AnnAisu's reblogs! Updates at 6-9 EST. Non-fiction, Fiction, and My Stuff. This exists so I can freely reblog whatever catches my eye, and yet leave my main blog focused on my writings and crafts!
I think the aversion in our society to coming up w/ utilitarian answers to ethical questions (my favorite hobby) has caused us to cede way too much ground to the assholes of the world in the vein of "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb," as Dark Helmet put it. Like.
Laypeople (and also a concerning number of scientists) have often got the idea that unethical human experimentation is some sort of ultra-effective super science that would fix all the disease and discover all of the medicine and we only don't do it because it isn't nice (see: every science fiction show ever). No! Jumping straight from abstract theory to human trials is a terrible way to do science. It produces incoherent results and useless observations and nonsensical conclusions. We have pages and pages of historical precedent demonstrating this.
And lots of people have got the idea that totalitarianism is some sort of magic super-government that does all the government stuff really effectively abd efficiently and we only don't do it because it isn't nice. No!!!! "Let's put one idiot in charge and do whatever dumb shit they say" is the worst way to organize any project at all, let alone an economy and a political machine. Fascist regimes are models of corruption, waste, and inefficiency.
mengela discovered nothing. 731 discovered nothing. Residential school trials discovered nothing. Unethical medical trials are just cruelty by mediocre people. None of the doctors in these unethical trials were outstanding students or notable doctors. We dont need science fiction we just need history and honesty.
In addition to its being niceys, ethics is a form of rigor. Someone who disregards ethics is (1) Doing It Wrong and (2) just as likely to disregard any other forms of rigor they decide they don't like.
(original tags: she literally had tears in her eyes while she explained that her pikachu had a boy tail shape. i was like hey she can still be a girl. all we know from her body shape is what her body is shaped like. maybe if we asked her she would say that she feels like she’s really a girl. and my kid was like BUT POKEMON CANT TALK 😭😭😭😭 so i was like ‘ok. pikachu. if you want to use he/him say ‘pika’. if you want to use she/her say ‘chu’. and if you want smth else say ‘pikachu’’. and my daughter had her say ‘chu’ and i was like see there you go! now. she doesn’t HAVE to change her tail shape. she can totally be a girl with a rectangle tail. but if she would feel more comfortable with heart shape bc she prefers it, or so that people won’t assume she’s a boy, i can make that happen. so pikachu what do you think? do you want tail surgery? and pikachu agreed enthusiastically! so. plushie gender-affirming surgery first thing tomorrow i guess!)
her results look great, congrats pikachu! 💖⚡️🏳️⚧️
I can't believe this is how I'm finding out that I got a scam forklift cert.
I took the cargo ops class at school but my teacher explained that it doesn't give a certification and I'd only be okay for ship's crane and the school forklifts. she said I could take an online exam and get my cert. I paid 60 bucks.
I'm googling and I'm seeing a lot of resources saying that the online programs cover the classroom part of the exam but not the in person practical aspect.
the back of the card even had fancy numbers on it. I couldn't have known that this isn't the one. this website sounded more official than certifyme.net, and there wasn't one with a .gov address.
so, I emailed OSHA, and they said that so long as I live and work in California, there's no such thing as forklift certification. I have to be told how to do it every time I get the job.
Update: I took a certification class in shipboard Material Handling Equipment at my federal job. *now* I'm forklift certified, but only on ships and piers and only for this company, but also rated to forklift explosives and hazardous materials. Also I'm a woman now.
I remember seeing a reddit post going around that compared pidw to the popular light novel Against the Gods to great comic effect, and the whole thing might honestly be more comical than what the memes suggest.
Because as far as I can tell, these two novels started serializing at almost exactly the same time.
If the publicly available info is correct, this means that neither work could be directly inspired by the other, and goes to show just how derivative and predictable this genre of power fantasy has become at this point in time.
A more direct translation of this type of fiction is the "stud novel", initially said with some humor and probably some self-deprecation. The thing about the word "zhongma" (种马), or stud, is that it doesn't have the same kind of situationally flattering connotations as its English counterpart, and literally just means a male horse used for breeding. You'd never see a popular lady's man and say "ah, what a zhongma." The more romantic translation of "stallion" came later. It's considered a sub-genre of the broader "YY novel" genre (lit. translation "mentally masturbatory novel), which just means fantastical wish-fulfillment light novels with no interest in realism, and does not necessarily have to do with sex.
(As a side note, "shooting airplane" literally means "to masturbate". It's not so much a metaphor as just one of the most common and direct euphemisms for masturbation.)
I've seen too many "stallion" novels, mostly from the 2000s, that follow the exact same formula as both pidw and Against the Gods that I honestly can't tell you which ones probably went into inspiring pidw, because they all blur together into a giant skinner box of never-ending dopamine loops and same-y story arcs.
One thing about these books is that most (successful ones) were not the kind of ultra pornographic, out-there kinky stories we sometimes associate pidw with, and they were more concerned with massaging the (default straight male) reader's ego and their dopamine addiction than their cucumber. Some had decent female followings, too, though women were clearly not the main target audience. One story I do still remember, funnily enough, had a protagonist also named Bing something, and I remember it mostly because it was a sort of bizarre combination of Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, high fantasy wizard fights, revenge drama, and the usual harem shenanigans.
That is to say, the idea of a gary stu demon emperor who also mains cooking isn't all that strange for a Chinese power fantasy protagonist. Most of these protagonists all share very similar origin stories. The secret heir of some great power, a pretty-boy blessed with a special "golden finger", which only unlocks after a obligatory whump period to make the eventual payoff all the sweeter.
Many of these protagonists, a stereotypical "straight dude" Western™️ reader might find goofy, or strange, or straight up effeminate. They embody a very Chinese millennial kind of machismo that's less Batman and more Monkey King but unimaginably conventionally attractive--conventionally attractive as in tall, athletic but still slender, pretty but not girl-pretty. The truly androgynous sort of look is usually reserved for antagonists (hi, Dongfang Bubai). The hunks are usually the sidekicks (hello, mobei-jun).
But don't mistake most of these "softer" harem novel mcs for anything but raging misogynists; it's just that often times, when looking in from another culture, their brand of misogyny might appear to flip flop between cartoonishly heinous to too subtle to notice. To be fair, I don't think most of these authors were deliberately writing misogynistic stories to make some kind of political point, it's just that the end result is usually no less grim or revealing. It was a sort of "naive art," especially during the early days when the genre was still consolidating into the cultural behemoth it eventually became, and direct engagement with gender discourse was low.
So here comes Bingge, who could almost, almost be considered a working class hero if you disregard the fact that he is literally royalty, and that he acquires inconceivable wealth, and that he eventually becomes the absolute monarch of the entire known universe. He supposedly comes from nothing, and was probably considered no better than a slave during his early childhood arc (all we know is that his mother was a washerwoman who worked for some noble house. This was usually a slave or indentured servant's job.)
The brief facade of an underdog narrative is all but mandatory in these types of stories, and it speaks of the contradictory impulses that demand the protagonist be simultaneously relatable and all-powerful. He should become the preeminent establishment, but also be anti-establishment in a cool rebellious way. He should destroy all the corrupt sects, kill all the evil shizuns, slay all the unjust gods, but only if he gets to replace the gods and be even more powerful than all of them combined.
The harem part of the stories also hone in on the same kind of contradictions. The protagonist spends pages waxing poetics about the women he meets, but is too cool for school and usually doesn't care much for actual believable relationships. He's kind of down-to-earth, but also an untouchable sex god. Everybody he non-cons falls in love with him eventually. He is also non-conned sometimes but it's fine because he likes it. There's this palpable sense of earnest anguish to the whole sex god thing that you'd probably immediately pick up on if you read one of these stories, in that it's painfully clear that neither the writer nor the intended reader has any idea what a plausible sex god might look like from their own pov.
This leaves Bingge in a bit of a strange place, because svsss' parody of a stallion novel is more or less a perfect copy of these patterns, until it all falls apart the moment Bingge gets displaced into the "main" svsss world. It takes him all of two hours to start questioning it all, leading to one of the most weirdly macabre moments of the novel. I don't think the Bingge vs Bingmei incident was even meant to be all that disturbing, but it ends up creating something that comes across as indescribably miserable, as the fandom is deeply aware. This cheerfully fan-servicy wish-fulfilment story, created by some (probably closeted) young author to cheer up, de-stress, and numb the pain of millions of readers with gratuitous dopamine loops, accidentally results in existential dread so uncontainable that it breaks dimensions and grows genuinely monstrous in all its assumptions and implications.
RIP Bingge. To yall reading this, thanks for coming along for the rambling ride, and I hope you never find yourself stuck at home and your family keeps buying you random stallion novels off the bestselling rack because they seem to be popular with the Kids. Unless you're into that kind of thing, of course. Fiction!
#I think the fandom would benefit from reading more genuine stallion novels and/or webtoons#bc it really does enhance one's understanding of bingge AND shen Yuan#ALSO bingmei ie how he very much diverges from a “stallion protag” in both his purposeful actions like whining/crying#and his more genuine moments where he's emotionally volatile and clearly hates himself#(not to mention that he dreams of domestic peace and bliss above all else) - via @ruri-rari
Because ao3’s tagging system explicitly allows romantic pairings in Gen fics as long as the relationship is not the focus of the fic.
(But real talk: this comes up a lot on Tumblr and on r/ao3 and while most people know the Gen fic rules, there’s always a portion of people who don’t and get extremely frustrated when they can’t find a fic devoid of romantic relationships. Which is valid! But definitely not a reason to blame authors or their fics.
What concerns me is the growing amount of people who acknowledge ao3’s correct tagging rules and then say “well I don’t like/believe in it” and proceed to ignore the rules and continue to be upset because they don’t want it to be a rule and they think they can apply their own “beliefs” to the system and others should too.
That’s not how rules work.
If you want to change ao3, join the OTW. Run for one of their elected seats. Petition for a rule change, etc. Help wrangle the “no relationships” tags and encourage use of one others might want too.
But stop treating every relationship like it’s icky and that others are morally inferior because they’re okay with the Gen rules. You don’t make the rules, and that’s a good thing!
Also, an ao3 without relationships in gen fics? There would be so many batfamily fics disappearing because of a 200 word section buried in one chapter of 34 where Bruce and Clark interact and are presumably together!)
I've seen people say that Asgore doesn't care about the flowers like at all because he ignores them or that he's waaay worse in deltarune than in undertale and that's just???? Not true???
Like cool I guess you skipped over the part where he explicitly says that he still thought their gestures were thoughtful and that all of them seemed like lovely people, and his eyes noticably shine when thinking about it
I guess you skipped over the part where he says he literally can't stay with them because he has to keep them alive!!! Which he wants to do!!!!
I guess you didn't see the part where he then mentions that he wants to keep taking care of them not because of misguided nostalgia but because they're important to him for different reasons now! Like????
Yeah, he's a dick for ignoring them, like he's a dick for ignoring his own kids, the latter of which he realizes and apologizes for– and he might? be apologizing for the former as well here depending on who he's referring to by "everyone"
True, Asgore IS wrong for that. He's wrong for that and it's meant to parallel how he was wrong for what he did in Undertale. This is not exclusive to Deltarune in any way and he's not somehow only worse here. Asgore declared war on all humankind like an idiot because his two kids died to them and he was wracked with guilt over it . And the thing is I don't think the situation is all that different in spirit?
The holidays and the dreemurrs were CLOSE. Close close. He's known Carol and Rudy for AGES. Rudy was the best man at his wedding, presumably his college roommate and his best friend, their kids grew up alongside eachother and were just as close, and he was the head of the police (AKA in charge of making sure everyone is safe). And then, whatever happened to Dess happened to Dess. Under his watch! Obviously he's obsessed with it because he can't even look his sick best friend Rudy or a clearly silently grieving Carol in the eyes without somewhere in the back of his head being reminded of it.
And obviously he's MAD at the person he thinks committed that injustice. He's willing to wage a war against all humans for his own kids, I'm not surprised he's willing to kill one person who in his eyes did something horrible to Dess and has been a danger to all of hometown.
Undertale Asgore had decades to cool down from his rage and realize he fucked up by letting his guilt drive him the first time (not that that helped him become less self hating or guilty) so it's logical to me that Deltarune Asgore is still on about bloody vengeance. We're just witnessing it directly for the first time.
I don't know what my point here is. I guess my point is that Asgore was never going to be in the right mental headspace for the flowers' attempts at connecting with him to work, not because he doesn't give a shit about them, but because he has the Asgore tunnelvision switched on that makes him blind to whatever he needs to sacrifice in the name of the greater good.
I also ☝️ think that flowery making him realize how he's acting to Toriel is about more than just "oh that was harassment"
The fact that he mentions playing along and thinking it was thoughtful but the affection still not being asked for, feels like it (in drawing that comparison in the first place) implies to me
that that's what toriel is doing, playing along and not being as firm as she is in undertale because she doesn't hate him (she prays for him in church, she waters the flowers even though she throws them in the trash, she expresses her gratitude to Rudy for Carol helping him out even if she doesn't like her funding his conspiracies)
And she might appreciate the gesture, she might not want to hurt his feelings and just want to go on with her day so she keeps letting him down easy instead of putting her foot down (which he misinterprets). He doesn't just realize what he's been doing because he couldn't figure out harassment was bad?? he realizes the true context of toriels actions towards him which he had been tunnelvision rationalizing as something else. She was just playing along, like he is.
Anyway this post is far too fucking long already. Conclusion: you can hate Asgore all you want for his actions because they're definitely Bad, but one thing you can't do is claim he's being purposefully malicious because that's simply Not The Case.
Also! Deltarune Asgore is not in fact worse than Undertale Asgore because Deltarune Asgore didn't murder six children! Come on now
It is the task of older generations to bear witness to the younger, to recount the events of their lives, so that they are remembered. These personal, first-hand accounts are as important to history as any formal documentation … and because those official accounts often play to an agenda, they are often more important.
In these troubled times, those who have borne witness to the atrocities of the past continue this vital task, standing firm against those who would deny their role in repeating the worst and darkest moments of the last century.
Their words must be heard. There are some things that we must always remember, some things that we must never forget.
But not all of these are hard, dark things. History is more than bleak cruelty. There are moments of light, of hope, of triumph, and it is our duty to remember and share these, as well, to keep that light of hope alive.
I am, as I write, listening to one of those moments, courtesy of https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/, a real-time replay of the Apollo 11 flight. A few minutes ago, I heard Neil Armstrong announce those immortal words: “The Eagle Has Landed.”
I heard them when they were first uttered.
My memories of the Apollo program are entwined with my memories of my mother, who left us not long ago. We watched every one of the Apollo flights, and she kept us home from school to do so on at least one of them. (Of course, one of her Good Republican Cloth Coat acquaintances asked her, “aren’t you worried that they’ll miss something important in school?” I can only image the LOOK Mom must have given them when she responded, “What could be more important than THIS?”) *
I have always suspected that the midsummer scheduling of Apollo 11 was no accident: only the most ardent space flight devotees (like my family) were glued to the television for the dry runs of 8, 9, and 10, but NASA knew that when it was time for the actual landing, the whole world would just stop.
I am aware that much of the manned space program of my childhood was political. The “Space Race” was as much for prestige as for science, a grandiose game of Capture the Flag played to one-up our Soviet counterparts. That’s the official account, these days. That’s the excuse for canceling the last three Apollo missions, the justification for half a century of shoestring budgets. We “won the race,” so why should we still keep running?
I suppose that in the adult world of 1969, this was common knowledge, the enthusiasm leavened with the world-weary cynicism of the times.
But I was five. All I knew about the Soviet Union was that they called their astronauts “cosmonauts.” I didn’t have politics: I had WONDER. I BELIEVED.
I know that I will always see the events of that day through that five-year-old’s eyes … but I have to think that, when the Eagle landed, and a few hours later, when Armstrong took that One Small Step … for just a day, even just an hour … three and a half billion human beings let themselves believe, too. For all the cynical rhetoric then and now about the Apollo program being a nationalistic publicity stunt … for a brief, fragile moment, this was a victory not just for the United States, but for humanity as a whole.
The truth of Apollo 11 isn’t in the flag they raised, which toppled in the exhaust of their departure and has almost certainly faded in half a century of the hard and unrelenting lunar sunlight. It’s etched in the plaque on the leg of the lunar module, in gleaming stainless steel:
HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969, A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND
For all mankind.
Look into the night sky tonight, at the the waning gibbous Moon.
And remember:
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, we reached for the Moon, and had it in our grasp.
That we let it go all too soon doesn’t matter: we have touched the sky.
All of us.
In the face of tyranny and cruelty, in the face of catastrophe, remember what we have done, and dare to believe in what we yet can do.
I normally save this one for Moon Landing Day on July 20th, but withy yesterday’s launch of Artemis II, I thought it appropriate to bring it back early.
Certainly, all of the emotional resonance still holds true for me. I am certainly of the political and propaganda aspects of this flight, but in this midst of all this hellish turmoil, I am setting those aside to let my inner child embrace that sense of joy and wonder and unity.
We’re going back to the moon.
And, yes, “we.” Much of the lead-in to yesterday’s launch on NASA’s streaming service was full of idealistic rhetoric about “discovery and exploration for all”, and certainly, there is an element of propaganda there. But I think that for the astronauts and the support staff behind them, those ideals are sincere. The mission patch encapsulates it, with the “AII” deliberately depicted in such a way that it spells “All”:
[source]
Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen. You carry our hopes and dreams with you. Clear skies.
Since I haven't seen anybody else do it (admittedly, I haven't looked that hard), I decided to compile all the big Transfem Ralsei stuff in Deltarune Chapter 5, since some people apparently still "don't see it." I hope this list makes it clear that it's almost certainly not just an allegory, and especially that Toby would have to be really stupid to not know what he was doing with Ralsei in this chapter. This is all the obvious in-text evidence I was able to find, but feel free to respond with additional evidence if you have any:
• The whole hidden Princess Ralsei scene in Castle Town locked behind the climbing game. The whole thing. All of it.
Ralsei says this: "Turns out the other princesses they put up here, mostly left..." "But, I can be your princess, Kris! If you want me to be!" [Source]
If you respond with "Nah bro...", they change their clothes back and say this: "Umm, okay! I suppose I do have more experience being a prince..." "I hope that will be sufficient for you!!" [Source]
If you respond with "Of course!": "Really!? Oh, I'm so excited!" "I've been a prince for a while, but I haven't been a princess yet." "I suppose the only difference is how you present yourself..." "But, it's fun to try new things, isn't it...?" "... as long as it's... what other people want, of course!" They also do a cute lil' pose and are clearly more excited by this option. [Source]
• Ralsei's introduction in Chapter 5 is them literally coming out of a closet (wardrobe, whatever). This closet is full of hats, something which is used pretty consistently as a symbol of repression for Ralsei.
• In the "Close eyes and think about Ralsei" scene, Flowery offers Ralsei a blue-and-pink drink voucher, saying they were "staring at it the longest." This is followed by the only instance of Flowery referring to just Ralsei specifically as "Princess," which seemingly makes Ralsei blush. Not to mention this scene features Ralsei praying into a pool of water at their own reflection... [Source]
I'd like to add onto this that, while yes, blue and pink are Kris and Susie's colors, the game never actually refers to Susie as being "pink" to my knowledge. I checked and I'm pretty sure she's only ever referred to as "purple," even in the Dark World. (I think Toby Fox is kinda colorblind and doesn't know Susie is pink tbh)
• During the battle with Pink, an extremely obvious trans allegory, Ralsei paraphrases something they said about themself in Chapter 4 to convince Pink to cooperate with her body: "Pink, your BODY... it's... its own person, too." "It has its own likes... its own dislikes." [Source]
Here's Ralsei's dialogue from Chapter 4, for comparison: "I'm starting to feel like..." "Like I'm developing my own opinions." "My own likes." "My own dislikes." [Source]
• At the end of Chapter 5, the Power Menu refers to Ralsei with they/them pronouns: "LV 5 Dark Vine" "Watering their own thorns." [Source]
This has never been the case in previous chapters. For instance: "LV1 Prickly Prince" "Deals damage with his rugged scarf." [Source]
• Asgore refers to Ralsei with they/them pronouns at the end of Chapter 5. This is the first time a character hasn't immediately recognized Ralsei as a boy. What he says when you talk to him twice is also very interesting:
"(Kris's other friend...)" "(It's strange. At a glance, they look a bit like Asriel...)" "(But, the longer you look...)" "(The harder it is to tell if they're a monster at all.)" [Source]
"(Even if they look that way, Kris accepts them...)" "(I hope they realize they don't have to hide themself.)" [Source]
Here's the point of all this: Galsei believers aren't trying to "take away" femboy Ralsei, they're just paying attention to some pretty on-the-nose subtext the game is laying out. Both interpretations of the character are good and valid, but Ralsei's struggle with identity and personhood is core to their character and one that many trans people resonate with. If Ralsei was trans, it would add even more depth and complexity to their character and their choice to defy the prophecy. Not to mention, it would be wonderful representation!
Dialogue sourced from the Deltarune Text Dump. Most screenshots sourced from Vargskelethor's playthrough.
I truly love how much of a hater Ralsei is this chapter
Thinking about it now, logically, it’s probably Kris preventing us from turning Flowery’s voice lines back on in the menu. It’s our shared menu, after all. But I think it would be really funny if it was Ralsei reaching into the menu and just going, “No.” (This is also legitimately what I thought was happening as I was playing. I’m going to choose to continue to believe. It’s funnier this way)
Saying goodbye to the flowers feels so surreal cause it's like hi beautiful brand new characters I met you when I was in high school. I knew you by your stat buffs and the places you left the things you loved. I know how each one of you died. You've been here the whole time but I only just got to know you properly. I love you. I am so honored to witness your dream.
