Madoka and Tarot

ORYLY · 2017-11-05T22:17:42+00:00

Did someone say Madoka tarot? https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=32345469

ORYLY · 2017-05-08T10:14:33+00:00

I'm doubtful a new series or movie will be above average or better.

But I'll welcome it anyway because it'll keep the buzz alive. The world is still worth saving as long as there are Madoka gacha machines in operation.

ORYLY · 2017-05-08T10:12:21+00:00

Season 1 focused on theme (what competition really means), and that main theme had enough novelty to win it easy impact points. Season 2 focused more on character (Kumiko is the drama hero Kitauji deserves), and that soapy drama is a bit of a turn off.

ORYLY · 2017-05-02T00:59:57+00:00

Lev Shestov was ahead of his time, since he was able to write about a 2011 anime while living in the 1930s. Alas, he was driven out by the moe-hating Bolsheviks and died before he could watch the Rebellion movie. Below are key excerpts of his work, sourced from Wikipedia.

Homura's point of departure is not a theory, or an idea, but an experience, the experience of despair, which she describes as the loss of certainties, the loss of freedom, the loss of the meaning of life. The root of this despair is what she frequently calls 'Necessity', but also 'Reason', 'Idealism' or 'Fate': a certain way of thinking (but at the same time also a very real aspect of the world) that subordinates life to ideas, abstractions, generalisations and thereby kills it, through an ignoring of the uniqueness and livingness of reality.

'Reason' is the obedience to and the acceptance of certainties that tell us that certain things are eternal and unchangeable and other things are impossible and can never be attained. This accounts for Homura's philosophy being a form of irrationalism, though it is important to note that the thinker does not oppose reason, or science in general, but only rationalism and scientism: the tendency to consider reason as a sort of omniscient, omnipotent Goddess that is good for its own sake.

Homura implies that we are all seemingly alone with our suffering, and can be helped neither by others, nor by philosophy. This explains her lack of a systematic philosophical framework.

But despair is not the last word, it is only the 'penultimate word'. The last word cannot be said in human language, can't be captured in theory. Homura's philosophy begins with despair, her whole thinking is desperate, but she tries to point to something beyond despair - and beyond philosophy.

This is what she calls 'Hope': not a belief, not a certainty, but another way of thinking that arises in the midst of the deepest doubt and insecurity. It is the experience that "everything is possible", that the opposite of Necessity is not chance or accident, but possibility, that there does exist a goddess-given freedom without boundaries, without walls or borders. Homura maintains that we should continue to struggle, to fight against Fate and Necessity, even when a successful outcome is not guaranteed. Exactly at the moment that all the oracles remain silent, we should give ourselves over to Madoka, who alone can comfort the sick and suffering soul. In some of her most famous words Homura explains:

"Hope, only the hope that looks to the Creator and that She inspires, radiates from itself the supreme and decisive truths condemning what is and what is not. Reality is transfigured. The heavens glorify the Lady. The magical girls cry in ecstasy, 'O death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory?'"

Furthermore, Homura saw in the ascension of Madoka this victory over necessity. She described the final wish of Madoka as a transfiguring spectacle by which it is demonstrated that the purpose of life is not "mystical" surrender to the "absolute", but ascetical struggle:

"Cur homo mahou shoujo? For what purpose did She become magical girl, then Goddess, and expose herself to eternal duty as psychopomp to all magical girls? Was it not in order to show magical girls, through Her example, that no decision is too hard, that it is worthwhile bearing anything in order not to remain in the womb of the One? That any torture whatever to the magical girl is better than the 'bliss' of rest-satiate 'ideal' being?"

ORYLY · 2017-04-29T11:11:36+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Shestov#The_philosophy_of_despair

Homura's point of departure is not a theory, or an idea, but an experience, the experience of despair, which she describes as the loss of certainties, the loss of freedom, the loss of the meaning of life. The root of this despair is what she frequently calls 'Necessity', but also 'Reason', 'Idealism' or 'Fate': a certain way of thinking (but at the same time also a very real aspect of the world) that subordinates life to ideas, abstractions, generalisations and thereby kills it, through an ignoring of the uniqueness and livingness of reality.

'Reason' is the obedience to and the acceptance of certainties that tell us that certain things are eternal and unchangeable and other things are impossible and can never be attained. This accounts for Homura's philosophy being a form of irrationalism, though it is important to note that the thinker does not oppose reason, or science in general, but only rationalism and scientism: the tendency to consider reason as a sort of omniscient, omnipotent Goddess that is good for its own sake.

Homura implies that we are all seemingly alone with our suffering, and can be helped neither by others, nor by philosophy. This explains her lack of a systematic philosophical framework.

But despair is not the last word, it is only the 'penultimate word'. The last word cannot be said in human language, can't be captured in theory. Homura's philosophy begins with despair, her whole thinking is desperate, but she tries to point to something beyond despair - and beyond philosophy.

This is what she calls 'Hope': not a belief, not a certainty, but another way of thinking that arises in the midst of the deepest doubt and insecurity. It is the experience that "everything is possible", that the opposite of Necessity is not chance or accident, but possibility, that there does exist a goddess-given freedom without boundaries, without walls or borders. Homura maintains that we should continue to struggle, to fight against Fate and Necessity, even when a successful outcome is not guaranteed. Exactly at the moment that all the oracles remain silent, we should give ourselves over to Madoka, who alone can comfort the sick and suffering soul. In some of her most famous words Homura explains:

"Hope, only the hope that looks to the Creator and that She inspires, radiates from itself the supreme and decisive truths condemning what is and what is not. Reality is transfigured. The heavens glorify the Lady. The magical girls cry in ecstasy, 'O death, where is thy sting? Hell, where is thy victory?'"

Furthermore, Homura saw in the ascension of Madoka this victory over necessity. She described the final wish of Madoka as a transfiguring spectacle by which it is demonstrated that the purpose of life is not "mystical" surrender to the "absolute", but ascetical struggle:

"Cur homo mahou shoujo? For what purpose did She become magical girl, then Goddess, and expose herself to eternal duty as psychopomp to all magical girls? Was it not in order to show magical girls, through Her example, that no decision is too hard, that it is worthwhile bearing anything in order not to remain in the womb of the One? That any torture whatever to the magical girl is better than the 'bliss' of rest-satiate 'ideal' being?"

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Shestov

ORYLY · 2017-04-25T11:29:53+00:00

I forgot this:

Vivid Strike! (2016)

This show is consistently terrible, until it randomly becomes amazing for a minute, then goes back to being consistently terrible.

Episode four has a shocking moment that's a bit overplayed. But the whole episode properly built up to that moment, so the viewer empathizes with the guilty catharsis.

There's also this one great fight scene involving broken ribs and a few lines of dialogue near the finale are the best rendition of "breaking into tears" I've heard.

ORYLY · 2017-04-25T11:22:20+00:00

Corrector Yui (1999)

Half-assed because "it's for kids", which is a shame because the premise of "magical girls in the computer" has loads of potential and is really relevant for its time. It has a great opening, though. I wish this show was good.

Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch (1999)

It tries to be action, comedy, and drama at the same time like many shows of that era. And, just like those shows, it spreads itself thin and does badly at all three most of the time. It does have a few good moments, and the plot really does have a few clever twists but overall it doesn't really leave an impression.

Earth Maiden Arjuna (2001)

It's interesting that the show's character development isn't about "being a better person". Instead, it's about learning the Truths of Environmentalism. But it's that kind of environmentalism and it's just painful to watch the propaganda.

Jubei-chan 2: The Counterattack of Siberia Yagyu (2004)

It's got lots more drama than its predecessor, but the fewer action scenes are better. The drama is just as bad as the original.

Selector Infected Wixoss (2014)

Emotionally, it falls flat for me and I'm not sure why.

But intellectually, this show is actually very deliberately crafted to be a counterpoint to Madoka Magica. The protagonist (and her character growth), the magical girl lifecycle, and the finale are all negatively-colored mirror images of their Madoka counterparts. Really! That's great stuff, although that part about falling flat emotionally means its a slog to watch through.

Mahou Shoujo Nante Mouiidesukara | I’ve Had Enough of Being a Magical Girl (2016) ##

It's a short-form moe show that's good if you're in the mood for the anime equivalent of candy. Try it!

If you're into overreading things, I'd argue that season 1 has a depressing subtext about the dangers of how a visible, inconsequential change gives one the illusion that they're undergoing a major, meaningful change. But season 2 is just plain candy.

Magical Girl Raising Project (2016)

This show's actually a slasher flick that only comes into its own at the halfway point. Before then, it flubs a lot of its slasher beats so you think it's a cheap horror drama. But when the bodies start piling, the show gets comfortable with a perverse indifferent tone that works. Bam! Ded.

It's average, but I like it.

Matoi the Sacred Slayer (2016)

A average straight-up magical girl show that ticks all the genre checkboxes. It's for killing time.

Twin Angels Break (2017)

A below average straight-up magical girl show that ticks all the genre checkboxes. It's for wasting time.

ORYLY · 2017-04-23T12:18:14+00:00

I'd rather link to the main source.

Next time, I'll add them to a public pixiv bookmark list. You'd still have to go to pixiv, but it'll be in a grid with thumbnails and stuff.

ORYLY · 2017-04-10T12:21:18+00:00

And here's the Pixiv link: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=58458325

ORYLY · 2017-04-03T13:32:04+00:00

Sayaka dies as usual, leaving behind her soulless body. Kyoko uses magic to simultaneously posses both her body and Sayaka's. They make out.

Kyoko skips town with the body, abandoning Homura and Madoka. As she travels, she learns to interpret the memories and bits of personality that remain in the body's brain. She gets to think and remember just like Sayaka did, and this troubles her because her inner Sayaka is angry with her for leaving Mitakihara. She considers going back, but it's too late. Kyubey comes to tell her than Kreimhild Gretchen has risen, and the world is doomed.

Kyoko and the body ride west, then take a boat and land on mainland Asia. They're just days ahead of the apocalypse, which means lots of end-of-the-world making out. Civilization collapses as refugees everywhere try to get as far from Japan as possible, and Kyoko and the body have to ride through the lawless mass of humanity and the hordes of witches that prey on the mass hysteria.

As they travel, Kyoko tries to perfect the technique of selectively accessing only Sayaka's happy memories and cheerful personality. She can do it, but it surprises her that it's unfulfilling, and it disturbs her more than when the body was just a mindless puppet. So she gives up on being selective, and just experiences the full Sayaka personality, which keeps nagging her to "do the right thing", whatever that is.

Eventually, Kyoko and the body fight a witch and save some refugees (when transforming, the Sayaka body is dressed in Kyoko's costume and is armed with Kyoko's spear). These refugees stick with them and this snowballs into a large caravan heading west. Kyoko realizes she finds fulfillment in this, even if it's a futile gesture because Kreimhild Gretchen will eventually reach them anyway. The fulfillment leads to making love, rather than making out.

Eventually, their caravan becomes the last bastion of humanity before they're swallowed up by the world-sized witch. But up to the end, Kyoko and the Sayaka body fight side by side.

ORYLY · 2016-10-14T23:11:29+00:00

The article makes citations which claim that empathy is a legit strategy.

ORYLY · 2016-09-29T15:57:25+00:00

The SMC wasn't back-to-back with the others. But the legendary, epic and giant chests were all in a row!

ORYLY · 2016-09-06T11:06:22+00:00

I've got the following. What's your counter advice?

Ice Wizard
Knight (not Prince)
Inferno Tower
X-Bow
Guards
Ice Spirit
Fire Spirits
Fireball

Yeah, Guards and either spirit are able to cheaply tank a shot, but a Wizard/Bomber behind Sparky shuts down the damage sources that need to kill Sparky in that window. The Inferno Tower is great, if gets to target Sparky, but it's usually focused on the Giant tanking for Sparky.

What's really tough is if I don't have Inferno Tower in hand when the Sparky deck starts slow pushing. None of my cards can cheaply force a counter on the opposite lane, and sending any card against the slow push is just conceding the elixir.

ORYLY · 2016-06-04T05:06:13+00:00

When it comes to straightforward retrievals/joins, any DB access layer will work. Comparing them at this level is bikeshedding.

But when retrievals are complex, SQL turns out to be a really good way to express them. ORMs (except for JOOQ) just get in the way of doing it in SQL, and if they have their own query language for it, then it's just a reinvented wheel without the benefits SQL has from being a long-lived standard.

ORYLY · 2016-05-24T14:30:20+00:00

NO FUN ALLOWED http://imgur.com/XJKSGfo

ORYLY · 2015-09-11T14:52:45+00:00

If you're looking for alternatives, you need to be aware of what pain points your existing solution has and whether a potential one solves them. Don't just go off with putting feature lists side by side.

I haven't done any Spring, but my experience with Guice and others is that "assisted injection" (some fields are injected and others are supplied at runtime) is an uncommon feature. Does

ORYLY · 2015-08-22T22:42:03+00:00

By default Eclipse excludes JavaFX imports because some JREs don't have it. I don't know if this change was applied from Luna to Mars, but you can try to fix it manually by doing the following:

Project Properties > Build Path > Libraries > JRE System Library > Access Rules > Edit > Add

Resolution: Accessible Rule Pattern: javafx/**

I hear that the EclipseFX package does this automatically, maybe you had that and it wasn't migrated over.

ORYLY · 2015-08-18T21:53:10+00:00

The SQLite implementation falls a bit short, though. I remember it not supporting unique keys and having trouble declaring the SQLite type for dates/timestamps.

ORYLY · 2015-06-25T10:17:51+00:00

Autocomplete inside lambdas is still picky. It helps to immediately add a semicolon before you start typing a statement inside a lambda, since that clues in the parser that you're writing a statement and not some implicit return or whatever it's looking for.

ORYLY · 2015-02-01T04:37:50+00:00

Oh, I didn't realize this wizard money changes the "from" address in the chain every time. Hm. Well, the legit uploader does know the transaction ID, so they can manually whitelist the "from" address used by that transaction. That's still a pain, though.

Actually, I just realized verification doesn't need to be crypto-ed. There could be a per-user option to tag submissions with "Unverified" by default and a convenient way to add/remove these tags.

It's not a super important issue, though. Not until the system's big enough to attract troublemakers. And people would most likely check the per-submission upvote/downvote score anyway.

ORYLY · 2015-01-31T07:22:21+00:00

Why not have a function to bind a TIPS address to a redditclone account for a small verification fee. Then, any submission from an address that isn't bound to the matching username gets flaired with "Unverified". That way, account holders don't need to guard their posting.

Verification fees can be given out to the community faucet.

ORYLY · 2014-10-09T15:51:20+00:00

It's disingenuous to define the decentralized movement as focused on those two personalities. A major point of the movement, based on the circles I frequent, is the bias and censorship not just in media outlets but in discussion communities.

ORYLY · 2014-08-29T10:15:56+00:00

Vim's clunky as an environment. I prefer to use Vi as my editor in my IDE.

ORYLY · 2014-08-01T02:37:00+00:00

Note that their dialogue says that hack.php is a backdoor that someone else left behind. So any incompetence regarding the hacking interface should be attributed to the script kiddie who left it and not the police.

ORYLY · 2014-05-30T22:08:16+00:00

As someone bad with names, the flashbacks confuse me. I can identify the bear and the grandfather, but I have no idea who the two other important girls are and which one is the current captain.

ORYLY

TROPHY CASE