#at least none that Wikipedia tells me
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hmmmm biggest mistake of Your jeep. Your teeth. The coffee that you bought me so far was making it take place 1998.... whoops... i just really wanted Bradley to be turning 15...
this just shows that i'll do anything for the birthday guy... i'll even disregard real military operations and historical events. anything for u bradley brad bradshaw
#there were no major battles or accomplishments or operations in early june of 1998 for Mav to get injured in#at least none that Wikipedia tells me#like where were u mav..... where did they send you....#so he just got injured... somehow... somewhere... that I don't even know#i unfortunately found this outwhen I was trying to make a timeline of my icemav's relationship...#and then i fell down a us military research rabbit hole and rerealized a plot inconsistency#like i kinda already knew that nothing happened in 1998 but i was trying to ignore it#i like how i said MY icemav#l was trying to say my interpretation#but like they're mine ig#let me know if anyone wants a timeline btw i will make a post#i'll make it all pretty and cool looking#please someone say yes#icemav#icemav fanfic#top gun 1986#top gun#pete maverick mitchell#tom iceman kazansky#bradley rooster bradshaw#stopthatfool writes
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New OCs
(briefly, humans and supernatural beings have to team up for building better relations with each other and all the supernaturals can shapeshift and take on human appearances but also have their 'original form'.)
OK so I was GOING to draw fanart today - I had a fun idea and everything! But health anxiety (and anti-anxiety meds) wore me out so I kinda .... slogged through OCs as a treat to me. I am going to go to the doctor tomorrow so HOPEFULLY it's all okay.
#my characters#also kite is the worst socially and says things he thinks are surely fitting for a human conversation#but ends up insulting grady with 99% of the comments and that makes grady not fond of him#but then grady is like super pleasant to others and doesnt know how to act around kite and flubs a lot too#its a disaster and the twins are like oh no this is painful#mr tengu that was so tacky you cant say that to a human#mr tengu you cant DO that to a human STOP BEING LIKE THIS#while callum is just like wow this is hilarious thanks for bothering my younger brother its adding character to his life#and kite is stressed because thats the least encouraging thing to hear ever thank you v much hes TRYING to adapt#but also kite isnt his real name and he doesnt know squat about humans BUT he knows they have the internet#and so hes like well the problem is i dont want to actually say my name to you all because what if i am Online (TM)#and so he asks for a new name and then is like he should name me - the tiny one who wants to kick my ass should name me#so grady is like ....... nooooo...... dont............ and then suggests kite bc he's done google research#and kite is a type of bird and according to wikipedia has some familiarity to tengu so therefore yeah#and kite is like !!!!!! DOES HE ! KNOW THINGS ! and happily accepts the slightly researched name while the other humans#are like grady stop that is bullying the poor guy leave him alone pick a normal name!#anyway not drawn yet but there is a human guy partner for the twins and he immediately is like perfect#i know which is which lets go out and explore the human world for your research#and they dont understand how he knows them apart so fast and none of the other humans seem to tell em apart#but then none of the humans are shocked at the guy who knows so the girls are like sir howst do you know#and hes just v casual oh right yeah younger identical twin sisters - i have Practice ! and they are endeared to him haha#anyway if you read all those tags ty#and yes in his tengu form he does actually have the long nose please do not be mad#i just dont draw noses normally and im too tired to practice rn so#i only drew the second one today anyway - the first pic was done a couple days ago but i didnt wanna post on main#but then here i am posting on main#im sorry
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Ok I watched the leaked episodes
Let’s start with the positives! I love positives!
- Alex Brightman put his whole Alexussy into this shit oh my god, Pentious and Adam actually sound really good. Adam singing is also really really good. Alex can sing in character and carry things well and I’m glad now he’s part of the project. Because at least it’ll be bearable if I see the other episodes.
-Vox is actually weirdly really compelling? Like I actually ended up enjoying the vibe he’s got and his own voice grew on me, I know it’s not what people wanted but it works well.
-Nifty’s voice is pretty ok, so is Charlie’s. They’re some of the better voices of the cast, Alastor’s performance was uh. It wasn’t bad so there’s that!
-the opening exposition was needed but also a bit hamfisted- wait shit the positives- uh, I love the direction it went? Art wise?
-the songs are pretty good, they get you from point A to point B, and at least wasn’t Poison levels of cringe in writing.
-Charlie actually helping Pentious in episode 2 try to repent and be a better person actually feels nice, like a crumb of what the show should of be-
…
Ok let’s get to the point.
-the episodes clearly are trying to shove as much of the plot as humanly possible, to the point that you get whiplash.
-Angel Dust, Vaggie, Valentino, Husk all have voices that either do not fit, crack from the pressure to perform, or are trying so hard to mimic the previous voice that it’s actually worrying. The Angel dust one in particular I’ll get to when I get to the point.
-The plot starts with the main antagonist, literally telling Charlie that her plan is pointless and she should give up. There’s no actual “I want” song to counter this, unless you count the song where Adam mocks her for trying and tells her the exterminations will happen twice a year now.
-Pentious at least wasn’t a creep like i was fearing in the script, but he comes off too pathetic? Like I know he was pathetic and that’s the point but why the fuck does he want to be equal to the Vees now? Didn’t he want to rule over hell himself? I know the instagram had him crop himself into pictures with the Vees but remember those aren’t canon!
-I realized I was able to hop in because I had Wikipedia level knowledge of these characters to the point they click in my head (and enough to where Alastor, Charlie, Vaggie and Husk all felt a little off but that’s neither here nor there). But god I cannot imagine being a new person trying to jump into this show, this is bad. None of the characters get actually introduced outside of Charlie, the show references the pilot which isn’t part of the show so new audiences have no idea what they’re talking about, and the staff gets actually introduced in episode 2. EPISODE 2, TO PENTIOUS!? GIRLIE POP HAVE HIM COME EPISODE 1 THEN?
-Animation that’s either too floaty, too janky, too stiff or straight up traced. Which I don’t blame the animators for, Mammon was busy buying 10,000 dollars worth of peacocks to bother paying them more than a dollar per frame. There’s no charm here.
-Where did the fucking cat key come from? No I’m serious. Where did it come from? It just kinda exists now.
-Alastor’s commercial is just straight up MEAN and he’s often more mean than chaotic, which I know is ironic since he wasn’t a good person and I wasn’t expecting him to be but it’s to a point where it’s not even fun mean. He literally called Charlie’s endeavor “Daddy issues”. It felt like he was just there to slap Charlie in the face.
-Angel Dust rant is gonna be so long that I saved it for last.
I have to put it under the read more because of talk of SA! Fun!
Ok.
I’m saying this as someone who loved him from the pilot and was willing to excuse his behavior as “flaws he can work on” since Addict and everything else proved that there was more under the surface and he was a character that could change and grow and-
…
…
Angel dust, the rape victim… the guy running away from his abuser…
The Angel dust who has traumatic episodes so fucking graphic that he flashes back to them when he’s performing.
Saying “yeah no, fucking sexually exploit me! It turns me on!”
Viv, I know you’re not reading this but I mean this genuinely.
Fuck you.
As someone who’s family has experienced sexual abuse, as someone who’s family still has CPTSD because men in power decide to exploit them… how fuckin dare you make a character enjoy their own exploitation.
This isn’t me kink shaming a sexual character! He can be sexual and like sex! It’s never been the problem and hell it could of been liberation to have sex he deserves.
But no.
Let’s make the SA victim into the sexual harassment character, let’s make the SA victim the Stolas of the show where he wears down his love interest so thin that they have to give up.
Let’s make the SA victim still work under his shitty abuser, and make that into a joke as the abuser mentions wanting to rape everyone in the hotel.
Don’t pay to watch this show, I mean it.
Pirate it.
Hell don’t even watch it, find something better to watch. I’ve been binging anime as of late and I still like captain lazerhawk.
#hazbin leaks#hazbin hotel critical#oh yeah btw I reneg my statement of letting go of Angel dust#I’m stealing his ass#Viv stole from people anyways#Angel dust is now my character and I am keeping him away from Valentino#The radio dust au is gonna be my comfort from this
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Hey it's been a hot minute, I'm gonna go off about Helldivers 2 for a bit, because the whole thing fascinates me.
Funnily enough it's not even the actual game itself that truly fascinates me, as great as it is. I do genuinely think that, while not perfect, it's a very solid game that knows what kind of experience it wants to deliver, and does a fantastic job delivering on it. The Starship Troopers-esque satire is hilarious, and I love how much the gameplay reinforces that satire through things like reinforcements canonically being a whole new Helldiver sent into the meat grinder, and that the mission still counts as a celebrated victory even if you never make it back alive. I could even talk about how the objectively clunky system for calling in orbital support is actually a positive for the game, but only this game and the type of experience it's selling.
But none of that is what fascinates me about this game so much. Because y'see, I played the first Helldivers game, and it was also a great bit of fun! It's actually why I was interested in the second one to begin with. But I also know that the first Helldivers was not a very wide reaching game, none of Arrowhead's games have been. They've not done poorly by any means, they're still in business and have been for over a decade now. But they've always been fairly niche affairs. Until now. To really sell the picture, I wanna rattle off player counts for their previous games:
Magicka in 2011, Arrowhead's first big game and published by Paradox, had an all-time max player count of 11,727 players according to SteamDB. I don't believe it was on any other storefronts, but I could be mistaken. A quick wikipedia visit tells me that the game sold roughly a million units over a year which, again, not bad! Especially for a game that is admittedly fairly unusual, but is a lot of fun!
The Showdown Effect in 2013, which I only just found out about right now after double checking my numbers, had a all time high of just 3,284 according to SteamDB, and is now delisted from Steam. Though apparently there's a remake from another company happening? There's a lot less info on this one in general.
Gauntlet in 2014, this one I do know a bit more about since I also played this one. A remake of the original 1985 game, and was a good bit of fun as well! This one is trickier to get an accurate player count reading, because it did have a PS4 release and those are harder to find numbers for. Regardless, it was also on Steam, so therefore I can use those numbers at least, which gives me a max consecutive player count of 12,730. I don't know how much PS4 factored into this.
And now we get to the real interesting one: Helldivers 1. Again, this is tricky because not only was it on console, but it was actually on console before it was ever on PC, which heavily skews numbers. SteamDB has the peak at just 6,744, but this doesn't sit right with me. I've seen estimates of 50k people around the place, some say 35k, but never a solid source. It's also very difficult to search atm because of how much Helldivers 2 is blowing up. Speaking of...
So Helldivers 1 is their most popular game, and I'll be generous and say that the 50k count is the accurate one. So surely Helldivers 2 can't be that much more- oh I'm not even going to pretend, you already know what's going on here. The game has reached ~450k concurrent players just on Steam alone! And the game also exists on PS5, and if I recall correctly: there's official statements saying that the player counts are roughly equal with each other. That means a peak of ~900,000 individual players. To illustrate how bonkers batshit insane that is, motherfucking Fortnite has a current consecutive player count of roughly one million.
Let me reiterate: a game that came out of basically nowhere with little marketing, from a small studio with only about 100 employees, is rivaling the juggernaut that is fucking Fortnite. That is insane.
As someone who has played all of Arrowhead's previous games besides The Showdown Effect, this is bonkers. There's a reason the sentiment was "there's no way to have predicted this" when the servers were at their worst, because look at the previous data! How is anyone supposed to predict a sequel to a niche game (from a company very few people have heard about) to get a ~1800% increase in max player count? Their initial server capacity was 250k, which would've been very optimistic if you were just going by Helldivers 1 numbers. But then that wasn't enough. And then 360k wasn't enough. And then 450k wasn't enough. We're now at 700k server capacity and just finally getting things under control. This game just exploded in a way no one could have reasonably predicted. And I have no idea why this is the case either.
I'm not saying it's not deserved; it absolutely is! Like I said, game is great, and there's not even any shitty business practices I can bitch at this time! It's just so sudden and out of nowhere that it baffles me. Such a small percentage of these players would've even heard of the first game, let alone played it. It didn't have a massive marketing campaign, this is pretty much all spread through word of mouth, which is insane in its own right. It's not even like the game is entering an untapped market, it shares its existence with games like Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide, Darktide, the actual Starship Troopers game, probably some others I'm forgetting. And yet, despite all of this, it breached containment something fierce. I don't have a big conclusion to make from all this, I'd love to be able to say "oh people are just getting tired of Triple A- oh I'm sorry, Quadruple A gaming and this is a breath of fresh air" and it is that, as was Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm not naive enough to think that's the main reason. Not when so many other great games continue to go undiscovered, and so many people still end up buying whatever the next big Triple A thing is. It's a great game to play with friends, and there's a lot going for it and a lot of charm, but such is also the case for the other games I already listed in this paragraph and they don't see the same popularity.
Whether it's just dumb fucking luck, or a really oddly specific set of circumstances at play that I can't see, I'm just dumbfounded and flabbergasted. But I'm not exactly gonna complain. It's fun getting sent into the meat grinder to spread Managed Democracy, and I'm glad the game is doing as well as it is, though I do hope that the devs get to have a bit of rest once the dust finally settles a little bit.
#helldivers#helldivers 2#seriously if they ever need to update the example sentence for the word “unprecedented” this would be a solid candidate#this has genuinely kept me up at night before just thinking about how wild it is compared to all of Arrowhead's other games#let alone compared to just Helldivers 1
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Defining Darkness.
I need to decide what I want to do here.
I could just tell you what I think the Answer (to each topic) is, and what led me to that. But instead, I want to ask as many questions as possible. If I'm alone in my echo chamber, I need to be my own worst enemy, the most thorough critic possible. I want to make this fun (for me).
So let's strip this down to the most barebones it can be, and dive into the wonderful world of Lexicology: the study of words.
Darkness.
Darkness, according to Wikipedia, is defined as:
A lack of illumination
An absence of visible light, or
or a surface that absorbs light.
Darkness is a concrete, normal concept about real life, but it has transcended beyond its immediate definition to become a steeple of powerful metaphors expressing endless bounds of human emotion.
Darkness is used to paint a picture of evils, unknowns, dangers beyond the warmth of the sun. Darkness eats the sun, holds it hostage and drains hope, love, and joy. Darkness wants, it hungers, and it schemes. It has a plan. And worst of all, it's very patient.
...at least in writing.
Darkness can mean anything a writer wants it to mean, so it can mean all of those, and it could mean none of those!
Our job as Lore theorists, is to observe what this word means to Sky, and what picture should be painted in our head when we try to understand exactly, just what 'darkness' is.
{{{Continue Reading}}}
Because to the unaware, when they first hear of a "Darkness" in Sky, their minds go to every far corner possible that I had just poetized above.
There is an inescapable tendency among fanfic writers and OC designers to relish and drool over the idea of 'the bad guy'. We are craving an antagonist, and we paint them in our thoughts the moment a crumb of content leans in that direction.
And even better than an antagonist; we are itching for an antihero. For some kind of 'opposite' side against the light. Something to represent our rebellions and battles in real life as we rage against the machine, for whatever our machines are.
"Dark" creatures, "dark" skykids, "dark" elders; a world of possibility opens up and we just can't help ourselves, not even the devs!
[Official Sky concept art by Tom Zhao]
But enough about Lexicology (the study of words (if you forgot)).
What about what we can actually see in person? (In game)
As we begin to observe the world around us, we have an immediate official Rule that every theorist seems to agree on:
If it hurts your Light, it's Darkness.
[By the way, damage to your Flame is not damage to your Light. This will someday make sense later.]
The game warns us early on to 'protect your Light', and as we travel through the realms we find creatures that attack us; creatures that the game warns in loading screens are 'dark' entities, "hungry for your light". The rainfall and sludge in wasteland are also harmful to your Light, showing that Darkness may be carried in water.
Within this rule we now have a small list of Things-That-Hurt-Us:
Forest rain
Wasteland water
Darkness crabs
Dark Dragons (Krill)
Shardfall, and Dark Shards
And for the loremoffy, that leaves them with a bunch of questions and dots to connect. Starting with the creatures on the list, we're instantly alarmed, especially as moths entering the false temple for the first time. These two 'enemies' are canonically named by quests and loading screens as 'dark' creatures. "Are they dark evil minions of the bad guy??" gasps the moth, audibly. They certainly seem evil, attacking you with no [some] hesitation. If they are 'a part of' the Darkness, then that seems to guarantee the Darkness wants/exists to attack Light.
And what of signs of 'evil' darkness that don't appear to hurt you?
Darkness plants, also canonically named so, don't hurt you, but, foreign and invasive in appearance and nature, they do seem to be uninvited guests in a land that didn't really expect them. They appear in places that are wet and dimly lit, and have been seen to trap exposed light, be that smaller creatures of Light, memories of Light (released by Shardfall or memory/spirit quests), and lastly, the spirits of Ancestors, who's shells have been cracked and exposed to the Darkness.
The plants appear to keep and store Light, mostly inside small orb-like sacs. This along with the fact that it traps Beings of Light and memories of Light, seems to show that whatever this 'Darkness' is, it doesn't 'get rid' of Light, but rather bury it, keeping it perpetually contained, encased within a strange tomb indefinitely.
More official concept art by Tom Zhao
These things are slowly and painfully choking the land, killing whatever still dares to perch on the ground. They may or may not be 'evil', but whatever they are, they're a plague, a disease. Are they what make the Dark creatures the way they are, or do Dark creatures and Dark plants all appear because of something deeper down the rabbithole?
We follow the trail of Darkness, worse and worse as we grow near its source, and find that the worst of the Darkness comes from the ruined kingdom's heart of society. Whatever Darkness is, the Ancestors obviously seem to have something to do with it. From here the lore moth can trail down a few paths. The Ancestors were either the direct cause of this Darkness, or created it by accident. It was either directly connected to whatever they were doing, or they didn't expect Darkness to be a factor at all. Regardless, we'll look at why Darkness is on another day.
But What is it?
The goal of an Answer is to be able to summarize everything you know about a subject, into a bitesize, consumable, tolerable answer. And to answer what Darkness is, after all of this blog-long research and meditation; one specific word is the Answer.
noun
noun: pollution
the presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects.
Pollution is the word that matches everything we know about the way this Darkness spreads. It has been introduced into the environment by the Ancestors, and is affecting the world. Pollution contaminates and poisons, killing the world with no intent of its own, but destroying everything nonetheless. This is the perfect word for what we've seen in our journey so far.
But how does this tie back in to the beginning of this post?
We had determined that the possible definitions of Darkness ellicit:
Lack of Light
Opposite of Light
An Evil
Absorption/Burying of Light
We are beginning to find that Darkness in the world of Sky does not 'lack' Light, as it instead traps and stores Light in a perpetual sleep.
🚫 [Darkness]: a lack of Light
We have also found that, being released by the Ancestors of the ancient kingdom, Darkness is not seemingly malicious, but instead a force, a storm, almost 'natural' in its ways, with no conscious mind of its own. We cannot create a face of pollution in real life enough to visualize an antagonist we can 'defeat', unless you generalize a concept of rich old fat men. It is the same way with Darkness in Sky. It's probably not 'evil', but it's not okay.
🚫 [Darkness]: an ancient evil
But we have confirmed that it does absorb Light, which is a concrete definition of 'darkness' in the dictionary.
[Darkness]: content that absorbs Light ✅✅✅
And because of that, we've come full circle! 🎊🎉🎇
Wait, we didn't address if our Darkness is or is not synonymous with the definition "opposite of Light"...
Well, maybe it's better we hold off on that thought for now. Because in order to say it's the opposite of Light, first we have to Define what Light is. And I think its safe to say we won't get there for a while. 😅
You're crazy if you actually read all of this, but thank you so much.
I think I'm really going to enjoy making these, so long as I can make them s l i g h t l y coherent. Have a good day/night yall!
#sky children of the light#sky children of the light lore#sky cotl#sky cotl lore#sky game#sky lore#sky rambles#skychildrenofthelightlore#skychildrenofthelight#skycotl#skycotllore#skycotlstory#sky children of the light story
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Everyone: "Man, how does Van Helsing know so much about Dracula and vampires?? Must be a personal connection between him and the Count."
Me: *pulling my hair out trying to rewrite the September 30 meeting scene* "IF YOU ACTUALLY FUCKING READ HIS MONOLOGUE TWENTY TIMES OVER YOU WOULD KNOW HE KNEW NONE OF THIS INFORMATION PRIOR TO THE STORY."
Maybe not none. But. Let me just. Most of the shit he says is filler. "Let me tell you, it's gonna be fucking spooky" is what he says like fifty times over in twenty words or more each time.
"Alas! Had I known at the first what now I know—nay, had I even guess at him—one so precious life had been spared to many of us who did love her."
Van Helsing says that if he knew all the info he's about to dump on us about vampires, they could have saved Lucy. Meaning he didn't know jack shit. He most certainly didn't know who Dracula was.
"Even friend Jonathan, who lived with him for weeks, did never see him to eat, never! He throws no shadow; he make in the mirror no reflect, as again Jonathan observe. He has the strength of many of his hand—witness again Jonathan when he shut the door against the wolfs, and when he help him from the diligence too. He can transform himself to wolf, as we gather from the ship arrival in Whitby, when he tear open the dog; he can be as bat, as Madam Mina saw him on the window at Whitby, and as friend John saw him fly from this so near house, and as my friend Quincey saw him at the window of Miss Lucy. He can come in mist which he create—that noble ship's captain proved him of this; but, from what we know, the distance he can make this mist is limited, and it can only be round himself. He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust—as again Jonathan saw those sisters in the castle of Dracula. He become so small—we ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a hairbreadth space at the tomb door."
Then finally he starts saying things that he may have already known since he cites no specific examples: night vision, requiring invitation, no power in the daytime, the sunrise and sunset bit, etc.. He does cite an example of what "unhallowed ground" vampires can enter uninvited, but that's just to illustrate his point. But then he talks about his friend Arminius.
"I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to make his record; and, from all the means that are, he tell me of what he has been. He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier of Turkey-land. If it be so, then was he no common man; for in that time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land beyond the forest.' That mighty brain and that iron resolution went with him to his grave, and are even now arrayed against us. The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due. In the records are such words as 'stregoica'—witch, 'ordog,' and 'pokol'—Satan and hell; and in one manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as 'wampyr,' which we all understand too well."
Van Helsing is really just like me for real oh my god. He sounds like me after just having gone on a Wikipedia binge. He knew absolutely nothing about Dracula before, and he really wants to capitalize on all the new shit he just learned.
"We know from the inquiry of Jonathan that from the castle to Whitby came fifty boxes of earth, all of which were delivered at Carfax; we also know that at least some of these boxes have been removed. It seems to me, that our first step should be to ascertain whether all the rest remain in the house beyond that wall where we look to-day; or whether any more have been removed. If the latter, we must trace——"
*gunshots* Anyway.
More fucking fuel for the stop fucking painting him and Dracula as mortal enemies fire. He's literally just an old man who reads a lot, he's not a badass vampire hunter, Dracula didn't kill his gf or some shit, and he's probably never successfully dealt with a vampire before. Also, more ammo for my if you deny Jonathan's importance to the story one more time-- gun.
#picturing Jonathan trying to dissociate during Van Helsing's monologue and jumping each time VH says his name#Jonathan: yeayeayea we know we all know my trauma so intimately can we not#VH: of course. one more thing--#dracula#dracula daily#rant???#who knows#abraham van helsing#van helsing#also just??#VH: Dracula is super smart he's a tactician-- he's also a baby with a widdle baby brain bc only the mentally handicapped commit crimes#which one is it abe
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Is anyone still trying to figure out the final code on the MV? The one with (the world of abnormal sentiment dances)? No judgement, I have no idea what's going on with it either, but I'm surprised there's so little discussion of it. I’m making this post to share some observations, and some of the things I’ve tried as I go insane over this MV. Warning, don’t expect anything too revolutionary.
+First, the code doesn't have a direct parallel in the original LGI MV, so no clues there.
+But I did find something possibly peculiar. You know the "find the 'n'" bit that shows up right after it? Well, it's lifted straight from the original LGI video, but the symbol you're supposed to find there is somewhere else.
That's the equivalent from the og LGI.
And there's the n. It's in a completely different spot, which makes me wonder if it's somehow related to the code. The n does pretty much coincide with a number of the images. Here's a transcription of the numbers, with the numbers related to the n in blue (you should still check I didn't fuck anything up though). Italics and bold means I'm not completely sure about the number.
1 4 6 3 1 4 8 4 2 6 8
1 7 3 7 4 1 0 2 0 1 4
3 0 3 6 4 5 1 1 7 5 9
2 3 3 6 8 6 3 6 2 7 8
9 3 0 4 0 4 9 2 3 7 4
3 0 8 2 4 3 6 7 7 2 0
6 9 7 0 5 2 1 7 3 2 6
&
4 3 6 0 7 8 8 6 5 0 3
7 1 8 8 1 1 5 2 5 7 9
8 7 6 4 3 2 1 6 8 6 4
9 5 6 2 8 0 7 1 3 5 3
0 8 5 9 5 6 3 3 0 7 1
7 5 8 1 4 9 8 3 7 5 2
9 1 4 4 4 1 0 0 5 2 6
Does it mean anything? Hell if I know! I have no idea how any of this works!
+Perhaps a more out there possibility is the changed alphabet. I've mentioned it before, but there's a point in the David MV where a modified alphabet shows up.
In case you can't tell, not only are letters listed in both capital and non-capital form, the alphabet ends W-U-X instead of W-X-Y-Z. This changed alphabet is not in the original LGI.
This is the equivalent scene. You can see it's perfectly fine, and as far as I can tell (aka: zero Japanese, just the translation and vibes) the letters aren't listed twice. And this is the video the David MV is based on, there are a lot of similarities.
This would imply, in my mind at least, that the alphabet was changed for a reason. I've seen it interpreted as another sign David doesn't see himself as human, as he doesn't even use the same alphabet, but it feels like a weird way to go about showing that to me.
So, uh, if you're trying something, and some words don't look right, maybe this can help?
+I have no idea what footnote 14 is supposed to be. "Hint: word length of 256". I've seen it suggested that it relates back to Hamlet's "To be or not to be" thing, but... while I think I did see one source with 256 words once, the word count is highly inconsistent throughout the internet, and almost none of them have it as 256 words. I checked with wordcounter.net.
-Wikipedia: 275 words.
-Poetry Foundation: 259 words.
-Poets.org: 276 words.
-Nosweatshakespeare: 275 words.
-Representative Poetry Online: 265 words
-Shakespeare Resource Center: 261 words.
-Litcharts: 273 words.
See the issue here? And now I don't have any idea what footnote 14 is. Here's some other things that it isn't.
+Literature Girl Insane: >256 words.
+Colored lyrics in the MV: ~190 words
+Lemon: Way more than 256 words
+The part of lemon in the MV: 113 words.
+The defense of Socrates: Way more than 256 words.
+The defense of Socrates, but only the part in the MV, and extended to the next end of sentence: I want to cry. 257 words. 257. One off. Why? Why are you like this? Please, someone check the fucking text and tell me I accidentally pasted in a word I shouldn't have. PLEASE-
+That part of the Little Prince in that one part before the tally 5 code: 198 words.
+Undefeated by the Rain poem: 139 words (in English Wikipedia, or 180, in the English translation found in Spanish Wikipedia, because my life can't just be easy so apparently the English version of the poem is different in different languages of Wikipedia what-)
+Just the correct/incorrect code: The most is 247 characters, if you include "correct13" and "incorrect".
+Yamanashi, the story "kapukapu" comes from: Thousands of words.
I didn't check anything else, but I can't for the life of me find what this is referring to. And it feels important, seeing as it's on the goddamn equal sign. Maybe it’s one of those excerpts from that part of the MV right before the “correct/incorrect” code? I don’t know.
If it helps, I’m pretty sure the code’s going to translate to something related to Xander, seeing as his numeral flashes on screen right before that. And because of that, it’s possible this 256 word thing refers to some kind of revolutionary speech or text or something the like.
How would the footnote matter? Well, you know the ampersand symbol (&) that shows up between the numbers?
Maybe, if we put the numbers on both rows together:
14 43 66 30 17 48 88 46 25 60 83
17 71 38 78 41 11 05 22 05 17 49
38 07 36 64 43 52 11 16 78 56 94
29 35 36 62 88 60 37 61 23 75 83
90 38 05 49 05 46 93 23 30 77 41
37 05 88 21 44 39 68 73 77 25 02
69 91 74 04 54 21 10 70 35 22 66
Then reference whatever text is 256 words long, we can assign each number a word. Possibly, we would only start where the n appears, just to give that some meaning.
Like, here's what you get if you do that with the Wikipedia version of "To be or not to be", starting with the 05 the n represents (starting from the beginning gives you a completely nonsensical message, I didn't even go all the way).
to - sleep - to - and - dream - of - against - to - die - opposing - to - that - and - no - them - consummation - to - to - fortune - be - devoutly - death - die - not - the - and - question - to - and - arrows - ‘tis
Like, that almost sounds like it works, but obviously we would need to find the actual text of 256 words, which isn’t the Wikipedia version of the Hamlet speech. I also tried with the Socrates text, but I don't think it works (from the n you get, like, "O - but - O - word - ashamed", and that's going to be in there even if you start from the beginning).
I also tried some kind of alphabet cypher thing, both with the regular alphabet and with the modified alphabet, and while I would like second opinions on account of my skill issues, I didn’t get anything.
If that’s not what the ampersand is for, here's what you get if you add the numbers together instead of just putting them next to each other:
5 7 12 3 8 12 16 10 7 6 11
8 8 11 15 5 2 5 4 5 8 13
11 7 9 10 7 7 2 7 15 11 13
11 8 9 8 16 6 10 7 5 12 11
9 11 5 13 5 10 12 5 3 14 5
10 5 16 3 8 12 14 10 14 7 2
15 10 11 4 9 3 1 7 8 4 12
It looks like it could be translated to hex almost perfectly, with the 16s possibly just translated to 10s, but I don't know what to do with it. I tried converting to hex and just putting it in as a Tumblr image URL, but nothing. Though there’s a chance I just didn’t do it right, I guess. I even took the first part up to the "n" and put it in th goddamn tally 5 page just in case it did something, but no. I tried the "word association" thing with the Hamlet thing as well, but nothing. Also tried alphabet cypher, even with the modified alphabet, and nothing. But again, any cypher cracking I tried to do should be taken with a grain of salt, since I’m a bit of an idiot at it.
One thing I didn’t do, simply because I don’t know how to, is try to use column cyphers. You can look them up and try them yourself, but I sorta doubt that’s the answer.
Finally, it’s a possibility “world length of 256” is actually some kind of cypher key. Like, not whatever it’s referencing, just “word length of 256” as a key. I severely doubt it, but if anyone wants to try it, be my guest.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, I kinda just wanted to tell someone, I guess. I’m going insane over most of the MV anyways, might as well share a bit of the madness. Also because of the content drought caused by me working on the MV video which is coming I promise but it’s going to take a while-
Anyways, thanks for reading my inane ramblings for so long! Take care!
#drdt#danganronpa despair time#drdt mv#can you even call this a theory?#it’s just a series of failures#like my life#/j
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so im curious
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About Lif's material and form.
Ever since I saw Lif for the fist time I could do nothing else but wonder what he was made of. Lately I have seen people wondering about it too and I took this chance to give my opinion. This of course does not in any way undermines anyone else's idea or headcanon. I just want, as I said before, to contribute with my idea and reasons as to why I think it is so. I take as proof other works of fiction as there are no concrete evidence of real activity. At least none that does not look like fake 1800's seance pictures.
First of all I want to say that to me the most obvious material used in Lif and Thrasir's making is Ectoplasm. Why do I think it is obvious? Well it is what ghosts, apparitions and the like are supposedly made up off in other works of fiction.
But what is Ectoplasm in Paranormal Studies? The psychical researcher Gustav Geley defined ectoplasm as being "very variable in appearance, being sometimes vaporous, sometimes a plastic paste, sometimes a bundle of fine threads, or a membrane with swellings or fringes, or a fine fabric-like tissue". Arthur Conan Doyle described ectoplasm as "a viscous, gelatinous substance which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes" -Wikipedia
As an example of an entity that has most of these properties in one I present to you :
The spirit of H H Holmes. The famous serial Killer who was haunting the apartment building of the courthouse he was killed on, on the show Supernatural. He demonstrated to be able to be solid enough to kidnap the girls he wanted and he left traces of slime ectoplasm as well as becoming vaporous.
If we take this information that ectoplasm can be solid, gelatinous, viscous, vapor and even crack and break, then we have an explanation of Hel, Thasir and Lif's bodies and why they look different but look to be the same material.
First let us take Hel, and why she appears to be solid enough to crack. Hel has always been this way and has existed for time untold. She is powerful as well and her feelings seemed to be always under control.
Let us take Gozer from Ghostbusters . Ancient and powerful, Gozer can be vaporous and is able to posses humans and is as solid as any living creature. When Gozer is defeated they break as if made of stone. Gozer's resemblance to Hel comes from how old they are and the command they have of their bodies and emotions. They also have always been this way and so they do not have an issue with their physical makeup.
Then we have Thrasir. Thasir is younger than Lif but her life as Veronica has not been as free as Alfonse. Veronica has been possessed so not being herself is nothing new to her. Veronica also seems to be used to suppress her feelings and thoughts. I mean she does look depressed and accepting of whatever fate befalls her when she is Letizia's prisoner. So I feel that her lack of emotional reactions or suppression of them plays a part in this. It feels more like acceptance of her new form and new self in my opinion. For this reason I take that even though she is younger than Alfonse she has more command of her essence than Lif. Still she has not been this way all of her existence so she is solid enough not to "bleed" but not enough to be hard as stone or crystal. As shown on her art. I think their mental state plays a lot on their command on their essence.
And here is where the difference with Lif is. Alfonse of course being a prince has been taught to not show what he really feels. He has restrains as well as parental issues on top of all. The difference with Veronica is that he has at least more freedom and is more of a revel than her. His line in the castle where he tells you that he may not behave as a prince should comes to mind along with the fact that he should not have been part of the Order but still enlisted any way. We see him get angry and sad and react very badly to different situations during the battles. Now imagine what they went through and think of this old saying. " Life is like boiling water. It either hardens you ( like a boiled egg) or it turns you into mush ( like carrots)." Thrasir hardened in that she looks like she is more adapted to being the way she is. She became used to it in a way. Lif though did not and it shows.
Take Slimmer as an example of this.
In the cartoon (Yes I went to watch it when I was little. I'm a geek ok?) Peter asks why Slimmer is the way he is and the explanation was that he was anxious because he wanted to help them but also because he was helping them hunt his own kind. He had the tendency of eating a lot because he wanted to be accepted. He gets be solid enough to eat but turned to slime and vapor as well depending of the need. There was always a pressure on him of not being accepted by Peter and it played a lot on his actions. Guy had existential issues Ok? SO who else has existential issues?
Lif in a way is like this. The artbook mentions his armor is empty but it can not be so even if he was but vapor, because vapor is something to begin with. Also because you can see the change of his ectoplasm from solid to somewhat liquid and vapor. He has also bones and ABS on his ectoplasm body.
And what glorious abs he has. He can Slime me any day he wants
Yeah...just like that.
But I digress. The point is that he gets angry and he looses a little solidity because
The vapor coming out of his mask when he is angry.
And the bleeding of his liquid ectoplasm when he is injured as well when he is protecting Thasir in their Day of Devotion alt is proof that he is a more emotional person than Thrasir and therefore his ectoplasm changes with his mental state. Alfonse seemed to have had self esteem issues to begin with and the physical change seemed only to aggravate them so I believe that he is of course not accepting his situation, not only that his people has died but what he himself looks like and what he has become. I think this was also a part of why he says he can't use the name Alfonse anymore. He does not feel himself anymore so his command of his new body is not always the same.
In conclusion:
He will get flustered when he has a making up cession and someone (preferably me) will get slimmed and maybe not in the good way if you know what I mean ;)
Where was I ? Oh yeah they are made of ectoplasm in my opinion. Now I just need to know why he glows like Hel but Thrasir does not. I feel it is also because of emotions and mental states but who really knows. I like to think that he glows brighter when he "blushes".
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I've never done any kind of proper historical studies -- everything I've learned is from high school, from reading things on wikipedia, from history podcasts, and more rarely (because I rarely have the patience to read) from books. So I... hardly know anything about specifics. The kind of intimate knowledge of the inner workings of empires and peoples that a college educated student would have.
This might sound odd but... it's a bit reassuring to me that even someone who's spent years studying those two specific subjects doesn't feel comfortable saying for certain what any individual person, or group of people may have been experiencing at any given time. That the environment people lived in was so *vastly* different that one can only have clues as to what people felt, how they experienced the world.
All that being said, and I do apologize if this is another too-vague or too-broad question -- do you feel as though your college studies have changed the way you relate to the past?
So I wanna unpack some of this a little bit, because you're closing off some avenues I don't think you need to close off.
College students do learn about specifics, but the thing that's really being taught in college is how to think and learn. Skills, not facts. Part of what made that conversation with the history majors so memorable is that it highlighted how much is different between majors in that regard.
Sociology vs psych might be a valuable example here: Rule of thumb, sociology teaches you to approach issues on a population level, groups of people; psychology teaches you to approach issues on the individual level. There's very few areas where either is 100% right to the exclusion of the other, but it's useful to know which lens (a) you and (b) your source is using, if you're going to be reading about, e.g., the causes of poor academic performance in American boys. Psych says this is due to a rise in ADHD; socio says our classrooms aren't suitable for...anyone, but especially people who have never had to sit still and be quiet (ie, boys).
WHAT you learn in college is HOW to learn. (It's also, crucially, a period where 1, you very often have nothing else to do BUT learn and 2, you are paying a gazillion dollars for the privilege of learning, so you're heavily incentivized to actually do it. Free activities are easier to stop doing than ones you paid to do.)
It's how to navigate databases, how to read articles (peer reviewed or otherwise), which resources to trust, what it MEANS to trust a resource, how to read with different lenses, how to find information at all, what sorts of conclusions are reasonable or specious to draw from that information (aka: how flimsy can your argument be before your professor will tell you to find more evidence), when to apply certain techniques...
* Enormous caveat: if your professors were any good. Some of them aren't. Many of them aren't. If your professors universally suck, you'll come out with a meaningless degree and student debt, which is not ideal.
But theoretically, at least, the purpose of 21st century higher ed is to teach you how to learn.
Then you go apply it.
All of which is to say: The granular factoids I have on call about 15th and 16th century explorers did not come from college; I didn't take a single class on that era. They came from books and articles and online resources. College taught me how to evaluate those books (although common sense plays a huge role here) but the rest of it was self driven.
Here's the other thing: None of that knowledge is paywalled.
While the decline of Google makes finding some of these resources harder, I highly, highly recommend just searching things like "how to judge a history source" and "basic resources for social history" (a guess based on your focus on 'inner workings of empires and peoples'). Then read a bunch of links (please first filter for obviously AI written pages!).
THEN ask yourself some questions: Where did those links disagree? Are there areas they all agreed on? Was there something that 8 pages agreed on but 2 did not? If it seems like a key area, go check who's written & hosting those links, and consider what they might (or might not) know about the field. (If r/askhistorians and PragerU disagree on a definition, you can bet which one I'm listening to.)
After reading a bunch of pages, you probably have MORE search terms and MORE questions. Repeat. Repeat.
I just mentioned r/askhistorians: For this sort of thing, I would read anything with the Monday Methods flair. Start here. That page was last updated 5 years ago but it DOES link to 3 years of mostly weekly posts on how historians think. 100% free. No college tuition required.
Podcasts are great resources. r/askhistorians is fucking invaluable. I would murder for the r/askhistorians modteam, no questions asked.
Reading is a learnable skill! Reading history books is very learnable! I stopped reading print material for 2 years, and when I was getting back into it, I set myself an alarm. 15 minutes a day in the evening when I had nothing else going on. Start with fiction if you're out of the habit, YA would be my recommendation, then start expanding.
There ARE history books with audio versions out there and you can check your library system for those; I don't vibe with audiobooks so can't provide any specifics, but I know they exist. Most history books won't have recordings, though--what you may be able to do if you check out or purchase a digital version is use a text-to-speech program or screenreader to read it to you. This obviously has some drawbacks :P But it's an option!
So: Did my degrees affect how I interact with history? Yeah. I'm not discarding the impact of my education, I had some really phenomenal classics teachers. But they're not the only way to get that result. There are other routes to the same destination.
#asks for ts#jennifermoriarta#ask more questions about who is writing this and why!#history#long post for ts
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Terry's Birthday: Fandom, the Internet, and Citations
Or, a too long, too in depth essay on a fictional character's birthday
If you aren't thinking I'm a total nerd by the time you're done reading this than you didn't really read this. But, let's start at the beginning. Recently I posted a timeline I made for "Batman Beyond" and in the time since I made that post there's been something I've seen pop up in tags which I'd never heard of before. A few people were saying that Terry's birthday is August 18th. I was really interested in the source of this claim because I had no recollection of ever seeing it anywhere before now. I looked it up on google (as you do) and found this date scattered around the internet. Case closed, right? But I quickly realized there was a consistent problem on every site I came across. None of them cited a source for Terry's alleged August 18th birthday.
Just look it up yourself and you'll find that the date is ubiquitous across the internet. Yet, as far as I can tell after all my research, it's also completely unconfirmed. I mean, I may have missed something, but if I have than someone else is going to have to point it out to me. I also made a post prior to this one asking people to cite a source for Terry's birthday and no one has so far. You can have a look at that post if you want to know what I consider a good source on this subject. In any case, if this date or any other had been confirmed in any piece of media or in an interview with any DC creator involved in Batman Beyond than I think I would have found a citation for that source somewhere by now.
Right now it kind of seems like August 18th is fanon that's been recycled into "canon". This seems to have happened through a process of source-less wikipedia edits being parroted across reddit threads, sites featuring profiles of comic heroes, other wikis, etc. The less popular June 27th birthday for Terry seems to have gone through the same process. Here are links to some of these sites: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
As my research continued I came across some possible witness testimony of the first mentions of these birthdates:
a.) In this archived thread from the DCAU wiki, in quotations below, I've copied an excerpt of an exchange between two users that I feel is most relevant to this post (emphasis mine):
"So, I've noticed lately that a lot of different sites have been stating Terry's birthday to be August 18th with various years attached to the date. The earliest mention of which I could find is an edit to his wikipedia page in 2008 (which prior to the change stated his birthday was June 27th). I don't remember a mention of when he was born on the show or tie-in comics, and the third volume of comics didn't come out until 2010, so would anyone here know where these dates originate from? -- ReachingForRevolution (talk) 17:48, September 26, 2013 (UTC)"
"I've done some extensive timeline research, and I never came across a good source for those dates. All I saw was a wikipedia edit war with those two dates, but neither is correct AFAIK. The most cited year of birth is 2023, which is speculation as well, but there's at least some foundation for that. --Tupka217 17:56, September 26, 2013 (UTC)"
b.) A similar claim was made in this thread. The relevant excerpt, written by the user "Yojimbo" on October 16, 2023, is in quotations below (emphasis mine):
"No official birth date was ever given.
There was a wikipedia edit war in the 2000s but no source was ever given for either disputed date, June 27, 2023 and August 18, 2023."
As I've travelled down this rabbit hole, I've begun to suspect I won't be able to find exactly where it began, but this is as close as I've gotten. Allegedly, sometime around 2008, there was an edit war on Terry McGinnis' wikipedia page between at least two users over the birthdates of June 27th and August 18th. Now, how or why that edit war even started, I don't know. Why those dates, I also don't know. What I do know is that August 18th is the birthdate that gained the most popularity in the end and spread across the internet.
I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes with this post or call anyone out, really. If anything, this post exists because the subject was interesting to me and I've found the journey enjoyable. If you want to say Terry's birthday is June 27th or August 18th, then please do. Fandom is about fun, not perfectly sourced and cited dissertations on fictional teenagers' birthdays...unless, of course, that sort of thing is fun for you. I know I've loved every minute researching for and writing this...because I'm a massive nerd...but I certainly don't adhere to a strict reading of the timeline myself which is something I plan on covering in an upcoming addendum to my timeline.
In summary, my own research has produced no officially confirmed birthday for Terry McGinnis. This leads me to believe that August 18th and June 27th are fanon birthdates. It may be that I've just not found the citation for one or the other of these dates so I'm open to anyone who can provide me a good source. But really, none of this matters in the grand scheme of things, although it's interesting to see the way user edited/moderated wikis can sometimes bring less clarity rather than more. I'm sure this isn't the only example of that. Assuming I'm right and these birthdates are fanon, I wouldn't consider this a cautionary tale or anything so dramatic. Instead, I'd say this was a case study in the interaction between fandom collated information about fictional works as it exists across the internet and why the adage, "cite your sources", will never die...or something like that...
#batman beyond#terry mcginnis#dcau#this was supposed to be up like a week ago but I got sick on Jan 5th and haven't felt well enough to post this until now#anyway don't take this too seriously because I certainly don't#Terry's birthday can be whatever you feel like#despite my confidence in my research I'm open to being proven wrong on all this and will happily take the L in a follow up post#I'm honestly embarrassed by how deep I got into this subject it's so unimportant and I'm not sure anyone will find it interesting
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I feel like being a hater real quick so bear with me. A defense I sometimes see for Tom King's Mister Miracle is that most people who read it probably don't know much about Mister Miracle or the Fourth World as a whole, so they don't see the major flaws in it. Like if you don't know Orion you don't know King massacres his character. If you haven't read the original New Gods series you can't be mad about the way King deforms its anti-war messaging or misconstrues Highfather's character. You can't be mad about the way the Forever People are uncerimoniously killed off screen if you don't know who they are. You can't see just how far King deviates thematically from every other Mister Miracle series if you've never read them. So the argument is that Tom King's Mister Miracle is good, provided you don't know anything about the characters or world, which is where all the praise for the series comes from.
But. And I'm sorry in advance for sounding like a complete tool. It's not?? Like even without any prior knowledge of the source material, King's Mister Miracle is mediocre at best.
King's Mister Miracle hinges on the shock factor its brutal scenes and heavy subject matter has. Yes, it's good at portraying horrific scenes in visceral detail - it opens with a graphic suicide attempt that is undoubtedly shocking, its portrayal of mental health issues and trauma is visceral, its scenes of warfare and torture horrific. But being shocking, visceral, and horrific does not make you interesting. It does not make you good.
Because beneath the graphic gore, the thematic core of the series is childish. King's understanding of the philosophies and ethics he discusses is rudimentary at best. The series has nothing interesting to say about the ethics of war - or at least, nothing that other works of literarure haven't said in far more interesting ways.
Its treatment of utilitarianism specifically really sticks in my mind. The question of idealism vs utilitarianism is discussed, but never on a level deeper than you can find on Wikipedia. It is treated as a flat conflict of ideologies; Highfather, on the side of utilitarianism, sacrificing Scott to Darkseid, vs Scott, on the side of idealism, refusing to do so and escaping the trap.
But that is a fundamental simplification of the actual events portrayed in Kirby's New Gods, where Highfather, far from a utilitarian, was actually fueled by a deeply held ideal. His decision to give up Scott wasn't a 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' situation - 'the greater good' never comes up. It was Highfather sacrificing all he had left - the son of his wife, for whose sake he'd started this war to begin with - for what he believed in: peace. He only became Highfather once he achieved this ideal, the belief in peace, the belief that war must not last forever. He did not sacrifice Scott in a game of numbers; he did not calculate that the happiness of one was outweighed by the happiness of thousands, millions even. It wasn't about the numbers. It was about the ideal.
And when you actually came down to it, it wasn't even, truly, a sacrifice: it was a trade. A trade of two sons. For Highfather, this was a sacrifice that it wasn't for Darkseid, but this wasn't Agamemnon leading Iphigenia to the slaughter by will of the gods; as he traded Scott into hell, Highfather saved another, gave Orion the chance at a good life that he never could've gotten on Apokolips. He gave Orion the choice to be good, and Orion took it.
Does that mean Scott's trade was justified? Does that mean that the ideal of peace - achieved for a time and instilled in a young soul who never would've encountered it otherwise - was worth it? Was Scott's trade a moral one? Maybe! All Kirby's book tells you is that war cannot go on forever. How to approach that is up to you.
None of that is anything you'd think of if King's Mister Miracle was your first foray into the Fourth World. But these layers of complexity are completely absent from King's Mister Miracle. There is a right choice in King's world, unambiguously, and it wasn't trading Jacob. The topic of utilitarianism is discussed with a random cashier who spouts a textbook definition, and the book doesn't dig futher, delve into the difference between utilitarianism and consequentialism, for example. Jacob wouldn't have been traded for another life, another young soul, but for a weapon. King's Mister Miracle does not engage with the true complexities of ethics here; it simply has Scott escape the trade, winning unamiguously, but the war continues, as it always will. Even the world's greatest escape artist can't escape from the neverending war.
Jacob's trade was not justified. The war will never end. These are unambiguous truths in King's Mister Miracle.
I know jack shit about ethics. I am almost positive my definition of idealism here is wrong or, at the very least, oversimplified. The extent of my knowledge lies in my fucking high school ethics class.
I am still not exaggerating when I say said high school course on war ethics still provided more depth than King's Mister Miracle. My high school essay provided more depth. King's Mister Miracle waxes poetically about the complexities of war while showing extremely black and white views on ethics, its moral quandries having obvious correct answers the narrative goes out of its way to facilitate.
In King's Mister Miracle, you can never win the war, but you can, somehow, fight it ethically. Negotiations are doomed to fail. Peace will never last. War is hell, a string of violent injuries, torture, and depravity. But the ethical questions have a right and a wrong answer. You can't win at war, but you can win at ethics.
In King's Mister Miracle, nothing in war is good, but, simultaneously, its ethics are black and white. It's an edgy teenager's view of war. Or, perhaps more accurately: a CIA agent's.
#My posts#Fourth world#Infodumping#Scott free#Orion#Highfather#Also just imagine a 'dni if you disagree with me' banner on this post#I do not care to discuss tom king's mister miracle. Im interested in dunking on it#Is that unfair? Yes#Do i care? No
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if you don't mind (and you have time), could you explain a little bit about the story with solomon, asmo, and the ocean? or at least tell us where a good place to read about it is? I've tried to look into the actual stories of who the characters are based off of but it's honestly really hard to even know where to start because there's just so much to it 😭 but the stories seem so interesting especially the stuff between asmo and solomon
My original source is "I read this in a friend's religious text (?) when I was a teenager and it stuck with me" but here's some actual online places that cover the story of Solomon & Asmodeus.
*None of these stories are the ones I grew up with (i was raised buddhist) & none of these sites are ones I'm familiar with so I don't know how valid/reliable the sources are. If anyone has better sources feel free to drop a link in the replies
I'm only adding short parts from each site to this post and I'd highly recommend reading the whole thing if anyone is interested
"Confident of his own power, Solomon granted Ashmedai's wish. Instantly the demon seized the king's crown, and with a single flick of his powerful wing, hurled Solomon four hundred miles from Jerusalem.
Ashmedai then flung Solomon's magic ring into the sea, where it was swallowed by a fish. For Ashmedai thought, "If anyone should gain possession of the ring, he will know what I have done."
Then the Demon King disguised himself as Solomon and sat down upon his golden throne."
-Jewish Heritage Online Magazine
"Ashmedai remained with Solomon until the Temple was completed. One day the king told him that he did not understand wherein the greatness of the demons lay, if their king could be kept in bonds by a mortal. Ashmedai replied that if Solomon would remove his chains and lend him the magic ring, he (Ashmedai) would prove his own greatness. Solomon agreed. The demon then stood before him with one wing touching heaven, and the other reaching to the earth. Snatching up Solomon, who had parted with his protecting ring, he flung him four hundred parasangs away from Jerusalem, and then palmed himself off as the king."
-Jewish Encyclopedia
Another Talmudic legend has King Solomon tricking Asmodai into collaborating in the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem[4] (see: The Story of King Solomon and Ashmedai).
Another legend depicts Asmodai throwing King Solomon over 400 leagues away from the capital by putting one wing on the ground and the other stretched skyward.
-Wikipedia
Solomon - Britannica
*The original text I read as a teenager said Solomon himself was flung into the ocean? But none of these mention that. Then again I read that about a whole decade ago so it's highly probable I'm misremembering. But also (at least with Buddhism*) small details like that tend to differ depending on where you find the text and when you read it
eg: *did you know in some buddhist texts the horse no longer dies!!? Because apparently it makes children too sad!!?? You're telling me I had to sob my little 7yr old heart out in an art museum over this horse and kids nowadays don't get to experience that devastating heartbreak!?? That kick to the teeth!? The nerve! Why did my generation have to suffer like this!? Kids these days don't know how good they have it! Why I oughta-
anyway-
Honestly I think the easiest and most comprehensive way to digest these stories if you want to know more but are overwhelmed by how vast and interconnected they are is by finding a good reliable youtube channel that talks about them
Here are some channels that I've watched before & some I haven't (so I can't vouch for them) but are popular & cover those topics:
•ESOTERICA
• Mr. Mythos
• Mythology & Fiction Explained (subscribed/watched)
• Mythology- Folklore A-Z
• Overly Sarcastic Productions (subscribed/watched)
• See U in History / Mythology (subscribed/watched)
• Storied (subscribed/watched)
• The Legends of History
Hope this helps!
#asks#obey me#obey me shall we date#obey me!#shall we date? obey me!#swd obey me#swd obey me!#shall we date obey me#obey me nightbringer#obey me solomon#om solomon#obey me! solomon#om! solomon#swd solomon#shall we date solomon#obey me asmo#obey me asmodeus#om asmo#om asmodeus#obey me! asmo#obey me! asmodeus#om! asmo#om! asmodeus#swd asmo#swd asmodeus#shall we date asmo#shall we date asmodeus
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Anime Talk - In Memory of Nami Sano
As we are nearing the end of the year, I would like to bring attention to one manga artist who is no longer in this world. I write this with the intention of paying her my respects. Anything that may seem offensive have no such intention behind it.
Nami Sano was born on April 17. 1987 and died August 5. 2023. She was 36 years old and passed from cancer. She left behind many works, two of which have been animated. The first one was Sakamoto Desu ga? (Haven't You Heard, I'm Sakamoto) which was animated in 2016. The other is Migi to Dali (Migi and Dali), which was animated in 2023, the last episode airing December 25. 2023.
I have watched both these anime and want to talk a little bit about both of them. I want to start with Sakamoto Desu ga?.
The story is about a cool high school student named Sakamoto. He transfers to one school and solves problems in the coolest way possible, making friends and enemies along the way. I didn't watch the series as it aired, but it's still been a while. I do remember enjoying it a lot. It is seinen and mainly a comedy series. I can't describe it very well, so I encourage you to watch it, or at least check it out on MAL. I gave it a 7/10 ranking. This is also called "good". I will admit, comedy is not what makes me rank a series highly. My favorite part about the series is probably the titular character, Sakamoto and all the character dynamics he is part of.
As for Migi to Dali, I have quite a lot to say. I had seen the series as part of the line-up of the Fall season 2023 and was considering to watch it. I originally decided against it because I simply had too much to watch on the airdate, Monday. Yet, after another student from my university recommended it to me and mentioned that the author had passed, I decided I should at least watch the first episode and see if I liked it. I definitely did. I couldn't look away. A middle-aged couple named the Sonoyamas, living in Origon village, decide to adopt one child, just one. They find the perfect son, a 13-year-old boy named Hitori. However, there is something the couple do not realize. Hitori is not Hitori. Hitori is two 13-year-old twin boys named Migi and Dali, who both play the role of Hitori. They often swap places and pull off little tricks to make sure that no one will ever catch onto this.
I will say no more on the story. As it is a comedy, mystery and suspense story, I would hate to ruin all the fun. The final episode is great and I ended up giving it a 9/10 score (great) on MAL. If you enjoy mysteries like I do, then I can't recommend this series enough. You can check it out on MAL if you feel like it.
Knowing that this is Sano-sensei's last completed work, you would suspect it ended around the time of her death, but this is not the case. Apparently the manga finished in November 2021, long before she was diagnosed. According to Wikipedia, she was also working on a new project around the time of her death, which further proves that Migi to Dali ended as she intended.
While it is possible to tell that the author is the same through the art style, the stories of Sakamoto Desu ga? and Migi to Dali are so different it is hard to believe they are written by the same author.
What I can conclude is that Nami Sano had a creative mind with many ideas for gimics and interesting stories. It is sad that the world has lost such a great, creative mind this year. My heart goes out to her loved ones, and I hope that none of them are left alone at this difficult time.
#Anime#Manga#sakamoto desu ga#haven't you heard? i'm sakamoto#Migi to Dali#Migi and Dali#Memory#Sano Nami#Nami Sano
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Okay so @scordoesart posted a lovely Bellhands thing the other day and I got thinking again, which can either be fun, or lead to sheer madness and brainrot and this is the brainrot kind of thinking apparently. So I had to write it down and regain some semblance of sanity again.
So, Bellhands is all well and good (and honestly, probably the most likely option for Izzy's long lost boyfriend please cast Matt Berry as Sam, he is so perfect), but then I doodled a little piratey dude the other day, thought he looked like he could be a good boyfriend for Izzy, but he didn't feel like Bellamy to me, and then I thought
Blackbeard is a pirate with a bloody reputation, but a soft side for his beloved.
You know you else had a big, nasty, bloodthirsty reputation?
Charles Vane
Hear me out:
In history, Vane got started sailing around the same time as Stede and Blackbeard under Henry Jennings, and pretty quickly made a name for himself and gained a reputation for like, torturing captured crews, and being the "leave none alive, show no mercy" sort of pirate captain.
So if Vane is a big name in the pirate world, why wouldn't Izzy hear that name and go "that's my boyfriend! He's alive!"
Some pirates likely changed their names to protect their family's reputation, so maybe when they were younger, Izzy didn't know him as Charles Vane?
From what I skimmed on Wikipedia, Vane didn't sail with Hornigold, but we're history inspired here, not completely accurate. I read somewhere that Taika said he read like 4 sentences of the Blackbeard Wikipedia page and decided to just wing it from there, so if it's good enough for Taika, it's good enough for me
So, what if he did? What if he sailed with Hornigold and company under his legal name, and then later changed it to Vane when he started building his own piratey reputation?
Some time after Blackbeard gets to captain his own ship, something happens and Charles gets separated from the crew (arrested? Falls overboard and picked up by a different ship? Idk, something) and Izzy thinks his boyfriend is dead
Maybe Charles has some connections somewhere and talks his way out of being hanged for crimes of piracy, but has a hard time getting back out to sea for some reason. Eventually he does get away and back out to sea where he meets Jennings, and somewhere down the road, he gets to captain his own ship and goes off to try to reunite with Izzy and company.
(side note: at least according to Wikipedia, he sailed on The Lark, The Ranger, The Katherine, and a different ship called The Ranger. Hornigold also had a ship called the Ranger, so there's the basis for my half-assed 'Vane used to sail with Hornigold' theory. I’ve also decided that his ship the Katherine is named after someone he knows. A beloved little sister, maybe?)
Historically, Vane and Calico Jack sailed together for a time. Per Wikipedia, Jack was Vane's quartermaster, and later became captain after voting Vane out of his captaincy. Again, vaguely historically inspired, my vision of Vane (fairly level-headed and laid back, but prone to bursts of anger and murder) probably doesn't like wild, rambunctious Jack too much, and maybe only briefly reunited with him prior to ep 8. So maybe when Charles reunites with Blackbeard and Izzy, there can be a "why the FUCK didn't Jack tell you I've been looking for you, I'm gonna fuckin kill him" moment
Maybe Vane got his violent reputation while looking for Izzy. I'm picturing like, Vane shows up in the republic of pirates, asks about Blackbeard, and the guys there are like "oh yeah he was here like a week ago, you just missed him. No idea where he fucked off to this time", and he starts taking out his frustration on captured ships because his former shipmates are just always slightly out of reach. Or maybe gossip spreads about Ed and Stede taking the act of grace, and Vane starts getting extra passionate about hunting English ships, hoping to find Blackbeard on one of them and reunite with his old friend?
how did Izzy and Charles end up together in the first place? Still working out the details on that one, but it's coming together, just slowly
This may turn into a actual fic some day (probably not, I have no time, nor am I good with words) but for now it's just a jumbly, scrambly list of half-formed ideas that need to be dealt with eventually
#our flag means death#ofmd#Izzy Hands#give this sad little man a boyfriend please#historical accuracy? what historical accuracy? we don't do that here#its pirate party time at all fuckin hours in my brain lately
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Tell me about the anatomical traits of bipedalism this is not a joke I really want to know
REEEHEEHEE lucky me!!
this is gonna focus on (the rise of) human bipedalism (pun intended) because i dont know jackshit about any other animals! ALSO im going to link everything i mention to its wikipedia article as further reading 4 those interested :3
also, pleas keep in mind i have zero formal education on this whatsoever i am literally just a hyperfixated child
Before we get straight into it, a brief word on evolution, since I include some human ancestors here- if you see a scientific name rather than a colloquial one like chimp or gorilla, that's a human ancestor. The reason the ancestors in question look like they're transitioning from chimps to humans is because chimps and the rest of the great apes haven't begun their bipedalism journey, and human ancestors did! We're more derived than chimps from our common ancestor :3 that's all thank you
The skull // foramen magnum positioning
OK SO i have no idea how to ease into this so im throwing it all at you raw. This is a human skull from the bottom view with the jaw removed:
Aside from looking freaky as hell, it's also got that big hole right in the center. It's called the foramen magnum, and it's the hole where your brain connects to the spinal cord- AKA, where your neck is. Cool, but what's this gotta do with anything? Take a gander now at this gorilla skull:
(Image src: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gorilla_Male_skull_base.png)
See how much closer to the back of the skull the gorilla's foramen magnum is? This is because gorillas primarily walk quadrupedally!
(Image src: https://origins.swau.edu/papers/man/hominid/index.html)
Here's also an example of the changing of its placement as bipedalism evolved- from left to right, that's a modern chimpanzee, Australopithecus africanus, Homo erectus, and a modern human.
If you're having trouble imagining how the placement of the neck could indicate how a primate walks, try getting on all fours and looking around you- you have to tilt your head up almost as far as it can go just to see forwards, and you can't see directly above you like you can when standing on your legs. If you try to maintain the position for a while, you'll get exhausted- and a majority of the mobility in your neck is now useless, because who cares about seeing the floor from twenty different angles?
All of this is taken care of by just making the neck come out a lil closer to the back of your head. Behold my incredible artistic explanation:
The placement of the neck is uh, a LITTLE exaggerated, but you get the gist. Or at least, I hope you do, 'cause I'm moving on now.
The curves // spinal structure
Ok I'm going to come clean about this i think the spine is the most boring aspect of primate bipedalism to talk about because it's biophysics and its like whats the point of biology if you're just going to make it physics again, I came here to escape! But FINE, I'll talk about it.
also my sources here are probably the least reliable in the whole post because i had to go refresh my memory on fucking QUORA because i completely zone out whenever someone starts talking biophysics. SORRY FOR RAMBLING FOR TWO ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS it will happen again
Behold the curves in the spine for this chimp vs. this Man.
(Image src: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-human-spines-zig-zag-unlike-other-apes-How-is-it-not-detrimental)
And you should immediately see the differences. I mean, the red line's right there for you. C'mon. That dip inwards at the neck is called the cervical curve, the bump outwards at your ribcage is your thoracic curve, the final dip inwards between the ribs and the pelvis is the lumbar curve, and the tailbone-ish bit at the pelvis is your sacral curve! And quadrupedal apes have none of it.
The reason, in short, is gravity. It's painfully difficult to find an image that shows this that doesn't look goofy as hell, so please have this hilariously crunchy picture because it's the best I can do short of making my own.
(Image src: https://efossils.org/book/lumbar-vertebra)
This is where we get to the physics bit that I'm really not confident about whatsoever and I could be completely making up but AS FAR AS I UNDERSTAND:
Essentially, the weight on either side of that line has to be somewhat equal, but the dot it comes out of cannot move. Whenever a chimp like in the images or something similar stands up, it has to exert constant muscular effort to remain upright, because there's an imbalance. There isn't a demonstration of this I can think of like we had for the foramen magnum, but just imagine doing that Michael Jackson lean stunt or being bent over at your hip constantly. Physics bit over.
So, to keep us from being Anatomically Hunched Over Forever, we developed the lumbar curve- but because just inverting the curve in our spine was basically just as bad because now our ribs would be weird, we also got the thoracic curve to make up for it- but because our head being bent forward with the thoracic curve would also be weird (it'd create the same issue as discussed above with the foramen magnum), we ALSO got the cervical curve to make up for that. Do you see now why I don't like this? Funny as hell, don't get me wrong, but man.
The ass // pelvic structure
Can you tell my maturity is rapidly declining? The pelvis, as you can probably guess, is really indicitave of whether a primate was bi or quadrupedal. Feast your eyes upon the pelvis bones of a chimp, an Ardipithecus ramidus, and a human respectively.
(Image src: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Ardipithecus-pelvis-at-44-mya-was-already-more-human-than-chimpanzee-like-Three_fig4_280721011)
Take a look at that side view in the first row- it's wild how different those shapes are! If you're having trouble picturing this in 3D, a human pelvis is more bowl-shaped whereas a chimp's is kind of flat, like a road sign. This allows for two main things, as far as I can tell - one, our pelvises literally serve as bowls for our internal organs, just as extra support, and two, this broader, wider area gives more space for the ass muscles to attach, which makes standing on one leg easier- a problem quadrupeds obviously don't have.
A second change you might notice is that the pelvis obviously shrunk along with changing shape! This is to bring the sacral curve closer to the hips to create sort of a ⊥ (upside-down T) shape, which makes everything way more stable than if it was a ⅄ (upside-down Y) shape. This matters because the ball-and-socket joints we walk on are actually relatively unstable to balance on, we needa make things as stable as possible, to put less muscular effort into balancing!
Another, far, faar more subtle difference is the size of the hip joints (check the side views in the first row again - not the holes! The little circular imprints above them) has gotten bigger! This is because when you half the number of limbs that are supporting your weight, you double the weight each limb is carrying- so our bones need to be thicker and stronger than a quadrupedal ape's down there!
The legs // knee structure
I'm not doing this. No more physics please no more physics
The feef // inline big toes and arches
Let's kick (lol. lmao) this bit off with some human-chimp comparisons, as always!
The big thing here, as you can guess, is the weird big toe chimps have (although we gotta keep in mind that we're the more divergent species, AKA the weird ones!) which you probably already know is for climbing trees! As our ancestors left the canopies we slowly lost need for a big toe like that and now we've got lame ass feet.
One thing we did gain, though, is three arches in our feet- y'know, that inwards dip in the "palm"? Chimps and other quadrupedal apes don't have that, and are flat-footed! It helps with walking and stuff. I dunno.
God, that's a lot! If you read all the way here, um, thank you! Hope you learned something or at least thought this was cool ^^ I'd be happy to try and answer any questions :3!!
#cw animal bones#tw animal bones#animal bones tw#animal bones cw#do they count as animals colloquially if they're hominidae? who cares! gnarly bones!#bones tw#bones cw#cw bones#tw bones#skull tw#tw skull#skull cw#cw skull#no id#no description#[IF SOMEONE WOULD BE WILLING TO WRITE IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS FOR ALL OF THESE I WOULD LOVE YOU FOREVER AND EDIT THEM ONTO THE POST !!! TY]#🐞 || asks#🐞 || beetle's bad biology
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