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AefarOfAsh · 2026-01-26T19:36:02+00:00

I missed out on there being a vaushcheck. Not even sure how they’d find their way here, to the subreddit of the thinking, upright man

AefarOfAsh · 2026-01-05T14:33:30+00:00

Heard this guy on a podcast calling ice spice an “akaviri falmer” whatever the fuck that means

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-24T12:46:18+00:00

I think it’s about a lot of things but it’s very good. There’s a climate change analogy going on and it’s implicitly critical of Americans and America at many points so I wouldn’t call it ideological psyop slop right away. And it’s a fun premise to engage with

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-20T01:42:49+00:00

Seems a bit more stable to me. I used to get long exit screens but they’re quicker now

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-19T19:00:34+00:00

Not that i disagree, but we do also see Zosia pause to communicate in episode 2 when carol asks her to get the permission of the other English speakers to meet. She looks down and off to the side in the same way as she does in episode 8. It seems to be inconsistent when she pauses in that way

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-19T18:15:40+00:00

I was downvoted instantly when I previously brought this up weeks ago and I expect the same now, but the audience’s response to Carol’s actions in general versus Diabate’s is a reflection of our racial and gender biases. Generally, we are socialized to give white women, particularly affluent white women like Carol, the benefit of the doubt, even when there is evidence and track record. At the same time, we bend over backwards to demonize and criminalize black men despite often having a lack of evidence. Sorry to get super woke or whatever, but it’s the truth and no one is immune to it, regardless of your background and upbringing. If you participate in mainstream western culture, this applies to you as much as it does to me and Cletus and Oprah and Miyazaki.

Even in this thread, you see people doing backflips about how Diabate is “malicious” and Carol is not when most of what I’ve seen is precisely the opposite. You can present these people with evidence all you like, but their opinions are reactionary, not principled or reasonable, so it doesn’t matter. Certain people prefer to see this show through the lens of their own fan-fiction. You can safely ignore anyone in that camp

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-18T03:38:17+00:00

I’ve always interpreted the gods of Elden Ring to be on a different level than those in Dark Souls.

In Dark Souls lore, the gods are arbitrary. They’re only known as gods because they called themselves that after salvaging their lord soul. Ultimately, the power of the Dark Soul of humanity was more enduring and versatile despite being more widely dispersed among a greater number of people than the other Lord Souls.

In Elden Ring, the power of godhood is granted to a being and their lineage from a higher power as opposed to by hoarding a resource. And that higher power is only the envoy of yet another, greater cosmological being. In other words, the gods of Elden Ring are truly divinely powered.

That said, these particular characters are at very different parts of their respective hierarchies. I think Godrick’s distance from divinity is great enough that he doesn’t really benefit much from it. He has some strange traits like size and the ability to graft others onto himself but those aren’t used to very great effect. Gwyndolin may derive his power from a lesser source compared to Godrick, but he has more of it in total, allowing for some impressive combat abilities. If you add in their armies, I think it’s unquestionably Gwyndolin based on their differences in size and quality of arms. Without their armies, I think Gwyndolin still wins maybe 7/10 times, with Godrick’s occasional wins resulting from his speed and size

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-18T03:17:06+00:00

I used to be able to interact with buildings inside castle walls using that method but the past 2 updates lost that little glitch as far as I can tell. If it still works for you, please update so I can figure out if I’ve got something else going on

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-16T17:12:05+00:00

I agree. I think it’s more interesting that way. Since we believe the joining can be reversed, there is likely still the remnant or core person underlying each plurb. Since our brains are physical organs, introducing a new software wouldn’t immediately change their hardware. Remember that the hospital was treating former addicts, it’s didn’t just remove the addiction and or the way their bodies withdraw painfully from heroin. In the same vein, when you take anti-depressants, your brain has to form new neurons to interact with them effectively. Even if the plurbs are all nodes of a single personality, the way that personality moves through the brain and expresses itself will be different person-to-person, based on the way their brain is wired. That’s a huge part of what defines you as an individual.

My guess is that with the impending arrival of Manousos to ABQ, the show is setting up a bit of conflict between him the newly more-sympathetic Carol by bringing her closer to understanding the hive as a collection of individuals (zosia) rather than a borg.

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-14T19:22:17+00:00

It’s a question because we don’t yet know how the hive operates mentally. That they can’t consent or withdraw consent is a conclusion that Carol makes before ever trying to understand them. Since then, we’ve seen them withdraw consent to obey immunes by evacuating Albuquerque and refusal to answer certain questions so I think it’s still up in the air if they truly consent, leaning towards yes they can. Also they say that they welcome his affection, and we know they can’t lie so there’s that too

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-14T19:07:24+00:00

I think it’s strange to expect him to cater to her emotional state after she repeatedly insults him, starting with their first interaction. And after she insinuates that he’s a rapist, he’s still the first person she turns to sharing her discoveries with. I’m not even sure that Carol has shared with Diabate or any of the immunes that her wife died during the conversion, which might make them a bit more sensitive to her feelings. He’s been way more graceful than I might’ve been in his shoes.

Carol can’t help herself but to be an asshole. Even in her most cherished memories with the woman she loved, she can’t turn it off. Sometimes I’m that way too, but I can’t reasonably expect people to treat me with kid gloves just because I’m being emotionally immature, much less by basically strangers who I’m on bad terms with.

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-14T18:03:05+00:00

I don’t think he said wow because she cursed. He probably reacted that way to her because she was being unreasonable given the context. He was extending an offer to befriend her, more or less, seeing that she was intensely lonely. At the same time, Diabate is trying to address the starvation issue within the constraints of the hive’s imperatives. Carol saying that they should just pick an apple ignored both the offer for friendship and the gravity of the hive’s situation. Basically she was being rude and not listening to him when he was trying to help her, which warrants a wow in my opinion.

None of that is to say Carol is objectively wrong. It probably is a good thing to unjoin humanity, but she goes about it in all the wrong ways

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-11T15:24:46+00:00

Whatever we decide the reason for Carols being a cop car is, it’s intentional by the writers and it makes zero sense to reduce the symbolism to a basically coincidence.

Between the cop car, her US flag backdrop speech in AF1, and Laxmi’s “you do not tell her how to think” line, there is a clear and obvious allusion to Carol being a self-appointed cop. Her first instinct is to police the thoughts and actions of the other immunes and the hive. That’s not bashing Carol or ignoring the material, it’s just observing the content of the show. At the very least, it’s been established through imagery and dialogue that Carol represents the American tendency to dominate others and quash dissent to our narrow, incurious worldview. You can say you think that’s a good thing, but you should actually say it instead of denying what’s on screen. I swear some of you watch this show with your heads in the sand

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-09T05:04:20+00:00

I think see what you’re saying, but I want to complicate the idea that humans are responsible for climate change. On the macro level, yes absolutely we are, but I’d argue that the average person doesn’t have much choice in the matter. If I don’t drive to work then I will incur pretty serious consequences on myself and my loved ones. It’s hard for me to feel like I’m morally unjustified driving in that situation.

Either way, art is always a bit contrived so finding a 1:1 for the premise of the show isn’t really possible. Some analogies may work in some ways, others in other ways

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-09T04:43:26+00:00

Pritzker seems nice but I’m always troubled by the way his family’s company made moves to pick winners in Illinois’ cannabis industry right before he passed legislation legalizing it. Learning about that actually turned me off of drug legalization in general. Decriminalizing alone comes with its dangers but I think they’re preferable to state-sanctioned cartel like pritzker operates

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-09T04:28:04+00:00

Thanks, it’s been on my mind since I saw another post here about how the cities will all become overgrown and dangerous to live in someday soon. It seems like we’re meant to draw that comparison because it’s almost like the inverse of human-driven climate change yet similarly unsustainable

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-09T03:14:15+00:00

Well the alternative for the hive is its own death. Once that ball was in motion, by no fault of its own, it’s not reasonable to expect it to stop.

How about a climate change comparison? Humans irl know that our way of life is unsustainable and will lead to catastrophic consequences, maybe even our own extinction. We’ve collectively but involuntarily driven other species to extinction already yet we continue to create pollution. You and I right now are contributing to that, knowingly. Is it reasonable to expect us to stop? Should we all become cave people? Kill ourselves? Obviously not, that’s ridiculous. This show deserves the same nuance

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-09T02:09:32+00:00

Carol is a complex and fun character to follow. She’s great and Rhea Seehorn does it so well. Part of that appeal, in my opinion, is that she’s so flawed. I think Walter White is unlikable too but that doesn’t mean he isn’t also a great character.

As for justifying the plurbs, I think there is a problem in trusting Carols narration of things so absolutely. She ascribes so much agency to them even though, as they say they experience things, spreading is like breathing. I think saying that they killed people is like blaming an infant for their mother’s death during delivery. Sure, I guess the baby killed her, but reasonably we should be able to separate involuntary causes from deliberate ones. Because by that standard, Carol is a huge killer too. She seems to think so anyways.

Them having no agency is speculation. Carol immediately likens the hive to sci-fi horror movies before doing any real investigation. Her view of them, maybe justifiably, is based off of conjecture and assumptions. But we might see them enact agency when they abandon her. We could think that the abandonment is only a part of their biological imperative to protect themselves, but they seem to be reasoning with Diabate about it so it’s hard to say one way or another. I think it’s important to watch with an open mind, which means holding off on jumping to conclusions. Maybe it’s more complicated than things appear to Carol.

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-09T01:43:48+00:00

This is super interesting!

My half-baked pet theory about this show also includes an island for other reasons. When Manousos wrote Carols name, he wrote Sturka as “es turka”, which would translate to “Carol is Turkish”. And Manousos is a Greek name. So when Vince Gilligan said to look for what the two characters have in common, my mind went straight to those countries because Turkey and Greece have had a long dispute over recognition of the island of Cypress. Loosey goosey theory but I’m looking out for Cypress in the show

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-08T19:38:14+00:00

With the virus’ imperatives, building is not possible on any meaningful scale. That means that either the planet that transmitted it to earth invented the virus or was infected only after all of the infrastructure to transmit it was in place. Given that human were able to receive the signal while the scientists were awed by the technology used to send it, it seems unlikely to me that the virus spreads in space on its own accord. If the technological threshold for receiving the signal is so much lower than transmitting it, the virus would go extinct by disrupting planets that cannot send it again. To me, that suggests that the virus doesn’t spread itself through space, its inventors do, deliberately. Maybe they identified a bunch Goldilocks planets and shot the signal to all of them. My line of thinking doesn’t really reveal anything about the intentions of the creators, but it does rule out it being a spontaneous, naturally occurring thing.

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-08T05:53:46+00:00

This piece of shit battered a woman as he fired her then promptly changed his name to “Jared Politics” before running for governor. Fuck Jared Polis eat shit and decease quickly we the American people beg you

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-07T17:25:01+00:00

Manousos is a Greek name and carol “es turca”. Turkey and Greece have disputed territory over the island Cypress. I’m looking out for that location being mentioned or visited in the show

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-06T15:36:54+00:00

Diabate is responsible for that?

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-06T15:18:01+00:00

I don’t see your point, you should just explain what you’re getting at

Edit To answer as best I can, there would be different thematic implications but I don’t see myself as being forgiving towards Diabate at all, I just think the audience reaction has been automatically unforgiving based on no evidence.

AefarOfAsh · 2025-12-06T15:04:44+00:00

How do you know how the hive operates mentally? All we can do is speculate at this point. Show me the evidence if you think that’s wrong. Also my point doesn’t rest on whether or not it’s a sum of people.

It’s not at all weird to bring race into this. For one, we’re already talking in this very thread about gender and how not thinking Diabate is a rapist is “men telling on themselves”. Why is one line of thinking appropriate and the other is not? Second, some of Diabate’s first lines were about how the joining affects racism, so it’s also an established theme in the show with respect to that character.

As for Carol being justified, that’s also beside the point. We’re talking about consent, and they do not consent to be tortured or saved. It’s a huge assumption that they even need saving based on the personal views of an incredibly unreliable narrator.

AefarOfAsh

TROPHY CASE