#viscountfrancisbacon

[whetstonefires]

high five for interlibrary loans, got to be one of my favorite systems to use. just checked out some junji ito and a documentary to try. i was forlorn for months thinking my local library system wasn't offering ILLs anymore (outside of the state program) til i realized they'd just had a really long delay getting a new digital catalog working. props also to their book sale shelf - ive gotten loads of CDs for 50 cents each, and some time ago also a complete boxset of stargate.

Man, a digital catalog for interlibrary loan? That sounds so luxurious. We don't have a statewide program either afaik, there's just the local system of. Hm.

I should know how many libraries it is, they did a scavenger hunt a couple years ago where you went around to all of them and got a stamp on the map and I completed it. Like 23? Anyway it's this section of this river valley and much of the surrounding hills.

Fascinating the contrasts between the six branches of the city library (city with okay tax revenue, breezy and professional) the two branches of the other city library (poverty stricken, one used to be an airplane warehouse in wwi and the other was beautiful 200 years ago and is actively rotting) and then all the local libraries in small towns and wealthy suburbs.

My approach to ILL is I go to Mindy and say 'can I request [book] through interlibrary loan from [university]?' and Mindy turns to her assistant and they agree that John can do that when he comes in next week, and take down the book information on a bit of scrap paper.

I don't know who John is.

When I asked Mindy if we could order a specific book that was coming out, because I couldn't find a place online for making such requests, she also said to write that down on a scrap of paper and she'd try not to lose it. I like her but I can't claim she's at the cutting edge of her field lmao.

Yeah idk how any secondhand bookstores are staying in business these days, between Amazon and the other online markets and how every public library seems to have a perpetual booksale on these days.

Someone tried to charge me $2 a CD at their tag sale the other day and I was like haha yeah never mind the library charges me a quarter.

[sevi007]

i unironically love the minor plothole in 5 wherein vergil tears nero's entire arm off to get yamato. in 4, sanctus steals yamato from nero by just yoinking it and he's not even its previous owner! the whole game, nero deals with the loss of a limb vergil destroys immediately to get the ONE ITEM inside it he could've summoned. did vergil ever even wonder why yamato was in nero's arm to begin with. did he just grab the first feels-like-my-sword thing he found. this family is so stupid i love them

Mh, I neverreally considered that a plothole… , wait, I’m gonna have to explain that. XD

 So:

 Basically,you can’t really think of Vergil as himselfright there, I don’t think. Vergil might have been stubborn, cold, and rashsometimes, but… watch him, in that scene. Stumbling into the garage, not sayinga single word, not even a brash thingto silence Nero’s offer to stay for food, or announcing that he was here totake what’s his. He’s moving like a puppet whose string where cut (which,basically, after Nelo Angelo, sounds horribly close to truth).

That’s notreally Vergil like we know him. That’s completely unlike him, even. I think at that point, he was a broken mind trappedin a dying body, and he wasn’t thinking rationally… or even human. He acts morelike an animal (a demon?) on complete instinct – get Yamato. At all costs.

 So takingthe whole arm, instead of calling Yamato forth, was probably not even a conscious decision. Yamato was rightthere, he could feel it, and he just – grabbed it. With the whole arm alongsideit. (That doesn’t make it okay, mind you. I’m just saying he’s not really thinking there, it doesn’t seem like itat least.)

 That’sreally what I thought about why he didn’t just summon it out – he’s acting likea wild animal right there, more than rationally thinking this through.

 That, plusafter all his time in Hell / as Nelo Angelo, and with Yamato once being broken,and with Vergil in such a condition,I really wonder if the bond between him as the owner and the weapon was somehowdamaged, and he couldn’t summon itfrom farther away like he once used to. The moment he gets Yamato back in hishand – and it transforms – we even see him stumbleand look like he’s going to break down for a second, before he uses itagain. It’s like it takes him more than he can give to simply accept the weapon back, let alone useit.

 So you see,I didn’t consider this a plothole or wondered about it too much, I more thoughtit’s a matter of circumstances and Vergil’s condition. XD

  (And as forthe whole “feels-like-my-sword”-thing, I think with the demon swords, likeSparda, Yamato, and the sword Dante, it seems to go way deeper than just it feels similar – it’s more like, the wholeweapon is somehow linked to their very being. So that pull Vergil was followingwas probably quite strong, and there was no doubt to him – or his instincts –that he’s following Yamato.)

[joaniam]

Hey, anon, I’ll have to get back to you on those time estimates, since I have to do some math on that, but as for longevity of wool socks, I think @viscountfrancisbacon can answer that a little better than I can.

Hey vis, how long do those socks last?

[creepyscritches]

honestly, the part that always gets me about V is that he outright tells urizen the ONE thing they share (iirc) is that they both wanna defeat dante. given that V is actually vergil i can only assume the hardest part of his plan was having multiple civil conversations with his brother, how did V have so much CHILL

I’ve been thinking about how much I love V and like to an extent I agree with you that YES both he and Urizen share a desire to defeat Dante, but the sentiment behind it is different for each. This could have been a funny haha joke moment, but I actually wanna delve into WHY I love the dynamic of these two.

Urizen is, to put it bluntly, just rage/anger and everything about Vergil that desperately grasps for power as a coping mechanism--almost like a deadly security blanket. His resentment towards Dante and drive to defeat him is more like a milestone he wants to reach. Like “If I can come out as even more powerful than the only one with my same base abilities and thrive instead of just survive, then I can assure myself ultimate safety and security when it comes to any other adversary or obstacle.” To me, Urizen is the kind of fear and anger that is seen in cornered predators.

V, on the other hand, is everything human and vulnerable about Vergil. He tells Nero he only wanted to be loved and protected and there’s this penetrating sorrow throughout his character. Every time Vergil fell victim to an unfair and traumatic hand in life, the grief that goes with the hardship is what accumulated within his human heart: V. The desire V feels to defeating Dante is more of a “I want to have been given the paths to walk that you were. We’re twins, but things happen so differently for us that it feels like I should have struck your hand away as it reached for your happier and kinder road instead of just letting myself be trampled.” 

V is the resigned bitterness and heartbreak in fear and trauma, but those are quieter emotions in Vergil when compared to his anger at the way life has indifferently struck him down again and again, so naturally V is weak and crumbling away in comparison to Urizen growing stronger by the minute. Notice how he can’t fight himself and uses the demons created by Vergil’s bitterness during his time as Neo Angelo. Those are where all the desires to actually strike down Dante are contained and they are what keep his delicate body from further harm. They are also the only part of V that do end up trying to kill Dante and ONLY after the resolve and guilt from V is no longer around to properly guide them at appropriate targets.

When he’s back together, both of these contrasting sides of Vergil’s feelings towards Dante mix into the complex and warring relationship he has with his brother. I honestly think Vergil does love his brother in his unique way, but he’s buried beneath so many old scars and traumas that it’s safer and easier to lash out and remain isolated than to be as emotionally vulnerable as V is physically. Could you imagine how many warning sirens would blare if you decided after ALL that you would go back to the same relationship dynamic that you felt welcomed the first of many traumas? 

The brothers love to fight each other and it’s not something rooted entirely in resentment--they’re siblings, it’s what they do. End game DMC5 shows them fighting and actually having fun with each other and it’s the first time you see a friendly competition between them just rooted in being brothers. Tbh if Vergil were to be separated again into Urizen and V after 10 years of this return to a familial dynamic with Dante, I’d bet that V wouldn’t be so frail and would likely be able to survive easier while severed from his counterpart. 

I don’t think V ever wanted to kill or attack Dante, but moreso defeat him in a metaphorical sense of living a life as good as his brother’s or even better.

[whetstonefires]

went to a nearby river shore with my family today to enjoy nature but more importantly to find cool rocks (mom collects them). it was a blast - read some fun facts about the local watershed, looked at the river, and filled my pockets with rocks including a great digging rock that helped uncover a very old broken ceramic pot lid mom found mostly buried on the shore. do you enjoy rocks much irl or mostly just in the worldbuilding geologic sense of figuring out where the vampires live?

I would say I enjoy rocks more than the average amount? Kind of out of the habit of picking them up and taking them with me because eventually you have to put them somewhere, and storing a rock collection is just not high on the priority list around here. Plus a lot of the time I don't want to take a rock because someone might be using it for something.

But that description of your outing really speaks to me. I assume the watershed facts were up on some sort of signage?

There's signage like that along the bike path in the neighboring town where I go to bike on account of I am so bad at biking and need a very smooth surface with very little chance of being run over if I find myself swerving. It follows the route of the power line right-of-way, which runs where it does because a hundred years ago there was a tram line connecting a whole string of towns along this spur, which just goes to show progress is not a steady march forward.

Anyway yes I like rocks a lot but don't get excited about them very often.

I don't remember doing rock facts about where vampires live. 🤔 I did tectonics but they weren't exactly about where you get vampires, because vampires are a byproduct of and parasite on human beings, so you get them where there are people, but not where the people have the wherewithal to object. Geology comes into it mainly when the people have a great deal of wherewithal and the vampires start lurking in caves, at which point they become highly pro-limestone.

...I should decide where there's lots of limestone huh.

[sevi007]

i really dig all the meta you've done wrt everyone worrying about nero killing vergil! but i always thought that at least for dante, him worrying about that was true, but was also (and maybe even more) dante being afraid of the OPPOSITE - that urizen/vergil might kill his own son out of ignorance, or of callousness born of throwing away his humanity. relatedly: god what would've even happened if vergil HAD killed dante, what was his plan? fight nero after? idk but all of this messes me up lmao

Aaaah, yes, that.

 Honestly,personally, I think Dante’s… worry? Perspective?... on that matter changed overthe course of the game.

Rememberthe first fight against Urizen – the prologue – where Dante calls out to V to “getNero out of there” and that Nero would “only be deadweight”. At that point intime, Urizen was unbeatable, to all of them – but Dante’s worry, first andforemost, was getting Nero out of there.

At thatpoint in the time, Dante was under the impression Urizen (whom he thought isVergil) would kill Nero, his own son, and he couldn’t let that happen.

  But thenthings shift – Dante becomes strong enough to beat Urizen (though not the “resurrected”Vergil, not yet) and Nero… well, Nero just might have proven to Dante that he could be strong enough to do the same,given that he had made his way through all these demons and very nearly Urizenand was still standing.

I think atthat point in time, Dante was torn about – if Nero and Vergil fight, one ofthem would win, and kill the other. He wasn’t sure which one would win – but either way, family would have to killfamily. If Nero won, he had to kill his own father and live with that. IfVergil won, Dante would lose his nephew. (Given that Dante probably wasconvinced “death” would be the only outcome in such a battle.)

  As for “whatwas the plan after” – honestly? I think neither of the twins knew what wouldcome after. That’s kind of a thing for them, but especially for Vergil: Planning some big thing, but not beyond that.He did that when he chased after Sparda’s power – what would he do once he hadit? He did that when he summoned Temen-Ni-Gru – and then what, what do you dowhen the Demon World is opened again? Or as V – what do you do once you reachUrizen in your broken state, should Dante not have beaten him yet, pummel himinto submission with your cane?

Vergil has always done that, not thinking beyondone goal, I mean. Dante on the other hand doesn’t even plan big things, so he doesn’t get to that point where he has towonder what comes after.  

I think forthe twins, fighting each other is not… it’s not planned. They wouldn’t evenknow what to do with a win. It’s just so ingrained in them, they don’t know what else to do with each other. (Imean, that, mixed with really having the urge to beat the other up since theyare angry at him.) If oyu asked them, they would probably tell you somethinglike “it’s always been like this” as the reason, or something – I wouldn’twager they have a real, tangible reason for it. It took Nero stepping in andyelling to get them out of that same old rut and remind them they don’t have to do that constantly.

 But yeah,it’s one big, fucked up thing between those two, most of the time. I’m glad itseems they started to at least try and straighten some stuff out by the end ofit. XD

[joaniam]

Harry Potter OOTP Theory (that’s probably over a decade late)

[6/12/17, 1:34:24 AM] Joan: just looking at what happens directly after harry gets back to the house- it honestly seems like harry might have been baited into running [6/12/17, 1:34:33 AM] Joan: like, someone wanted him outside and outside the wards again [6/12/17, 1:34:47 AM] Joan: and then dumbledore seems to work to /keep that from happening/ [6/12/17, 1:35:16 AM] vis: oooh. thats an interesting take on it [6/12/17, 1:36:16 AM] Joan: if we're assuming someone wanted harry out of the house and alone, just analyzing what he did in third year- i would have done the same thing? [6/12/17, 1:37:30 AM] Joan: send a serious threat so harry would have to use magic- two dementors are nothing to sneeze at (and tbh i don't think the knowledge that harry took out a bunch of dementors in third year would be secret after wormtail got back to voldemort) but harry can take them, and they know that [6/12/17, 1:37:42 AM] Joan: then, have some asshole in the ministry expel harry [6/12/17, 1:37:51 AM] Joan: he'd run, just like in third year [6/12/17, 1:37:55 AM] Joan: out of the house- out of the wards [6/12/17, 1:38:06 AM] Joan: into the clutches of who/whatever was waiting for him

[6/12/17, 1:38:39 AM] vis: i mean, it COULD all be coincedence, but its a lot cooler if it isnt [6/12/17, 1:38:40 AM] Joan: Arthur Weasley working at the Ministry might have been the only thing to save Harry's life that night [6/12/17, 1:38:47 AM] vis: geez yeah [6/12/17, 1:39:02 AM] vis: lmao just another instance of harry narrowly avoiding death then [6/12/17, 1:39:05 AM] Joan: he sent the first note telling harry to stay put IN THE HOUSE and not give up his wand

[anneapocalypse]

happy bday <3

Thank you!