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bestworstcase · 1 year

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do you think there's anything to be implied about the quality of rwby's writing and framing in light of how much of the audience misinterprets salem/oz and the role of the gods? i see so many people reading the lost fable as a straightforward condemnation of salem and ozma as a pretty basic tragic hero that it makes me nervous about the future of the show and that IM reading too much into things when i see more nuance in salem. are that many people really that shallow when engaging with rwby? idk

nah people are—well tbh i think what it comes down to mainly is that fandom is not really centered around critical analysis, it’s centered on transformative engagement, and while these are by no means mutually exclusive endeavors they are in fact. Different. analytical vs transformative approaches to the text are different endeavors with different goals requiring different skillsets and can but do not inherently overlap. frankly in fandom spaces i think real textual analysis is not just ancillary but actively discouraged; nobody is quicker to respond to analytical discussions with “it’s not that deep” than a fan who doesn’t like the discussion and there is a noticeable tendency in fandom spaces for any analysis that isn’t 100% ebullient to be read as negativity or critical—e.g. note the frequency with which my reading of ozma is interpreted as character bashing—which isn’t to say that fandoms do not engage analytically at all, but in broad terms there is something of an unspoken… chilliness toward textual analysis in fandom culture. and i am saying this from the perspective of having written a lot of textual analysis and a lot of fanfiction across different fandoms; there is A Pattern. you write a detailed analytical breakdown of your reading of a character and see people tagging it fandom negativity while gushing about the detailed character study you wrote based on that same reading enough times and you start to pick up on the fact that maybe fandoms are not really built for analytical engagement. there is also the whole thing where fandom has an entire category of headcanon predicated on “this thing happened in the text but i don’t like it so no it didn’t” and a second entire category predicated on “this has no basis and is possibly out of character but i like it so happened actually” lmao [TO BE CLEAR THIS IS NOT A VALUE JUDGMENT I HAVE NONSENSE HEADCANONS ALSO ITS FINE.]

anyway this is all fine but! because fandoms devote the bulk of their collective energy into pouring out vast endless streams of like, fanfic and fanart and headcanon and “ship dynamics” [i still do not quite understand what these are] and incorrect quote mills and so forth you tend to get a sort of collective flattening of the text. there is a tendency for characters to be stripped down and reduced to small easily-manageable sets of tropes derived more from aesthetics and first impressions and for any moral complexity to be boiled down to simple black and white and for unique worldbuilding to be smudged a bit until it resembles its nearest recognizable trope. there is a sort of creative entropy. a smooth surface is easier to write on. also sometimes fans do not Obsessively Rewatch The Show four times in the space of a year and over time details get memetically blurred and this, obviously, is detrimental to the overall fidelity-to-canon of popular fanon.

and then like the thing to remember about rwby is it’s a very detail-oriented story, and one that respects its audience. the one downside of that storytelling approach is that fandom is uniquely ill-equipped for it (think about how many people Completely Missed that ironwood was on the express train to fascism land in V4-5 even though. the narrative made it like. hilariously obvious)

In Summary i lived through the fandom where the protagonist after two years of increasingly toxic behavior towards her bestie, charbroiled her friend’s arm into a shriveled blackened husk and not only did not apologize but had a whole episode about being mad at the friend for being upset and then 95% of the fandom was shocked when the friend went “fuck you” and stole the magical artifact whose power was involved in the charbroiling incident all of four episodes later; and almost two years later half the remaining is still Discoursing about how the friend “didn’t have a reason” for betraying the protagonist. tts was a show written with small children in mind. i have witnessed Actual Forty Year Olds insisting that this character’s betrayal was petty and childish. rwby is a lot more tightly-written and nuanced and not a disney princess cartoon and while it does benefit from its fandom not being mostly Disney People the fandom is still. A Fandom. doing what fandoms… do.

#i really cannot emphasize enough that the salem nonsense is not ANYWHERE EVEN CLOSE TO the level of the cassandra tts nonsense #like every single episode that is About Cassandra is about rapunzel being an egregiously bad friend #(cause tts went ‘this girl grew up abused in a tower and has negative social skills’ god bless)#and the charbroiling happens because rapunzel uses a Known Dangerous Uncontrollable spell that cass begs her not to use #goes into a trance repeating it and cass grabs her to snap her out of it #and then like two episodes later is like i’m mad at you bc i had it under control and you wouldn’t have gotten hurt if you listened to me #and people are still like ‘how dare this petty egotistical selfish bitch be angry at rapunzel’ lmfao #like at least with salem she’s The Villain yk #not the deuteragonist who gets two seasons of being relentlessly mistreated by her friends and permanently disabled before finally snapping #anyway yeah as a Collective fandoms don’t engage beyond the level of like grade school analysis you get on TVTropes #i.e recognition of common tropes and genre conventions #the rwby fandom is honestly ahead of the curve for having a widespread grasp of what deconstruction is #but it’s still not. great #ironwood is the measuring stick to use here

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flickeringart · 3 years

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Minor aspects

While the nature of the major aspects in astrology is quite straightforward and has been covered more than sufficiently, there’s still a lot of fog surrounding the nature of the minor ones. There are a lot of minor aspects that can be taken into consideration when interpreting a chart… however, since they are labeled minor they won’t be as obvious and much more difficult to spot in one’s own life. Note that this doesn't mean that they aren't impactful. There’s a lot of speculation and vague terms used when describing them. It seems that every minor aspect is said to have a “spiritual/creative dimension” as if that is supposed to clear up any of the mystery surrounding them. Perhaps, on one level, we don’t want to pin them down too much because certainty is the enemy of exploration. Or perhaps it’s the case that the aspects themselves don’t want to be pinned down? There’s an appeal in keeping certain things mysterious in our lives, to avoid defining and putting rigid labels on phenomena. It makes life alive and beautiful. Many people dismiss astrology is because they are afraid that they’re going to be reduced to a set of characteristics and have their personality mapped up to the point of being able to predict and foresee patterns of behavior and fated themes. The fear of knowledge is not irrational; it is probably healthy to an extent. Knowing too much can be dangerous and rob life of its magic. “Curiosity killed the cat”, as the saying goes. However, this is not the whole truth because curiosity also leads to expansion and better understanding, so let’s not be afraid to concretize these aspects, it's not the same as "killing" their potential. Life is never completely in our hands anyway, there's no risk of knowing it all.

Quintile (72°)/Bi-quintile (144°)

These aspects are said to have something to do with individual style and quality of creative work. It is suggested that these aspects say something about a mental-creative process of imposing one’s mind on a particular subject. It is also linked to talent and gifts the individual would possess that have not been actively learned. Basically, it seems to be indicative of the particular way a person would approach a subject. For example, the quintile would not describe the activity itself - the activity could be painting, knitting, running, cleaning or whatever – the quintile/bi-quintile would point to the way the person approaches the activity.

For example, Ted Bundy (whose chart I’ve explored a bit here), has Neptune bi-quintile the MC. Neptune, being the planet of illusion hints to Bundy’s quality of being a chameleon, deceiving the public as part of his personal style.

Prince Harry, (whose chart I’ve touched upon before), has his Moon bi-quintile Neptune. The Moon can be indicative of the mother figure, and his mother Princess Diana certainly had an elusive style and charm that was a bit deceptive and seductive. Of course, he would have the same thing going in his own life but it would perhaps be difficult for us to spot. He also has Moon quintile Venus and he definitely has a style/quality of emotional-physical comfort. He has Pluto quintile the AC, which would point to a style of showing up in the world that is powerful and intense. He has a tendency to come off as destructive and chaotic at times. There’s also a quintile aspect forming between Mercury in the 8th house and the MC which would hint to a public image that is colored by the “taboo” things he has said about his family in the recent present, but also in the past. He’s a public image that is aligning with the style of the playful amoral trickster.

As I’m going with charts I’ve already explored, let’s look at the quintiles in Meghan Markle’s chart. Her Venus is quintile Uranus and it perfectly describes her style of “wokeism”, that is, appearing to be objective and intelligent about feelings and affective values. She has a style of being “the loving humanitarian”. Whether she is this way in an actual sense is debatable. The quintile aspect is describing the quality and style not the actuality. But, it is disturbingly close to reality that it somehow becomes reality. It’s like the actor who adopts another energy signature in order to portray a different person. It doesn’t really matter if a person is rotten at the core - if he has a loving way of being, what difference does it make? The style is real enough to not reflect and give the impression of love.

Semi-square (45°) / Sesquiquadrate (135°)

These aspects are said to precipitate events. The nature of these two aspects is more immediate than the square aspect (which causes tension and doubt and needs constant navigation). The conflict represented is usually unconscious and is therefore not easy to identify. However, as these conflicts tend to manifest quite abruptly, we can take a look at the concrete problems the person faces. The planets connected by a semi-square/sesquiquadrate aspect will be in conflict but force some kind of release (that may result in an accident because of it’s autonomous/unconscious function).

I have Saturn sesquiquadrate my Moon. Since I tend to unconsciously block my emotional responses, the pressure builds and I am “forced” to get out of a situation, “forced to listen to my emotions”. I have encountered the theory that the sesquiquadrate in particular is manifesting as something that is looked down upon societally. This would make sense considering the aspect forces a breakout of one of the planets and nothing that is immediate and abrupt is ever favorably looked upon when it comes to social-societal structure and predictability. I have been meaning to take on commitments that would further my status in society in terms of formal education (Saturn in the 9th conjunct the MC) but I have not been able to do it without considerable decline in my emotional well-being. So, I have been “thrown out” by unconscious forces every time I’ve tried.

My sister has her Venus sesquiquadrate Saturn. She’s known for her deliberate and strategic way of dressing. She plans her outfits carefully, there’s nothing haphazard about the way she presents herself. However, she has Lilith conjunct Venus so she can push the limits and simply do what she pleases sometimes as well when the pressure of Saturn becomes too much. But, this often causes external judgment. A relative of mine has her Sun semi-square Venus. I can tell that she’s highly aware of her appearance. She is very pretty but there’s always something that is a bit off between what she wears and her self-expression. It’s like it doesn’t quite fit and it’s irritating.

To get back to the celebrities, Meghan Markle has Neptune sesquiquadrate Mercury. Is it possible that this forces distortion and vagueness in opinion and communication? It would certainly fit the bill. She also has Uranus sesquiquadrate Mars. She simply has to “break out of her confining situations”, cut people out of her life and move on in her own way. Uranus is also sesquiquadrate her MC, which seems to point to her unconscious pull to “do what she wants to do” at the detriment of her public image and reputation. Notably, Uranus sits in her 5th house of personal enjoyment and creation.

Prince Harry has a semi-square between Mars and Pluto. When he is angry it blossoms into rage and he can’t see straight. It has gotten him into quite a lot of trouble and societal-social disapproval. It seems that this is a common theme with the sesquiquadrate and semi-square. He also has his Moon sesquiquadrate Jupiter. Isn’t it the case that he tends to indulge in a way that makes him look bad in society?

Quincunx (150°)

This aspect is typically found between planets incompatible by element and mode. Basically, they have nothing in common and have a hard time cooperating, which will cause minor stress in the individual because of necessity to work around the incompatibilities. The planets are not in direct conflict but they are uncomfortable with each other.

For example, I have my Moon quincunx Mercury. Every time I sit down to write I’m mildly disturbed by little things like an aching back, a headache, restless legs or whatever. It’s not very comfortable for me but I can still keep with it, however it might take a toll on me health wise. The quincunx has been related to health issues because of the mild stress that it causes. It is manageable and one is usually able to cope with the stress, but it’s not very pleasant. Because it is not as demanding as more disturbing conflicts in one’s life, it’s in the background causing irritation.

Meghan Markle’s Venus makes a quincunx aspect to her MC. This suggests that she has a hard time reflecting her value on a public level, it’s as if how she’s perceived publicly disturbs her sense of ease and comfort. She has an Aries MC with a Virgo Venus and she’s continuously depicted as a bully these days, as some kind a selfish and aggressive bitch (the more negative attributes of Aries). This must be undermining her self-worth immensely, however, it’s perhaps too minor of a problem to do anything about. It is still there nonetheless, harping on in the background, breaking her down and causing slow disintegration…

Semi-sextile (30°)

Planets forming semi-sextile aspects are said to be able to aid each other, to have a better connection than if they had no link at all. Usually one planet is in the sign that comes before the sign of the other; in other words, a semi-sextile might be forming between Mars in Aries and Venus in Taurus. The semi-sextile usually connects consecutive sign like this, but planets could be in semi-sextile in the same sign, like Mars in 0° Taurus semi-sextile Venus in 30° Taurus. In any case, the planet placed at an earlier degree or in the earlier sign can draw on qualities of the planet in the later degree or the later sign and vice versa. For example, Prince Harry’s Venus in Libra is semi-sextile his MC. He can draw on his sense of harmony a diplomacy to benefit his public image. His Mars in Sagittarius is also semi-sextile his MC, which makes it so that he can draw from his Martial qualities of energy and action to influence his career and success.

Parallel/Contra-parallel

These are called aspects in declination because they are measured by latitude and not by longitude. This essentially means that two planetary bodies can aspect each other in a certain way measuring the distance between them north-south of the celestial equator. Two planets at the same degree north and south of the equator form a parallel aspect and can be interpreted the same as a conjunction (some say that it's more obscure like a quincunx/semi-square). Two planets opposite each other north and south form a contra-parallel aspect and can be interpreted as an opposition (some say that it's basically the same as the parallel though).

I have found, looking at my own chart that these aspects only confirms already existing aspects measured by longitude or it confirms the sign that a specific angle is in. For example, my MC is in Aries and it is also parallel Mars. Mars is the ruler of Aries so it emphasizes my already martial MC. My Sun is conjunct Saturn and it’s also parallel Saturn. My sister has a Scorpio MC and it’s also parallel Pluto, the natural ruler of Scorpio. For example, my sister has a wide Moon-Mars conjunction (6°) but they are also in contra-parallel. How is this supposed to be interpreted? I would simply see it as Moon-Mars is connected strongly despite the orb being a little wide with the conjunction.

However, it’s not always the case that parallel and contra-parallel aspects only confirms already existing influences. They can also add themes and connections. My sister doesn’t have any longitude aspects between Saturn and Uranus but they are contra-parallel to each other.

Septile (51.43° - a 1/7 of the 360°)

It is said to indicate a hidden flow of energy between the planets involved, an inner sensitivity to the spiritual dimension of the planets. Another description I have come across is that the planets “darkly interact” and there’s an occult theme surrounding the connection.

I have Venus septile Jupiter in my own chart. Going by the said method of interpretation, it would mean that I have sensitivity to the hidden wealth and underlying beauty and abundance in life. I think it is quite accurate.

Novile (40° - 1/9 of the 360°)

Is said to be describing a contact of perfection/idealization. It also seems to have something to do with spiritual awakening and growth, lack of fear and freedom.

Having Sun novile Saturn for example could be interpreted as a feeling of communion with the world and life itself through responsibility and the control one can exercise through self-expression.

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There are of course other minor aspects to explore, but I'll stop here for now.

#astrology #aspects in astrology #minor aspects #minor aspects in astrology #quintile #bi-quintile #semi-square #sesquiquadrate #quincunx #parallel and contra-parallel #aspects of declination #prallel aspects #contra-parallel aspects #septile #novile #aspects in the natal chart #aspects #aspects in declination

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Takeru’s character song “Focus”

I alluded to this in a prior post (and, to be a bit honest about it, was a little concerned about how it would be received), but I had some friends ask about what I meant about this, so I decided to go more into detail with it! This is also partially in light of the occasion of the Best Partner albums also becoming a topic of interest again, so it feels like a good time as ever!

02 was a pretty prolific time for merchandising and side material as far as the franchise goes, and one of the many things that came out of it was the “Best Partner” series of character song albums (a whole 36 songs for all 12 Adventure and 02 kids plus their partners!). Of these, Takeru’s song “Focus” has been a particular topic of interest for many in the fanbase to its suspiciously loaded language and the fact that, well...it comes off as a romantic song, which is very unusual in a series that infamously didn’t touch on the topic of romance very much in terms of the actual series. Speculation has constantly abounded on what it’s supposed to imply, why it’s written this way, and what it could possibly mean...

But if you look at it closely? It’s probably not meant to be romantic, and it most likely refers to Patamon.

One thing that I do need to point out is context. Many who have been cynical about the song’s alleged romantic implications have generally put forth the idea that the music department was technically separate from the anime staff, so it’s possible that the music staff wanted to bait or provoke fanservice without much connection from the anime production. It is, undoubtedly, true that the music department isn’t necessarily fully tied in with the anime department, and has been fully willing to indulge in questionably-canon silliness (while 02′s Christmas Fantasy is certainly in-character, its placement in actual canon timeline has to be finagled with because of what we know about 02′s actual Christmas, and Tamers’s Christmas Illusion is far more comedic than the series itself actually permits), and, exacerbating this further is the fact that Hikari has her own extremely romantically loaded song, Reflection, which is often submitted as evidence that Focus must be made in the same vein, but tends to omit the fact that the album it comes from (Girls Festival) needs to be taken with a very heavy grain of salt given that it’s a notorious fanservice album that deliberately plays up the “maiden-like” characteristics of all of the girls involved for the sake of, ah, a certain subsection of the audience. (It was also made in 2002, long after 02′s production had ended.)

The notable thing about the Best Partner albums is that all of the material on it is extremely in-character, and this is especially notable because the song lyrics are significantly more obviously relevant to each character in 02 and their relationship with their partner than even the original Adventure character songs were (with said Adventure character songs often toeing into rather vague glosses that are only tangentially relevant to each character, and Mimi’s song on there pretty blatantly being an AiM single shoved onto the album for the sake of being called a Mimi song). Moreover, Focus isn’t just written by some random lyricist they grabbed for it, but regular Digimon lyricist Yamada Hiroshi himself, who was very involved in the anime production in terms of writing 02′s inserts Break up! and Beat Hit!, and, considering everything this series is about, you’d imagine he’d probably have been given some kind of details about what to do with Takeru’s representative song. It would be quite strange if, for some reason, Takeru’s song were the only one to go really off the rails about shipping bait instead of being, well, actually about his character arc.

I should emphasize that the fact that this song is so commonly read as romantic persists in Japan as well, so whether it was via mishap or not, undeniably, the way the lyrics are phrased definitely make the romantic reading a very reasonable one to pull. The language in the song is extremely “loaded”, and, if it weren’t for the unique circumstances I’m about to describe, most reasonable people can’t really be blamed for taking it this way. However, I will say that all of the most common English translations of various parts of the songs have tended to assume the romantic interpretation as well, and have thus followed up with it by definitively translating it in ways that make it near impossible to read otherwise. So what I’m saying here is that I don’t think it was unreasonable for people to have taken the romantic interpretation, and I don’t particularly intend to blame or criticize the translators who handled this song for also taking it this way, but I also want to make clear that this is not the only way to read the song, and that there’s a very high possibility that this wasn’t the case to begin with.

(Also, since I mentioned Yamada Hiroshi earlier: it’s actually not all that uncommon for him to use heavily-loaded language like this in songs he’s written for the series -- refer to Beat Hit! -- it’s just that people haven’t traditionally taken them as shipping because the context and identity of the songs’ topic matters were so obvious that there wasn’t much need to do speculation about it.)

Let’s take a look into all of the parts of the song that have been traditionally taken as romantic:

"We were together since we were little”

One thing that’s interesting about how this line is phrased in Japanese is that it doesn’t actually specify who was little. And, obviously, if you’re talking about a relationship between humans, you’d think that childhood friends would grow up together, so you’d default to “we”...but, actually, the Japanese text doesn’t rule out the possibility of reading this as “since I was little”. Which means that, yes, Patamon isn’t out of the ruling here -- because, indeed, they met when Takeru was young.

In fact, this actually is a line that arguably should rule out anyone else, especially including the most common speculated topic for this song, Hikari -- because he and Hikari weren’t actually that close during Adventure, and their time “together” was relatively short compared to the rest of the adventure. Remember that the Adventure kids weren’t very close to each other after the events of the series, and Hikari and Takeru didn’t keep close contact between Adventure and 02 -- contrast Patamon being close to Takeru during the entirety of the series, and, bar their periods of disconnect between Adventure and 02, you could say that he’s been the closest to Takeru since this time, especially since Yamato hadn’t been able to be as present for him as he’d wanted.

"Running, rolling around, and always laughing"

Again, this is a line that practically excludes nearly anyone else from consideration. Nobody ever did this with Takeru in Adventure but Patamon, especially since Takeru was trying to present himself as a well-behaved kid in the presence of his elders, and it’s entirely possible he wouldn’t have been willing to do this with anyone else but the outwardly childish Patamon. It definitely would not have been Hikari, who was arguably even more reserved than him during this time.

“It would have been better if I hadn’t realized”/“I have a lot of things I want to tell you, but I can’t really say it”/“I can’t ask that”

Sentiments like “I can’t admit it”, or difficulty with accepting one’s own feelings, is usually associated with developing romantic feelings for another person and being touchy about admitting them, but the thing is that this is intended to be a representative character song, and Takeru is actually abysmally bad at admitting anything in general. And yes, that includes not being able to be straightforward with Patamon himself about parsing his trauma over his death.

Takeru was never able to have a straightforward conversation with even Patamon about the whole issue, because of his nasty habit of never opening up about his problems and never being honest about them. That’s why Iori had to be the one to take matters into his own hands and go out of his way to understand Takeru, because Takeru sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to work through this on his own, or even with Patamon.

“I can’t get you off my mind”

This one’s actually a stock phrase in Japanese that can refer to “being interested” in someone (romantically), but can also refer to something just not really being able to leave your head in general (from being bothered by it, or being very worried). So yes, this could mean anything from a romantic fixation...to simply being constantly worried and concerned about one’s welfare.

“You were always crying”

As far as people around Takeru’s periphery who apparently cried a lot goes, there aren’t a lot! The description doesn’t seem to fit Hikari much, either (she had her moments, but it’s not the kind of thing you’d imagine this kind of extreme descriptor for). Hm, but there is someone who might fit that description...

Certainly, enough that Takeru would remember.

(By the way, Patamon gets sent on the verge of tears in the middle of his own solo song...)

"The door that I couldn't reach that day, no matter how far I stretched out"

Very important part here: that day. There was a very important “day” that seems to be on Takeru’s mind here. What’s repeatedly referred to in 02 as one of the most traumatic and impactful days of Takeru’s life?

Incidentally, Takeru and Patamon’s duet song for this album also just so happens to use “opening door” imagery...

“You’re now standing in the light”

That use of “light” is usually submitted as evidence that it’s referring to Hikari via a pun on her name, but, well, “light” does happen to just mean “light”, after all (and it’s used in many contexts that don’t necessarily have to refer to Hikari in 02 itself). And, well...

Pretty apt description there, no?

"We were always being protected"

It could refer to Hikari, or anyone else Takeru was with during Adventure, but remember that Patamon was always the slowest to evolve (especially given the many circumstances that happened with him in Adventure that kept him unable to actively join the fight effectively for a very, very long time), and Takeru himself also had a pretty nasty complex about holding everyone back.

So, in conclusion...

Despite how loaded the language is, in the end, it’s probably meant to be a song about Takeru handling his trauma regarding Patamon very poorly at the time of 02. Which is, well, what his character arc in 02 was about, so it tracks, doesn’t it?

Bear in mind that, again, this is basically “one readable interpretation of it”, which I also personally happen to back very strongly because I think the evidence simply tracks too much given context -- the details described in the song rule out almost every other candidate that would be relevant to Takeru’s character arc, also happen to describe the events of Adventure too well, and certainly would track much better with everything else in this particular album series mostly being relevant to everyone’s character as reflected in 02. Song lyrics are song lyrics, and interpretation might be in the eyes of the beholder...but, you know, food for thought.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #takaishi takeru #takeru takaishi #shihameta

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otverzhennyy · 3 years

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Viktor on every Harbingers.

As stated before, Viktor’s loyalty tend to be more to the people of Snezhnaya and the Harbingers than the Tsaritsa, who he sees more as a faceless tradition despite, yes, believing in the cryo archon’s mission. However, when it comes to his daily life, it is actually the Harbingers who possess his devotion.

Viktor is implied to have, at the very least, witnessed the harbingers which I imagine are during Fatui events, speeches and such, and is knowledgeable of both their way of work, their abilities, the personality they present, quirks and what the other Fatui think of them in general. This is a post based on the information we got so far in canon, the Commedia dell’arte and of course liberal interpretations to flesh out Viktor’s relation towards the harbingers, it is HEAVILY subject to change.

This list goes from who Viktor would like to work for the LEAST to the MOST. Viktor admires all Harbingers and see how incredible they are to the Fatui cause, but this is purely him speaking selfishly in terms of working under them.

SCARAMOUCHE Scaramouche is implied by Viktor to be pretty much universally disliked by the Fatui, which is supported by his shown temper. Scaramouche is one to belittle and not respect underlings, even potentially harming them physically through electro, and lead them with fear. Scaramouche throws emotional, gratuitous tantrums.

This is something Viktor cannot respect when strictly speaking of ways to run the chain of commands. This is no way to be a leader, not when you do not have reasons to apply this kind of authority. Scaramouche’s devastating power, however, is no joke, and given that the Tsaritsa has had her own reason to choose him, there is no question that Viktor would answer the man’s call and orders, but would he enjoy his daily working life under such a self-centered man with no respect for the lives he is responsible for but his own ? Not really. He’d sooner ask for a transfer... which is, unfortunately, not really possible within the Fatui, as you are to believe that where you are stationed is where you should be.

PIERRO Pierro’s crazed antics constantly have one question his state of mind, and his chaotic mockery and obvious bitterness are made for a sour association, where one can never really rest as the man is too unpredictable. Underlings unable to guess what his plans are, given he never tell anyone anything.

Pierro doesn’t care what happens when his subordinates are sent on assignments, not caring if they are casualties or not. As someone who values his life, even if he is loyal and swore an oath to the chain of command, Viktor much rather stay alive. The man is... devastating.

SANDRONE Sandrone uses underhanded tricks and manipulates people to get what he wants, hiding behind a face of kindness to the people. Although Viktor is one to recognize the grey areas of politics, which is, politics is everywhere in any social interactions, Sandrone stands out because he is not influencing people’s judgements, he is a hypocrite who takes advantage of commoners when they meet their lowest points.

This, alongside his eerie puppets... is absolutely terrifying. Viktor cannot help but, unlike Scaramouche where he sees the immaturity and lack of professionalism of one man, feel genuine fear... and fascination. The things he could learn from this man, he cannot even start to comprehend.

PULCINELLA Pulcinella is the harbinger in charge of the Fatui’s military and, alternatively, its recruits camp. Viktor would be more than happy to give his body for the nation if needed, even if the battlefield is not his ideal position.

Technically, all Fatui receives a form of military training. The difference with Pulcinella is mainly that the Skirmishers are constantly enhanced through the Fatui technology, modified as their body belongs to the nation. Viktor personally has no interest in being cut open and changed, as he spent a significant amount of time perfecting his form and knowing his own body. Not everyone has the mental fortitude to be more than happy to be pumped with drugged and have their brain reconstructed to be a better martial weapon.

PANTALONE As the one gathering all funds related to Snezhnaya and the Fatui, working for Pantalone is about contributing to the wealth of the nation, an absolute vital part which, however, comes with a ruthless environment. Whereas politics and influence are more subjective, wealth is about cold, hard numbers in an unsure, competitive scene.

Although Viktor is the first one to tell that there is no bad way to gather money and actually admire the length the man goes for the nation’s mission, what is more of a desk job with very little flexibility (the way political debates and diplomatic exchanges do) is bound to bore him out, thinking like his wits could be used elsewhere.

TARTAGLIA When there is need for intimidation, Tartaglia Childe is the one sent by her Lady Tsaritsa. When there is need for muscles on the field, Tartaglia Childe is also the one sent. Although Viktor’s hunting background would technically make his skills appropriate for the task, Viktor is still not one who actually enjoys applying, let’s say, physical matters, especially unconventional ones Tartaglia Childe is sent into : it is not a straightforward army VS army combat. It is something which require finesse... a dangerous game which doesn’t necessarily fit Viktor.

As for the young lord himself, although he is one of the most respectable harbinger, Tartaglia’s impulsiveness and free spirit is known to suddenly put operations into chaos, without him going through the proper channels. This, honestly sounds both thrilling, rewarding and amazing... which is not Viktor’s cup of tea. However, Tartaglia has been proven to be the harbinger who respects underlings the most as individuals, despite his casual attitude giving some rookies the false impression that he is a softie... it just makes getting a disciplinary action from him harder.

SIGNORA La Signora is her majesty’s most direct representative in the manners of political and courtly presence. Although working for Signora is a door to open many opportunities to political events for one’s ascension in their career, Signora knows the game... and plays it dirty. Many threats are given under technically diplomatic moves, and as someone who hates losing time on something else than her goals, she has no olive branch to any subordinate, who are pawns for her to be at her service like a mighty mistress... but her ways are always so bloody efficient, the results speak for her manners. Always ahead of the whole court. A queen in any place she walks in.

Technically, Viktor cannot complain about his position, although he is very disgruntled about being that low in the food chain... and extremely neglected. Sigh. Even if he is one to not bother about a pause to his advancements, Viktor cannot get, at least, the satisfaction of doing something for his home... because he’s not doing anything and he’s denying the fact that he’s been forgotten.

DOTTORE Dottore is the most cerebral and knowledgeable of the harbingers, with actual results and hard work to show. As someone in need of mental stimulation, Viktor cannot help but be mesmerized at the constant studying opportunity, under a man who knows exactly what he is doing, what he wants, and makes it clear.

The practical application of skills and sense of professionalism make Dottore both a harbinger Viktor personally admire greatly and would like to work under : with such talent which shouldn’t, for Viktor, be wasted for a single second, he is no scientist, but would gladly do anything to remotely be useful to him. Dottore is actually one of the three harginers where Viktor’s respect, for various reasons, actually cancel part of the fear he would normally get from a man doing such harsh experiments.

CAPITANO The first time Viktor laid his eyes on Capitano, he’d never forget. For whatever reason the man was in his region, probably some undisclosed assignments, he had never seen a man breathing so much charisma by merely existing. Amidst the men who’d try to appear strong and tall, Capitano didn’t have to be the tallest or largest to be absolutely mesmerizing. A man who commanded authority by presence alone.

He needed to be like him. And this is when a young Viktor decided to join the Fatui, not telling a single word that a single man triggered it all. Viktor doesn’t see himself as someone with particular talent, drive or patience to change the world... but if he could be half the man his idol was, that would be enough... but did he want to be the man, or solely be by his side, even if it meant potentially never working under him ? ... both.

As a recruit, Viktor would always run to the pavilion up the Fatui base to see Capitano entering the premises whenever his arrival was announced, watching from afar, get information on what the man had been up to. The stories of the man’s conquests, exploring uncharted territories while keeping such a solemn expression, an inspiring leader who’d run his affairs with the most unforgiving grip, to the perfection, with every bit of professionalism and no break in his composure.

If Viktor was to work under this man, he wouldn’t care a single bit about the treatment on his person. If he can be the slightest bit not indirectly, but directly useful to such a man, he would gladly serve him with every bit of devotion he has. Travelling at his side with the most powerful assets to the Fatui, each challenge only one exciting puzzle after one another.

If Viktor sees the holy Tsaritsa as the Fatui’s queen, Capitano is his King.

#.otverzhennyy ( headcanon )#insert simp jokes here #this took me waaaay too long and it is SO confusing but I needed t oat least have something done for this

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curetapwater · 3 years

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My turn to subject you to The Mortifying Ordeal Of Being Known:

In both art and writing, you seem to have taken inspiration from Monster High, Bratz, Equestria Girls, Barbie and probably some other stuff in that realm that I can't recall because I wasn't in that sphere growing up, plus the more obvious Magical Girl inspiration. In fact, I feel like every character in Power of Rock is a bit of a homage to each one of these, both separately and in general. I don't know enough about any of it to pinpoint with precision, though.

but I'll take a wild guess and say your favourite EqG movie is Rainbow Rocks, followed by the Legend of Everfree.

You're spot on, especially about Rainbow Rocks! In fact, Power of Rock arose from an mlp fanfic I'd been kicking around since I was 11 years old! Now, as I talk about this, please bear in mind I've been developing this story since middle school so things get kinda wacky.. Star started out as Twilight and Sky started out as Rainbow Dash. The rest of the characters have nothing to do with mlp, unless you count Crescent being partially inspired by a friend I had in middle school with whom we bonded over our shared mlp hyperfixation. I see how one could interpret her as Pinkie Pie though.

Rainbow Rocks in particular was a gigantic inspiration! I fixated really really hard on it when it came out, partially because I had a major crush on all of the Dazzlings plus human!Rainbow Dash and partially because that's when I was getting really into rock music. I'd listen to music and always imagine my in-name-only fanfic versions of The Rainbooms playing the songs and casting spells with their instruments. I was so enchanted by the concept and at that point had realized that the thing I'd created was so far removed from mlp that I scrapped the mlp angle entirely and zeroed in on the rock band element.

Star originally arose as me realizing that Twilight had an incredibly privileged upbringing and thinking that it'd be funny if she acted like a spoiled brat that was full of herself. By the time she became Star, I'd fleshed her out way more and softened her up to be less arrogant and more confident in an endearing way. Aesthetically, she takes the most from the influences you brought up, especially Bratz and Barbie!

Sky is a subject I'm gonna have to tiptoe around because the only thing that ever stayed consistent about her is also a spoiler. But although the logic behind how Rainbow Dash became Sky seems pretty straightforward, I promise you the story is wild and insane and omg I'm honestly shocked that I was able to make Sky into a good character 'cause... omg I don't even know where to start haha. To give a taste of what she was like when her name was Rainbow Dash, I'll say she got infused with demon blood as a child and it ~haunted~ her afterwards and she was ~sooo angsty~ about it. And then I removed all demon stuff from the story along with pony stuff and decided to tone things down by making her a vampire instead (because vampires are cool, something Monster High convinced me of!). But with the demon stuff also left her ~tragic backstory~ that I'd based her entire character around and after losing that I realized I was left with nothing that made her interesting. Then I listened to Escape From the City from SA2 and thought, "hey, Sonic is a cool and endearing character, what if I inserted a little of his rebellious spirit into Sky?" And then her current backstory sprouted from that point and shaped her further into a far more distinct character that I love writing for. She's naturally the most Monster High inspired character in terms of aesthetics but I also drew from punk and pastel goth fashion for her.

The rest of the main characters are heavily retooled transplants from a scrapped WIP of mine, complete with visual redesigns inspired by all the influences you listed!

I tend to consume a lot of children's media like the ones you brought up, plus kidcoms like Hannah Montana and iCarly, and I wouldn't be surprised if that influenced my writing style, especially dialogue.

The stories I could TELL about how Power of Rock came to be, my goodness! And the art... oh god the art........ I drew some bomb outfits from when they were still the Humane Six but my anatomy was AWFUL so I'm unsure if they'll ever see the light of day.

You're right about Rainbow Rocks being my fave EG movie, in fact it may be one of my favorite mlp things period because of what it's led to in my life! Shine Like Rainbows is enough to move me to tears. My second fave is actually the first one, for nostalgia reasons. Legend of Everfree I only watched once but I should give it another look!

#oh the infodumping i could do #oh the stories left to tell #my middle school and high school sketchbooks are just stuffed with art documenting power of rock's creation #a real passion project of mine

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togglesbloggle · 4 years

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So, @argumate is up to some more prosocial atheistic trolling. As is usual with such things, the conversation isn’t particularly elevated, but it does make me nostalgic for the old bbc days. So I thought I’d be the Discourse I’d like to see in the world. This is the post that kicked things off; correctly noting Platonism as a philosophical foundation underpinning most versions of Abrahamic faiths. And it’s probably the most useful place for me to target also, since hardly anybody just identifies as a Platonist but most westerners are one. So, without further ado, a halfhearted and full-length defense of Platonism:

Well, strike that. A little bit of ado.

I’m not a Platonist myself, so this is a devil’s advocate type of thing. Or maybe you could call it an intellectual Turing test? As I discuss here, my philosophical commitments are mostly to skepticism, and for instrumental reasons, to reductionist materialism. That combo leaves me some wiggle room, and I find it fairly easy to provisionally occupy a religious mindset, so I can generally read and enjoy religious polemics. I also have a fairly deep roster of what are often called ‘spiritual experiences’; I’m probably in the set of people that are by nature predisposed to religion. I am not religious, and I approve of Argumate saying things like ‘God is not real’ a lot. This is in no way a retread of the arguments in The Republic or Plato’s other writings; you can go read those if you want, but I’m going to play around with stuff that I think is better suited to this audience.

Attention conservation notice: yikes. This got pretty long.

Anyway, on to the argument. Argumate’s main point is pretty clear, I think: ‘forms’ in the Greek sense are a function and product of the perceiving mind. Birds don’t conform to bird-ness; instead brains naturally produce a sort of bird-ness category to make processing the world easier, and to turn a series of wiggly and continuous phenomena into a discrete number of well-modeled objects. Basically, we impose ‘thing-ness’ on the wavefunction of reality. And there are some good reasons to think that it might be true! Our understanding of categories gets a lot sharper when reality conveniently segregates itself, and whenever that boundary gets a little blurry, our ability to use categories tends to break down. If the recognition of animal-ness came from contact with a higher plane of reality, you wouldn’t necessarily expect people to get confused about sponges.

But. While there’s certainly plenty of support for Argumate’s position, it doesn’t strike me as anything near self-evident, or necessarily true. So what I’ll argue is that Platonism isn’t obviously false, and that if we ever converge on a true answer to the question of our reality, then that truth could plausibly be recognizably Platonist. My opening salvo here is, predictably enough, mathematics.

‘Mathematical Platonism’ is a whole other thing, only distantly related to Classical Platonism, and I only really mean to talk about the latter. But nonetheless, mathematics really actually does appear to be a situation where we can simply sit in a chair, think deeply, and then more or less directly perceive truths. Basic arithmetic can be independently discovered, and usefully applied, by almost anybody; ‘quantity’ comes naturally to most humans, and the inviolable laws of quantity are exploited just as often. It’s also very hard to argue that these are ‘mere’ linguistic conventions, since fundamental natural behaviors like the conservation of mass depend on a kind of consistent logical framework. In most chemical reactions, the number of atomic nuclei does not change, and the atoms added to a new molecule are perfectly mirrored by the loss of atoms in some reactant; this remains true in times and places where no thinking mind exists to count them.

There are a lot of debates about what math is, fundamentally. But inevitably when we study math, we’re studying the set of things that must be true, given some premise: we’re asking whether some proposition is a necessary consequence of our axioms. The so-called ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics’ suggests that the phenomena that Argumate mentions- hotdogs and birds and whatnot- are observed only within the auspices of a sort of super-phenomenon. Loosely speaking, we can call this super-phenomenon self-consistency.

We treat phenomena as having a natural cause. Platonism, at its crunchy intellectually rewarding center, represents a willingness to bite the bullet and say that self-consistency also has a cause. Plato himself actually provided what might be the most elegant possible answer! Basically, posit the simplest thing that meets the criterion of being A) autocausal and B) omnicausal, and then allow the self-consistency of the cosmos to follow from its dependence on (in Platonist terms, its emanation from) that single, unitary cause. The universe is self-consistent for the very straightforward reason that there’s only one thing. Any plurality, to the extent that plurality is even a thing, happens because ‘the only real thing’ is only partially expressed in a particular phenomenon. To skip ahead to Lewis’ Christian interpretation of all this, you’d say that humans and moons and hotdogs are distinguished from God not by what they have, but by what they lack.

And for present purposes, I do want to take a step back and point out that this does feel like a reasonable answer to a very important question. Materialism fundamentally has no answer to the question of self-consistency and/or the presence of logic and order, and that is (for me) one of its least satisfying limits. We’ve got things like ‘the origin of the universe’, sure. But we probe the Big Bang with mathematical models! That’s a hell of an assumption- namely, that even at the origin of our universe, self-consistency applies. It’s not like materialism has a bad explanation. It just remains silent, treats the problem as outside the domain. If we’re adopting the thing for utilitarian reasons, that’s fine. But if we’re treating materialism as a more comprehensive philosophy, a possible approach to the bigger questions, then it’s a painful absence. In that domain, far from being self-evidently true (in comparison to Platonism), materialism doesn’t even toss its hat in the ring!

Which, uh, gets us to the stuff about Forms and shadows in Plato’s Cave and all that- the intermediate form of existence between the omnisimple core of Platonism and the often chaotic and very plural experience of day-to-day life. And frankly, we’re not especially bound to say that the forms are exactly as Plato described them, any more than atomism is restricted to Democritus. Whether there is some ‘bird-ness’ that is supra- to all extant birds might be contestable; however, it’s easier to wonder whether ‘binary tree’ is supra- to speciation and the real pattern of differences between organisms that we map using Linnaean taxonomy.

But, this is an attempted defense of Platonism and not Toggle’s Version of Platonism that He Invented Because it’s Easier, so I’ll give it a try. Fair warning to the reader, what follows is not fully endorsed (even in the context of a devil’s advocate-type essay), except the broader claim that it’s not self-evidently false. And on the givens we came up with a couple paragraphs ago, this is a reasonable way to tackle what necessarily follows. So let me see how far I can defend a very strong claim: in a self-consistent (or: mathematical) cosmos, beauty cannot be arbitrary.

Remember that Plato never argued that his Forms were arbitrary, or even fully discrete as such; their apparent plurality, like our own, emanates from the unitary Thing What Exists. And so, bird-ness is treated as a contingent thing, not an absolute. It’s just not contingent on human experience. And so for us to believe in ‘bird-ness’ is to believe that there exists some specific and necessary pattern- a Form- which any given material bird must express.

Let’s take an obvious example: any flying bird will, for fairly simple aerodynamic reasons, tend to be symmetrical. Usually, this means two wings. In theory, you could… have one in the middle? Maybe? Even that seems rather goofy to try to imagine, but you could probably get away with it if you were extremely creative biologically. And if we see a bird with only one wing (without a prosthetic or other form of accommodation), then we will tend quite naturally to recognize that something awful is in the process of happening.

A fully materialist explanation of our reaction here would say: we think of the one-winged bird as problematic because A) we have been socialized to recognize and appreciate two-winged birds, and spurn deviations from that socialization, or maybe B) because natural selection has given us a set of instincts that recognize when a body plan has failed in the past, so things like ‘being crippled’ or ‘being sick’ are recognizable.

Platonism, I think, would offer a third option, that C) we recognize (as emanations of The Real Thing) that a one-winged bird body is insufficiently reflective of The Real Thing, and that accordingly it lacks the ability to keep existing. Plato had some… basically magical ideas, about how Forms are recognized, but here I’ll point out that ‘deduction’ is a completely serviceable kind of magic for our purposes. It is, after all, our direct experience of the self-consistency of the cosmos, which follows from the fact that we are ourselves an expression of that same self-consistency; it meets the criteria.

Materialists, obviously, would agree that deductive reasoning could allow a person to recognize the problems inherent in a one-winged bird, but as I said a few paragraphs up, their(/our) explanation of this process is rootless. “Yes, logic and a few high-confidence assumptions let you assume that a bird with only one wing is in trouble,” they might say. And we might ask- “what makes you so sure?” And then the materialist must respond, “Well, let me be more clear. It always worked in the past, and my Bayesian priors are strongly in the direction of the method continuing to bear fruit.” True enough, but it’s not an explanation and doesn’t pretend to be. The universe just does this weird thing for some reason; it works ‘by magic’. So why not call it that? Theurgy for all!

So, consider. We recognize (deductively, let’s say for the sake of argument) that a one-winged bird is on the road to becoming nonexistent, absent some change in circumstances. It may keep going for a little while, but it’s not in homeostasis. And if we reasonably admit this very basic duality to our thinking- things which can persist, and things which cannot- then we start to recognize a sort of analogy between physical phenomena and mathematical propositions. A lemma can be right or wrong, albeit sometimes unprovably so. Basically, it can follow- or not- from the axioms we’re working with. And in a softer but very real sense, that one-winged body plan is wrong analogously to the lemma’s wrongness. Not ‘wrong’ as in ‘counter to cultural norms’, but ‘wrong’ as in ‘unstable given the premises, given the Thing That Exists Most’. Look up research on fitness landscapes, if you’re so inclined- actual biological research isn’t totally unacquainted with the notion. There exists a surprisingly discrete ideal or set of ideals, both for flying birds as a whole and subordinately for any given flying bird species. And we have discovered this using magic.

Insofar as beauty is something to be admired, or pursued, or is otherwise desirable, then our sense of beauty must necessarily correlate with those abstract, and dare I say supra-real, qualities which allow things to persist, and which can therefore be understood deductively. And that set of qualities does, effectively, meet the Platonic criterion of a ‘form’.

The immediate materialist objection is: hey, wait a minute. The supposed ‘objective’ criterion of a bird is contingent, not absolute! It follows from the strength of gravity, the thickness of the atmosphere, the availability of food sources, and on and on. This is one of the most important reasons why genetic drift and speciation happens in the first place, because the ‘ideal’ bird depends on an environment that’s in constant flux.

True enough. But! How do you think the atmosphere got there? It’s an old trick in religious discourse, but in this case I think a valid one. The rightness of the bird depends on the atmosphere, the rightness of the atmosphere depends on the planet, the rightness of the planet depends on the solar system, and ultimately it all depends on that necessary self-consistency which (we proclaim) implies our unitary Most Real Thing. This does mean that we can’t really think of Platonic forms as wholly discrete objects, unconnected to one another and without internal relation among themselves- unfortunately, that’s part of the original Plato that I don’t see as defensible, even with maximum charity. But there’s such a thing as a ‘ring species’, and if we admit Platonic Forms of that type, a kind of dense network of paths being traced through higher-dimensional spaces that correspond to the shadow of That Than Which There Is No Whicher, then it’s more than salvageable. It’s both satisfying to imagine and, I think, quite consistent with the spirit of the original philosophy.

One thing this doesn’t mean. Even if we were to accept all of this, we aren’t obliged to resign ourselves to the lot of that one-winged bird. Indeed, if anything this gives us a rich language by which to justify a prosthetic wing or other form of accommodation: we can talk about ‘making the bird whole’, and can see how our compassion for that bird might lead us to create the conditions of homeostasis once again. But it does mean that if we take a position on the merits of existence- if we’re in favor- then we don’t treat a one- and two-winged bird as coequal scenarios.

Anyway, this has gone on hideously long already for what’s basically an intellectual exercise, so I won’t dive into immortal souls or any of the other ancillaries. I mostly want to reiterate that, far from being obviously false, I do think that (some forms of) Platonism are quite defensible, and can provide coherent answers to questions that I A) care about very deeply and B) can’t resolve to my own satisfaction. Of course, it is not obviously nor trivially true, either. But one can be Platonist without being willfully wrong.

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rivalsforlife · 4 years

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"Eventually Miles said, “Do you want to know when it happened, when I realized it, or when I came to terms with it?” / “You have three answers?” / “Technically four. Don’t be a hypocrite, you rejected me even though you were in love with me —”" and the rest of the scene if you want to haha, not a lot fits in the ask box :P

Alright!! I’ll do... most of the scene haha, there is one part of the scene I really want to point out, so I’ll once again put this under a keep reading so I don’t take up all this space on people’s dashboards...

Okay!

So basically this part of the scene existed because... I kind of wanted to touch on Miles’ perspective throughout this entire fic as well as a handful of headcanons for Miles and also so that I could fit in a bunch of narumitsu fluff in there somewhere, since my notes for this chapter were pretty much to just shove as much fluff as possible to make up for the rest of it.

In some ways I’m kind of regretting talking about Miles’ perspective because that reduces some of my flexibility for possibly rewriting this fic entirely from Miles’ perspective OR the handful of jumbled scenes that could potentially form a sequel someday... but honestly writing has been like pulling teeth lately so who knows if that will happen at all. Either way I’m sure I’ll be able to get it to work somehow. (Also kind of... directly pointing out what Miles was feeling when it probably would’ve been a better decision to leave it implicit but WHATEVER TOO LATE NOW --)

“When did you fall in love with me?”

Miles didn’t say anything, and Phoenix might have thought he fell asleep again if it weren’t for his breathing. It didn’t line up with what Phoenix had learned from experience, when Miles fell asleep.

Eventually Miles said, “Do you want to know when it happened, when I realized it, or when I came to terms with it?”

“You have three answers?”

when you’re Miles Edgeworth emotions are waaaaay more complicated than they need to be huh. Since this scene was just Dumping Ground For My Headcanons they for the most part tend to line up with what I think most of the time, buuut I might go into more detail a little later.

“Technically four. Don’t be a hypocrite, you rejected me even though you were in love with me —”

Phoenix shushed him by clapping a hand over his mouth, except he missed in the dark and slapped Miles’ nose instead. “Whoops! Sorry. Okay. Give me all four.”

aww see they can laugh about it now like Miles didn’t cry for several hours after the rejection :’)

“I should have guessed,” Miles sighed. He used the hand not currently squished against his side by Phoenix’s entire body to hold Phoenix’s hand, guiding it down from his face and holding it against his chest.

This is me trying to find a way to write affection in a way that isn’t totally awkward... uh so basicallyyyy I am not a very affectionate person and I don’t think Miles is particularly big on physical affection most of the time, so when I write him trying to express affection I typically go for subtler things... like hand-holding and such, because I think even that much would be a pretty big deal for him when it wouldn’t be for some other people.

Pretty much every time in this fic he initiates any form of physical touch (which is pretty often because he is attempting to Court Phoenix (ba dum tshhh)) it’s something that he’s deliberately thought through and deliberately initiated, as opposed to like... Phoenix who does it more unconsciously. (And of course not all of Miles’ initiation of physical affection is strictly romantic, I like to headcanon him making an effort towards platonic physical affection as well towards his friends + found family members... just putting this here to cover my bases so no one thinks every time Miles puts his hand on someone’s shoulder he’s flirting with them haha that’s NOT what I was going for, more that he’s aware that lots of people enjoy physical contact and see that as a way of expressing affection, and he’s trying to get better at expressing affection, and Phoenix happens to be one of those people he is expressing affection to, in both the platonic and romantic sense.)

(That was a very long paragraph for literally one sentence about affection hahahaha...)

“Well, I am fairly sure I had a crush on you in fourth grade.”

“No, you didn’t. I had a crush on you in fourth grade, I changed my whole career for you because of it. You were in love with your law books.”

“I told you I ‘liked’ you and you started talking about girls.”

“O-Okay, sorry I didn’t know about bisexuality when I was nine, give me a break here.”

I waver back and forth on whether Miles had a little baby crush on Phoenix in fourth grade or not, I guess when I wrote this I was feeling that way! Anyways this line is referencing the flashback part of chapter 3:

“Do you like anyone, Miles?”

Miles blinked. “I like you.”

Phoenix’s face reddened. “N-No, I meant like-like. You know, like a girl.”

Miles looked at the ground, and his face was red as well.

this fic would have been over with SO MUCH FASTER if Phoenix actually knew what he meant there --

My interpretation is pretty much always that Phoenix had a little baby crush on Miles in fourth grade, but it wasn’t until he got older that he realized that it was a crush and not just pure idolization -- which was definitely part of it too, and I could probably write thousands of words on how baby Phoenix’s idolization crush on Miles when he was younger shaped some of their interactions throughout the trilogy but I’m not going to get into that now. I thiiink I said in this fic somewhere that Phoenix didn’t realize he was bi until he was in his teens, so baby Phoenix just thought that Miles was His Best Friend Who He Wants To Hang Out With All The Time And Hold Hands With And If Miles Were A Girl Phoenix Would Want To Kiss Him, and at some point adult Phoenix remembers this train of thought and goes “... wait.”

As for Miles, in the universe of this fic he figures out that he’s gay pretty young, probably largely influenced by Larry talking constantly about girls while Miles complains to his father “I don’t know why Larry’s talking about how pretty [girl of the day] is, I think Phoenix has a nicer smile” while Gregory tries to pretend his laughter is him choking on his dinner. And I think Gregory was an excellent father who loved and supported his son, and probably talked about it a bit with him and made sure Miles knew he was always loved and supported no matter what and --

Anyways, there’s that.

The next paragraphs are mostly them talking about the situations where Miles did fall in love with Phoenix (Turnabout Goodbyes) and then realized it (after Farewell, My Turnabout/ when Phoenix fell off the bridge) then kind of... repressed it until post-canon because he didn’t think he was ready yet and they weren’t really in the right place. I don’t have much to say about it because it’s all pretty straightforward stuff...

Then Phoenix deflects Miles asking about when he fell in love, because Phoenix is still struggling a bit with expressing his emotions this way haha. Also because he was in denial for a really long time so he can’t quite pinpoint exact moments aside from “the moment Miles stood up for him during the class trial”, but much like Miles he’s probably had multiple realizations of love throughout his life.

My personal headcanons though is that Phoenix genuinely thought he was just helping out a friend throughout the trilogy... and then sometime during disbarment, possibly during one of those Europe trips, he realizes “oh crap I loved him the whole time”. Obviously in this fic Phoenix doesn’t realize he’s in love with Miles until the cherry blossom petals scene at the end of chapter 4 and then can’t quite articulate that feeling as love rather than more general attraction until the end of chapter 8 after reading Trucy’s note. (Where the last psyche-lock breaks!)

What I DO want to talk about though is this line at the end of the scene:

“It doesn’t matter when I realized it,” Phoenix whispered. “What matters most is that we’re here, together, now.”

No one’s pointed it out so idk if it was too subtle or too obvious that it didn’t need pointing out, but it’s a callback to this line in chapter 4:

Edgeworth stared at him with an unreadable expression, almost curious. “Well, you don’t have to say anything,” he said. “What matters most is that I can be here with you now.”

It’s a very slight difference in the last part of the dialogue, but an important one!!

I had an interesting conversation with my best friend a while ago... long story short her brother was in a relationship for a long time with this one woman then they broke up and now he’s engaged to a different woman, and they dated for a shorter time than the first. And my friend says that she and her family knew that this was a different relationship and that she was “the one” because the way they talked about doing things was different -- more of a “we’re going to do [x]” rather than “she and I are going to do [x]”. This probably isn’t really a real thing so like... don’t use it to judge relationships around you... but I thought it was pretty neat.

So in the conversation in chapter 4, Miles says “What matters most is that I can be here with you now”, which is still like exceptionally romantic, but it still sees the two of them as separate entities -- whereas Phoenix in chapter 9 saying “What matters most is that we’re here, together, now” sort of phrases the two of them as more of a unit. ... not that they’re not still separate entities with their own lives outside of just each other of course but you know. you know. just having some fun with sentences!

Anyways that’s what I really wanted to talk about... I hope you enjoyed!!

#dvd commentary meme #the catch-up game #asks

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marta-bee · 3 years

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Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Sherlockians, I want to talk about Mary. Or not about Mary the character, because enough words have been spent on that topic and I’m nowhere near brave enough to wade into that one on a snowy Sunday afternoon, but rather on the way we as readers can (perhaps should) relate to her. At some level what follows is about this Tumblr post, where an anonymous commenter asked for “any fics where Mary’s not the bad guy” and noticed that a lot of the evil-Mary fanworks “gets a bit misogynistic in my opinion”; but I’m also using that as something of a springboard, and don’t mean this as a direct reply to that post. (Which is why I’m not replying in a reblog; please everyone go check out that post and comment on it as well.)

Anyway, let me start with two basic points that I hope are pretty noncontroversial.

Mary is an antagonist, at least some of the time.

Mary has at least some aspects of her character that are bad-making (more on what I mean by “bad-making” in a moment), or at least would be if she were a real person.

The devil’s in the details here, as it is with most things worth talking about, so let’s unpack that a bit.

(Long post is long, and so continued under the cut.)

When I say someone’s an antagonist, I’m not really making a value-judgment. I’m purposefully avoiding that word, “villain,” which calls to mind “villainous” as a description of their personality and character. An antagonist is just someone who plot-wise stands in opposition to the character. They’re wrapped up in the conflict our hero has to overcome.

Let’s take a pretty straightforward (and unrelated to our fandom, so hopefully less emotionally charged for a lot of us) example: the first “Hunger Games” book. Katniss is thrown into a gladiatorial fight to the death with twenty-three other teenagers. With the exception of Rue and (later in the games) Peeta, everyone else is an antagonist in relation to Katniss. She has to hope for their death and be prepared to kill them because their continued existence stands in the way of her surviving the games. Most are reduced to numbers with s knowing precious little about them – certainly not enough to think they deserve death. But they’re still antagonists because they’re obstacles the hero has to work past if she hopes to succeed.

Or take Draco Malfoy, in the early Harry Potter books. He’s a thoroughly unpleasant boy, spoiled and sniveling certainly, but I’d be hard-pressed to call him bad. His biggest defining characteristic is he stands up and tries to fight Harry; but often as not this comes down to inter-house squabbling and the only reason he and Harry are on opposite sides is how they were sorted. As we learn, given the way he was raised and the political situation he was raised in, it’s actually pretty admirable how on the periphery of the Death Eaters he stays. But he’s still the antagonist, he’s the one Harry has to outsmart or outperform or otherwise get around.

It's only natural we cheer when the antagonists fail. We’re primed to identify with the protagonist, after all, and their failure means the protagonist gets to win. Even if objectively know the antagonist doesn’t actually deserve to fail, well. That’s just kind of how stories work.

Getting back to Sherlock, I said it’s pretty noncontroversial that Mary’s an antagonist. So when I say that I don’t mean she’s evil, or even that she’s only an antagonist. But the woman shoots our star character in the chest. It’s her secrets and her very presence that drive Sherlock into exile (and drive Sherlock and John apart) for a second time, undoing whatever victory Sherlock achieved when he defeated Moriarty’s web. She’s certainly a problem to be addressed and worked past in HLV. In terms of canon and parallels with the Doyle stories, there’s quite a lot about her actions (particular in Leinster Gardens) that all but screams “Sebastian Moran.” Ergo: antagonist.

There’s also a quieter, more ordinary sense that I suspect will be more controversial but is worth talking about anyway. Like a lot of Sherlockians and Johnlockers, I’m a big fan of making space for John/Mary/Sherlock in happy OT3 land. I think Sherlock and John at least want some version of that in canon; maybe not romantically, but they like to imagine their being room in their lives for these different relationships to not be in conflict. But in BBC-canon that hope’s not really borne out. This deserves a full meta on its own, but briefly: when Mary observes that neither she nor Sherlock were “the first” (talking about Sholto), she situates them in competition for the same position in John’s life, rather than in distinct, complementary ones (which an OT3 seems to require); and when Sherlock notes at the end of TSOT episode that “we can’t all three dance,” he seems to come to a similar conclusion. I do love me some good Johnlockary fic, but I don’t think this is where the show was heading

At a more basic level, I’d actually argue it almost has to be this way with these three- at least if we’re to hold on to John and Sherlock being “the two of us against the world.” In the 1800s men and women had such different roles in society, a man would do very different things and relate in very different ways to his close (male) friends than he would to his (female) wife. So Watson could run off with Holmes and have adventure, then return home to Mary for the peaceful, even loving family life, without one really being in tension with the other. But by the twenty-first century those spheres aren’t nearly so different. Even if you don’t imagine them as lovers, it’s hard not to imagine a self-respecting woman today saying as Mary did in TAB, “I don’t mind you going; I mind you leaving me behind.” One of the biggest challenges for a modern Holmes adaptation (or indeed, for a modern consumer of the original Doyle stories) is how to balance Holmes’ and Watson’s private “intimate partnership” – however we understand that term – against (John) Watson’s marriage to Mary with all we moderns expect of that relationship in terms of emotional fidelity, equal partnership, shared future, etc.

Put more simply: Mary should throw a monkey-wrench in the mix; she should be something that must be accounted for and whose presence should affect how Holmes and Watson can interact. Not to mean her presence is incompatible with Holmes and Watson’s close and exclusive relationship, but at a minimum she’s a factor in need of an explanation. She can’t help but be antagonistic, at least to some interpretations of Holmes’s and (John) Watson’s relationship.

As I said, with antagonists, it’s only natural to cheer for the protagonists, which almost inevitably means rooting for the protagonists’ failure. At least we root for them being de-antagonized, converted into some other relationship to the main character. But if you’ve spent any time on AO3, you’ve probably come across fanfic focusing on the antagonists (*cough* Loki *cough**cough* Drary *hacks up a longue* Silm-fandom-this-one’s-for-you *cough*’s). We can be a thirsty bunch when it comes to our antagonists, for characters we by all rights should be primed to hate. And even at the level of primary-canon, one of the biggest ways the primary creator shows their emotional growth is by realizing their antagonists aren’t truly their enemy. Like most readers I had a tear in my eye as Cato suffered through the night, begging for death; and certainly I would have been outraged if Harry hadn’t saved Draco from the Room of Requirements in “Deathly Hallows.” Gollum’s treachery is explained and he is given his own completion; Darth Vader is spared by Luke and allowed to look on his son with his own eyes; and the Klingons, Cardassians, and Borg are given their own sort of redemption in Worf, Garak, and Seven of Nine.

All of which is to say: it’s understandable, even natural, why people would have a hard time rooting for the antagonist, but there’s a long history of fandom peoples steering into the curve on this one. So it’s also understandable, even natural, that people want to hear stories with them at the center, both new stories about them and also versions of the original canon narrative that don’t need them to wear the black hat all the time. Some folks want Mary, Sherlock, and John to all go crime-solving together. I personally think there’s sometimes a danger of turning an antagonist – especially one who is at least morally gray (and I promise we’re getting there) like Mary is – into a protagonist without wrestling with what turned them into an antagonist in the first place; so if you want to bring Mary back to the side of John and Sherlock you need to grapple with what pushed them into opposing roles in the first place, or else risk your plot feeling “cheap” and unearned. (In fairness, this warning could as easily be directed to Mofftiss as anyone in fandom!)

But at an absolute minimum, I think it’s pretty obvious that lots of fans want to imagine the antagonists as at the heart of their own stories, and lots of fan-creators have done a really good job of providing those stories. Just as a lot of fans will almost instinctively be drawn to hate them, well, if you want to go a different path you’re in good company.

Enough about protagonist/antagonist, which as I said is more about the role the character fills in the story than about their morality or character. This, for me at least, is where it really gets interesting.

Before we get started, though, I know a lot of people struggle against this idea of morality when it applies to fictional characters and fictional stories. They’ll point out (rightly) that just because they enjoy a non-con PWP doesn’t mean they approve of rape in real life; that their reading preferences come from a different place entirely than their moral judgments. But at the same time, a lot of people (equally rightly) struggle to enjoy stories that glorify things we don’t consider worth glorifying. It’s one thing to enjoy a story about Draco rejecting the Death Eaters, returning to mainstream wizarding society and joining the Aurors; quite another to imagine him dating Harry while he’s still walking around calling Hermione a mudblood.

Or getting back to the Sherlock fandom, a lot of people are most comfortable with stories with Mary’s the antagonist because she’s got a character history and just personality traits where, if we met someone like her in real-life, we’d consider her morally bad. Or on the flip slide, those fans who want a not-evil!Mary in their stories often like to imagine her as the kind of person we’d describe as good or redeemed or some such thing, if she were an actual person. Mary’s morality, at least the morality of a similar person operating in the real world (because --speaking as a former philosophy Ph.D. student who taught philosophical ethics for years-- let me tell you: talking about the morality of fictional constructs gets very messy, very quickly), seems to matter to a great number of fans. So let’s talk about that.

I said above I thought most people would agree, Mary had parts o her character that were bad-making. What I mean is there are aspects about her that tend to make a person bad, unless they’re explained by some other factor. I’ve got in mind something vaguely similar to W.D. Ross’s theories of prima facie duties (if any of you studied this in your Ethics 101 courses- you would have in mine). Basically, the idea is we have all these duties that apply to us, but they can seem to conflict, and we may decide (rightly) in any given situation that one or the other is the more important one for us to follow. The classic example is the duty to keep our promises and prevent suffering when we can. You can imagine situations where you can’t do both- for instance, if I promised to meet you for lunch and on my way to the restaurant came across a man who fell into a ditch and twisted his ankle along a deserted road, where it’s unlikely someone else would come upon him. If I stop to help him I’ll miss our lunch date and break my promise; and while I still have a duty to keep that promise, I think most people would agree it’s more important to stop and help the person. We’d all be hard-pressed to say if I helped the stranger, I’d failed at my duty to keep a promise; at least not in the same way as if I could have kept that promise and just chose not to. That’s Ross’s idea of prima facie duties: that we have all these general obligations on us, but which actually should govern our choices in any particular instance comes down to the details of that situation.

I think there’s something similar going on with Mary’s character. This is actually a good way to evaluate most of us morally, in my opinion, but it’s doubly useful when it comes to Mary because she’s simultaneously got so many troubling aspects about her that just demand some sort of justification, but at the same time, because Mofftiss really screwed the pooch here, we don’t really have the information we need to give a definitive answer. So it’s useful to say: here’s something about Mary that needs accounting for, even if we don’t have enough information to evaluate her definitively.

Let’s take Magnussen’s biggest accusation against her: “All those wet jobs.” Mary killed people on her own prerogative, and she left behind a lot of grieving relatives who would love their revenge – both a testament to the suffering she caused, and a real risk for John, the baby that will become Rosie, and everyone else in their orbit. But if that’s all there is to it, it’s not wholly dissimilar to John’s decision to shoot the cabbie. It may have been different, but we don’t have the information to know that; it feels different, but most because John was saving Sherlock (who we know), whereas if Mary was saving anyone, it’s not someone we the viewer have an emotional connection to. Still, to borrow a phrase from Ricky Ricardo, Mary, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Or to take an even more serious charge, Mary shot Sherlock, was prepared to make John watch him die all over again and force him to go through that grief that so nearly destroyed him the first time around. Unforgiveable, yeah? The best shot at justification here is that Mary had somehow got herself cornered, so that shooting Sherlock was somehow an attempt to escape an even worse sitation. This really demands a full meta to dive in to, but very briefly, I think Mary never intended to kill Magnussen and was instead trying to intimidate him; meaning she couldn’t let Sherlock undercut her power, but equally she couldn’t leave Magnussen with the impression that John and Sherlock were somehow her partners; so shooting Sherlock was the best way to keep him from becoming a full target of Magnussen’s. If that’s the case, the whole showdown in Magnussen’s office becomes markedly similar to Sherlock’s decision to “kill” himself on the roof of St. Bart’s. Mary is willing to cause a lot of pain to avoid even greater destruction, but at the same time, the whole situation that compels this choice was fed by her limiting her options when she decided to intimidate Magnussen. Similar to how Sherlock, once he’s on the roof of St. Bart’s, has no better option than to fake his own death and leave John to grieve; but how he does have some degree of culpability for engaging Moriarty in the first place and egging on Moriarty’s destructive obsession with Sherlock.

My point isn’t that any of these parallels really hold up to scrutiny. Sherlock risked his own life in TRF (and John’s pain) while Mary was prepared to kill another. John was ready to kill “a bad man” to save our hero while whatever murders Mary committed were against unnamed people in undetermined circumstances, and narratively certainly don’t pull at or heart strings in the same way John’s heroic killing of Jefferson Hope does. But the point is, with Mary, so much of what a lot of fans object to involve these vaguely-told stories where whatever factors would excuse her actions just are left untold. What we can say definitively is “all those wet jobs” require justification. Mary’s willingness to shoot Sherlock require justification. These things are prima facie wrong (or bad-making, the kind of things that tend to make something bad in the absence of other explanations) and demand an accounting for.

I’m focusing on Mary’s violence more than what a lot of fans have identified as her abuse toward John. Partly, this is personal: I have my own experience with abusive relationships and don’t entirely trust my ability to parse similar dynamics in fiction; certainly I don’t want to tie that part of my past to public debate, and I’ve not worked out how to talk about Mary and John without over-personalizing it. But I will say, there’s a lot to be considered on that front as well, and people interested in thinking through Mary’s im/morality shouldn’t ignore it. As a starting point, inevity-johnlocked pointed to several of her old posts making the case that Mary was an emotional abuser. silentauroriamthereal’s fic “Rebuilding Rome” looks at a lot of these issues in a really powerful way if you’re looking for an exploration in fic form. I’ll just add, even if I thought Mary was justified and so “good” in some sense (and my internal compass is so screwed up, I’m not really qualified to tell at this point), the way she chose or had to lie about her past to John seems a particularly bad match for a man like him with his trust issues. So even if you think Mary is good, there’s a lot of justification for saying she’s still not good for him.

So what does this mean for reading fics involving a kinder, gentler Mary? First, I’d emphasize there’s no shame or judgment in reading what you want. Much as writers may choose to write about all kinds of things they’d disapprove of in real life, readers have that same freedom to scratch whatever readerly itch they like, with no need to defend that to anyone else. Kinktomato and all that. On the other hand, I know I personally enjoy stories more when I can lose myself in them, and – again, for me personally – it helps me do that if my values are at least compatible with what’s presented as praiseworthy. I don’t have to guard myself as I enter the story. So it’s definitely worth thinking about how comfortable you are with fiction that vilifies Mary or pardons her or something in between, because it may make it easier or harder to really immerse yourself in a fic.

Then again, maybe that’s just me. I am a rather persnickety chickadee with things like this.

I do know that many fandoms have an unfortunate history of coming down hard on the female competition to a popular slash ship. While I’m reluctant to apply “should”s to our consumption of fiction, I think there are genuine feminist concerns here. Not with thinking Mary’s bad/evil or even hating her, but hating her for the wrong. For me, it helps to imagine another character doing something similar, and think about why I would react differently if it was someone other than Mary doing the deed. Also to be aware of the details canon doesn’t answer decisively or answers different ways in different episodes.

(More than most characters, Mary does suffer from a really inconsistent characterization. I’ve often wondered if everything since HLV was Sherlock or whomever trying on different frameworks for her personality/psychology/what-have-you, to see which could account for what she did to him. First she’s a badass villain, then a Mycroftian operative, then a martyr, then a worldclass manipulator, and finally a sanctifier whose own personality was irrelevant, giving her imprimatur from beyond the grave. And that’s without throwing veteran/maths genius and happy homemaker into the bunch. Maybe the showrunners simply weren’t sure what they wanted to do with her. Whatever the situation, I do think we need to be careful about taking any one canon detail at face-value, especially with her.)

I’m also a little discomfited by this trend I’ve seen among Johnlockers, to write Mary as a monster as a way to lessen John’s pain at her… betrayal, I guess? Or just the loss at her death? I remember when a lot of fanfic authors back between S3 & S4 wrote about the baby being fake; or even after S4, as part of John’s “alibi” rather than a true detail. Or even just deciding the baby was David’s or some such. By itself, that could have been really interesting, but what I saw so often happening was people used that as a way to remove the complication of the baby. Or to let John skip the grief he’d feel if the baby wasn’t born healthy- for instance, if it didn’t exist, or died, or if Mary was killed or ran while she was still pregnant. The basic theme was if Mary didn’t deserve John’s pain, John didn’t have to hurt for so long or as deeply.

Complicated grief is a thing, though, and for a lot of people, grieving the loss of someone who hurt them and aren’t “worth” their pain seem to suffer worse and for longer, particularly if they also have to grieve the lost opportunity to make their peace with the person while they were alive. This doesn’t mean fanfic writers or readers have to give us some kind of sanitized Mary; certainly she has the potential to be a true east wind of a character. But I do think there’s a tendency to prefer a more evil Mary because this lets the story move past her or spares John some suffering often won’t feel true. It also runs the risk of disrespecting the suffering of people impacted by these kinds of losses. So while I think this kind of characterization can be really interesting and compelling, it also takes a lot of skill and thoughtfulness to do it well. Here be dragons.

For me, though, the point isn’t to be proscriptive, to say Sherlock fic writers and readers need to limit themselves to a particular read of Mary. Her character has such potential to give birth to such a wide range of fic. As a viewer of the show I wish the writers and other creators had given us more of a sense of who she was because I think it really contributes to my frustration with not understanding the story they were trying to tell. But as a (kinda-sorta-someday-once-again) fic writer, it’s a true embarrassment of riches. The trick, for those of us concerned about Mary’s ethics were she a real person, is to be aware of the dangers of reading her character certain ways and to be cautious around them if we want to play with those interpretations.

#sherlock meta #mary morstan #marta blathers #johnlock meta

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jinruihokankeikaku · 4 years

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Analysis for a Witch of Space? (sharing a classpect with a canon character struggle bus 😔😔)

oh hey nice!! this is the first canon character classpect, the first Witch, and the first Space player we’ve analyzed. I’m going to try not to let Jade specifically influence this analysis too much; while obviously her canon powers and behavior are to a degree relevant to the question, in order to make this analysis as broadly applicable to various people and/or fan characters, I’m going to refer to her mainly as a Witch || a Space player, so as not to suggest that her path in the canon is necessarily the path that a Witch of Space will take.

Title: Witch of Space

Title Breakdown: One who actively manipulates [transforms, alters, adapts, bends the rules of] Space [physical space, expansiveness, beginnings, growth/birth]

Role in the Session: So, Witches are a very Active class, almost universally agreed to be among the most Active 3 Active classes, and they’re arguably the most Active class of all. Their relationship with their Aspect is complicated, but generally speaking involves adapting their Aspect to suit the needs of the Session. They may bend or even break the rules of their Aspect (though of course, barring exceptional circumstances, they cannot cause their Aspect to directly act as another Aspect); they may also blur the edges of their Aspect on a conceptual level, accessing “arcane” or “fringe” elements that other Classes (with the exception of the Mage, perhaps) are unlikely to even discover.

Space, like most Aspects, has a literal interpretation (in this case, literal, physical space, distance, size, and so on) and a broader, figurative interpretation (in this case, expansiveness or openness and beginnings or origins). This latter interpretation is critically relevant to a Space player’s role in the session, as of course it is their duty to breed the Genesis Frog and thereby create the new universe.

I don’t doubt that the Witch of Space would be up to this task – while it’s unlikely that the process would be straightforward, a Witch of Space isn’t as overt a threat to a session’s potential success as would be, for example, a Bard of Space. The Witch tends to bend rules, but not break them; they remain firmly within the purview of their Aspect, whereas it’s really only the Destruction classes (and exceptional cases) which transcend or violate the established boundaries of their Aspect’s domain.

While they may not pose a direct threat to their Session’s odds of success (unless something has already gone terribly wrong), the Witch of Space is nonetheless a powerful and swingy role, capable of changing the state of the game outright. If there’s one class that stands out in terms of the “flashy powers”, it’s the Witch, and with sufficient practice they’ll be able to set a session up to dramatically alter such fundamental characteristics of the game as the players’ planets and the process of Alchemy.

Life players and Space players tend to vibrate on similar levels, due to the strong affinity between their Aspects, and Seers (with their broad knowledge and unique capacity to share it) can do a great deal to help shape and direct a Witch’s tremendous raw power. One other less-obvious, and perhaps riskier, affinity a Witch of Space might have is with a Bard of Rage – Bards and Witches would, I expect, synergize a bit like a primary and secondary explosive (Bards being a class similarly likely to meddle with the Rules), and with Rage and Space forming a perhaps unintuitive but certainly present Trine (maybe I’ll talk about that in its own post), this pair could transform a session into something completely different. I don’t know what, exactly, but it’ll certainly be different.

Opposite Role: The Seer of Time. The Seer of Time, a player who is first taught of and ultimately teaches of the structure of timelines, death, fate, and the End, is probably going to be a valuable resource to the Witch of Space, even if they may not get along at first. The Seer of Time is likely to be a rather fast-moving person, bouncing from idea to idea (and once they’ve awakened, from moment to moment) faster than the Witch would prefer to approach just about anything. However, if they can manage to cross that communication barrier, they’re unlikely to conflict as directly as some opposed pairs might be; and as mentioned above, the Seer’s potential to guide and render more precise the Witch’s transformative tidal wave makes their co-operation less unlikely than it may initially appear.

God Tier Powers

Jade’s powers were influenced heavily by her connection to the Green Sun and Becquerel, a First Guardian, so I’m not sure that they’re entirely indicative of the general suite of powers to which yr typical Witch of Space might have access. As always, there’s a great deal of room for variation in this realm, but here’s a few ideas I came up with –

Spatial Distortion: The Witch bends Space ever so slightly, allowing a wormhole-like shift in proximity between two entities or locations. Alternatively, they stretch Space in a similar fashion, in this case forming a hyperbolic curve and causing an increase in distance between two formerly orthogonally proximal entities. These effects could, with sufficient practice, be layered on top of one another to rearrange an entire scene with some degree of precision. Care would need to be taken to avoid collisions or gross error in the extent to which the spatial plane (brane?) gets bent, but to a sufficiently skillful Witch of Space the sky is (no longer) the limit in this regard.

Inceptive Shift: The Witch causes an object to change course but maintain all of its momentum and acceleration by subtly (or perhaps less than subtly) altering the origin point of the object’s trajectory. Used in conjunction with Spatial Distortion, the Witch could not only alter two entities’ current positions but also, in a sense, alter their potential future positions – not through temporal shenanigans, as a Witch of Time might, but through bopping, twisting, and pulling localized Space to serve the Witch’s needs in a particular situation. The variety of uses of this power are all but endless – cause flying enemies to collide? Set up or break down elaborate structures? Deflect meteors prior to the moment of impact? All very real possibilities.

True Alchemy: This one’s basically what it says on the tin. By “editing” Space on a subatomic level, the Witch can transmute lead into gold, or radium into barium, or helium into xenon, or… you get the idea. The catch is that the greater the shift in atomic mass, the more effort and expenditure of energy this ability demands of the Witch – and of course, if radiation is emitted, as it is so often bound to be, the Witch will need to find a way to safeguard themselves and any nearby allies from its effects, a task that is likely to become more difficult as heavier and less stable isotopes come into play.

Personality: Witches are irrepressibly creative personalities, to the point that they may have difficulty surrendering some creative control – and a Witch on a power trip is a dangerous being indeed. This controlling streak is likely to be ameliorated some by the influence of the Space Aspect, which is associated with personable (if less than precise) personalities. To avoid the Serious Bad News™ that is a Witch inverting or derailing, it’s best that they have some trusted friends as co-players, as the Witch’s substantial power and the Space player’s tremendous responsibility are both bound to be difficult to cope with, especially early in the game. A Witch of Space might have a penchant for designing or inventing gadgets with varying degrees of practical applicability, and while their workspace won’t necessarily be disorganized per se, it’s very likely that it will be cluttered, and subject to organization methods comprehensible to only the Witch themselves. The Witch might exhibit a sort of paradoxical patience-by-way-of distraction, never failing to be occupied with some novel task or project.

I haven’t got any songs for the Witch off the top of my head, but should I come up with any I might well add them to this post later on. I hope you found this analysis informative and/or entertaining, and at the very least sufficiently untethered from the surly bonds of “canon” (whatever that means :3). Let me know if you’ve got any commentary or questions re: the analysis or my approach to classpecting in general, or if you think I’m dead wrong on any particular count – I’m still pretty new to this business. Thanks for your request, and

~P L U R~

#Homestuck #classpect #classpect analysis #class #aspect #witch #space #witch of space

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tlaquetzqui · 3 years

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Orthodox Judaism, like Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, relies quite a bit on Oral Tradition in addition to scripture. However, some things in the Talmud, which are claimed to be Oral/Sacred Tradition (claimed to be passed down from Moses, and God the Father, a near consensus among the Rabbis, like how our Traditions often come from a near consensus (or does it have to be a complete consensus?) among Church Fathers) are.... concerning, shall I say (part 1)

(Part 2) The Babylonian Talmud permits the rape of captive women. Not anti Semitic slander, it is literally there (Kiddushin 21a-22b). Rabbis acknowledge this. This isn’t me misinterpreting it. It differs from the Biblical written Torah by saying the man may have sex with the woman immediately after the battle. Pretty blatantly rape.

(Part 3) The earlier Jerusalem Talmud disagrees with this, it follows the written Biblical protocol (no sex before mourning period is over and the woman has converted to Judaism, much more humane thank God). But it is not considered as authoritative as the Babylonian Talmud. My concern is: if the Talmud contains Oral Tradition passed from Moses and God himself, then what if this ... atrocious interpretation is from God, and then what kind of God is he..

“Pretty blatantly” is not the word I would use; nothing in the Talmud is blatant, or even particularly straightforward. Most of the passages in question concern the manumission and ransoming of slaves, with a long and bizarre digression about piercing slaves’ ears. So far as I can tell 21a only describes female slaves in terms of betrothals and with reference to ransoming them. The trouble comes in with 21b–22a, but even that, while saying something that seems to mean (the euphemistic phrasing is annoying) taking one captive sexually (at one point it seems to say for only one sex-act, but then it seems to mean as a mistress while in camp) is permitted, for the rest of the passage it’s discussing marriage-by-capture again. Then it’s back to talking about the conditions for manumission and the ransoming of slaves, and their pierced ears. 22b is mostly just about Canaanite slaves in general again.

To me the obvious interpretation is that, aside from it actually being hard to tell what it’s actually saying about captive women, if it does contradict the commands given in the Tanakh, or the well-known natural law, then it should not be treated as speaking with authority. Just as one of the Christian Fathers, say Origen or Tertullian, is not treated as authoritative when he contradicts the rest of the Tradition. (And besides, we know from history that Jews simply did not, as a matter of course, do such things. Obviously Jewish soldiers sometimes committed rape. All societies have soldiers that commit rape. Jews, alone of all ancient societies, did not list opportunities for rape as an incentive when recruiting soldiers. Of all the many conflicts Jews had with various other peoples in the centuries since Roman annexation and the fall of the Second Temple, from the Roman-Jewish Wars to the Jewish bandit-state of Nehardea in the Parthian era to Sephardic collaboration with the Islamic subjugation of Spain, Jews were sometimes noted for massacres, but not for large-scale rape.)

#history #the talmud is really freaking hard to read

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realtalk-princeton · 4 years

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@Sulpicia do you have any advice on how to achieve such a high gpa in the humanities, when essay grades can sometimes seem subjective and different professors have different preferences? for ex, do you recommend using office hours in a certain way?

Response from Sulpicia:

I think that one thing to keep in mind is that I’m in a humanities major where empirical exams often determine 70-80% of your grade in a class; while they’re not usually curved, the language exams I took had a pretty similar format between classes, and so with every class you’re more prepared to engage with the material in that way. I personally think the best thing you can do to do well in a humanities class is to do the work; coming into class having prepared and done the readings will mean you have things to say, which translates into a better class discussion; this then will inevitably inspire thinking about what to write about for papers, and will also give you a better idea of how your instructor responds to your thinking. I’m not pretending that I showed up to class prepared 100% of the time, but I think sometimes people take humanities classes here and don’t take them seriously and then struggle at the end because they weren’t really trying to understand things on a week-to-week level.

In terms of writing papers, I generally tried to be in contact with instructors as much as possible throughout the process. Going to office hours with an idea (or, better yet, an outline) is really helpful, since you can get feedback before you spend a ton of time writing something that is founded on a mistaken assumption (which was something I did a LOT in my thesis process) or following a line of argument that might not be as strong as you initially think/hope. I often tried to come up with paper topics early on and even when (as was inevitably the case) I didn’t write anything, I knew I a) had the green light from a professor and b) was passively thinking about the topic for a long time. I also tried to write about things that made me excited, since the best papers are the ones you actually care about.

I actually have not found that professors have hugely different expectations for writing, because at the undergraduate level, good academic writing is good academic writing. I’m not the best essay writer in the world, but here are some tips I have for essay writing that I’ve learned over the past few years:

- Structure is so important, and is something a lot of essays miss. You should have a clear thesis statement of 1-2 sentences for a term paper, and this should be clearly positioned at the end of your introduction. For a shorter paper (5-10 pages) this should be at the end of the first page or top of the second page, while for longer papers, a JP, or a thesis chapter, they can be a little bit further in. Overlong introductions are my weakness as a writer, but a good intro basically just needs to provide the context you need to set up your thesis statement. I would stay away from the “three-pronged” thesis you learned in high school, but your thesis should correspond with the structure of your paper by presenting your claims in the order you will address them.

- Structure is important in your main body too! Write an outline before you begin your essay that briefly sketches out the progression of your argument and what evidence you will use to prove each part of it. Use transition words to link together ideas, and make sure to regularly tie back all of your claims to the main idea of your paper. Don’t write anything that does not support your thesis or provide a counterargument that you can then mitigate or disprove. Always let your reader know where they are in your argument, and don’t be afraid to refer back to earlier parts of the paper.

- Every sentence should matter. When you’re presenting a piece of evidence or analysis, think about its relationship to the one previous. Is that relationship meaningful? If not, the sentence shouldn’t be there (or should be placed elsewhere in your paper). The ideal is that every piece of your paper will follow naturally from what immediately precedes it, guiding the reader on a nice walk through your argument.

- In the humanities, close engagement with primary sources is key. Yes, you need to use secondary scholarship. However, engagement with the “scholarly conversation” should be second to your unique contribution, which is your close reading of the text/images at hand. This was something I struggled with in my thesis, since I felt so pressured to read all the scholarship and lost my close focus on primary sources. The absolute first thing you should do when you write a humanities paper is sit down with the sources you’re analyzing and think about them. What questions do they raise for you? Why are they confusing or contradictory? How does this source connect what you discussed in lecture, precept, or seminar? What can one source say about another? If you can, annotate the source on a piece of paper or take notes alongside it.

From there, you’ll start to find your unique insights which will form the backbone of the paper. Then, if this is a research paper and not just a close reading, look at secondary sources. If you have your own opinions about a primary text, however naive, you’ll feel more confident looking at *the discourse*. Sometimes, this will answer questions you had about the text, and so you don’t need to do that work in your paper. Other times, it will give you more interpretive tools to understand a text (e.g. you might find that X feature of the writing is typical of a certain genre, and you can think about the implications of that on your text). Sometimes, it’ll show you that the scholarly consensus is, in your opinions, totally wrong; for example, one chapter of my thesis was inspired by the fact that I visual source I thought was straightforward and was going to use in another chapter had in fact been pretty clearly misread by scholars, so my new project became proving why my identification was correct. However, any engagement with scholarship should only work to support your argument; unless you’re doing a lit review or writing about scholarly history (in which case the scholarship is your primary source), you don’t just want to slap different people’s opinions next to each other.

- Use lots of evidence and use lots of analysis. Graders are not mind readers, even if they are familiar with the material you’re studying. Good essays will present a lot of evidence; one thing I find helpful is breaking up longer quotes into shorter sections and treating them separately. Every piece of evidence should also be given analysis about why a) it is proving whatever point you’re making in the paragraph and b) how this connects to your larger argument. Part (b) might be implicit, but many essays could be stronger by making clear, distinctive points. Obviously not every piece of evidence merits a lot of analysis, and you can feel free to draw together several quotes to make one larger point.

- Speaking of, make specific claims. This refers both to the evidence that you use and how you use it. It’s totally okay to make general statements about a work, or an author, or an artistic movement; you couldn’t write an essay without doing that. However, those broad claims need to (at least in part) be grounded in some form of evidence; this can come from a secondary source or from an illustrative quote from a primary source. Inexperienced essay writers will be too vague and general--while there are dangers in getting to hyper-specific, I think it’s important that if you make a claim in your paper, you point to the specific thing that made you think that way (this is also a good way to avoid misconceptions/bad assumptions in your argument). When you’re using evidence, you should also try to say something as specific as possible about it, rather than just continuing to string up evidence and restating your thesis. Your thesis statement is just a summary of your ideas; your reasoning should be more nuanced and complex than that one concept. The more specific you are the more original you are, which helps you make points.

- Revise, revise, revise! When I did HUM, I would write up to five drafts of each paper. As a senior, I’ve gotten a lot lazier about this, but part of the reason I could do that was because I had learned a lot from revising previous papers and knew what mistakes to avoid. I think that papers grow the most between a first draft and a second draft. My favorite way to revise (and this is what I did with my thesis, JPs, and many papers I’ve written at Princeton) is to take a draft, print it out (with professor comments, if applicable), and then go through and retype the whole thing into a blank document. Optionally you can mark it up yourself as well, which is probably for the best. I like this because it means you have to read every word of your paper and also don’t feel bound by its existing structure; you can move paragraphs or shuffle things around more easily. I also always find myself adding more things or rephrasing analysis, which improves the paper. You’ll never come up with every idea in a first draft, so it’s good to revisit the paper as much as you can.

- Ask other people to read your work. We all have bad writing habits, from overuse of certain words to repetitive syntax to skipping steps in our logic. These things are not always obvious to us, but are very obvious to other readers. If you can, ask a friend (or writing center tutor, or instructor) to read your paper and help you identify these “bad habits” so you’re more conscious of them in future drafts. They can also often help you see where you skipped a step in your structure or the logic of your argument, or where your treatment of evidence doesn’t fully make sense. This is not always an option, of course, but especially early on, having people who will frankly tell you what’s not working will be helpful to your development as a writer.

- Learn from your mistakes. Criticism, even of the kindest, gentlest, most constructive kind, is hard to hear. To be honest, I would sometimes put off writing my thesis for hours because I was so embarrassed that my advisor had seen a stupid mistake I’d made in my writing (which is entirely irrational, yes, I get it). However, it is very important not only to bask in the positive comments on your paper, but to look at any more constructive ones to see what you can do better next time. Every paper teaches you how to write the next one better. Keep old papers and use them as teaching tools; you might even find it helpful to pin a list of things you know you need to remember when writing next to your desk or on your computer desktop. Professors offer comments because they want you to do better and understand more, not because they want to tear you down (unless they’re really mean).

Anyway this was kind of long-winded, but hopefully at least a little helpful as Dean’s Date approaches (the one lesson I never learn is how to stop procrastinating). I don’t know if there’s a secret to having a good GPA. I don’t consider myself to be brilliant or industrious at all, really; I think I’ve been lucky, taken classes that suited my academic strengths, come into them prepared, and really spent time understanding what exams and papers are trying to assess and then crafting my responses accordingly.

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thegeneralsnotebook · 4 years

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February Feature: Ten Things Every Metagame Needs

I’m going to start this month’s article by offering a little unorthodox advice. Unorthodox because, as someone writing a blog series about card games, who hopes that readers will take some precious time out of their day to peruse some of the words I’ve written, it might seem unwise for me to recommend other blogs about card games that you could spend your time reading. Especially when said blogs are written by actual professionals who no doubt have much more insight into matters of consequence than I.

For the last few weeks of February, I have been perusing and enjoying the collected works of one Mark Rosewater, a name likely familiar to many of you. For those who don’t know him, Mark Rosewater is the head designer for Magic: the Gathering, a position that he has held for more than 15 years. As someone who has shepherded dozens upon dozens of new sets through that game’s development process, it goes without saying the Rosewater clearly knows a thing or two about game design.

Of particular interest to me as an amateur game designer is his Making Magic series, covering design decisions and processes over a length of years and a variety of topics. But the one article that originally got me interested in his work, and the one that we’re going to be looking at today, is one of his most well-known: The Ten Things Every Game Needs. In this post, Rosewater covers ten bullet points that cover the very essence of game design, the absolute basics of things which no game can lack if it is to be properly designed. It’s a great read, but it got me thinking. About metagames.

In the context of a collectible card game, “the metagame” is generally defined as the swirl of trends and constraints that go into a player’s decision of what kind of deck to bring to tournaments. If you’re expecting a lot of Nightmare Moon at the next Harmony event, what will you do to take advantage of that? If most of the players in your group play aggro (or control, or combo or whatever) then how does that affect the kind of deck you should play in order to maximize your chances of winning? These are metagame decisions.

The word metagame literally means “a game about a game”. Yet, I thought, if a metagame is also a game, as that definition seems to imply, should it not also abide by Rosewater’s ten requirements? It turned out that the answer was a bit of yes and a bit of no, but there were still some useful thoughts that came out of the exercise.

1. A Goal

Before we even really get started, it’s going to be useful to clarify exactly what the metagame is. Because otherwise we’ll fall flat on our face with just this first question. What does it mean to “play” the metagame? And what is the objective of the players?

One interesting thing about the metagame for a CCG is that it’s largely removed from the act of playing the normal game. The metagame is played by building decks and taking them to tournaments. In that sense, if we’re looking for an analogue, a CCG metagame can be thought of along the lines of a simple bidding game. Given some info about what the other players are thinking (the trends), and an understanding of the resolution process (playing the actual game), each player secretly submits their own decks, and then things are resolved and a winner is decided. Then everyone heads home to craft their decks for the next round.

So given that, the goal of the metagame becomes straightforward: in playing the metagame one tries to build the best deck to maximize their chances of winning a tournament. Note of course that that goal is stated in terms of chances. The resolution of each tournament is non-deterministic, since we’re not all comparing decklists and grading them to see who wins the tournament. The games still have to be played, and upsets will happen. But over time, playing well in the metagame will translate to good performance and tournament wins.

2. Rules

One of the things that makes CCGs really interesting as games is that they fall under a category that we might call “living games”. Unlike other tabletop games that are published once and never change for the rest of time, CCGs change because the card pool gets updated. So it’s a shifting experience, and the same is true of the metagame.

Since the metagame is played by building decks rather than by playing the normal game, the rules of the metagame are contained within the OCR. These rules define which cards are allowed to be run at tournaments, and thus constrain the kind of decks that can be built. Of lesser importance of course are the game rules themselves, and the floor rules, as these place some additional constraints on what kind of decks are allowed to be played at tournaments. But the prime point here is the OCR.

What this means is that the rules of the metagame are constantly shifting, making it even more of a living game than the CCG itself. The metagame can be totally different from one set to the next, and indeed that is something a designer may like to shoot for.

3. Interaction

As we get into the middle of the list, we start to hit the really interesting ones. As I said at the start, there is something useful that comes out of this exercise, and one of the things we realize about metagames, and about living games in general, is that attention needs to be paid to them in order for them to be kept fun. A straightforward advantage of fixed games is that once they’re finished, they’re done. They will be fun forever. A living game though needs to be designed constantly, otherwise it can end up drifting away from what its developers originally intended.

One thing that’s cool about these Ten Things is that one can look at them not only as requirements for initial design, but in the case of a living game we can also treat them as metrics to measure our success going forward. If any of them are lacking, it’s a sign that things aren’t healthy in your metagame.

To that point, we come to Interaction: the principle that players should have to react to each other as they play the game in order to play optimally. On the one hand, this may seem to be an obvious strikeout for a CCG metagame, as it is played solo, on Ponyhead often late at night, and the other players are only seen when we come together to play the real game.

Yet even so, the metagame necessarily exists as a push-and-pull between different creators and different decks. What other people are bringing to the tournament is a key piece of info for playing the metagame, and that creates a game of hiding your intentions while attempting to divine everyone else’s. Anyone who has seen the pre-Continentals verbal jousting matches between Bugle and eminently_sensible on Discord can attest to that, I hope.

But to bring this section back to its point, Interaction is also one of the key gauges we can use to judge the health of the metagame. If there is an optimal strategy that means I don’t have to care about what other people are bringing, and I still have a good chance at winning, then that’s a bad sign.

4. A Catch-up Feature

This is another point where it may seem that if we’re thinking about metagames we’re out of luck. A Catch-up Feature is defined as a way for players who are behind to get back themselves back into the game. What does it even mean to be behind in a metagame?

Well, we know what it means to be ahead. The players in the lead are the ones playing the best decks at the moment, so the players behind would be the ones who aren’t doing that. The catch-up comes from two places. First, the players behind can simply build a better deck than the players in front, or at least one as good. Then, suddenly, you’re in the mix, just like that.

Alternatively, and this is again the somewhat more useful point to note, the players behind can look for the counter and build for it. In well-established CCG metagames, there are often broad trends that run across sets and release years. Style A rises to prominence, and the players naturally turn to Style B to counter it. Note that I didn’t say Deck A and Deck B. The decks change, but often the overall winds of style and strategy stay the same. When these counters exist, they naturally serve as the metagame’s Catch-up feature. So thus it’s a benefit to the metagame for those counters to exist.

5. Inertia

Inertia is the tendency of a game to end itself. Systems of inertia are systems that naturally raise the probability of a game ending as it progresses onward. And this is therefore the first of the Ten Things that CCG metagames can’t satisfy. After all, metagames don’t end. There’s always another tournament coming up, or another set that will shake things up. When a metagame ends, it dies, because that means it’s “solved” and there is no longer any question on what decks to bring to the next tournament.

Now, if one was looking for an excuse here, we could decide to break apart the metagame, and say that rather than one continuous metagame, we instead have many smaller ones, consisting of the constraints and trends that exist for specific tournaments. So once a tournament happens, its metagame ends and the next metagame (for the next tournament) starts right away. If this is our interpretation, then the game’s Inertia is simply the passage of time, as tournament dates are fixed and necessarily come along.

6. Surprise

For metagames, surprise is actually a pretty easy one, again covered by the same idea that gave us Interaction up above. A large part of the metagame is trying to guess what other players are going to be bringing, and while sometimes these guesses can be pretty easy, they’re still fundamentally guesses, and that naturally creates the possibility that they can be wrong.

In Rosewater’s article, he makes mention of a concept called Depth of Play, which is simply to say that game states should be complex enough that it’s difficult to know exactly what to do at any given point. The metagame has that solved easily, as there are countless possible decks out there. While it’s true that many of them can be discounted as unworkable, there’s always the chance that at the next tournament someone will show up with something completely out of left field, simply because they thought to try it while you didn’t.

7. Strategy

Counterbalancing Surprise is Strategy. While Surprise dictates that it should never be possible to know exactly what the right move is in most circumstances, there should at least be principles and heuristics that we can use to get an idea of the sorts of moves that might be better than others.

Here again, we can see that the metagame covers this category nicely. Some of the principles of playing the game well are easy: many of us learn the simple dicta of deck construction very early on in our forays into the game. But naturally there’s an advanced layer underneath, where one can learn to think critically about other decks’ styles of play and how to counter them, or which play strategies should be countered and which should be ignored in pursuit of increasing the strength of our own. Since the metagame is a living game, these strategies necessarily will evolve as the rules do. There can never be static analysis as complete as there is for a game like Chess, but that keeps the metagame interesting, as there’s always something to learn.

8. Fun

Don’t worry folks, the end is in sight. Especially as with these last three there isn’t a whole lot to talk about. As Rosewater freely admits in his article, while Fun is bar-none the most important of the ten requirements, it’s also the one that can’t really be talked about in prescriptive terms.

What some find fun others will not, and there isn’t really a way to find out if a game is fun except by letting people play it and finding out. Now, after all of this, I think I can reasonably say that a CCG metagame can be expressed largely as an exercise in problem-solving, with the added spice of a healthy sprinkle of incomplete information. I’m pretty sure that some people find that fun, so it seems we’re probably in the clear on this one.

9. Flavour

Now, here’s a funny thing. CCGs in general are usually dripping with flavour, and our humble MLP CCG is no exception. Yet CCG metagames, almost by definition, have none whatsoever. Because metagames are abstractions, existing purely in terms of optimizing decks. Decks, tournaments, strategies, these things are all abstract concepts defined according to the game rules, and thus can’t really have emotional connections attached to them. We do at least have human narratives that play out over the course of a season; rivalries between players and decks that become famed in their own rights. But I would argue that none of that constitutes flavour.

10. A Hook

And finally, the list ends with quite the whimper, as A Hook is something that Rosewater notes is for people that want to sell their games. For CCGs themselves the Hook is absolutely essential, as it is for all tabletop games. Yet, as it was with Inertia and Flavour, metagames by their definition are not sold on their own merits, and thus don’t need Hooks. One cannot buy the MLP CCG metagame, at least not without buying the CCG that underlies it, and similarly one cannot play the former without first playing the latter.

***

So, at the conclusion of all that, where do we stand? As I said starting out, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. If we take Rosewater’s Ten Things as the fundamental requirements without which a thing cannot be a game, then the metagame necessarily falls short, as it’s missing Inertia, Flavour, and A Hook. Yet that seems like a fairly meaningless analysis, as by their nature metagames don’t need any of those things, and wouldn’t benefit from having them.

I think there is value in looking at and understanding the other seven, though, as they all should be present in a healthy metagame, and a healthy metagame is something that requires work. Some of these properties are fixed: the Goal, the Rules, the Surprise, the Strategy and the Fun will always be present regardless of the design decisions that are made going forward. Note of course that many of these properties will still change as the metagame changes. But their presence is something that the living nature of the metagame has no real bearing on.

Finally, the remaining two properties: Interaction and Catch-up. These are the properties that the living nature of the metagame has the most bearing on, as a poorly maintained metagame can lose these two properties, and their absence is a sure sign that things are not going well. If the metagame has turned into one which lacks Interaction, where there is no need to think about the other decks people might bring to the tournament, then that’s a problem. If there’s no way to assail the top-tier decks aside from copying them, then that may also be a problem.

There’s often a fair amount of talk within the community as to when intervention is required to fix an ailing metagame. Well, these two properties can hopefully serve as nicely understandable metrics to let us know how healthy the metagame is from a more objective standpoint, and thus guide our discussion in more constructive directions.

As a final note, I feel I should perhaps apologize to people who may have been expecting a History of White this month. While I do intend to eventually cover all of the colours in that series, I also expect to interrupt it whenever something more inspiring comes up, as happened this month. We’ll have to see if White can get its due in March, or if sudden inspiration will strike again. Until then, thank you and good day.

#mlpccg #gamedesign #mark rosewater

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thelastmemeera · 5 years

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Stop Freaking Out About Gödel: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Incompleteness Theorems

So when I was in college, I noticed something a bit concerning: a rather large portion of people involved in hard sciences were totally unfamiliar with even basic philosophy of science. For example, when I talked to other science majors I discovered that the majority of them seemingly didn’t know the difference between a theory and a law. The most frequent definition I got was that theories are still somewhat uncertain, whereas laws have been proven to be true and are more or less never wrong. This is incorrect – first of all, a scientific law can absolutely be wrong. Throughout history, even well-established scientific laws often end up being modified or thrown out entirely as new evidence comes to light. For instance, it turns out Newton’s Laws of Motion are only accurate for large objects moving slowly; things that are extremely small or moving close to the speed of light behave by entirely different rules. The actual difference between a theory and a law is that a law has to be a concise description of how something in nature behaves that can usually be stated in full in one or two sentences, or more ideally an equation. For example, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, or simply ∆S≥0. A theory, on the other hand, is an interconnected collection of ideas that attempts to explain a natural phenomenon or range of phenomena, and will make multiple falsifiable predictions. It’s possible for a scientist to devote their entire lives to improving humanity’s understanding of a single scientific theory – biology’s theory of evolution is a good example.

Now at this point you might be saying “So what? You’re just nitpicking at semantics.” I would argue that misunderstanding the theory/law distinction betrays a more fundamental lack of grasp on the scientific method. Once we start conceptualizing certain ideas, even implicitly, as infallible or otherwise not worth questioning anymore, we start veering away from the realm of science and into the realm of dogma. I have a strong suspicion that a lot of the weird STEM elitism that’s so prevalent these days is a result of widespread illiteracy as to what science itself is at a basic level – otherwise it would become obvious how ultimately inseparable hard science is from soft science, from philosophy, from art. I could go on about this for ten more pages but this isn’t really the topic I want to talk about right now. My essential point is that it’s very easy for people who are otherwise highly intelligent and highly competent in their field to lack proper understanding of its underlying philosophy.

The reason I bring this up is because I am about to argue that almost everyone is interpreting Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems wildly inaccurately. More specifically, I’m aiming to demonstrate that the idea that a mathematical conjecture can be “true but unprovable” is tautologically false. This is a misconception that stems from confusion over what constitutes mathematical truth – which is actually a philosophy problem, not a math problem. If you want to be able to say anything at all about truth or falsehood in this context, first you’re going to need a coherent and precise definition for mathematics itself.

Let’s start by trying to answer a narrower question: what are numbers? In what manner can numbers be said to exist? Can you look at a number? Can you touch a number? I can draw the numeral “4” on a sheet of paper, but that’s not really the number four, it’s just an arbitrary symbol we chose to represent it. If tomorrow everyone decided that we were going to switch the numerals for four and five (such that “5” now means four and vice versa), nothing about how math works would change, it would just look slightly different on paper. So then a number definitely isn’t a physical object like a proton or a chair or a planet. Now at this point you could argue that perhaps numbers are a property that things in the real world can have – for example, if an H+ ion has a positive electric charge, most people would agree that its charge is something that that exists in the physical world despite the fact that it can’t exist independently from the ion. Analogously, you can count a group of apples and always get the same results; if there are four apples then there are four apples. You can even use arithmetic to make accurate predictions about how many apples there will be if you add more, remove some, or divide them into groups. So you could claim: therefore, numbers must be real i.e. they must somehow exist in the universe independent of human thought.

However, this line of argument fails pretty quickly once you consider the fact that the all the rules of arithmetic change relative to how you happen to be looking at the problem. For instance, suppose you’re trying to figure out how many people you can fit in an elevator. You’re inevitably going to end up using the natural numbers – we can all reasonably agree you can’t have a fraction of a person (you could cut a human being in half, but they would cease to meaningfully be a person at this point). You decide you can cram about eight people in before running out of room, but then realize you forgot to consider the elevator’s weight capacity. If it can safely lift about two tons, then you’re also going to have to measure the combined weight of everything it’s carrying in terms of fractions of tons. Suddenly the math you have to use changes from discrete to continuous, which is a really important difference; there’s no way to have between one and two people, but you can easily measure a weight between one and two tons (say 1.5 tons), and then if you want you theorize a possible weight that’s between one and the weight you just measured (say 1.25 tons), and so on and so on indefinitely. This is all fairly straightforward, but it presents a significant problem if you want to contend that these numbers exist independently of human cognition. Which set of rules is correct? If numbers objectively exist then it logically must follow that any given number either can be divided into arbitrarily smaller parts, or cannot be. Do negative numbers really exist? As far as we’re aware it’s impossible for an object to have negative mass, and you certainly can’t have a negative number of people. Do complex numbers exist?

Another problem: the number we get when we determine the mass of a given object will be different depending on what units of measure we’re using. If we switch from using kilograms to pound-masses, none of the physical properties of the object have changed, but we’re now measuring completely different numbers. This is because mass is an objective physical property, but numbers are simply a system we’ve come up with to help us describe this. An object inherently has mass, but does not inherently have two-ness or four-ness or the like. Mathematics, then, is not an objective reality but merely a human invention we sometimes use to describe objective reality, somewhat conceptually akin to a natural language like English or Mandarin. Once we grasp this, it becomes possible to define math in a precise and consistent matter (and hence mathematical truth). All mathematical systems can be ultimately be characterized in terms of sets of symbols, axioms, and rules of inference. Mathematics, therefore, is simply the study of axiomatic systems.

In this context, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems are less “existential crisis inducing mind-screw” and more “fairly intuitive idea that perhaps should have been obvious in retrospect.” The second incompleteness theorem can be approximately stated as: “for any consistent system F within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out, the consistency of F cannot be proved in F itself.” How could any system of axioms conceivably prove itself consistent? By the logical principle of explosion, we know that in any inconsistent system we can prove literally any proposition that the system can express, meaning an inconsistent system would necessarily be able to prove itself consistent according to its own rules. Therefore, it would be impossible for us to distinguish a hypothetical consistent math system that could somehow prove its own consistency versus an inconsistent system that could prove its own consistency due to some internal contradiction we haven’t yet discovered.

The first theorem states, roughly: “Any consistent formal system F within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out is incomplete; i.e., there are statements of the language of F which can neither be proved nor disproved in F.” Remember, math isn’t “about” anything, it’s a series of games in which you manipulate strings of symbols according to a set of made up rules. No axiomatic system is fundamentally any more real than any other; some of these systems we study because they help us describe things in the real world, some of these systems we study because they have interesting properties, and some of them we don’t study because they’re neither useful nor interesting (such as systems that have been proven to be inconsistent), but ultimately what determines what kind of math is used or not is simple pragmatism. Thus, the only meaningful way to define mathematical truth is such that a statement is true within the context of a given math system if and only if it can be proven with the axioms provided by said system. The idea that a proposition could be “true but unprovable” is equivalent to saying that a statement simultaneously both can be proven and cannot be proven. A mathematical theorem is just a string of symbols; if you can produce this string within a given formal system then it is true, if you can produce its negation then it is false, and if you can neither produce the string nor its negation then it is undecidable i.e. independent of the axiomatic system you’re currently using. The first incompleteness theorem demonstrates that all relevant formal mathematical systems will necessarily contain such undecidable statements, but we should no more be upset about this than we should be upset about the fact that there are possible positions on a chess board that can’t be arrived at through normal play. If the math system you’re using doesn’t end up having the properties you want it to have, then the solution is to make up a system that does have those properties (side note: this is why everyone should just accept the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis as an axiom and get on with our lives instead of being obnoxious about it). The idea of “completeness” was always impossible and never really meant anything – it’s time to stop mourning Gödel and embrace mathematics for what it really is.

#math #philosophy #mathblr #mathematics #seriously calm down

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lordsicheng · 6 years

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The Ideal Types of The Boyz (2/3)

*disclaimer at the bottom of the post!

This part will be covering Juyeon, Kevin, New and Q. The last four members will be posted soon! For the first part that covers the first four members, please go here.

Juyeon - Venus in Capricorn, Mars in Aquarius

This is a pretty interesting combination because these two signs usually have different interests in terms of love

Falls for the individualistic, unique and industrious types

Would be very attracted to someone who was serious with getting into their goals

This combination is also shows interest in someone older if possible (wow ironic to the gif I used tbh) or at least someone with a mature mindset.

May possibly be also attracted to someone who was inclined in the arts

I also see him being attracted to those who have really elegant fashion styles; think of silk dresses/suits, classic pumps, etc.

Someone who compliments him, his work, anything about him; he loves compliments even though he doesn’t want to admit it / gets shy too easily

Someone who can also give him guidance and warmth; might fall for the motherly types

Because Capricorn craves stability while Aquarius craves freedom, I think he’d be a little confused with regards to how he can commit to a relationship

Not that he can be going from relationship to relationship or would likely cheat / mess around, just that it can give him slight indecisiveness in terms of what he wants in love later in his life

Can be a possessive at times, although doesn’t really want to admit it

Prefers to show his love with what he does than through words, might be too shy to admit his feelings very often

This is because of the difference of how his Capricorn can be a little reserved and closed off to admitting their interest and the Aquarius that just wants to be straightforward

His sun conjuncts his venus; he might have a hidden romantic side (which will only show if he really likes someone he dates) and would slightly be romantically impulsive (e.g sending his s/o flowers for no particular reason, showing care and worry, etc). Will possibly also fall right then and there if someone showed interest in him. Men with this aspect are very gifted with natural charming qualities.

He also has venus conjunct neptune. This is kind of tricky because people with this placement might fall in love too quickly (or at least have lots of crushes), causing them to believe in an idealistic type or romance. However seeing this as it is in the sign of Capricorn, he might cause himself to overthink in relationships or even in attraction where as an example he could get confused if someone were flirting with him or not.

Kevin - Venus in Capricorn, Mars in Pisces

His combination likes to take his time when it comes to love, he’s a little bit than most types of lovers

Attracted to someone classy, tenderhearted and giving; possibly falling for someone who also has a nurturing and motherly side

Like Juyeon, I believe he will be interested with someone who has a mature mindset; age most likely doesn’t matter to him

I believe he would like someone who is, in a little bit of a difference to Juyeon, in need on guidance; possibly interested in someone who is willing to learn from him and let him guide the relationship

The most important thing for him in a relationship is loyalty and honesty

He may be a little demanding at times but his Mars in Pisces will be able to soften up his hard edges from being too mean / clamoring

Will adore someone who is very generous and selfless; I see him possibly falling for someone who is very interested/employed in an industry for philanthropy like charities

Prefers someone who has a feminine, sweet style; possibly would like someone who had a bit of a more edgier side if needed in an occasion (the classic red lipstick, smokey eyes with cat eyeliner look)

Like Juyeon, he also has his sun conjuncting his venus and venus conjuncting his neptune. Look at Juyeon’s bit for the descriptions!

He has moon conjunct venus. Very gentle and affectionate. Has the type of love that is like of a mother. This also shows someone who is very social, so I see him falling for someone he is already close to. However these natives also have a sensitive side where they can be hurt if their expectations in love aren’t met.

He has venus sextile mars. Very adventurous when it comes to living his life, very likely to take challenges in a spontaneous way. He’s also rather honest and straightforward. Possibly falls for someone who he sees he can “guide” or has an innocent look to them.

A pretty tricky placement he has is his venus squares his saturn. These individuals may have a hard time either committing in a relationship or commits too easily through impulse and pity. Has a bit of a problem handling rejection and loneliness which he can’t understand himself often times, so someone who can assure him and is loyal to him will fit well.

New - Venus in Pisces, Mars in Taurus

The combination of his Venus and Mars is pretty interesting because it’s one of the most romantic Venus/Mars combos in astrology

Falls for a softie; someone who isn’t too aggressive but someone who is also able to have great respect for themselves

Will find sensitivity attractive; attractive to someone who wears their heart on their sleeve

Might also possibly find being clingy as cute or even attractive in a way

However he is sensitive himself; Pisces is a very romantic sign, he’d probably think of a romance that was like Romeo and Juliet where he and his future partner will protect each other at all costs (how cute)

He has to be careful though because Pisces is also one of the most sensitive signs; he might take relationships too seriously and idealize them

He is most attracted to even-minded people who are strong enough to keep him in line, and smart enough to do so privately with respect and compassion

Someone who assures him emotional and financial stability that would help him build a foundation of their love; actions must speak louder than words as he wouldn’t tolerate promise after promise if it’s not gonna happen (even more with his Taurus placements)

His venus conjuncts his jupiter; he’s very selfless and generous when in love and will always put their partner and their needs first. Doesn’t want a partner that’s overly demanding or dominant; as it is in the sign of Pisces, he wants fairness in his relationship.

Q - Venus in Scorpio, Mars in Virgo

Ayayay another member that pretty much surprised me other than Hyunjae

Attracted to the sensitive types just like New, but also someone who shows themselves as strong and determined compared to New who likes someone more of a sweetheart

Finds someone with ambitious attractive; someone who knows what they’re doing

I see him liking someone who also would tend to worry about him and what he’s doing, someone that’s very considerate

He can be quite possessive just saying

Probably falls for ones who wear darker, edgier clothes (think biker jackets, leather pants, etc)

His approach in love is direct but subtle; doesn’t want to make things too obvious so sometimes he just stares at someone he likes for a long while whilst thinking on when to talk to them

He has venus sextile mars just like Kevin. Look for Kevin’s part above for the description!

He also has venus trine jupiter. This is a very fortunate aspect in astrology because these natives know the value of self-love. When it comes to romance, he’s charismatic in terms of attraction and adventurous; would find travel a very stimulating hobby with his partner.

However, his venus squares his uranus. In terms of commitment, he can have a hard time to find his needs of freedom and individuality. He doesn’t want to lose his identity when in love; might prefer non-traditional relationships and doesn’t really like routine either (unless necessary of course).

Disclaimer: Take note that I discussed their ideal types in terms of their Venus and slightly their Mars signs, also slightly how they will be like when with their partner/when in love. I’m also not an expert and I am only speaking of my own interpretation and of a friend’s who has practiced astrology for five years.

If you ask me why I added their Mars sign for the hyung line instead of just their Venus in comparison to the younger ones, it’s because it also adds through their basis of physical/sexual attraction and also their impulse for when they feel like they’re feeling a “magnetic” kind of attraction to someone. Usually we only look at Venus as a basis since it helps us know what we find beautiful and attractive, Mars helps on the magnetism of attraction if you may. Idk if I’m making any sense, but yes you may research it more if you may. Google can help.

This may vary and I am viewing this through astrological placements. They may also have personal preferences and personal lifestyles to take note of, so this will go either way. It doesn’t always mean that astrology and these interpretations are 100% accurate. This is only to give you guys a bit of an idea and so.

#the boyz #tbz #lee juyeon #juyeon #kevin moon #moon hyungseo #ji changmin #the boyz q #the boyz new #choi chanhee #the boyz scenarios #kpop astrology

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