hello, i'm cata - welcome to my mini log for random thoughts and sometimes my art
tags: book thoughts, game thoughts, my fanart, kpop stuff
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@catacatacaka
hello, i'm cata - welcome to my mini log for random thoughts and sometimes my art
tags: book thoughts, game thoughts, my fanart, kpop stuff
other links: my carrd
"at least the world will end faggily"
đđđđđđ
[stumbling out of the new lady gaga album covered in blood] we are so back.
Weâre Leaving YouTube
check out http://watchertv.com !
i get people donât like to pay for things that were once free. but paying people fairly and making a survivable living while making cool things is HARD. even with ads. i think what the fellows are cooking up will be well worth it tbh!!!
Sara, the fact that you made this post strongly implies that Watcher Entertainment did not consult a PR specialist, or employed someone to agree with everything theyâve said.
Iâm not going to repeat what everyone else has said about how tone deaf and manipulative the language youâve used is, but what I will say is this:
I have worked in one of the international offices of one of the large streaming services for almost 10 years, and Iâve watched Ryan and Shane casually since early Buzzfeed days.
As soon as Watcher Entertainment became a streaming service, their Youtube audience stopped being their âFansâ and 'Communityâ and became their 'Customersâ.
Customers vote with their wallets. The price point WE has gone for, with the volume of content theyâre providing is not worth the monthly cost compared to other streaming services in the already oversaturated market.
Thatâs one thing. The other is the very strange tone youâve all gone for that implies none of them make enough money. Imagine if Jeff Bezos or David Zaslav put out a tweet saying they didnât have enough money to follow their dream and asking for support, while simultaneously posting instagram pics of their lifestyles that their CUSTOMERS couldnât ever hope to acheive (an exaggerated comparison, but you get the point).
Again, everyoneâs already said this, but we have visibility on at least an estimate on what WE makes monthly. Itâs clear that none of the 25 employees work on company budgetting or PR.
WE have already made a terrible decision by not putting out any statement in the past 48 hours, but if they continue to stay silent for the next 24 then the live shows tomorrow are not going to go well for them. I would almost be inclined to recommend cancelling the shows.
In summary: WE and those around them need some global perspective. This isnât a Witch Hunt. Sometimes when everyone is telling you you fucked up. You might have fucked up.
Good luck, I guess.
i think some of you guys are insane đ it's actually possible for a 16 year old to be online friends with someone in their 20s. source: teenagers are actually people who can talk to other people about shared interests.
21 đđđđđđđđđđđ that 18 year old is literally your college classmate. you are the same age. You Are The Same Age
like, the moral panic about age gaps in dating is one thing but this reddit thread was literally about Being Online Friends. you can be online friends with a teenager. they are actually people you can talk to. i promise.
it's very easy to not be a creepy adult when talking to a minor. step one: don't act creepy. that's it. that's all you need to do.
When I was sixteen, I and my boyfriend (eighteen) and his little brother (fourteen) all belonged to the same gaming group, which had been started by his father's friend Steve. We played twice a week with a bunch of people twice and even three times our age, and we learned that adults weren't aliens, they were people with their own feelings and fears and they weren't always right about everything.
Those years at Steve's table were incredibly important to my development as a person. And we had something in common: the game.
Here's the truth: when you grow up, as you go through the various developmental stages, there are things which are vital to happen for proper psychological and cognitive development. For example, when you're very young it is absolutely vital that you are exposed to language. A lot of language. Of varying levels of complexity and formality. That's vital for the healthy development of the language centers of the brain and for early socializing. It must happen. If it does not, you see severe dysfunction as they get older.
This is basic psychological and cognitive development theory. It's taught in pretty basic level Psych courses. This is known science.
Socializing with adults, of various ages, both related to you and not related to you, in various social situations from social equals to authority figure, is one of those vital landmarks. And it comes up over and over and over during development. As a young child you must interact with adults, who care for you, so you can understand care and safety. And it gets more deep and more complicated as you develop.
Preteens and teens must interact with people older than them, significantly older, in various ways, up to and including casual friendly socializing as equals, or they will not develop properly. This is absolutely vital. Your ability to function in the real world socially depends on it.
We are fucking destroying our young people with this bullshit.
Source: Majored in Psychology with a focus on childhood development in university. This is what I went to school for.
The undercurrent of this reads so much to me like the undercurrent of the Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger - this idea that children are permanently Imperiledâą. That there are dangers around every corner, that every person is a potential threat to be guarded against - which justifies enacting iron-fisted total control over children's lives, social circles, and the places they are allowed to go.
You invent an outside enemy to justify ramping up authoritarianism inside the home, the family group. Children cannot be trusted to socialize outside of their parents' constant surveillance and control, they cannot be suffered to develop an identity outside of the domination of the family.
Which, like, that's part of the undercurrent of the "groomer" slur too - queer people (especially trans people) are constructed to pose a special category of danger to children, in order to justify harshly restricting the possibility that a child might meet a queer person and realize something about themselves, or self-actualize in a way that runs counter to their parent/owners' interests or politics.
It takes the accurate but rather banal observation that adults can use their age and authority to enact abuse on a child, and jumps straight to the assumption that because the risk exists, it is rational to act as though it is an absolute certainty. Much in the same way rabid pro-gun advocates claim that because it is theoretically possible for an implacably murderous serial killer to break into your house in the middle of the night and slaughter your family, you as a responsible adult must keep a gun in every room of the house.
Broke:
Belle has Stockholm syndrome because she falls in love with the Beast, her kidnapper.
Woke:
Stockholm syndrome was coined to slander a woman who had been in a hostage situation but openly criticized the poor police response which recklessly put her in more danger and escalated the violence. She was then belittled and discredited publically by the police for this.
So. Yeah. Maybe Belle does have Stockholm syndrome actually.
If anyone is curious here is the wikipedia section describing this.
[ID: Gif image from Disney's Beauty and the Beast with Gaston leading a large group of villagers down the road holding a torch. The atmosphere is dark.
Wikipedia screenshot containing the following:
According to accounts by Kristin Enmark, one of the hostages, the police however was acting incompetently, with little care for the hostages' safety, which forced the hostages to negotiate for their life and release with the robbers on their own. In the process the hostages saw the robbers behaving more rationally than police negotiators and therefore developed a deep distrust towards the latter. Enmark had criticized Bejerot specifically for endangering their lives by behaving aggressively and agitating the captors. She had criticized the police for pointing guns at the convicts while the hostages were in the line of fire and she had told news outlets that one of the captors tried to protect the hostages from being caught in the crossfire. She was also critical of prime minister Olof Palme, as she had negotiated with the captors for freedom, but the prime minister told her that she would have to content herself to die at her post rather than give in to the captors' demands. Ultimately, Enmark explained she was more afraid of the police whose attitude seemed to be a much larger, direct threat to her life than the robbers.]
Hope the ID helps, it's my first time writing one.
Excerpts from âSee What You Made Me Do: The Dangers of Domestic Abuse That We Ignore, Explain Away, or Refuse to Seeâ by Jess Hill
Here are some other facts you should know about Nils Bejerot: He had a major influence (this involved founding the "Swedish National Association for a Drug-free Society") on Sweden's zero-tolerance approach to drug use.
And he wrote "Barn, Serier, SamhÀlle" (Children, Comics, Society), basically the Swedish version of "Seduction of the Innocent"; an infamous anti-comics book by Fredric Wertham that led to the Comics Code Authority.
Bejerot described comic books as a "significant mental hygiene and cultural problem that concerns us all."
This is the man who coined the phrase "Stockholm syndrome", guys.
Too many people are unclear on the history of this term.
Do you ever think about how Ballister didn't get to grieve the Queen properly
Do you ever think about how the Queen was probably the first person who's shown him kindness ever since he became a street kid
Do you ever think about how much she meant to him and he didn't even go to her funeral
Do you ever think about how she spent the last seconds of her life thinking he killed her
Do you *explodes*
steam demos I played recently
Summerhouse (played Dec. 10) - Beautiful and atmospheric somehow, I like how it feels like your houses are in the middle of nowhere. It feels quaintly dystopian even. Adding this to my buy list.
The Mermaidâs Tongue (played Dec. 10) - Classic Detective Grimoire! Iâm looking forward to see how much theyâve switched it up since Tangle Tower while still retaining the charm of that game. Super excited!
Minami Lane (played Feb. 6) - Looks like itâll be a cute and simple cozy game, with some resource management and cat petting. Will probably be good for a casual time sink.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (played Feb. 16) - Looks really promising! I think Iâll enjoy the deducktion method and general gameplay. Voice acting is great! The waddle! The art! Definitely on my list of games to get. Between this and new Detective Grimoire, I'm excited for some sleuthing.
Tell Me Your Story (played Feb. 16) - Beautiful game! It reminds me of Dordogne and Venba, but itâs hard to tell if itâll be as charming as the other two. It feels clunky and a bit slow with all the clicking. I love the aesthetic, but I can tell itâll be hard for me to finish with my attention span.
Demos I still need to try: Crypt Custodian and The Posthumous Investigation
In other news: I canceled my PC game pass.
Honzuki no Gekokujou (Ascendance of a Bookworm) - Sequel (4th season) announced for the adaptation of the light novel's Part 3 "Adopted Daughter of an Archduke"
Long Spoiler ridden rambling about Ascendance of a bookworm
I really like Ascendance of a bookworm because it is so unique. It has such a rigid social heirachal structure and societal rules compared to many other fantasy novels.
Other fantasy novels: âThereâs the royal family, the (usually evil) duke whose usually a step above regular nobles and âŠthe restâą where the only difference between a commoner and noble is how they dress and if they got fancy parties.
AOAB: âEVERYONE IS RANKED. Royalty (zent and family) â> archduke of a duchy (aub and family) â> archnobles â> mednobles â> laynobles.
The duchies? RANKED. The sovereignty where the royal family reigns â> the duchies ranked 1st to 13th.
Marriages? RANKED. Men can marry 3 wives with the 1st wife being the most influential and the 3rd being the least. They all have jobs to best benefit the family. Wives can get promoted and demoted. All children produced by any wife are equally able to inherit the noble title and become the head but preferences exist, typically based on mana quantityâŠwhich means they are what? RANKED (on likelihood to inherit unofficially).â
But why do I like it as a world building aspect? Besides being really detailed? Because it is an ENORMOUS problem that the narrative doesnât pretend any character can solve âŠbut itâs also sort of balanced?
Their world is PRECARIOUS and this flawed system is both contributing to the problem but the only reason itâs not constantly in civil war or barren of life. The more mana/higher the rank you have as a noble, the more power you can exert but you also have the obligation to ensure harvest happen and the duchy runs smoothly.
An archnoble of lower ranked duchy and laynoble of a higher ranked duchy know exactly how much respect they have to extend to each other. While women are expected to marry before 20 and marry men of equal status and mana to maintain ensure good offspring - sexism doesnât exist BETWEEN social classes. A man of lower class holds NO power over a woman higher class - she is his superior. One too many missteps can just have you getting you and your family murdered or executed. Want a better life for you or your duchy? CLIMB THE RANKS. Marry upwards or to your benefit and start making yourself, your family, your duchy, as valuable as you can to the nation while watching your step. Make new inventions! introduce trends! Make allies!
This rigid, ranked society being a death trap is the only way to balance Rosemyne as a mana rich isekai protagonist with knowledge far beyond even regular humans.
And what is main draw of the series? Rosemyne exploiting the fuck out of this system to get what she wants. She gains allies by simply being too beneficial to ignore and climbs the social ladder of society so fast by simply navigating the rules with her mana and skills. It lays bare the issue of why structure society on heirachies, not only how many exploitative it is.. but how simply exploitABLE it is.
The narrative doesnât spend a second directly addressing the sexism of only men getting to marry multiple women into ranked positions or men being preferred over women for heirs, or children under 7 not being considered people, literal treatment of orphans across the nation. They are simply too big of an issue for her to solve. And Rosemyne frankly doesnât care if itâs not happening infront of her. She doesnât even care who she marries or what rank she marries at on a personal level. Wilifried is simply convenient. If didnât she care about family, she would be in the 2nd ranked duchy engaged to a man who called her a fake saint and swiftly married into royalty.
But the system is beyond exploitable for someone with smarts, mana, goals and no investment in the morality of the world- it is simply a CAKEWALK. If she cared less about books and more about power, she would be Zent in less than few years. Higher ranked nobles can do literally fuck all to stop her besides try to marry her into their families and potentially giving her MORE power. When Rosemyne so much as takes her head out of a book and plays a power move everyone is scrambling like itâs oncoming traffic. When she decides to just be a little morally grey or business oriented it ripples through the nation. The society is so rigid that she could predict nobles but nobles canât predict her. The only thing separating Myne from the antagonists is she loves family and books and nothing else.
Itâs so good.
Another Rambling post about Ascendance of a Bookworm:
BLUE - ORANGE MORALITY
(with minor digs at Harry Potter)
When I was younger I used to browse Tv Tropes and I really enjoyed looking at them describe things I noticed in media but didnât have a name for. On a rare occasion, I would find a trope that I had no real reference for and one of those was âblue-orange moralityâ.
The concept of having a morality system completely divorced from our own that we canât really judge it. Now itâs not like I have never seen like a series or text attempt to create a character or species that has different standards of morality but the issue I always had was, that the supposed âdifferent moral standardsâ were always included as a contrast to a more recognisable real world standard - which meant it was framed from a real world standard anyways.
It is always seemed like one of two scenarios:
Scenario A:
Alien/Monster/Non-human: âHere is our horrifically barbaric practice that has no functional purpose to our society and entirely superstitious!â
Human/Humanoid 1: âThatâs badâ
Human/Humanoid 2: âOh thatâs just their cultureâ
And its like no⊠the narrative framing still shows that is weird and barbaric and not at all a foreign concept which is itâs own morality system so divorced from our own. If we have to be advised not to judge it on our own standards, it can be judged by our standards.
Scenario B:
Olden Times!
Stories being set in a distant past/medieval times where there are different moral standards is not true blue-orange morality. They are just the worse models of current moral standards. We are not divorced from those at all. They are just uncomfortable to think about. Like, yes it is fucked for dudes to claim to be kings and murder thousands to maintain their power⊠but people werenât super cool with massmurder back then either - it was just an inevitability due to the social economical problems. Itâs like being a billionaire with hundreds of sweatshops now. Even with people who are cool with the system - we all know that shit isnât our âmoral standardâ - itâs our uncomfortable reality. Pushing the setting back or forward a 1000 years doesnât really change anything. Our countriesâ leaders still go off to kill and exploit people to maintain power, they just donât get crowns for it anymore.
And I donât care if you chose to do this with fictional races and places, that is just set dressing. They still resemble human society as we know it.
So I just never really saw a series that really grabbed me as authentically blue-orange⊠just typically shades of grey.
But then I read AOAB⊠and I really saw the potential of blue-orange morality. And it was done well.
Now it might seem logical to treat Bookworm as a Scenario B.
After all, itâs literally nobles presiding over commonfolk and elizabethan era political drama⊠but heres the thing⊠the framing of Scenario B is based on understanding that some characters still fit our present mold of a good person:
caring
considerate
fair
just
humble
attractive (no literally)
would not murder babies
religious in the right way
And these characters are the ones we root for. The characters we arenât rooting have qualities we do not desire
mean
selfish
powerhungry
bloodthirsty
unattractive
will murder babies
over zealous or cult-like
Like in a Scenario B you canât show the main characters enslave children in a sweatshop and allow grown adult attendants put their hands on them - and still be the good guy. You canât plan the purging of an entire faction and hold their children hostage under penalty of death - and be THE GOOD GUY . Canât overtly tax a city to the bones and deny them the best possible harvest because the previous mayor annoyed YOU â AND EVER HOPE TO BE THE GOOD GUY.
Well you can in ascendance of a bookworm tho.
And the readers will agree with you.
And itâs NOT because readers can overly moralise the actions of main characters.
And itâs because unlike a Scenarios A and B which are just OUR WORLD where we are all AWARE that we donât really need kings or billionaires and antiquated traditions that rely on human suffering for the world to work. AOAB is different
The world of AOAB is not our own. Nobles have more rights because the world explicitly requires their mana to function. Nobles are human plus. They are what rich people in the regular world pretend to be.
Remove the army, the wealth, the status of a king and he is commoner. AOAB Nobles are literally magic batteries that build cities, make harvests happen, keep the population safe from deadly magical creatures âŠlike the yearly giant blizzard monster that wonât literally wonât let spring come unless you have an army of trained magical knights slay it. Without Nobles the world literally be a giant sandpit.
So right of the bat, the nobility are integral to society. You simply donât live your life raised as a necessary part of the world functioning and not have a social structure that reflects that. Its our world turned on itâs head. All the commoners could die and all that means is the nobles have to do more work. Instead of rich needing the poor, the commoners need the nobles. Otherwise they rarely even interact. The commoners and nobles are almost different species.
And not like itâs particularly unfair on the commoners. Not having mana simply bars you from a lot of activities, duties and experiences. Hell, not having a lot of mana as someone born into a noble family arguably sucks more than being a commoner. Nobility is earned, not given. Being born into a noble family that doesnât have the means to regulate your mana means you wonât even make it to age where you are considered a separate entity from your parents in that society. If you have enough mana to make it to the Royal Academy without getting sent to the temple and the ability to pass or even excel at the Royal Academy - congrats you are now an asset to your duchy and that includes the commoners inside it. Just make sure you donât blunder and cause your own execution.
So if murder, classism, deception and greed arenât necessarily immoral in AOAB, what is?
The only real way to be a labeled a bad person in AOAB noble society is to endanger your duchy and cause widespread problems. Which only means the real way to be immoral in AOAB is to be incompetent or to FAIL.
You might initially think The Veronica-Georgine faction are the antagonists because they try to murder a barely baptised child but the guardian trio literally admitted they had plans to kill her too. They are ones committing the most one sided mass murders in the series. Ferdinand being able to outmanoeuvre and manipulate his enemies in the ring of politics is considered a SEXY TRAIT.
So whatâs the difference between the Florencia faction and the Veronica-Georgine faction? Easy. The V-G faction is DESTABILISING AN ENTIRE DUCHY WITH SHORTSIGHTED NOBLE BULLSHIT. And just escalates into the entire nation being in jeopardy⊠because the Ahrensbachian Archducal family keeps producing nobles that are profoundly worthless with no sense of noble duty. They are defective.
In the next paragraph, Iâm just going to state something this legion of defective nobles did and the names of who did it/involved.
They donât respect the authority or wisdom of nobles of higher rank so they disobey orders (Bezewanst, Veronica). They force already new brides on married nobles that ruin established marriages for no benefit besides sating their schoolyard fantasies on a whim (Gabriele). Their spitefulness and cruelty to one of the biggest archnoble families in the duchy has made the Ehnferestian faction politics a disaster (Veronica) and were forced to create an entire section of mednobles not even loyal to Ehnferest because archnobles rightfully disliked them (Shikikoza and Gloria). Theyâre such suck ups it endangered their own duchyâs stability to the point where their only options is an intermediate archducal candidate that was poorly raised by all metrics (Gieselfried). Ahrensbach archducal children are regularly raised to be puppeteered by the parents instead of independent thinkers (Detlinde). Which is a real fucking problem for duchies when you keep trying (and typically succeeding) in making these children the Aubs of duchies (Georgine).
Ultimately it comes down to the fact they believe in their ideological RIGHT as nobles over their ideological DUTY to prioritise their duchies running smoothly. And that leads them to overestimate their APTITUDE as nobles.
Which is REALLY telling when a little powerhouse is redefining what it means to be an accomplished noble and entire political career is to the benefit of Ehnferest. Which is why the Ehnferest archducal family and Florencia faction who prioritise the stability and growth of the own goddam duchy instead of their own personal grudges are the good guys.
Bad guys are bad because they are bad what they are supposed to be doing and the good guys are good because they focused on what they should be.
Thereâs even a moral gray zone which is âtrying your best but not being enoughâ and the prime example of that is the current the royal family. The country is only in this sorry state because one prince allowed his ineptitude and thirst for power to spiral and cause the nation lose the most important tool, and now it has a king that was only ever raised as a vassal is struggling (impressively) to keep a nation that should have dried up to keep running⊠A shame his intel gathering is dogshit so he keeps making mistakes and even overlook things that could have solved the problem.
So the dynamic of magic and morality is baked in the worldbuilding and itâs doesnât feel dumb that nobles have all this power but somehow DONâT really interfere the non magical inhabitants in the world on a grand scale. These features, not flaws.
It is so much better than making a magical world where wizards hide their shit IN non magical places but donât interact with non magical humans and have poverty and slaves that do house chores despite HAVING MAGIC that handles that shit. And also celebrate non magical peopleâs holidays despite thinking non magical people are beneath them because despite the book apparently being about fascism being bad - it doesnât address any of the core issues of it and even has extra issues layered on top!
AOAB doesnât operate on regular morality so itâs not mind numbingly incongruent when bad things happen in the universe because the magic people choose to let it happen despite thinking itâs bad. Even tho nobles do not care about the commonfolk it would stupid if they hid magic from the non magical folk and even dumber if entire spinoffs were based in fighting to keep it secret. Having a series where the protagonists realise that a faction in their world is a problem and getting RID OF THEM? Imagine getting rid of people who are the problem instead of fighting them in a WAR and reading checking the epilogue and that faction caused the fascism is STILL THERE and children are scared to end up there?? WHY DOES SLYTHERIN STILL EXISTâ
Anyways,,,
I havenât had the pleasure of reading past the translated pre-pub myself, but from what I do know is the Ahrensbachian penchant for stupidity and shortsightedness in the pursuit of positions of power they couldnât hope to manage effectively⊠while destabilising as much of the nation as possible continues and I canât wait to read it.
Badly done doodle because I havenât drawn anything to commemorate the 3rd season of the anime.
Ok, but seriously, read/watch Ascendance of a Bookworm. The Light Novel is addicting with itâs fleshed out worldbuilding and likeable characters, the anime has wonderful songs and is a pretty good adaption despite having to cut a lot of stuff and the manga is somewhere in-between.
Also, for any voice actor fans: the casting is *chefs kiss* just watch it and youâll get what I mean.
It does delve into dark topics though, just so yâall know, despite what the art style may tell you the original webnovel has a rating of 15+
P3 V5 in nutshell
Truly, no otome isekai is doing it like AoB. I'm going through a withdrawal. Help.
friend, i am in the same boat. on the one hand it seems a little unfair to compare other isekai to bookworm because they clearly are trying to tell much smaller-scale stories, and really is ANYONE on Kazuki-senseiâs level??? on the other hand, the second the supposedly noble MC gets whisked off to noble school to do nothing but engage in the pettiest drama ever imagined with MAYBE a question of succession at stake if weâre lucky, i just kind of tune out. like i know youâre not telling that kind of story but could you at least help me suspend my disbelief a little by at least making economics and politics somewhat relevant????
i think the only thing that can really scratch the itch is another similarly large-scale fantasy series. itâs gotta have the characters. itâs gotta have the themes. itâs gotta have the world-building. itâs gotta have the airtight plotting. itâs gotta have the edge-of-your seat, heart-pounding tension. itâs gotta have the comic relief. itâs gotta have the soooo satisfying pay-off in the resolution!!!
honestly, is any series out there doing it like bookworm??
yeah, no one's doing it like kazuki-sensei imho, so it's hard to find another series that feels remotely similar to bookworm
all of my other current favorites aren't as intense with worldbuilding and/or not even in the same vein of storytelling
Different adaptations of AoaB: