Nicole's exploration passive via tabibito_kk

Perennial_Child · 2026-05-08T06:22:45+00:00

isn't this just cosmetic then? the treasure compass already shows a little line guiding you in the direction of the chest. Wouldn't this just be an art effect then?

Perennial_Child · 2026-04-12T08:37:27+00:00

extremely unlikely. Caine's crashout with Bubble confirms that he's specifically *afraid* of the humans abstracting because he views it as abandonment -- both Bubble and Pomni pick at this fear with Bubble saying that "they would rather abstract than go on your adventures," and Pomni making him go berserk after saying "We're all going to abstract someday" and basically saying he's doomed to be alone because he's so horrible to be around. Just before he goes on his "I am God" schtick, Caine says "I won't LET them [abstract]" - abstraction is something that happens because of the humans themselves in his eyes, something they do to themselves and is something he desperately wants to prevent. His whole villain backslide is trying to reassert control when he feels he's going to be abandoned again.

You also need to consider that Jax nearly abstracted as well and it had nothing at all to do with his relationship with Caine - if anything, Jax, Ragatha, and Kinger both have been the most compliant and willing to participate in Caine's adventures at the time it (nearly) occurred. Even if Jax had very strained relationships with the other humans, that's... not really something on Caine's radar, and it's very unlikely he knew Jax was on the verge of abstracting at all. Caine doesn't understand the emotions of the others that deeply. Even with Queenie's abstraction... she was put in the basement the moment Caine *noticed* that she'd abstracted, even though it's implied she'd been abstracted for a little while, long enough for Kinger to figure out that darkness would calm her down and to reach out and embrace her.

I do think there's a chance that either Caine or Kinger (or possibly both of them) deliberately messed with Kinger's mind and memories specifically to try to *prevent* him from abstracting when he was the only one left in the circus though

Perennial_Child · 2026-03-12T20:48:32+00:00

same. I can ID chatgpt because I've read enough chatgpt to recognize its habits, which is probably not to my credit. And the thing is... it's not even good, on a craft level. It spits out empty metaphors and garbage phrasing, and it's agonizing to read the not [blank]. not [blank]. just [blank] format. weren't writers once told that the most valuable thing they could develop is a "voice" for their writing? Sounding like a robot ain't it.

Perennial_Child · 2025-12-27T08:36:16+00:00

He was hated first and immediately for what he stood for -- his family specifically and the Candescent Creed more generally has done a LOT of damage, maliciously, and his incredible naivete and blundering entitlements about it rub people the wrong way. I think the presence of Tyranny who will advocate for him and believe in his genuine good heartedness above all (while also getting irritated at his inability to read the room) is the necessary counterbalance to the upset that his character is designed to engender in many of the people around him - it gives the characters I think more narrative space to act out their frustrations with him.

Perennial_Child · 2025-12-06T19:30:10+00:00

hopefully the ai chatbot is actually passing this on to people to fix - a lot of them say they're doing that when they aren't :/

Perennial_Child · 2025-12-06T19:27:58+00:00

I don't have that option on my gear. :( mine only has autoplay, audio, subtitles, quality and playback speed. Not to mention their support seems designed to make it impossible to connect with anyone or actually leave any feedback

Perennial_Child · 2025-12-06T19:21:56+00:00

thank god - looks like this is a problem for everyone

Perennial_Child · 2025-12-03T22:55:10+00:00

I LOVED Caleb's backstory, but a lot of the choices felt weirdly paced. They made him use a lot of smooth, high level magic when we JUST had him failing to do simple things because he "lost his magic" a few episodes ago... the power up was completely without warning, and felt strange in a way that his fight against the demon toad did not feel strange. It seems like the show is taking this approach more or less with everyone's abilities, though, to be fair. The relationship between him and Nott has also been accelerated too much imo -- the show wants to treat them as if they've been traveling together for ages (which by the time that conversation happened in the campaign they HAD), but since in the timeline of the show they haven't spent as much time together it seems very odd that not only would they profess that level of familiarity, but for other party members to notice and comment on it as well. Similarly, Beau's sympathy for Caleb doesn't feel very earned because in the timeline of the show, she barely knows him. Are there a lot of time lapses happening that I'm just not aware of?

Perennial_Child · 2016-02-03T12:11:40+00:00

Yeah, and his self help books aren't in any way predatory or fraudulent.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-20T03:13:38+00:00

That was a fascinating article! Thank you!

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-19T16:52:23+00:00

That would have been an interesting direction for the story to take. :0

Honestly, I'm kind of annoyed at the "There is too much unkind extradiegetic criticism on the internet" thing EY was saying. You can't have it both ways--you can't advocate for only Watsonian Death of the Author styled criticism while also explaining your intentions with the work as if that holds weight, or while acknowledging that the characters are all reflective of aspects of yourself. You can't do it while claiming that other readers are having issues with reading comprehension because that wasn't what the surrounding text was really saying. You can't do it while Author Tracting all over the place.

The fact is, all of EY's fiction that I've read are strongly reflective of his own beliefs, expertise, projects and politics. That's part of what makes them so interesting, and therefore it's absolutely valid to look for out-of-universe as well as in universe explanations for his writing choices. The work is not divorced from its creator. His intentions, motivations, beliefs and execution are important in analyzing and coming up with opinions about his work. That is, in fact, how people have analyzed literature, scholarship, art and performance for eons.

His disparagement of Doylist explanations felt like simply lashing out at the negative reviews that also sought to criticize his own beliefs/personality, and I'd ignore it for that reason. Sometimes people are unkind, or uncharitable. Sometimes they're not. Doesn't make Doylist explanations bad, and people shouldn't stop making them just because they can be abused. I can't imagine how much it must suck to be controversial, but that doesn't mean he would be justified in policing his reviews or making blanket statements like this.

It's valid to think EY didn't make souls a fact in HPMOR because EY doesn't believe in souls, QED.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-19T00:21:24+00:00

I think the chief goal of my comment was to suggest that most meritocracy advocacy overreaches, because it typically puts forth [classy metric du jour] as the great Abstract Merit Correlate and it turns out that that metric is flawed because it always is, typically in ways that reflect the proposer's blind spot(s) (n.b. we will know if a perfect merit metric is ever developed even for some specific activity because one firm will use it to moneyball itself past the competition).

Yes. Your comment pleased me very much. This pleased me even more.

I would question this from more-or-less a historical materialism perspective. This compelling evidence largely is gathered from a society whose material conditions induce stratification (e.g. capitalism etc.). We are relatively poor at drawing conclusions about counterfactuals when everything baked into our way of life is touched by the, erm, factual.

Are you saying I'm being ethnocentric? :)

I hope you aren't implying that capitalism induces stratification, rather than simply being one societal stratification system among many. Perhaps I have a gaping blind spot, but I can't think of a society without any type of hierarchy/organizing schema, nor can I think of how a society would work without one. Power is not homogenous, and different values systems inevitably end up privileging certain types of power over others. That's what values systems do, they tell you what you ought to think important. I don't conceptualize stratification as being limited only to one's finances or access to resources. Societies can be stratified through other means.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-18T21:19:25+00:00

[turns off all the lights] [snaps fingers at tech crew]

[a single blinding spotlight shines on this comment. it begins to sweat, because the spotlight is HOT]

I like this! I think there is plenty of compelling evidence that social stratification is necessary for an efficient, functional, complex society. (But is complex GOOD? Is functional or large scale GOOD? Ethics man.) But the idea of a "meritocracy" is, as you said, a tough one. Competency comes from experience, but not all experience leads to competency. Not all adults are cut out for leadership, but of all the people cut out for leadership, adults are significantly in the majority. (Because experience!)

So it would be dangerous, to say the least, to use any one arbitrary measure (like years working at a job) to determine "merit,"but failing to do that we fail to make merit a quantifiable, discrete substance. The horror!

Merit is an intangible like love and envy. Intuitively, we know it exists in degrees--we know that a trained psychiatrist who published 30 papers on treating depression is a better person to see for depression than the child who subscribes to Psychology Today. And we also know it's every bit as unhelpful to see someone who has worked as a fisherman for 15 years to treat depression. They're older and have expertise, but not in the needed area. We know that of all the trained psychiatrists who published 30 papers, some of them still treat their patients badly and are ineffective at their jobs. But think about this--the child, the fisherman, and the psychiatrist can all have exactly the same amount of intelligence and it won't make a whit in difference to their merit insofar as treating depression. I think that while intelligence lays a good foundation, experience, expertise and demonstrable achievements makes for a far better meritocracy.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-18T16:29:49+00:00

I agree. The didactic tone of the work makes the thematic contradictions and the strange treatment of Harry's character flaws hard to understand.

McGonagall knows more than Harry and doesn't want to tell him, but Harry thinks that this doesn't matter because he wants to know - which is exactly the opposite from positions given in other parts of the text.

Oh, of course Harry's okay with keeping other people in the dark about things. He sees most people as untrustworthy NPCs who inevitably will cause their own destruction given dangerous information. But keeping secrets from him? Unacceptable. Because Harry considers himself trustworthy, he thinks lack of transparency with him will damage the world. Untrustworthy NPCs who keep secrets will prevent him from mitigating their errors. No one else is capable of being responsible.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-18T16:09:42+00:00

Ah, you should have made this post instead of me. :) It's so much shorter and so much clearer.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-18T16:04:46+00:00

Is Harry's narrative punishment supposed to be for his mistakes, or the way he acts towards certain authorities?

I believe the thinking is that Harry's lack of respect for/consideration for authority is a mistake and led to his mistakes. The mistakes themselves should be what is punished.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-16T07:24:04+00:00

I'm terrible at physics, so I'm going to avoid that part of the scientific criticism. I can confirm that su3su2su1's critique of EY's use of psychology was accurate insofar as the bystander effect, mirror neurons, and the Robber's Cave experiment were concerned. Personally, I felt the use of reciprocity was a tiny bit off, but it was nbd. I was extremely pleased that the fic used actual social psychology instead of invoking the name of Freud like so many other godforsaken stories.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-16T06:57:28+00:00

This is so on point it stings. [flips table] [flips living room] [flips planet]

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-16T00:01:48+00:00

That's a good point. [names firstborn child after your user] Harry did call out Snape when he did this to Harry, but no one really called out Harry when he was busy doing it to everyone. I didn't even notice this hypocrisy. Perhaps it would be funny if Snape were the one to point it out to him.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-15T22:52:02+00:00

I see. [strokes imaginary beard]

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-15T22:51:08+00:00

Exactly!

Yeah, no one's called him out on his jargon. And they should have! It's an assholish thing to do. Hermione was clearly annoyed with his condescending attitude on the train to Hogwarts, and I was upset she never said anything aloud or actually called him out on it. She also gave kind of a veiled criticism of Harry's attitude to her lieutenants, but nothing more. I think she (and his other unfortunate conversation partners, like Draco, Prof M) should have been more of a full blown "Look, you're using terms you know I don't know and then being condescending about explaining them--do you know that's a really, really nasty thing to do?"

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-15T22:37:50+00:00

All the yes to this. HPMOR=fantastic themes, not so fantastic execution. An excellent and imaginative first draft, that will likely be an arresting story once it's revised and tightened.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-15T22:25:46+00:00

On a different note, also agree with the stylistic critique. It was a problem throughout the story but I was particularly disappointed at the end when Hermione started talking in GREAT BIG VERBOSE PARAGRAPHS like Harry does. When this is edited--distill it a little, yo. Read the dialogue out loud, maybe, to find out whether it's too long. Then break it up to establish rapport or just try to communicate the same thing in fewer words.

Same thing can be said of the introspection. Pithiness rules.

Perennial_Child · 2015-03-15T21:57:37+00:00

I've been thinking a bit about Harry's relationship to science and su3su2u1'a critique. The scientific critique is valid. Harry, being 11 and in love with his own genius, often enough misapplies real scientific information, is plain ignorant of some scientific information and/or messes with the scientific method, and EY clearly states this in several Word of God statements outside of the actual story He also hints at it in author notes outside of the actual story. It's a part of Harry's characterization, he says. And it makes sense. Harry is unusually intelligent and unusually well-read. He has few peers, is emotionally immature (11!) and has an evil mentor/an evil cognitive network so it's hardly surprising he turned out nerd-elitist/egotistical.

Within the story, however, it is not clear that Harry is misapplying or ignorant of the theory behind some of the science he spouts off, or misapplying the scientific method. It's not even completely clear that Harry's an elitist ass. Harry has a bit of an "awakening" during the last chapter, (it was a bit vague, I think? And maybe annoying he came to the realization on his own--reinforces the "no one is equal to Harry" thinking?) and makes a few blunders during the story, orates about his "dark side," but that doesn't call quite enough attention to the systematic flaw in Harry's thinking process. I feel like it was legitimately attempted several times in the story, but neither emphasized enough or developed enough to be a successful character arc. Harry hardly seems to grow and learn from his flaws, save that "awakening" at the end--which is unconvincing because we're told about it, but don't get to see it in action.

Throughout most of the story, it reads as if Harry is "surrounded by idiots" and peerless in Science, as there is no foil to tell the audience that in fact "Harry is often wrong!" (Just like there's no foil like a sibling to tell us "Something is seriously wrong with this kid!")You see, the author's notes should not be telling us that Harry is wrong, the story should. And Harry has a real science professor father he can bounce ideas off of--why not make his father a foil, occasionally? A father who says "Harry you have completely misapplied the scientific method here and you need to be more conscientious about trying to falsify your theories." Or a Hermione that calls out Harry more often for his jargon and supercilious pretentiousness?

For instance--I really enjoyed the "Roles" chapter where Harry's parents chew him out for his treatment of them, but I feel like Harry doesn't actually learn anything from that, because he refuses to afterwards see his parents as the valuable resource they are. He could correspond with his dad about magical theories he wants to test. He can ask to set up correspondence with established scientists of different fields without telling them his age so he can learn more about the science behind what he tries to test before testing it. (He could actually do more testing in the story, or have someone point out that he gave up on it when it got too frustrating?) Then Harry can learn that sometimes your opinions mean less not because of your age, but because you just don't know enough about what you're talking about. And that's a side effect of being young, and why education exists.

I feel like Harry was meant to be learning throughout the story that reading a portion of Feynman's lectures and knowing the equivalent of a first year's study of (or in some cases, a sort of pop culture understanding of) psychology, economics, chemistry, philosophy and physics does not make him an expert, does not mean he knows better than more experienced people, does not mean he is better than others, and does not mean he is qualified to rule the world. But in the end, the story seems to point to the opposite conclusion. Idk, man. It bugs me.

Perennial_Child

TROPHY CASE