domain:science.org
SerialStateLineXer
1d ago
Given that they didn't remove any of those comments, that seems unlikely. You probably just got autojannied.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Vinland Saga: Suggest finishing, partly because the anime does something I've rarely ever seen: after the first season is a (fun) orgy of violence and revenge and action, the second season is the opposite: character development, slow plot, and a message about how violence is bad.
My own suggestions/mini review list, loosely sorted in order of appeal to non-anime types, or people who have only watched one or two. Of course, it's always subjective. I don't quite agree that "anime is just a medium" because its highly-controlled production pipeline and limited set of studios creates some definite commonalities, but it's true there's a wide variety of genres.
Violet Evergarden, 9/10
THIS is really an excellent first or early anime. A woman used essentially as a special-ops child soldier is now a little older, and while the war continues, she decides to take up an unusual vocation: a typist in an era where few people know how to write (I guess), she also assists in helping people organize their thoughts to write letters. Often, these letters are emotionally charged, or offer some major catharsis; thus the show's episodes are organized roughly with a major letter per episode. Parallel to this, we should mention that the main character, the eponymous Violet Evergarden, has lost both of her arms, replaced with mechanical ones, which mirrors her emotional state, still dull and robotic from her war experiences. So we slowly get to see her open up over the course of the series. Sad and emotional at times, hopeful in others, this one is highly memorable and at times honestly you often forget it's an anime at all. Finished, a season and a movie or two.
Apothecary Diaries, 9/10
This show is great. A nice mix of mystery, cool setting, and like the previous, much fewer anime tropes than your usual fare, this one stands out. A fairly level-headed girl but with a strange obsession with poisons, raised as an apothecary by her adopted father (read: herbal-medicine doctor for the poor, in this case often a brothel) is kidnapped into a loosely-Chinese imperial palace as a servant there. And not the cool, plot kidnapping version either, she's literally just nabbed off the street and sold and has to come to terms with her new life. Which she does, and she's pretty smart and a good investigator even though it really isn't her interest, and she gets pulled into harem politics to some extent as first a food taster, and then other adventures especially for a powerful eunuch within the palace. Ongoing story with two seasons, but with some good closure.
Frieren: At Journey's End, 10/10
Now, I'm not sure whether this score, which reflects my anime of the decade designation, translates to the general public, but it's very enjoyable. A fantasy series that explores the idea of what a long-lived elf's life is actually like! Lord of the Rings plays a bit with this idea in a way, but doesn't fully commit and it's spun differently. There, the elves are kind of tired of life, but here, we ask the question: what might Legolas be feeling, going on an adventure with some others, when he knows that they are going to die and leave him behind again? LotR dodges this a bit by both killing much of the cast, and Gimli is also of a similar long life, but Frieren tackles this a bit more explicitly. She once went on a save-the-world trip, but as the mage of the party. Living for at least a thousand years however, she doesn't fully appreciate the impact this trip had on her, and experiences regret for not emotionally engaging more after her friends pass away. She uses this as impetus to start another journey back north again to the demon lands, retracing the save-the-world steps with a new group of people who grow on her. The world-building is great, the storytelling is on point, the vibes are excellent, it's just a great watch. Ongoing, one season completed.
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, 9/10
This one earns a rare distinction for carrying with it a strong piece of advice: try the first episode or two subbed and dubbed. A humor-first series, this one takes place in a super-elite high school, where the two highest-performing students (one old money, and one a scholarship student), on the student council together, are trying to get each other to admit a crush on the other. They play all sorts of mental gymnastics to make this work. The humor largely comes from the commentary/narrator, but the sub and dub both approach it differently (and the dub actually localizes many of the jokes, so they are funny but in a different way). The sub leans a bit more dry-humor, irony-focused, while the dub plays up the conflicts as being outrageous. At any rate, this one is just good fun and although the series starts out as a bit more like a series of connected skits, it eventually transitions a little more into a proper show with character arcs and plot and all that good stuff. Finished, three seasons, epilogue movie to come.
I don't really know how the below actually stack up but I felt like tossing them in too.
Angel Beats!, 8.5/10
Admittedly it has been a while since I watched this one, but it's good. Some nice emotional catharsis, but I don't know how much I can say without spoiling things too much. A guy wakes up all of the sudden in a sort of alternate-reality school, with a confusing 'war' between a group of kids within the school and the school student body president, who is a bit of a robot, with the drone-like other students as bystanders. Despite the presence of guns, this is a low-violence affair where the war is mostly a series of, well, pranks more or less? Despite the sort of confusing set-up, you get some good character moments, and this one is a tear-jerker at times.
Dandadan, 8.5/10
Visual flair. Panache. Dialing stuff up to 11. This anime is now in its second season and is ridiculous but fun. You probably only need to see a few minutes to get an idea about what this one's about, but for text purposes the classic hook is that a high schooler who believes in ghosts teams up with one who believes in aliens, and they're both right! He has his balls stolen by a spirit, and aliens try to kidnap her, and then they have some adventures trying to resolve that.
Code Geass, 8.5/10
This is kind of like the Ender's Game of anime in a way? The main character lives as a privileged elite in a dystopian Japan ruled by a world monarchy-autocracy, but decides to join a local Japanese rebellion. He's very much a 5D chess type of guy, takes on an alter-ego, and did I mention there's mechs for some reason? Most of the show is him outsmarting people, because in a similar kind of "hook" to the oft-recommended Death Note (which I personally don't like), he has the ability to brainwash-command anyone to do anything... but only once, ever, in their life. Which he obviously wants to keep a secret, but has to also be smart about using due to its one-time-use nature. Two seasons.
The Thick of It is like The Office (US version) in that it’s an idealized version of a ‘fun’ office as imagined by people from that particular culture. Leaving aside that even in the mid Blair era I doubt most of that kind of banter was tolerated all the time even from Alistair Campbell types (let alone random civil servants) there is an authenticity to it.
I would say that working in an office full of well-educated English people who like banter, at its best on Friday afternoons when everyone is comfortable with each other, has had a couple of drinks at lunch and is joking around then sure, it feels a bit like The Thick of It (at least to my foreign ears).
In the same way, Americans and some other Anglos identified with the kind of camaraderie and humor in the US Office because they experienced a lesser version of it, sometimes, themselves. The Thick of It lacks the maudlin sentimentality of most US sitcoms but a similar principle applies.
The swearing in particular seems like a remnant of the TV culture of that time, ‘The F Word’, Gordon Ramsey swearing, the growth of satellite TV without watershed, established networks being willing to have more swearing on later in the evening. This was, after all, when Little Britain was airing on BBC One. In addition, the main character is based on a notorious fan of profanity even today.
More interesting for the TV connoisseur is Veep, which while a less funny show highlights the subtle cultural differences between Britain and America by having American actors and characters speak dialogue clearly written by Brits and therefore always a little uncanny to American ears.
Succession (by much the same team) has a similar problem but skirts it by making the main cast half-English.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1d ago
My take is that competent people still exist, and there may be more of them than ever, but they've been pulled into niche industries where they can make much bigger salaries, leaving the dum dums to fill jobs in government and more mundane industries.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1d ago
People are unalived rather than killed.
I wonder if the bot would pass "mur-diddley-urdered". Deliberately make the censorship look stupid.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
1d ago
A girl challenging you and her showing you who's boss, and then doing that in the movie are different. Mark Renton in Trainspotting, when he meets Diane gets challenged by her despite his awful pickup, but ultimately she does not end up being the man in the movie. I like feisty women, modern portrayals, despite the nudity, are very sexless. You can sense that the creators have had weird lives; the woman running Star Wars, or whatever their latest flop TV show was, spent her high school as a pariah. No wonder her art is that bad.
JTarrou
1d ago
Oh, a throwaway line about NPR hosts getting flogged.
I suspect my recent comment of the week about race and IQ to be the real culprit, but they got Capone for tax evasion.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
Thank you! I'm currently at Borough Market, suffering from sensory overload. I'll see how my legs hold up after I've had something to eat.
pretty nice in summer especially if it’s sunny this afternoon
The opposite, unfortunately. Tottenham was positively dystopian due to the overall bleakness and the rather concerning number of schizophrenics on the loose. Clouds as far as the London Eye can see.
Corvos
1d ago
I have you pegged as "flighty wordcel who is way too interested in austere, self-referential literature and art" and that's meant as a compliment. The profile of your interests isn't super typical here and it adds flavour and depth to the Motte, I don't like it much when people downvote them.
Just seconding this. We need some nutters around the place to keep things interesting
Conventional English strongly associates quality with clarity, for good reason IMO (see C.S. Lewis and Orwell’s critiques of bureaucratese and the superiority of clear sentences and everyday Anglo-Saxon derived words, with which I largely agree).
But I do see the force of the Continental claim that writing something is not actually the same as expressing it. It can even be the reverse - an inoculation that robs an idea of all its true interest and allows you to lock it in a mental drawer without further thought.
The problem for me is that I find all the continental attempts to circumvent this process to be tedious in the extreme :) Which is why I appreciate having you around to try and indicate why it is not so.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
1d ago
where Peter Pan gets slapped by a girl in his own movie
My impression was that girls slapped protagonists a lot in their own movies in the Old Movies. It's what girls do.
2rafa
1d ago
Start in St John’s Wood or Primrose Hill, walk down through Regents Park, past the rose garden and the outdoor theater, down through Marylebone and some of Mayfair, then into Green and then St James’ park, then walk down along the Strand, stopping by whatever seems interesting. Then either take the district or circle line west, back to Hyde Park, to Chelsea and South Ken, past the museums (V&A if you haven’t been), all of Chelsea is pretty nice in summer especially if it’s sunny this afternoon.
Or walk down to the Embankment or Westminster pier, take the thames boat (now branded “uber boat” due to sponsorship but its regular public transport) to Greenwich, see the Cutty Sark and the naval college and the date line, have a pint at the Trafalgar, take the boat back.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
Thinking and Feeling aren't so alien to each other.
Right, I'm always trying to explain this to people. The "logic vs emotion" dichotomy is clearly overly simplistic and not really tenable. But at the same time, I think it's pretty clear that different people do think and experience in fundamentally different ways, and we need some kind of language for talking about it, even if we end up not using those terms specifically.
I think that the issue is the network effect and centralization is the problem that attracts the shaping of opinions. Why this place still feels authentic is because of size. Maybe the solution is to have an aggregator of independent smaller forums where the forums are actually independent moderation and actual resource ownership as opposed subreddits that are controlled by reddit.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
Oh, not sure why you removed the Paul Klee section, I was going to comment on it...
Klee was an artist, not a philosopher. Most artists are frankly not very good at talking about their own work. They tend to not actually be that knowledgeable about art theory, let alone philosophy in general. That's why they're artists and not philosophers.
The Klee stuff you quoted seemed pretty bad and uninteresting and I would have nope'd out after a few sentences.
When someone is actually trained as a philosopher, and their work is recognized as philosophy by other philosophers, you can take it on good faith that there is a method to the madness. I quoted that Heidegger comment about poets for example to give an example of one of his more extreme flights of fancy, but at the same time, it's undeniable that Heidegger was extremely well-versed in the entirety of the history of Western philosophy, and (at least some of) his work makes genuine contributions to legitimate philosophical problems. (His What is Metaphysics is interesting and approachable.)
Thus Spake Zarathrusta threw me badly though and I've not returned to it since.
Aaaaa what a tragedy! Zarathustra is a terrible book, it's easily the worst thing he ever wrote. I don't blame people for assuming that it's a natural starting place for reading Nietzsche though. He himself insisted from the day it was published to the day he died that it was his best work. I have no idea why. He was simply wrong about that. I can only assume that he was just trolling and trying to filter people or something.
If you ever want to return to Nietzsche, I would recommend Twilight of the Idols, Gay Science, and Genealogy of Morality in that order. I think that would give you a relatively balanced overview of his project and his main concerns.
But in general I have the sense that much appreciation of continental philosophy actually primarily relies on vibes and not coherent sense-making.
Like I've been saying, you have to make judgements on a book by book, paragraph by paragraph basis. Almost all the specific books I've recommended throughout this thread are approachable and can be read like any other book, and they do make coherent sense, such that you could explain them to analytic philosophers without too much trouble.
And sometimes you get sentences that function on multiple levels, instead of adhering to a strict "semantic meaning vs vibes-based" distinction. So, for example, when Lacan says "woman does not exist; Woman cannot be said", you can "decode" this to get the "literal" meaning of "there is no single paradigmatic successful example that women can model themselves after, unlike how an individual man can aspire to be 'The Man' (people say 'you're the man, man' but they never say 'you're the woman, girl'); social expectations for women are perpetually and irreconcilably split between the Madonna and the whore". This is how many of his commentators interpret him, especially if they're writing a "Lacan 101" type introduction. But you can also choose to just let your mind run free with the poetic, vibes-based associations. I think some continental texts are very much intended to get your brain to trigger both modes of cognition at once.
I have you pegged as "flighty wordcel who is way too interested in austere, self-referential literature and art" and that's meant as a compliment. The profile of your interests isn't super typical here and it adds flavour and depth to the Motte, I don't like it much when people downvote them.
Thank you, I really appreciate that. Some number of downvotes is actually a good thing. If I only ever got upvotes, then that would mean I was just agreeing with the hivemind on everything and I wasn't saying anything that challenged people and made them push back.
Corvos
1d ago
I was watching some clips from the Thick of It and it seemed slightly… off. The broad plot points and the characters seemed realistic enough but the overt and graphic threats, and the fucky fucky speaking style seemed to be very much written to pander to the audience rather than to be realistic.
(Who would be caught dead saying something like ‘fuck you very much’? It makes you sound like a five year old.)
I know some of us have experience in this environment (e.g. @SSCReader). What do you think? Which bits basically ring true and which bits don’t? Is TToI just outdated?
I have some experience but it’s all student politics on the one hand and dealing with civil service type people and procurement on the other hand.
Movie reviews and demonic modern media
I really like Robert Eggers, his movies are well made and are true to the time period that they are from, the actors are good, you get sucked into eh atmosphere, and there is no modern leftist drudgery. I made the mistake of not posting my unfinished draft and ended up losing 5 pages of progress, so I will try to be brief here. Eggers adapts euro folklore to his brand of extremely immersive cinema; his movie The Northman was the most aryan thing I have seen on a screen in a while; it celebrated values that my own people, a continent away, celebrate. I wrote a review of it here and recommend everything Eggers has made.
The lighthouse
The movie is about homosexuality, I liked it,t but it's my least favorite Eggers movie. It reminds me of david lynch a lot. Worth watching once. I like Eggers when he adapts more straightforward older material that, whilst being simple, conveys a lot of things; in this case, it felt a lot like watching David Lynch in some ways. Great movie, though not the best movie ever, kinda good.
Nosferatu
This movie is amazing; if you removed the cuckoldry from it, it would have been perfect. The dialogue and the setting are something from a weird time where it feels like a European adaptation from the early 1900s. Count Orlok strikes fear with zero jump scares. Bill Skarsgard's portrayal is very real and very scary. I would rewatch it simply because of the immersion. This is a super immersive movie, and it's very polished. It's one of the best movies I have ever seen and is a must-watch in my book.
F1
61-year-old Brad Pitt stars in a rare good summer blockbuster sports action by-the-numbers movie. The director of Top Gun Maverick made a movie that even my mom liked, who, for the record, rarely watches movies. It's a very lighthearted action-heavy flick that, due to not being leftist explicitly, makes for a great movie to watch in the theatres. Real equipment and CGI feel very different; CGI has made movies feel less consequential. Pro wrestling became worse partly because people started doing more extreme things like jumping off the cage, jumping into tacks, jumping off the cage on a table that's on fire with tacks around it. Ultimately, it only made it worse as people tuned in for the story, the usage of more extreme gimmicks worked as an occasional thing, doing it more made people desensitised, and it made everyone look superhuman. It is much more interesting to see Brad in a car than it is to see some 5'2 diverse female lead "save" the universe in CGI slop because one of them is not indestructible.
Watchmen Chapter 1 and 2
Watchmen is touted as peak comic book stuff, and this adaptation is the most faithful one we have seen since the HBO show was just cringeworthy pro-leftist drivel, and the Snyder one apparently took too many liberties. My favorite part is the comic inside the comic, where the dialogues in that comic end up matching what we see in the world of Watchmen through different POVs. Alan Moore, the creator, is a hardcore leftist in whose eyes the world is a nihilistic place; he is competent at his job and can subvert you in better ways than modern ones. The character people root for who have read the comic or seen the adaptation, is Rorschach, who Moore created to dunk on conservatives. He remains the only guy who stood for the right thing by the end.
Modern Media is Demonic
No, seriously, let's consider two superhero stories. On one hand, we have the boys, the current cucked tv show, where there is a literal line where Billy Butcher goes "He is my wife's son", which is supposed to make him look like the good guy. On the other we have All-Star Superman, a story about Superman coming to terms that he is dying and living out his last days on earth. The boys and watchmen have a nihilistic vision of the world where despite all the lawlessness, the word crime is still racism. There are no good guys, power corrupts and all endings are bad. In All-Star Superman, you instead see, also spoiler alert, skip the paragraph is you wanna not know the ending, although the ending makes no difference.
In the comic and its adaptation, Superman lives in eternally fixing the sun to save his foster homeland. There is a very touching scene where he visits his mother, who adopted him as a child, and she can sense he is ill despite no signs. It's a touching little nudge. The world needs people like him to live so that we can have order. Lex Luthor ends up with a death sentence after realising what he has done, the world is saved, and Luthor, before he dies, tries to find penance by helping Lois bear Clark's son by some sort of sci-fi IVF.
Superhero tales are for kids; they are simple. Jonathan Bowden has a good criticism of them, but we have moved to a point where even the ones he read seem like fucking biblical stories. Modern entries are that bad. These stories appeal to young boys. By making every guy in modern adaptations a bumbling incompetent idiot who is playing second fiddle to some girlboss, you go against the very nature of the story. In the case of Watchmen, consequentialist Moore wants to make these qualities look bad, though he still does an ok job with Rorschach. We on the other hand, saw Star Wars, Indiana Jones and fucking LOTR get turned into modern left-wing caricatures.
There are people who make videos on these topics, the best I have seen is this guy Despot of Antrim, there are others like nerdrotic etc, who are not as good. I never watched any of these videos about "Woke Hollywood is killing XYZ franchise". Why bother since I am too reactionary to ever get swayed? I opened one of these based on Jim from blog.reaction.la, and holy shit, modern movies are straight up unwatchable. When I was in my early teens, so the 2010s, these movies still tried being somewhat alright, but the ones today are castration via cinema.
No parent in good conscience can let kids watch modern Disney adaptations where Snow White wants a communist commune, or where Peter Pan gets slapped by a girl in his own movie. We joke about actors being whores, but current cinema is worse than whorehouses given its poisoning of little children. LOTR and Rings of Power could not be further apart. I wrote a glowing review of LOTR, after having spent 12 plus hours plopped on my bed watching all three movies, I felt something warm and glowing inside of me. Watership Down, the book I am reading and the countless folktales and mythical stories we grew up with have to do with the hero who overcomes some evil, and the end leaves him and the world better.
Men and Women are very different, the hero is a mostly male archetype, and I am sick of seeing tampons thrown at it. A concerned father here posted about his neighbour's son, how he felt bad for his mom was making him effeminate. Modern state now tries that with beloved children's cartoons too. This is a long, meandering post. I liked comic book heroes, I really did. Batman: The Animated Series was the only cartoon I ever watched. People making movies are showing me the finger, they defile some things I liked as a child, and their losing money is a good thing. I refuse to relate to a female protagonist. I would as a parent, would not want my kids to consoom product we see being shilled. These people are losing money, which gives me some hope for the world.
SerialStateLineXer
1d ago
Speaking of which, /u/JTarrou, what did you get the mop for?
I'd be very leery about calling myself interested in fashion. I buy two, maybe three, articles of clothing a year, but I do try to make sure I look good in them.
Visiting the book shops might not hurt, but I haven't bought a dead tree book (that wasn't a textbook) in almost a decade. Libgen rules.
Thanks!
Corvos
1d ago
The Piccadilly area is pretty nice for shopping: it’s got a couple of good, big bookshops (Hatchard’s especially), Fortnum & Mason’s for food, and Jermyn street etc. for top-end clothes, jackets etc. (I think you were quite interested in fashion but maybe not that kind?)
Very crowded and expensive obviously, but nice.
Or there’s the historical stuff: go to Bank and see the old City of London, or to Westminster/St. James’ Park.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
I armchair psychologize that many girls who are more well-endowed here (not simply big) develop a kind of hunched-over posture to de-emphasize their tits. Onsen (hot springs) and public bathing are not uncommon here, and a girl who develops breasts larger than the norm will 100 % have this commented on by other girls. While this is also true back in the states (or used to be, I've no idea now) there is a cultural tendency in Japan to avoid standing out. What you describe is not that surprising.
How.
A few weeks back, I'd gotten in touch with an old buddy of mine living down in London. We hadn't met for ages, and I offered to come visit during the last dying days of what passes as a summer around these parts.
You can see below that my experience catching a red-eye flight (one that threatened to give me pink-eye to boot) didn't go so well. A small price to pay, I told myself, as I landed at the airport an hour or so back, and caught the train towards where my friend lives. I dropped him a text letting him know I was on my way, and looking forward to seeing him in a few hours.
At which point came back a rather incredulous message. "self_made_human, you were supposed to be come visit next weekend."
Well. Shit. I have no valid explanation, barring chronic severe deprivation brought on by too many night shifts and dissolute living. He'd been very clear on the dates, I just ended up mixing them up, only remembering that I was supposed to see him the last weekend of this month.
He called to figure out what on earth had happened, and I was in the process of explaining the above when the train went through a tunnel and lost network. I made small talk with my fellow passengers, and took to heart their advice to make a picnic out of my misfortune. Call it self_made_human's most spontaneous (and first) solo day trip. Not kidding about that, I'm not one for travel, and I never go any significant distances unless it's on some kind of vacation or to visit someone. This is quite literally the first time I've found myself in a different city with no plans or fixed agenda.
I'm furiously asking ChatGPT for advice on how to kill the time until I hear back from my friend regarding his ability to accommodate my stupidity. I've already promised to come visit again next weekend, as he'd already made time and spent money booking things for us to do.
So uh, what do I do now? Any suggestions? Tottenham looks profoundly uninspiring, and I don't even know what sport the local team, the Tottenham Hotspurs, even play. Worst case I go to a pub. Or maybe I wander around Central London, with far more discretionary spending potential than the last time I was here.
(My family is never going to let me live this down)
Edit:
If it wasn't Anita Sarkeesian I saw at the Tate Modern, then this lady is her long lost twin. I should have said hi.
Edit 2:
Brother, they're playing a film where a bunch of clean-shaven Asian twinks are jerking off with/to plants. Modern and postmodern art outdoes itself.
It does not appear that either side has figured out a way to hide from enemy drones. If you are in the settlement that they are attacking, you will eventually just die.
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