There are Spoilers Below. @spoilersbelow - Tumblr Blog

The Fortinbras Problem

Let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand men Fortinbras is about as minor a character as can be in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599? 1601?). He is mentioned offhandedly a few times, such as Horatio’s re-telling of Hamlet’s father killing Fortinbras’ father in a duel in Act 1.1, or Claudius sending ambassadors to Norway to stave off an invasion. Hamlet bumps into a…

#books #Hamlet #Literature #Philosophy #Plays #Poetry #Politics #Shakespeare #Violence

Pascal's Mugging

Pascal’s Mugging

I was thinking about dumb logic things today. So, one dumb thing is Roko’s Basilisk. It’s the dumb rationality obsessed nerd thing where the odds of us being in a computer simulation are less good than us being in reality, so we should give money to a loser who promises to build AI god. The flip side of Roko’s Basilisk is a slightly different yet still dumb bit called Pascal’s Mugging. The idea…

View On WordPress

#economics #Investment #Logic #Pascal #Philosophy #Religion

God

A simple proposition: God is Omnipotent. Consider this word: Omni-Potent. Omni, meaning all or of all things. Potent, meaning having great power, influence, or effect. This is not simply “very powerful” or “extremely powerful”. This is all powerful. Unlimited. Unbounded. Possessing absolute agency. Non-dependent. Any being which is not omnipotent is not worthy of being called God. It may be a…

View On WordPress

#Burritos #God #Light #Logic #Omnipotence #Philosophy #Religion

"If only there was a way to learn more about the world..." -- Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

“If only there was a way to learn more about the world…” — Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared

When I was a small child, I was deathly afraid of the Hamburgler. For some reason, that striped, masked, bizarre fellow just disturbed my child self. I can’t place exactly why. I had other fears, of course. Certain clowns, moths, the dark, being alone and lost… all pretty common things. Like most children of my era, I was raised on a steady diet of Sesame Street (1969-Present), Mr. Rogers, The…

View On WordPress

#DHMIS #Don&039;t Hug Me I&039;m Scared #Gnosticism #Puppets #YouTube

They Can't Have Disappeared. No Ship That Small Has a Cloaking Device!

They Can’t Have Disappeared. No Ship That Small Has a Cloaking Device!

The small ship is being pursued from the rebel base, and has emerged from the asteroid field. The larger ship is pursuing it. The small ship, in defiance of all known tactics, suddenly turns and engages the large ship, charging directly at the bridge, flying within feet of the viewing window and causing the bridge officers to flinch for fear that they will crash! And then, the ship is gone. “They…

View On WordPress

#Canon #Darth Maul #Henry IV #Shakespeare #Star Wars

More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1 of X)

For a certain generation, The Transformers: The Movie (1986) is a traumatic and horrible experience that defined childhood forever.

Consider the opening:

We are in space. An eerie, haunting theme plays as, from between two suns, a distant object approaches. It grows closer, and we see it is a large grey sphere, surrounded by…

View On WordPress

#history #Movies #Personal #Philosophy #Religion #reviews #Transformers #Violence

The Invisibles Isn't Very Good

The Invisibles Isn’t Very Good

(This one has been in the queue for a while, and I figure I should get this out before the TV show starts up and everyone starts in with their retrospectives.)

Just finished The Invisibles in its nice fat trade paperback editions, and, well, perhaps you had to be there.

I mean, I’m reading this comic out of context. It’s twenty years on, and the world is a very different place than it was in…

View On WordPress

#books #Comics #Grant Morrison #Nonsense #Pseudoscience #reviews #Sex #spoilers #The Invisibles #Violence

Homer, Robot vs Manual

Homer, The Iliad,

translated by Robert Fagles

Lines 1-10

Rage-Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke…

View On WordPress

ecchifortheplot

fujinoshizuru

ポッキーの日 by Mola Mola

victoriansword

Ella Hattan, better known by her nom-de-guerre “Jaguarina,” was Colonel Thomas Monstery’s most accomplished student. Born in 1859 in Ohio, she would go on to become widely regarded as one of the greatest swordswomen of the nineteenth century, and perhaps of all time. Hattan would defeat more than sixty men in high-profile combats on both horseback and on foot; according to one major newspaper, more than half of these men were fencing masters. For more details of Hattan’s extraordinary career, her training, and her lengthy master-student relationship with Monstery, see the following article: http://martialartsnewyork.org/2015/03/31/colonel-thomas-monstery-and-the-training-of-jaguarina-americas-champion-swordswoman/

youvegotthatone-ring-deactivate

“As soon as she comprehended what his words meant, bang, biff! she landed right and left, and he fell to the ground. ‘Get up, you coward,’ she commanded, and he, overcome by the ringing tones, very foolishly crawled to his knees. Biff! Bang! Right and left landed again, and down he went, and this time he refused to get up and sprawled on the ground, calling for help. It was several days before he was presentable, while Jaguarina laughingly showed her friends in this city the next day that she knocked the fellow down twice without even taking the skin from her rosy little knuckles.” (Los Angeles Herald)

“In the twelfth attack Jaguarina dashed to Wiedemann’s corner, there was a crash of arms, a prolonged ring of steel, a blade was seen to flash through the air, and Jaguarina threw the fragments of a broken sword from her to the ground. In an instant another sword was put into her hand, and again she dashed towards her opponent and slashed right and left, and a moment later the referee announced a point for Jaguarina…the score this time stood five to five. Jaguarina’s friends urged her to be cautious, but she, heeding nothing, rushed at her opponent and cut right and left, Weidemann parrying with all his might and skill. Recovering himself from the first shock, he aimed a cut at Jaguarina in high carte which was met by a strong parry which threw his sword arm out of line, and before he could return his weapon to protect himself, the sound of Jaguarina’s blade was heard on his cuirasse from a vigorous and unmistakable cut in carte, ending the contest with a score of six to five in favor of Jaguarina. The victor at once doffed her helmet and cuirasse and received round after round of applause from those present, many of her more enthusiastic friends throwing their caps high in the air…” (San Diego Union)

“I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that women were meant to be just as robust and hardy as men—and they can be without losing any of their womanliness. In fact, physical culture gives grace, beauty, self-reliance—while taking nothing but aches and dyspepsia.” Ella Hattan

“Despite such accounts, more than one reporter who met her, expecting to meet a “fierce faced Amazon,” was shocked to find that Hattan exuded grace, refinement, and, as one put it, “perfect self-control and sweetness.” “

“After training for three years under Monstery, Hattan left to travel the world, andbecame a sensation with the foil, saber, broadsword, singlestick, rapier, dagger, bayonet, lance, Spanish knife, and Bowie knife, defeating fencing heavyweights such as Sergeant Owen Davis of the U.S. Cavalry, the famed knife duelist Charles Engelbrecht of the Danish Royal Guard, and the fencing master E. N. Jennings of the Royal Irish Hussars.”

“Under Monstery’s tutelage, Hattan would go on to become recognized as one of the greatest swordswomen of the nineteenth century, and perhaps of all time.”

SHE IS MY HERO

My source

m-korlan

pettiness level: k’nuckles

nevver

Strike your fancy, Ravi Zupa & Arna Miller (because)

redscullyrevival

1992: We all know its Sailor Moon but lets just say its Video Girl Ai

My numero uno 1992 anime is Sailor Moon, O B V I O U S L Y. Sailor Moon means a lot to me personally and as such I’ve talked about Sailor Moon extensively over time and I will continue to do so in the future - so for the sake of getting to talk about something else from 1992 for a change I’m going smudge the “favorite” part of this pet project and go with a title I’ve always really liked.

Video Girl Ai is a OVA (original version anime) of Masakazu Katsura’s manga of the same name. While I like the manga I prefer the anime because it’s a strange story about masturbation, loneliness, guilt, and working towards being comfortable with ones self and our icky human emotions and desires. Comedy gold, right?

Yota Moteuchi is an average guy and the girl he likes is in love with his best friend. Feeling down about the one directional love triangle he’s in, Yota comes across a video rental store and decides to take out a video girl VHS on a whim. “Video girls” have kind of disappeared nowadays (not true, they’ve retreated to youtube) but once upon a time they were films of women talking to a camera while cooking or shopping or bathing or doing literally anything from the mundane to the kinky; a VHS girlfriend who’d have a one sided conversation with a viewer who was free to do whatever they’d like on their end *wink-wink*.

This is anime though so naturally Yota’s crap VCR glitches and out pops the girl from the video. Now they have to live together and wacky racy hi-jinks abound!

By all means Video Girl Ai shouldn’t be as good as it is. Just writing the synopsis was exhausting. At the same time we all lose our shit over Ah-ha’s “Take on Me” music video so maybe we shouldn’t be so ready to throw stones.

What works for Video Girl Ai is that while yes it has pervy hahas and yes there is an undeniable aspect of creeper otaku wish fulfillment happening, what throws most anyone who finishes the six episodes for a loop is how goddamn real it can get.

Ai does her best to try and help Yota’s confidence and to alleviate his loneliness but her play time on the VHS will eventually run out and she will need to be rewound. Ai can’t fix anything for Yota, not his situation nor his cycle of depression, she is in more ways than one just a fictional character. Yota himself feels guilt over liking a girl who doesn’t like him, over having rented such a video, and over accepting Ai’s unearned presence in his life but Video Girl Ai remains a light ecchi comedy series - until it isn’t.

Surprisingly poignant depictions on variations of loneliness build over the first four episodes and in the last two the series takes a nose dive into a VHS realm of self reflective symbolism. By the end of Video Girl Ai Yota finds himself more alone than ever as he travels a pocket dimension with a Q-like entity who calls themselves the “producer” of Ai and all video girls.

Love for a fictional character and how one utilizes that love can range from the emotional to the sexual and every shade in between with the sexual appeal and use of fiction being the unspoken drive to so much of fandom and fannish behavior. From A03, fan art, merchandise purchases and cosplay, people have been gettin’ freaky with themselves over art and always have been.

This series ends with a glass staircase and Ai trapped at the top. Yota climbs it to reach her with the stairs breaking over and over shredding his feet, hands, his entire body and for what he is asked; for a single moment of connection, of contact, of love? Ai is not real. Yota should give up. The pain isn’t worth the trouble.

The bigger picture is that by this point Ai is in love with Yota herself, its the reason she is being punished and why Yota is here to find her; but Ai is still not real. She is a literal video girl. She will always need to be rewound. We can view Ai’s love for Yota as his budding confidence, or slow acceptance over his emotional and sexual loneliness not being mutually exclusive or always one and the same, that loneliness is as complex and shifting as our relationship to ficitonal characters, stories, and any art can be. We all use things to come to terms with our lonliness, to come to terms with ourselves, to understand ourselves and to understand our desires.

Ai isn’t real but Yota climbs the glass staircase and gets wrecked for the hope of love, for the belief that he can move past his lonliness and feelings of invisibility. And yes the work hurts and the reward can be fleeting, but the choice to keep choosing love can’t really be argued as wrong.

Of course nothing I just said is as eloquent, concise, and accurate as the review left by user syncrogazer on myanimelist.net stating the series is “a vaporwave romance"

Honestly they’re right and that’s all you really need to know.