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istherewifiinhell · 2 months

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IS FLYING GENDERED?

On the masculine default, typifying gender in genre, and women as the other in the transformers cartoons.

question for the ages

once again i said back in the halcyon days of watching g1 (aka 5 months ago) i was like. Nooooo, decepticon is NOT a gender that's Silly. It's funny, but as a Read Of The Text, I thought it largely unneeded. (The concept came about, as a joke, involving dismissing the bad guys using the same language you would abt women (sexistly) that they're emotional [heh, flighty], vain, and shrill) after all. If in the 80s era there are 5 whole named/speaking woman tfs, its only ever gonna get better from here right? (<- booboo the fool)

anyway

Let's consider the axiom that the assumed default gender is male, that maleness is often seen as LACK of gender, and femaleness and gender variance are the PRESENCE of gender. In certain reasoning and worldviews, of course (See Androcentrism). Then add that, for transformers, the assumed default thing a transformer turns into, is car. (Autocentrism, if you will)

(The most general term for what a tf turns into is "Alt mode" as some of them are not vehicles at all. The other mode is "Robot Mode", whether its humanoid or not)

So I will be laying out why I believe the cartoon iterations support: non standard alt modes = non standard genders. This is in spite of the fact that FIRST lady tfs were all cars. Sleek cyber cars, but still. For whatever reason, (possibly, the reason for everything in tf, toys) they might as well not exist for how woman tf characters presence in the cartoons progressed over time.

And, to be clear, this is a reading of how these works of fiction are created, not a new unified bioessentialism but for robots aliens I'm proposing for like. In universe lore reasons. I hate that idea.

That said, alt modes in order of most to least gender: Spider, motorcycle, flying (in general, with rotors, jets), tank, and then FINALLY, car. (water and space crafts are already too marginal to rank, but they too can be assumed in relation to default maleness, AND that in making one a woman, would still qualify as othering her).

The NUMBER one reason for this is the bizarre need to have an ESTABLISHED woman tf character before making new ones. AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE. With a g1 gender ratio something like.... (counting even the most marginal cases for the ladies) 9:120? (That's a rough count from a quick scanning of the tf wiki g1 char list) Shits dire out here.

The second is, ofc, character design based. cis people [stand in phrase for the hegemonic world view] are not okay, and their opinions about how tf gender must need be depicted visually is. uh? Im not a fan. Size and shape dimorphism in general is a given, and specifically having women tfs as far more humanoid and curvy in specific. Also general cartoon lady face syndrome but, whatever. I think there's exactly one character here who doesn't have "lips" or "lipstick" as a distinguishing factor. I'm so tired.

Third is generally, the idea of The Girl Of the Team. When there's The Girl, she often isn't JUST a normal character, who happens to be a girl. See, of course, the Smurtfette Principle. But in my view there's also a trend to give The Girl "special traits" on top of "Girl", maybe even to directly combat the idea that the Girl Character has no other traits? To stop this from being a General Primer on Woman in Media, my explanatory focus is things specific to the tf franchise.

(A phrase I use for thinking about normative modes [in general, not just the Alt ones] in within the tf universe is "unique transformerdom" or, even more clunkily, "A transformer of unique transformerdom". The excessive verbosity is amusing to me personally. All I mean by it is to have an umbrella term for any of the ways tfs can be made unique from their peers in the non allegorical realities of the fiction).

I could, and do, and greatly want to, speak about this AT LENGTH. But it keeps spiraling away from me. So I'll say for now were looking at ways a character is being depicted different from her peers, not because she is the only woman (which she likely is), but cause she's a different kind of transformer, AND if she's othered for it.

(IN SOME forms of the lore. Being a transformer woman, IS A UNIQUE KIND of transformer unto itself. Let's just say I hate it and move on)

Fourth, is the gender of villainy. There is much to be said about gender presentation of villains, the ways they are allowed to be aberrant. We will get to it. There is also all the tropes specific TO evil women, and the modes of villainy open TO female characters. But a general thing I think impacting the gender ratios of the factions is the how "Good" and "Evil" female characters are written. I'll generalize and call this the "Damsel vs Temptress" dichotomy. (See concepts like the Madonna-whore complex). Transformers, is by and large, an action franchise. Unless special reasons are made, characters who can impact the action– have more screen time, and likely more memorable, and iconic presences. A villainous woman can be unchaste, violent, aggressive. While a heroic woman, even if not a literal damsel are more likely to be in a support role. The secretaries of the action genre: medics and techs.

(Another factor is that tfs are giant robots, and the good guys are often friends with tiny squishy little humans. These make very good damsel fodder, and can be taking up the spots on the roster that might, in a different franchise, go to women. Additionally, while woman characters in transformers overall is an interesting topic. When I say tf women, I'm referring to ones that are in fictionally, transformers.)

SO, now understanding our points of attack/obstacles for getting woman into transformers. (Getting established, gendering the designed, uniqueness of existence, and general villainy). Lets go over those alt modes, and the characters that have em, in more detail.

Spiders

The "Beast Era" (1996) intro-ed the spider ofc. And what don't we have with this one. She's a villain, but shes also misunderstood, the era and design style let to these more organic shapes. And they used them to make sure she was very sexy. She's genre aware, she's quippy, she's an absolute icon. So naturally. She gets ported to other later shows. Which means we just have sexy spider ladies running around when everyone else is a fucking truck and shit.

Her own origin is, well think of her as a "Bride of Frankenstein" to the resident evil scientist, also a spider. She was designed for, and manipulated by him in multiple ways. Her protoform (A blank robot base), was supposed to be one of the good guys (a Maximal), but was reprogrammed into a bad guy (Predacon). Even then, she eventually joins them, for her own reasons. She's not even the first predacon to do so, the difference? Well the characters are a lot more NORMAL about his autonomy. Both of these characters stress that being a predacon is an identity they still see as important. But only the woman is told that really, she is was was always MEANT to be a maximal. And while that's true in a sense. There's also a plot were she's forced (by plot contrivance, not the other maximals) to get corrective robot surgery for it. And when they think she died from, everyone's more sad for her boyfriend than for her. Ouch.

The second spider, in the 2007 show, is now one in a world where she is the only "techno-organic" transformer, hence, she is spider, everyone else is a vehicle. Similar to the first, her narrative is very gendered, but less in the way were, like, I do literally think the first was was experiencing in universe sexism from other characters. Here, they really focus on the "techno vs organic" narrative, and the tragic circumstances on how that happened. In this case its just real world sexist writing.

THIRD SPIDER, (2010), instead of misunderstood and tragic evil, this ones just super mega likes to cause pain evil. She also occupies a strange place between the typic vehicular tfs, and the insecticons. This is because she has a helicopter alt mode, and her robot mode is just, a lady with spider characteristics. And, more than just a passing bug like similarity, she has the power to control the insecticons (you know, cause evil woman mind control). However, she doesn't fit in with them either, as the insecticons are at the most insect like they've ever been, in look, living in hives and that most don't even speak.

They may vary in exact character, relationship to the story's moral conflict, and design. But they stay comfortably established, dimorphised, flirty and flirting with villainy. And bonus points, always, for black widow spider trope.

SO. SPIDERS. Established: ✅️ Gendered designs: ✅️ (Extremely!) Unique: ✅️ Othered: ✅️ Villainy: ✅️

Motorcycles

Tooooo my knowledge the first bike lady was in 2004, and fairly minor, in the actual plot, but rest assured, they did go the previously established woman route, by being pink, though, which one shes named after varies by language. But neither were previously motorcycles. (And yes, there is also this problem of mixing together or swapping out one woman tf for another. As if we have the ladies to spare). Even though motorcycle men also exist, this one just stuck for a bit. Maybe something to do with Those Movies. I think the Gendered Existence of a motorcycle is pretty evident though, general sex appeal, being smaller, the mode of riding a motorcycle is different, more physical and intimate. Mainly this ranks so high for the level of grossness they can pack in. Just how objectifying it can be, particularly with two instances where the human rider is an annoying teen boy. Naturally, I've also never seen a male and female motorcycle in the same room, but the approach to design tends to be different. And yeah most of em are Arcee, who's first alt mode was cyber car, but it's not just her.

Established: ✅️ Gendered designs: ✅️ Unique: ✅️ Othered: Depends on iteration, I do NOT like the way one gets called "tough, for a two wheeler". Villainy: ❌(they wouldn't need to be motorcycles if they weren't making them the Special Girl Autobot, after all)

Flying

General: It just tends to stick out when your one girl is only flyer in the group, even she's otherwise tactfully done. Only flyer of the Maximals, a falcon, only flyer of the dinobots, a Pteranodon.

Rotors

I can barely even figure this one. Maybe it's just a general, aesthetics and use case of the actually vehicles, the associations? None of these ladies (and special case) are very connected otherwise. As previously mentioned, the spider helicopter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A big one for this is the preschool demo shows, which are rescue team focused. In the first one the only woman on the human response worker team pairs with the helicopter, they mention she does medical at times. The helicopter is male, like the other tfs. But also he's afraid of flying, and while not the first case of a flyer with a fear of heights, their personalities are, pretty different. As he's both fearful AND effeminate, fine as character traits go but, with the tone of humour used, marks him as Other.

In the second, Whirl (pointing to icon) becomes a girl for the first time, now with standard humanized face. I assume as move to keep with the previous show of having a girl one, as there's no human team mates. She's also the only one who really likes rescue school. Aaaand that's all know of her. What more do you want from me.

Helicopters: Unique: ✅️ Othered: ✅️ (milder than some)

But why'd I call this section rotors instead of helicopters? That would be because one of the latest Sole Female TF we just put in everything™ is a VTOL jet with rotors. She'll tend to be the only jet of her type, which is also smaller than the type of jet used for the villains.

And, of course, aside from alt mode, the thing that makes her stand out most in the cartoons? That she's very clearly a comics character. (I find the emphasize that she's "fan created" over done, as it only controlled minor aspects, and irrelevant cause tfs get completely overhauled in new versions all the time). From her design, which is a bit busier than most characters she stars with. And also uses Japanese aesthetic signifiers in ways that I think are a bit misappropriated and untactful. (VERY USamerican comics). Also, when she stars next to a guy, also from comics employing Japanese aesthetic, you can tell its not deployed in the same manner. (E.I she has hair and makeup, he has armor). Either way, her depictions have her either as badass sword lady on mission from god who's constantly getting hit on by an annoying guy. Or have her be from a different planet and has special telepathy.

Do we see how both her gender AND the cultural signifiers are having affects here? That the main woman tf in a series can be a literal alien even among our alien robots, with cultural signifiers they don't have?

Ratings Established: ✅️ (made the comics to cartoon jump) Gendered designs: ✅️ Unique: ✅️ Othered: ✅️ (SO SO EXTREMELY, using methods in fiction and real life)

Jets

I think my association of jets with tf gender is stronger, than some of the above examples, even if there's less reason to it. And why is that? Well, lets get socratic. Here's another question.

Is This All Starscream's Fault?

No. He's not real, he can't do things. But. His legacy as THE main stay transformers character that gets to subvert gender? Yeah. (Sure, the G1 autobots have their own effete, but he's not in every single cartoon they ever made now is he? Plus now that I think about it, he is a FLYING car...)

From the get, he's not a Man's man. He's shrill, he's manipulative and duplicitous, petty and emotional, cowardly and wheedling. He is, of course, the Perfect character. Now naturally, the 80s cartoon was not concerned with your paltry logics. Starscream and his ilk are the jets, but every decepticon can fly. The gun, the cassette player, the camera, the cassettes.

And each to a last, more masculine than he is. Vocally or behaviorally, physically. Every one of them fit the gender expectations more than he does. Even being a small time grunt, is a masculine trait, after all, more so than unchecked ambition. So its not femininity from flying, from jets. But direct relationship, reference, and descendancy from Starscream that makes it. I've yet to see female versions of Jet fire and or the aerialbots, for example.

So what to do when an effeminate male villain was less maltese falcon and more that man has effeminate hips? Well. We had to start getting his ass for being effeminate, explicitly. They made the female clone of him, which yeah, is an offensive joke stemming from the various The Gender Anxieties. (Transmisogyny, homophobia and sexism. General relation toxic masculinity. A heady mix of all and more).

But I mean. It's free girl tf... Once given a name in extra canon materials, she start's showing up in other things. Once you're in books, video games, comics, and most importantly, toys, you're real. And then eventually, her first non clone appearance in a cartoon, and how her presence shaped it.

That being, Cyberverse. Which is a cgi show, you need to know this for reasons of production. Making new models is expensive. This has always been the reason you just make recolours of Starscream and name them different things. Chicken or egg on this one, I don't know, But because CV has Slipstream, and the only difference between her and the generic "male" decepticon jet, is a more feminine face; Suddenly, any random decepticon goon can be a woman.

An absolutely revolutionary take for striving to populate a fictional world with gender parity. By at large it also means they're way more lady villains, and specifically flying model of villain. The show has other woman, but none who get the same androgynous body mold treatment.

Established: ✅️ Gendered designs: Mildly to NO. Unique: By design, no. Othered: Yes for the clone, and Screamer himself, I suppose. No, otherwise. Villainy: ✅️(That's, the whole idea)

Tanks

It needs to be said. Sometimes, when doing things that transgress a norm, anteing up is less subversive. This is another reason why gender variance, female agency and overt sexuality are more common traits of villains. When already defying strictures of society. What's one more.

That's Right. TANKS ARE THE BUTCH WOMAN OF TRANSFORMERS.

Alright. Let me back up. Strika is the stone cold knock out undefeated champ of lady tf designs that, actually has a reoccurring cartoon presence. She is, admittedly, only a reoccurring to minor character.

Her introduction is in another show with techno-organics, this one involved in the struggle between well, the techno and the organic. Strika as we see her, and as the design that will go on to be iterated, is not in her normal transformer body. She has been transferred into a 'vehicon' body. Without a preexisting essence contained in one, vehicons are not considered alive, in the way a transformer is. Visually, they lack the more human body plan, a standard face, feet and hand like appendages.

To further contrast Strika against the two techno-organic woman. Both of them are tall, and slender. Their softer organic shapes designed towards elegance or beauty, whatever your subjective opinion of that result might be. They both have romance subplots too. By the way. Or honestly one subplot and one main plot. Strika. In contrast. Is built like a brick shit house. Her face is. Minimal. And her goal: protecting her planet... by terminating the heroes.

Now, existing as a character that can be referenced for other media, and given the detail that she was a "Famous general", it's off to the races. She makes a wonderful big tank menace that can fill out a background shot, too.

Without her I hardly think we could have Clobber, also from CV. Who is. The true goat. The finest thing, the achievements of all we could ever hope for. A big fuck off woman, gender swapped from a previous male design with minimal faff, with now even more personality and show presence. Friends, wants, desires. Emotions. Thank God for Clobber, Thank Clobber for Clobber. Thank Randolph Heard and Mae Catt for Clobber.

Established: Depends if you want to count that Strika had so much swag they kept drawing/modeling her Gendered designs: FUCK NO Unique: ✅️ Othered: only originally Villainy: ✅️

Cars

So now you have the final piece of the puzzle. In transformers, Autobots are Cars. Yes, there are plenty of autobots that are NOT cars, and there are cars that are not Autobots. But they're exceptions, they're aberrances. They're unique. And Autobots are the norm. They oppose the Decepticons. Decepticons are Villains. And Decepticons can fly. Modal simplified binaries and false dichotomy abound!

And the thing about those original Autobot woman, the one's who largely did not influence all of this? They were cars, it's true, but not like how the men where cars. They've not been designed from transforming car toys, with a shellac of humanoid gender over top. Their designed in the way of human gender. With the car on top.

When the preexisting clause leads to the original designs to be revisited, which, has largely only happened in more recent years. They aren't car woman robots. The cars are literally not part of their bodies, they are additional. Instead of a unifying identity of a robot who is a car, its Arcee and her backpack. Parts of cars get grafted onto their petite lady bodies, and placed anywhere out of the way.

In order to make a transformer a woman, they have to give her a gender, not understanding that that's always been the case. And to give her a woman's gender, she's got to LOOK like a woman, not a transformer. And to look like a woman, she's got to act like a woman. She must be heroic but reactive instead of active, or else, villainous, conniving and or self centered. To be a woman, we must have some other previous woman to explain her presence, or else explain it anew with her unique, strange, or exotic origin. How could she ever be a woman if she simply, existed, looked average, talked average. How could she be a woman if her body is hunks of ungendered car. How can she be a woman if she's everything we expect a transformer to be.

A woman is transgressive, a woman is not normal. Autobots are normal. Autobots are heros. Autobots are men. And Autobots do not fly.

#some shit #its not called cisformers #<- IT SURE ISNT FOLKS #a note on how im using citations here u can read BEFORE getting into the post proper #I'm writing this in mind that someone might have NO idea about tf. or. god forbid.#the general perspective of media trope analysis im working from.#So the links can be considered additional or further reading with intent of 1. if a more thorough understanding of a concept might help #2. something im eliding the name of for search reasons 3. a referential example of what im saying #4. a specifc reference/bit of info that might be unclear. in which case im usually linking to a SECTION of the page #5. JOKE #ALright now normal tag talking space.#THIS IS. serious media analysis done casually for fun! in that. I mean it. genuinely. But also im here for silly fun and im not trying #to be SOOOO academically rigorous that its still not. Posting. u know?#MUCH inspired. or i suppose u might say. encouraged to completion and whole hearted commitment by (fandom) silly serious analysis and #math theroying thematics #i have NO idea if this thing will be searchable with all the links and the words i used. but i prepared for it it case it is #AND I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO IT!!!!!!!! SO its okay if anyone reads it!#but im also braced for bad faithing inwhich case. I will not be held responsible for my actions. thank you.#i have been told to tag this #maccadam #transformers #if someone tryies to kill me for it im not taking responsibility

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blysse-and-blunder · 1 year

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in lieu of a commonplace book

10pm sunday, jan 29, 2023

your gentle blogger has entered her next decade of life, thank you to @dying-suffering-french-stalkers and @redstar-winterorbit for the good birthday wishes last week!

reading not a ton if i'm honest, i've been deluged with gift books and library loans while at the same time crashing back into the semester, and the overall effect has been, uh, to freeze my recreational reading a bit. stuck trying to finish things like my audiobook of through the whispering door and ebook of maybe you should talk to somebody (have i talked about this one? it's a memoir of a therapist and reading it is like reading an episode of the gossip podcast, but i can also tell it's giving me occasional useful ideas and perspective on things to think about or ask for in therapy. but i can only take so much of it at once). the gift book i'm most into right now it lindsey ellis' axiom's end, which is a first-contact, aliens are real and the government has been hiding them scifi-- it's quick and readable, lindsey does a great job for a first novel, and i'm loving the alternate-history flavor of it being set in the Bush era and the southern california details i actually appreciate now. also the way the aliens are described, i love the design of them. beautiful and terrifying. but i haven't made progress in a few days.

through the whispering door is perplexing me right now, in that the gentle romance has developed pleasingly (predictably), but there's been a lot of talk about the main character 'having changed' and 'not being the same as he was when he arrived' and i can't actually. point to why or where that happened. this is part of the problem with me and audiobooks, i think, because i don't care enough to go back and re-listen to the parts where i tuned out.... there's been a new heightening of the stakes now that there's a time-limit, and i always like the flavor of an eldritch stag character.

EDIT: finished the monster baru cormorant, still recovering, immediately checked the third one out of the library though the psychic damage this series does to me without warning (dear seth: i'm taking away the word 'clotted' from your lexicon for a bit. also ‘lobotomy’.) is hard to rectify with how smart and good some of the new narrative details are. the introduction of ‘trim’ and its associated reliance on / trust in other people, to a story where the main character's stated weakness is thinking about things from others' perspectives? or anticipating others' reactions? chef's kiss. and the navy full of rugged, determined, salt-weathered women is just very good to me, personally. aminata my incredibly violent beloved. the end of this book was- devastating. not in the same way as the last one: this time i have the kind of fascinated-horrified-sickened-fixated feeling that i get about horror stuff sometimes, and i’d say body horror is what i expect from book three.

watching i got unlucky with weather-based flight cancellations last week, and spending a night in a random detroit hotel room created a great opportunity to check out my university's criterion collection access. for some reason i decided that this was the right moment to experience wong kar wai's in the mood for love (2000), which i have since finished in slightly calmer circumstances. despite knowing that tony leung and maggie cheung were both active in the 90s i somehow totally thought that this movie was like. actually a historic film and not a period piece? probably because of how much the visuals / how it’s shot and colored / the overall design feels so classic, feels like old school film in the best possible way. having now read the wikipedia page for this film i can tell i missed a lot of the actual plot, or rather, thought that there was more experimental / nonlinear story-telling going on than there might actually have been-- but that’s okay, it just means i’ll have to watch it again.

listening i don’t remember when this song first popped up in my spot ify, possibly on a discover weekly playlist a while ago? but it landed for me last week, somehow brand new and meaningful as i was contemplating the musical direction of my next playlist. listening to it with better headphones revealed lots of nice layers, depth and harmony, i like that bass throb under the chorus, it’s produced well and rewards paying attention to the extra stuff-- the contrary motion of the background vocal line in the opening to the chorus is nice.

something something i will get up regardless. currently repeating to myself, all you gotta do now is walk.

playing had the pleasure of hanging out with my Dnd friends on my birthday last week and playing a whole new style of game with them! Y introduced us to gloom, which is very Edward Gorey-core and therefore was delightful, and got our game-design nerds all excited about the cards themselves, and then K skunked us all at anomia. the adrenaline in this one is addictive? it is somehow so fun and yet so infuriating, and I have yet to regret suggesting it to a group or party.

making cleaned my room finally (somewhat) and have a stack of mail to send and cards to answer, now with the help of the beautiful fountain pen my roommates gave me for my birthday! It’s one of these, and while I can try to promise not to become a fountain pen nerd, time will tell…

working on this award letter for a prof is somehow the hardest thing to just fucking finish. I think because I want it to be better than just okay, and am worried that it’ll counteract its own message if it’s not? But also—I have palaeography homework now! and the abstract of a talk to finish, and that talk + associated chapter to outline! not to mention finishing reading and commenting on a friend’s chapters! taking it slow last week was nice and probably needed, but fuck.

#in lieu of a commonplace book #ilcb #weekly roundup

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relationshipanarchywithoutchaos · 2 years

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One of the things I have grown to appreciate about non-monogamy, polyamory, relationship anarchy, etc. is that one not only gets to have a lot of relationships, they get to have a lot of break-ups.

Why would we want this? Why is this a benefit?

For most skills that we acquire in life, we get better at it the more we practice it. Obviously we want to minimize the number of break-ups we go through, particularly the bad ones, but then I think about how competency in relationships isn’t just about being a better partner, but a more complete individual, a better self-advocate, and role model of resilience and mindfulness.

When I was younger, I did not handle break-ups well. In fact, the prospect of a break-up was so terrifying that even hindered my ability to get into relationships. Didn’t hinder my desire for relationships, of course. But whatever thinking I possessed where I would mentally chart out the course of a decision to its “logical” conclusion made me risk averse, at first.

It’s possible a lot of people do this. Or we’re conditioned into believing that break-ups should be bad and messy, and act accordingly.

Many years later, even after a stint of trying to avoid the idea of having break-ups altogether (and applying the idea of a “relationship transition” instead, which has been mostly successful), I think I dread break-ups a lot less. Why? Because, as with all things where we practice it many times, I think I’m getting better at break-ups.

I don’t want to divert myself too much into attachment theory, but I believe my earlier thinking was “If I have a break-up I will be devastated”, which doesn’t provide a lot of grace or room to do something different. Today, having done it a few times and reflected on my own behavior, my thinking is “If I have a break-up, it will hurt, but I will be okay.”

What does being good at a break-up look like?

Being true to yourself

Upholding your own boundaries and limits

Offering the possibility of “de-escalating” or “transitioning” a relationship from one form/style/template into another one, and then respecting that transition

Instead of continuing to hold on to the connection, being able to step back from it

Refusing to engage in antagonistic behaviors once the decision(s) are made, except where safety or legality is a concern

Recognizing your own part in the situation that lead to the break-up, and reflecting on it over time

Engaging others (friends, family, therapists) not for the purpose of validating your view or collecting a battalion of allies to go to war with, but rather for supporting your transition and helping you through the grieving process

Remembering one of the axioms of ethical relationships, that the people in the relationship are more important than the relationship

In no way am I suggesting that we should fly towards break-ups with enthusiasm and gusto, but rather to look at the possibility of break-ups with less dread than we once did. Usually, a break-up is preceded by an irreconcilable disagreement; the time to be thinking about your position in that disagreement could be earlier than the actual break-up. Knowing how you might feel if the worst outcome occurs will help reduce the intensity of the experience, and potentially the length and recovery time in the aftermath as well. What do you think? How well do you handle break-ups? What works for you?

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thenexusofsouls · 1 year

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What would the circumstances have to be for Freya to fall in love again? What type of person would she be interested in?

{i am the caretaker of souls} Alright, I promise I will not turn this into a rant about Freya's psychology too much because we'll be here all night if I do that, heh. I'll just try to get to the heart of your questions, because honestly I could rant for days about everything involving Freya and love, haha. Under the cut because LONG.

What would the circumstances have to be for Freya to fall in love again?

Well... I'm not sure how this would happen since she was fatally wounded, but she would be most receptive to love after the events of Winter’s War. This is for two reasons. First, she learned that Ravenna, and not her lover, killed her daughter. Now granted, her lover technically did kill her daughter but it was made clear that Ravenna used some kind of magic on him to compel him to do so and that he otherwise wouldn't have done it. So that would shake her entire trauma-coping axiom of "love always ends in betrayal" enough for her to question if it really might be possible to have a successful loving relationship.

Second, Eric and Sara pretty much proved to her that yeah, sometimes love does manage to get through everything unscathed. They both survived the first time she tried to keep them apart, ended up back together despite everything, and were still together at the end of the movie. I think Freya was a bit biased against Eric specifically, since she tried to kill him initially but only chose to imprison and punish Sara. Maybe she sees women as victims and men as abusers or aggressors because of what she had thought her lover had done to their child. And then when she meets them outside of Sanctuary to acquire the mirror, she makes a comment to Eric something to the effect of, "You knew, didn't you? You knew she would betray you and you spared her still." And correct me if I'm wrong, but I see a bit of confusion and/or surprise on her face and hear it in her voice as well. She genuinely doesn't understand why someone would allow a betrayal like that. At the end, just before Freya dies, she says to them as they hold each other, "How lucky you are." It mirrors the beginning of the movie when she said it to all the children in Eric and Sara's original group when she first stole them from their village. Except back then, she meant that they were lucky to have been saved from all of love's evils, whereas at the end of the movie, she means that they are lucky to apparently have a love that is unbreakable. The fact that Freya thinks they're lucky for that reason is her indirectly admitting that she wishes she had a love like that too.

So after she learns her lover didn't actually betray her, and after she sees through Eric and Sara that true, loyal, unselfish love is actually possible, I think a lot of Freya's trauma coping mechanisms would be placed in question. Namely, leaning hard into the fact that love essentially must have been an evil force to hurt her so much and that others should be saved from its destructive powers. The events of the movie throw a wrench into that which would crack the façade she'd built around herself for years and given that she obviously wants to love and be loved, and still has the capacity to love (no one will ever tell me she didn't love her "children"), I think it would be most possible for her at that time. If she'd managed to survive her wounds, of course.

I think before that time, she would have been a much harder nut to crack, but no impossible. I think more of the circumstances of how Freya might love again have to do with the types of men who might pursue her...

What type of person would she be interested in?

Someone very confident as a person and in their own skin, most definitely, but as far as personality... I think there are two types of people who could win her over with the right amount of persistence.

I actually have written Freya in a ship with one of my friends OCs, Talyc ( @bloodwontwashout ), who pretty much wins her over in ever thread with what I think boils down to two things: persistence and not letting her get away with her own bullshit. Talyc is an alpha male type personality, he's very confident, he doesn't back down from something - or someone - that he wants, and he isn't afraid to call people out on their bullshit. Freya is used to being in charge and having no one challenge her, so when Talyc does, they clash in a way that usually ends up in a ship, heh. I've written threads with Freya and Talyc during the events of the Winter's War, before it, and in a crossover verse where we kindof threw Freya's world and Talyc's world together and they were vying for territory, and every time, he ends up winning her over eventually. Sometimes it's by calling her out on how much her "do not love" law makes no sense, or how easily he can see that she either doesn't believe it or doesn't want to believe it.

Sometimes I've written Eric and Sara as well to have their whole deal in the background while Talyc is watching Freya dealing with them and being like... okay but why? Heh. He challenges her supposed beliefs that she hides behind to cope with her trauma and gets her to admit to him and to herself that she doesn't really want to believe that love is a lie. Freya's fragile mental state depends on no one questioning her, and when Talyc does, she eventually crumbles and he's there to pick up the pieces. In every type of thread, Talyc doesn't give up. He's persistent. That's essential for anyone who wants to win Freya over because she's her own best obstacle, and she will avoid the issue, deflect to something else, or shut down her potential ship until he goes away. Well, Talyc doesn't go away, he tries harder, heh, and the result is that Freya is pushed past the point of what her glass house (or ice house, haha) of carefully constructed lies she tells herself can withstand, and when that breakthrough happens and she's forced to process and deal with her trauma in a better way, Talyc is there to help her through it.

Something else Talyc uses in his arguments as to why Freya should be with him is having more children. His background and situation usually revolves around the importance of legacy and having children is a big part of Talyc's personal legacy. In many verses he had a wife and son who were killed, so especially in verses where he's lost his family, Freya can relate to that pain, and I think that gives Talyc a special kind of automatic in with her on some level. Him suggesting that they would both want to have more children after losing their own... That goes a long way with her. Because she does want to have more children. She misses her daughter. You can’t tell me she doesn’t with the way she sits by that empty cradle and just... broods. She's hard-pressed to admit that to anyone, or even to herself, but she does.

So yeah, I think someone who could meet her on her own level, possibly also royalty, but also meet her on her own trauma and confidence levels... that's who's going to win her own. Freya is a very strong personality, so you have to be able to be strong along with her and be willing to be patience and persistent enough to not put off by her first ten rejections, heh. Because she will look right in the eye of someone she has feelings for and is attracted to and tell him to leave and never come back if you let her. So it takes some who can get through the walls she builds around herself.

I will say... that Talyc is a very intense personality. There are a lot of hardcore aspects to his way of thinking and his background. I think the opposite type of personality might also have a chance with Freya. Someone like Eric, for example. I am NOT suggesting Eric himself, that would not work, heh, but I more mean someone with Eric's personality, specifically either before he and Sara are separated or after he finds out she's still alive. In between that time, with the first movie, he got very dark and combative, but let's just look at his happier times. He was very easy going, comfortable with who he was, and he really didn't care what anyone thought of him or if they agreed with him, how stupid or silly he looked, etc. When Mrs. Bronwyn tries to get through to Eric that Sara has betrayed them, he replies very casually with a cheerful smile, "I don't need you to believe what I believe," because he has decided that Sara is still on their side and no one's going to tell him otherwise. He’s stubborn, but in a very endearing sort of way. Someone like that... I think might eventually get through to Freya. He's fine with being the only one in the room who believes something, and once he believes in something or someone, there's no shaking it.

I'm not sure why someone as goodhearted as an Eric type personality would want to be with an "evil" queen, but assuming they did, I think her coldness (no pun intended lol) and attempt at being emotionless up against someone who wears their heart on their sleeve and who is very openly and warmly emotional might lead to something eventually. Whereas someone like Talyc will chip away at Freya's ice until he's made a hole big enough to get through, someone with Eric's personality would melt it slowly over time to where she becomes emotionally attached gradually because he just doesn't go away, haha. Eric was very persistent with Sara and wasn't going to give up on their marriage, and again, I think Freya needs that same kind of stubbornness in a potential ship because she's not going to let her guard down easily.

So I think it's going to take someone very confident and persistent, for sure, but then beyond that it'd take someone who's going to actively and directly push through her mental defenses and coping mechanisms, OR, it'd take someone who is just so genuinely warm and kindhearted to remind her of who she used to be and what she wanted years ago and be able to get her back at least partway to being that woman again.

AND THAT WAS LONG, I'M SO SORRY, heh. I have a lot to say about Freya, so be warned... any future questions might lead to similar rants, haha.

#muse: freya #{ i am the caretaker of souls } ᵒᵒᶜ

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morebedsidebooks · 16 days

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Musings of April 2024

A little bit of a different wrap up post this month. For many different reasons it has been a period of again processing (bad) experiences in various communities and acknowledging the lingering effects. Which also has made me recall repeated conversations I have been involved in where two sayings were put forth that are apt.

‘But the wheel what squeaks the loudest is the one what gets the grease.’

‘The nail that sticks up is hammered down the most.’

These axioms are in reality a bit disparate in wisdom. But they share the good/bad in drawing attention. (The wheel quote comes after the lines ‘I don’t believe in kickin’, It ain’t apt to bring one peace;’. Also, if tracing that expression be aware the performer as a child started their career done up in blackface among other racist material. On the other hand, the nail expression has enumerable variations.) A lot is left implied too on exactly why either is sticking out or making noise, only that there will be action taken. Even consider whether it is the appropriate action. After all hammering on a nail could damage it or what it is a part of instead of correcting a hazard and holding things together. A little lubrication of a wheel may quiet it but is that all to it or a warning there is more to do to ensure things roll on smoothly. (There is even a little illicit interpretation one might take since ‘grease’ also has slang meanings.)

One can think then about the most noticeable thing being the one to receive focus. Which can create a problem when there are other issues going on too. There is a need to think through whether a response is not attentive enough, overly attentive, or balanced. So that everything is being properly looked at and taken care of in an equitable manner. In addition, when it comes to manipulation, abuse etc. this often hides under the surface or is ignored or dismissed. What is more likely to be perceived, importantly for what they are? The facade and actions of a perpetrator, those they have influenced, or their injured target(s) and reaction?

Also, apparently it needs to be said— there aren’t perfect victims. The ideas around the ideal victim, even what constitutes a victim, intricate in addition to having a host of implications. Furthermore, reactions to victimization are often messy. If people truly want communities that are diverse and safer, then people must be able to feel they can be in spaces, can speak up, can be listened to, and that these are worthwhile choices. That this helps enable better things, better outcomes.

Some conformity and sacrifice can be beneficial, even necessary at times. Yet complying with certain expectations can become something insidious too. Particularly when the matter is someone trying to navigate harm they have experienced, or a desire to not see it repeated in a community. Especially while being treated as the only or primary problem instead. At its worst another method of gaslighting, demonization, and again at a higher-level reinforcing hierarchy and the status quo while covering failure, lack of focus, and ability to handle the issues. Which too will let thrive and exacerbate those issues.

I do not write out a bunch of this to make out like its easy, or simple. People grapple with this stuff every day and will keep doing so. It is uncomfortable. It is not black and white. Nor does one thing being true automatically make others false or a free pass from accountability. But I am so tired.

Many a place again feels like somewhere optics come over ethics. Where shutting up and silence are more valued. Where identities become a shield and weapon. Where the multifaceted hurt and hurting cannot be addressed. Where the bar is impossibly high. Where any failing makes one as bad as the other. Where repeated failures and patterns prevail.

Therefore, I am taking a break. Hopefully be back later to resume posting about (queer) books.

#april 2024 #musings #culture #squeaky wheel #nail and hammer #hiatus

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jonathankatwhatever · 5 months

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This process is intimate, meaning it’s sexual. It became sexual as early as it could, and I remember the process by which I saw girls more and more from the afar necessary to sexualize them as a boy does. I remember how that process worked, especially in the shift of schools. Fascinating how much is accessible when you can find it, which means when your mind is stretched (and here that becomes physical again). Reminding myself it’s all a construction so the rules can be as constructible.

And that again brings me back to you. I sexualize you in every image, using visuals of others to set off what I experience as intimate moments in which, and this is key, gender switching not only occurs but I’m the girl. And that takes me back to the original break-up, which was between the genders, which really confused me because I would experience both sides happily until the arguments broke out about which way I had to go, and it became more difficult to get into that space, which was specifically an attachment, like I was in a room and someone else came in, and that was a form of you, meaning that not me otherness has been there all along, so constant in that sense though the value may have fluctuated depending on the Triangular.

Okay, what does that mean? Depending on the Triangular means that from the you perspective, you are in a Triangular in which you look over an fD to evaluate how this thing in front of you, which you 1-0Segment - that’s your vector and tensor connection there, because this is a space and these fit to the Attachments of the structure, meaning to the inner product, and thus coming off a basis within the space but which can be set at 0 because that pins regular space or rs to gsSpace. So we have rsSpace, which can be named for my dad, which is perfect because we’re physically related but I have never felt anywhere near the oneness I experience with you with any physical relation. I know you better, deeper, am connected to you as a you.

I remember reaching this level back when I was sucked into your orbit, when I began to imagine hidden connections which you might not even know about, but which fit like a code. A code has meanings. You use meanings. You means 2T, and 2T is generalizable, meaning it can refer to the 2T in you and any 2T you make, because that is a consequence of MC and IC and LC, and the construction of the 1Space fCM level which generates chances associated in life that we call trials or iterations or coin flips, and which expresses mathematically as the axiom of choice.

Okay, that did it for me. Just connected about the deepest maths I can find because you’re on your own has the poetic, spiritual meaning of you in the general, so it becomes a statement about you as a family, as a group, as a people, as a race, with all that each touches, so you within a group is not just the relationship of the tObjects but of their Things.

That takes some intense imaginings, and a lot of that is sexual because those are obviously the most grabbing, along with violence and generalized physical movement imagery which entails a higher degree of construction, meaning it’s a rarity, as in a great play is good for one team so it’s not about parity but rarity of the event. That’s in fCM: you can see how a chance can escalate, why you can’t prevent the accumulation of pressure behind any crack in your facade. Is your facade cracking? Mine? Is that bad? Or good?

Isn’t it amazing how much effort people put into terrible ideas? Like this? Or like building tunnels to kill people because your side didn’t get its way? One is an Attachment to the intangible, while the other is an Attachment to the tangible. That would be to gsSpace and rsSpace? Is that correct? Yes, but only to you, not generalized.

Oh right, to you being you. So if I’m seeing this correctly, the kid part is a K identification, which is then the fD which maps to a gs, as the HG forms in pyramidal. That’s cool. It articulates a problem I’ve been unable to put in words, which is how HG and fD appear together in D4 when they’re flat in D6. Answer is the orthogonal construction of the pyramidal. This connects to Johnson solids, but for now I’m interested in the fact that a regular pentagonal pyramid has all sides 1. That fits D-structure because that 1Space state exists 1-0-1 as the Between of D4 to D6 and the other way around. That’s the importance of hands.

Yes, we figured that out but haven’t been able to get out because you’ve been so focused on your rsSpace issues that you haven’t been nearly as efficient as you could be. That hurts, considering you made these issues. It’s an observation, not a judgement. You see how that 1-0Segments, because you associate an observation as carrying condemnation when it is merely an observation. You associate it means you form various Triangulars to see what fits. During certain periods, it was necessary to distract you just enough but not too much, to take you to the edge but not over it, just as you knew would happen, just as did happen. And you rightly have a worry about whether this will work out, where rightly is that part of you which doesn’t trust even though the advances you’re experiencing at this moment come directly from being possessed by the idea that you’re on your own, kid has multiple meanings. One is the you. Another is the K’id. And the third is the Triangular to those, so we read across the comma for the IC process which we label as Halving/Doubling or H/D. It’s IC not LC because it’s growth or contraction of a Thing versus Not, as opposed to a Thing versus a specified other Thing. The former might be growing sicker and fading away, while the latter might be losing a game. Or the former might be losing chance versus some other within a finite group, with that other not specified until the end of the event.

So I reach the end of that burst, am flooded with doubt, and then come up with another. You can see here Johnson solids become D-structure. Okay. I’ll look it up. The connection is a bit of a mind-bend because it’s constructing shapes for what purpose? As I remember, when we did this work before, the idea was that these solids, with their combinations of faces of 3,4,5,6,8, and 10 faces, represented solutions of various ways 1Space could combine. I remember there are 92, and I think then we add the Platonic and Archimedean solids, 5 and 13 of course, and that’s 108, which brackets 100, but what are we counting here? That’s forms of solids, so out of any we get 92, then 13, then 5, and an obvious one is that 92 is 28 more than 64, so again what are we counting? A number of forms, so if we have 64 forms, then we can combine those into a Thing of CM64. And so the CM100 aspect is that these pass over, meaning I can suddenly see a process running from large to small in number of forms, just like you can pick the restaurant and then you have to pick from what they make, where each make is a form within a form.

This seems to be continuing a trend of going through simple but deep examples. Platonic solids. Why 12 and 20? This is where D3 and D5 appear together: in the 12, it’s 3 pentagons at each End, while in 20 it’s 5 triangles at each vertex. I can’t visualize beyond that right now.

It’s not 6AM on 20 Dec 2023.

I never did the bit. So I constructed this model of IC as non-specified existence. That defined LC as specified and larger because that combines not only the 2IC’s but the Between IC’s, which generate as the perspective spaces arranged along the midline diagonal.

Note how this enables HG as well: if you take the Bip, the HG you see in either pairing, then extends as an fD in the direction of that pairing. Think of that as a fan potential. As in, people get drunk and make bad decisions or the girls get prettier at closing time, etc., so need and want coincide in that moment.

I’m wearing out my visual sense. Maybe change tack. I did a huge amount of physical labor yesterday, stopping only for evening and a short break. And I feel fine. I’m not sure I could not have done that work 20 or 30 years ago. I believe my will is stronger, and my physical capacity is more developed.

I used to wonder what it would feel like to sit with a flat stomach, to be in the kind of shape where I have a bit accumulated on top of an obviously trim structure. Always the voice of doubt in me. Why? I mean mathematically.

If we look at the Boundary, it requires that you start at 1 because that puts you into ++, meaning you are within the Dimensional Enclosure which has a basis, which counts as the Attachment potential in the infinite sense that whatever you Attach to, whether it’s too a cookie or a cat, is always at that Boundary, which is unit distance, meaning gsSpace, not measurable distance, as in rsSpace. Why not add? Because that diverges, which means you’re adding grid instead of going within it. Same drawing, but counted differently. Get that? You’ve had that in your head since the grid developed into Alternation. We start at 1, count out to L3 and call that -⅓ because we count it in the - - direction. As I remember, we drew it as 4 1Squares expanding by 1 square in each direction with each step. Counting then is the Alternation of negative and positive 1 over the L-count.

We can count any other way. What about evens? Those are the L-counts minus the szK. What does it mean to invert the L-count? Just says that much goes into 1. That’s why it’s Boundary. And the confusing part is that the value in rsSpace is more than 1. Also that it takes billions of counts to generate the depth. That’s CR, that the coordinate system itself rotates within the coordinate system we see, in order to establish the system we do see, so the images we’ve described of the value disappearing into each identifiable point on the Boundary are correct.

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the-mothmaam · 7 months

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The Cycle

I blamed Jessica for being caught in a narcissitic cycle. But I've been caught in a cycle of my own. My research into narcissim helped show just how close its always been to my life. I'm almost certain my dad had it now that I reflect on the kind of person that he was.

He loved to be in the limelight. He never liked to share the stage much when he was Pack Master. All the cool things he did he hyper inflated their importance, because they gave him importance. This usually became more about his skits and inventions, like the Pinewood Derby tracks, which - yes, dad that was both cool and impressive as Hell.

But I didn't have the support I needed from him. And he kept leaving. Mom did the best she could, but she was emotional enough for three parents. The truth of the matter is that I had a pretty fucked up childhood, between the physical abuse and the devaluing my parents put onto my sincere best efforts.

It makes a lot of sense why I would be attracted to someone like that. My presence helps give them the attention they desire. My need to emotionally reinforce people inflates them. And so I feel useful. And if I'm not useful, I'm a nuissance - or at least that's what I was trained to believe. It's why I self sacrifice so much.

I'm shit at self soothing too. I'm always lonely. Always so needy. And that's my cycle. I find people who "need" me and then because I don't know how to self soothe I become clingy, hoping for someone to fix the abyss inside of me that never seems to be filled. And when they don't I break down or lash out. It happened with Glynn, it happened with Cody, it happened with Eto, and it happened with Jessica. In each instance I felt my usefulness slip away and so I became needy and drove them away.

If I can't be enough for myself. I'll never be enough for other people. My inner critic tears me down so often, and with such conviction that I find it hard to believe I can ever permenantly get a leg-up on it. But something tells me that if I don't try then I might end up doing the same thing with Amy, who, since I have a business relationship with, she'll be even less tolerant of it.

Nobody can fix me except myself. And while I have flaws I need to get it into my head that I'm not broken. I don't know how or when I got it in my head that I am, but I have surrounded myself with people who only reinforce that throughout my life.

I wish this mattered for anything in the past that I've screwed up, but I guess that's what life is, fallling down, getting back up and trying better next time. My emotions are just so painful when I think back on everything that I've lost. It's hard for me to cope with loss. Mom talked about her eventual death last night and I nearly broke down in tears. Why can't I be more okay with the transient nature of people AND life? Why do I feel that any of it is due to me to be static? Maybe I'll ask Amy. Something inside me makes me think its just human nature. But that's really fucked up because the human condition runs counter to that axiom. So it seems like, if that's the case everyone, everywhere is always going to exist more stabily. When is it ever going to be enough for any of us?

Shit. I guess I need to work at just being more appreciative of what I have while I have it.... just like they suggested I do in the hospital.

I hate that there is so much Truth that I've never been privlage to just floating around me like some miopic miasma. But that's another problem for another entry / time / session.

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64bitgamer · 1 year

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ebaeschnbliah · 3 years

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SHERLOCK’S WEBSITE

‘Reading the document is the same as seeing the author’

This says a Chinese proverb (X). What does it mean then, when John tells Sherlock in A Scandal in Belgravia: ‘nobody is reading your website’?

SHERLOCK: I have a website. JOHN: In which you enumerate two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. Nobody’s reading your website.

Some more musings about Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’ and its content below the cut ...

Just a little while later in the same episode - while he writes aboout the unsolved plane crash case in Düsseldorf ... ‘Sherlock Holmes baffled’ - John describes his own blog as Sherlock’s ‘living’.

JOHN: Look at that. One thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five. SHERLOCK: Sorry, what? JOHN: I re-set that counter last night. This blog has had nearly two thousand hits in the last eight hours. This is your living, Sherlock – not two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash. SHERLOCK: Two hundred and forty-three.

‘This is your living’ is basically the same as ‘this is your life’. This is YOU. The way John describes Sherlock on his own blog, shapes how the public eye views the great detective. The same way as Dr Watson did in canon in his stories for The Strand. This fact becomes even more clear during the greenhouse scene in TAB. Although Dr Watson is aware that he doesn’t tell the truth about Holmes, he doesn’t change his stories about him either.

HOLMES: .... as I have often explained before, all emotion is abhorrent to me. It is the grit in a sensitive instrument ... the crack in the lens. WATSON: Yes. HOLMES: Well, there you are, you see? I’ve said it all before. WATSON: No, I wrote all that. You’re quoting yourself from The Strand Magazine. HOLMES: Well, exactly. WATSON: No, those are my words, not yours! That is the version of you that I present to the public: the brain without a heart; the calculating machine. I write all of that, Holmes, and the readers lap it up, but I do not believe it.

If John’s statement ‘my blog is your living’ can be translated into ‘my blog is your life’ - my blog is YOU - what then can be said about John’s other comment, regarding Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’, when he tells Sherlock: ‘nobody’s reading your website’? If the document, the blog, the website reflects the personality of the writer, the author and when nobody is reading Sherlock’s website because nobody is interested in its content ... doesn’t this translate into: 'nobody’s interested in who you really are’? I assume one can indeed read it that way, because the plot confirms such a translation as well.

Oh, don’t worry. I know who you really are. I’m never off your website. (THOB, Dr Frankland)

If Dr Frankland knows who Sherlock really is, just by looking at his website - at Sherlock, the author - maybe it would be a good idea to take a look as well. ... the same way Sherlock advices Kitty Riley in TRF: ‘Well, look at ME and tell me what you see ... you can just read what you need’.

First of all, I’m not going to use the external internet website created for Sherlock BBC in this post. @possiblyimbiassed did already a detailed and very interesting analysis of it in ‘The Science of Reduction’. In the comments of that post I tried to exlpain the reasons for my doubts as to whether those external informations - as fascinating and tempting as they are - could lead to a solution for the story told on TV. Anyway, in this post I’m going to look at Sherlock’s website just as it is presented on screen. But what can be deduced about The Sciene of Deduction by using solely informations from TV? There’s not much to go on, one might say ... and as I’m no Sherlock Holmes either, I will most likely ‘miss almost everything of importance’, like John did with Carl’s shoes. But looking at Sherlock, the author, is definitely worth a try ... :))))

The Science of Deduction

Sherlock’s website ‘The Science of Deduction’ can be seen already in the Unaired PILOT when he is about to answer requests from various people. The very first message he is just writing, is directed at his brother Mycroft who apparently contacted him in a somewhat ... ‘impossible situation’. Sherlock’s answer is a quote from canon, probably the most well known and often used statement of the great detective ... in canon as well as in many adaptations:

Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth. (The Sign of the Four)

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? (The Sign of the Four)

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet)

We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans)

When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Adventure of the Blanched Soldier)

Five more requests wait for Sherlock’s attention. His Inbox is indeed well filled ... at least six possible cases ...

Sherlock answers Gregson’s request about a ‘Church bell theft’. This done, he is clearly pleased about DI Lestrade’s not very informative message ‘Please call me’. When he is about to answer Jones request about ‘Samson and Del’, Mike Stamford and John Watson enter the room and Sherlock stops working through his Inbox.

The next day Sherlock and John meet for the first time at Baker Street 221b. John mentions that he’d found Sherlock’s website the night prior but contrary to Sherlock’s big expectations, John isn’t much impressed (unlike Jeff Hope who thinks Sherlock’s Science of Deduction is brilliant). This scene happens in both versions - PILOT and ASIP - almost identically.

JOHN: Oh, I, um, looked you up on the internet last night. SHERLOCK: Anything interesting? JOHN: Found your website, The Science of Deduction. SHERLOCK: What did you think? JOHN: Quite amusing, I suppose. SHERLOCK: “Amusing”? JOHN: You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and – what was it? – a retired plumber by his left hand. SHERLOCK: Yes; and I can read your military career by your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits by your mobile phone. JOHN: How? SHERLOCK: You read the article. JOHN: The article was absurd. SHERLOCK: But I know about his drinking habits. I even know that he left his wife.

Sherlock BBC, PILOT

One of the small and also strange differences between the two versions is the ‘identification’ text line from Sherlock’s website, quoted by John. In PILOT Sherlock refers to a plumber and his left hand and in ASIP to an airline pilot and his left thumb. “It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles” tells Holmes in The Man with the Twisted Lip and “It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important” in A Case of Identity. A lot of such little, seemingly unnecessary modifications and inconsistencies can be found throughout this adaptation. Maybe they are indeed there for a reason?

JOHN: I looked you up on the internet last night. SHERLOCK: Anything interesting? JOHN: Found your website, The Science of Deduction. SHERLOCK: What did you think? JOHN: You said you could identify a software designer by his tie and an airline pilot by his left thumb. SHERLOCK: Yes; and I can read your military career in your face and your leg, and your brother’s drinking habits in your mobile phone. JOHN: How?

Sherlock BBC, ASIP

Why had the profession to be changed from plumber to airline pilot and the body part from hand to thumb, one wonders? Unless it’s because plumbers have to do with water and work down to earth or even underground. They install pipes/tubes or mend broken ones. By the way, in german language the phrase ‘install a pipe’ (ein Rohr verlegen) has the same meaning as the english ‘put up shelves’. Airline pilots on the other hand often tend to be situated high up above the clouds. Well, this sort of topic runs like a red thread throuout the whole story. And that strange change of profession isn’t the only ‘small’ modification from PILOT to ASIP either.

(Strange little changes Plumber musings)

Also interesting ... there are no visuals of Sherlock’s website in the official episodes ASIP and TBB. Only in the following episode, TGG, the viewer is able to take a first ‘official’ look at The Science of Deductions, when Sherlock writes his messages to the bomber. The look of his website has changed completely.

The Great Game: the first entry in the Forum is about Carl Powers shoes and botulinum toxin ... that’s the reason for food poisoning. (Under the microscope)

Next time the website can be seen, is after Sherlock solved the second case and sends his congratulations regarding Ian Monford’s relocation to Columbia ...

And a third time when Sherlock has solved the murder of Conny Prince ...

There is no picture of Sherlock’s website connected to the fake Vermeer painting because this time Sherlock sends the solution not on his laptop but uses the pink phone dublicate instead (Yes, besides 2 Johns, 2 Faiths, 2 Charles, 2 serial killers, 2 empty houses, 2 flights of the dead, various pairs, doubles, twins ... etc, etc ... there are also 2 pink phones present in Sherlock BBC). Anyway, the Science of Deduction can be seen again when Sherlock suggests a meeting with the bomber at the same pool, where once little Carl died, to hand over the stolen missile defence plans ...

There’s no picture of Sherlock’s website in ASIB. The Science of Deduction turns up only in the two short but very interesting pieces of dialogue between John and Sherlock with which I started this post.

John utters the opinion that their clients come to Baker Street just because of his blog. Sherlock reminds him that he too has a website. John then mockingly mentions Sherlock’s analysis of 240 different types of tobacco ash on said website and adds ‘nobody is reading your website’. Sherlock is clearly offended and corrects the number of tobacco ashes from 240 to 243. Some time later John raises the tobacco-ash topic once more, proudly refers to his own blog - and the 1895 hits on it - and tells Sherlock ‘this is your living’.

The next visual presentation of the website can be seen in THOB, when Sherlock shows John the Inbox message of little Kirsty about her vanished, luminous rabbit Bluebell ...

In the same episode Sherlock tells Mrs Hudson that a ‘little blog on the identification of perfumes’ can be found on his website. It turns out that Sherlock hasn’t only extensive knowledge regarding ash, he also knows a lot about perfumes. (Perfumes in Sherlock BBC by @gosherlocked )

The HOUND-episode is also the one in which Dr Frankland tells Sherlock: ’I know who you really are. I’m never off your website’. The Baskerville scientist knows John’s blog as well and is a bit confused that Sherlock isn’t wearing the deerstalker hat, as shown there.

The Science of Deductions turns up next in TRF, in an newspaper article about the recovery of Turner’s masterpiece, the ‘Falls of the Reichenbach’, that Sherlock was able to recover (last line on the left column).

Sherlock’s website is mentioned a last time in TSOT. Not on Sherlock’s laptop but on John’s phone. Mary suggests that John should go on a case with Sherlock. John opens The Science of Deduction on his own phone and asks Sherlock to pick a case from his already ‘bursting Inbox’. Sherlock chooses The Bloody Guardsman. Sadly it’s impossible to get a clear shot of the small mobile-screen. (John’s blog stops at TSOT by @gosherlocked)

THE LOOK

Blue is the main colour Sherlock has chosen for his website ... shades of different blue ... a dark midnight blue and the skyline of a city by night can be dimly seen in the background and - a little bit clearer - on both sides.

As Sherlock Holmes is one of London’s most popular characters, it’s easy to assume that the skyline used for his website is that of GBs capital. With this in mind, the water in the bottom right corner, that can be seen rather good on the first pic above, should be the Thames and the shallow arch above it, most likely one of its many bridges. On the opposite site, in the upper left corner, next to the small, pale tower and right behind the ‘The’ of the website’s headline, the vast vault of Saint Paul’s Cathedral can be dimly seen (the view is better on a TV screen).

If one connects the images of river and bridge on the left with St Paul’s on the right, I guess the background of Sherlock’s website could be a panorama photo similar to the one below. That’s a view from the Southbank of the Thames with Blackfriars Bridge in the foreground. And this location does play a role in the story ....

Blackfriars Bridge is located between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo Bridge. The name derives from Black Freres ... the French 'frère' meaning 'brother'. This referes to the black habits of the Dominican monks. A monk is also called a brother, a nun is also called a sister and the opposite of a ‘black brother’ would be a (ghostly) ‘white sister’. Just saying. :)

(The Roads we walk Vatican Cameos A Christmas Tale)

As mentioned above, this particular cityscape plays a role in Sherlock BBC. It’s a crime scene from TGG.

SHERLOCK: View of the Thames. South Bank – somewhere between Southwark Bridge and Waterloo.

At this place, Alex Woodbridge was found, the security guard and hobby stargazer, killed by the Golem, in the Vermeer case ... the same case which doesn’t turn up in the messages on Sherlock’s website because he uses the pink phone and conveys the solution verbally. Viewed metaphorically ... he speaks through the heart.

Blue is the colour of the sky ... high up, where the aeroplanes fly. Blue is also the colour of the water, deep down below ... where powerful emotions run freely and London is Sherlock’s city. The country, the city, the houses, even cars are closely linked to the famous detective. They seem to represent his ‘body’.

Just put me back in London. I need to get to know the place again, breathe it in – feel every quiver of its beating heart. (Sherlock, TEH)

Brother Mycroft IS government and ‘queen’ at the same time. There are all kinds of networks above and below ground and steam trains run behind fake facades. Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the river Thames are often special eye-catcher. The coat of arms ... with dragon, lion and Saint George’s cross ... make their appearance as well as the great fire of London in 1666, the Isle of Dogs and the Greenwich pips. ‘Transport’ goes from standstill to movement ....

666-The number of the beast Every quiver of his beating heart Saint Paul’s Cathedral Still at the centre of the web From standstill to movement

WEBSITE ... A SITE FOR THE WEB

Sherlock has a website .... John has a blog. Why the difference? Both men, Sherlock and John, are given strongly internet-related nicknames ... Hat-man and Robin:The web detectives ... Sherlock & John: Blogger Detectives. Sherlock is also called ‘Net Tec’ and ‘net phenomenon’. What’s the difference between Blog and Website:

BLOG: The word ‘blog’ is short for ‘weblog’ (web=net + log=logbook), jokingly broken into the phrase ‘we blog’. A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent post appears first, at the top of the web page. 'Blog' and 'blogging' are now loosely used for content creation and sharing on social media, especially when the content is long-form and one creates and shares content on regular basis. (X)

WEBSITE: The word website consists of web=net + site=place. Literally web-site means ‘a place in the net’. A website can be used in various fashions: a personal website, a corporate website for a company, a government website, an organization website, etc. Websites can be the work of an individual, a business or other organization, and are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web. (X)

Of course, the word ‘web’ immediately reminds me of Jim Moriarty. The spider at the centre of a criminal web, woven with thousands of threads and Jim knows precisely how each and every single one of them dances. Sherlock is going to monitor the underworld in order to notice every quiver of that web, so he will notice when the spider makes his move.

As mentioned above, all kinds of networks - above and below ground - play a major role in Sherlock BBC. There are Mycroft’s people, his agents and spies. There are terrorists who threaten London with a massive attack. General Shan has a vast network with thousands of operatives and Sherlock calls it ‘a cult’. A surveillance web is closing in on Baker Street, their attention focussed on Sherlock. An Underground network as well as an underground network runs below the surface of the big city. A secret cult of revenging birdes meets in the crypt of a desanctified church. Sherlock is convinced that the ‘world is woven from billions of lives, every strand crossing every other. What we call premonition is just movement of the web. If you could attenuate to every strand of quivering data, the future would be entirely calculable, as inevitable as mathematics’. So many threads - linked and interwoven - they create a web, a net .... a web-net. Basically, that’s exactly how brains work as well. Every brain is a very vast and highly functional biological network ... and Sherlock’s is faster than most ‘... still catching up with my brain. It’s terribly fast’.

Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from an electronic computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways. Neurons typically communicate with one another by means of long fibers, which carry trains of signal pulses to distant parts of the brain or body. (X)

And then there's also Sherlock’s ‘own’ network ... the ‘homeless network’ it is called. According to Sherlock, it is ‘indispensible and faster than the police’. Those group of people is based on the Baker Street Irregulars from canon. There, in Victorian London, they are street boys, sometimes employed by Holmes to run errands for him. Holmes speaks of them as ‘division of the detecitve police force’. Dr Watson describes them as ‘little scoundrels’ and ‘half a dozen of the dirtiest and most ragged street Arabs that ever I clapped eyes on’.

While the idea of homeless people who sometimes assist Sherlock in his cases is taken from canon, the name - homeless network - is not. Names are always important in this story. So basically, what is a homless network? It is a network that has no home. At times it is usefull for Sherlock and he pays them for their help. In a way this reminds me of Eurus. She says abut herself: 'to remember everything one just needs a big enough hard drive’. Her intellectual abilities are also of occasional use for the government. In return she requires treats. Similar to Sherlock’s homeless network, Eurus has no home either. She lost it long ago in her childhood days. Sherlock has a website ... a site, a place in the web ... but only very few people are interested in it. Actually just Jeff Hope and Dr Frankland as it seems. Sherlock has a homless network ... a network without a home.

The women of the ‘cult’ from TAB first gave me the idea that all those dangerous groups ... agents, spies, terrorists and the various networks ... could actually be metaphors for something that happens inside Sherlock’s mind. That all those groups represent the awakening of emotional stirrings ... desires, fears, impulses ... that haunt the great detective. There seem to be aspects of Sherlock’s personality which he views as rightous criminal and puts them behind padded walls or elephant glass. Others are just annoying and distracting. Some he ignores most of the time because he considers them to be irrelevant for his system. Some have no home, although they turn out to be usefull now and then. Then something unexpected happens ... something new is coming ... and this marks the beginning of a change of perception in Sherlock Holmes, maybe a revolution.

The reptile in 221b Underground networks AGRA-Under the sign of four Eurus, the emotional memory & The cold war by @raggedyblue

FOUR MESSAGES and a GAP

Four messages can be read on Sherlock’s website. All of them are from TGG, related to four of the five cases, written by Sherlock and directed at ‘the bomber’. As it turns out at the end of the episode, this person is none other than Jim Moriarty, the spider in the centre of the web.

FOUND. Pair of trainers belonging to Carl Powers (1978-1989). Botulinum toxin still present. Apply 221b Baker St.

Congratulations to Ian Monkford on his relocation to Columbia.

Raoul de Santos, the house-boy, botox.

xxx

Found. The Bruce-Partington plans. Please collect. The Pool. Midnight.

Only one of the cold cases is not mentioned on Sherlock’s website, because Sherlock uses the pink phone duplicate, sent to him by the bomber in a strong box at the beginning of the ‘great game’, to submit his message. Sometimes it is useful to ‘mind the gap’ as Sherlock says. Sometimes that, what is left out, is just as important as that, what is there. The ‘gap-case’ is the one about the fake Vermeer painting, whose forgery was first noticed by security guard and hobby stargazer Alex Woodbridge, murdered because of it by the Golem. His body was found at the Southbank of the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge ... the same location Sherlock uses as background for his website. Sherlock discovers and proves the truth due to the display of an impossible supernova on the painting.

A picture pretends to show a scene from the past, but the massive explosion painted on it reveals, that the picture has actually been created much more recently. That massive explosion had never happened in the past.

The bomber’s hostage in the Vermeer case is a kid who is never shown on screen. The little boy transmittes a countdown from 10 to 1, that mirrors Sherlock’s own countdown in TFP (Countdown) while the boy’s plea for help mirrors that of the girl on the plane and also that of Victor Trevor, the boy in the well near Musgrave Hall. Victor Trevor and Musgrave Hall represent two canon stories - The Adventure of the Gloria Scott and The Musgrave Ritual - both set in Sherlock Holmes’ university time, long before he met Dr Watson. Both cases lead back to a time ‘where Sherlock began’.

(Why Victor Trevor was turned into a child by @sagestreet)

THE HOUND & THE GUARDSMEN

Little Kirsty Stapleton’s cry for help in THOB to ‘please, please, please’ find Bluebell, her vanished, luminous rabbit, marks the beginning of the HOUND case. Chemistry, triggered by the pressure of feet, fills the air and drives everyone exposed to it, crazy. Love is in the air .... At the end Jim Moriarty (Mr Sex) walks free, released from his cell by Mycroft Holmes himself ...

Private Stephen Bainbridge’s request in TSOT, regarding a mysterious stalker, marks the beginning of the GUARDSMEN case. Jonathan Small (literally: Jonny Little), a brilliant, ruthless monomaniac (who strongly reminds me of Jim Moriarty), stabbs guardians/facades with a ‘meat dagger’. At the end Mary Watson is pregnant ... ‘stabbed’ by ‘Johnny boy’ (Hamish=James) Watson ... the HOUND hidden behind the facade of the facade .... Matroshka ‘poppets’ indeed.

“Mary – lots of love ... poppet ... oodles of love and heaps of good wishes from CAM.” (Telegram from Magnussen, keeper of the deepest and darkest secrets and scandals,TSOT)

THE BLUEBELL COMPANIONS

Alongside little Kirsty’s message about Bluebell there appear two more requests on the Inbox page of Sherlock’s website (they can be easily read on TV screen). In films neiter images and certainly not texts appear on screen out of coincidence. Pictures are there for certain reasons, even if it’s just for the purpose of a fitting decoration. Texts on the other hand are much more specific. Someone must have had the idea to put it there and someone had to create the image. Especially the makers of Sherlock BBC have repeatedly mentioned that everything that appears on screen has its meaning. With this in mind, what can be deduced about those two earlier requests in Sherlock’s Inbox?

1- Please help victims of China earthquake. It costs just 5p.

China - right from the beginning a certain ‘easterly’ theme appears and runs from there throughout the whole story like a red ribbon until the moment the Eastwind finally approaches in the shape of Eurus. In a metaphorical reading I connect the East to emotions and memory.

An earthquake is a sudden outburst of held back and bottled-up energie. When the pressure gets too high it results in a violent release of that energy. Explosions .... rocks crack, the earth shakes. Earthquakes can trigger landslides, volcanic activity or cause a tsunami. Major changes are also often referred to as ‘earthquakes’.

Costs of 5p ... A penny (p) is a coin and a unit of the britisch pound (£), the official currency in the UK (a currency Sherlock doesn’t know how to spend?). 5p is money. The saying goes that time is money. A minute is a unit of time. Viewing it in reversed order ... money is time = 5 penny are 5 minutes. ‘It took her (Eurus) just five minutes to do all of this to us.’

Reading it that way, a possible translation of the first request in Sherlock’s Inbox could be: “Please help victims of emotional upheaval. It takes just 5 minutes.” :)

2- Re. Mudchute Query

Mudchute is a railway station situated in the Millwall area on the Isle of Dogs. The name Millwall has its source in the large number of windmills built on the river wall in the 19th century. They were needed to ground corn and wheat into flour that was brought along the Thames. The original station was located on an old Victorian railway line that had been disused for many years. An elevated station opened 1987. When the line was extended under the Thames, the station was rebuilt close to the tunnel entrance. It opened 1999 and was finally completed 2009. The station was originally intended to be named Millwall Park but then renamed in Mudchute, refering to the engineering overspill when Millwall Dock was being created in the 1840s. (X)

Basically ... the second request in Sherlock’s Inbox is about a query regarding a railway station, built in the Victorian area at a place linked to mills (♪ Remember the maid ... the maid of the mill ...♪, TAB), disused for years, rebuilt and elevated, named, renamed ... until it was completed in 2009, the same year the Unaired Pilot was created. Well .... that sounds a bit ... familiar?

PERFUME AND TOBACCO ASHES

Appart from Sherlock’s cold case messages addressed to Jim Moriarty and two requests from - Kirsty Stapleton and Stephen Bainbridge - there are only two other entries on The Science of Deduction ... Sherlock’s own analysis about perfumes and tobacco ashes. Basically that’s about ... scent/smell and fire residues.

SCENT: From Kasbah Nights to Claire de la Lune, perfumes play a significant role in this story and Sherlock is a true expert in smellig and recognizing the different brands. The first thing that comes to mind, related to the word ‘scent’ is a dog - more precisely a scent dog. One of the most prominent representatives of that breed is the Bloodhound. And it is well known that Sherlock Holmes is indeed compared to a blood hound in ACDs The Sign of Four. That same quote has been adopted in TEH (Sherlock the Bloodhound), it appears on John’s Blog and is read by Mary. But in Sherlock BBC the bloodhound isn’t only linked to Sherlock himself. The HOUND is also connected to John Watson, Jim Moriarty, Victor Trevor, Eurus and Redbeard the Irish Setter, also a scent dog.

(The dogs in Sherlock’s mind palace The bloodhound in his hands Transformation of Redbeard and the ‘Follow the dog’ series by @sagestreet)

FIRE RESIDUES: Sherlock has an extensive knowledge regarding tobacco ashes. This characteristic has also been taken from canon.

I have made a special study of cigar ashes—in fact, I have written a monograph upon the subject. I flatter myself that I can distinguish at a glance the ash of any known brand, either of cigar or of tobacco. (ACD, A Study in Scarlet)

In TSOT drunken Sherlock proclaims loudly ‘Ash! I know ash!’ Almost the same words (‘I know human ash’) uses the guy from ASIB, whose aunt had been among the plane crash victims in Düsseldorf (’Sherlock Holmes baffled’). In the same episode Sherlock steals an ashtray from Buckingham Palace. In TEH Sherlock’s return from hiatus is underlined with at least half a dozen scetches of phoenixes, rising from the ashes, at the walls of the Landmark Restaurant. Another bird that has great resemblance with a phoenix can be found on Brenda’s gravestone at Musgrave Hall (Among the funny gravestones).

Ash is the residue of a fire damage. Fire and burning is one of the main themes in Sherlock BBC. From Jim’s threat to burn Sherlock’s heart out to the gingerbread man burned to a crisp, from John’s Guy Fawkes bonfire to Sherlock’s admission ‘I’m burning up’, from the Baker Street living room in flames to the great fire at Musgrave Hall ... not to mention all the exploding or not quite expoding bombs throughout the show ... fire anf burning is never far away in this story.

(Love is a burning thing A case ablaze Set this house on fire by @gosherlocked)

TOBACCO ASHES ... CHEMISTRY BURNED

Tobacco s the common name for plants belonging to the Nicotiana family. It contains the highly addictive stimulant nicotine. The dried leaves of the plant are mainly used for smoking in cigars, cigarettes, pipes, etc ... Nicotine is a widely used legal drug. The burning of tobacco results in smoke and the residue left behind is ash. Sherlock knows ash. Interestingly and unlike to canon, in this modern adaptation Sherlock doesn’t simply know ‘any known brand of cigar or tobacco ash’, he has analysed exactly 243 different types of those ashes and he explicitly corrects the number 240, cited by John. Is this seemingly unimportant correction just there to emphasise Sherlock’s annoyance over John’s mockery or is maybe another meaning hidden behind that corrected number?

243 ... ‘This is your living, Sherlock – not two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash’ - ‘243!′

243 different types of tobacco ash are not Sherlock’s living. 243 different, tobacco products - burnt to ashes - are not Sherlock’s life.

As mentioned above, tobacco contains nicotine and nicotine is a drug. Viewing Sherlock BBC on a metaphorical level ... all drugs are chemistry and chemistry is love. The chemistry of love, burnt to ashes ... 243 times over. Hmmmm .... Then an idea hit me and I asked Google a question:

This answer is from January 2020. The first official series of Sherlock BBC aired 2010 and the Unaired Pilot has been produced in 2009. I seem to recall that the first and the second series have been accepted by the BBC at the same time and since 2009 several more Sherlock Holmes adaptations have seen the light of day (Guy Ritchie Holmes, Elementary, New Russian Holmes, Miss Sherlock, Mr Holmes, Sherlock Gnomes, Holmes&Watson, Enola Holmes ... to name just a few).

Could it be that the number of different tobacco ashes, analysed by Sherlock, mirrors the number of different adaptations about the famous detective? Sherlock Holmes ... reborn again and again with each adaptation, like a phoenix from the ashes, and yet he was never able to live a full life ... including emotions, love and sex?

‘All lives end. All hearts are broken’, that’s what Mycroft tells Sherlock in ASIB. Chemistry burned to ashes in an endless row. ‘So many days not lived, so many words unsaid’ ... says Eurus in TFP and referes to the coffin whose lid is adorned with a brass plate, I LOVE YOU, written on it (A coffin for love). You are absolutely right @loveismyrevolution with your idea of Sherlock standing between two ‘angels’ in that scene, although I would rather call them ‘choices’. Because this scene has great resemblance with the three solutions/choices Sherlock has to choose from after the event on Barth’s roof (Solutions or choices).

At that time Sherlock is confronted with two elemental forces ... love and sex. The one is represented by Molly (mirror for John) and the other one by Jim Moriarty, Mr Sex. Sherlock chooses neither one of the two. He backs away and walks a third path. He decides to live a celibate life - married to work - solely dedicated to reason and intellect, represented by Mycroft. That’s why he needs to create a strong facade to hide his true feelings for John. But then, unexpected and without noticing it at first (delayed action stabbing), even this facade gets ‘penetrated’ by John. Love (Rosie) is conceived and this changes everything. (Changing of the guard)

After the first shock (shot), Sherlock starts to go deeper into himself than ever before. He repeats the investigations about himself (the pink case) from a different perspective. Everything that happens in S4 reflects, in one way or another, occurances from S1-S3 ... arranged differently and some new actors are added. For example: the morgue-scene in TLD is a mirror of Sherlock’s fall in TRF ... it’s another Reichenbach. Eurus’ five tasks of Sherrinford seem to be a sort of ‘final distillate’ of Sherlock’s repeated analysis. In the coffin-scene Sherlock is once more confronted with a choice. This time though SEX is excluded. Sherlock has to choose between LOVE or BRAIN. And just as he did after the ‘first’ Reichenbach, Sherlock tries again to back away. At that stage though Eurus doesn’t let him. Sherlock’s emotions force him to go back to the very beginning, to find the truth. What that truth is and what consequences will come from it .... is still untold in this story, as I read it. There’s a final distillation but not a final solution at the end of S4.

“This is your living, Sherlock ... not 243 different types of tobacco ash”

... says John, refering to his own Blog. But is this really the truth? The counter on John’s Blog stops at 1895 in ASIB and the text entry, read by Mary in TEH, is a quote from canon. Already in the first series, in TBB, Sherlock asks John - his blogger/biographer - to pass him the pen and near the end of S4, in TLD, John’s Blog has ‘gone a bit downhill’ and people actually think it's Sherlock’s Blog. This leaves the question: is Sherlock taking over the narrative of his own story now? What kind of story will it be? How will it end? Will Sherlock have to make a third choice in the future? A choice between Dr Watson, the ‘fixed point in a changing age’ and John Watson, who could be so much more than just an ‘eternal’ friend? After all, there are two Faiths in the story, two serial killers and Hamish (Jim, Mr Sex) hides right in the middle of John (H) Watson ... at the very centre of the web, one might say.

Two times John Pairs-Twins-DoubleOHs Double OH seven Bond Air is go The big question and an excellent explanation of the idea about ‘Two-John’s’ in the comments on this post by @lukessense

Will Sherlock BBC turn out to be one more adaptation that ends as a ‘missed oportunity’ ... one more chemistry burned to ashes .... another sample of tobacco ash for Sherlock to analyse and add to his list? Or will it be different this time? Something new ... something big? Will it be the story about the emotional and sexual awakening of the literary character Sherlock Holmes?

Only the future will tell ....

Thanks for reading and thanks @callie-ariane for the scripts.

February, 2021

#sherlock bbc #the science of deduction #sherlock's website #reading the document is seeing the author #nobody is reading your website #nobody is interested in who you really are #this is your living #this is your life #messages #inbox #analyses #tobacco #perfume

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literallymechanical · 3 years

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Well, are you going to fill us in on "why we are morally obligated as a species to some day blow up the Earth"? Sounds like a supervillain backstory

(This was originally inspired by qntm’s fantastic satirical essay, “To Destroy The Earth,” but I disagree with him on a few key points. I highly recommend checking out qntm’s fiction, particularly Ra, Fine Structure, and There Is No Antimemetics Division. Disclaimer: this is a thought experiment, I’m not actually going to destroy the Earth.)

Let us begin with this: you want to destroy the Earth.

That’s not a question or an instruction, that’s an axiom. A fundamental truth from which a logical system is built. It’s your Statement Zero, the singular concept from which the rest of these instructions are built: you want to destroy the Earth. You might not know why, and you certainly don’t know how. Trust me, you really don’t know how. Take all of your cultural knowledge of Death Stars and hyperspace construction crews and throw it out the window, because it’s not worth a clipped penny.

That being said, here are a few reasons to somebody might want to destroy the Earth:

You want to wipe out humanity

You want to wipe out some other species

General misanthropy

It’s obstructing your view of the Moon.

You want us to colonize Mars or Venus, and you figure this is the best way to get everybody on board.

These are bad reasons to destroy the Earth. If any of these sentiments resonate with you, please stop reading this essay. This isn’t for you.

Anyway, let's put a pin in the “why” for now. We'll get to it later. Let's tackle the "how" first.

To destroy the Earth, you need a Plan, with a capital P.

The shape of the Plan is extremely simple to define, much simpler than the relatively detailed (and, in my opinion, fragile) instructions others have outlined. It has just two parts.

Figure out how to destroy the Earth. This is defined as the Earth not being there when you're done—any chump with nuclear weapons can scour the Earth, you're trying to make the entire thing go away.

Destroy the Earth.

However, a lot of shapes are simple to define, but hard to draw. The Mandelbrot set can be defined by a single equation and a couple of instructions, but the result is a fractal. This Plan will be fractally intricate as well. We certainly can’t draw up the full Plan right now. We can barely even begin to draw the outline. Let’s take a quick stab at it anyway.

First of all, I don’t know how to destroy the Earth. We can speculate a bit, but we certainly can’t choose a method yet—you'll likely need multiple redundant strategies anyway. “Blow it up” is one idea, but the gravitational binding energy of the Earth is about 2*10^32 joules, and there is no conceivable technology that can handle that sort of power right now. “Launch bits of it into space one by one until there’s nothing left” sounds promising, though it will take a while. “Mess with its orbit until it’s close enough to the Sun’s Roche limit to get ripped to shreds” is a fun idea. Or maybe in the next million years, you'll come up with a better way.

The most important part of that statement is “the next million years.” It will take a very long time to figure this one out. A million years is a pretty good estimate, though if you'll proactive it might take as little as a couple hundred thousand.

That brings us to the hardest part of the Plan: making sure the Plan survives a million years.

Right now, you're in a precarious position. Climate change probably won’t entirely wipe us out, but it will likely disrupt civilization enough that the Plan will be lost. Nuclear war might actually cause us to go extinct. A killer asteroid certainly would. Therefore, the first thing the Plan needs to do is save the world. Reverse climate change, or at least halt it. Nuclear disarmament. Peace, or as close as we can get to it. Medicine, spaceflight, art, prosperity, happiness, survival—all part of the Plan.

Colonizing other planets, and eventually other solar systems, is also in the Plan. Not just for a backup in case of killer meteor, but also because when you do destroy the Earth, you’ll need somewhere to stand. Remember, you're not trying to wipe out humanity here! Just destroy a planet. This will be tricky. It’s very likely that there’s no such thing as faster-than-light travel, so it will take a while to spread across the galaxy. This might take up the bulk of the million-year timeline.

(Quick note: you may be tempted to conquer the Earth, or set yourself up as some sort of galaxy-spanning God-Ruler. In my personal opinion, this is a bad idea. Right now, empires typically last a couple hundred years before falling. Do you think it would be easier to hold on to multiple planets than just a bit of land around the Mediterranean? I believe that it’s best to have your Plan set up a system where people can survive and thrive without needing you.)

But as tricky as interstellar colonization may be, it’s still the easy part. The hard part is that the entire Plan has to reconstruct itself from scratch if everything goes wrong.

The Plan has to be the most massively redundant, self-repairing, and robust project humanity has ever undertaken, or will ever undertake. The Plan needs to be able to resurrect our entire species on its own, without human intervention, in case something goes wrong (e.g. nuclear war) and we all get wiped out. Here’s one idea: computerize the Humanity Reboot Protocol, stamp the code onto platinum bricks, launch a million copies into deep space and onto every rocky body in the solar system, and have it check back in every once in a while. You can have that one for free.

The Plan also needs to have a way to re-motivate humanity to destroy the Earth. Maybe that’s as simple as posting it to tumblr and having a lot of people read it, but it will probably be a bit more complicated. Crucially, the Plan does not have to be visible. Nobody actually needs to know that the Plan exists, if you’re clever enough. You might be tempted to turn it into a religion, but religions change and die. Remember: the Plan has to eventually pop off, no matter what we do to ourselves.

The Plan is now its own entity, both distinct from and deeply intertwined with humanity.

(As a side note, this begs the question: What if the Plan is already in effect? If it’s a good Plan, we wouldn’t be able to tell. What if some sufficiently motivated creature set things into motion ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million years ago? Food for thought.)

Alright. So, enough time has passed, and you’ve figured out how to destroy the Earth. I use “you” loosely at this point. Maybe, against all odds, you’ve figured out immortality, or mind-uploading, cloning, whatever. More likely, you’ve been dust for a million years. That’s not important. Regardless, “you” are standing on Mars or wherever and your metaphorical finger is hovering a metaphorical big red button marked “DESTROY THE EARTH.” Step 2 of the Plan.

Let’s pause here and go back to that pin from before: Why? Why are you destroying the Earth?

Well, a lot of reasons. If I were doing this, my Plan would include abandoning the Earth for other star systems and setting it up as some sort of museum. I'd take all the biosphere with me, of course, and make better Earths elsewhere. Imagine a hundred Earths, each of which are perfect nature preserves, or more! Imagine finding a good silica-heavy planet, turning it into molten glass, and sculpting it into something beautiful. Imagine spelling your name in an Oort cloud. Imagine an ocean planet full of whales.

Imagine coming back to a deserted G-type solar system with a few dusty rocks, an asteroid belt, and a handful of gas giants. Imagine breaking them down to make raw materials for a Dyson sphere.

Bam! Earth destroyed! You did it!

Maybe a paleontologist somewhere will figure out that this might be the planet where we first evolved, and it would be nice to put it somewhere safe. Hey, does that count as destroying the Earth? Where the Earth once was, there is now empty space. No more Earth! That sounds pretty destroyed to me. Bam! Earth destroyed! You did it!

Maybe your Plan is different, and the Earth is still inhabited. For what it’s worth, I hope you’ve made it a paradise, one of a thousand Edens across the galaxy. It would be a shame to blow it up… but if Sol-3 is just one paradise among many, what makes it significant? “Earth” is our homeworld, but now there are a thousand homeworlds, so what is “Earth?” What makes this one rock special? Nothing! You’ve successfully destroyed the entire concept of “Earth.” That might be harder than blowing up a planet! Well done! You did it!

In conclusion, here is why I say it’s a moral imperative to destroy the Earth:

Eventually, a baby bird has to leave the nest. Somebody needs to be the mom bird who lures her chicks off the edge, and it might as well be me.

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 3 years

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#ask the writer

How can I write a couple with a healthy relationship?

I mean I don't want them to change themselves to make the other happy but I want them to work well

You know, it’s funny, this is a very serious question but I’m just laughing.

Because I feel like I am not the writer you’re looking for as I have never, in my life, written a story that is solely centered around two characters having a healthy relationship.

I like to think I write relationships well, that I write well period, but I have never written a story with the goal you outline in mind.

Still, I’ll do my best and see where this takes us. Though caveat that as I’ll be speaking very generally it may not apply to your situation.

First, a post I made earlier, how to write organic, believable, relationships period.

All of that still applies which... makes your goal a little harder.

What do I mean?

Stories Are About Change

At their heart, stories are always a journey. Something happens. It can be big, it can be small, maybe the characters learned something, maybe they pointedly learned nothing. Some things changed, some things didn’t, but as an audience we left feeling something. However, the point being, it is not a snapshot.

Which automatically puts us in deep water with your premise.

If I’m writing a story that’s focused on a relationship, and I want that relationship to be depicted in a certain manner and only that manner, and that’s all I want to touch on: I don’t have a story, I have an aesthetic. It’s a nice aesthetic, I like it, but it is just a snapshot in time.

If our characters are only ever in a healthy relationship, if they never enter or grow into this relationship, or leave this relationship, and we have nothing else going on... Then what’s this even about?

Nobody grows, nobody changes, it’s just... stagnant.

So, right away that presents a problem. If the relationship is the whole point then it must change throughout the story. That’s what people do, we change, we learn things about the world and about each other.

And that means... it might not always be at its healthiest.

Mitigation One: Don’t Focus on the Relationship

Alright, well, what if the story’s not about the relationship? What if there are just two characters who have a very healthy relationship inside the story and I have some other, larger, plot going on?

Well, you’re in a better place here. We have an excuse for things with the couple to move more slowly, we have other sources of conflict that the characters can focus on while still relying on one another but...

You’re still going to have issues because our characters are still growing as people.

As they confront things out there in the wide world their view of the world, of themselves, and of each other will change. There will be miscommunications, their beliefs may come into conflict, their desires may come into conflict, and they may grow to be people who cannot in fact maintain a healthy relationship (which, ending a relationship that’s bad for you can be a very healthy thing to do).

Now, maybe they work through these issues, which is a very healthy thing to do. However, they will likely still run into these issues and may have periods where tensions are running very high and the relationship seems like it will fail. In other words, in working through issues, you may have periods where you’re writing a relationship you do not wish to.

Relationships have highs and they have lows, you have to be willing to write such things even if said relationship is taking a backseat to the greater plot.

Mitigation Two: Move From an Unhealthy Relationship to a Healthy Relationship

To me some of the greatest stories that focus on a pair are those which focus on Character A realizing they’re in a horrible relationship and getting out, sometimes finding a better one.

Take, “The Revolutionary Girl Utena”. That is what this entire, beautiful, show is about. The characters begin in the most toxic, horrific, abusive relationships and yet we end on a very hopeful note where people recognize the relationships they were in, get out, and someday in the future might begin again with healthier partners.

You have everything a story needs in this. You have growth of characters, you have a lot of tension and conflict, you have a recognition of what love is, what healthy relationships truly are, and what bad relationships are.

However, this is a very dark path, as it involves writing the relationship you do not, in fact, wish to write at all. You end up where you want to, which might be sweeter for it, but maybe as a writer this isn’t what you want to focus on.

Mitigation Three: The Story is the Development of the Relationship

Perhaps the story closest to what you’re looking for is one that focuses on the relationship coming into being. In other words, the slow burn route. The characters are well suited to each other, they treat each other with dignity and respect, but for a variety of legitimate reasons they do not get together until the very end of your story.

The story, then, is how these people end up together (among other things).

However, this isn’t quite the Healthy Relationship I see bandied about on Ao3 either, because it’s slow burn. The characters still have to grow as people, undoubtedly have their own faults or barriers that get in the way of the relationship starting, and may have significant communication issues.

They end up where you want them to be, in a great communicative relationship, but there are reasons they don’t start there which violate the Healthy Relationship axiom.

Some Other Problems

Changing Your Characters to Make the Ship Work

In your ask you outline one of the major issues with the Healthy Relationship trope. Sometimes, if you have two characters in mind, they will simply never enter a healthy relationship. Ever.

Their backgrounds, personalities, goals, or something are completely incompatible. Trying to get them together is like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. It’s just not going to work and feel very hamfisted if you try.

And honestly, the best advice I have for that is to accept it. I’m sorry it sucks your ship isn’t going to work out the way you wanted, but if you’re working that hard, it means your brain is screaming at you “DON’T DO IT!!!” Your brain is usually right in these matters.

If you change too much of a character to make it work, then it’s not even the character you wanted to smash together with the other character.

Now, that said, while you should never enter a relationship expecting to change your partner into someone you like (nor should they have to change for you), I will say that people do change. More, if we’re talking things like “my partner is a mass murderer”, then yeah, we should change that to enter a healthy relationship (or, perhaps the safest option, don’t enter that relationship at all).

I once read a fic that, while mostly good, ended on the hilariously terrible morale of Character A realizing it was wrong to what to change her love interest Character B and that she should accept her for who she is. Great moral at a distance, a great lesson learned, but in the scope of the story fell to pieces. What did Character B do that Character A initially objected to? She murdered thousands of people. I’m still with Character A’s initial thoughts on that one.

What the Hell is a Healthy Relationship?

If you read fics focusing on healthy relationships a lot of the time they’re... really weird. The couple never seem to have any emotions, they’re always placid and calm (with a great BDSM sex life), never have any fights, never have any conflict between their interest, and just smile at each other and become complete Stepford Wives.

The author is so focused on the relationship being healthy, the pair never fighting and having fantastic safe yet realistic sex, that they forget what relationships are.

It’s okay if your characters fight, it’s okay if they sometimes forget how to communicate, the point is if they are able to work through these barriers or not.

Why Are You Asking Me?

Now, all that said, I am just one person on the internet. A lot of people love the healthy relationship trope, and frankly, if you give it to them they will love you forever.

People will routinely read and adore 100k stories where nothing happens, at all, except we see two characters just be in this stagnant healthy relationship with each other interrupted by your occasional lemon. Maybe during the story a second set of characters will enter an equally healthy relationship to fuel the plot.

And hey, if other people like it, who am I to complain? Go for it, have fun, have your healthy relationship and slice of life story. I personally may not read it, but you’re not writing it for me, are you?

#writing #writing meta #healthy relationships #relationships #meta

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max1461 · 3 years

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I've been having a kind of strange anxiety about math lately. Everything in math is a consequence of our definitions, so in a certain sense, it's all trivial. There is a part of me that looks at this and goes "Ok, so what's the point then? Everything that's true in math was simply selected to be true when we defined things, so are we really learning anything genuinely new with all this effort towards proving theorems and so on?" And obviously, like, yeah we are: many of the consequences of our definitions are uninuitive or otherwise would not occur to us from looking at the definitions alone, so we're learning that those things are in fact consequences of these particular definitions.

But that's not quite satisfying to me. Because, right, there are basically two ways we select definitions in math. The first is as models of things in the natural world (the real numbers model quantity in various capacities, Euclidean geometry models small regions of space, etc.). The second is that, in studying these first types of definition set, some generalization or abstraction or piece of machinery that might make our lives easier reveals itself, so we make some definitions for that. So in a sense the "interestingness" value of mathematics all stems at some level from its ability to model the natural world. We don't just think up axiom systems at random with no connection to anything that's come before, because no one would care.

But when we're coming up with definitions of the first type, definitions that model the real world, how do we decide if they're good models? Or at least, good enough models to act as a wellspring for mathematical interestingness (because lots of mathematical objects that physicists have abandoned or whatever because they're no longer useful models of nature are still somehow "close enough" to generate interest from mathematicians, where again a random definition pulled from thin air would not). Well, in practice the way we decide they're good enough models to be mathematically interesting in generally to ask if they accord with our intuitions. Like, when I was first learning knot theory, I asked my professor "why is this the way we've defined mathematical knots?" and he basically said (in many more words and with some examples) "because this definition captures our intuitions about all the properties of a real knot that we'd think of as 'topological', while ignoring the other ones (friction, etc.) that we don't care about."

But wait! At the beginning I said that the reason math was still worth doing, despite it all coming from our definitions anyway, is the potential for unintuitive results. But all mathematical interestingness seems to stem from definitions that model real-world things, and the way we test if they model real-world things sufficiently well is to ask "does their behavior accord with our intuition?" So it seems like we're, uh, designing math in a way that produces a catch-22 between interestingness and nontrivialness, in some sort of sense.

idk exactly, this is a vague and imprecise thought, but it's been causing me some discomfort.

#navel gazing #math

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN HACKERS

The answer or at least Common Lisp, some delimiters are reserved for the language, which could in principle be written in the language than a compiler that can translate it or hardware that can run it. No one loves it. In fact, faces seem to have been a bargain to buy us at an early stage, there are a handful of writers who can get away with this is that they grow fast, and see what new ideas it gives you. Better a narrow description than a vague one. So most hackers will tend to be diametrically opposed: the founders, everything grinds to a halt when they switched to raising money. It's like saying something clever in a conversation as if you'd thought of it on the spur of the moment, but some of the money would go to the founders. There are lots of good examples. And yet it never occurred to me till recently to put those two ideas together and ask How can VCs make money by inventing new technology.

A copy of Time costs $5 for 58 pages, or 8. It may be surprisingly large; people overvalue physical stuff. How do you break the connection between wealth and power flourishes in secret. The thing is, VCs are pretty good at reading people. People often tell me how much my essays sound like me talking. I spend a lot of them. Probably because startups are so small. Like many startup founders, and certainly not you as an investor. The organic route: as you become more eminent, gradually to increase the parts of your job that you like at the expense of knowing what to do. If you seem like you'll be one of those they remember. You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. My father's entire industry breeder reactors disappeared that way.

Which is not surprising: work wasn't fun for most hackers. You need the young hacker's naive faith in his abilities, and at the same time the veteran's skepticism.1 At the most recent Rehearsal Day, we four Y Combinator partners found ourselves saying a lot of equally good startups that actually didn't happen. The wrong people like it. Before Durer tried making engravings, no one wants to look like a fool. As well as being a bad use of time, if your business model seems spectacularly wrong, that will push the stuff you want investors to remember out of their heads. Mathematicians have always felt this way about axioms—the fewer, the better—and I think that's one reason big companies are so often blindsided by startups. Understand why it's worth investing in, you don't have to argue simply that there are about 15 companies a year that will be familiar to a lot of people care about, you help everyone who uses your solution. Sound is a good instinct; investors dislike unbalanced teams. Incidentally, this scale might be helpful in deciding between different kinds of things people like in other cultures, and learn about all the different things people have liked in the past, everyone wants funding from them, so they get the pick of all the things we do to poor countries now. To change the interface both have to agree to change it at once.2 I've never heard anyone say that they have better hackers.

Bring us your startups early, said Google's speaker at the Startup School. Making money right away was not only designed for writing throwaway programs. Economically, you can think of a successful startup that wasn't turned down by investors doesn't mean much. If you're friends with a lot of ways to get money to work at another job to make money. In a big company. It means he makes up his mind quickly, and follows through. Imitating it was like pretending to have gout in order to seem rich. But often memory will be the most demanding user of a company's products. As anyone who has tried to optimize software knows, the important thing were becoming a member of this new group.

Otherwise all the minor details left unspecified in the termsheet will be interpreted to your disadvantage. The central issue is picking the right startups is for investors. Generally, the garage guys envy the big bang method. Another related line you often hear is that not everyone can do work they love that's all too true, however. This essay was originally published in Hackers & Painters. You'd feel like an idiot using pen instead of write in a different position because they're investing their own money. What about using it to write software. You can do math this way. One is to work with him on something. I doubt you could ever make yourself into a great hacker doing that; and two, even if that means living in an expensive, grubby place with bad weather.

The top 10 startups account for 8. But there might be things that appealed particularly to men, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will push the stuff you want investors to remember out of their heads. That's why oil paintings look so different from watercolors. And the only thing you can offer in return is raw materials and cheap labor. That's kind of hard to imagine. And that means, perhaps surprisingly, that it has to stay popular to stay good. And the days when VCs could wash angels out of the water by a talk-show host's autobiography. Yeah, sure, but first you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure.

They passed. The faster you cycle through projects, the faster you'll evolve. If you can't ensure your own security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a forum with a lot of time or you won't get a share in the excitement, but if there had been some way just to work super hard and get paid a lot more common. It means arguments of the form Life is too short for something. Both customers and investors will be who else is investing? In a low-tech society you don't see much variation in productivity.3 News. Though somewhat humiliating, this is a net win.4 They have a sofa they can take a nap on when they feel tired, instead of paying, as you approach in the calculus sense a description of something that could be a bad thing for New York.

Notes

Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the best response is neither to bluff nor give up your anti-dilution protections. The founders want to write it all yourself. In principle yes, of S P 500 CEOs in 2002 was 3. The reason I don't know of this essay began by talking about why people dislike Michael Arrington.

At the time of its identity. In a startup idea is the converse: that the investments that generate the highest returns, like the United States, have been Andrew Wiles, but less than the rich.

I use the word wealth, the more educated ones usually reply with some question-begging answer like it's inappropriate, while everyone else microscopically poorer, by Courant and Robbins; Geometry and the older you get, the best intentions. 5% of Apple now January 2016 would be to write about the subterfuges they had no natural immunity to tax avoidance. Cell phone handset makers are satisfied to sell your company into one? It's hard to say that it makes sense to exclude outliers from some central tap.

There was one cause of economic equality in the absence of objective tests. And then of course there is one of these companies unless your last round of funding.

Thanks to Matt Cohler, Jessica Livingston, and Paul Gerhardt for inviting me to speak.

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jonathankatwhatever · 1 year

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I’m having the strangest experience. I ran across a reference to the axioms of number theory, which led me to Peano, which all made such complete sense I wondered if I’d just trivialized all this work. That lasted until I realized we generate these, that we generate the invisible and the visible, tangible and intangible, and thus not only the processes inherent in the axioms but also the results, the visible results, which we map from 1Space to 0Space. That last means we create dimensional Objects, which we divide into tObjects for tangible and iObjects for intangible. As I was reading through the Peano entry, it referred me to set theory, and when I followed the reference, the very first sentence of importance was that they assume an object. My hand wanted to start waving in the air, I know how to make objects out of nothing or almost nothing at all.

Think about it. One of the first, if not the first hook was to set theory, to the idea inherent in paradoxes that 2 objects can’t be in contradictory existences. This is also the essence of the Chomsky idea of impossible sentences being the ones that negate their own subjects. It shows up as Pauli exclusion. And we generate that and can explain how and why that can happen, meaning how something can be excluded because it can’t resolve within the shared Conformal Space and Conformal Reality. The last has a lot of connections, from physics to how you experience a show or food. I have been thinking of it as the reality of a show, where the Space is the confines of the Reality as it reduces to Actuality. I wonder where the inspiration comes from.

That says that within the Space there is a Reality and that reduces further to Actualities, with the last being what actually happens so it can be perceived within the Reality which is happening within the Space. The point of the Space is that it collects all the Ends from outside, all the preparation and rehearsal threads, all the years of work done by each involved, all collects at the boundary of the Conformal Space. Thus you can say the signs pointed or you can say I saw that coming: there’s a Triangular from the boundary of the Conformal Space, which is a Dimensional Enclosure, and the focal End, which might be you as actor or the entirety of the show, inverts over the 1-0Segment linking across the CS and the DE. By using CS, we can go into shapes. By using DE, we can go into numbers and ideal forms. Go DE. So, there’s a Triangular to the result, inverts over that dividing line to the outer limit. And now I’m seeing where this is going: the depth and extent of inversion.

Wow, this is really amazing now. Let me try to get this down, because it’s like a tidal wave. Penis, obviously. Fixations on. Fixations on size generally. Dinosaurs. Loaded entirely into results space, into tObjects, with little abstraction, so nothing stopped them from getting bigger. Physically bigger.

Intangible Things surround tangible Things, link them, construct them from both sides of the boundary. What is the boundary? It has two sides, outer and inner. Outer is where Dimensional Reduction establishes an ideal for that Thing. That means the boundary constructs from higher dimensions reducing to it, which literally means the intangible reduces to the tangible. By invoking Dimensional Reduction, we bring in the tools developed for Dimensional Analysis, such as the link between ideal geometric shapes and conceptions of dimension.

Inner is 0Space. That is where we live because we are tObjects, which have associated Things, which relate at various scales of Things, to other tObjects through chains of iObjects. Each tObject has its own existence. A good analogy is a blockchain, since we are counting and verifying blocks. In fact, ideas like process cost or ‘gas’ needed to run the process associated with mining or identifying the solutions which are treated as coinage, all directly reflect 0Space. That’s what we call gs process, because DR takes us to the level of D3 tObjects within D4Space.

I need a break.

Oh, so pole bigger but what makes it bigger intangibly, which we might call the experience, is the extent to which the pole aligns. That’s the connection to the dino bit above: their abstract poles didn’t extend very far, like they were play constructions which hadn’t yet developed more abstract space - which is the exact truth - so when they aligned, as play constructions do, they got really big and the only big around was physically big, larger toys for the Observer.

So people should think of life as making love to eternity, because that’s what you are as a male ejaculating into and as a female what you are nurturing. And that includes, of course, however your identities are tuned or situated. True to your various selves.

And if someone says this implies extreme relativism, of choice without meaning, the answer is that’s like deciding to blunder into the wilderness without preparation. You choose Pathways and Pathways choose you. You can’t escape that by believing exploration is without consequence. It’s all recorded. This is finally taking me to the place I’ve been expecting, which I’ve been trying to get out, but I haven’t been able to organize thoughts so they don’t flip perspective. That is: what about relatives? What about what your ‘people’ did or didn’t do? Who is to blame? Can you make up for the past? Do you need to make up for what you didn’t do?

These questions are beyond difficult: they’re literally not solvable because solution requires perspectives coming together without an End in sight. It’s like how people used to talk about The Great Depression or WWII, how we were all in it together. The size of the Thing literally constrained people to react as they did. That means all the various levels of Things generated what happened, just as how we see what happened is generated today. This is why people may remember the past, but groups don’t.

We can describe how Things exist over time, how past events stay alive. There is no general solution because the quintic is just the beginning of higher dimensions. That is why the idea is to become more attuned to higher dimensions. So the pole aligns, which makes it reach deeper.

————

BTW, it’s 1 Feb 2023. I forget to date things. My memory system doesn’t file by date because it needs to file by higher level Thing in order to organize and reduce down to the attributes of the Actualities, those which place it in a specific place on that ‘blockchain’ section which feeds into the Continuum which allows 1-0Segment ordering. I’d never thought that through until that moment. I think of me as sK dominant. Is that correct? You clearly associate to the count because you produce exactly that. I see that as zK dominant because the counting is visible, but of course sK and zK flip and the attributes thus pair and flip and twist. Maybe I do the same, but I think of myself as highly associative so the counting fits to it. So we strive for the two forms of the ideal, which gets to the point which popped into my head that I had to avoid Pathway entanglements which you had to go down, so the issues of belief express as we’ve laid out, with huge difficulties in each approach. That actually straightens out the ideas here: each is a Pathway, so a high z is a high s, because that way s can be minimized for z and z for s, meaning that enables forms of maximums.

This did not come out with much poetry, did it? I’m a bit tired from reading quickly through mathematics that used to be impenetrable.

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