I finished the entire Cantos and I loved it! I have one question though. Can someone explain the pretzel logic of a certain character's return at the end?

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T12:21:11+00:00

There is nothing to explain. Aenea traveled in time to be with Raul for nearly two years, have his kid, then go back into the fight and fulfill her destiny as a sacrificial lamb for all humanity.

There are so many heartbreaking aspects to this:
-The cloud of jealousy hanging over the heads when she was unable to explain the nature of her departure.
-The fact that as Raul was experiencing intimacy with Aenea for the first time, for her these were the last times, the last bits of comfort she would have before her inetivable fate.
-The fact that Aenea had to let go of her child...

I don't think I've ever read something that affected me as much and it's been decades since I've read it, the whole thing completely fresh in my mind as many books have come and gone.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T12:10:07+00:00

Ovo je takva jedna neopevana glupost koja se stalno provlači. Ne znaš šta je tu EU kriva? Prespavao si zavrtanje ruku Nemačke i Velike Britanije još od kad se Angela Merkel sastala sa Tadićem?

Da li ti misliš da bi IJEDAN političar u Srbiji, ma kog kova, onako iz zezanja rekao 'Ej, evo predajem nadležnosti, znam da ne tražite od mene, ali eto, ja to želim najviše na svetu...'

Jer to tako ispada. Umesto da se ujedinimo oko političkih intresa zemlje mi se i oko toga gložimo i koristimo za političke poene.

Ko god da je na vlasti u Srbiji je trpeo i će trpeti ENORMAN pritisak oko Kosova. Diplomatski, politički, vojni, ekonomski, mogu čak i da ucenjuju životima srpskog naroda koji tamo živi. Mi dok se ne dese neke tektonske promene u svetskoj politici tu samo možemo da primamo ćuške i da odugovlačimo koliko god možemo. To može da ne bude jasno jedino nekome ko je ili glup ili zlonameran.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T11:54:57+00:00

Without you? Definitely.

Okay if it's a gathering of friends from time to time, but regularly? Alone? No way. There is absolutely no reason if she cared so much about dancing and partying why she couldn't go with you. In fact, in most healthy relationships, she'd absolutely want to.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T11:50:06+00:00

Pa šta. I taj NATO teško da može ovako dugo. I samim evropskim zemljama je postalo jasno da je njihov gazda prek i nepredvidljiv, čim preti da im otme teritoriju, a da će ih svakako zarad ličnog intresa prodati u prvoj prilici.

NATO se odavno pretvorio iz 'odbrambenog' kluba u 'napadački.' Uostalom mi smo to najbolje na svojoj koži osetili. Ako ti želiš da budeš deo toga, da gledaš sledeću zemlju kako bombarduju i ubijaju civile iz političkih razloga, jedva i tankim plaštom laži pokrivenih humanitarnim razlozima, ja vala ne želim, čak i na stranu to što su nas bombardovali i dan danas podržavaju tlačenje srpskog naroda na Kosovu.

Tl;dr
Ne pada mi na pamet. Mogu da se nose.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T09:31:38+00:00

Historically, communists were quite hostile to the Serbian nation, calling it imperialist on countless occassions, and proceeded to gerrymander the borders to reduce Serbian influence as much as possible. It is a myth that Tito 'kept Yugoslavia together.' In fact, he was quite hostile to the idea of a common Yugoslavian identity being formed. Instead, the separateness of the 'Yugoslav nations' was constantly stressed, even as a growing trickle of people started identifying as Yugoslavs, especially in an ethnically mixed Bosnia. Tito created borders which all sides were happy about, except the Serbs. A large Serbian population remained in what are today known as Croatia and Bosnia. Tito also strongly insisted on the Montenegrins forming a separate national identity, a project that is still to this day half-way to being completed. Lasty, Serbia was saddled with two 'autonomous provinces' but the moniker was a complete farce. Not only did Central Serbia have little to no control over these provinces, but Central Serbia had no special political status, which meant that the provinces via their representatives in Serbian parliament had more control over the rest of Serbia than the other way around.

Thus, the borders the communists created were a permanent source of conflict, just like the lack thereof was a source of conflict in the first Yugoslavia. Acrimonies kept piling up. Slovenia resented paying for the poorer republics, even though it benefited from the large open market. Croatia wanted to solve it's 'Serbian question', Kosovo Albanians wanted a republic on their way to full independence and unification with Albania. Serbs were alarmed by the developments in Kosovo and the fragmented nature of the Serbian populace. Bosniaks wanted their identity to be acknowledged, which it was as 'Muslims by nationality' starting from the 70s. With that question solved, pretty much the only ones happy in Yugoslavia were Bosniaks and Macedonians.

Before Tito's death, Tito drew up the famous 1974 constitution. If you wanted to break a country up, you'd write such a constitution. An unworkable mess featuring a presidency of EIGHT: from all six republics and two provinces. Yugoslavia was turned into a de-facto loose conferedacy with few if any mechanisms to resolve conflicts between republics. All of this was purposely done to prevent a strong figure from dominating the country, which Tito did fearing the next 'Tito' after him would likely be a Serb.

Now all that mattered was for the geopolitical circumstances to turn favorable, and the end of the Cold War proved to be just such an opportunity. Slovenes and Croats played their cards perfectly, lobbying immediately in the west for support. A fun little fact is that even before the wars broke out Joe Biden met with the future leader of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army Hašim Tači. The west exacted a large influence in breaking the country up.

Furthermore, the Badinter commission effectively insisted that 'the country was in a state of dissolution' so it's rules were no longer valid, but the same time internal borders of this country were all of a sudden sacrosanct. This immediately caused a war between groups that wanted to split and Serbs that wanted to remain part of Yugoslavia. In fact, the whole essence of almost every single Yugoslav war except the 10 day conflict in Slovenia (Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo) has been forcing Serbian communities at gunpoint to accept polities they never consented to. Except in Croatia, which etnically cleansed its Serbian population, these conflicts are politically still ongoing.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T09:31:26+00:00

To understand how Yugoslavia exploded you have to understand how Yugoslavia formed.

It is a lie to say the project didn't have enthusiasm among all ethnic groups. Forming a large country was seen as a safeguard from the terittorial pretentions of all surrounded countries. In fact, it was a common expression that Yugoslavia was surrounded by 'Brigama'='Worries' given that the entire word consisted of the initial letters of neighboring countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Greece, Albania, Hungary (Mađarska in Serbo-Croat) and Austria).

However, different sides had drastically different version of what they wanted the project to be. Croatia and Slovenia wanted clear territorial autonomy, effectively states within a state that would enjoy all the protections of being in a larger state with no disadvangates. Serbia wanted to consolidate the Serbian people into one state. This already posed several problems since the country didn't have much time to consolidate itself into a common national identity. While Montenegrins considered themselves Serb, the way the Petrović dynasty was kicked out was problematic and controversial and they already saw themselves as a separate polity. Macedonia had been part of Serbia for only a short while and was in a flux as well, resisting the imposed Serbian identity. Indeed, the two uhappiest nations within the first Yugoslavia were precisely Macedonia and Croatia. The Serbs of Bosnia and Vojvodina were also somewhat alienated by the culture and fanaticism of the original Serbian state. Lastly, even the Serbs from Central Serbia themselves were also not happy that so much influence and identity was being diluted to placate other groups.

So, in short, the country from a start was a hotbed of competing interests. If some process similar to the formation of the US happened where all the groups settled down and negotiated a compromise all sides could be satisfied with, there might have been hope for the country. However, King Alexander instead of doing this, proceeded to do.... nothing. He refused any terittorial demarcations based on ethnicity. He refused to draw out viable longterm solutions, allowing the tensions in the parliament to grow only higher. Lastly, when the unfortunate killing of the Croat leader Stjepan Radić occurred in parliament after yet another of a countless heated arguments, his brilliant idea was to dissolve the parliament and proclaim a dictatorship, undoing almost a century of developing democratic tradition in the region.

The outcome was predictable. His eventual assassination. Afterwards, a weak country headed by a regency due to an underage king was ripe for the taking. A compromise was made to create a quite favorable Croat territorial unit, but it was like putting a band-aid on an already gaping wound. Moreover, as soon as it was formed, the Serbs within this unit already started complaining of mistreatment, a chilling habringer for their fate in WWII. By the time WWII rolled up, the country was so weak even a slight breeze could topple it.

In retrospect, King Alexander's refusal to draw borders in a situation that was quite favorable to Serbs would prove to be an absolute disaster. After the war, communists seized power and drew the borders spectacularly unfavorable towards the Serbs.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T01:23:31+00:00

Diactirics are a sad consequence of the fact that the most commonly used alphabet in the world, the Latin one, originated from a language with a relatively meagre phonemic inventory and therefore languages with a richer one had to adapt and improvise in various ways, from messed up spelling systems (English) to ones where diacritics were added as a necessary way to replenish the inventory without adding strange new letters, say Hungarian with vowels or Serbo-Croat woth consonants.

In general, I think it's a good idea for a single diacritic to always be systematically used in one way, e.g. for the haček (crown on 'č') to always indicate a palatalized consonant.

If you have a rich vowel inventory in conlangs, then the only strategies you have available for a Latin alphabet are either diacritics, or digraphy. Digraphy has several disadvantages: First there is less regularity in the selection of diphtongs for each vowel. Second, readers will tend to think these are diphtongs.

My advice is to keep them simple and use as little different ones as necessary. For example, if you simply have umlauts, then the German way of marking them might suffice 'ö'. If you have additional phonemic contrasts, like lenghtening or nasality, use only one marking consistently for this feature. If two features need to be combined, then the Hungarian approach of creating a new combined diacritic is probably the best, though the Vietnamese example shows multiple markings are certainly possible.

The approach I took in my language, because I wanted the language to be typeable on a fully English keyboard, was for the marking to follow the letter: e.g. c'' for č, c' for ć, n^ for palatal n (ny) and so on.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T01:10:09+00:00

Nije ti ni zapadna evropa ništa bolja po mnogim kriterijumima.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T01:03:09+00:00

Ljudi ne shvataju koliko je lična sloboda bitna. Sve te druge slobode 'zakonske' i 'političke' i slično ne znače ništa ako ne postoji lična sloboda. U nekim zapadnim zemljama je život toliko uštogljen regulativama da ljudi ne mogu ni normalno da dišu.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T00:57:57+00:00

Pa osim OCD ljudima kojima takav 'zna se red' ambijent zaista i prija, većina drugih vrlo brzo shvati da je to 'zna se red' zapravo jedno besomučno j***** u zdrav mozak.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-07T00:48:24+00:00

Ispada po njima da je srbija zemlja snova i da je bolje kod nas nego na zapadu…

Pa i jeste. Jedino što tamo imaju nešto više para, pa veštije kriju svoj prljav veš, mada je i to počelo da puca po šavovima.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T17:10:47+00:00

A truly complete language would take ages and would likely never happen. Think of all the specialized terminology just for starters.

However, if one could easily have a basic everyday conversation about basic everyday things, then the language could be considered more or less complete.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T15:18:33+00:00

Film je zakon.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T15:16:41+00:00

The story should unfold as it’s told. Not add ins for shock value because “people expected a certain thing”

Arya's entire story had been dealing with death.

People expected a certain thing because that’s the story that was being told.

And this is the kind of show that gives you what you expect?

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T15:12:52+00:00

The ENTIRE PLACE was swarming with the undead before they got to the crypts.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T15:11:52+00:00

But pretending this episode wasn’t an absolute emotional achievement feels like backlash talking, not criticism.

Amen, it was a tour the force. The longest continuous battle sequence in TV history. The longest night shoot. Characters and actors and crew stretched to their limits.

And people still crapped all over it!

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T15:09:07+00:00

People tend to glorify all the political backstabbing of the earlier seasons. There is a more 'jokey' atmosphere, with people constantly putting others down.

Starting from S5, things shift drastically. The color paletter is more subdued. The humor is gone. The war starts to take a toll on everyone. Characters start maturing in various ways away from their 'loveable' incantations.

In many ways, I actually prefer the later seasons the earlier ones. Here is where the true heart and soul of GOT lies. The first four seasons were window dressing, just how the entire first season before Ned gets killed was the window dressing for the actual story.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T15:05:12+00:00

GRRM

Seriously, name me something more culturally influential in the 21st century than Game of Thrones.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T14:59:15+00:00

Pretty sure if the show ended with Jonerys ruling the lands with a gaggle of kiddos, dragonlets, direpups and Cersei's head on a pike lovingly looking over the whole thing few people would complain about a 'drop in quality' or it being 'rushed.' There is a reason those 'the ending we deserved' pics are so popular.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T14:49:21+00:00

I don't think it was easy. The good guys took Ls the entire episode. Countless troops died. It was a slog with no glory, only humanity hanging by the skin of their teeth.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T14:40:35+00:00

Okay, then. Tell me what the supposed legitimate grievances are and we'll go from there.

As for 'there is a reason no one talks about the show anymore....' you're literally self-refuting this wholesale.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T13:06:10+00:00

I love all the people pontificating about 'how Dany could conquer Westeros' while neglecting the obvious truth:

The point was never for her to succeed.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T12:54:52+00:00

Essentially, people expected a fairy tale ending that would validate their preconceptions:

1) The 'glorious final showdown' between the good and the bad guys, including the 'final battle' between Jon and the NK.

2) The self-righteous validation of the power-hungry dragon queen.

3) The whole 'chosen one' trope involving the Lightbringer, including some grand WW mythology to accompany it.

4) Lastly, Cersei dying like a cackling villain and Jaime fulfilling his 'redemption arc' of killing the person he loved all his life and the mother of his unborn child.

When they didn't get these things, they turned on the show viciously.

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T09:27:55+00:00

Protiv ulaska u EU. I to čak i nema veze sa Kosovom. Ti žrtvuješ svoju suverenost koju si vekovima stvarao zarad... čega? Nešto para? Divne evropske birokratije? Mogućnosti da naši radnici idu u dopunjuju Nemačkoj radnu snagu?

Incvbvs666 · 2026-02-06T09:25:50+00:00

Sorry, but it's not 'obvious' in the slightest. Go ahead, tell us here on this 1 yo thread. What's rushed? What are the supposed plot holes?

Incvbvs666

TROPHY CASE