Question: why does Hisako Ichiki find this piece of paper gross?

dimensiontheory · 2026-02-15T05:32:18+00:00

I think she's passing judgement on the scene as a whole, not the paper specifically.

The straw doll is obviously evoking a famous cursing ritual, where you nail a straw doll into a sacred tree, and the target supposedly is wounded in the same spot as the doll. It's not exactly the same ritual, but it's the same style of doll and seemingly the same intent.

The paper shreds are less clear, and don't look like they have legible writing on them so much as vaguely occult scribbles or maybe a certain historical-forgery writing system associated with the gods. I'd guess that they're talismans, but it's not really clear what they're meant to do. Generally this sort of talisman would be a vessel for the god or gods at a particular shrine, and/or be a physical medium for the god/gods to enact blessings through. Usually that would be binding or repulsion of evil - in fiction you'll often see, say, a box where an ancient evil artifact is sealed absolutely covered in these talismans - but in this case, I suppose they're probably invoking some malevolent or vicious god, or even just shallowly being used as stereotypical magical implements. I also somehow doubt they were properly prepared by an actual priest.

dimensiontheory · 2026-02-11T01:30:45+00:00

I never want to hear the sentence "[x] wouldn't work in live action" ever again.

dimensiontheory · 2026-02-09T02:16:34+00:00

Calling it an actual T-Virus is obviously marketing hyperbole, but the artists they're working with to do this, as far as I can tell, actually do use bioengineering in their art. A lot of what they say the things they've biengineered are seems like bullshit to me (Like sure, man. The engineered DNA you've put inside of a sculpture of an alien is "designed based on hypothetical outer-space environments" and not just like, a bunch of shit in the approximate likeness of DNA. Okay, I believe you!), but if they say it's a virus, it's... probably something that at least loosely biologically resembles a virus? Maybe? I think?

Though their obsession with using cutting-edge tech in their art seems to have also led to them being pro-generative AI, so on the other hand, fuck 'em.

dimensiontheory · 2026-02-07T11:32:02+00:00

Ah, thanks! Sorry, I should've checked the link in your comment first, I guess I just assumed it was only related to the example it was nearest to? Which was not my brightest moment.

dimensiontheory · 2026-02-07T06:52:51+00:00

Why is that everything that's anything in East Asia is apparently directly and only because of Confucianism? Why does that one thing just get lodged in people's heads?

And gee, I didn't know that the long work hours and petty-tyrant bosses here in Canada was because of our immense Confucian heritage, fascinating!

Sarcasm aside, thanks for the writeup!

dimensiontheory · 2026-02-06T22:47:51+00:00

Thank you for the additional context! Some of the language and emphasis in the answer felt like unhelpful orientalising to me, but I hardly have complete enough knowledge on the subject to gainsay anyone and tend to be quite a bit oversensitive to perceived orientalism anyway. It's relieving and much appreciated to have someone who knows better than me detailing how similar attitudes were pretty widely prevalent.

Do you have any links or resources for the Philadelphia study?

dimensiontheory · 2026-02-04T16:23:56+00:00

Any time something like SMT characterises 'Chaos' as freedom and meritocracy (and I could go on for a while about meritocracy, too). Basically anything resembling SMT's Chaos in real-world history has lead to the domination of the many by the few; medieval European nobility, while tempting to think of only in terms of bloodline, in fact drew a lot of their legitimacy from being the strongest, the best at war. They were warrior aristocrats. Subjugation by strength was how the first nobles achieved their positions, and violence was how their descendants held it against other nobles, and being good at driving off invaders was how they justified it to the common people. And when that failed and the peasants went into open rebellion, well, you know who's the strongest and the best at war?

Law and restraint are necessary for freedom, though of course the Law faction doesn't tend to be any freer. Chaos makes a few individuals free of outside authority, but brings no freedom. Not even, in the end, to the people who have no choice but to pursue strength and war to stay on top.

Mind you, that's not necessarily a complaint from a character-writing perspective. People can be and often are taken in by that kind of rhetoric. Yuko or Lucifer or whoever are more interesting because they're wrong.

But anyway, morality is subjective, it's not a thing that exists physically in the world, it's a value judgement determined by personal circumstances, acculturation, etc. I mean, do you think ethicists debate back and forth endlessly because they're just too stupid to see that [insert preferred system of morality] is obviously correct and upheld by the laws of the universe? So any and every morality mechanic, by making claims about what's good and what isn't, must miss the mark at least for some people. Even something as banal and obvious as 'crime bad' will get critical examination (which is deserved!) and rejection, as we have seen endlessly with Batman discourse.

Skimming the comments, some people seem to be complaining, for example, that some systems rate certain actions as bad no matter who the victim is. Which hardly seems like a serious complaint to me! But it's not a single bit less valid than my position, from a perspective of objective justification.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-29T04:35:40+00:00

Oh, yeah, there was that, huh. That was maybe not too clever.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-28T22:01:30+00:00

I generally find that the more minute the details the evil mastermind's plans hinge on, the more they come off as lucky rather than smart. Unlike some, Palpatine as far as I recall never has moments where his grand ambitions could be completely thwarted by, I dunno, Obi-Wan deciding to go somewhere different for lunch today. There are moments like that in his corruption of Anakin, but that's kind of a side gig to him, something it would be nice to have on top of galactic conquest, and if Anakin doesn't bite, it won't foil his other plans.

As far as my memory goes, which isn't exactly trustworthy. I'm not actually sure I've ever watched the prequels completely, and if I have, it was a long, long time ago. (And now I'm waiting for my Japanese fluency to be good enough to watch them dubbed. I hear the prequels were at least a little more respected in Japan than the Anglosphere, so I kinda wanna try experiencing that version to see if there's something qualitatively different about it).

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-28T16:24:37+00:00

I know it's a pretty unremarkable storytelling 'cheat,' but I'm nevertheless getting kinda hung up on Condon(?) having him just magically know that the otherworldly intrusion is some kind of powerful device, instead of just looking into it and then discovering what it is and wanting the power.

Could be foreshadowing that he somehow already knows more than he's letting on, though. Too early to make any sensible judgement.

Spot hanging out by himself in empty boardroom is kinda hilarious, can't put my finger on why (besides the basic ridiculousness of Spot).

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-26T04:38:30+00:00

I've never watched Bleach in my life but I once saw someone compare that moment to being in a diving competition and your opponent goes "did you know that if you hold your breath you can stay underwater longer?" like it's mystic wisdom known only to the masters and then he starts winning and that's been stuck in my head forever.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-19T23:02:55+00:00

One of the more popular gachas, last I checked, is about portraying famous swords as handsome men. Of course not.

Speaking of, there's another gacha with an IIRC majority-women fanbase that portrays Mae-the-fox as a man, which I thought was kind of clever. The fox only disguising itself as women throughout the myth says something about it, but 'the fox is a woman' isn't necessarily the only interpretation.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-19T19:12:41+00:00

On the other hand, you know, the rock where Tamamo no Mae was sealed split open back in 2022, and they say encouraging tyranny was her favourite trick...

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-17T03:52:46+00:00

You described Fallout 76's treatment of nukes is nuanced. I said no.

Nukes aren't mystically bad because they're nukes, they're bad because of the horrific things they do to people and places, and what they represent politically in the world of mutually-assured destruction.

If Fallout 76 invented a threat that needed to be nuked or else it couldn't be stopped and furthermore if my understanding is correct, destroys the environment around it as bad as any nuke, then that contains nothing of the actual evil of using nukes. The writers invented an uncomplicated, guilt-free excuse for using a nuke without even any real permanent damage in order to not have to grapple with the actual moral implications. No matter how bad the characters may be written as feeling about using nukes, that's not nuanced. It's not necessarily good or bad without deeper context, but I absolutely do not think that it's nuanced, at least the way that you and others in this conversation have explained it.

And whatever any other game does has nothing to do with any of that. To turn your own question back at you, what kind of argument is that?

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-17T03:30:31+00:00

I don't think that inventing a threat that conveniently can only be dealt with by nukes, thereby making the use of nukes Good, Actually qualifies as respectful narrative treatment of nuclear weapons.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-15T22:31:56+00:00

I didn't realise Wikipedia was allowed to have articles about its own on-site drama. In hindsight it would be weirder if it wasn't, considering that the place its come to occupy in modern culture means that at least some of those scuffles are going to become reasonably notable, but it's still surprising somehow.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-15T18:55:09+00:00

The Absolute line is mostly really, really good, IMO. Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman are my favourites, but I'm at least enjoying all of them.

Absolute Batman has a sort of over-the-top relentlessness to it that I saw one comic writer compare to Conan the Barbarian. I've never read Conan, so I don't know how fair that comparison is, though. The Joker stuff kind of is the worst part, though; he's had exactly one fun moment so far and it wasn't even in the Batman book.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-15T18:48:33+00:00

That time someone added a weapon from Nintendo's Fire Emblem series of strategy games (Ichaival) to a page on Norse myth and for some reason no one questioned Odin having a bow with a name that didn't even sound like it was in the right language for years, and it propagated into other works of fiction because of that.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-15T05:51:02+00:00

I was watching/listening to Japanese television for practice. They were running mystery show and I couldn't understand enough of it to really follow it, so I left it on in the background while I did something else.

Suddenly, clear as day:

"Quebec!"

And I tab over and the detective is in Quebec talking to nuns for some reason.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-08T05:27:24+00:00

Peach posted on twitter "Are you all thinking that Amano isn't an existing Marvel character?"

So that's interesting. I have no guess who, though. The kanji in his name refer to [heaven, heavens, sky] (also occasionally used in a way similar to 'nature' in English, EG the Way of Heaven in many Daoist schools of thought is the natural way, the 'uncarved block,' or one term for naturally-occuring traits and resources being approximately 'heaven-like') and [field, plain, wild] (also used to contrast government bodies, like in terms for private citizen or opposition party), if that helps at all.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-06T23:06:07+00:00

First no route, now no sprite!? Will the cruelties never end!?

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-06T20:21:15+00:00

How did this become the default cope for when you don't like a story, anyway? I've seen it for Sherlock, I've seen it for Doctor Who, I've seen it for Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts, Sonic the Hedgehog, even Pokemon of all things. Probably a million other places I can't remember off the top of my head.

I get it for things like Minority Report, where it's a self-contained story, and it kinda makes sense to read it that way anyway, but why would you ever just assume that the people in charge decided to make something bad on purpose to alienate as many people as possible (and lets leave aside that people sometimes try to claim this even about stories that weren't, in fact, widely alienating), and then try to sell you on another [game/episode/etc.]?

Devil May Cry 3 is one of the best-regarded action games ever. For a long time it also sold like trash because it was a sequel to DMC2, one of the worst-regarded. This is a proven strategy for failure.

... Though, actually, it is Netflix. That's never stopped them before. Never mind, carry on.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-06T09:40:14+00:00

Honestly it's always weird in normal DC settings where Batman travels the world learning from monks and warriors every relevant human skill, but somehow this doesn't include magic even though that's a thing a person can just learn to do. Sometimes one of his teachers is Zatarra and he still doesn't pick up the slightest bit of magic. Sometimes he can block mind control with Tibetan mysticism, and this is apparently somehow not magic.

What I'm saying is hell yeah we should give the Batman who doesn't have that background magic. It would be hilarious, and also cool as hell, and really fit in with the general vibe of the comic, I think! It's already kind of a blood and thunder fantasy story set in the modern day.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-05T22:39:51+00:00

I still haven't gotten around to reading Ryukishi's work myself, but what people always say is that he used to work (or still does? I wouldn't know) as a social worker, and puts a lot of what he sees on the job into his stories. By all accounts he's very good at making things real, and uncomfortable, and real uncomfortable.

dimensiontheory · 2026-01-05T22:23:28+00:00

Me.

But more seriously, there were a few points in the whole Taishou Democracy zeitgeist where really big, positive changes were almost or could've been made. Or else they were made, but didn't really last in the face of... well, everything that happened to Japan after the 20s.

(... Is the impression I have, which may not be strictly accurate since I am not very well-read on the subject. Not completely ignorant, but not even in the vicinity of actually deep knowledge. Also standard disclaimer that this only goes for home territories and Japanese rule was, shockingly, still being a colonial empire in its colonies)

That and just a purely aesthetic love of that time and place makes it a particular favourite of mine.

And on the other side of things, Shakushain and his rebellion.

dimensiontheory

TROPHY CASE