theunwrittenman
Misplaced Creativity
This is where I put all my fandom conent, dungeons and dragons thoughts, and meta-musing. If you're interested in some homebrew content, check out my sideblog: dailyadventuremprompts.tumblr.com
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Contrast this with the fact that most of Jones's financing comes from hawking various supplements to his audience and on one of his most recent episodes was legit bragging about how painful the erections caused by his boner pills were.
So much of right wing/conspiracy culture is rooted in anxiety, and particular sexual anxiety: they think there's a social dick measuring contest hierarchy of masculinity and anything that messes with their place in it (soy in the food, women voting, black men existing) becomes an existential threat.
One thing people never really mention about the conspiracy right wing is they fucking hate antidepressants. Alex Jones has tried to blame multiple mass shootings on some non existent SSRI-induced psychosis.
Now, I don't think I'm cooking here, but I think an ingredient in that soup is how SSRIs tank your libido. These losers are all obsessed with growth rates and fertility and other vaguely psychosexual white supremacist shit like that.
I can absolutely see some redpilled weirdo going on SSRIs bc his wife wanted him to, only for him to freak out that it's chemically edging him.
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Adding on to this, I've always taken the length of Jinx's hair to be a sign about her inability to move on: she possibly hasn't cut it since the night of Vander's death, litterally carrying around the weight of her guilt, the same way she made the worst thing that Vi called her into her name, the same way that her hallucinations trap her in her own shame.
Also a note on the tattoos: there's a connection between the blue smoke on Jinx's tattoos and the blue smoke of the flare Vi gave her ...it's a literal cry for help she thought could never be made good on because she thought Vi was dead.
Concurrently: Vi's tattoos are all machines and mechanisms, like her sister powder used to build in the hopes of protecting herself.
Some cool Powder/Jinx design details:
1) The very noticeable, very badly cut bang that highlights that her/Vi/someone else (likely Powder herself) cuts her hair to prevent it from covering up her eye. Which then ends up growing out fully and covers up her right eye completely, making her resemble Silco. I love this implication that there’s clumsy but determined attempts at preventing the bang from growing, like it represents that there’s clumsy but determined attempts at preventing insanity from seeping in.
2) The changing eye color. It goes from this grey color when she’s ‘unremarkable’ to blue and then pink, both colors representing her trauma and how it colors her view of the world/life. Blue for the explosion and pink for the pink bullets. As a person grows older it’s possible that their eye color could change slightly like going from grey to blue but the color still represents hextech/arcane and its impact on her life. The pink is directly caused by shimmer and also represents its impact on her life. It also alludes to Silco who’s the shimmer dealer and who’s got a glowing red eye that’s very close to the pink eye that Jinx gets.
3) The tattoos and their colors also represent the trauma. Blue clouds for the arcane explosion and in s2 likely pink bullets for her minigun ammunition. To me it’s also reminiscent of Silco’s scar, it’s wearing your trauma on display.
4) Braids reflecting her mental state. Again, as Powder she had a simple, relatively short and straight braid. Based on the reddit QnA she’d have this poorly done, skewed to one side braid as little Jinx, cos Silco didn’t know how to braid hair. With her later in life taking the look of the skewed braid and making it intentionally her hairstyle, making it symmetrical and also longer, nicer. More polished with more jewelry/bolts in there. Kinda highlighting that immediately after the trauma she’d be at her lowest but that later in life she attempts to keep her life together.
5) I love that Silco braiding Jinx’s hair is semi-canon now cos I always loved the image, braiding these long-ass braids really conveys visually how effort and time consuming taking care of Jinx is. It also indirectly confirms that Vi must have braided her hair before, keeping it straight and by implication keeping her sane.
6) I also wonder what’s the motivation for the hairstyle. What would make sense to me is that if for Silco’s character it represents how much he has to take care of her then for Jinx it would represent how attention seeking and love-starved she is, right? So maybe she splits the braid in two and starts growing it out as much as she can in order to get more time/attention from Silco? It strikes me as smth little Powder/Jinx would absolutely do. Maybe it’s wishful thinking but I also used to think that about the concept of Silco braiding her hair in general.
7) They changed Jinx’s design to look more punk-like, which makes her fit the world more. Zaun’s aesthetics/fashion are partially borrowed from the 80s working class punk subculture.
8) An X on her outfit for jinX, similarly to how Mylo had an M with a crown in 'Mylo' on his outfit. Both of them also already had X's on their outfits as kids. Kinda how s2 will likely have Vi wearing Claggor’s glasses. Each sister somewhere on their outfit having a reference to the brother who was more like them.
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No, my critique of the analogy is apt: if god created the universe and gave shape to the life in it he objectively created life that could change and adapt to best fit it's circumstances, like the many, many times that fish have adapted to survive on land/breathe oxygen.
Your general argument is based on the idea that things were created a certain way, and have to stay that way, but that's a perspective that adheres to a very limited and human view of the universe in it's totality. You're denigrating your own god to make him fit in the narrow band of human ignorance. God is eternal, but he is not stagnancy, and the fact that you think you as a limited human think you can understand his design is an act of utmost pride.
Equally disparaging: you've fundamentally got Steven Universe lore wrong. White Daimond did not create the Gems, nor was she the first. Gem society was explicitly designed by an outside force and WD was put in charge of it. What she represents (both in gem society and in the story) is dogmatic adherence to social norms and orthodox hierarchy. It's understandable why you, someone who bases their self image on a similar adherence to orthodoxy would feel attacked by her villianization, but even you can admit that the bible says to beware false, flawed power structures like the ones that would deny the truth of god's universe truth to keep their own authority in tact.
“At least it's not ferociously attacking God quite as directly as Steven Universe did…”
Not that I’m surprised by this statement, but can you elaborate on this? Kinda intrigued by your thoughts on Steven Universe.
Okie dokie, you’re not the only one who has asked me about this, so I suppose I’ll poke the hornet’s nest. 😅 I haven’t talked about this before because I assumed that everyone who wanted to hear my kinds of opinions on stories wasn’t watching or interested in Steven Universe.
It’s like asking vegetarian if they enjoyed a turkey dinner. The turkey dinner was so obviously not made for vegetarians to enjoy, so why would the vegetarian even bother analyzing the turkey?
But I think if some people are asking me why I think Steven Universe is anti-God (of the Bible) its because maybe they don’t know what the turkey is. Not completely. (Maybe not you, because like you said, you’re not surprised by my comment.) So I’ll explain my thoughts on Steven Universe.
If you’re just following me because you liked some stuff I posted, but didn’t realize that I’m a Bible-believing Christian and don’t want to hear about it, unfollow me now. Because I’m going to talk about some hot button issues here and the trolls will come out.
Steven Universe is really well-done. The jokes are funny, the writing is believable, the characters have great chemistry, great design, the concept is fascinating, the slow build-up and reveal of the plot elements is great. But when you watch the throne room scene in the last episode of Season 5 “Change Your Mind,” it’s alarmingly clear how much the whole show is not just settling for defending and championing the LGBTQ+ worldview—it goes all the way to attacking what Christians believe, on the other side.
Anything that’s pro-LGBTQ+ is doing that by default, but this show goes out of its way to do that.
You have to understand: God created and designed us. Deeper than that; He created and designed romantic relationships, and invented marriage. He didn’t just create love—He is love. So when humans come along and do what we’ve always done since the fall, and say, “I’d rather define what Your thing is and how it works for myself, God,” it’s not only an incredible slap in the face, it’s an attack on God’s actual identity—and it’s destructive for us and the people around us. Like a fish insisting it can breathe oxygen.
But Steven Universe goes beyond that. It knows that the Christian worldview is it’s biggest opposition. It digs right down to the heart of the worldview-battle. LGBTQ+ worldview says, “I should get to love what I want and be who I am, because I’m me. Love is love. (By which I mean, any action or relationship I choose to call love is love, because I’m the one calling it that.)”
Biblical worldview says “No, wait, you shouldn’t base your decisions on you alone; what you want changes day to day, and you’re broken, so you can’t ever be satisfied based on what you want—the Bible says God made you for something, and you rejected that, and it broke you. You’re not how you’re meant to be: even what you want and what you think love is is twisted up and can hurt you and others. But if you submit to God He’ll help you, He’ll fix what’s broken and give you new life by making you how you were supposed to be: He’ll live in you and through you.”
Are we beginning to get the picture?
See, the whole thing with the opposing views between LGBTQ+ and Christian people is as old as time. It’s not a new debate. It’s Satan and Eve in the garden. She says, “This is not how God said things should be,” and Satan says, “Are you sure that’s what He said? He knows if you do this thing, you’ll be like Him. You’ll be god: you’ll get to decide ‘how things should be’ for yourself.”
He lied and said that disobedience would satisfy her. That she knew what her own heart needed better than the God that made it did. That the very act of being imperfect would make her godlike.
And then Steven Universe comes along and says “if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hotdogs.”
And has a cast of created being characters who’s imperfections (Garnet’s forbidden “love,” Pearl’s obsession, Amethyst’s insecurity) are supposedly “the best thing about them; what makes them who they are.”
And has a main character who used to be a part of the god-like creator relationship, but used her power to come down to earth and completely change who she is into a fully different person.
And has a godlike Creator character who claims she “doesn’t need” her created beings (just like the God of the Bible) but they all have a little part of their creator in them so she has to repress their imperfections; she holds them all to a standard that’s impossible to reach called “perfection” and punishes them when they don’t meet it even though it hurts them to try; she expects them all to do what they were created by her for; she fixes them when they can’t meet her standard by shining her light through them and making them extensions of their Creator.
And has a main character who argues, fights back, tries to stop her, and is answered with lines that sound surprisingly like what LGBTQ+ people hear when Christians argue with them: “you’re only making things worse; you’re just deceiving yourself; even while you resist it your actual light can’t help shining through,” etc.
White Diamond just wants everything to be perfect. Like her. She just wants her created beings to “be themselves.” But what she means is, be how she created them to be.
And she’s the bad guy. She’s playing God in this show, and Rebecca Sugar is saying, “If God is telling us that can only be happy by being perfect, as He is perfect, and doing what He created us to do, then He’s wrong. Our imperfections are what make us special—unique—individuals—free—and there is nobody who has the right to take that freedom away from us, not even out creator!”
And you know what?
If God were like White Diamond, like Rebecca Sugar believes Him to be, Steven Universe would be right.
But He is NOT.
God is not a dictator who forces us to conform to a standard of perfection and then smashes us when we don’t meet it. He is a King who made us perfect to begin with, and we rejected him, because He allowed us to do that. He knew that true love was love that had to be chosen, and He wanted us to love Him by choice, so he gave us the option. But Rebecca Sugar doesn’t understand—there was never “Choose God or Choose Yourself.” There was only, “Choose God or Choose Nothing.” There was nothing except God. Then He created everything. There is no version of reality where you have something better than God, or even slightly less good but different, to pick. You’re not jumping from one ship into a smaller one, but at least it’s yours—you’re jumping from one ship into a void, and then complaining that there’s no other ship. That’s humans. That’s not God. / White Diamond didn’t make her creations perfect (Amethyst) and she didn’t make them for love. She made them for power. That’s not the God of the Bible.
Even when we did choose to try and love ourselves instead of God, and therefore warped our ability to perfectly love at all, He didn’t smash us. True, everything fell and was cursed, which is exactly what He warned us would happen if we chose it, but it was a natural consequence of breaking ourselves. And then He didn’t leave us that way. He didn’t give up on us. And He certainly didn’t just zap us, snap His fingers, quick-fix it and turn us all into robots who are extensions of Him, who say they love Him but only because it’s His voice puppeting us to say it.
No. He came to us, chose to give up His life at the exact point on the timeline when Romans, masters in the art of slow, humiliating, torturous death, would be the ones to carry out His crucifixion, and saved us Himself. Through the sacrifice of His own life. And even then, we still have a choice. We get to choose to accept that incredible self-sacrifice when we don’t deserve it, and be given new life and a relationship with the Creator who knows us and loves us better than we can love ourselves or receive love from others—OR we can just keep stubbornly insisting that our slavery to the opposite of what God wants is somehow freedom, and our twisted versions of love are genuine, and we’re not broken, and die like that. Die broken creatures who lived their whole lives stomping their feet and screaming “I’m not a creature, I’m a god!”
White Diamond sacrifices nothing, because Rebecca Sugar doesn’t know the God of the Bible. She just knows her idea of Him. She’s never actually gotten to know Him. If she had, she’d learn how silly and twisted her idea is.
Because you know what, yeah, if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs. But people aren’t pork chops. And hot dogs have flavor (not better than pork chops) but they are awful for you.
Christians aren’t perfect cuts of meat with no individuality or flavor. Just because we all know and love the same God doesn’t mean we have no personalities. It just means we don’t think so freaking much about what we are, or who we get to be, or what we like and want. Jeez, what a self-centered, narcissistic, self-obsessed way to live. She plays Steven like he’s this wonder-child, innocent and full of heart, who encourages his friends to love and keep trying. But honestly?
This is very pretty animation but it’s not real. Steven looks happy hugging Steven but self-love doesn’t ultimately get you that.
That’s all based on the premise that what he’s encouraging them to do is actually good, and will make them happy, and will help them love better. And it just won’t. Not in real life. That’s not how any of this works. Self-love is just self-obsession. And that is a sure-fire way to hurt you, and everyone around you.
You’ll never be free by choosing to run to a worse master. You’ll never be satisfied with your crappy attempts at loving yourself, because you were made to be loved flawlessly and forever by someone who is Love Himself.
And choosing to identify with your imperfections doesn’t make you uniquely you. It just makes you exactly like every other human being marching in the same line since the Fall.
White Diamond’s not relational. She’s up high and distant. That’s not God. He made you to be in relationship with Him. He loves you, totally and perfectly, and He proved it by sacrificing for You.
So yeah. That’s the problem with Steven Universe. Come get me, SU fans.
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Also a fish DID decide to start breathing air. It's a relatively minor point but it is absolutely a thing that happened.
“At least it's not ferociously attacking God quite as directly as Steven Universe did…”
Not that I’m surprised by this statement, but can you elaborate on this? Kinda intrigued by your thoughts on Steven Universe.
Okie dokie, you’re not the only one who has asked me about this, so I suppose I’ll poke the hornet’s nest. 😅 I haven’t talked about this before because I assumed that everyone who wanted to hear my kinds of opinions on stories wasn’t watching or interested in Steven Universe.
It’s like asking vegetarian if they enjoyed a turkey dinner. The turkey dinner was so obviously not made for vegetarians to enjoy, so why would the vegetarian even bother analyzing the turkey?
But I think if some people are asking me why I think Steven Universe is anti-God (of the Bible) its because maybe they don’t know what the turkey is. Not completely. (Maybe not you, because like you said, you’re not surprised by my comment.) So I’ll explain my thoughts on Steven Universe.
If you’re just following me because you liked some stuff I posted, but didn’t realize that I’m a Bible-believing Christian and don’t want to hear about it, unfollow me now. Because I’m going to talk about some hot button issues here and the trolls will come out.
Steven Universe is really well-done. The jokes are funny, the writing is believable, the characters have great chemistry, great design, the concept is fascinating, the slow build-up and reveal of the plot elements is great. But when you watch the throne room scene in the last episode of Season 5 “Change Your Mind,” it’s alarmingly clear how much the whole show is not just settling for defending and championing the LGBTQ+ worldview—it goes all the way to attacking what Christians believe, on the other side.
Anything that’s pro-LGBTQ+ is doing that by default, but this show goes out of its way to do that.
You have to understand: God created and designed us. Deeper than that; He created and designed romantic relationships, and invented marriage. He didn’t just create love—He is love. So when humans come along and do what we’ve always done since the fall, and say, “I’d rather define what Your thing is and how it works for myself, God,” it’s not only an incredible slap in the face, it’s an attack on God’s actual identity—and it’s destructive for us and the people around us. Like a fish insisting it can breathe oxygen.
But Steven Universe goes beyond that. It knows that the Christian worldview is it’s biggest opposition. It digs right down to the heart of the worldview-battle. LGBTQ+ worldview says, “I should get to love what I want and be who I am, because I’m me. Love is love. (By which I mean, any action or relationship I choose to call love is love, because I’m the one calling it that.)”
Biblical worldview says “No, wait, you shouldn’t base your decisions on you alone; what you want changes day to day, and you’re broken, so you can’t ever be satisfied based on what you want—the Bible says God made you for something, and you rejected that, and it broke you. You’re not how you’re meant to be: even what you want and what you think love is is twisted up and can hurt you and others. But if you submit to God He’ll help you, He’ll fix what’s broken and give you new life by making you how you were supposed to be: He’ll live in you and through you.”
Are we beginning to get the picture?
See, the whole thing with the opposing views between LGBTQ+ and Christian people is as old as time. It’s not a new debate. It’s Satan and Eve in the garden. She says, “This is not how God said things should be,” and Satan says, “Are you sure that’s what He said? He knows if you do this thing, you’ll be like Him. You’ll be god: you’ll get to decide ‘how things should be’ for yourself.”
He lied and said that disobedience would satisfy her. That she knew what her own heart needed better than the God that made it did. That the very act of being imperfect would make her godlike.
And then Steven Universe comes along and says “if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hotdogs.”
And has a cast of created being characters who’s imperfections (Garnet’s forbidden “love,” Pearl’s obsession, Amethyst’s insecurity) are supposedly “the best thing about them; what makes them who they are.”
And has a main character who used to be a part of the god-like creator relationship, but used her power to come down to earth and completely change who she is into a fully different person.
And has a godlike Creator character who claims she “doesn’t need” her created beings (just like the God of the Bible) but they all have a little part of their creator in them so she has to repress their imperfections; she holds them all to a standard that’s impossible to reach called “perfection” and punishes them when they don’t meet it even though it hurts them to try; she expects them all to do what they were created by her for; she fixes them when they can’t meet her standard by shining her light through them and making them extensions of their Creator.
And has a main character who argues, fights back, tries to stop her, and is answered with lines that sound surprisingly like what LGBTQ+ people hear when Christians argue with them: “you’re only making things worse; you’re just deceiving yourself; even while you resist it your actual light can’t help shining through,” etc.
White Diamond just wants everything to be perfect. Like her. She just wants her created beings to “be themselves.” But what she means is, be how she created them to be.
And she’s the bad guy. She’s playing God in this show, and Rebecca Sugar is saying, “If God is telling us that can only be happy by being perfect, as He is perfect, and doing what He created us to do, then He’s wrong. Our imperfections are what make us special—unique—individuals—free—and there is nobody who has the right to take that freedom away from us, not even out creator!”
And you know what?
If God were like White Diamond, like Rebecca Sugar believes Him to be, Steven Universe would be right.
But He is NOT.
God is not a dictator who forces us to conform to a standard of perfection and then smashes us when we don’t meet it. He is a King who made us perfect to begin with, and we rejected him, because He allowed us to do that. He knew that true love was love that had to be chosen, and He wanted us to love Him by choice, so he gave us the option. But Rebecca Sugar doesn’t understand—there was never “Choose God or Choose Yourself.” There was only, “Choose God or Choose Nothing.” There was nothing except God. Then He created everything. There is no version of reality where you have something better than God, or even slightly less good but different, to pick. You’re not jumping from one ship into a smaller one, but at least it’s yours—you’re jumping from one ship into a void, and then complaining that there’s no other ship. That’s humans. That’s not God. / White Diamond didn’t make her creations perfect (Amethyst) and she didn’t make them for love. She made them for power. That’s not the God of the Bible.
Even when we did choose to try and love ourselves instead of God, and therefore warped our ability to perfectly love at all, He didn’t smash us. True, everything fell and was cursed, which is exactly what He warned us would happen if we chose it, but it was a natural consequence of breaking ourselves. And then He didn’t leave us that way. He didn’t give up on us. And He certainly didn’t just zap us, snap His fingers, quick-fix it and turn us all into robots who are extensions of Him, who say they love Him but only because it’s His voice puppeting us to say it.
No. He came to us, chose to give up His life at the exact point on the timeline when Romans, masters in the art of slow, humiliating, torturous death, would be the ones to carry out His crucifixion, and saved us Himself. Through the sacrifice of His own life. And even then, we still have a choice. We get to choose to accept that incredible self-sacrifice when we don’t deserve it, and be given new life and a relationship with the Creator who knows us and loves us better than we can love ourselves or receive love from others—OR we can just keep stubbornly insisting that our slavery to the opposite of what God wants is somehow freedom, and our twisted versions of love are genuine, and we’re not broken, and die like that. Die broken creatures who lived their whole lives stomping their feet and screaming “I’m not a creature, I’m a god!”
White Diamond sacrifices nothing, because Rebecca Sugar doesn’t know the God of the Bible. She just knows her idea of Him. She’s never actually gotten to know Him. If she had, she’d learn how silly and twisted her idea is.
Because you know what, yeah, if every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hot dogs. But people aren’t pork chops. And hot dogs have flavor (not better than pork chops) but they are awful for you.
Christians aren’t perfect cuts of meat with no individuality or flavor. Just because we all know and love the same God doesn’t mean we have no personalities. It just means we don’t think so freaking much about what we are, or who we get to be, or what we like and want. Jeez, what a self-centered, narcissistic, self-obsessed way to live. She plays Steven like he’s this wonder-child, innocent and full of heart, who encourages his friends to love and keep trying. But honestly?
This is very pretty animation but it’s not real. Steven looks happy hugging Steven but self-love doesn’t ultimately get you that.
That’s all based on the premise that what he’s encouraging them to do is actually good, and will make them happy, and will help them love better. And it just won’t. Not in real life. That’s not how any of this works. Self-love is just self-obsession. And that is a sure-fire way to hurt you, and everyone around you.
You’ll never be free by choosing to run to a worse master. You’ll never be satisfied with your crappy attempts at loving yourself, because you were made to be loved flawlessly and forever by someone who is Love Himself.
And choosing to identify with your imperfections doesn’t make you uniquely you. It just makes you exactly like every other human being marching in the same line since the Fall.
White Diamond’s not relational. She’s up high and distant. That’s not God. He made you to be in relationship with Him. He loves you, totally and perfectly, and He proved it by sacrificing for You.
So yeah. That’s the problem with Steven Universe. Come get me, SU fans.
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Its also their respective trigger fingers, metaphorically representing their relationship to violence. Cooper has absorbed a portion of Lucy's measured pacifism and Lucy absorbed a bit of Cooper's survivalist necessity.
Cooper teaches Lucy about the brutality required to survive in the wasteland, Lucy reminds Cooper about the idealism he lost track of since the bomba dropped.
I thought it was a tad gratuitous when I watched it happened but HOLY SHIT the THEMES.
What was so special about the Fallout finger scene?
Everyone I know is a little freak who enjoys when two people get a little violent with each other. The removal of the fingers is a permanent mark they made on each other. He takes it one step further and sews her finger on his hand! And while not using his finger she ends up with an old dead finger on her hand. I've seen it compared to a more violent version of an exchange of rings. Its just a fun little flavor thing that people who like their character dynamics a little fucked up have latched onto.
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My off again on again take was always that (even though she'd never admit it) Gertrude was web aligned: plans and countermeasures and contingencies, the red string conspiracy board connecting seemingly random data points that illustrated a grand design. Same goes for her ability to compel statements, functionally identical to John's "forced confession" abilities but distinctly different than the purely eye aligned Jonah's ability to simply "know" someone's secrets.
That's why the archive as we find it in season 1 of TMA is far more of a jumble, Gertrude says she's doing it to spite the eye but she's inadvertently creating a far more spider friendly space (right down to the cobwebs) that resembles how the web sees the world.
I'd argue that the Magnus Institute began as a purely eye based institution and existed that way for centuries but came into the Web's influence around the time that Jonah was planning his big ritual (inadvertently becoming a part of the Fears lifecycle of growing, gorging, and then spreading to other worlds)
Okay okay okay, I need everyone to listen to me about this.
I know I kinda talked about this before in a reblog to someone else's post, but the idea has been rotating in my brain ever since and I feel like it needs to be further explored.
A lot of people have been talking about the differences between TMA and TMP, and memeing about how people can actually quit the OIAR (which btw, I'll believe when I actually see it, by which I mean if we're able to get through the entire series without Teddy either coming back or turning up dead or otherwise facing "You can quit but you can never leave" levels of repercussions) but like nobody, from what I've seen, has been talking about what imo is the pretty glaringly obvious element at play here.
So let's talk about the spider in the room, shall we?
What do we know about the Magnus Institute in TMA?
People came there to give statements regarding their spooky experiences, including people who had doubts about doing so (because they weren't sure if the Institute was reputable, because they weren't sure if they believed what they had experienced, because they served a different entity so what reason would they have to do something for The Eye, etc).
The head archivist would ultimately become the Archivist, an Avatar of the Eye.
The Archivist's abilities included enabling statement givers to give their statements without going off track or leaving out details (we even see what happens when it's not the Archivist taking the statement), and being able to compel people to tell them things against their will, from statements to their darkest secrets.
You couldn't quit, at least not without gouging your eyes out.
The Magnus Institute was a part of the Eye.
Or was it? Because the other thing we know about the Magnus Institute is that the Web was using it as part of its plan to break free from the TMA world and gain access to the other worlds out there.
How much of the compulsion aspects of the Institute-- people being drawn to the Institute to give statements, the Archivist's ability to draw statements and secrets out of people, people's inability to quit the Institute--was actually because of the Web?
Where does the Eye's "compulsion to seek out knowledge even if it could be bad/ harmful" end and the Web's "not being in control of your own actions" begin?
Was the Archivist--at least in the form Gertrude and John took--really purely an Avatar of the Eye? Or were they an Avatar of a mix between The Eye and the Web, much like how Martin, if he were to ever become a full fledged Avatar, likely would have been a mix of the Eye and the Lonely, just like his domain in S5 was?
After all, Jonah was an Eye Avatar, was he not? And as far as we saw, he never needed to compel information out of people. He just Knew it (and used it to torment people).
One of the themes I've been playing around with in my TMA fanfictions since I first finished the podcast for the first time last winter is how the course of history would be different in the alternate worlds, where the Web wasn't interfering--at least not on the same scale, or for the same reasons--since it had already gotten what it wanted at the end of TMA. And I think that's exactly what we're seeing a version of in Protocol.
I think the OIAR is what it looks like when it's entirely the Eye at play, with 0 interference from the Web. The Eye is all about having your secrets exposed, being watched, being followed. The tape recorders--something that would need to be turned off and on (controlled) in order to record something--were a tool of the Web. Now we're "witnessing" the events of the podcast through the audio from security cameras and other things that are constantly running; constantly seeing and listening without needing to be turned on and off. The statements aren't being given by people who somehow found their way to the institute and were on some level or another compelled to tell their tales. They're journal entries detailing a person's private thoughts. They're letters meant only for the eyes of the recipient, sharing secrets not meant for anyone else. They're recorded therapy sessions.
And the statements that are related to the Eye? The ones read in John's voice? They're forum and blog posts, which not only makes them the only ones whose sources didn't have the same expectation of privacy as the others, also ties them to the Web, since computers and websites were previously established as being associated with it.
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Every great trek baddie takes some central conceit of the federation and either presents its antithesis or cranks it up to 11, so here's a few random ones
Xenophobes: doomsday prepper equivelent of a civilization that is terrified of other life existing in the galaxy, to the point of considering it a religious/existential threat. Sends automated warfleets out into the cosmos to purge it of life, in a direct inversion of the "seeking out strange new worlds and new civilizations" ethos.
Radical unifiers: Starfleet is dedicated to peace and diplomacy, but what happens when they encounter a civilization with a very different idea of what "peace" even is. Looking to eliminate all conflict by ensuring that everything is subjugated by one unified system, one centralized idea of morality, this group is happy to live and let live, or reduce your culture to ashes as an example for others who refuse to bend the knee. This is technically the same role as the borg, but think less hivemind and more individuals who genuinely believe in an ideology.
Gamers: an "ascended" species who share the federation's post-scarcity ethos of self betterment and amusement, only they view the universe as their holodeck. They larp as space pirates, play risk with empires, do trickshots with comets. Not Q levels of omniponent, just powerful enough to ensure they avoid any consequences for their actions.
I think Star Trek badly needs some new villains. The Klingons are hugely overdone and are more interesting as allies anyways; the Romulans lost their homeworld and shouldn't really be enemies anymore; I'd be extremely disappointed if they just boringly returned the Cardassians to being a military dictatorship; the Dominion are on the other side of the Galaxy; and the Borg Collective is gone except for a Federation-aligned splinter faction. It's time to get some new blood in here.
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Wait...Ironic punishments? Binding death in a chair? An overly long series that just keeps going over and over no matter how many times it seems like it should end?
Sounds like Sisyphus to me
I really wish the Saw producers just had John Jigsaw come back from the dead. They clearly wish they hadn't killed him off so soon. If any character asks, just have him say, "nope," and get to the jigsawing. Or have the Time Lord's resurrect him to fight in the Time War. Or have Poe Dameron say, "somehow Jigsaw jigturned."
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It was almost the same "pretty but conceptually dead" feeling you get from AI art, totally unable to deliver on themes or develop character arcs because it can only give you a surface level gloss mimicking what it was trained on.
the whole reason the show works is that the doctor is a character who can blunder into any scifi-anthology short story, and if you've got a compelling short story, you've got a compelling doctor who episode. Alternatively you can do something super character focused, which tend to be the highlight of the series once we've spent some time observing the characters dealing with monsters of the week.
Chibnall's run fails on both counts: The short stories are incoherent on their own, and none of the companions (or even 13 herself) have much in the way of characters.
Take Ryan for instance: a guy we're introduced to learning (and failing) to ride a bike because he's got a challenge to his balance and motor skills, which has affected his self image and how much he's accomplished in life. Having a companion who can't reliably run/climb/manipulate plot important technology is a FASCINATING wrinkle to the usual formula, and would likewise give us a bunch of interesting questions when we came into contact with how the future/past/alien cultures we meet deal with disability.
Is there a risky barrier that only Ryan is in a position to surmount showing us how he's managed to far in life?
Does he mess something up and then feel guilty that he's taking up space and forcing others to cover for him?
Is there a situation where EVERYONE'S balance is affected, and he's got a leg up because he's been dealing with it his whole life?
Would he be tempted by futuristic cybernetic augmentation that would make him not only meet, but exceed his normal limits? Could a villain manipulate him by making this offer?
Chibnall has two seasons to work on any of these themes and he uses NONE of them. More companions means more personalities, more character arcs, and instead they're rendered down to a glorified soundingboard.
it's really unlucky how the first female doctor happened to coincide with the show just starting to absolutely suck shit
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So, a wellspring of elemental fire magic that would be super dangerous for Ashton to absorb....
What a coincidence then that there's a wildfire druid with whom they have an unspoken chemistry RIGHT THERE .
SO many things would need to go right....but damn if I won't be screaming for that narrative symmetry if it happens.
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You need some mental hair of the dog: watch The Mask (or wherever your brain picked up the song) and it'll unsnarl the tangle of memory threads that you're getting caught up on.
Coincidentally I have a 10 second snippet of an atrocious magic schoolbus rap about a decaying log stuck in my head for the past 20 or so years that I just can't be bothered to unstick that fades in and out every couple of months
My brain: *upbeat Latin style horns*
Me: no please
Brain: THEY CALL ME CUBAN PETE
Me: please it's been three days
Brain: I'M THE KING OF THE RHUMBA BEAT
Me: you only remember the first thirty seconds you can't keep looping this
Brain: WHEN I PLAY MY MARACAS THEY GO CHIK-CHIKKY BOOM CHIK-CHIKKY BOOM
Brain: ...
Brain: THEY CALL ME CUBAN PETE-
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Midst is VERY GOOD, amd has a decent trailer you can hit up on youtube if you want a good sample of the vibes.
Wireland Ranch: An Amalgamation is a delicious psychedelic horror about the horror of latestage America
Badlands Cola is a new weird detective story with flavours of lovecraftian archeology
If i don't start hyperfocusing on something soon I'm gonna wither and die
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Someone else will doubtlessly have pointed this out but he also makes a heart stabbing gesture, as if the concept of friendship was some kind of betrayal against him.
Bring this back to men who get SO OFFENDED at the concept of women who they find attractive who don't return their affections, whether they're just not interested/lesbians/ace. In their mind, finding the woman attractive and telling her that should be enough to make her want to sleep with him.
The thing is, we (queers and enlightened straights alike) KNOW this doesn't work, and it especially doesn't work on Barbie: she was made objectively pretty, and she lives in a panopticon of positivity so she's in no way starved for attention.
This is actually why I think the Barbie movie is one of the best showcases of letting go of toxic masculinity because just like Barbie was made objectively pretty, Ken was made with this desperate need to be validated through her affections, and the moment he realizes he can give that up he achieves actual happiness.
The second time he sings "Where I see love, she sees a friend", the ballet Kens split off and hug each other in the background while Ryan!Ken is still resentful and remorseful in the foreground, unaware of them.
He's been distracted by the patriarchal ideology that men must win women's love as their only outlet of connection, even when women deny them, because it's the only option known to them.
The true solution is being telegraphed in the backround: nonviolent community with men as much as women, brotherhood and friendship with any person in life so that demand isn't directed one way.
In this essay I will--
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More than anything else I think the problem comes from how BORING Control's non powered combat is in comparison to its premise, how all too often you're just using a normal ish gun to shoot at enemies that behave just like human enemies would, same as any other shooter.
Compare this with the combat in Alan Wake, which did have regular weapons but used them to supplement its darkness based encounter design against very unusual enemies.
Consider for a moment if we capitalized on the fact that the hiss is a sort of signal/sound and that fighting the hiss revolved around breaking whatever they were using as a transmitter, be it speakers, the vibrations of mechanical equipment, or the emanations of an OOP. The human enemies could keep respawning so it would become a matter of clearing a destructive path through them till you could cut them off at the source.
Likewise, the game's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: Launch. NOTHING feels as good as chucking chunks of concrete or forklifts at enemies and watching them dissolve into mist and short of the gameplay instances that contrive me to use the service weapon I'm always going to default to Launch if given the chance. If we had other offensive powers that were useful in other situations it might not be so bad but we don't, at least not isolated to the DLC
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Oh damn. I thought the uncanny valley was the POINT of her, like she was a decidedly inhuman thing that was cute in theory but unnerving in execution, like a predator that'd evolved to LOOK like its prey so it could move about without startling the herd (the herd being us).
That's what I thought her character was going to be about during the tease. She was a thing that mimicd humans but she'd grown interested in us as more than just a food source, and interest was in the initial stages of turning into empathy just as we meet her.
I don't want to wade too much into Briar Discourse™ but good god the level of disconnect between the childish button-nosed babyface on her splash art and the much more defined, much older, much better proportioned face on her character model.
these are literally not the same character, and frankly props to the 3D modelling team, because in the splash art, that head on that body is spelunking in the uncanny valley
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We've been building in Tharizdun lore for multiple campaigns now and it'd be so weird if we didn't close in on it. I'd say the connection between it and Predathos is too close to be coincidence but it's a question of whether the mutations, swirling chaos, psychic terror too many eyes and teeth bodyhorror is actually a shared characteristic or just Matt returning to the same well.
I'd be FASCINATED if it was actually all another Tharizdun decoy cult that got even more out of hand, given how much they operate like the Ruby Vanguard
Response by @gorgynei on this post;
I honestly dont even have much to add to this comment because I completely agree. Everything we know about Tharizdun is framed around how he's different from the other deities in some alien way. It's apparently also said that "It is feared that the nature of Tharizdun, being unlike the other deities, could shatter the Divine Gate alone if unleashed", which is presumably why they have him chained and bound by the prime trammels and the six shackles. The other Betrayer gods were all banished, but Tharizdun is the only one who had to be (and continues to be) physically chained within its plane.... Besides Predathos, who had to be physically bound within Ruidus and sealed behind a divine gate. So.
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