autistic-science-cryptid

[autistic-science-cryptid]

And the thing about stories is that they’re fiction. You don’t expect them to be 100% real, even if part of the genre is to do things that are either kinda-sorta realistic or they aren’t now but could be. Even those can sometimes depart from reality in a way that’s convenient to the story. It’s expected.

And in the case of the 2000 Disney movie Dinosaur, which is my favorite dinosaur story, yes, lemurs weren’t around at the same time as the dinosaurs. But also, the animal used for that story really has to be lemurs, because the lemurs are as close as you could get to dinosaur days and still illustrate the fallen glory that’s part of the story (as well as the feelings of a character who witnessed the glory but never really got to be a part of it even though the glory’s piece de resistance tried as hard as he could to make that lemur part of said glory because the piece de resistance, a dinosaur named Aladar, is a good ally, a lovable “crazy uncle” whose personality type is actually similar in some ways to that of certain known pack animals, and the protagonist of the story).

And besides, that story could have taken place in a hypothetical universe where the Chicxulub asteroid never hit, but either some disasters died later or else the dinosaurs in that story were simply suffering the slow, protracted extinction that might have happened anyway without that disaster. Because stories can take place in hypothetical universes.

And to be brutally honest, many of the worst offenders in terms of story misinformation are “based on a true story” things featuring humans whose inaccuracies are so glaring that they make Dinosaur look like a documentary next to them, and that’s not even to speak of the fact that you could make  movies featuring literal talking wolves that are based on actual true wolf stories and you would know that you aren’t lying when you say that (and that anyone over the age of maybe 5 or so is going to know that wolves don’t really speak English anyway).

That is, assuming you were not handwringing so much about anthropomorphism that you didn’t notice that the overall slant of this hypothetical talking wolf story was accurate and 100% confirmed by scientific reports and that the talking was the only truly fanciful part (and that it makes sense to assume emotions in animals because those didn’t come out of nowhere and there is no evidence that angels or a similar entity showed up one day and tinkered with our evolution so as to make us the only one that has feelings and no evidence that such an intervention could not possibly spill over to animals even if it did happen).

And these hypothetical talking wolf movies would be far more deserving of that “based on a true story” designation than some of these human stories (like the Blind Side, which was a total grift). Not to mention, talking could easily be used, especially in movies, as a narrative stand-in for the social signals that wolves actually use, much the way the language of the audience is used as a stand-in for the language characters actually speak, not because those social signals are technically or strictly speaking language, but because they probably communicate certain complex ideas in a way that they use social signals for, but we use language for.

Because the animal doesn’t need language if social signals are enough to communicate the complex ideas they understand, but our social signals don’t always accomplish it and some of our ideas are far too complicated for that anyway, so we use language for that, and then don’t consider that other animals might have more complex ideas than we give them credit for, even if those ideas are (very often) simpler than a lot of ours.

Alright here's the deal:

no, it doesn't really matter if cartoons misrepresent dinosaurs. Almost like most people don't really spend their time critiquing them (I certainly don't, unless someone asks me to, and then it's cause they asked)

The representation of dinosaurs and the deep past actually does matter, because it completely disproves the founding myths of society that have lead to climate change and environmental destruction. I can explain why, but I'm trying to be brief.

If you really think that paleontologists who use social media - ie, all of them, because unfortunately online science communication is now a mandatory part of being a scientist - want to spend all their time critiquing dinosaur designs, you are very, very, very wrong

Thinking that living things matter more than dead things is so illogical (everything living one day becomes dead. the past matters) that it sounds like a twelve year old whining about studying for their bar mitzvah.

Misinformation of any kind is bad and you should be against it. Acting like some is okay while others aren't is just... picking and choosing favorites. Way to be consistent.

The end.

#dinosaur #lemurs #apocalypse

[autistic-science-cryptid]

Or like the way the people of the Underworld from Sword Art Online believe their magic spells are gifts from the three gods, but these spells are actually system commands and they live entirely inside a virtual world generated by a computer powered by something that might look similar to the Dust from the His Dark Materials series (because it is effectively either particles of consciousness, or something else that our brains would read as particles of consciousness). And also the fact that the data of this world is either made of consciousness or something like it also explains some of the strange behavior of some of their other “magics”, and the uncanny sentience that some of their NPC animals can display after centuries (not to mention, the ultra-realistic behavior of some of their other NPC animals, like horses).

Every time I'm around mosquitoes I start thinking about how people made the entirely correct connection between places with a lot of temperate stagnant water and the spread of malaria, but didn't quite connect all the dots - this place has stagnant water, this place has people getting sick with this same illness. Clearly it's the stinky water causing this, maybe it smells bad and the bad air is causing this. It's unhealthy to breathe the outdoor air at night, people who are out at night or don't shutter their windows tightly when the sun goes down are more likely to get sick because the bad air gets in.

The missing middle part was mosquitoes. Mosquitoes breed in standing water, and mosquitoes spread malaria.

I think this kind of thing would make a fun worldbuilding exercise. Have something in your world that does function the way people think it does, but they're completely wrong about why that happens. Or they've gotten the right connection, but backwards.

Holy rites that ward off evil but the Pure Substance is actually just antibacterial. Birds whose call is an omen of an approaching dragon, but these birds actually just have some symbiotic relationship with them. Half-elves that seem predestined to turn to dabbling with dark and lethal magic, but actually they just have a stronger tolerance of The Thing That Kills You due to hybrid vigour. Everyone knows that tigers never attack holy women because of a pact between their gods, but actually it's because a tiger is an ambush predator and the priestesses' headwear vaguely resembles a human face from the back, and the tigers can't quite tell whether she's facing away or towards them.

#sword art online #sword art online alicization #sao alicization

[autistic-science-cryptid]

#this is so funny to me bc creative writing classes have taught me that you can't give meaningful critique w/o knowing author intent#like 9 times /10 there isn't enough context to even critique someone on anything other than basic spelling and grammar in fanfic#craft is subjective let writers do whatever they want unless they ask#fanfic talk

These tags also highlight why, far as I’m concerned, with very few exceptions, criticisms based on the idea of the “overpowered character” are garbage. Most stories are NOT intended to be blow-by-blow performances in the vein of a pro wrestling match. Often the fights, or other acts (or heaven forbid, even the way things just end up magically fixed at the end of a story sometimes) are metaphors for other things.

There is one way in which this can be kind of justified, mind you, but that’s less to do with power or strength and more the idea of a character being pulled along too easily by the plot. And very often this kind of “overpowered” does NOT manifest itself in fights. Often it’s an unrealistic level of social finesse, or characters falling at the protagonist’s feet in ways that read as saccharine and like you’d expect some conflict or at the very least disagreement in a real relationship but here, it doesn’t happen. And I’d put the emphasis on saccharine here. Like it reads as some kind of promise. And said social finesse tends to extend to non-romantic encounters or else gets treated as the romantic equivalent of a celebrity idol in the flesh (or like the guy in fundamentalist Islam who gets the forty-two virgins as a reward for committing a terrorist act)

And even then, there are many ways in which things that look like this kind of overpowered-ness can be justified by the narrative. Like if it’s a comedy, or there are religious themes, or there is a good reason why multiple people might fall behind someone (this can happen if a character falls into a place which makes them a figurehead, which can happen to anyone, at least in theory, especially if they fall into a situation where people, or even one person, might be desperate for a savior). And sometimes the character might even attract something romantically akin to celebrity in the flesh because they really are a celebrity of a sort and that is clearly justified in the plot and they didn't just fall into that status without so much as a warning (and they may or may not take an actual lover or family).

Or sometimes (as in Sword Art Online everywhere except the Underworld which would be unusually primed to receive saviors) a character is just genuinely nice and happens to fall in with the right group of people and all those people like them but when other people are shown they don't like that person at a rate significantly higher than the average person would (and sometimes even some of the people who were part of the protagonist's group kind of brush them off initially). Or when there are crushes, they may not be connected to reality due to high stress situations.

Pretty much the only times you can reasonably say this kind of overpowered-ness is unjustified (with the reminder that genuine story overpowered-ness is usually socially based), without knowing the intent of the author, is if the story literally reads like some saccharine religious tract (as in, the character just falls into the situation and has their deepest desires granted with the same feel as Publishers Clearing House showing up to the door).

Or the other favorite of stories with overpowered protagonists, the “everyone clapped” kind of story. Which can be entertaining in its own right and might even have some good morals, but it’s for good reason that “everyone clapped” stories can be considered junk food entertainment (after all, usually every feat shown there is designed for maximum entertainment value and often doesn't speak to a deeper meaning).

As can their opposite, the psychological thriller, also junk food entertainment, in which characters are usually really underpowered, though sometimes they also take much longer to die than real people would in equivalent situations. Because those are really just designed to trigger vicarious fears, and even when people do add “depth” to those, it’s the barest amount, sometimes forced, and sometimes it doesn’t even come across and the characters feel like they exhibit a severe lack of intelligence that is not justified by an intellectual disability (I could go on about that, this is one of the types of stories I find most annoying and even the few of those I like I could easily imagine being disliked by others who share my personality but not my actual life experiences).

And I’d remind folks again that I’m talking about the obvious extremes here, because there really is a huge gray area, and I mean huge, between the extremes. And plenty of stories get accused of overpowering characters unjustifiably and most of the time it’s a metaphor. And even some of the ones that aren’t are merely logical extensions of magic systems which maybe didn’t take into consideration a believable character whose behaviors and/or coping mechanisms dovetail perfectly with that system.

On that last item, I’m looking at the Force here, mind you. Any issues that might come up re: Rey are really issues with the Force in general. You see, George Lucas never took into consideration what would happen if you took the Force and added to it a character whose primary coping mechanism is magical thinking, and he really should have, the number of characters who use magical thinking as a coping mechanism in fiction is truly staggering (for obvious reasons which are often justified given the nature of the art form).

And this issue can also apply to other poorly considered magic systems, which don’t take into account what might happen if a common type of coping mechanism was introduced, because sooner or later, if you create a diverse cast of characters and your system is poorly written, a character will come along who checks all the boxes and needs little to no training to master that system. and you know what? Even some well-written magic systems have characters who fly through all the progression with no training.

And that’s sometimes the point. Take Mary and the Witch’s Flower, for example, as shown in the Ghibli film. The magic system in that story (or at any rate the metrics of it as judged by those who train in it) is actually intentionally poorly designed and the protagonist is supposed to fly through the progressions without training. Because it turns out the practitioners of that magic system care only about increasing their power level and creating lots of pretty tableaus and have zero regard for actually controlling that power or fine-tuning the purposes they have for it. And it turns out that their magic system can collapse as easily as a house of cards just by chanting a spell. In other words, one of the lessons of that story is the idea of “easy come, easy go”.

Nah, fam. It's not about "taking" criticism. It's about the fact that unless a writer asks for it specifically, it's a dick thing to do on a website that is rooted in community.

If a writer wants critique they will ask trusted friends or professional associates (in the relevant field). When a writer shares a fic on AO3 it's not necessarily with the aim of improving their craft (there are better places for that). It's about sharing joy.

Positive comments enhance that feeling of joy and community. Negative comments do not.

Fic isn't a product to be evaluated. If it's not for you, then you can just walk away. 😁

#fiction #fanfic #literary criticism #overpowered #note that my take applies to fiction in general #I'm not just talking about fanfic here #though that applies too #mind you people writing fanfic do come up with Mary Sues for a reason #sometimes they are folks in desperate need for some kind of escape from a shitty life #and that is why while these escapism stories aren't good quality #I don't have an issue with them on a fundamental level #what I do have an issue with in regards to those #is the shitty circumstances which force someone to be that desperate for some escape #any escape #unhealthy escapism is a symptom of a problem #it's not a problem where there's no need for escape

[autistic-science-cryptid]

And this is why I wish there wasn’t still a lot of nonsense about “don’t anthropomorphize”. Because the whole “don’t anthropomorphize” thing (as if some of the real issues aren’t things humans do to other humans as well) is the reason why, to folks like this OP, “alpha” can seem like a good compromise. Because there are still scientists out there who would push back if you tried to use terms like “leader” or “conflict resolution” or other terms that actually describe animal behavior very well but are seen as “anthropomorphism”. And we don’t really have a compromise word that neither matches the human term nor falsely ascribes BS organization to animals. Not to mention the people, scientists and laypeople alike, who push back against ascribing raw emotions to animals, even mammals or highly intelligent species of birds, when a lot of animals are in fact highly expressive and it is reasonable to assume they can feel certain emotions intensely.

The main difference is that human emotions can be shaped by a narrative, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t make said human emotions more intense per se so much as it can sometimes “sculpt” those emotions into a specific shape, if you will. And many times humans actually suppress the intensity of their emotions anyway, so if anything human emotions might often be less raw than those of other mammals (and while we do have crying tears and other animals don’t, not to the same extent, those animals do have other forms of expression, like keening, which, if need be, can also be used by humans whose trauma damaged their ability to cry).

And far as I can tell humans are the only animal who can (while awake) even so much as redirect, let alone control, certain types of emotional surges that would manifest as a focal seizure in most animals (which makes sense, that act is damned difficult and requires a tremendous amount of brainpower and can leave you wiped at the end and if you have an event like that in your sleep it just manifests like it would in a dog anyway). And from what I can tell, it’s certain amphibians and cold-blooded reptiles, not mammals, that have less intense emotions than humans. And I’d hesitate to ascribe a specific level of emotional intensity wholesale to groupings like fish, insects or other arthropods, or other highly diverse classes of animals

So in the past few years I’ve seen so many videos / posts that are like:

“Actually wolves don’t have hierarchies!  They live in family groups where the ‘alphas’ are mom and dad and the other wolves are their CHILDREN and offer their respect willingly! :D”

and I just have to say

how dare you try to make normative nuclear families out of wolves

Yes, a lot of the old “nature red in tooth and claw” stuff about wolves is nonsense. (Like anything from Jack London.) And anything ‘alpha’ you see sleazy men trying to relate to dating (yikes!) is especially nonsense.

But wolves are complex social creatures and they create complex social structures. Just as you can’t say “THIS is the way human society is structured. Just THIS single way and no other”, so too there is no single form for a wolf pack.  

Some packs are a mom wolf and a dad wolf and their wolf children.  Others are two small ragged packs that combine to form a large pack.  Others are packs where a lone wolf joins and eventually becomes a leader. Others are packs where a grown child-wolf has pushed their parent out of the leadership role.

Speaking of the latter, let’s look at the tale of Wolf 40 and Wolf 42.

Wolf 40, Wolf 41, and Wolf 42 were wild Yellowstone wolves, daughters of the alphas. Their father was illegally killed by hunters and shortly after ambitious Wolf 40 ousted her mother, driving her out of the pack.  Wolf 21 became the new alpha male, and 40′s mate.

Wolves have personalities, and Wolf 40′s personality was “volatile”.  Imagine Scar from The Lion King combined with the boss from Office Space, and you have Wolf 40.  She habitually bullied the other female wolves, attacking them until they expressed abject submission.  And the wolves that got the worst of it were her sisters, Wolves 41 and 42.

Wolf 41 got tired of the bullying and left.  Wolf 42 remained, perhaps because she was close to Wolf 21, the alpha male.  Despite that, Wolf 21 did not interfere when his mate harassed Wolf 42.

Unlike 40, Wolf 42 got along well with the other female wolves, spending time grooming them and relaxing with them. Wolf 40 could have followed her sister’s example and built up positive social bonds. But she didn’t.

One day, Wolf 40 went out on an important task.  She was going to kill another litter of her sister’s pups–having done the same in two previous years.  This isn’t uncommon wolf behavior (but is not universal, as we will see.)  Typically only the alphas breed.

However, Wolf 40 never returned from her important task because Wolf 42–who previously had submitted to her alpha and sister, who had allowed the killing of two previous litters of pups–had had enough.  She fought back.

And the other female wolves jumped to aid her.

Collectively, they killed Wolf 40. Because “alpha” isn’t a magic cloak of protection, it doesn’t even mean “strongest wolf”, it’s just a job title.

The next day Wolf 42 carried her pups, one by one, to her sister’s den.  She set her children among the pups of her dead sister and raised both litters together. And when another wolf in the pack had pups, Wolf 42 carried them to the den to be communally raised as well.  She was the alpha female now and she made the rules, and the first rule was “we don’t hurt pups here.”

As for Wolf 21, he became the mate of Wolf 42.  Maybe he understood that Wolf 40 had been riding for a fall. 

As alpha female, Wolf 42 continued to be supportive and kind towards the other pack members.  Wolves who had been nervous wrecks under Wolf 40 began to relax and come into their own; one of the former omega wolves gained self-confidence and became one of the best hunters.

“Alpha”, for wolves, just means leader.  They might be good leaders, whom you respect, or they might be bad leaders, who fill you with dread.  They might be your parents, or they might not.  Even if they are your mother or father, wolves don’t contextualize those relationships the same way humans do.

But one thing wolves have in common with humans is that they have individual personalities and experiences, and their actions derive from those.  There is no “typical wolf pack.” And I think that’s beautiful.

If you want to learn more about wild wolf dynamics, I recommend reading the annual Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.  Which are FASCINATING.  There are also some good wildlife specials out there.

Wolves are my favorite animal. <3  It pains me to see them misunderstood as crazed bloodthirsty brutes, but it also pains me to see them woobified.  They deserve better than that.

#animal behavior #animal cognition #biology

[autistic-science-cryptid]

Reblogging myself to add that this wolf story is proof positive that wolves don’t have a patriarchy. Perhaps the male wolf could have acted like this in a wolf story (as is the case in similar stories featuring human characters in similar conflicts in which said characters are usually both men), but in this case it was the female - two females. Because wolves recognize leader roles and the roles of pregnancy as well as “insert object A into slot B (after which babies follow)” but they recognize nothing of the gender roles that human societies have made for themselves.

So in the past few years I’ve seen so many videos / posts that are like:

“Actually wolves don’t have hierarchies!  They live in family groups where the ‘alphas’ are mom and dad and the other wolves are their CHILDREN and offer their respect willingly! :D”

and I just have to say

how dare you try to make normative nuclear families out of wolves

Yes, a lot of the old “nature red in tooth and claw” stuff about wolves is nonsense. (Like anything from Jack London.) And anything ‘alpha’ you see sleazy men trying to relate to dating (yikes!) is especially nonsense.

But wolves are complex social creatures and they create complex social structures. Just as you can’t say “THIS is the way human society is structured. Just THIS single way and no other”, so too there is no single form for a wolf pack.  

Some packs are a mom wolf and a dad wolf and their wolf children.  Others are two small ragged packs that combine to form a large pack.  Others are packs where a lone wolf joins and eventually becomes a leader. Others are packs where a grown child-wolf has pushed their parent out of the leadership role.

Speaking of the latter, let’s look at the tale of Wolf 40 and Wolf 42.

Wolf 40, Wolf 41, and Wolf 42 were wild Yellowstone wolves, daughters of the alphas. Their father was illegally killed by hunters and shortly after ambitious Wolf 40 ousted her mother, driving her out of the pack.  Wolf 21 became the new alpha male, and 40′s mate.

Wolves have personalities, and Wolf 40′s personality was “volatile”.  Imagine Scar from The Lion King combined with the boss from Office Space, and you have Wolf 40.  She habitually bullied the other female wolves, attacking them until they expressed abject submission.  And the wolves that got the worst of it were her sisters, Wolves 41 and 42.

Wolf 41 got tired of the bullying and left.  Wolf 42 remained, perhaps because she was close to Wolf 21, the alpha male.  Despite that, Wolf 21 did not interfere when his mate harassed Wolf 42.

Unlike 40, Wolf 42 got along well with the other female wolves, spending time grooming them and relaxing with them. Wolf 40 could have followed her sister’s example and built up positive social bonds. But she didn’t.

One day, Wolf 40 went out on an important task.  She was going to kill another litter of her sister’s pups–having done the same in two previous years.  This isn’t uncommon wolf behavior (but is not universal, as we will see.)  Typically only the alphas breed.

However, Wolf 40 never returned from her important task because Wolf 42–who previously had submitted to her alpha and sister, who had allowed the killing of two previous litters of pups–had had enough.  She fought back.

And the other female wolves jumped to aid her.

Collectively, they killed Wolf 40. Because “alpha” isn’t a magic cloak of protection, it doesn’t even mean “strongest wolf”, it’s just a job title.

The next day Wolf 42 carried her pups, one by one, to her sister’s den.  She set her children among the pups of her dead sister and raised both litters together. And when another wolf in the pack had pups, Wolf 42 carried them to the den to be communally raised as well.  She was the alpha female now and she made the rules, and the first rule was “we don’t hurt pups here.”

As for Wolf 21, he became the mate of Wolf 42.  Maybe he understood that Wolf 40 had been riding for a fall. 

As alpha female, Wolf 42 continued to be supportive and kind towards the other pack members.  Wolves who had been nervous wrecks under Wolf 40 began to relax and come into their own; one of the former omega wolves gained self-confidence and became one of the best hunters.

“Alpha”, for wolves, just means leader.  They might be good leaders, whom you respect, or they might be bad leaders, who fill you with dread.  They might be your parents, or they might not.  Even if they are your mother or father, wolves don’t contextualize those relationships the same way humans do.

But one thing wolves have in common with humans is that they have individual personalities and experiences, and their actions derive from those.  There is no “typical wolf pack.” And I think that’s beautiful.

If you want to learn more about wild wolf dynamics, I recommend reading the annual Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.  Which are FASCINATING.  There are also some good wildlife specials out there.

Wolves are my favorite animal. <3  It pains me to see them misunderstood as crazed bloodthirsty brutes, but it also pains me to see them woobified.  They deserve better than that.

#animal behavior #animal cognition #biology

[autistic-science-cryptid]

Yep. No species has a cookie-cutter model of society or social organization. Sure, there are trends, but other than that, there are many ways in which species might organize. That is true of humans, and of other species as well. Like the wolves. Or foxes. Or cats. Or squirrels. Or anything, really. And I’m pretty sure even eusocial insects have some variation even within species, even if they may have less variation than other beings do.

And if fantasy races were real, they too would break down like any real-world species with similar levels of diversity. The reason fantasy races (and species) often don’t have much variation at all within their worlds is because fantasy races are just that - fantasy. And often there are only so many variations an author can come up with on the spot. So even when their is more variation within that world, it often has to be implied because creative capacity of an individual (or even a crew sometimes) can only do so much at once. Or else fan writers supply added variation to do what the original author can’t.

So in the past few years I’ve seen so many videos / posts that are like:

“Actually wolves don’t have hierarchies!  They live in family groups where the ‘alphas’ are mom and dad and the other wolves are their CHILDREN and offer their respect willingly! :D”

and I just have to say

how dare you try to make normative nuclear families out of wolves

Yes, a lot of the old “nature red in tooth and claw” stuff about wolves is nonsense. (Like anything from Jack London.) And anything ‘alpha’ you see sleazy men trying to relate to dating (yikes!) is especially nonsense.

But wolves are complex social creatures and they create complex social structures. Just as you can’t say “THIS is the way human society is structured. Just THIS single way and no other”, so too there is no single form for a wolf pack.  

Some packs are a mom wolf and a dad wolf and their wolf children.  Others are two small ragged packs that combine to form a large pack.  Others are packs where a lone wolf joins and eventually becomes a leader. Others are packs where a grown child-wolf has pushed their parent out of the leadership role.

Speaking of the latter, let’s look at the tale of Wolf 40 and Wolf 42.

Wolf 40, Wolf 41, and Wolf 42 were wild Yellowstone wolves, daughters of the alphas. Their father was illegally killed by hunters and shortly after ambitious Wolf 40 ousted her mother, driving her out of the pack.  Wolf 21 became the new alpha male, and 40′s mate.

Wolves have personalities, and Wolf 40′s personality was “volatile”.  Imagine Scar from The Lion King combined with the boss from Office Space, and you have Wolf 40.  She habitually bullied the other female wolves, attacking them until they expressed abject submission.  And the wolves that got the worst of it were her sisters, Wolves 41 and 42.

Wolf 41 got tired of the bullying and left.  Wolf 42 remained, perhaps because she was close to Wolf 21, the alpha male.  Despite that, Wolf 21 did not interfere when his mate harassed Wolf 42.

Unlike 40, Wolf 42 got along well with the other female wolves, spending time grooming them and relaxing with them. Wolf 40 could have followed her sister’s example and built up positive social bonds. But she didn’t.

One day, Wolf 40 went out on an important task.  She was going to kill another litter of her sister’s pups–having done the same in two previous years.  This isn’t uncommon wolf behavior (but is not universal, as we will see.)  Typically only the alphas breed.

However, Wolf 40 never returned from her important task because Wolf 42–who previously had submitted to her alpha and sister, who had allowed the killing of two previous litters of pups–had had enough.  She fought back.

And the other female wolves jumped to aid her.

Collectively, they killed Wolf 40. Because “alpha” isn’t a magic cloak of protection, it doesn’t even mean “strongest wolf”, it’s just a job title.

The next day Wolf 42 carried her pups, one by one, to her sister’s den.  She set her children among the pups of her dead sister and raised both litters together. And when another wolf in the pack had pups, Wolf 42 carried them to the den to be communally raised as well.  She was the alpha female now and she made the rules, and the first rule was “we don’t hurt pups here.”

As for Wolf 21, he became the mate of Wolf 42.  Maybe he understood that Wolf 40 had been riding for a fall. 

As alpha female, Wolf 42 continued to be supportive and kind towards the other pack members.  Wolves who had been nervous wrecks under Wolf 40 began to relax and come into their own; one of the former omega wolves gained self-confidence and became one of the best hunters.

“Alpha”, for wolves, just means leader.  They might be good leaders, whom you respect, or they might be bad leaders, who fill you with dread.  They might be your parents, or they might not.  Even if they are your mother or father, wolves don’t contextualize those relationships the same way humans do.

But one thing wolves have in common with humans is that they have individual personalities and experiences, and their actions derive from those.  There is no “typical wolf pack.” And I think that’s beautiful.

If you want to learn more about wild wolf dynamics, I recommend reading the annual Yellowstone Wolf Project Reports.  Which are FASCINATING.  There are also some good wildlife specials out there.

Wolves are my favorite animal. <3  It pains me to see them misunderstood as crazed bloodthirsty brutes, but it also pains me to see them woobified.  They deserve better than that.

#animal behavior #animal cognition #biology

[autistic-science-cryptid]

And the stuff about Eowyn also applies to Asuna Yuuki in the anime Sword Art Online. People bash HER fate similarly as anti-feminist, even though she actually leans towards being innocent and ladylike, personality-wise, and would rather be that than a harsh commander (though she still retains her peculiar sense of humor and her ability to fight back and lead when it really counts).

And this happens even though Sword Art Online is more explicitly anti-authoritarian in its messaging than Lord of the Rings is, and is equally anti-war, though with added messaging against things that aren’t technically war but are as bad as if not worse than war in their own way. And there are several girls featured in that story who do not end up as ladylike people because they were never particularly ladylike in the first place. Including one girl, Sinon, with the same personality as the series’ male protagonist, Kirito (in which Kirito’s gender expression is actually somewhat more stereotypically feminine than that of Sinon, the girl who shares his personality).

 Not to mention that there are other parts of Sword Art Online that speak out against the subjugation of women far more explicitly than LOTR does (yes, including in some of the parts of Asuna Yuuki’s arc that get bashed as anti-feminist, like when they basically remind people why we fought against arranged marriages in the first place and paint it as not okay when it’s a woman doing the marriage arranging for someone else either). It’s purity testing, plain and simple, when people bash decisions like these. Like every character who starts out outwardly strong better stay that way or else the narrative gets bashed as anti-feminist even when it clearly isn’t.

And woe betide someone even portray sexual assault in a clearly negative way akin to how Frollo’s behavior is portrayed in Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, because they will be seen as having a weird fetish, never mind that there really might be no discernible fetish in that portrayal and the only reason it feels like a fetish is other people’s fetishes make your skin crawl and so do portrayals intentionally designed to make your skin crawl.

The difference is that fetishes are designed to titillate folks who have that fetish, whereas good negative portrayals of things you should fear are designed to make your skin crawl on purpose (and should not be construed as a fetish unless the creator straight-up admits that because the thing inspiring it could also be trauma), and in cases where there’s both a fetish and a desire to inspire fear, there’s an obvious cautionary tale, and the skin-crawly aspects get a little neglected while this weird sense of absurdity creeps through, and those things tend to happen in cult-like and fundamentalist groups where folks are intentionally kept repressed, or if they do happen in other stories, those stories are likely to be of low quality in other ways because folks who do stuff like that are not concerned about quality of storytelling.

it’s just hard not to think about the fact that in 1915, JRR Tolkien went to war not with but certainly in the same army and many of the same battles as his 3 best school friends, all nicely upper class young men who had never known much loss, and only he and one other came back alive - and a couple decades later, he wrote a book in which 3 nicely upper class young men (and one very excellent gardener) who have never known much loss go to war together, or at least they start out together, and they all come home alive. (Though one cannot bear it, and does not stay.)

#lotr #lord of the rings #sao #sword art online

[autistic-science-cryptid]

That sounds like it pretty much sums it up. Also, fun fact, quarters are about an inch long, so at least if you have a few of those in your pocket, you can do some of the standard American measurements. So “formal and informal tense” of measurement really kind of makes sense.

apparently europeans have the impression that US Americans never learn the metric system.

[autistic-science-cryptid]

If you've ever wondered why people in Hawai'i hate tourists, try to wrap your mind around the fact that there are CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW, tourists sipping martinis and looking at fish within swimming range of the fresh corpses of local people who couldn't escape the overnight destruction of their entire town.

Try to comprehend that there are fully functional, high capacity boats passing through the waters in front of an area full of survivors who are stranded and in need of supplies, refusing to help. They are hosting snorkeling tours.

Really think about, try your best to actually picture over two thousand people unhoused and in need of shelter, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nothing to return to. Understand that the island, stolen land, is littered with hotels full of air conditioned of rooms with beds and showers and toilets, each fully equipped to host hundreds of families for weeks, turning these people away because they're booked up with tourists who refuse to leave.

And understand that these tourists were offered free transport to return home or be hosted on other islands. Free. Courtesy of local tax dollars. 4,000 wealthy tourists were offered free flights shelter on Oahu and begged to leave the island, BEFORE the survivors were given shelter.

And enough still insisted on remaining and carrying out their vacations that people are left without shelter and resources while they enjoy "their stay in paradise".

[autistic-science-cryptid]

hello 🐙

[autistic-science-cryptid]

"No one can love you until you love yourself" is like the worst possible way of articulating "if you don't respect and value yourself, it's very easy to become attracted to people who don't treat you right and then justify their mistreatment, so be careful."

#abuse #domestic abuse #child abuse #abuse survivor

[autistic-science-cryptid]

Reblogging these tags:

#its Physically Impossible for me to ignore it and treat it as an internet thing#cus i studied performing arts for five years so i KNOW that the stuff antis think should be Banned from fiction#would NEVER go down well in Real Life art spaces#like ffs at the level of a /learner/ we studied multiple stories that had themes of incest#we studied stories with rape and assault#we studied toxic relationships#non of us came away from them thinking those things were acceptable#if we watched those things we didnt think the actors or writers were approving those things irl#if we performed them it didn't suddenly turn us into abusers#not only that but censorship WAS something we discussed in the context of acting history#and the only ones who EVER advocated for that shit was dictators. nazis. people who wanted to limit the publics ability to reason.#and actors ALWAYS stood against it#there was ALWAYS people performing things that the government DEMANDED that they stop#so no its NOT a silly online thing#its a problem thats been arpund for centuries#and i REFUSE to be on the side that wants to restrict and control the public

And also pointing out that some antis will push this take even with stories that negatively portray these themes. Like Sword Art Online, for instance (whose themes, btw, agree with a lot of what is being said in these tags I just reblogged). Its negative portrayal of sexual assault that consists of things that people are likely to brush off as not falling under that umbrella (the predominant thing they use to criticize sexual assault is intentionally skin-crawly portrayals of people licking people - hardly what I’d call fetish material - and having the bad guys inch inexorably from that to things that anyone would see are sexual assault only to be stopped in the nick of time), and its story of a girl who’s limerent towards her older brother and does NOT act on it and who is ultimately guided away from this limerent impulse - antis will slam that, too.

Never mind that sometimes it’s worth exploring the bad side of these things, not just dancing around it (and really, that’s what media not aimed at kids is for, it’s there to explore things you would not show to children). And if they do this to stories where the portrayal is unequivocally negative - and where any astute observer would see that is the intention - you know they’ll do this to stories other than Sword Art Online where the themes are way more ambiguous or where the protagonist even glorifies it (though sometimes they seem to be okay with those, in true conservative fashion). And when it comes to kid’s stories, you definitely see similarly inane sentiments criticizing a kid’s story for being targeted at kids and dealing with the limitations that come with that territory (i.e. using juvenile humor to stand in for certain dark themes they may not be allowed to be explicit about or only vaguely hinting at torture). You often can’t win with these people. And conservatives are the same way. The only way to win “with” them is to win against them and beat them in political office and in the arena of ideas (they call it the marketplace, but you know they treat it as an arena and if they do, we kind of have to so they can’t spread their BS too far).

proshipping and antishipping is a silly internet argument TO YOU.

i can easily replace the word "ship" with "read", "write", "listen to", "draw" and "create", and think about it for 3-5 seconds.

not only that, i can really ponder on the consequences of the anti mindset coming to life

[autistic-science-cryptid]

And you know what? You have every right to hate your dad too. He is making pretty much his entire identity about screwing you over, after all. He wasn’t even willing to properly share his interest in Godzilla with you. He just wanted to one-up you over it and take full credit for it. So yes, hate him. Hate him as long as you’re stuck living with him. At least that way you have a shot at salvaging some self-respect and not turning all that hatred on yourself. And it’s not like you’d have to worry about killing him anyway, since I know you’d never do that. But if he dies, feel free to not feel sorry for him.

Behind a cut so people don’t have to see me rant about my disabled, emotionally abusive dad.

So my dad fell twice in the last five days due to not listening to me and mom. He has Parkinson’s and if you dig through my posts you’ll see me talk about it, so I won’t go into it.

I don’t hate disabled people, just him. I don’t hate him for having Parkinson’s, I hate him for the abuse he inflicted on me and still inflicts on me with his disability as a crutch to get away with it. And I call out ableism when the problems we have with him are caused by the medical care system, because sometimes it’s not his fault.

But THIS situation IS his fault.

SO ANYWAY…

Last Friday, he fell because he wouldn’t stop rocking sideways every time he got up. He gets up with help and uses a walker, but he throws his weight around when he knows me and mom are two tiny women compared to a hulking huge man.

And he fell.

We had to call my aunt and uncle over to get his ass off the damn floor and onto his toilet commode so he could take a shit. Then they got him into bed. He claimed he was fine, and then on Tuesday he started griping that his lower back and buttcheek hurt on the left side. But he could walk and didn’t complain much after the initial gripe.

Today, he was all scrunched up in bed in a way that guarantees his back will hurt and made his pain worse, like I told him it would (and he wouldn’t listen to me).

Mom took him out into the living room and he fell on the way, AGAIN, because he kept rocking his weight around.

Now get this, he doesn’t throw his weight like that when therapists would come over. Dad will be an angel for them, but a nightmare for me and mom. He cooperates for professionals, but not family. He does everything in his power to make life as hard as possible for me and mom. I’m not kidding when I say that.

He goes to the doctor on Monday to find out what the fuck he did to himself, but it’s going to be a nightmare.

My birthday is coming up and of COURSE he does this right before it, and ruins any excitement I had.

Before you attack me for that, keep in mind that he pulls shit like this all the time. He knows everyone will be sympathetic to him while looking at mom and me like we’re evil for being exhausted, angry and burnt out.

The fact that we can’t afford to put him anywhere or get help into this house means we have no lives outside of caregiving. Every waking moment until we sleep is him and all his emotionally abusive bullshit, every day with no breaks, forever. He has ruined holidays, birthdays and plans because his only joy in life is making everyone around him as miserable as he is.

I’ve managed to eke out a few moments of joy here and there, but for the most part my life is a slog that never ends.

I laugh at the people who acted like COVID lockdowns were depriving them of life. I won’t deny that it was a traumatic experience, and this is not aimed at people who got sick anyway and now have long covid. This ain’t you, don’t worry.

But the people who acted so inconvenienced that their social lives got interrupted? Fuck off.

I’ve lived something like the COVID lockdowns for over a decade. No life outside of my house, no life outside of being a caregiver for someone who is sucking away all my compassion and love.

I can’t leave because I’m disabled too and all the legal shit is inaccessible to me.

I’m trapped, mom is trapped, and we are eventually going to die from the stress while he sits there yelling at us for not jumping to his every whim.

My only escape is writing fanfics and staring dead-eyed at my ipad screen, interrupted constantly by him demanding things.

I have accumulated so much trauma from him, and COVID, and mom having medical crises that were resolved, and my needs not being met, that I’ll be surprised to see 45. I will be shocked if I wake up alive on my 45th birthday.

I turn 43 this July 29, 2023, so yeah.

If I don’t die, my mom is going to, and if she goes we’re all dead.

I just hope I go first. Either heart attack or stroke will probably do it, but I don’t want to outlive her and be alone with him.

No child should be trapped as a caregiver for a disabled abusive parent, but it happens and nobody talks about it.

[autistic-science-cryptid]

Reblogging myself because I edited since I first posted, and there’s other stuff you might want to see too if you haven’t already, Cyndi.

Behind a cut so people don’t have to see me rant about my disabled, emotionally abusive dad.

So my dad fell twice in the last five days due to not listening to me and mom. He has Parkinson’s and if you dig through my posts you’ll see me talk about it, so I won’t go into it.

I don’t hate disabled people, just him. I don’t hate him for having Parkinson’s, I hate him for the abuse he inflicted on me and still inflicts on me with his disability as a crutch to get away with it. And I call out ableism when the problems we have with him are caused by the medical care system, because sometimes it’s not his fault.

But THIS situation IS his fault.

SO ANYWAY…

Last Friday, he fell because he wouldn’t stop rocking sideways every time he got up. He gets up with help and uses a walker, but he throws his weight around when he knows me and mom are two tiny women compared to a hulking huge man.

And he fell.

We had to call my aunt and uncle over to get his ass off the damn floor and onto his toilet commode so he could take a shit. Then they got him into bed. He claimed he was fine, and then on Tuesday he started griping that his lower back and buttcheek hurt on the left side. But he could walk and didn’t complain much after the initial gripe.

Today, he was all scrunched up in bed in a way that guarantees his back will hurt and made his pain worse, like I told him it would (and he wouldn’t listen to me).

Mom took him out into the living room and he fell on the way, AGAIN, because he kept rocking his weight around.

Now get this, he doesn’t throw his weight like that when therapists would come over. Dad will be an angel for them, but a nightmare for me and mom. He cooperates for professionals, but not family. He does everything in his power to make life as hard as possible for me and mom. I’m not kidding when I say that.

He goes to the doctor on Monday to find out what the fuck he did to himself, but it’s going to be a nightmare.

My birthday is coming up and of COURSE he does this right before it, and ruins any excitement I had.

Before you attack me for that, keep in mind that he pulls shit like this all the time. He knows everyone will be sympathetic to him while looking at mom and me like we’re evil for being exhausted, angry and burnt out.

The fact that we can’t afford to put him anywhere or get help into this house means we have no lives outside of caregiving. Every waking moment until we sleep is him and all his emotionally abusive bullshit, every day with no breaks, forever. He has ruined holidays, birthdays and plans because his only joy in life is making everyone around him as miserable as he is.

I’ve managed to eke out a few moments of joy here and there, but for the most part my life is a slog that never ends.

I laugh at the people who acted like COVID lockdowns were depriving them of life. I won’t deny that it was a traumatic experience, and this is not aimed at people who got sick anyway and now have long covid. This ain’t you, don’t worry.

But the people who acted so inconvenienced that their social lives got interrupted? Fuck off.

I’ve lived something like the COVID lockdowns for over a decade. No life outside of my house, no life outside of being a caregiver for someone who is sucking away all my compassion and love.

I can’t leave because I’m disabled too and all the legal shit is inaccessible to me.

I’m trapped, mom is trapped, and we are eventually going to die from the stress while he sits there yelling at us for not jumping to his every whim.

My only escape is writing fanfics and staring dead-eyed at my ipad screen, interrupted constantly by him demanding things.

I have accumulated so much trauma from him, and COVID, and mom having medical crises that were resolved, and my needs not being met, that I’ll be surprised to see 45. I will be shocked if I wake up alive on my 45th birthday.

I turn 43 this July 29, 2023, so yeah.

If I don’t die, my mom is going to, and if she goes we’re all dead.

I just hope I go first. Either heart attack or stroke will probably do it, but I don’t want to outlive her and be alone with him.

No child should be trapped as a caregiver for a disabled abusive parent, but it happens and nobody talks about it.

#dragon prince #abuse #fanfic #sword art online

[autistic-science-cryptid]

I'm sending you virtual hugs as well. I'm speaking as someone who gets annoyed at people who act as if everything is "fuck their life" (I don't mean depressed, I mean like when they do so in a way that seems likely to make other people give up hope). But when I get annoyed at such people, it's because the worst they have is social stagnation - like, they clearly still have room in their lives to carve out a safe space (like, they have money, they have social ability, they may have a toxic spouse but said spouse is like a roommate so they don't have an abuser who would control every aspect of their lives, they could find themselves a third place or at the very least find themselves a regular hangout at a nearby park or cafe) and they don't do so, they just sit and stew in a state of "nothing will change", and sure they might do their work, but their hobby seems to be undercutting other people's hope a lot of the time.

You're not doing that. In your case, fanfic is pretty much your only safe space (because you try to actually carve out one) and you probably even helped some folks in Ukraine right now with the stories you wrote, and people act like garbage in the fanfic spaces too. And I’m sure a lot of the way people criticize media in general doesn’t help - a lot of criticism comes from people who don’t know how stories work, don’t understand how metaphors play into things, or in some cases, fail to register that of course certain stories have limitations they can’t get around.

Like Dragon Prince for example. That show is targeted at children, and the show seems to more or less imply that the evil magic in the show uses torture (what else do you call it when you see things like eyes extracted from living animals). But here’s the rub: Kid’s shows can’t show torture in too detailed a manner or they get canceled or moved from the kid’s category. So they’re forced to imply it in a way that requires reading between the lines. Which means a lot of people miss it. And then they also have other constraints like being forced to use fart jokes as a metaphor for human relational issues (because the show would likewise be canceled if they addressed that too literally).

And I would say maybe mentioning the use of torture in dark magic in the Dragon Prince FAQs is a good idea, but I don’t know if they’re even allowed to do that or if just saying that torture is used would risk cancellation even without actually saying it in the show (if YouTube’s response to folks who report animal abuse is any indication, it would). Yet they blame the show for being constrained by company policies. And then those same types of people dump on stories like Sword Art Online for actually showing these problematic things and portraying them negatively, because shows like that don’t have the constraints of a kid’s shows - you can’t win with these types of people. Like, you have to show me why it’s bad, but when you show the actual reason why XYZ is bad, it’s a gratuitous portrayal of that bad thing. Like really. What’s up with these people?

It stinks when people stink and act stupid. And when they don’t get things. And when they take craps all over you and won’t even let you have a safe space in peace. All I can do here is send you virtual hugs and commisseration. And if I may, I’ve been able to find Sword Art Online on free websites (this one’s good, for now I’m just posting Season 1 for you but it’s easy to find the other seasons in the search function - https://www.wcostream.org/anime/sword-art-online). It might be worth a watch.

Two of the protagonists of Sword Art Online (Kirito and Sinon) are pretty clearly autistic, and the third (Asuna), while more ambiguously coded, reminds me of my autistic mother, right down to her wit and sense of humor and outlook on life. Which means that if nothing else, you could be able to vicariously borrow my mom by watching Asuna. She makes me feel like a part of my mom is with me even though she can’t literally be with me in the same way right now due to her severe Alzheimer’s (and as for the other two protagonists, they’re so like me it’s almost spooky - Kirito even seems to have a similar general taste in animals - and they both make me feel less like I’m an alien among humans, and I bet those characters would like you too if they were real, since I like you, after all).

And if you can't get around to watching Sword Art Online, I can still offer you this lesson from it - you have the right to consider the people you helped with the stuff you did. In the story, some folks who learn this (not all, some) are ones who were forced to kill people to save lives because the person they killed was a murderer attacking them. And if you even had to do that, you'd have that right too.

But you haven't even killed people. You don't have to worry about that particular moral dilemma. But you still have the right to consider the people you surely helped with the fanfiction you wrote (and even that the fanfics likely helped folks in Ukraine considering how far-reaching the internet is and the fact that the Godzilla director's recommendation of your fic meant that you reaching some folks in Ukraine was more likely). And the ways in which the fanfic helped you.

Behind a cut so people don’t have to see me rant about my disabled, emotionally abusive dad.

So my dad fell twice in the last five days due to not listening to me and mom. He has Parkinson’s and if you dig through my posts you’ll see me talk about it, so I won’t go into it.

I don’t hate disabled people, just him. I don’t hate him for having Parkinson’s, I hate him for the abuse he inflicted on me and still inflicts on me with his disability as a crutch to get away with it. And I call out ableism when the problems we have with him are caused by the medical care system, because sometimes it’s not his fault.

But THIS situation IS his fault.

SO ANYWAY…

Last Friday, he fell because he wouldn’t stop rocking sideways every time he got up. He gets up with help and uses a walker, but he throws his weight around when he knows me and mom are two tiny women compared to a hulking huge man.

And he fell.

We had to call my aunt and uncle over to get his ass off the damn floor and onto his toilet commode so he could take a shit. Then they got him into bed. He claimed he was fine, and then on Tuesday he started griping that his lower back and buttcheek hurt on the left side. But he could walk and didn’t complain much after the initial gripe.

Today, he was all scrunched up in bed in a way that guarantees his back will hurt and made his pain worse, like I told him it would (and he wouldn’t listen to me).

Mom took him out into the living room and he fell on the way, AGAIN, because he kept rocking his weight around.

Now get this, he doesn’t throw his weight like that when therapists would come over. Dad will be an angel for them, but a nightmare for me and mom. He cooperates for professionals, but not family. He does everything in his power to make life as hard as possible for me and mom. I’m not kidding when I say that.

He goes to the doctor on Monday to find out what the fuck he did to himself, but it’s going to be a nightmare.

My birthday is coming up and of COURSE he does this right before it, and ruins any excitement I had.

Before you attack me for that, keep in mind that he pulls shit like this all the time. He knows everyone will be sympathetic to him while looking at mom and me like we’re evil for being exhausted, angry and burnt out.

The fact that we can’t afford to put him anywhere or get help into this house means we have no lives outside of caregiving. Every waking moment until we sleep is him and all his emotionally abusive bullshit, every day with no breaks, forever. He has ruined holidays, birthdays and plans because his only joy in life is making everyone around him as miserable as he is.

I’ve managed to eke out a few moments of joy here and there, but for the most part my life is a slog that never ends.

I laugh at the people who acted like COVID lockdowns were depriving them of life. I won’t deny that it was a traumatic experience, and this is not aimed at people who got sick anyway and now have long covid. This ain’t you, don’t worry.

But the people who acted so inconvenienced that their social lives got interrupted? Fuck off.

I’ve lived something like the COVID lockdowns for over a decade. No life outside of my house, no life outside of being a caregiver for someone who is sucking away all my compassion and love.

I can’t leave because I’m disabled too and all the legal shit is inaccessible to me.

I’m trapped, mom is trapped, and we are eventually going to die from the stress while he sits there yelling at us for not jumping to his every whim.

My only escape is writing fanfics and staring dead-eyed at my ipad screen, interrupted constantly by him demanding things.

I have accumulated so much trauma from him, and COVID, and mom having medical crises that were resolved, and my needs not being met, that I’ll be surprised to see 45. I will be shocked if I wake up alive on my 45th birthday.

I turn 43 this July 29, 2023, so yeah.

If I don’t die, my mom is going to, and if she goes we’re all dead.

I just hope I go first. Either heart attack or stroke will probably do it, but I don’t want to outlive her and be alone with him.

No child should be trapped as a caregiver for a disabled abusive parent, but it happens and nobody talks about it.

#fanfic #abuse #dragon prince #sword art online

[autistic-science-cryptid]

Except they actually explain how Kirito could have done that by showing Eldrie Synthesis Thirty-One doing exactly the same trick in Alicization (and hint that Kirito’s not the only one who did it even when you only count Aincrad by showing Griselda’s ghost beforehand, which indicates that Griselda did the same thing only to actually die). It’s not so much brute-forcing their way past death. It’s that for both Kirito and Eldrie (and for Griselda as well), their survival instincts and realization that they were going to die tipped the scales in such a way that it would cause their HP to dip into the negative for a time (which allows one to stick around because negative values are still technically a number and something needs to be a zero to disappear outright). And only genuine belief one is going to die triggers this bug - it can’t just be brute-forced on purpose, because there’s a difference between someone clinging to life for dear life and someone trying to wish death away.

And the reason this could happen (in this way that is reminiscent of sacrifice magic in fantasy stories) is because the technology interacts directly with brain signals - and the signals of someone trying to hold on to their last bit of life can be very strong, thus confusing the system for a minute. Particularly when you consider that even the best AIs, including that Cardinal system, usually don’t have a real consciousness of their own and so they can’t reliably tell the difference between a conscious will and a system command, which also plays into why Asuna could overcome her paralysis simply by brute-forcing, because that function seems to be less strictly limited than overcoming a game death is (since of course programmers would want to make it pretty much impossible to brute-force that so as to avoid game breaking but can’t account for sheer survival instincts).

And while Kirito avoided death altogether, that’s because he cleared the game (and because Kayaba had obviously turned the death function off, or left it off, or however that was accomplished, as we can see by the fact that Asuna is still alive as well even though she too should have technically died). But Eldrie, in his death scene - where we actually see his HP gauge - shows what would have happened if the death function stayed on. Sooner or later, the Cardinal system was going to kick in and correct the error by wiping out anything that had negative HP. It does that to Eldrie. After his HP has already dipped into the negative thousands. And so Eldrie actually dies. After doing the same exact thing (right down to the exact same line) that Kirito does at the end of the Aincrad arc. With more or less the same goal, too. In short, Eldrie dies the death that Kirito meant to die at the end of the Aincrad arc because Eldrie does not have the Deus Ex Machina in the form of Kayaba’s will to save him.

And as for Griselda - likely enough, since part of her hung on longer than it would take for the NerveGear to kill her (again, if the length of time Eldrie was able to hang on is any guide, since he did so way longer than the ten seconds it presumably takes for the NerveGear to fry the brain), it meant that her avatar likely turned into some kind of imprint, in an effect similar to Kayaba copying his consciousness to the internet, except the copy of Griselda is imperfect and retains only a few superficial memories and can’t hold a conversation (because she wasn’t even attempting to copy her consciousness, she was just trying to survive the murder her husband engineered) though said copy can still smile and offer silent encouragement to people.

And if you want to talk about strong force of will doing something genuinely impossible, the only one who seems to do that is Kayaba, moving the robot body with the busted battery in Season 4. Unless there’s some backup power we’re not seeing in that robot, Kayaba, alone among the SAO characters, actually defied (or at any rate stretched) the laws of physics, at least a little bit. But that makes sense. Kayaba is a God character after all, not so different from a cross between the Jewish god and Aslan, actually. So he would be the most ridiculously overpowered character of them all.

I wonder if anyone else realized that. Kirito didn’t just brute force his way past death in that final show down in SAO. His friend, Klein, who was present, had the revival item from the Christmas event.

So instead of kirito just being “the chosen one” special-est boy TM, he actually got saved by his friend.

We should all be impressed with Asuna being able to break through the paralysis to take the hit for kirito. Now THAT’S some strong force of will.

#kirito #eldrie #sword art online #sao #griselda

[autistic-science-cryptid]

Though Asuna might also crack a joke about wanting to kill you (or something similar) depending on what mood she’s in. She has the same sense of humor and personality (and from what I can tell the same basic criteria for a suitable partner) as my mom, and my mom made a joke about wanting to kill my dad just a few weeks ago even though the Alzheimer’s makes it difficult for her to talk now.

Characters who would roll their eyes and sigh (lovingly) if you asked ‘would you love me if I was a worm?’

Namor, Aizawa Shota, Tomura Shigaraki, Coach Ukai, Iwazumi Hajime, Asuna Yuuki, Karasuma Tadomi.

#sword art online #sao #asuna yuuki