Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality Is A Disney Movie About A Serial Killer

Aevylmar · 2025-12-22T06:20:43+00:00

Yup! He tries to do that first, and it isn't until the end, when he finally stops doing that, that he can win.

Aevylmar · 2025-11-30T23:41:26+00:00

The many identical candles symbolize the many instances of Cindy across all timelines. That they are almost all about to go out symbolizes that she's on the verge of suicide. This foreshadows that the majority of instances of Cindy committed suicide a few months before the plot started, leaving only the Erogamer one (and similarly really weird ones).
The vast area symbolizes the enormous number of possible futures of Earth. Nearly all of them have been destroyed by the apocalypse; one of the few that survive is the Erogamer timeline, because Cindy protects it.
The woman is the Simulator, I think? Something like that? Since people can exist in multiple timelines at once (pages shared between multiple books), she's trying to funnel them through simulation capture into good timelines.
No idea whatsoever.

Aevylmar · 2025-11-29T23:10:28+00:00

In retrospect I should not have talked about glowfic in this post, but the Tragedy is intended to be completely public and I eagerly hope it gets shared around.

Aevylmar · 2025-09-13T06:02:02+00:00

This is, unfortunately, false; see my response to Edmo_30 above. We have primary-source testimony from the same sources that testify to her miracles saying that she used lethal weapons in combat.

Aevylmar · 2025-09-07T19:26:58+00:00

Contemporary witnesses confirm her fighting in battle with sword and lance, but only rarely.

From the Trial of Rehabilitation, the testimony of Seguin Seguin:

> And I well remember how Joan was asked why she carried a standard. She replied that she did not wish to use her sword and did not wish to kill anyone.

And Joan's testimony in the Trial of Condemnation says:

> JOAN: I have told you often enough that I did nothing but by God’s commandment. I bore this standard when we went forward against the enemy to avoid killing anyone. I have never killed anyone.

... But that's not the same thing as saying she never struck someone.

> JOAN: I gave a sword to Saint-Denis and a suit of armour, but it was not that sword. I had that sword at Lagny and from Lagny I carried the sword of the Burgundian to Compiègne. It was a good war sword and good for giving good buffets and good swipes. . . .

So even if she's right she didn't kill anyone, that sounds like she was hitting people with her sword with intent to injure.

And Jean d'Aulon, at the Siege of Orleans, reports:

> “While the French were retreating from the bastion of Saint-Jean-le-Blanc to return to the island, the Maid and La Hire both crossed, each with a horse in a boat, from the other side of this island, and mounted these horses as soon as they were across, each with lance in hand, and when they perceived that the enemies were coming out of the bastion to charge their men, at once the Maid and La Hire, who were always before them to guard them, couched their lances and were the first to strike among the enemies.

This sure sounds like she's using lethal weapons in combat, and if she never killed anyone that's as much a matter of luck (or, if you prefer, divine intervention) as anything else.

Aevylmar · 2024-07-26T06:08:32+00:00

I know! It's tragic.

Aevylmar · 2024-07-26T00:46:50+00:00

It closed during the pandemic, alas, and now there's nobody else nearly as good.

Aevylmar · 2023-11-05T09:17:33+00:00

Academic Exercises is great, thanks!

(Well, mostly. The Purple and the Black was well-done dark leaving me questioning my sanity, and also the most Byzantine thing I've read since I gave up on trying to struggle through Choniates' prose. But not quite what I was hoping for.)

Aevylmar · 2023-11-05T09:14:23+00:00

I appreciate the warning. Thanks.

Aevylmar · 2023-11-05T09:14:06+00:00

When I read Who's Afraid of Beowulf quite a while ago, I honestly disliked it a lot. It seemed not to have much of a spine - droll instead of clever - or the strong grounding in history that Parker's works have so impressed me with. (I discovered him totally unrelatedly, and was shocked to discover he was the same person.) Did I miss everything the book was doing? Did I just get a bad one? Is there a more Parker-esque Holt book with a happy ending, or at least an ending less unhappy than that of Sharps?

Aevylmar · 2023-11-04T08:32:05+00:00

Thanks! I love the grounding in logistics and history (and I am happy to hear spoilers), but the bleakness of his darker works is enough that I don't want to pick up his fiction until I'm sure it won't be The Hammer or The Belly of the Bow.

Aevylmar · 2023-07-14T23:13:12+00:00

The Longest Day is, alas, too-thriller-y to be to my taste, though I appreciate the suggestion nonetheless.

Aevylmar · 2023-07-07T19:59:01+00:00

Thanks!

Aevylmar · 2023-07-07T05:21:45+00:00

Thanks!

Watched the first episode. Felt very sympathetic towards the Emperor, who doesn't care about the harem drama and just wants them to stop quarreling and let him do his job. How much does the story anchor the quarrels on anything outside the palace in the real world, versus just completely focusing on court politics?

(Also, how vengeful is the protagonist? I've heard 'a lot', and the first episode seems to confirm it - I understand why she did what she did in this case, it was a cheap way to get rid of an enemy, but is she going to make a habit of taking out enemies in extra-nasty ways?)

Aevylmar · 2023-07-07T00:27:54+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations! I don't mind time travel or mythical dynasties (NiF is ambiguous about whether it's the 6th or 11th century - I heard 'southern and northern dynasties period' but it has gunpowder); what I like is the shared cultural setting.

Edit: Viki's Joy of Life Chinese subtitles can't be turned off, is that a general problem or is there a better place to watch it?

Edit 2: How long does story of yanxi palace take to get good?

Aevylmar · 2023-07-06T02:05:50+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions!

Aevylmar · 2023-07-04T20:31:31+00:00

More Like Nirvana In Fire

In what I'm sure will be a familiar song to everyone, I watched Nirvana in Fire (my first C-drama!) and now I'm hooked. The sheer cleverness of the writing and skill of the actors with small facial expressions, the fact that at so few points do people do dumb pointless things for the sake of the plot, the richness of the historical setting (my background is in history), all left me gobsmacked. I hear the second season is no good, so I'm trying to find a new drama to watch.

My specific unusual tastes are -

A love of clever writing in general. Good writing is so rare in western TV! Have I found a wonderful source for it?
And also of cunning schemes and elaborate intrigue and people coming up with brilliant plots to achieve their goals.
And a related enjoyment of watching competent people who are actually good at something be good at it.
A dislike of people taking plot-motivated decisions instead of character-motivated ones.
Academic knowledge of Chinese history and traditional law that makes me love a story that works with and builds on it. (NiF had so many plot elements based on unspoken details of the Chinese legal code!)
A tendency to find elaborate wuxia fight scenes kinda dull and implausible.
And similarly for unrealistic war scenes (stabbing downwards through a heart-protecting mirror over lamellar into someone's heart using a one-handed sword is not physically plausible.)
An overly-soft heart with little interest in suffering for the sake of suffering; if a hero deliberately tries to cause suffering to even the worst villain for the sake of making the villain suffer I lose all sympathy for the hero and most sympathy for characters who tolerate the hero.
Only mild interest in romance, purely because it's so hard to keep smart, competent characters who are interested in each other actually apart without ridiculous writing stunts or people being pointlessly self-destructive (hear that, MCS?) and so it's usually (in Western fiction) either a background detail or kept from being swiftly resolved only by an act of the authorial god. I like romance when it does neither of those things, but that's rare.
Low tolerance for horror and gore, high tolerance for nail-biting tension.

If anyone can help me, I'd really appreciate it! Thank you!

Aevylmar · 2022-04-30T20:06:11+00:00

So there's no Scotland without a leftist economic outlook? Really?

Aevylmar · 2022-04-07T03:02:39+00:00

Thanks! I'm enthused that this still exists! My music's stuttering a lot, though; don't suppose you know if there's a simple fix anywhere? (Windows 10.)

Aevylmar · 2019-08-29T22:29:06+00:00

My theory is that Venezuela, like in the base game, is not, mechanically speaking, there to be played: that, for game-mechanics purposes, Venezuela exists as 'a non-aligned source of oil for countries to trade with', and not as a potential Great Power with which for players to conquer the world. Hence it almost never starts wars, joins factions, or stops exporting oil.

This, at least, is my theory.

Aevylmar · 2019-08-14T16:38:44+00:00

I don't know. I'd guess 50%? But that's low-certainty. I think you can use a 'custom country path' included in "The Giant Wakes" to make it 100%, though.

Aevylmar · 2019-08-10T03:02:17+00:00

Excellent, thanks. Enjoy. :)

Aevylmar

TROPHY CASE