#location and culture dissection

[blindtaleteller]

MCU Asgard Canon Observation Research [Part 1]

Firstly and before I even start in on the subject, keep in mind that this is what it says: a collection of research into actual Canon Lore from the Marvel Cinematic Universe: not the comics, or the Nordic lore twice removed from it.

Secondly and alongside that, also keep in mind that even back at the start of the MCU as a long term project, while the MCU is based on the Marvel comics universe: the creators made a point of making it a completely different universe: for many varying reasons, including the spaces lacking continuity in the comics over the years that the MCU as a project wanted to pursue from it's first conception.

This is a large part of why there are phases and why they were numbered from it's creation. (And yes also why my tags recently mentioning counting phases are what they are elsewhere, but that's a whole other post.. or set of them.)

These are important to remember because, I would like to avoid previous iterations of people wasting their time trying to insert comics-universe lore and more excessively into or onto this requested post purely for the sake of, well; being argumentative or just trolling:as much as possible. I do try to take some time to respond to comments and reblogs as much as possible, but I can and will ignore or yes, at times point out people unable to manage these things.. and respond as necessary.

I normally wouldn't bother to mention this except yes, that has happened before so: consider this your disclaimer.. I ain't dealin' with you if you're gonna be a trolly shit disrespectful enough of the time effort and willingness to share what research and observations I have, by shitting on it or me in your pursuit of whatever flimsy excuses might be given for any inhuman reactions posted passive aggressive or worse.

More frankly: be respectful on my posts or get lost. I don't tolerate harassment on my blog whether it's aimed at me or others. Passive aggressive or otherwise. I'll discuss stuff, am happy to have any valid references I might miss added to and pointed out. Just don't be an asshat about it, and you'll get the same from me. That's how basic-bitch Karma, and I; both work: you'll get what you give along those lines, while in my space.

The necessary now out of the way... Next!

More as a side note with that mentioned; while I may mention some meta/theory in the form of the most probable (as that's how my meta in particular is formed) it is again: based on the facts of the canon lore and contexts confirmed presented in it; visually, in dialogue, and out of the mouths of the very people who made all that themselves, at the time that lore was given to us on screen: and will be mentioned as the theory and supposition that is 'meta' rather than 'canon'. I have gone out of my way as a fan of world, universe, and character building as a part of the creative process in particular: to watch, rewatch, rewatch again and again, and hunt down all this stuff (often lol purely out of my own curiosity.) All in all Meta is theory, Canon is story/film-established fact; and I do try to keep a clear line between the two of them. The early world and character building in the MCU has always been interesting enough to me alone, to do all that with my free time.

And that's especially true with Asgard in particular, as a main story driving force in one form or another as far back as 2010 when both Thor and CA: tFA's scripts were being filmed and their sets/settings picked out and created.

Final few bits before we get into it..? As Asgard lore (and even a lack of it's presence at times) is directly and appropriately attached and or in relation to the lore of several races, species, and massive events in the entirety of the MCU's first three phases.. I will be touching some of those cultures and places too, where important. Probably not in this particular part, but yeah. It's gonna happen.

As with the research post into Loki and his year of absence prior to Avengers 2012: (yes that's a link to an ask that contains a good chunk of info and years of interviews on that particular subject) this might not be an entirely complete compilation: for the same reasons. As I said, i didn't just watch, I rewatched repeatedly from differing personal mental angles: not just three or four times, but and as I wrote my own fanfiction.. I would also re-watch once or twice just prior to fleshing out an outlined story of my own to refresh my memory, seek out interviews official and otherwise from the creators and actors who made that lore and put it on screen for us to enjoy as part of the stories we enjoyed (or not, depending lol) and well.. the resulting organization of the whole outside of this post is less than comprehensive for anyone else. You can see the explanation for how that happens in the foreword of that thread if you're curious.

As a result, I may or may not exclude the actual interviews if this gets too long. Much of the visual in this first part especially are pretty self explanatory, as I did find some of my dissection pics too.

All said (I think? Gods I hope so that was a lot wasn't it? XD) and as suggested/requested recently in discord?

This one is gonna be expansive.. and hellaciously so: so grab your drinks and your snacks and still be prepared for this series of posts to be going for while (not kidding, may be compiling this properly between jobs for weeks) so yeah..

Here we go again!

The major forgotten fact of Asgard's depiction in the MCU is this:

We the audience are only shown a very tiny fragment of Asgard as another separate planet in space, and: they do show us we're missing as much, from the very first film.

That gif directly from the movie I used at the top? I'm using it again, because...

..look at that.

With topography, perspective and size in mind.

That tiny golden triangle in the middle is the Palace at the center. The little golden bar along that tiny portion to either side? Is the city attached to it proper, with the Bifrost, and as far as we've seen the 'Heroes Road' (as soem are calling it) and city walls cupping the Bifrost Bay directly facing the camera.

This is a space shot (of course,) and that tiny itty bitty moving spec that is still shrinking as it gets further from our perspective and closer to Asgard at the bottom, is the Bifrost in use.

And, they do give us a few views of that as early as five to six minutes into the first movie in 2011, as seen in the first clip below. I've set it to share at the first view of Asgard itself.

Hopefully that works. If not, the timestamp you're looking for is 2:04.

I recommend shutting off the audio, as it's a bit distracting. Trust me, we will get back to the very interesting audio from a world builder's perspective, when we get to the History and Relations section of Asgard's break down.. there are several tons, of that and in that opener alone, to examine later.

IMPORTANT!! When looking at any of these images or videos, keep in mind and look at the scale. Not just in the scene on screen at that moment, but also in reference to previous shots. Distance is a thing. The size of trees and people are a thing. This place in the MCU is much more massive than where it's very cloistered story parts take place.

This is not a city-planet like and for comparison: Coruscant, from Star Wars... though I am very aware that some people will throw out Asgard's concept art to try and 'debunk' that (yes its' been done and proven pointless in other threads).. that does also bring us to another couple of facts that slip by in their context.

In fact, you know what? I'll throw it in here right now myself:

This concept art: does still apply, if slightly adjusted with the topography and likely under ground portions taken into account.. because Asgard is the name of both the planet AND the city as separate entities of the same locale.

In other words, the concept art is VERY valid as a map of the city itself: but not the outlying locations outside of Asgard as a Capital City Proper, of Asgard as a disk planet.

And again.. they do show us this, and not just in the first film: although that first shot going into the city says as much too, being that..

A. Asgard is established as a society greatly more advanced than Earth and most others, and;

B. there are whole swaths of land (and especially mountain they like to build into) without structure between the edge panned through and the City itself. (see still image below: not the best quality but it's also in the video.)

Which.. we'll touch again a little more in a bit (and probably the biggest lol) part of this breakdown set; digging at History, Culture, and Relations.. as the fact they do prefer to build INTO their environment much more than on top of it is also shown in the shot of the canyons and canals on which not only that city is built, but even what buildings are shown outside of it on that panning-in shot.

We can see in the one above though: that while they did redirect some of the water through canals in the lower shot; they also kept and built into the natural(?*) lay of the river canyons below.

This theme is kept even before we get into the city though with the first part of the shot above the water.

Want a more visual view of the breakdowns as I do them?

Here you go, here's one example from out of my crazy folders and docs, that I made in paint back in 2013 (LOL yes I know. XD) while once again re-watching that same scene.

I would highly suggest clicking on it, as tumblr does downsize images making text on them hard to read otherwise. Crappy in-motion quality screen cap but, it was made more for breaking down the visual elements on screen for what it told us about the land, and more; on it.

----[?*] As a set of side/foot notes to that last bit and the image..

A. the top left corner yes: does reference some of where I use certain observations of canon in my own fics; and how they would have grown or evolved depending on that story. In this case, and at the time: the pink text is making note to utilize those observations in outlining Hvedrungr (Loki from Uni 0) and Flykra's (Loki from Vesti1 Uni 14) universes in particular: both of which return to Asgard at VERY different times and in different situations: while the history and culture I've been able to glean and expand on in some cases is still part of their and the location's background. As I don't have the patience to remove the text from an old paint shop cut.. I thought I would at least explain it's presence left there. These things are, ultimately connected by the culture that originated on and created them on that planet after all.. and why there's an entire section dedicated to the varied aspects of Asgard's presented Cultural, Relations, and History lore. B. The '?' at the 'natural' mention in parenthesis above, also takes into account that Asgard is much older than Earth's culture and has to be: if only because as only three generations have come and gone over the passage of what to us is five thousand years! (see the next installment Thor the Dark World: Bor and Darkalfheim, or just watch the movie with info gathering in mind.) In other words, between Bor's War, and Odin's Asgardian Great Wars: we cannot be certain whether or not 1. those canyons are actually natural or the now aged result of one of many previous interplanetary wars, or 2. whether Asgard at this stage of it's showing timed at 2011 more than a millennia later, has even always been this size, given their advancement in technology and study of magic as presented OR left in question, either. For my part, as there's no conclusive dialogue from that era to state otherwise in the MCU or it's interviews that I know of, and knowing the context of Malekith and Darkalfheim's familiarity with Asgard itself during their raid to reclaim the infinity stone: I tend to veer towards a mixture of the two. While it's very likely at least some of the canyons are indeed natural; the great age of the culture and planet both, along with the nature of Bor and Odin's rules alone as we've seen them: leaves a HUGE and LONG period of time and opportunities for some of those nasty fights to come directly to them... or even their predecessors. Which would also explain why they had that shield for the palace too. You don't build and more importantly upkeep something like that without a very good set of reasons or examples experienced, to do so after all. Much of that is meta though, however based on canon fact it may be: and as many of the creators were not asked publicly during that era, and have been dismissed or moved on to other projects since.. it's hard to know if we'll ever see a *genuine* answer from the people who actually made it all starting sixteen years ago.

Anyway, let's look at a few more shots of Asgard with that breakdown going. Some of these are all old, from as far back as about ten years ago when I first started writing outlines for the varied universes in my Lokiverse Project: but they do still hold up. theer are some from TDW in this bunch too. I heavily dissected these scenes knowing I was going to do whole chapters in multiple differing universes, and wanted to have the presented layout and feel laid out in my head, before I started adding in locations on the planet not yet shown on film. And given my first Book was already going to be DREAMS.. where Asgard has been blown to bits post Endgame? I really wanted to get it right so I could deconstruct it as many times as I and the muses wanted to. Laufeyson (Universe 10 Loki) was pretty insistent too with the opening chapters on his end focusing partially on that chase with Abell through Asgard's blown apart ruin

Sorry for the ramble of an explanation, but that's how it is and how it works over here...? XD

..uhmmmm. Yeah lol! When I said I watch and re-watch from differing mental perspectives..? That's what I mean. I don't usually share those at all... only the unedited pics. Genrally I will take caps or take existing raw caps and pick out piece that catch my eye. I've been told they do help put your brain in the right mode for those who have difficulty processing them in that way, like I do when in that mode. Also yes, trees and fish ...bruh. lol!

It's there, has been for years in some cases; and I'm not messing with it now.

That basic bit out of the way (doesn't sound so basic does it.) Let's backtrack a bit, specifically to Asgard's shape and the placement of it's location and the locations on it.

As I first write this, I don't have the talks I had with a few wild meteorologists and geologists back then directly on hand (as this is a part I still don't focus on too much; but:) shaped as it is, those I did talk to theorized that between the shape and placement of planets as well as the nebula they're partially inside, that Asgard may be shaped and in rotation as it is because of its' placement in it's system: or because of late interference by Asgard's inhabitants to keep it stable.

^ That one scene in particular from Thor 2011 really made my eyes pop. Not because of what's going on in it so much as trying to answer the whys and hows and what the actual fricks man: because..

Can you imagine, the conversation: trying to pitch that spinning death ball to the King there OR anywhere else on the planet before Bor or even his great grandfather?

Or, trying to talk the royalty down from the idea of putting it anywhere NEAR the palace, or other people's homes?

How about testing that house sized death-by-velocity-alone gilded mess? (Yes I still laugh thinking about that. Some poor scholar/engineer type trying to dissuade Bor's grand-daddy from building what would definitely become a giant pinball of death in the canyons and canals, if that thing ever came off it's anchors even once in the city. Good gods! lol!) Who knows; maybe that was when people started moving to Vanaheim... XD! Just (mostly) kidding.

Cray-cray thoughts of high velocity gilded pinball hell that was probably somewhere way back in the Bifrost's likely development and evolution as tech/normie science boosted by magic, and or vice versa, aside:

You probably notice I've mentioned the nebulae and the planets in their rotation more than once. And with good reason.

Backing up a bit; Asgard is interesting well before you hit her shores.

Not only is she a top-shaped disk-planet: but with the way the sky is shown: Asgard has a very interesting rotation if she has any left at all. There's very little we know, but what we do know is she is not alone in her systematic rotation either way.

(Asgard's sky from Thor's personal Hall in Thor: the Dark World)

In fact and as seen in the screen caps above: Asgard has an incredibly close relation to at least three planets in her nebulous solar system. At least one of which is absolutely massive: massive enough that it's close proximity is theorized as being pretty likely to be the only way Asgard experiences night cycles as seen in Thor: the Dark World... mainly through eclipsing the nebulous sun by passing between it and Asgard as a planet.

Which is both cool -and- scary when you take things like degrading orbits, space debris and projectiles like comets and other space science into account.. but also very, very interesting.

It also begs the question either way: why didn't Asgard at their earlier establishment of a greater technological level, colonize or move to those planets sooner? Of course.. the first obvious answer is.. they probably couldn't, at first. And even more probably were past trying by the time the Bifrost was built, prior to Bor's time (I say prior because we have seen Bor use it in Thor the Dark World: and on a massive scale moving whole armies, the same as his son Odin. See some of the scenes from Bor's seizure of the Aether below.)

But yeah, Asgard is a pretty unique place even before you get to the water fall's edge: or questioning what kind of condensed mass it has to retain gravity at it's very small size.

Or, whether that gravity and the shape is in fact generated in some form or another after millennia upon millennia of just the Wars we do know about in their history.

(At current we know about Darkalfheim and the series of Wars including Jotunheim and Muspelheim that they call the Great Wars. While they are definitely aware of the extensive millennia of intergalactic war between the Xandarian based Nova Corps and the Kree Empire put front and center in GotG.. there hasn't been any actual confirmation as to whether Asgardians fought in that war on either side: only that they are at that stage at least loosely allied with Asgard.. if not a more separated protectorate being considered among the nine realms in the MCU.)

Why do I keep pointing out trees, and perspective; or teh size of the city in that first little gif again?

Because.. that is our repeated visual evidence of just how much of Asgard as a planet; the story did not take place in.. huge parts of the place we haven't seen. And that makes sense.

Power plants or generators, smithys, and even schools can be easily placed in the city proper, at this stage.

But what about BEFORE, they got to this stage.. because that is a thing in the MCU in regards to Asgard: and a major plot point for three movies of script running, from 2010 all the way to 2015 when Taika Waititi was hired (unfortunately, for those of us who know the root of what happened there.)

What about food, for thousands of 5000 year lifespans and their kids. And their grandkids. And.. the food for the livestock, or the wild game

Or the bilgesnipes and dragons--well we can guess what happened to the dragons of Asgard in particular actually. If they were anything like Muspelheim's; and on a planet that size..? It doesn't take much to figure out Odin, Bor and their predecessors probably couldn't excuse not hunting a predator big enough to swallow people to extinction: not for much longer than they absolutely had to anyway.

What about fibers and leather for clothes.

How about waste management, for both the city and suburban areas? Sewers? Water filtration? Factories or slaughterhouses to process it all, and the means to support those things. Everything man made, is grown, processed or made somewhere.

We know they have these things, because we know they have and make their own alcohol (fermentation of grains, fruits, and more); as well as other things to eat: displayed in both T1 and TDW.

(The top image is from Thor's table flip scene in Thor 2011; while the one below it is from the tavern scene in the beginning of Thor: the Dark World.)

Meat, vegetables, fruit, grain, herbs, and seasonings are all represented on the tables above. While some might be imported (I really do wonder about the platters of golden apples myself:) it's not very likely all of them are. And it wouldn't make sense for them to have been imported from off world throughout their species development either. After all and again: they would have had to have survived and developed enough to GET TO, that stage in the first place.

You're also looking at Varnish in the shine of that table; smithing and metal working and ceramics in their table ware. Weaving either plant or animal fibers in their clothes, as well as the likely production of tannin (or it's equivalent) and leather working in every leather piece on screen. Candles can be made from varied sources, whether that's actual wax of some form, or condensed animal fat.

Oh, and if you find the enlarged version of those images: you'll also notice things like fine engraving and metal sculpture to the goblets and platters on the Thor 2011 table in particular.

Either way, the images above show us directly that unsurprisingly, they have come to understand whole other sub-levels of production: before you even get to the high-tech and magic ends of any of that to be able to reproduce it in that modern era.

As another side note related to that: the booze alone is pretty telling as to how far off the "Loki" series is on this mark, as well. Creators of current content 'conveniently forgot' that this is supposed to be a space faring, technologically advanced society (even if they're the social equivalent of medieval imperialist thugs .. lol sorry not sorry! That's literally how they're depicted... and honestly that really weird twist IS some of Asgard's most interesting and strange development) whose friends, allies and other examples of places visited DO and HAVE included Earth, Xandar, and six other 'realms' as their etymology names them: for literal millennia. Even taking the other, long established cultural influences and visitations aside? For a society who 5000 years ago was still porting whole armies to other planets to kick peoples asses? The idea they never discovered honey; or sugar especially even on the inside of a fermentation barrel for wine; OR how to process it into something like candy? Is more than just a -little- dumb in the stretch. Sugar often naturally starts to separate and crystallize during the fermentation process. Ask a vintner, or look it up if you don't believe me. Just sayin'.. just on Earth alone, we know sweets were discovered more than 8000 years ago. Eight thousand. And the only reason we haven't been able to confirm people older than that finding things like bee's hives?? Is because well.. that kind of thing rarely survives even that length of time at all, to be found in archeology in order to tell us more. I'll touch that and how it's pretty damned near impossible that 'Loki doesn't know wtf candy is' being 1k+ years himself, and a guy raised as an Asgardian prince & spymaster to boot later into the culture section I think, but mmm.. that whole bit still reeks of stupid, to me And more so after their own DB Cooper scene. Gonna say candy wasn't a snack in that era either? Cause if so; I got big shocking news, for those who think so... XD

In closing.. for this part?

As far as the world of Asgard goes, we have only been allowed to see a very small part of it: and even then? It is still undoubtedly massively larger than even what's implied: and definitely capable of supporting it's comparatively small base population of less than 10k people.

(Odin's subterranean vault reference: exterior)

The only reason we don't see even more of it; is the fact that films have a limited time to give you everything, and the story focuses on the royal family from the get go. And they live, in the heart of Asgard's capital city... so we largely don't see as much of that as weirdo world building fans like me would absolutely love to see in the process... and frankly; they gave plenty enough to start us off with.

The films would have suffered for having too much more of that, rather than the stories they were trying to tell.

The same.. I would love to know more: and I do wish the current teams paid the previous ones more respect by using what was already there and expanding on it: instead of making mismatched new things up, as they went.

The early creative teams really knew what they were doing back then.

(Asgard's defensive cannons defending against the Darkalfheim air raid in Thor the Dark World.)

And no, this isn't all they showed us, in the show and tell they did manage to give us over the course of years of work... far from it.

Hope you enjoyed part one! Maybe you learned or saw something you missed.. or have been inspired to watch the older films again..?

I know I often am.

#MCU #Asgard #MCU Asgard #Lore drops #research #scene dissection #location and culture dissection #world building #universe building #Lokiverse references #writing references #writing research #Youtube #MCU Lore #part one: #about the land more than the people on it #don't worry: we'll get to that #:3

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Pits aren't evil, but it's disingenuous to ignore how prevalent they are in dog bite and fatal attack statistics (both on humans and animals). These dogs were bred for bloodsport, and more specifically they were bred to not send out warnings before attacking, that's not going to magically go away just because you're good with dogs or because an individual pit is friendly. If that were the case, the majority of dog attacks wouldn't consist of pitbulls, pit mixes, or other trouble breeds like rottweilers.

Even if the dogs were 100% safe the weird culture surrounding them would continue to be a problem. Why does one individual dog breed need such a zealous defensive squad? Why do attack survivors have to tread on eggshells to avoid offending owners of the dog breed that attacked them? Why do so many people pin the blame on the human or animal victim of an attack when these dog breeds are designed to snap without warning? Why is "bully bashing" so reprehensible, but shit like "chihuahuas are hellspawns" and "cats are so mean" acceptable?

Alright, I suppose we can dissect this.

Claim: Pit bulls are more prevalent than any other breed in dog bites and dog bite fatalities

Fact: this claim is only relaying bite incidents regarding pit bulls and “pit bull type dogs” in the US. Why does that matter? Well these surveys self-admittedly were inaccurate, and no conclusion could be drawn from them, simply because they were relying on the public to accurately identify the breed of dog that bit them and it didn’t account for cases that were not reported or the dog could not be identified as one breed or another. These surveys also did not account for prevalence of one breed over another in the country. Why does that part matter?

Well you could factually say that most smokers in the UK are white. If you then say white people in the UK are significantly more prone to nicotine addiction, that’s a very false conclusion to draw if you don’t account for the fact over 85% of people in the UK are white. This is the same level of false conclusion being drawn from those dog bite surveys because, as I have said before, there are a lot of pit bulls in America. But besides that, they are a very common breed in low income areas. Dog bites are more likely to be reported in a low income area because if a rich person’s dog bites someone, they tend to pay off the victim to avoid the dog being labeled as an aggressive dog and taken away or put down for being too dangerous. Low income families obviously can’t do that. Low income areas will also commonly have lower/less sturdy fencing and other limitations that can lead to a dog escaping the owner’s property. A lot of the bites reported also involved dogs where an owner could not be located, which means strays. A large stray dog of any breed is absolutely dangerous. If I see a stray malinois or something I’m not going to be thinking “ah well thank goodness it isn’t a pit bull” because I don’t particularly want to be bitten by a malinois either.

Bottom line though, the CDC stopped collecting data on what specific breeds were “more dangerous” because there was too much statistical error in the nature of collecting the data for any meaningful conclusion to be drawn.

Claim: pit bulls were bred to attack opponents with no warning which means they can and will attack at any time

Fact: this is another example of a false conclusion.

For one thing, I couldn’t find any non-biased sources claiming that pit bulls specifically were bred to attack without warning, but even if we say that’s true for sake of argument, attacking an opponent dog in a fight without telegraphing their attack doesn’t mean “this dog does not engage in any body language” thus making them unreadable or whatever. They wag their tails when happy, whine when they want something, and yes! They do in fact curl their lip and growl when they want you to stop doing something. They bark at noises or scents they don’t trust, and they bow and roll when they want to play.

They’re dogs. Therefore, they share a lot of the same body language cues as any other breed will give you.

Claim: pit bulls were bred as fighting dogs so they’re bred for aggression.

Fact: dogs classify other dogs and humans in very different categories of their mind in much the same way they classify a rabbit and a cat and a cow in different categories of their mind. A dog that’s extremely reactive to other dogs may not be reactive towards humans at all.

No modern breed was bred for blanket aggressive behavior because that would make them impossible to keep in captivity at all because the second someone went to feed them they’d lose a hand and the second you tried to get two extremely aggressive animals to breed they’d kill each other on sight. Pits were bred primarily to be reactive to unfamiliar dogs and for physical strength. They were not bred to be reactive to humans, and attack dogs are typically abused in some way to make them reactive to humans in the same way they’re reactive to dogs, or at minimum rewarded for reacting excessively to an unknown human to encourage more extreme reactivity.

So why does one breed need so much defense?

Because pits and other “”trouble breeds”” cause your insurance rates to go up significantly if your insurance provider finds out you own one. Because you can live in an apartment for years and get an ultimatum to be evicted or get rid of your dog despite it never showing any signs of being dangerous. Because there are people who will see a bully dog in the street and hit the gas.

It’s not about them being “more important” than cats or micro dogs, no one is saying that. No one has ever been saying that, but a pit bull gets all the hate and aggression and vitriol people throw at black cats but with legal backing on top of that. People defend the breed because there is a culture of “the only good pit bull is a dead one” and actually act on it. Yes, people insult and mock chihuahuas and that’s very rude and all, but how many places have breed bans against them?

Why do people blame the human over the animal?

Well because any dog will bite “without warning” if it’s raised to think failure to do so will cause it pain and any dog that’s never seen a human other than the ones in its house has the potential to be reactive to outside stimuli. And if you run up to a random dog and try to pet it, it’s not the dog’s fault you got bit it was your fault for just assuming you can touch any random animal and not get bitten/scratched/etc.

Do I blame children for not knowing better or victims that were charged by a loose dog? No. Is that what most bite cases are? Also no.

But hey it’s also weird to frame it as “either the dog is at fault or the victim is at fault and you’re blaming one” as like a blanket statement. Because no. That’s not what’s being said or claimed. Some bites are the fault of how the dog was raised, some are the fault of the person who was bitten, and some are a mix of both or just poor circumstances and the worst of happenstances.

Treating it as a breed specific thing rather than a “people need better education on raising and behaving around animals” thing isn’t going to make less bites happen fwiw.

[transgenderer]

this article is really cool, ive never seen such a radically biological study of memory! also, check out the properties of their model organism:

After an extensive search for a suitable experimental animal, I settled on the giant marine snail Aplysia (Fig. 1A) because it offers three important advantages: Its nervous system is made up of a small number of nerve cells; many of these are gigantic; and (as became evident to me later) many are uniquely identifiable (3, 4). Whereas the mammalian brain has a trillion central nerve cells, Aplysia has only 20,000, and the simplest behaviors that can be modified by learning may directly involve less than 100 central nerve cells. In addition to being few in numbers, these cells are the largest nerve cells in the animal kingdom, reaching up to 1000 mmin diameter, large enough to be seen with the naked eye. One can record from these large cells for many hours without any difficulty, and the same cell can be returned to and recorded from over a period of days. The cells can easily be dissected out for biochemical studies, so that from a single cell one can obtain sufficient mRNA to make a cDNA library. Finally, these identified cells can readily be injected with labeled compounds, antibodies, or genetic constructs, procedures which opened up the molecular study of signal transduction within individual nerve cells.

also some remarkable results about determinism in neural development

Kupfermann, Castellucci, Carew, Hawkins, John Byrne, and I worked out significant components of the neural circuit gill-withdrawal reflex (Fig. 2). The circuit is located in the abdominal ganglion and has 24 central mechanoreceptor sensory neurons that innervate the siphon skin and make direct monosynaptic connections with 6 gill motor cells (Fig. 2C) (12–14). The sensory neurons also made indirect connections with the motor cells through small groups of excitatory and inhibitory interneurons (15, 16). In addition to being identifiable, individual cells also have surprisingly large effects on behavior (Fig. 2B) (4, 14, 17). As we examined the neural circuit of this reflex, we were struck by its invariance. In every animal we examined, each cell connected only to certain target cells and not to others (Fig. 2C). This also was true in the neural circuitry of other behaviors in Aplysia including inking, control of the circulation, and locomotion (4, 18)

anyway the big takeaways here are

you can get long-term learning without changing the connections between neurons if you change the *strength* of the connections between neurons (and you can directly measure these changes)

short term memory forms even when protein synthesis is inhibited, but long term doesnt, and they were actually able to piece out which protein cascades (like, you go and transcribe one protein from the DNA, then this starts a process that transcribes other proteins, etc) are involved!

another detail, about how you can have synapse-specific changes when stuff is going on in the nucleus, which shares a huge number of synapses:

The finding of a transcriptional cascade explained why long-term memory requires new protein synthesis immediately after training, but it posed a new cell-biological problem. A single neuron makes hundreds of contacts on many different target cells. Short-term synaptic changes are synapse-specific. Since longlasting synaptic changes require transcription and thus the nucleus, is long-term memory storage a cell-wide process, or are there cellbiological mechanisms that maintain the synapse specificity of long-term facilitation? To examine these questions, Kelsey Martin cultured one Aplysia sensory cell with a bifurcating axon with two motor neurons, forming two widely separated synapses (Fig. 4A). In this culture system, a single puff of serotonin applied to one synapse produces transient facilitation at that synapse only, as expected (50, 51). Five puffs of serotonin applied to one branch produces long-lasting facilitation (72 hours), also restricted to the stimulated synapse (Fig. 4B). This long-lasting synapse-specific facilitation requires CREB and also leads to structural changes. Thus, despite recruitment of nuclear processes, long-term changes in synaptic function and structure are confined only to those synapses stimulated by serotonin. How does this come about? Martin, Andrea Casadio, Bailey, and I found that five puffs of serotonin send a signal to the nucleus to activate CREB-1, which then appears to send proteins to all terminals; however, only those terminals that have been marked by serotonin can use these proteins productively for synaptic growth. Indeed, one puff of serotonin to the previously unstimulated synapse is sufficient to mark that synapse so that it can capture a reduced form of the long-term facilitation induced at the other site by five puffs of serotonin (Fig. 4B)

[abirdie]

Gael García Bernal photographed by Craig McDean for AnOther Man in 2006.

Accompanying interview text (it's a really good interview) after the jump.

Interview by Dave Calhoun

(source but I can never get AnOther Man articles to display properly)

He played Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. He made a stunning drag queen in Bad Education. Now he’s a confused young Parisian who can’t distinguish between dreams and waking-life in The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry’s latest mind-warp of a movie. He’s worked for some of the world’s top directors, from Pedro Almodóvar to Walter Salles. He’s fiercely political, a true film lover, and an actor who genuinely puts his art before his bank balance. He’s also a powerful force behind the new wave of filmmaking in Latin America. And Gael Garcia Bernal is still only 27.

Last night, Bernal was knocking back drinks and dancing late into the night at a house party in Greenwich Village. The morning after, he’s sitting in a small diner in downtown Manhattan, talking spiritedly about the disastrous effects that globalisation is having on rural farmers in his home country of Mexico.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s going to implode,” Bernal warns, knocking back a coffee. “The people who will be affected will be the poor. The countries who are going to get fucked up are the poor ones. It’s going to lead to civil wars.”

The more you speak to Bernal, the more time you spend in his company, and the more of his friends and collaborators that you speak to, the more you begin to understand that there’s something unusual about this young actor. There’s a refreshing, even old-fashioned, seriousness to the way he approaches his life and work. He’s unusually engaged – politically, culturally and socially – in a way that isn’t awkward or mannered. He’s hungry to learn, to work with the right people, to do the right thing, to make a difference. There’s a natural, confident ease in his commitment to cinema, politics and the world around him. If all this makes him sound too earnest, it shouldn’t; he’s as comfortable sniggering about beach parties in Brazil as he is dissecting politics. It’s all one life to him.

Bernal first grabbed the attention of the art-house crowd in 2000 in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros, an extreme story of three lives that collide in one car crash amid the chaos of Mexico City. He was 21. In the following year, he filmed the sexually charged road movie Y tu mamá también, which made him, alongside good friend and co-star Diego Luna, Mexico’s most in-demand young actor.

“We had finally discovered a new face,” remembers Carlos Cuarón, writer of Y tu mamá también and brother of the film’s director, Alfonso Cuarón.

“Here was a new young actor who could sustain emotion in a very different way. After seeing Gael in a short film a year or two before Amores Perros came out, I remember calling my brother and saying to him, ‘Man, you have to see this guy.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, thanks, I’m busy right now.’”

A year or two passed before Alfonso saw Gael in action. “Alejandro González Iñárritu is a friend of ours and he showed Alfonso an early cut of Amores Perros,” continues Carlos. “That was the moment when Alfonso said, ‘I want that guy!’ I was on the telephone saying, ‘I told you so!’”

Since then, Bernal has played a youthful Che Guevara in an award-winning performance for Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles in The Motorcycle Diaries, a fox of a transvestite (and according to one critic a “dead ringer for Julia Roberts”) for the Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar in Bad Education, and opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg in French director Michel Gondry’s latest movie, The Science of Sleep. It’s an impressive roll-call of collaborators. And still not one Hollywood movie in sight.

“I think Tijuana is the closest I’ve ever got to Hollywood,” Bernal jokes as we talk about the three months he recently spent on location in the notorious Mexican border town for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest film, Babel. “It sounds like a really bad tragedy, doesn’t it? The Closest I Ever Got to Hollywood Was Tijuana!”

Carlos Cuarón agrees that Bernal’s acting path has been remarkable. “The really crazy thing about Gael is that he’s probably the most famous Mexican actor nowadays, but he still hasn’t done a Hollywood movie. He chooses his projects very intelligently. He picks them because he likes the director or because he thinks the script is amazing or because there are other interesting actors in the film. Usually, people become famous across the world because of Hollywood movies, he hasn’t had to go that route.”

Bernal’s commitment is thrown into sharp relief when he talks about his move to London to go to drama school at the age of 17 a decade ago. He was shocked by the country’s apathy to politics and culture. He expected the Rolling Stones, the Marquee Club and arthouse cinema. Instead what he found were the Spice Girls, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and students who would rather sit drinking in pubs or subject themselves to pharmaceutical testing than attend a political rally.

“I found it difficult coming from Mexico,” Bernal explains. “In Mexico, there’s this feeling that everything you do has a political complexity. Which it does. Whatever you do, whoever you say hello to, whichever part of the neighbourhood you go to... Everything has this huge political complexity, as well as social, emotional and sexual.

“I think my attitude also has something to do with my family. They work in the theatre, underground theatre, so maybe I was pretentious, or snobbish perhaps.”

Bernal’s teenage years coincided with a tumultuous time in Mexico. The country was emerging from what he labels “an old tyrant democracy”, and the Zapatista movement in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas was rising up against the government. Street demonstrations were part of everyday life. Bernal and his family lived comfortably in Mexico City – his mother is an actor, his father an actor and director – but like many kids of his age he was swept up by the energy and sheer excitement of the capital’s mass support for the Zapatistas.

“That movement polarised the country, but it also united a lot of people,” Bernals recalls. “We helped to stop the war. Because of that, it felt like what we did counted. Something like a million and a half people demonstrated every day when the war between the government and the guerrillas started. I was very involved. I was writing and reading about the situation, helping to send food, and demonstrating on the marches. It was great. I was young, and it was fun. And, I’ve got to say, I met my first girlfriend – my first real girlfriend – there as well. It was a great place to meet girls!”

Sex and politics. There’s nothing po-faced about Bernal’s political engagement. It’s wrapped up in movies, fun, friendships, music, travel, theatre and family. There’s something pleasing and traditionally bohemian about all this. There is often a sense in Europe and North America, that we are too comfortable, cynical even, and few people believe that protest – let alone art – can make a difference. Bernal would get along just fine in Paris circa 1968.

All of which helps to explain why he spent the past ten days at the World Trade Organisation summit in Hong Kong. His world doesn’t end with himself and his films. In Hollywood, political engagement, more often than not, means rash gestures and red faces all round. Bernal’s engagement is more steady, more regular, more constant. He quietly attended the protests at the G8 summit in Edinburgh last year on the same weekend that Madonna, Elton et al performed at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park. In Hong Kong, he sat in meeting after meeting, discussing ideas, presenting case studies and assisting delegates such as Mary Robinson, the former Irish president (“La Presidenta!” as Bernal calls her, laughing). Before travelling to Hong Kong, he spent some time in Chiapas, discovering for himself the effect that free trade is having on local maize and coffee producers.

He’s fully aware that his profile as an actor is a selling point for organisations such as Oxfam, but still he makes sure – indeed demands – that he’s fully informed. He’s not interested in being an intelligent pretty face. He wants to get stuck in. He arrived at the Hong Kong summit with an undefined role, but was soon speaking out at meetings.

“Little by little, I started to get into it and became really interested in everything,” he explains. “Oxfam asked me if I wanted to be in the talks and negotiations.”

He jokes about something else that he picked up at the summit, after some Germans he met fell about laughing when they heard his name. “Gael” it turns out, means “horny” in German. You can already see the pin-up poster tag-line in the German equivalent of Teen Vogue: “Ich bin Gael”, it would read, pasted across a brooding portrait of the actor. It wouldn’t be anything new. “Mexican heart-throb”, “Sex Mex”, “The sexiest thing to come out of Latin America since Ricky Martin” are just some of the tacky headlines – often in upmarket publications – that have been written recently about Bernal.

The conversation turns to Live 8. Bernal admits that he feels a strong sense of unease towards events like these.

“I was a bit critical of Live 8. The people that organised it act as if they are there to safeguard our souls, and present it as a civil action, as if it’s our civil duty to go to a concert. Many of the people who took part made no more effort to do this concert than they would to make a Pepsi commercial. Some of these artists are the same people who advertise Coca Cola. People in Mexico don’t have clean water, yet they’ve drunk Coca Cola all their lives. It’s cheaper to get a Coke than to get clean drinking water. That in itself is a strong image of how much power such companies wield across the world.”

Such independent thinking is present too in Bernal’s attitude to films and filmmaking. He’s happier on the margins, where the ideas and imagination lie. It’s interesting to contrast his career with the young American actors of a similar stature – those who, one minute are hailed as the new saviours of independent cinema, and the next, are dressing up as Spiderman or nestling happily in King Kong’s computer-generated fur. It’s easier to say yes than it is to say no, as Bernal has consistently replied to all approaches from Hollywood.

The screenwriter Milo Addica (Monster’s Ball and Birth) tells a good story about how Bernal accepted the lead role in The King, which he wrote and produced. It’s an independent American movie that British director James Marsh shot in late 2004. When the film was still in the casting stage, many young American actors read the script and liked it, but, as Addica recalls, backed off for what he calls “moral reasons”. They didn’t like the film’s violence or the ambiguity of a lead character who starts out as a hero, but commits an horrific act in the film’s closing moments. Bernal, on the other hand, leapt at the chance. He plays Elvis Valderez, a young American with a Mexican mother, who leaves the navy and goes in search of his father (William Hurt), a popular Baptist preacher who never knew his illegitimate son. It’s a search that ultimately has terrible consequences. Bernal does a good job in his first American film.

“We went to a number of young actors, all of who you know but I won’t name names,” Addica explains. “They all liked the script but were concerned with the audience’s perception. They wanted changes made to accommodate that. Of course, when you pay an actor $20 million he will do an Irish jig on the table for you. He doesn’t give a flying fuck.” Needless to say, $20 million was not on offer for The King.

Bernal is not easily tempted by a pay cheque. “A film with no point of view is such a waste of money,” he considers. “So much money is spent on films. Oh man, spend that money somewhere else!”

Bernal’s attitude to cinema is rooted in Mexico – rooted in the struggle to get films made – personal stories, real storytelling, strong ideas. He says that making The Motorcycle Diaries, for which he travelled through Argentina, Peru and Mexico, reaffirmed his commitment to Latin America and Latin American cinema. Last month, his production company in Mexico City opened for business in partnership with Diego Luna. They’ve already launched a travelling documentary festival that began in Mexico City and is due to visit 16 towns across the country.

As an actor, Bernal is drawn to the filmmakers he has worked with. He wants to learn more, and says unashamedly that he usually wants to be friends with his directors.

“That was the best thing about all these films, on a very personal level, getting to know these people,” he says. “To be their friends, actually. That’s the best thing, and I really get emotional about that. Many people have explained what cinema is, but so far, to me, the best appreciation is that cinema is further proof, further affirmation that fiction can move people more than reality, more than the facts. Also that in the process of making films you get to travel and make friends.”

This isn’t just talk. Michel Gondry, who last year directed Bernal in his latest film, is effusive about the actor who he now counts as a good friend. In The Science of Sleep, Bernal plays Stephane, a half-Mexican, half-French young man whose colourful dreams have a bizarre effect on his waking-life. On the phone from New York, Gondry mentions that he has borrowed Bernal’s old apartment in the city while he works on the post-production of his film in time for Sundance. The two became close both before and during the shoot. When they first met, Gondry hadn’t quite completed his script, so he and Bernal discussed ideas together. Gondry is happy to credit Bernal with offering crucial input to the finished screenplay.

“He’s a great person on top of being a great actor,” Gondry says warmly. “He’s very caring and we’ve become very, very close. He’s very committed. The character he was playing in my film is close to me, so we had to find out what we both had in common. That takes time, and he was really pleased to spend time getting to know me. He’s also just a machine of happiness. During the shoot, he would always make everybody happy and entertain them.”

We walk around the corner and head back to the hotel, still talking about films, Mexico, London and New York, before saying goodbye in the lift. Bernal still has places to go today. The first is the local cinema, where he plans to catch the Tommy Lee Jones-directed Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, a superb film written by his fellow countryman Guillermo Arriaga, the writer of Amores Perros and 21 Grams. The second is with a TV set in a bar somewhere. His local football team in Mexico are playing in a cup final tonight. He wouldn’t miss it for the world. The revolution rolls on.

#gael garcía bernal #craig mcdean #dave calhoun #ggb interview #ggb photoshoot #gael garcia bernal

[intogenshin]

Tsurumi Island is also uncomfortable

I wrote a series where I dissected the underlying themes and narratives of the Inazuma chapter because most of the intent behind the poorly written storyline was lost in their ambition to pull a shocking plot twist. Unlike the other nations, the player doesn’t get to look into the archon’s inner world (figuratively) until the climax of the last act, save for some vague foreshadowing dialogues from Yae, so the most important part of the story was hidden from the audience.

I found the story they wrote compelling, but at the same time I couldn’t push away the uncomfortable feeling of knowing how that story was built by detaching it from its historical parallel: Tokugawa Japan. 

It is one thing to make fantasy dictatorship into a benevolent measure for protection, where the ruler was rather a subordinate to the major power and whose motivations were based on fear, if (if) the real life historical parallel of a feudal military dictatorship isn’t a big issue for Japanese people then it doesn’t matter much in the end. But it is another to blur the narratives around the parallels of indigenous people that were invaded and occupied by imperial Japan. 

Chinese media has strict restrictions regarding what they can and cannot portray or show, and revisionism of imperial japan is prohibited. I know it goes beyond even fiction, because an actor from a cdrama I liked was accused of praying at a temple that honors a Japanese general, and was unofficially banned from working in the industry (his name cannot even be used for registering a phone number). The actor in question has explained he was only walking outside, unaware of what the location really was since it is promoted as a tourist spot, yet he is still unofficially blacklisted. 

All this to say, no, this criticism is not implying hoyo is endorsing Japanese colonialism + mentioning an instance of just how serious the issue is in China. Let’s not waste time arguing in extremes. Moving on now. 

Names and terms in Tsurumi Island come from Ainu language, but it seems there’s very little that honors their culture. 

(Please check resources and research for yourself, don’t take my words at face value, as I might make mistakes)

Ainu cosmology sees their relationship with their environment in a symmetrical order, meaning there is a reciprocity between animals and humans, as well as humans and kamuy, the spirits that inhabit the heavenly world and watch over humans. 

Kamuy manifest in the human world (Ainu Moshir) through disguises of natural phenomena (wind, fire, water), parts of nature (animals, plants, mountains), and material culture (boats, pots), so when Ainu hunt or use these elements they are receiving the gifts of the kamuy in these forms. And they perform rituals in which they also give back to the kamuy in return, showing how important reciprocity between humans and nature is in their worldview. 

There is a ritual for “sending off” damaged, old or unwanted daily utensils to the the realm of the spirits called Iwakute, and one of salmon called Ascircep-nomi, but the most known ritual is Iomante, the ceremony of the bear, in which a cub is raised by the community for a couple of years and then sacrificed as a “sending off” of the kamuy of the mountains, Kim-un-kamuy, who manifests in the form of bears. 

The Ainu bear ritual has been recorded by varios explorers and researchers. It was so famous and attractive that it was performed in the presence of Emperor Meiji in the Shiraoi village in 1881.

Ainu believe that kamui live in the form of human beings in their own world Kamui-moshir. Plants and animals in this world are regarded as temporary forms of the kamui which are endowed to humans by deities themselves as gifts. Kindaichi states that the kamui who came down to Ainu-moshir can return happily to Kamui-moshir only by willingly being eaten and being respected. 

—The Ainu Bear Ceremony and the Logic Behind Hunting the Deified Bear, by Takako Yamada 

This type of ceremony or festival is very common in northern cultures:

As is revealed by Watanabe, the sending-off ceremonies for a variety of animals, including the caribou, the seal, and the whale, are commonly observed among northern hunting-gatherer peoples. Moreover, considering the northern cultures in terms of relationships between religion and ecology, Irimoto suggests two significant characteristics: first, the notion of reciprocity that exists between man and game spirits, and, second, the original oneness of both sets of beings. 

—The Ainu Bear Ceremony and the Logic Behind Hunting the Deified Bear, by Takako Yamada

Ainu is the name for the people that lived in the islands of Hokkaido, possibly Honshu, Kuril and Sakhalin (the latter two passed to soviet control following World War II), who lived in kotar (small villages) of people related by blood, but the groups shared similar religious beliefs and eventually came to be known collectively as Ainu. 

The history of the Ainu is intertwined with that of Northeast Asia, namely, Japan, Mongolia, and Siberia. The geography of these regions influenced various groups of Ainu and created obvious differences in their lifestyles. Nevertheless, all these Ainu groups seemed to share similar religious beliefs and subscribed to a similar philosophy. 

The identification of the Ainu culture is based more on “the Hokkaido Ainu” than other groups. This is because the Hokkaido Ainu were the largest of the Ainu groups and survived the Japanese and Russian conquests. 

—Symbolism of Symmetry in the Ainu Culture from the Viewpoint of Analytical Psychology, by Kazuko Kosaka-Tanaka

So, how did Hoyoverse portray this culture in the story of Tsurumi Island?

The people of Tsurumi are extinct due to their own actions, born of ignorance and naivety: the creature they revered as their god, Kapatcir, had no interest in them and didn’t regard herself as a deity or protector either, and the rituals of human sacrifice had no meaning for her. 

First of all, Ainu is a culture under threat of erasure after a long time of Japanese colonial/settler violence, but they are very much living and dedicate their lives to preserve their culture. 

Hoyoverse portrayed the island as a ghost civilization that only survives in memory and broken objects left behind, and that seems to be the way they also went about borrowing bits and pieces of their culture, as if they were taking different candies from a store, and carelessly used them to adorn their story. 

Tsurumi’s civilization doesn’t honor Ainu’s cosmology of reciprocity with nature, nor the respectful relationship between Ainu and Kamuy, nor their rituals or ceremonies performed in gratitude. It doesn’t even recognize them as a living people. 

I keep wondering just how many people might uncritically and subconsciously believe Ainu performed human sacrifices after playing this game. And I have to question why this narrative was used in this context at all alongside the recurrent justification of a civilization causing their own demise when it can make their main characters, the product they sell through their gacha, look bad. 

The Japanese themselves considered the Ainu to be barbarians, and this led to uneasy relationship from the start and to repeated efforts on the part of the Ainu to expel the Japanese from their lands. After a few centuries of sporadic conflict, including the last “pan-Ainu” uprising against the Japanese in 1669 (Shakushain’s War). 

Meiji government embarked on a policy of (forced) assimilation —a policy whose ultimate aim was to eradicate Ainu culture. Under this regime, the Ainu were systematically stripped of any Ainu identity and were “made” Japanese. 

The Japanese government redoubled its efforts at assimilating the Ainu into Japanese society and eradicating Ainu culture. As part of the act, Ainu families were granted small plots of land, in order to transform them from hunters into (more easily managed) farmers. Much of the best farmland had already been claimed by Japanese settlers. 

—Language Conflict and Language Rights: the Ainu, Ryūkyūans, and Koreans in Japan, by Stanley Dubinsky and William D Davies 

What it seems is, much like they did with Watatsumi Island and Ryukyu culture, the company intends to mimic the consequences of settler colonialism and the violence of occupation by framing the loss of these fantasy cultures in tragedy, but fails to address the historical parallels that inspired them in the first place so as not to damage the marketing of their product. Who would want to buy a colonizer ruler, even if it’s made in the vessel of a gacha waifu?

The archon and shogunate in Inazuma are portrayed initially as benevolent (by allowing Orobashi to maintain the island he brought from the depths nearby their territory), and their violence against Watatsumi and against Kapatcir is justified (Orobashi invaded Yashiori Island, the resistance broke the seals that suppressed the Tatarigami instigated by an undercover Fatui, and Kapatcir’s grief was out of control and therefore represented a danger to Seirai Island). Not to mention there is no contact between the Thunder Civilization of Tsurumi and the Shogunate or the archon. 

I don’t know if any allegory can work with Kapatcir at all. If she represents the power of the archon (thunder) and the destruction of Tsurumi’s civilization is an indirect reference to Japan’s genocide of Ainu, then it’s just weird that the people of Tsurumi were worshipping her in the first place. If Kapatcir is meant to represent the entirety of Tsurumi’s people and Ei sealing her in Seirai island is a reference to the genocide and forced assimilation, then it’s just weird that Kapatcir had such disregard and indifference for the people of Tsurumi in the first place. It doesn’t work in any cohesive way. 

Moreover, the human sacrifice narrative is at best distasteful and very unfortunate, and at worst malicious. 

There is a folklore Ainu legend that includes human sacrifices, though I couldn’t find much about it: Sitonai. A village is terrorized by a snake monster who demands human sacrifices and a girl, Sitonai, bravely volunteers in order to slay the snake with her wit and aided by her dog. This story however is about defeating a invasor, completely different from the narrative of ignorance and submissive acceptance portrayed by Ruu. 

There is no evidence of the Ainu ever performing human sacrifice, but given the racism against Ainu and this disrespectful notion of “barbarism”, it seems something malicious to imply. The only thing I could find was something that looks like an offhand comment by a researcher, with no evidence other than pointing out that a ceremonial object looks like ceramics in the shape of a person, nothing else. 

I did find, however, an instance of human sacrifice of Ainu people perpetrated by Japanese settlers. 

Ainu men and boys were exploited in Takobeya forced labor by the settlers, while women and girls were abused as Comfort Women. The laborers were kept incarcerated in small rooms and stripped off their human rights, and those who tried to escape were subjected to harsh punishments and brutally assaulted. 

Decades later, skeletal remains were found in a nearby tunnel in Hokkaido, and it is believed these remains were the result of Hitobashira, a Buddhist practice of human sacrifice where people are buried alive in a construction, perpetrated against some of these Tako laborers. 

Takahashi refers to these victims as “countless bloodstained human pillars” (hitobashira人柱). Although hitobashira usually refers to someone who sacrifices his or her life for a cause, it can also refer to the ancient practice of sacrificing people by burying them in the foundation of a building, castle, or bridge in order to appease the gods during a particularly difficult construction project. Takahashi does not elaborate on his word choice, but it is possible that hitobashira refers to the abstract notion of “sacrifice” for the nation’s “colonization” of Hokkaido, or the physical form of “sacrifice” involving the buried bodies upon which the “colony” was built. There were local rumors that there were “human pillars” buried within the Jōmon Tunnel walls, suggesting that Takahashi might have also been referring to the actual buried bodies at former construction sites.

—From “Convict” to “Victim”: Commemorating Laborers on Hokkaido’s Central Road, by Jesús Solís 

So why, just why, would the writers use the human sacrifice narrative in the fantasy island inspired by Ainu culture, while simultaneously butchering their religious beliefs of coexistence with kamuy, and ignoring the nature of the rituals they are known for? 

When I wrote my post The Allegory of the Puppet Ruler (first version on hoyolab, revised version on reddit), I could tell that the narrative of Inazuma’s chapter was trying to examine the beliefs around the bushido, a code of conduct that Tokugawa used to incentivize nationalism and military submission, which is something that plays into the expansionist colonial invasions of imperial japan. The NPC character leader of the Kujou clan also was portraying a quest for power, authority and control that scapegoats the rest of the nation (the shogunate and the archon) from this fault, especially with the way Kujou Sara vehemently rejects his delusions to follow the “true eternity” of the shogun instead, you know, the one that is benevolent and protective.

From the way they disrespectfully borrowed from Ainu and Ryukyu culture, the writing was on the wall for the fiasco that was Sumeru, but there’s something especially revolting about doing it to cultures under threat of erasure. And I’d be surprised if they improve at all in their depiction of indigenous America or Africa. 

Anyway, please check these resources if you made it down here.

Ainu Mythology: the Cuckoo and Pon-Oki-Kurumi, by Hosana Fukuzawa

Symbolism of Symmetry in the Ainu Culture from the Viewpoint of Analytical Psychology, by Kazuko Kosaka-Tanaka

The Concept of Shared Destiny in the Ainu Spiritual Belief, by Junhong Wang

Language Conflict and Language Rights: the Ainu, Ryūkyūans, and Koreans in Japan, by William D Davies and Stanley Dubinsky 

The Ainu Bear Ceremony and the Logic Behind Hunting the Deified Bear, by Takako Yamada

From “Convict” to “Victim”: Commemorating Laborers on Hokkaido’s Central Road, by Jesús Solís 

Forced Labor in Imperial Japan’s First Colony: Hokkaidō, by Pia M Jolliffe

#Genshin impact #tsurumi island #Genshin lore

[o-craven-canto]

Ea, Our Second Chance (16)

16. Ean heraldry

(Index)

(< 15. Dissection of trepangfish)

(original page)

« ... He doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves. » – Cassius, in William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II

« As the Romans knew well when they spoke of virtus, or the troubadours of valor, the worth of the sovereign is the same as his strength. Weak leaders terrorize their subjects, because they fear them; strong leaders want their people to walk with straight backs and eyes held high. Weak leaders keep their subjects quiet, because they have many mistakes to hide; strong leaders do not fear the truth. Weak leaders make their subjects work with the cane and the lash; strong leaders are served out of love. » – emperor Charles Saïd, A House Built on Sand

« There once was a fellow named Chuck / who was poor, ugly, and [redacted]-out-of-luck / He couldn't get laid / so he became king instead / just so he could find someone to [redacted] » – seditious rhyme of probable Pandavan origin, registered by the municipal police of Carcassonne, circa 310 AL

« One of Caesar Saïd's most ambitious accomplishments was the creation of a whole iconography from the ground up. Immediately after the Peacemaking Wars, he faced the need to strike a careful balance between the continuity of tradition with the culture of Earth, and the novelty of an empire of which he could be credited as true founder and maker... He would eventually resolve in favor of using organisms from this world, as popular choices from Earth's cultures such as eagles, lions, and bears meant little to the vast majority of his new subjects... Although it's interesting to notice that most of Saïd's heraldic beasts are in fact natives of Inanna, closer in location to the bureaucratic dreariness of Landing Point than to the fable spires of Montsalvat, but in the position of making the deepest impression upon the first generations of settlers.

... The springbear is an obvious symbol of overwhelming power. Like Hobbes' Leviathan, it can crush anything under its weight... As noted in Belvedere's recent work, it also represents an explicitely masculine incarnation of strength... Two charging springbears form visually the supporting columns of Saïd's personal coat-of-arms, strength channeled for the benefit of the Kingdom. The fact that no species of springbear is native to the Ninkasi Land does not lessen its significance anymore than the local lack of lions or, for that matter, unicorns lessened that of the British coat-of-arms on Earth.

... The colossal anzu-bird, which Saïd made a point of hunting personally in his harpoon-glider during his visit to Makka al-Jadida, justifies its own place in any heraldic system created on this planet... Named after the Mesopotamian harbinger of thunderstorms, the anzu combines extraordinary power and lightness, the qualities of an empire that must be at once immovable and dynamic; although at the same time its ungainly locomotion makes it extremely vulnerable on the ground... Its eye, in particular, caught the attention of poets and semiurges... ceaselessly staring at the blinding light of Utu, and nothing else, as the anzu fears no attack from above... The anzu-eye, as depicted for example on the chapels of Carcassonne and the ancestral shrines of Shangdu, is not merely a symbol of looking fearlessly into the sublime, but one that is purely an end in itself, with no need of practical justifications... In this sense it is contrasted with the anzu's olfactory flaps, distended in flight to detect food on the ground... In fact, the anzu is mainly a scavenger which, like Earth's vultures, uses its gliding capacity to cross the desert in search of carcasses, although it has been known to kill and eat living animals. The satyrical song "La Bravoure de l'Anzû", for broadcasting which Cyrus Yoshida was sentenced to sixty canestrikes in 266 AL, exaggerates its "cowardly" qualities, thus inverting its whole symbolic meaning...

... The honeybee was used by Napoleon and the early Mormons as symbol of industriousness and communal living (cf. the beehive structure of the townhall in New Zion)... In Ninkasi, its place is taken by the nest-building kirikits, who routinely risk their lives to gather food for their colony and defend it from predators. With their characteristic three hands and crude tool use, kirikits also add a connotation of intelligence that is lacking in bees... A colony of kirikits, almost two hundred members strong, is kept in the courtyard of the Imperial College in Mediolanum, making its nest on a grove of walnuts. The kirikit figures prominently on the College's paperwork...

... The use of the flute tree as symbol of pride and sturdiness is subtler, as it's not the whole plant, but rather the texture of its trunk that is used in heraldics... The peculiar "flute-bark" pattern (circles or ovals arranged in rosettes) is found on the ducal banners of Palmyra, the livery of land-based military officers, the porphyry paneling of the Ara Patrum... The apparent breaches or injuries in the trunk of flute trees are, of course, carefully crafted by nature to strengthen the trees, channeling the wind that would otherwise uproot them, and creating the lugubrious wail that resounds in the woods around Lake Svarog. This is exactly the trick employed by the architects of Palmyra for its high-rise towers, and by Sporean engineers for their arcologies, and serves as an excellent icon of resistance in the face of adversity.

... Saïd never quite justified his choice of the blue nova (Ouranthus cyaneus) as the Kingdom's official "flower"... It may have been a simple matter of personal preference. There are anecdotes about a young Saïd taking shelter in a grove of blue novae after being wounded in the Battle of the Sherida River... Richter has hypothesized a connection with the "Blaue Blume" of ancient German Romanticism, a symbol of longing and striving for the infinite, a fitting illustration of the motto Aut Caesar Aut Nihil... Less convincingly, Hrabe argues that the nine-fold symmetry of the plant-top might refer to the nine dukedoms of the Kingdom... »

– Theophilus Singh, Historical Compendium of the Celestial Kingdom, volume I, chapter IX, 276 AL

« I had a scaffold built just outside of Water's Edge [Byzantium], near where the river Sherida meets the waves of Rahab. The beauties of Ninkasi Land had fueled only corruption and debauchery for far too long an age [...] Three hundred prisoners, the worst criminals I could find in the long years of war, were brought there on open cars. Pirates, druglords, highwaymen, mobsters, terrorists, skilled in the crafts of murder, robbery, rape, and torture; those whose crimes were beyond pardon, those who could not be allowed to live in My Kingdom nor loosed upon other nations.

I had a theatre prepared around the scaffold. Nothing more than a few hundred folding chairs and fundamental facilities for the businessmen, the townheads, the landlords, and the scholars of Ninkasi. [...] Twenty by twenty the criminals went to the scaffold. My own black-gloved hand triggered the mechanism; they fell through the floor; the rope wrung their necks; and they died. Many of My men, who had suffered all manners of cruelties and indignities by their hand, regretted only that they would go so quickly to their final and greater Judge.

Other twenty came after, and then twenty more, until their whole number of three hundred was consumed. Some found some dignity in their final hour; some, who had never wept for another, wept for themselves; and some fell cursing God and Man, perjurying their innocence, and offering other, better lives in their stead. [...] Their bodies were buried on the shore under a great black stone, where good people still fear to tread. [...]

When the clocktower of Water's Edge struck one, I bade the witnesses rise. They would swear an oath of fealty to Me, and serve as My ministers and vassals, or simply My subjects; or they would leave the borders of the Kingdom forever, and forfeit any property they could not carry out within 48 hours. [...] A Joseon-born businessman, who had enjoyed much profit from the sale of unwilling services, said that I could not consider free an oath taken on pain of losing all of one's life's work. «Vae victis,» I responded; «It is only by My mercy that you are given this choice».

Four fifths of the present took the oath. The Europeans genuflected, the Americans saluted, the Chinese kowtowed, the Japanese bowed. All these gestures have the same meaning, and I accepted them equally. The rest was escorted to their homes to prepare their departure to our new borders. [...] My men, the children of Ninkasi, raised their guns, and thrice they cried as one: «Vive l'Empereur! Vive César Saïd!» A salvo of artillery made the distant hills tremble. The drone fleet traced My coat-of-arms in the skies.

Nine months later, the ground where Cutter's Bend once stood had been cleared of all contamination; and upon the basement of its ruins Montsalvat now glittered with marble and silver. There I kissed the hand of His Holiness Neophytus III; and there, after twenty-seven years of blood, sweat, and tears, the Titanium Crown finally rested on My brow. »

– Emperor Charles Saïd, quoted in Theophilus Singh, Historical Compendium of the Celestial Kingdom, volume III, chapter XIV, 279 AL

#speculative biology #speculative culture #scifi #worldbuilding #alien world #future history #my work #ea our second chance

[monisha1199]

The AWS Advantage: Exploring the Key Reasons Behind Its Dominance

In the ever-evolving landscape of cloud computing and web services, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as a true juggernaut. Its dominance transcends industries, making it the preferred choice for businesses, startups, and individuals alike. AWS's meteoric rise can be attributed to a potent combination of factors that have revolutionized the way organizations approach IT infrastructure and software development. In this comprehensive exploration, we will delve into the multifaceted reasons behind AWS's widespread popularity. We'll dissect how scalability, reliability, cost-effectiveness, a vast service portfolio, unwavering security, global reach, relentless innovation, and hybrid/multi-cloud capabilities have all played crucial roles in cementing AWS's position at the forefront of cloud computing.

The AWS Revolution: Unpacking the Reasons Behind Its Popularity:

1. Scalability: Fueling Growth and Flexibility AWS's unparalleled scalability is one of its defining features. This capability allows businesses to start with minimal resources and effortlessly scale their infrastructure up or down based on demand. Whether you're a startup experiencing rapid growth or an enterprise dealing with fluctuating workloads, AWS offers the flexibility to align resources with your evolving requirements. This "pay-as-you-go" model ensures that you only pay for what you use, eliminating the need for costly upfront investments in hardware and infrastructure.

2. Reliability: The Backbone of Mission-Critical Operations AWS's reputation for reliability is second to none. With a highly resilient infrastructure and a robust global network, AWS delivers on its promise of high availability. It offers a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that guarantees impressive uptime percentages, making it an ideal choice for mission-critical applications. Businesses can rely on AWS to keep their services up and running, even in the face of unexpected challenges.

3. Cost-Effectiveness: A Game-Changer for Businesses of All Sizes The cost-effectiveness of AWS is a game-changer. Its pay-as-you-go pricing model enables organizations to avoid hefty upfront capital expenditures. Startups can launch their ventures with minimal financial barriers, while enterprises can optimize costs by only paying for the resources they consume. This cost flexibility is a driving force behind AWS's widespread adoption across diverse industries.

4. Wide Range of Services: A One-Stop Cloud Ecosystem AWS offers a vast ecosystem of services that cover virtually every aspect of cloud computing. From computing and storage to databases, machine learning, analytics, and more, AWS provides a comprehensive suite of tools and resources. This breadth of services allows businesses to address various IT needs within a single platform, simplifying management and reducing the complexity of multi-cloud environments.

5. Security: Fortifying the Cloud Environment Security is a paramount concern in the digital age, and AWS takes it seriously. The platform offers a myriad of security tools and features designed to protect data and applications. AWS complies with various industry standards and certifications, providing a secure environment for sensitive workloads. This commitment to security has earned AWS the trust of organizations handling critical data and applications.

6. Global Reach: Bringing Services Closer to Users With data centers strategically located in multiple regions worldwide, AWS enables businesses to deploy applications and services closer to their end-users. This reduces latency and enhances the overall user experience, a crucial advantage in today's global marketplace. AWS's global presence ensures that your services can reach users wherever they are, ensuring optimal performance and responsiveness.

7. Innovation: Staying Ahead of the Curve AWS's culture of innovation keeps businesses at the forefront of technology. The platform continually introduces new services and features, allowing organizations to leverage the latest advancements without the need for significant internal development efforts. This innovation-driven approach empowers businesses to remain agile and competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

8. Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Capabilities: Embracing Diverse IT Environments AWS recognizes that not all organizations operate solely in the cloud. Many have on-premises infrastructure and may choose to adopt a multi-cloud strategy. AWS provides solutions for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, enabling businesses to seamlessly integrate their existing infrastructure with the cloud or even leverage multiple cloud providers. This flexibility ensures that AWS can adapt to the unique requirements of each organization.

Amazon Web Services has risen to unprecedented popularity by offering unmatched scalability, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and a comprehensive service portfolio. Its commitment to security, global reach, relentless innovation, and support for hybrid/multi-cloud environments make it the preferred choice for businesses worldwide. ACTE Technologies plays a crucial role in ensuring that professionals can harness the full potential of AWS through its comprehensive training programs. As AWS continues to shape the future of cloud computing, those equipped with the knowledge and skills provided by ACTE Technologies are poised to excel in this ever-evolving landscape.

#aws #aws course #aws training #tech

[chicademartinica]

Hello!

I made a post dissecting the songs in Sand's playlist,

https://www.tumblr.com/komorebi04san/727429100907692032/sands-only-friends-playlist-songs-meaning?source=share

I saw your comment on it! Thankyou!! I super love your blog.

So because my post was mostly about the songs' lyric interpretation, and not much on how it might possibly be hints on what is playing / about to play out in the series, I'm just wondering if you have your own take on it?

Thankyou!

Hi Fam ! Again your post about Phi Jojo’s Sand playlist was a WORK of love (and research !)

To answer your question YES I do think the director’s playlists are full of hints about the show because he has done it before. Jojo is a HUGE music an pop culture connoisseur and he made playlists like this before. The are part of his creative process. They are bluprints of sorts and we can tell by listening to the playlists of other shows. The Mama gogo, 3 will be free inspo and Two romeos and others (Totally what he listened to when making Never let me go) are still up. And it all matters the artists, the genre AND THE TITLES.

That’s why for almost a year all we had about OF was the video he did with Yinwar where he experimented with locations and vibe, the first (RIP) OF trailer and the almost 5 hours long #onlyfriendsseries playlist. Starting with who ? Amy freaking Winehouse. The tone was set and the girls were all here (Fiona Apple ! Visuals !) You can listen to that plaiylist but you can also JUST READ THE TITLES OF THE SONGS like a nice lil poem. My fave in that « on the nose » category : Fuck up the friendship by Leah Kate. (And the crazy in love haunted remix is for our boy Nicholas of course.) It’s all here and we are going to enjoy going down this road !

Bonus: Jojo said he couldn’t wait to see us make edits with O. Rodrigo’s Vampire. FUN !

#jojo tichakorn #only friends meta #only friends #Sand is the musician and the musical center #It will be interesting to see if someone else gets one #Nick do be wearing headphones a lot huh ?!!

[gust-jar-simulator]

I wanted to dissect the Twilight Beasts a bit, as well as the Fused Shadows, so:

The first major visual theme here is twinned serpents.

For the Fused Shadow, we have two snakes emerging from a central spot on the brow. They don’t take exactly the same path, and one is larger than the other, but they both travel up to the horns and seem to be breathing fire.

It’s worth noting that every Twili seems to have that same orange-blond hair, and the top of the helmet is open, so the horns curling around the gap could be meant as a compliment to the hair. Solar symbolism? Snakes embracing the sun?

The reason I bring it up is the mask of the Twilight Beasts. It could be a flower, it could be a sun, it could be both- in BOTW for example, based on some Gerudo text, the symbolism of the lotus and the sun seems entwined. Given the irl cultural influences of the Gerudo, this would make sense.

However! Either way, we have a sun being embraced by two snakes. It’s not one continuous snake, or even a two-headed snake, because you can see where the tails overlap. It kind of brings to mind the ancient Egyptian solar disc.

Lastly, there’s the scrapped Twilight Assassins that we only see in a cutscene, presumably higher level beasts ordered to guard Zant.

The mask is very plain, decorated with a entwined snakes embracing a solar symbol. It very much looks like a caduceus. Despite a lot of people mistaking it, the caduceus isn’t a symbol of medicine- that’s the rod of Asclepius, with one snake. Two snakes is the rod of Hermes, Iris, and other messengers of the Greek gods. It’s older than that and can be traced back to the symbol of Ningišzida (shown below, alongside a pot depicting Iris), a Sumerian god who travelled back and forth from the underworld.

If the Twili people are descendants of the “Interlopers”, who were come sort of rebel alliance, if their symbol is entwined snakes then I would be willing to bet it was at least two major social groups, possibly supplemented with scattered sympathetic individuals. Given the presence of the Mirror of Twilight in Arbiter’s Grounds, a Gerudo Desert location that used to be a temple to the Goddess of the Sands, at least one involved party was the Gerudo.

Given the Sheikah’s thematic connection to shadows, most particularly the presence of the Shadow Temple in Kakariko in OoT, I am convinced the other group involved was them. The depiction of the Sheikah eye can change a bit between games, but the eye on the Fused Shadow helmet in particular lacks the tear, and Twili iconography also seems to include the eye.

Anyway, this is going to be a whole ramble, so I’m making a tag for it. Keep an eye on “the interloper essay”.

#the interloper essay #loz theory #twilight princess

[kolajmag]

COLLAGE ON VIEW

Hand Cut Collage

Susan Lerner at The Smithy Market Loft Gallery in New Preston, Connecticut, USA through 31 August 2023. As a hand cut collage artist, Susan Lerner is particularly drawn to vintage imagery and maps, as they evoke a sense of familiarity and nostalgia. Her work is a reflection of the power of visual storytelling and its ability to connect us to our memories and emotions. Her process involves carefully selecting and sourcing materials from old books, magazines, found photographs and maps then excavating, dissecting and layering them to create a new narrative. By juxtaposing images from different eras and locations, she aims to create a sense of timelessness and to invite the viewer to explore the connections between seemingly disparate elements. MORE

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Kolaj Magazine, a full color, print magazine, exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present.

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#collage #collage art #collage artist #art #artist #art history #art project #art show #vintage art #art books #art education #book art #artistic #contemporary art #artwork #modern art #fine art #digital art #artist residency #artist books #contemporary artist #artist portfolio #artist book #artist profile #artist collective #Artist Interview #artists books #paper collage #collage illustration #collage painting

[seek--rest]

T*mdaya reader anon here. I decided to sleep on my reply and I'm glad I did bc I initially misread the tone of your post (responding to my first ask). Thank you for entertaining this dialogue on your blog. I think I now have a better understanding of the types of interactions/comments from T*mdaya fans (more like stans) that you have found frustrating and even troubling. I agree that the stan culture is out of control and unhealthy. I have even been troubled by the degree some fans have tracked the location of T or Z. So, maybe I'm not truly deserving of the T*mdaya label.? Ha. These labels are kinda weird AF anyway. I like Tom and Zendaya and I think they are an adorable couple. And, when I read your fics, I vaguely picture Zendaya and Tom as the physical embodiment of your Peter/MJ characters. And, that's about it -- I just let go and allow myself to be enveloped in your character arcs and story lines. Btw, I have to say that Magic Hour is truly one of my favorite fan fics. The way the racial elements are infused in the story is brilliant. You had me bawling when describing the magazine(?) interview Peter gave (the one where he essentially dissected his white privilege). My husband is a white guy, so I totally identified with this piece. It reminded me of why I married my husband -- he got it, much like Peter did in your fic. And, tbh, this is one of the reasons why I find Tom and Z so endearing -- bc I can relate to their racial dynamics (although, I'm not Black, I'm Mexican-American).

Anyway, my point here is that it seems like the concept of a T*mdaya fan is like a large umbrella encompassing fans of various, shall we say...fervency.? So, when I see someone reference a T*mdaya fan, I automatically assume that I'm included in that reference, even though that's in conflict with my feelings about labels. Thus, I got offended when my reaction to NWH was equated with that of a 12 y.o. But, now I realize you were conceptualizing a much more fervent T*mdaya stan when you wrote that.

I'm about to shut up, but I would like to point out one last thing in reference to you saying "I get squicked out at the realization of just how many people like the actors first and then the characters second, to the point of wanting what the real people do in their real lives to be represented in fic." It may be helpful for you and other authors to know that sometimes people like the actors first and then grow to love the Peter/MJ Marvel or comic characters that you have based your fics on. I have personally found Peter more and more endearing the more I read fan fics. So, for me, reading your and others' fan fics has been a gateway to appreciating the Marvel and comic characters. And, I know I'm not alone in this.

Take care and sorry for the rambling dissertation.

It's a broad label that absolutely generalizes, but is based on a lot of anecdotal experience both here and in the depths of twitter (derogatory). I know I'm not the majority when it comes to fans of the mcu versions of peter and mj (namely in that I didn't know / care / grow up with these people) but to me, it gives off the same vibes as the gwendrew fans did for TASM and why as a default I’m very much “block first ask questions later”

(Which, coincidentally enough, the desire for a happy ending for that story parallels NWH to me in a lot of ways and even more so because that's even more of a comic storyline with a definitive ending compared to Peter and MJ. Did people want Peter and Gwen to have a happy ending because they genuinely liked the characters and wanted to see them happy... or how many of those people just wanted to see an opportunity for Andrew and Emma to kiss, hold hands, and be cute on screen for fan edits and rpf fanfic or tumblr meta posts? The hundreds of tweets wanting Peter and MJ to canonically just get coffee and hold hands instead of the Spider-Man™️ ending we actually got gives me the same vibes.)

(Which isn’t to say you have to love NWH or like the ending by any means but I just— personally— don’t trust the “I hate the ending” crowd when 97% of the time it comes from someone with a Tom or Zendaya pfp, that also posts thirst traps and paparazzi photos like forgive me,,, I’m gonna have a harder time believing that’s a Character Decision Critique compared to wanting to see the blorbos kiss but that’s just me™️ — there’s LOTS of reasons to criticize NWH and lots of reasons why the ending is Not Good but almost never for the “””Right””” reasons imo but I digress)

And I should say for the record, just like there's nothing wrong with loving (1) particular adaptation, there's nothing wrong with liking the actors first and that making you love the characters as people. To me, it's less how you got here but more what you do when you ARE here.

Far it be from me to say 'you can't love peter parker unless you love THIS version' because that's dumb as hell. But the blurred line between people who like the actors, like peter and MJ and then want to effectively read fic that not only borrows from their real life and (presumed) details of their relationship, but then hyperfocuses on removing the Spider-Man™️ aspect…

It squicks me out and why I get so 🤺 about it as a rule. Reader fic exists. Regular romance novels exist. I want the Spider-Man fanfic i read to be… about Spider-Man lmao.

Nevertheless, I can’t tell people what to think (nor do I want to lmao) and there’s always exceptions to the rule. I’m very glad to hear you didn’t take my tone as anything other than what it is, polite discussion! I know I have a reputation for being ✨ bitey ✨ but 1) I rarely bite first 2) i simply love discourse I won’t lie I LIKE talking these things out, be it via anon or the DMs of which are always open!

#seek speaks #spideychelle #petermj #ngl you censoring t*mdaya had me on the floor (in a good way)

[passimtemere]

Sushi and Shadows: boarding school years.

Benni, Karnus, and Syliph had just completed a long day at school and decided to convene at their cherished sushi spot, conveniently located near their campus. Before school started, Alphonse had emphasized to them the importance of their sibling bond, despite their individuality and desire for independence, suggesting they make an effort to catch up weekly. Initially, they had brushed off this notion, but being creatures of habit, they frequently found themselves at the same sushi place. Perhaps it was the diverse menu that catered to their varying tastes or the secluded seating area in the back, where Karnus could assume his eccentric positions, Bennie could enjoy some privacy, and Syliph could sink into a comfortable armchair.

Their conversations flowed naturally.

"So, Benni, I heard you've become quite popular in the theatre club. I never thought of you as someone with stage presence," Karnus remarked, dramatically lounging upside down on the couch, making it seem like his legs were doing the talking.

"Well, I guess it's all the trauma that makes method acting easier. Plus, I needed an extra elective besides culinary arts, so I thought I could bluff my way through acting class by mimicking Dad," Benni explained with a shrug.

"Oh, that's funny, I'll be keeping an eye out for that. And Sy, how's religious studies treating you?" Karnus asked, a bit unsure where this topic might lead with his bookish brother.

Syliph sighed. "It's not as diverse or intellectually stimulating as I hoped. The professor seems fixated on exploring colonial perspectives of different cultures, which is disappointing considering he's a universalist. I thought he'd be more open-minded, but the classes are disappointingly one-sided. Maybe he's just pretending to be open-minded; I don't know."

Karnus shifted to lie down on the couch, making it easier to sneak a piece of sushi from Benni's plate and pop it into his mouth. "Wow, that's rough," he said, sounding almost nonchalant, though Syliph seemed to miss the hint.

"I know! There are so many captivating cultural beliefs to explore from different angles. I do all my research by immersing myself in the time and place I'm studying. How would my daily life be perceived through my beliefs? But no, he wants us to dissect these beliefs in a clinical manner. I even wrote a thought-provoking dissenting essay on this issue to the department head, who completely ignored it," Syliph lamented, taking a sip of his boba tea.

Bennie couldn't help but smile at Syliph's intellectual frustrations. "Well, you could consider asking Dad to help you gain admission to collegiate cou—" Bennie began, but Syliph cut them off.

"I'd rather not," Syliph bristled at the suggestion. They all often felt overshadowed by Alphonse's influence, making it challenging to establish themselves independently.

Bennie nodded. "Fair enough," they said, swatting Karnus's hand away as he made another attempt to pilfer a piece of sushi.

-------------

@fashionablyenigmatic

#submission #benni #Syliph #Karnus #AU #c: syliph #c: karnus #c: benni #save #fashionablyenigmatic

[ledenvs3000w23]

7. Nature Interpretation Through Music

Although asking where is music in nature and where is nature in music may appear as straight forward questions, there is much to dissect. Nature and music heavily influence one another, they are constantly overlapping, and building off each other. For me, answering these questions involves both subjectivity and objectivity. On one hand I have a clear understanding of where I notice music in nature and nature in music. However, then there are areas where I cannot distinguish where is music in nature and where is nature in music because of how interconnected music and nature are. I believe there are areas where both music can be seen in nature and nature can be seen in music simultaneously. One example where I see the two concepts/questions co-existing is at the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheatre located in Morrison, Colorado.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYyj49Ft/

TikTok User: makaylasutton Performer: Zach Bryan Location: Red Rocks Park Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado

Venues and locations such as this one creates opportunities for music to exist in natural landscapes, while also allowing nature to be incorporated into a musical experience. Their mutual existence provides this extremely impactful and novel experience that can move people in ways that may not be achievable without either factor. For me, these kinds of interactions hugely impact the way I value concerts; I feel far more inclined to spend money on an experience that feels all-encompassing. I am the most present when I can turn my face up to the sky and take in my surroundings, whether it be a starry night, a clear blue day, or torrential downpour, while being exposed to the organic nature of live music that creates the most synergetic, synchronized experience.  

All over the world ancestral and indigenous groups have developed musical practices and ceremonies that provide varying meaning and importance to each group. Majority of indigenous and ancestral groups have a close relationship with nature, often viewing themselves and nature as part of an extended ecological family that shares ancestry and origins. There is a perceived relatedness to each other and all natural elements of an ecosystem that is honoured, respected, and celebrated (Salmón, 2000). The ceremonies and practices that take place to honour, respect and celebrate this close relationship often take place in nature, incorporate nature, and/or are heavily influenced by nature. For example, Inuit ceremonies and celebrations tell stories, mimic nature, and celebrate events such as the first successful hunt of a young boy or the birth of a child using drums made from caribou skin. In addition, another cultural practice is Inuit throat singing which replicates the sounds of nature, such as a flock of geese or the Qamuti gliding on ice (Stepping Stones, 2019). This serves as another intersection where both music can be found in nature and nature can be found in music.

There are so many ways to perceive where is music in nature and where is nature in music. Music in nature can be seen through animals and the ambient sounds of different biomes. Whales, birds, and humans have many similarities in structure in the songs they use to communicate such as rhythmic variation, pitch relationships, permutations, and combinations of notes (Gray et al. 2001). In The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music there is mention if songs can be defined as “any rhythmic repeated utterance,” if so then I consider the sounds of waves crashing on a beach or the sounds of a storm to be an example of music in nature (Gray et al. 2001). Similarly, to indigenous songs and music, nature can be seen in music through folk singers and poets in all cultures. There is expression of the relationship between man and nature, and traditional ways of co-operation with nature through this art form (Sahi, 2012). In addition, nature can be seen in both modern and traditional music through the integration of natural sounds (Sahi, 2012). For example, the intro to a song I love called, Short Change Hero truly sets a scene for the rest of the song; you can hear thunder and wind from a storm, and the rustling of dirt and gravel underneath someone’s feet as they walk. Although both music and nature are beautiful on their own and both can be seen in one another, nothing may be more impactful than the connectivity between the two and what it can do for life on earth.

The song Candy by Paolo Nutini is a song that I connect to in many ways; I think the main reason why I feel such a strong connection to this song is because of the feelings and memories it evokes. I listened to this song on my first solo trip out west to British Columbia, a place I have a deep love for due to my previous trips and family ties. This was my first time going alone; I was coming out of a time where I felt like I was facing so many tests to see if I was strong enough to be there for myself and trust that I was ready to face whatever was thrown my way. At the time it was the freest I had ever felt, I believed that nothing could stand in my way. This was the song I listened to as my plane took off from Toronto during sunset, it was the first song I played when I left my hotel for any adventure on the west coast, and it was what I listened to when I was admiring and reflecting on the beauty of British Columbia. However, the core memory I associate it with was when I was hiking the Whistler and Blackcomb Mountain range. I had never experienced anything like it; although it was not the top of the world, it felt like it. It was late August, so the air was still warm, but the mountain breeze was crisp and the freshest air I had been exposed to. I don’t know how many times I listened to this song when I was up there, but every time I hear it, I am flooded with memories and feelings from that trip to the mountains.  

This is a photo of me at the top of Blackcomb Mountain 

Gray, P. M., Krause, B., Atema, J., Payne, R., Krumhansl, C., & Baptista, L. (2001). The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music. Science’s Compass, 29, 52-54.

Sahi, V. (2012). Using folk traditional music to communicate the sacredness of nature in Finland. In Mallarach, J.-M. (Ed.), Spiritual Values of Protected Areas of Europe Workshop Proceedings (129-132). Bundesamt für Naturschutz.

Salmón, E. (2000). Kincentric Ecology: Indigenous perceptions of the human–nature relationship. Ecological Applications, 10(5), 1327–1332. https://doi.org/10.1890/1051-0761(2000)010[1327:keipot]2.0.co;2  

Stepping Stones. (2019). First Nations, Métis and Inuit Music and Dance (Chapter 10). Alberta Teachers’ Association Walking Together: Education for Reconciliation. https://legacy.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/For%20Members/ProfessionalDevelopment/Walking%20Together/PD-WT-16j-10%20Music%20and%20Dance.pdf

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@echobled​ sent: hisui is... not staring at the pretty au ra, no. perish the thought.

          stares weren’t foreign to yugiri mistwalker; in fact, she had become accustomed to them— all kinds of stares: from the unfriendly ones to the more favourable pleasant ones, from the frightful ones to the reverent ones, she suffered them wherever and whenever she appeared as if she wasn’t a person of her own but a mere exotic creature to be dissected apart, scrutinised even for breathing. it used to bother her so much that she, in desperation, despite lord hien’s attempt to reassure her there was no such thing, resorted to finding safety in the comfort of garments covering every bit of skin, and concealing any hints of flawed oddity that might attract unwanted attention; it was cowardly, she knew, but at that time, what could she probably have done to change the situation? today was a different story though. things had changed drastically, and so did yugiri mistwalker. 

           no longer coweing beneath the false sense of security, yugiri was now proudly embracing her heritage as a raen aura of sui-no-sato descendent, and of doman cultures in the far-away land of eorzea. although much more work needed to be done before the alienation completely went away, she was comfortable enough to walk the crowded streets of ul’dah bare faced. still clad in armour and fully armed of course lest unfortunate events befell her (she surely hoped her luck wasn’t that... rotten), but this was definitely a change, a development, a step forward to reach for promising prospects. however, it didn’t mean she was comfortable with stares that lingered longer than neccessary no matter what the intentions were, be it good or ill or whatever in between— she had had enough of that to last a lifetime. if her days with the scions had taught her anything, it was the bravery to speak for one’s self, to not be afraid and stand one’s ground.

          with a sharp turn, yugiri quickly located the source of the staring and approached them: it was another raen aura, surprisingly, someone who share a bit of similarities with her in this sea of strangers. nevertheless, that couldn’t dissipate the mild annoyance which was threatening to surface any minute.     ‘ pardon my sudden intrusion but, ’     she said once she was within talking range, polite as ever despite the furrowing brows suggesting otherwise.     ‘ is there something you wish to speak to me? ’

#echobled. #ic. / in character #ii. endwalker verse. / blood-red skies tranquil after the storm #jkdnfjksndfn #yugiri can be very frightening #i pet hisui

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Watch Usama Bhalli viral video on Twitter and reddit

Watch Usama Bhalli viral video on Twitter and reddit

 In the ever-evolving landscape of social media, certain videos emerge as unexpected sensations, capturing the attention and intrigue of viewers across platforms like TikTok. Among these digital phenomena is the Usama Bhalli scandal, a series of leaked videos that have sparked widespread discussion and controversy. In this comprehensive analysis, we delve into the depths of the Usama Bhalli scandal, exploring its origins, impact, and the deeper implications it holds for online culture.At the center of the Usama Bhalli scandal are a series of leaked videos that have sent shockwaves through the online community. Shot in various locations and featuring Usama Bhalli, a figure of prominence in the digital realm, these videos offer a glimpse into a world of secrecy, intrigue, and scandal. From whispered conversations to incriminating footage, the Usama Bhalli scandal has captured the imagination of viewers worldwide, leaving many eager to uncover the truth behind the headlines.

Watch Usama Bhalli viral video on Twitter 

The origins of the Usama Bhalli scandal remain murky, with conflicting accounts and rumors swirling around its inception. Some speculate that the videos were leaked by insiders seeking to expose wrongdoing, while others suggest they were part of a larger smear campaign aimed at tarnishing Bhalli's reputation. Regardless of their origins, the videos quickly gained traction on TikTok, where users shared and reshared them, fueling speculation and debate.As the scandal spread, so too did the proliferation of related content, with users creating videos discussing, dissecting, and even parodying the leaked footage. From conspiracy theories to investigative deep dives, the Usama Bhalli scandal became a focal point of conversation on social media platforms, drawing attention from both fans and critics alike.

Watch Usama Bhalli viral video on  reddit

The impact of the Usama Bhalli scandal has been far-reaching, affecting not only Bhalli himself but also the broader landscape of online culture. For Bhalli, the scandal has led to a loss of credibility and trust among his followers, many of whom have expressed disappointment and disillusionment in the wake of the revelations. Moreover, the scandal has raised questions about accountability and transparency in the digital age, prompting discussions about the responsibilities of influencers and public figures on social media platforms.

Beyond its immediate fallout, the Usama Bhalli scandal has highlighted larger issues related to privacy, consent, and online ethics. As viewers grapple with questions of voyeurism and exploitation, the scandal serves as a sobering reminder of the risks inherent in our increasingly interconnected digital world. Moreover, it underscores the need for greater awareness and vigilance when it comes to navigating the complexities of online interactions and relationships.

Watch Usama Bhalli viral video on Twitter and reddit

Central to the Usama Bhalli scandal is the narrative constructed around the leaked videos, which often depict Bhalli in compromising or incriminating situations. As viewers analyze the footage and accompanying commentary, they are confronted with conflicting accounts and interpretations, each vying for attention and credibility. Some view Bhalli as a victim of manipulation and betrayal, while others see him as a willing participant in his own downfall.As the narrative unfolds, viewers are forced to confront their own biases and assumptions, challenging them to question the reliability of information and the motivations behind its dissemination. In an era defined by fake news and digital misinformation, the Usama Bhalli scandal serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of jumping to conclusions and forming judgments based on incomplete or manipulated evidence.

Watch Usama Bhalli viral video on Twitter 

As the dust settles on the Usama Bhalli scandal, one thing is clear: the reverberations will be felt for years to come. From its origins as a series of leaked videos to its broader implications for online culture, the scandal has sparked important conversations about privacy, ethics, and accountability in the digital age. As we reflect on the events that transpired, it is crucial to approach the Usama Bhalli scandal with nuance and empathy, recognizing the complexity of the issues at hand and the human beings affected by them.

Moving forward, it is imperative that we remain vigilant in our consumption of online content, questioning the narratives presented to us and interrogating the motivations behind their creation. By fostering a culture of critical thinking and digital literacy, we can work towards a more transparent and equitable online landscape, where truth and integrity prevail over sensationalism and exploitation. In doing so, we honor the lessons learned from the Usama Bhalli scandal and pave the way for a more ethical and responsible digital future. Source link Read the full article

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