Hey

[islamreflection]

"11,078 and counting have died in Palestine. Never stop talking.

Also this is just the surface, do further research to fully understand the situation.

Also this is just the surface, do further research to fully understand the situation."

Art credit: @flyingkikii

Reposted from @frxchix

[comickergirl]

Best Oscar look? Best Oscar look.

(Shoes by matsui ryosuke/hazama brand)

[escuerzoresucitado]

[pushovermediacritic]

[tytonidyke]

These are so fun to make

[tytonidyke]

@thedisablednaturalist @fagtabulous

Ask and you shall receive!

[inthefallofasparrow]

[tytonidyke]

Love your additions! Birds got that drip

[tytonidyke]

Oh yeah should probably add this one too-

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

I've never done this before

[inthefallofasparrow]

[inthefallofasparrow]

[floral-hydrate]

Sorry this is the best post I've seen in a while

[floral-hydrate]

I'll leave this post alone now

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

This is way too much fun

[floral-hydrate]

I'm not done yet I suppose

[inthefallofasparrow]

[headspace-hotel]

hey y'all if you're getting freaked over "overpopulation" or have heard of someone who is, watch this beautifully explained video please and thank you

[headspace-hotel]

I was going to get my degree in History

I dropped out and now I study Environmental Sciences

When environmental writers talk about "Overpopulation" I realize they have not studied History and I am afraid

I urge everyone to challenge and criticize the notion of "Overpopulation" whenever and wherever it appears.

As the video in the above link simply and elegantly illustrates, human population increased dramatically in the 20th century simply because fewer people were dying at young ages. For most of human history, half of humans died in childhood, and many humans died much younger than the modern life expectancy. In order to keep the population steady, human families had to have enough children so that on average, a pair of two humans would have two children (enough to replace themselves) survive long enough to successfully have their own kids.

Without modern medicine, half of children will die in childhood, so if you want 2 kids to grow up and have kids of their own, better have at least four. And in a world where an infected cut or a bad illness can easily kill you, even people who survive to adulthood might not live to become parents themselves, so better make it five. But as with the modern world, not everybody will have children, so six is a better number, given that a certain share of people may be infertile or run off and become a monk. And you might of course be particularly unlucky with any of the above, so better make it seven.

Of course, people weren't consciously thinking about the replacement rate thing, but I reckon cultural ideas about family size have this kind of math going on under the hood.

The exponential population increase of the 20th century happened because of an unavoidable lag in cultural changes after the change in death rate. People didn't know their kids would survive childhood at higher rates until the kids did survive childhood.

There is no possible way we can significantly decrease the human population within the next 50 or even 100 years without killing people. Why? Because most people who are 20 right now will still be alive in 50 years, assuming life expectancy follows current trends. Birth rates have already declined very dramatically in most areas of the world. This shows that humans are actually pretty damn good at self-regulating their population. It's just that the decline in death rate was relatively sudden and unprecedented, and humans couldn't respond to it until it had already occurred.

Areas that still have high birth rates, have little access to birth control and relatively high childhood death rates. The simple solution is to make health care and family planning safely and easily available for all people.

I think the video illustrates something that is particularly important to notice: WHICH populations are expected to grow. Africa grows the most. The countries that benefited first from lowered death rates—wealthy colonizing countries—have already re-adjusted their birth rates, so they don't grow. White skinned folks will soon be far outnumbered. Hmmmmm...why would we be concerned about this?

To illustrate why the overpopulation argument is so terrifying, here is a little excerpt from the book "Every Living Thing: The Politics of Life in Common" by Jenell Johnson. Trigger warning for genocide and discussion of Nazi ideology (what a surprise...not)

This very blatant and disgusting display of ecofascism being quoted and discussed is obvious, but I fear the concept of "Overpopulation" makes ecofascism acceptable in ways that are perhaps not so obvious.

I believe that every time we say: "Humans' impact on the earth is so terrible!" "Nature would be better off without humans destroying it." "Our species has had a devastating impact on this planet!" "Maybe nature will heal when humans go extinct." "Humans do nothing but kill and destroy everything." We are softening our world slightly more to the evil and abhorrent ideologies in these pages.

What would it look like, if "humans" were held accountable for the damage to the Earth? Do you think every human would be "held accountable" equally? Who do you think would be "held accountable" first? Who most likely dies when there are heat waves, floods, and tornadoes? Who cannot evacuate? Who loses everything, having no external store of capital outside of their home?

And if you think Earth would be better without humans, are you going to volunteer to go first?...or do you expect someone else to...? ...or do you say this to make yourself feel bad about being human as a form of self-punishment, disregarding that your contempt punishes others too?...

[onenicebugperday]

This exactly why I made this post a little while ago! It's an insidious mindset if you follow it through to its logical conclusion.

[memecucker]

Chuck Jones is the best counterexample to “the curtains are just blue” because you would not believe the amount of thought and art theory he put into his silly little cartoons

[memecucker]

I need to dig out my Chuck Jones books but one time he was talking about the Wile E Coyote gag where he runs off a cliff and continues running for a little bit before noticing there’s no ground underneath him and then turns to the camera and holds up a sign saying “Help!” before plummeting and Jones said the reason Coyote does that instead of immediately trying to get back to the cliff edge is bc Coyote embodies anxiety and in that particular moment represents the fear and worry about the judgement of others over and above the desire for self-preservation.

Like, if someone was told that interpretation without knowing any better they’d think it came from some pretentious academic or whatever but nope! It’s literally the creator like those are the thoughts he had in his head when he was creating the cartoons

[candyspider-deactivated20230731]

the Nine Rules of the Roadrunner cartoons always sticks with me. Rule 3 especially

[party-gilmore]

[luxwing]

you guys wanna see my favorite discord gif emoji

[briines]

[destinationtoast]

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

The Farmer’s Daughter by Victor Adame

[quark-nova-deactivated20260116]

I love how these are still very small triceratops. Like, adult Triceratops was stupidly huge compared to other ceratopsians. Three meters tall, and heavier than an elephant (that’s three centrosaurs, four rhinos or six bulls).

[pazzesco]

Poor old grizzly bear not a fan of a fan of thunder and lightning.

[drtanner]

I love this guy. Clearly VERY scared but being SO brave to come out and get a snack regardless. :')

[cryptotheism]

My stupid court eunuchs won't even scheme with me. All they do is smoke and make shitty EDM in their tower.

[saintjosie]

hey my edm isn’t shitty

[cryptotheism]

girl my heirs are plotting to kill my ass

[lostlavenderer]

OKOKOK. current magnus protocol theory: Jon, Martin and Jonah Magnus (?) are stuck in the tech circuit, lying dormant as avatars of the Eye. The files they're reading out, I think they probably function much the same as statements in TMA did; as in, they're 'feeding' on them. I think, as the statements go on, we'll see more and more consciousness creeping into their statements, like they're slowly regaining their energy and 'waking up' so to speak. Does that make sense??

[sporuss]

i see your “alice getting excited meeting jon and martin because they’re the guys from the computer” and i raise you “colin meeting jon and martin and immediately going into defence mode because they’re the guys from the computer”

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

Sam Messed Up + Tria Prima Ramblings

There are a few solid CAT# but one I really like is that it's based on if an incident affects the body, mind, or soul of the victim. This started off as an offhand example I used to explain how they could work, but there are a lot of fun links to it and will now make a semi-baseless accusation to continue to support it

Sam can't file documents correctly even when being told explicitly what to do.

Anyway, CAT#'s have been shown to have the following values, either in the show or on the Klaus doc: 1/2/3/12/13.

It stands to reason that if 13 can exist these are non-mutually exclusive categories and so 23 and 123 can also exist. And if an incident can be both 1 and 3 it would appear that these represent discrete facets of an incident's manifestation.

Given the show's obvious alchemic motifs it's not a huge leap to link that to the tria prima, alchemy's three primes; soul, spirit (mind), and body. These are represented by sulfur (🜍), mercury (☿), and salt (🜔) respectively. Each of which can be found on the OIAR's logo.

The strongest link here is that 3 is Body/Salt/🜔. Daria's transformation (full) was CAT3, ink5oul has 🜔 on their insta bio, and body is even the third thing in the list. Which is a great start.

We've also got transformation (eyes) at CAT23 which also helps back that up. There was an elemental of paranoia and mental manipulation to it as well as the transformation itself. That tracks really well for Spirit/Mercury/☿, which in alchemical terms is mind as most people would think of. CAT2 was also the watching doll which does also track.

The problem for me is with the last of our categories. CAT1 in the show has only been seen for reanimation (partial), combined with the extra context that said reanimation was "amalgamative", and I don't think that lines up well with a basic idea of Soul/Sulfur/🜍. If this was CAT13 I'd be all over this but I think given there is a strong emphasis of the physical body being an important detail here then it's not entirely convincing. Greater context could make it a stronger case though, if lots of undead ends up in CAT1 then it'd probably a sure thing.

The real problem with this idea is that Dr. Webber's incident seems to almost entirely disprove it. It was CAT2 and while it obviously had a strong mental component it's undeniably a huge physical transformation so it'd have to be CAT23 to really make this all make sense.

Which brings us to Sam. Sam definitely made one obvious mistake with the case number of Ep 3's incident. I think he also made a major mistake in its header. Both of which have solid foundations in the show's text. But I also think, somewhat seriously, that a third mistake has been made with the metatextual reason of obfuscating the meaning of this system.

So, after the incident plays and Sam talks to Alice about it she pretty explicitly tells him what it should be filed as. She says "“Infection” comma “arboreal”. Cross link it with “guilt” if you’re feeling fancy.", but this is what we get instead:

CAT2C8175-03042009-22012024 Infection (full body) -/- arboreal

Ignoring the header for the time being there firstly a very obvious and inarguable mistake. He missed out the R, and they all get the R because it's just a label. The header is also close to being different than what Alice mentions and arboreal as a crosslink specifically doesn't seem to fit in with the more emotional or mental elements crosslinks have had to that point. Arboreal doesn't fit in with regret, trespass, or dysmorphic, but guilt does. Which would make this the seemingly more correct case number and header:

CAT2RC8175-03042009-22012024 Infection (arboreal) -/- guilt

But based on the tria prima theory I'm now wondering if it's not meant to actually be this:

CAT23RC8175-03042009-22012024 Infection (arboreal) -/- guilt

And the 3 was removed to obfuscate the case numbering format. Because the stuff that was "wrong" is fairly obvious to find if that's all that was wrong with it but removing a digit from the CAT# is basically impossible to show unless you know for sure what's meant to be there. It's the sort of mistake that hides really well in ignorance, which makes it a great data point to screw with because of how it breaks ideas.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

What R# Means: The ABC's of Fear.

The grading system used by the OIAR is one of TMAGP's more central mysteries. The show is rife with administrative work that's obfuscated even to the employees that assign each case's rating.

I have my own theory about DPHW that I think is proving more and more likely each episode, but as of yet I don't think a comprehensive theory on CAT# or R# has been given. CAT# is still proving a hard to crack but I now think I can take a strong stab at the meaning behind R#.

Spoilers for TMAGP 1-7 below the cut.

For the people who aren't keeping close track of this I'll break down how those terms are used. Each incident the OIAR assesses is assigned a case number in the following format CAT#R#DPHW. CAT, short for Category, is assigned a value of 1, 2, 3, or any combination of those three digits (12, 13, etc.). R, short for Rank, are graded C, BC, B, AB, A, or S (potentially AS but it's not come up). For DPHW each letter is a category itself and replaced with a digit from 0-9 for its grading. So there are 6 separate statistics that the OIAR uses to assess each incident.

If I'm correct about DPHW it's a ranking based on the qualities the incident presents. That's obviously very valuable information. Because of how CAT# is formatted we know it's likely three non-mutually exclusive facets. I had some idea about what it could be but it's proving quite tricky to nail down.

However it's R# that is the topic of today's post and it's something I've had a few ideas on before. We know can assume from its formatting it's a linear scale. C is the "worst/weakest/etc." while S is the "best/strongest/etc.". Initially, I thought that R# was simply a straight forward ranking of potency or threat. Higher the rank, spookier the incident. Very early on that seemed like a strong idea. It was quickly disproven but I then had the idea that Rank was instead the scale of the effect. Higher the rank, wider the incident. Also quickly disproven.

Now I'm thinking it's graded on how hard it is to deny an incident's supernatural nature. Simply put, an outside observer can more readily find a believable rational explanation for an incident of lower rank than of higher rank. Either via their own conviction to believe the supernatural isn't real, or based on the story the OIAR cooks up to explain it.

For that to make sense it needs to tick two boxes. It needs to be able to be pre-assigned to an incident as all CAT#R#DPHW's seem to be, and it needs to be useful information to track. As they're operating under the assumption that CAT#R#DPHW's can be pre-assigned then they're operating under the assumption that each type of incident is relatively stable. Meaning that the likelihood that it can be rationally explained is also relatively stable. Tick 1. There is also a really strong reason for the OIAR to use this as a grade. They're the Office of Incident Assessment and Response, the Response Department might be dead but it was a part of the initial plan. Grading each incident on how likely they are to cause concern should the details go public is very useful for deciding how to approach any given case. Tick 2.

It being useful is all well and good but it does also need to have some evidence so let's look at our highest ranked incident to this point: CAT23RAB2155 - Transformation (Eye) -/- Trespass. A man grew eyes over his body. That's pretty tricky to explain away as a medical mystery. On the other end of the scale we've got CAT2RC1157 - Dolls (Watching), or CAT2RC3338 -Agglomeration (Miscellany) -/- Congregation†. Just a creepy doll and some crappy antiques. I think of all the incidents the one that's the least immediate fit is CAT3C7494 - Collection (Blood) -/- Musical. Most of that incident is very easy to slot in here. "It's just a violin that has sharp strings, so what?". But it's also a violin that made some people eat some other people. However, mass hysteria events do get reported every so often IRL and do have a very long history. So in the grand scheme of things I don't think the details of the event are necessarily all that outlandish. It's really in the realms of urban legend and witch hunts than it is definitive proof of the supernatural.

With all that out the way this is the broad strokes of how I could see this breaking down. C ranks are things you can entirely write off as urban legends, freak accidents, and stress. Potentially things that might not need any covering up at all. I think the majority of events people could entirely say didn't happen will end up in C. "Of course the doll wasn't watching you, dolls aren't alive". B ranks are things that are harder to entirely discount as things that happened but are themselves still relatively easy to excuse as mundane. "Sure, the circumstances of that blogger's disappearance are strange but people go missing all the time, doesn't mean a monster did it". We don't have any A ranks but given the AB rank we do have I'd say A's are things in which no rational explanation can account for it, and as such require more extensive covering up, if it indeed happened. "Okay, maybe the supernatural is real because people don't just grow eyes like that".

As I mentioned early, an S rank does exist. We've not seen this attributed to anything in the show yet and so it might prove to be a special case. However on Klaus' sheet‡ from the ARG it's attributed to an interesting incident. A CAT1RS[No DPHW] with the note Mr. B. And, well, if you know, you know.

From Klaus' sheet we also know that the higher ranked incidents happen less often than lower ones and that idea generally tracks with what we know of TMP and TMA. The supernatural tends to be something you can explain away. It often is explained away. Incredibly overt manifestations are a rarity.

This one will be a slow burn to see if it bears out. Much like with DPHW's it's only really interesting when things go against the theory. I'm not as certain on this one as I am the DPHW theory but I do think it's got legs with our current data.

† This did also feature people who seemed to erase their physical features from your memory after you interacted with them. This isn't something I mention in the theory because it's not taken into account by the header and case number. A major flaw in the OIAR's methodology here is that all incidents are only ever one thing. So the case number is based solely on the presence of lots of miscellaneous objects, rather than the mind-wiping people carrying them.

‡I have made an incident master doc here, containing all the current cases, their CAT#'s, R#'s, DPHW's, etc. It has about as much information on each as I think is reasonable, including who narrates it, a link to its episode, and any other relevant notes, as well as headers for incidents we didn't hear. Additionally it also contains the Klaus sheet (German and English) and links to it when an incident matches. It will be updated each episode after the episode is publicly available.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

Sam Messed Up + Tria Prima Ramblings

There are a few solid CAT# but one I really like is that it's based on if an incident affects the body, mind, or soul of the victim. This started off as an offhand example I used to explain how they could work, but there are a lot of fun links to it and will now make a semi-baseless accusation to continue to support it

Sam can't file documents correctly even when being told explicitly what to do.

Anyway, CAT#'s have been shown to have the following values, either in the show or on the Klaus doc: 1/2/3/12/13.

It stands to reason that if 13 can exist these are non-mutually exclusive categories and so 23 and 123 can also exist. And if an incident can be both 1 and 3 it would appear that these represent discrete facets of an incident's manifestation.

Given the show's obvious alchemic motifs it's not a huge leap to link that to the tria prima, alchemy's three primes; soul, spirit (mind), and body. These are represented by sulfur (🜍), mercury (☿), and salt (🜔) respectively. Each of which can be found on the OIAR's logo.

The strongest link here is that 3 is Body/Salt/🜔. Daria's transformation (full) was CAT3, ink5oul has 🜔 on their insta bio, and body is even the third thing in the list. Which is a great start.

We've also got transformation (eyes) at CAT23 which also helps back that up. There was an elemental of paranoia and mental manipulation to it as well as the transformation itself. That tracks really well for Spirit/Mercury/☿, which in alchemical terms is mind as most people would think of. CAT2 was also the watching doll which does also track.

The problem for me is with the last of our categories. CAT1 in the show has only been seen for reanimation (partial), combined with the extra context that said reanimation was "amalgamative", and I don't think that lines up well with a basic idea of Soul/Sulfur/🜍. If this was CAT13 I'd be all over this but I think given there is a strong emphasis of the physical body being an important detail here then it's not entirely convincing. Greater context could make it a stronger case though, if lots of undead ends up in CAT1 then it'd probably a sure thing.

The real problem with this idea is that Dr. Webber's incident seems to almost entirely disprove it. It was CAT2 and while it obviously had a strong mental component it's undeniably a huge physical transformation so it'd have to be CAT23 to really make this all make sense.

Which brings us to Sam. Sam definitely made one obvious mistake with the case number of Ep 3's incident. I think he also made a major mistake in its header. Both of which have solid foundations in the show's text. But I also think, somewhat seriously, that a third mistake has been made with the metatextual reason of obfuscating the meaning of this system.

So, after the incident plays and Sam talks to Alice about it she pretty explicitly tells him what it should be filed as. She says "“Infection” comma “arboreal”. Cross link it with “guilt” if you’re feeling fancy.", but this is what we get instead:

CAT2C8175-03042009-22012024 Infection (full body) -/- arboreal

Ignoring the header for the time being there firstly a very obvious and inarguable mistake. He missed out the R, and they all get the R because it's just a label. The header is also close to being different than what Alice mentions and arboreal as a crosslink specifically doesn't seem to fit in with the more emotional or mental elements crosslinks have had to that point. Arboreal doesn't fit in with regret, trespass, or dysmorphic, but guilt does. Which would make this the seemingly more correct case number and header:

CAT2RC8175-03042009-22012024 Infection (arboreal) -/- guilt

But based on the tria prima theory I'm now wondering if it's not meant to actually be this:

CAT23RC8175-03042009-22012024 Infection (arboreal) -/- guilt

And the 3 was removed to obfuscate the case numbering format. Because the stuff that was "wrong" is fairly obvious to find if that's all that was wrong with it but removing a digit from the CAT# is basically impossible to show unless you know for sure what's meant to be there. It's the sort of mistake that hides really well in ignorance, which makes it a great data point to screw with because of how it breaks ideas.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

What DPHW Means, and Its Relationship to Smirke's 14

The following contains spoilers for all of TMA, TMP (eps 1, 2, and 3 released currently if you’re in the future), and the ARG. Spoilers for all of this are throughout so I would advise against reading any of this unless you've listened to everything mentioned. It could also spoil episodes of TMP that have yet to release but if it does I don't think it will be a major spoiler. If I'm right I think I'm only right about a fairly trivial piece of information. 

Theory of Fears; or, Zur Furchtlehre

Part 1: Opticks

Smirke's 14 isn't the truth. With or without Dekker's +1. It is, however, necessary and correct. It has also been talked about ad nauseam and isn't a topic I want to dedicate a lot of time to. Smirke's 14+1, or even TMA in general, isn't the focus of this theory nor is it that relevant past its necessity as a point of comparison.

There aren't 14+1 distinct entities in the TMA cosmology. There is a singular entity that has been given divisions by fear and labels by those that have witnessed it. There is no objective line in which to draw these divisions. No matter where you put them or what you name them these concepts will always bleed into each other. Aspects of one Entity will manifest in another because the labels are invented and Fear is a storm of concepts crashing into each other. That's not a flaw in Smirke's list but its strength. A single entity of that scale is impossible to discuss in meaningful terms, the concept has too much gravity to be properly conceptualised and so an entire spectrum of fear must be divided in order to combat it. Categorisation is a vital part of TMA's cosmology and Smirke was as correct as anyone to put those lines down where he did. The real flaw with Smirke's list is forgetting the spectrum exists and stopping seeing the shades in between the Powers.

Finding a way to categorise this concept is important, but the methodology isn't. Smirke's 14 isn't the truth. The only truth is there is a singular whole. But branding goes a long way both in terms of research and in terms of following. This branding lacks accuracy though, it is in large part arbitrary and by its nature removes the shades and the bleed. TMP takes a different approach, one only hinted at, but one that I think is now fully explainable. 

Part 2: Lost in Translation

Perhaps the most interesting mystery in TMP thus far is DPHW. However, I think based on episodes 1 and 2 of TMP (and now 3), and the Klaus excel sheet from the ARG, we have all we need to explain its utility.

In order to show that conclusion in a satisfactory manner some basic facts need stating, and the order of my thoughts on those facts needs explaining. Firstly, each DPHW is 4 digits. Secondly, each DPHW is read as 4 numbers rather than, say, a pair of 2 numbers. Thirdly, these numbers can change independently of each other. Fourthly, incidents may share CAT#R#'s but have a different DHPW as found in the Klaus sheet (a German document listing OIAR-style incident reports). Finally, the German equivalent of DPHW is TSHU also found in the Klaus sheet. We can use those facts to determine something important. Each letter of this initialism is paired with a digit meaning that DHPW is a group of 4 categories. If that is true we can intuit some of its meaning. It is likely that these numbers are a rating of sorts for each category there. To prove that's the case we would need to know the categories and fortunately we have a starting point to understanding it, German.

If the categories that DPHW describes start with the letters TSHU in German then what needs to be done to find the categories is quite simple. You pair each letter up and then find a suitable word to categorise the supernatural whose first letter starts with the respective letter from the initialism in its language. D/T, P/S, H,H, W/U. After some brainstorming in the Statement Remains PLUS Discord server we had come up with strong candidates for 3 of the 4 pairs.

The first was Deadly/Tötlich, a seemingly solid start that gave this theory some legs. Next was Painful/Schmerzlich which was a distinct enough category for the threat of an incident that proved this was a strong direction to head it. H/H proved more troublesome. To my mind the two strongest contenders here were Hypnotic/Hypnotisch or Helpless/Hilflos. Both sound very reasonable but that in itself is a problem. However the last one was found relatively easily as Weird/Unheimlich. With 3 of the 4 it seemed like this was all but correct at this stage. However, I had been thinking about this backwards and it wasn't until I had a revelation that the pieces really fell into place.

Unheimlich sounded familiar when it was suggested but not in a way I could place. It wasn't until the next day that the aforementioned revelation happened. The ARG had a huge focus on Germany, and Ep 1 of TMP revealed why. FR3-D1 uses German source code which makes German the original language for the OIAR's methodology. Meaning DPHW is the translation, and I now think it's a shoddy one at best. The reason unheimlich sounded so familiar to me is because it's a fairly important part of psychology's history.

DPHW's Weird isn't weird, DPHW's Weird is uncanny. A direct translation could give you weird but a more accurate one, especially in this instance, gives you unheimlich. Unheimlich as in Jentsch's "Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen", and Freud's "Das Unheimlich". Both of which are essays on the uncanny. It's all about the fear of the unfamiliar, and a central example of this is Olympia from Der Sandmann, a seemingly living doll.

The German word unheimlich is obviously the opposite of heimlich, heimisch, meaning “familiar,” “native,” “belonging to the home”; and we are tempted to conclude that what is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar... - Freud, The Uncanny

This is incredibly relevant to a lot of what has been discovered so far. The uncanny as a topic in psychology was kickstarted by two Germans, and a central part of their essays was the German Der Sandmann, and a German, SSandman, was a large presence in the ARG. The strength of this connection all but solidified this theory in my mind. And, briefly, this is also related to Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley hypothesis which I'm sure I won't need to explain.

The obvious way to test this is to take the few W ratings we have been given and compare them to the incident to which they're assigned. The first is from Ep 1, “dolls comma watching”, and was given a 7. This is a good start both in that a 7 feels appropriate as an "uncanny rank" but also that a doll is a focal point on the essays on the subject. Also in Ep 1 is "Reanimation (Partial)", again with a 7. Another very appropriate number. The last in Ep 1 is "Transformation (eyes)" with a 5. Certainly less uncanny than the previous examples so this is still strong. In Ep 2 we get a 5 for Bram Stoker's Dracula, which seems more than fair for a strange man like him, and a 7 for Frankenstein which gives parity for another story of the resurrected dead. Finally we get "Transformation (full)" at a 7, more uncanny than "Transformation (eyes)" which tracks nicely.

With what I felt was such a strong theory for the W/U pairing it helped clarify the ideas of the others. The final digit rating the uncanniness of an incident gives an idea of how these categories work and the breadth of their definitions. Up until this point I was leaning towards Hypnotic/Hypnotisch for our H/H pairing. But giving it more thought, and comparing it to TMA's own groupings, it becomes apparent that Helpless/Hilflos is more appropriate. Hypnotic effects are too aligned with things that would already be very aligned with Uncanny ones, the Stranger's Not!Them alter memories and prey on the fear of something being not quite right, so as a categorisation tool I think it makes less sense because of the greater overlap. Helpless on the other hand works better for things like The Dark, The Buried, or The Lonely. Aspects which I don't think show up in our current other 3 groups. But given the current definition of the strongest category, the fear of the uncanny, I think that helplessness is a more apt label. The fear of helplessness. Which makes H Helplessness/Hilflosigkeit.

With this level of breadth established re-examination of the final two categories is warranted. Painful/Schmerzlich is more likely to be Pain/Schmerz. Not just incidents that are themselves painful but the fear of pain, possibly including the emotional. A comparison to TMA gives this rating a strong affiliation with Entities such as The Desolation, The Corruption, or the Flesh. Similarly Deadly/Tötlich should now be broadened beyond the fear of things that will kill you, to the fear of death in a broader sense. Which makes D/T Death/Tod instead. To compare again to TMA this is The End, The Extinction, or The Slaughter. Although, while I might be describing these ideas as the fear of ____ I think it's important to know that they do appear to be more conceptual in nature rather than just if something is scary or not.

Comparing each of these assumed categories against current DPHW’s strengthens this argument. “Dolls, watching” scored 1157. It’s a very low fear of death and pain, but they present a medium fear of helplessness and a high fear of the weird. For a fear that’s rooted in paranoia that makes good sense. “Reanimation (Partial)” got a very similar rating, at 5257, but it being a corpse cranks up its fear of death. “Transformation (eyes)” got 2155 which, again, seems to fall in place with what we know. It’s more human than the doll is so it’s less weird but a physical and alarming transformation naturally seems like more of a terminal concern. Combine that with some good ol' internet death threats and it's not nothing, but not much.

As a small aside, while it's not come up in the episodes so far the Klaus sheet shows DPHW's are 0-9. There is a good bit of evidence to suggest 0 might be read as 10 here. 0 most commonly showed up in that sheet for P and the incidents often had the notes "Kriegsvolk". Literally "war people" but more accurately "army/soldier". So pain of 10 for those would track better than P of 0, and it explains why things like the watching doll rate a 1 for D and P instead of a 0, and Dr. Webber's infection is a P of 1 despite entirely removing physical and emotional pain as it goes. Because 1 is the lowest.

For Ep 2 we start with Dracula scoring a 7465, he’s undead and a killer for high death, if he kills you it hurts but it’s not extreme, he’s both hard to physically stop and has mental tricks, and he’s just a weird dude in general who always seems off somehow. Frankenstein at 5337 has aforementioned parity with the reanimation incident as you’d expect but notably less on the helplessness rating as he is just a man. Next is “Transformation (full)” at 1567. This is generally a more severe rating overall than Transformation (eyes) and you’d expect that, but I think it does show something interesting. At no point did Daria want to end her own life. The transformation is far more severe, arguably looks more life threatening, and was clearly more painful but it is explicitly and repeatedly not about dying. I take that as a suggestion that these ratings take into account more than just the mundanely observable nature of the incident. She looks very sick which would make you think of death but it rates low for it because of the emotional, or maybe supernatural, purpose of the incident. She didn’t want to die, the manifestation didn’t try to kill her, and so despite its appearance it’s low on death.

Then finally in Ep 3, we have "Infection (full body)" with a 8175. (Although I'm assuming that's a misfile and it should be Infection (Arboreal)). I think D and H here are more interesting to dig into. P is pretty obvious it's the lowest rating because it seemed actively pain-numbing as it went. W being 5 tracks too is certainly uncanny and has strange geometry but it's not full Distortion levels. So with those two out of the way we can get to the good stuff. D is the most interesting of the two to me. Because while it's pretty clear he died I don't think that's got much to do with it. Rather I think the 8 is more specifically about the way it deals with death, decay, and rot in relation to new life and the growth of other things, plants and insects. Thematically, I think there is a lot more emphasis on death as a broader concept beyond the terminal nature of the infection. For Helplessness there is also an additional element beyond whether or not he was able to do something about the infection, and that's whether he wanted to. As the symptoms worsened his desire to treat them decreased. Initially he was worried about the infection and determined to seek attention when able, then he was happy to let someone else help instead (a hallucination, which makes things more helpless), before finally wanting it to happen. These sorts of elements are things I think we're going to see factor in quite a lot.

In summary; it is my belief that DPHW is a way to rate incidents that the OIAR catalogue based upon the strength of the fear they elicit in the categories of death, pain, helplessness, and weird (uncanny). This system is effectively the TMP equivalent to Smirke's 14 from TMA. Rather than assigning each statement to an Entity each incident is rated for those qualities. These systems are distinct methodologies but each is a way to categorise the supernatural.  

Part 3: On Analogy

That is the juicy bit of this post out of the way so now I have to put a bow on it and touch upon the overarching analogy here. As alluded to by the title and some turns of phrase, it's colour theory. It's a somewhat common analogy for TMA's fears but I think it applies in equal measure to TMP and taken together might provide an insight into how the cosmologies will differ. So, to me, colour theory is not only the perfect lens in which to view the Fears as a whole, it's the perfect lens to view these methodologies.

Smirke is Newton. He broke up a singular spectrum into wide chunks. The Dread Powers themselves are very analogous to a colour wheel. Colours bleed into each other and the boundaries of where one stops and starts is up for debate but red is still red, and blue is blue. That is a useful context for them, it aids discussion. Try talking about red without ever saying red and only referring to a representation of a divided whole. But all too similar to Newton's 7 colours Smirke's 14 lacks nuance, it lacks shade.

On the other hand we have DPHW and this is all shade. DPHW is CMYK. It's not one thing or another with DPHW. You don't have the pitfall of Smirke's methodology where one manifestation is in one arbitrary box. Here, assuming I'm correct, each incident is made up of constituent parts. The OIAR, and presumably its German forebear, are less interested in Smirke's occult ancient gods and more interested in bureaucratic precision. Smirke was doing research while the OIAR are doing administration. As such DPHW takes a wholly different approach. It's now all shades. This has its own problems in that it's harder to discuss in broad terms. It's such a specific methodology that it's lost a lot of what Smirke triumphed with. This is well represented already given that no one has been shown to know what it means at all yet. But if there is a truly different cosmology at play here we might see the axes of DPHW being where alliances fall.

All that leaves us with is a comparison of these two. The only way to really do that is to talk about how Smirke's 14+1 would fit in DPHW's system. This is something I touched upon briefly. Death is strongly related to The End, The Extinction, or The Slaughter. Pain to The Desolation, The Corruption, or the Flesh. Helplessness to The Dark, The Buried, or The Lonely. Weird to the Stranger, or the Spiral. But that's not all of them and even within those it's already clear that something like The Vast isn't just about helplessness, and we've already seen Daria who would likely be an avatar of the Flesh rank highly in Weird. Which hits upon what I feel is the most interesting aspect of this entire theory. We've seen what happens with Smirke's boundaries on the Entities. We don't know if Entities even exist in this setting, or if they do exist whether they'll be the same ones, or even if they're not the same ones whether they'll function under similar rules. But now we get to see what happens when there aren't those boundaries. We get to see much broader mingling than TMA showcased. It was hinted at there, especially early on before the lore really settled, but now that mingling seems to be the whole point.

And as a brief mention, and to further labour the theme, I don’t think there is enough information to really discuss how CAT#R# works but there are some analogies to work with here. From the Klaus sheet we can infer that CAT# has the following values 1/2/3/12/13/23/123. Or three non-mutually exclusive groups. What those groups are is hard to say right now. There is some soul/body/spirit stuff for the alchemic tria prima that's got some nice connections but doesn't map well now that Ep 3 is out. Either way, this is RGB. An incident can be all red, or red and blue, etc. R#'s values we can infer to be C/BC/B/AB/A/S with maybe an AS in there too. That's a linear scale of similarly unknown value but could represent something like potency/threat. If that is the case then R# is saturation. Some things are more intense than others. We also know from the Klaus sheet that CAT is the German from the "kategorie" meaning "category" the R was from the German “rang” meaning “rank” and so probably has more meaning to it than currently implied.