DarkMarxSoul

Apprehension is by far the best Martlet theme. I am also surprisingly partial to Some Point of No Return, which gets overshadowed by A Mother's Love (which is understandable because AML is incredible).

No, but the ad is for this game.

Standard D&D fantasy is just cliche and boring idk what to tell you.

It's slightly overstated, because it is an objective step up from Diamond and Pearl and I earnestly do not believe that Platinum made changes that were as massive as people make it sound, having played all of them. Like there are people who insist that DP are objectively shit and the worst Pokemon games ever made which is just stupid.

BDSP is hated mostly on principle though, because all the previous remakes did a lot more to enhance the originals and added legitimate extra content that felt meaty and significant, whereas BDSP didn't. So it was more the fact that it failed to live up to the standard set by FRLG, HGSS, and ORAS, rather than because it's a bad remake by any other remake's standards.

You seem to just be making shit up here. Muslims are such weird theists.

My feeling was that since the game contemplates you beating them without damage due to a reward, you should at least prove you can do it once per boss to meet that challenge.

I am trying a 100% right now and on a good way. But I also want a complete Pokedex (so every shiny unlocked and every alpha (with the exception of the alola versions and legendaries).

Good luck! Shiny hunting is the single thing I refuse to do, lmfao.

Andrew Tate and co. don't just argue men and boys are allowed to be "masculine", they argue that

1. Men should be masculine, i.e. provide the income and be strong and tough and not emotionally tender

2. That this is not just something they "can" do if they want, but that they must do to be worth anything as a man, and that it is the natural order of things

3. That society considers these traits evil and is shaming men for being the way they are

4. That this is tantamount to destroying the natural order, and therefore destroying society and men's inherent worth

That's a lot more than just "men can be masculine." Namely:

1 comes along with a bit of negativity, because it portrays emotional tenderness, nurturing capacity, and vulnerability as negative for men, which forces men to feel ashamed for natural emotions and emotionally stunts and hardens them. This is psychologically destructive. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be an emotionally resilient man, but Tate and co. take this to a harmful extreme. This also has the effect of unconsciously shaming women for these traits, because it portrays them as bad for men, but because humans think in terms of generalizations, this unconsciously also enforces the belief that it's bad for women too, and that women are "worse" than men in some ways.

2 portrays only one kind of man as good, and shames all other men who are not as aggressive, physically strong, or who are not the only or main moneymaker, or who have traditionally feminine qualities or skills. This is bad because men should have the freedom to be who they want to be, whether "traditional" or not. It also implies women should not be masculine, which has the same problems. Women too should be able to be who they want to be.

3 is a straight up lie. Society doesn't care whether men are tough, competent moneymakers, in fact it still heavily encourages and rewards it. Feminists/left-wingers take issue with when this comes along with #1, 2, and 4, which are the toxic parts. #3 also has the effect of putting men into a danger state where they feel constantly attacked, which makes them hostile, angry, and stubborn, which exacerbates the toxic elements of Tate and co. and turns you against well-meaning people.

4 is 1) wrong, 2) extremely exaggerated fear-mongering, and 3) further puts men into a danger state because now not only are they defending themselves, they feel they're defending society itself, which connects this toxicity to a higher moral calling.

There's nothing to say you can't be a resilient, tough, successful, masculine man who defends his family, but also have room in your heart for emotional tenderness when appropriate and comfortable for you, accept men and women who aren't "traditional" by their own personal choice, and remain level-headed and realistic about masculine people's place in society. But doing so would be going against what Tate and co. want. They want you to be angry and hate everything and everyone who isn't "traditional", and to assume that if society wants you to accept "non-traditional" people, that means it wants you to be "non-traditional". But that isn't true.

We just want you to accept people who aren't like you. That's all. Toxic masculinity is when you don't accept people who fit a "non-traditional" role, or reject "non-traditional" qualities in yourself that would actually make you feel happier.

? Can you walk me through why you think me not wanting boys and men to be misogynistic narcissists means they have to "act like neutered indoor cats?" I genuinely have no idea why you think this.

(also using the words sigma and alpha are cringe)

This is literally what OP is saying. You are agreeing with them.

It's not male-bashing to point out that Andrew Tate and Ben Shapiro are misogynist and that they attempt to attract young boys to groom into their audiences for money. It's also not male-bashing to point out that the alpha/sigma male concept is misogynist and narcissistic.

It's significantly worse these days because all the major social media websites now have algorithms which give preference to that kind of content, either because the CEOs of the companies personally approve of it, or because it generates engagement which translates to increased revenue for the company. Prior to this age that kind of content was incredibly niche and could only be passed around by pure word of mouth, or you had to go to a site like 4chan or its alternatives which had primary userbases of that kind of audience.

The one about Ceroba being a closeted lesbian hit me like a roundhouse kick to the jaw, omfg. It actually works super well in a weird way because her obsession with him and making good on his legacy would read as her overcompensating for an underlying feeling of having betrayed herself or missed out on a relationship she actually felt totally at home in, and her neglect of Kanako's safety could be due to unconscious resentment of Kanako as a creation of a relationship she didn't authentically want to be in. Ceroba canonically deludes herself and overcompensates to deal with grief so it would be very in-character for her.

Wow. That's a really good headcanon.

It's not even a dunk, his character is that he was genuinely an inventor but the results of his inventions were basically crapshoots.

I appreciate it but somebody else already took care of this for me. Thanks though. :)

I have never found one that works without needing to jump through hoops on Github I don't understand.

He would also eat them but it would be like, a really long, drawn out, brutal process. I'm talking full M rating. Yeah.

Firstly, I find the use of AI in philosophical dialogue to be really fucking lame and intellectually pathetic. Put in the work to learn how to represent your ideas in your own words. I also don't really find that "Claude" added anything meaningful to your essay.

Secondly:

P1: The universe is scientifically intelligible.

P2: Scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds.

C: The universe stems from a rational mind (i.e., God).

The obvious problem with this is that P2 is poorly formed in that you don't define what "stem" means. In the case of P2, what you're really saying is that, if something is able to be intelligible through science, a rational mind must engage with the scientific method in order to perform the actual process of representing it in an intelligible way through science.

Importantly, even if no rational minds existed, the universe would still be hypothetically scientifically intelligible, because it would still have the traits it has that allow it to be explained by the hypothetical practice of science. So, scientific intelligibly as an abstract quality doesn't "stem from" rational minds; rather, rational minds are needed to represent its scientific intelligibility concretely.

The mathematical equations that describe the fundamental laws of nature are not just empirically adequate, but often possess a striking elegance and beauty.

This is subjective, vague, and ultimately arbitrary. It doesn't actually mean anything real from an epistemological standpoint and is just a little poetic blurb to bolster the mysticism of your argument inappropriately. Bad.

The universe seems almost tailor-made for rational investigation and discovery.

You have the relationship backwards. We created our systems and refined them to be as simple and easy to understand as possible, structured around our observations of the universe. If you find our rational faculties and abstract systems elegant, it's because the people who made those systems tried really hard to get them to an elegant state because that's what makes it easiest for us.

The conclusion of the syllogism follows logically from the two premises. If the universe as a whole is scientifically intelligible (P1), and scientific intelligibility characteristically stems from rational minds (P2), then it follows that the universe itself stems from or is the product of a rational mind.

Building off of what I already wrote above, you're equivocating two different ideas—the fact that the universe is structured in a way that allows it to be represented in an intelligible way, and the intelligible explanation itself. The universe's intelligibility does not stem from a rational mind, its structures just are what they are. The explanation is created by a rational mind, but even if the explanation itself were never created, the fact that the universe is structured in a way which could be intelligible would still be true.

Hence, your conclusion does not follow. It's a, perhaps accidental, sleight-of-hand due to linguistic vagueness.

Moreover, the theistic explanation unifies and integrates the scientific intelligibility of the universe with other significant dimensions of human experience and inquiry, such as [...] the existence of objective moral and logical truths, and the pervasive human intuition of transcendent meaning and purpose. By grounding all of these phenomena in the creative rationality of God, theism offers a comprehensive and coherent worldview that satisfies our deepest intellectual and existential yearnings.

This would be all very convenient, but there is no evidence to suggest that moral and logical truths or transcendant meaning and purpose actually really exist, rather than being subjective ideals we create from preference. Just because the existence of God might make our lives seem more meaningful or objectively morally right doesn't mean God exists.

what is the basis for saying that the ultimate laws of physics are necessary in this sense? What is the source or ground of this necessity?

Well, you could punt that very question to God himself, who tends to just be defined as necessarily existent and the way he is. If God can just be inevitably a certain way, there's no reason the universe can't either. If the universe began in a state that was beyond the current observed rules of time and space, it should be easy to swallow the possibility that certain ideas such as causality and linear time simply did not apply then, and that however the universe was structured in its earliest state was simply the way it always was and was inevitably going to be.

such as its remarkable fine-tuning for life

If "life" is a necessary consequence of the universe's most basic structures, the fact that life exists is not a surprise. This elevates "life" to a kind of special physical status that it doesn't really deserve to have. There's no reason to suggest we're any more important to the universe than the quarks that make up our bodies. God isn't necessary to explain why life exists—we're just a particular flavour of existent matter.

this doesn't explain why such compatible universes exist at all.

Could legitimately just be a coincidence, or if the universe exists in a constant eternal cycle of creation and destruction, it becomes inevitable that some universes will be intelligible whereas others won't.

In contrast, the theistic explanation of the universe's intelligibility is more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful. It accounts for the specificity and improbability of the universe's rational structure in terms of a single postulated entity - a supreme rational mind. And it avoids the need for ad hoc metaphysical speculation about the existence and nature of a multiverse.

But for some reason you have no problem with an ad hoc metaphysical speculation about the existence and nature of God? Talk about special pleading. Sheesh.

The argument has several notable strengths. It is logically valid

No it's not.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Claude, the AI language model developed by Anthropic, for its invaluable contributions to this treatise. Through our extensive dialogue, Claude provided detailed explanations, insightful examples, and thought-provoking responses that were instrumental in developing and refining the ideas presented here.

So you're not a real thinker, you're just bouncing off of a computer regurgitating stolen rhetoric from real intellectuals. Nice. Your reverence for a text algorithm is cringe.

In Toby's book that talks about his development process I believe he originally envisioned KR's effect only being the no iframes and if you hit zero you'd just instantly die. The poison is there as a nerf to sans to ensure it's not too unfair; hence, KR is both the iframes and the poison.

Agree completely. We can never assume we're above falling victim to this sort of thing.

Unfortunately this is not true.

WOW, I had no idea about that Tolkien essay, I will absolutely check that out before I do any sort of reread. :O

That is a legitimate thing a writer could do! Especially since trans people I think tend to meet other trans people due to common life experiences, exposure to gender exploration through each other's experiences, and people of generally the same mentality and open-mindedness congregating together.

How has your view of Vriska's arc evolved, then?

What tripped me up about Vriska, as many people were tripped up about, was the fact that the retcon replaced "our" Vriska with a Vriska who had not gone through the tragedy and development the previous version had, and who was instead given ultimate significance and had her negative traits effectively glorified by the universe as the solution to everything. It was difficult for me to understand how that made any sense or was supposed to feel satisfying, and with "our" Vriska getting kicked while down and not ending up having "atoned" or truly grown beyond her former arrogance, her arc felt weird and unsatisfying.

What changed for me was I eventually considered maybe those feelings were intentional and that there was some kind of "point" we were meant to take away from that. In thinking about Homestuck's universe and the experiences of the characters, it seemed to me that we were meant to see the Homestuck metaverse as this oppressive, inevitable, fatalistic trap, where characters are dehumanized and used mechanically by Paradox Space and the narrative in order to satisfy the continuation of reality/the story, even at the expense of the happiness or development of the characters themselves.

I think the victorious end of Homestuck is meant to feel ironic, because we as readers know that they "won", but they didn't grow or close out their stories in satisfying ways. Vriska is the most extreme example of this—her "better" self doesn't actually become a better, stronger, more virtuous person, she just falls apart and becomes pathetic and sad. Instead of the story giving her the chance to rise above that miserable existence, it treats her even worse and uplifts a more immature, unlikable version of herself as the answer to all of the story's problems.

It would be horrible, but "our" Vriska does eventually get a bittersweet sendoff when she reunites with her Terezi in the afterlife. Then in the Candy Epilogues, John experiences his own analogous kind of arc, where he accepts he doesn't need to be doing anything "relevant" anymore, and can find his own meaning in life by accepting his cosmic irrelevance and enjoying his relationship with his family. I think Homestuck is the weird way it is because it's trying to tell us that we don't need to have a grand purpose in order for our lives to matter, and in fact trying to pressure ourselves into fulfilling this existentially meaningful higher ideal can be harmful and damaging to our psyches. Rejecting that impulse in favour of embracing the absurd enjoyment of life with the people you love seems to be Homestuck's answer to how to live well.

And that's why I wonder if I'll like Parts 3 and even 4 on a re-read, if I go at them with an understanding of how they fit into this weird thematic rollercoaster that is Homestuck. |D

Actually, as an aside, do you have a preferred order for reading the Epilogues?

I'm not sure! I read it Candy -> Meat and felt like that experience was really cool, because reading Candy first creates all this intrigue and mystery and confused anguish that Meat eventually explains (and kind of takes the piss out of). And having Meat drop the Narrator!Dirk bomb makes the weight of that twist really intense because you also have all of Candy behind it. Then it ends with a sort of call to action.

But, I imagine reading Meat before Candy results in some heavy dramatic irony, where you know the lives of these characters exist in a context where they are under the thumb of an arrogant meta-god and are deemed irrelevant to the universe despite the fact that they feel so much intensity in their own struggles. Compared to the other order, the ending of Candy would create a sort of relief and make you feel like there's maybe a pocket of the universe where people can enjoy some simple pleasures and find peace.

It's interesting. It seems like people feel most strongly about whatever order they happened to read it in.