i literally cannot describe how deep my hatred is for sites arbitrarily removing features/worsening experience on desktop/browser to make you get their shitty apps. like i get most users to any given site are now mobile but there's really no excuse for any functionality to be absent on desktop unless that functionality is specific to using a phone. i hate apps . i wish apps could be living and breathing beings so they could experience pain and death
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The thing that gets me about history and humanity is that you never know what is immortalized, and the things that will be immortalized are things you would never think.
I saw a person sharing a new tattoo, and it was one of Onfim's drawings. A boy who lived so long ago he is barely a blip now, but his drawings meant so much to people that somebody is now permanently marked in their skin with one of those drawings. Do you ever look at the things you make and just sit there and wonder if this is the thing that future people look at? Do you ever look at your art, your writing, your schoolwork, or anything that is yours and just wonder who will find it, who will fall in love with a piece of your humanity and become overwhelmed with emotion over? It's not unlikely. It's not totally unlikely that somebody will find a piece of you in the distant future and devoid of any other context of who you were will still love you because you were here. You were here, and you are still here, even hundreds or thousands of years later. Treat yourself with the same love that so many have for dear Onfim.
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Something about the fact that these shots are all grouped together, one after another, visually giving them equal weight just gets me. The narrative knows what's going to happen between JGY and Huaisang at this point, knows how it's going to treat JGY at the end of everything. And it still takes time to show Meng Yao instinctively and immediately going in front of Huaisang and Huaisang instinctively and immediately hiding behind him. It takes the time--literally, showed it in the background and focused on it with the same general amount of time as the other shots--to show that this act of protection and trust are just as real and true as Jiang Cheng defending his sister, as Wen Qing defending her younger brother.
Like, I dunno! There are other Nie juniors there! They have swords and shit! Huaisang could have gone and hid behind the wall, but he hid behind Meng Yao! And Meng Yao could have moved back with Huaisang, but he steps directly in front of him!
There's a lot CQL did to JGY's character and narrative that I don't like and that flatten or just straight up erase his full complexity. But I really appreciate the lengths that it went to in Episode 4 to explicitly tell us that he does not hesitate to protect Huaisang, even though at this point he does not have a sword and definitely does not have anywhere near the same cultivation power (if any) as any of the rest of the people in the room.
Right now, after being publicly humiliated, unarmed and definitely outclassed, he is brave. Along with the rest of the characters, he's allowed to be uncomplicatedly young and loyal and just as innocent as any of the other students there.
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Spoilers ahead for the finale!
An aspect of the final battle that got lost after Viola's amazing attack, was the fact that Tula nearly killed her son. And that, I think, is something I would really like to delve my teeth into, to properly look at what happened.
The thing that struck me the most during Tula's attack on her son, was that Jaysohn did manage to snap her out of it. In the context of the story, Jaysohn grappled his mom to get her to stop, and even after getting viciously bit by her, he still managed to get her back to herself. He managed to get to his mom fast enough, and used himself to protect the others from the mindless being Tula had become. And, even when faced with near death, this little kid manages to get back up and attack the creature that did this to his mother. Not once did he blame her, having understood enough about the situation to realise his mom was not in control. He knows, he understood, that this was Phoebe, not Tula. And so, the moment he is able to free his mom, still wounded and near death's door, he goes after Phoebe so that his mom won't be taken again.
Tula, however, was aware of everything she did to Jaysohn. She was painfully aware of how badly she hurt her son, how she nearly killed him. And, as Brennan describes;
She is broken, in a way she has never been before. She nearly killed her baby, used as a puppet because she's alive when she should have been dead. The Blue that keeps her alive is what nearly caused her to kill her son. Tula nearly lost everything, yet, once more, it was hope and love that brought her back once more. Her son brought her back.
However, she was silent for the rest of the battle until Phoebe finally fell, and Jaysohn nearly died. She was quiet, too horrified with what she nearly did. Perhaps, had more time been afforded to that moment with Tula and Jaysohn before he decided to retaliate against Phoebe, there would have been...something...that went on. A focus on the fact that it was Tula who went for another member of their family, whilst Ava went for the ground and the reactor. What would that do to her, I cannot help but wonder. What did that do to her, in the immediate aftermath, when she could slow down and process what happened. She must live with the knowledge she nearly killed her own child, and that, had he been just a little weaker or just a little slower, she would've succeeded. She might have been able to bring him back, like she did with Sybil...but she would have to live with the knowledge that she took her son's life. And that thought is horrifying.
Yet, it makes her gentleness with Lukas later all the more significant. Even with the blood of her son on her hands, she still chooses to hope for a better tomorrow. She still chooses to give Lukas - and herself - another chance, another tomorrow. Bad things could have happened, but they didn't, and they all made it out. The "what ifs" will remain in the shadows, in the nightmares, but in the daylight, she will keep her head high. It doesn't lessen the impact of her deeds or her burdens, but it can make them bearable. And, with the addition of her son's refusal to blame her, it makes it just the little easier. She deserves a new tomorrow, too.
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Do you think that people who invent things with very destructive consequences are blinded to the downsides of it more by money or more by scientific curiosity?
I think the downsides are not always immediately obvious. Coal-fired electricity looks a lot more attractive in 1882 when there's literally only one such power plant and the global population is like 18% its present value. TNT was invented as a yellow dye, and it's so stable its usefulness as an explosive wasn't discovered until thirty years later.
We have this collective mental image, promoted by simplifications of historical narratives, that the inventor is a lone genius who through his labor produces an artifact and all its consequences in a single moment in time, and without which the thing would never be invented. Pretty much every point in that narrative is wrong. New technologies are the culmination of many different discoveries; there are enough very smart people working at the cutting edge of these fields that if one of them did not discover the principles behind these inventions, another almost certainly would sooner or later; and the exact applications of new technologies, nevermind how they will change society when those applications are utilized, often take years or decades to discover.
Now, I think there is an extent to which, as a working scientists, you can reasonably be held to account for the work you do. If you work at the Acme National Horrible Death By Chemical Weapons Laboratory, and invent a new, horrible chemical weapon, you do not get to go "oh no!" in shock when somebody dies to your horrible chemical weapon. And sometimes scientists do have a pretty good idea of how their technology will be used--the Haber Process was originally invented to manufacture fertilizers, but its application to the manufacturing of explosives was pretty clear to Fritz Haber, and he joined the German effort to develop deadlier chemical weapons pretty enthusiastically.
Men like Haber seem historically to be motivated not by intrinsic greed, but by the things which motivate us all: the desire to provide for their loved ones, the approval of their peers and the respect of their colleagues, and their status in society. The problem with respect to scientists who know damn well what they're doing isn't that everybody working at the Acme National Horrible Death By Chemical Weapons Laboratory is greedy and the job pays too much; the problem is that society, by and large, respects you and looks up to you and fetes you at public events and talks about what a patriot and a community leader you are if you do really well at inventing new, horrible chemical weapons.
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I got a comment that was like ... people are only mad about film Faramir because he doesn't act exactly the way they personally imagined him, and tbh I'm torn between being annoyed at how deeply disingenuous that argument is and slightly impressed at the sheer audacity of pinning the Faramir Controversy on difference from random people's headcanons rather than the book itself.
...then I got to thinking about how the whole time-consuming and wildly out of character handling of the temptation of the Ring is one thing, and justifiably gets a lot of attention, but Faramir allowing his soldiers to beat Gollum for information is quite comparable in my mind. They're his men! Gollum is an unarmed prisoner! I guess it's meant to show the exigencies of war or something and I'm just like ... hahaha no.
In a way it reminds me of film Aragorn just straight up killing the Mouth of Sauron in a way that seems meant to show their desperation in a badass cathartic way, and meanwhile, I'm thinking ... oh, our heroes murder ambassadors now. I feel like it's the same underlying kind of rationale, and quite far from not matching people's headcanons.
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The thing that really gets me about Wyll and Karlach is just how their bond is allowed to have the importance in their narratives that it has
I mean, in games like these the cast is always going to be centered around the pc. Sure, the relationships between other companions can be developed through party banter, commentary, or even cinematics, but at the end of the day everyone's most significant relationship is always going to be the player. That's the person who most affects them and where their story is going
With these two, it's not even that Tav isn't vitally important to them both, but it's meeting Karlach that changes Wyll's life one way or another. It's Wyll that's the first person to stick out his neck for Karlach, and sends her reeling. Their bond alone is enough to convince Karlach to go to Avernus and stay alive
It's a very bold choice to risk limiting the player's importance in order to drive home the connection between two characters, and I really appreciate Larian for going there
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