Gormongous

Of course you can repost what I post. I was originally planning to do posts every ten years, played in between pages of my article revision, but not enough has happened to fill a post in the first ten that I just played, so I might go for twenty per post or even play the whole life before I decide how to break it down.

Let me know if that's any good. I'm actually going to be incredibly busy until after this weekend, at least, but I wanted to get the basic thing out there for people to chew on.

I am Bertrand of Provence. Properly, I am William Bertrand, count and marquis of Provence. Historians are not sure if my name was William or Bertrand, so they left me with me both. If it was the former, I am the fifth of my name to rule Lower Burgundy, and if it was the latter, I am the first or the second, depending on whether you count my father Fulk Bertrand as a Bertrand or a Fulk. Anyway. I am of the line of Boso, a nobleman of Lorraine who was appointed count of Lyon and Vienne after his sister married Charles the Bald, king of West Francia. After several years of loyal service, he was elevated to the rank of duke and given Provence, where I now live. He disapproved of Charles' invasions of Italy, not least because he was married to the only daughter of Emperor Louis II of Italy, and led a series of rebellions, which eventually put him in control of Charles' son Louis the Stammerer once Charles died. When Louis also died, after only two years of rule, Boso rejected the joint succession of Louis' two sons and declared himself independent. By this point, his lands included almost the entire de jure kingdom of Burgundy, in addition to much of the French duchy of Burgundy, but most of that was taken away a year later, when the two sons buried the hatchet with their cousin Charles the Fat, king of Italy and soon to be the last Carolingian emperor. They quickly conquered the duchy of Burgundy, which was never again to be part of the kingdom of Burgundy even in fantasy, and most of Vienne. The rest of the latter was lost to a rebellious relative, Richard of Autun, and Boso died soon after. He was hated for his presumption, as the first man to presume to be king in Christendom without a drop of Charlemagne's blood, and his Carolingian enemies had several deliberately inept forgeries of his charters produced to make him look stupid. The kingdom of Lower Burgundy — now more properly called the duchy, marquisate, and county of Provence — has survived, but it is a debased existence. I rule from Arles, and in theory my rule extends from the Côte d'Azur to the city of Vienne, but in fact I only control a single county directly — sometimes not even that, if the barons of Grimaud get uppity. My cousin Jaufret, son of my father's brother, rules the hills of Forcalquier in my name. He is much more experienced than me, so I have appointed him marshal, even though he seems to talk a lot about battles that no one else in the court recalls. The counties of Venaissin and Vienne are run by locals, only nominally under my rule. At least they are obligated each to send me a hundred troops whenever I call; the bishop of Vivrais doesn't even owe me that! I hate to say it, because I am the blood of kings, but I am a duke in name only. But I have dreams. The Bosonids will not slowly die out over the two centuries, to be inherited by some Spaniard. I will reclaim our rightful rule over the bishopric of Nice from the upstart money-grubbers in Genoa! I will regain our lost lands and reunite the duchy of Provence with the duchy of Dauphiné! I will... probably have to find at least one more territory to pick up somewhere because that's not enough to create the title for the kingdom of Burgundy. But I will! I will take that royal title from the Salian emperors of Germany to whom I now bow and scrape. It suits me to serve the emperor, who is the true ruler over all Christendom, but I will serve him as king! Now, if only I weren't content and slothful. Maybe I should see what they're up to in the kitchens...

All my best games have started within the Holy Roman Empire, at least starting in 1066! I've had amazing runs as the Dukes of Bavaria and of Saxony, but one of the dukes in the kingdoms of Burgundy or Italy would be just as good. My official vote would either be Count Werner von Hapsburg of Aargau (yes, that Hapsburg, and thus a little boring but still cool) or the Bosonids of Provence or Folcalquier (because they were descended from a line of losers in the post-Carolingian struggle and also have a funny name). I don't know how much powergaming I can truly leave behind after a thousand hours of play, but I'm going to try! The succession game will finally give me an excuse to play within my character's traits, which I've never had the guts to do when I had at least 400 years of gameplay ahead of me. I'd be happy to start, too. I'm probably one of the stronger players, as well as an actual historian, so maybe I'd be good for it? Maybe I'd ruin it, maybe I should defer to someone else...

There's a guy on my undergrad's alumni blogging server who's posted at length about his hopes that greater regulations, perhaps even banning, of antibiotics in agriculture will force social change towards vegetarianism, because it's simply not feasible to raise most animals in the conditions where they're currently raised without prophylactic antibiotics, so if those are banned, farmers will be forced to raise their animals in more humane conditions, leading to price increases in meat, milk, and eggs, which in turn will lead to people buying and eating less meat, which in turn will lead to even less animals being raised... He was very optimistic about how far that spirals down, whereas I'm not, but it's still an interesting thought and a very salient point for change.

There's actually a randomizer built into character selection, but it isn't necessarily weighted for interesting plays. Either we use that, with something of a veto system to make sure we don't end up as a pagan count in the Arctic Circle, or we each submit an interesting character and then vote on them, with each person not being allowed to vote for their own submission.

I'm in, too, although I might have to tear out my eyes if I have to play Ireland again. I'll do my best to roleplay instead of powergame!

A bit of a digression, but I'm fucking nuts about my Moto X. Its speed and battery life over the long term blows the previous two smartphones I had out of the water, both of which were Xperias, but maybe you'll be luckier than me.

This is an obvious bit, but have you bought the stealth suit? It reduces the AI awareness radius from "implausibly omniscient" to "extremely alert but otherwise normal," which makes its occasional inability to see five feet away more plausible.

Well, she might look alien, but that's contrary to the spoken intent of the crew, who's given a few interviews about how they want Arise to be about the Major's path from fallible human to hyper-competent professional. The design's meant to reflect that. I've only watched the first two, but if they fail at that goal overall, that's okay with me. A story about a woman who makes mistakes and needs help is not exactly why I'm drawn to Ghost in the Shell. If you watch the previews for episodes 25 and 26, they are detailed storyboards and shooting for Asuka's fight with the mass production Evas and Shinji's conversations during Instrumentality, so the shots that became of End of Evangelion were planned from the start. In that case, I think it's incredibly lucky for us to have internal and external versions of the same events that can be watched together, maybe not like Dark Side of Oz, but still as closely related companion pieces. And then we have the Rebuild movies, which are an alternative retelling of the original show, so that's just a thing with the Eva franchise and I like it.

I said I wasn't coming back to this thread, but I asked about pets in good faith and apologized for the obvious implications in the process of saying it. I'm not trying to catch anyone out on their beliefs here, but I am curious and figured that since the opening question of the thread had been so definitively answered in the affirmative, we could feel around a bit more. I regret it entirely now. Honestly, the issue I've always had talking with certain vegans, who are always in the infinitesimal minority as far as the entire community of vegans go, is that it's impossible to have a productive conversation about diet because theirs is wholly correct and mine just isn't, simply by virtue of me eating meat. No matter how much I've thought about my food consumption, there is nothing I can say, even about my own experiences, that actually reaches them or changes their mind about the smallest thing. If I'm really lucky, I get told that I should cut that last bit of meat out of my diet, even after explaining how sick I got in Greece eating near-vegan and showing them the scars on my arms from it, because that low-level self-harm is better than eating meat. For some reason, that level of open disrespect flies in discussions about food consumption where it doesn't in discussions about racism or sexism. That's where I get off the train and just focus on cutting unethical foods out of my diet in general, because neither of us is going to be improved by further discussion.

I was going to make my own comparison image, but there's so many online already! Basically, the Major is moe in the new Arise OVAs because her character design has been made smaller, softer, and more childlike. In terms of her personality, she is more unsure, more vulnerable, and more emotional, especially with regard to making mistakes and showing distress. It's not some cyberpunk K-On! or anything, but it's definitely creating a different Major who's less threatening and more relatable to the moe-loving crowd. I could swear one of the early statements by the director and character designer said as much, that people in 2013 prefer a girl to a woman and that's why Arise is a prequel, but I can't find it now... I keep wanting to direct people to the oft-ignored Anime and Manga threads, but I don't want to disrupt the conversation already in progress by doing so.

I love the fact that Rebuild was originally intended to begin in 2007 and end in 2008, with a movie being made and released every six months in that interval. It's like... okay? Considering that the release of Rebuild of Evangelion 3.33 has been delayed for well over a year now because Anno reportedly disliked the English dub (as well as the sub, it turns out) and pressed to have it redone, we have some idea of how this came to pass. It's also cool to hear fresh thoughts on Solid State Society. When I saw it, it was immediately after watching the show, so I was really aware of its "big episode" feel that's usually used to damn movies with faint praise. Still, in time, I came to appreciate it for being all about Togusa, who's designed from the ground up to be a foil for the more outre characters in the franchise, and found that a lot of the moments in the movie, like the one you describe, have stuck with me. I'm not as keen on Arise as Twig, because I can't help seeing how they've taken the TV series and done a one-to-one replacement of a lot of the philosophy with cheesecake and moe, but I do like having something more from that franchise. It's got such a carefully considered tone and feel. Dead of lung cancer at 44, man. That's sobering as hell.

Thanks, Baby. I appreciate the response, although I understand not wanting to get into more complicated reasoning because I don't have the mental energy right now to process it anyway. Tycho, it makes me sad, because I don't think we've ever really disagreed on the forum, but it's been mostly unpleasant to interact you in this thread. Usually, when talking about racism or sexism, the conversation reaches a point where it becomes obvious that social, economic, and personal factors particular to each person but ubiquitous in society make it impossible to act entirely in the interests of social justice. At that point, I tend to say, "It's okay, we're all sexist and racist, because our society is sexist and racist, but we're each doing our best." I think I'm going to have to accept the acknowledgement that we agree in the abstract about animal suffering as the closest we're going to get to that point in this conversation, because I live near the poverty line and flatly lack the time, money, and energy to make the forty-five minute walk down to Tower Grove every week to buy fresh produce at the only farmer's market in St. Louis. I eat some processed foods and meat in a mostly vegetarian diet because it's the most workable way for me to stay healthy and happy, based on the six months I was forced to go fully vegetarian while living abroad, and I have always tried to eat ethically within my own knowledge of self. I wish I had the combination of circumstances that makes it work for you, because that spreadsheet is nuts, but I don't, and I've had enough issues in the past with feeding myself that I don't need to feel any worse about my less-than-perfect choices for eating right now. I know that's privilege to say so, but knowing is half the battle. Seriously, thanks for the thread, everyone, and I'll catch you someplace else.

I also want to ask about keeping pets, especially indoor-only pets, because if meat is murder, then pets are slavery, aren't they? I've just realized that there's no way to frame this question so that it doesn't sound like a troll. Please feel free to ignore it.

Leaving aside what I find to be the absurdity of stating unequivocally that acts of harm against two obviously different classes of living being are morally identical based on a single commonality between them, a mosquito has roughly 1/860,000th the neurons of a human brain. Not only is there more difference in behavior and experience, there is more difference in biology and genetics between a human being and mosquito than between all the human beings living on this planet right now combined. If you don't find that to be an appreciable difference, then I don't know what else to say. I just find your decision to draw the line at sentience while condemning outright those that draw the line at sapience utterly baffling. In the end, both are arbitrary compromises, aren't they? I believe that causing suffering is an inevitable consequence of living, so our moral obligation is not to avoid it absolutely in a handful of areas, but rather to minimize it in as many ways as possible without causing suffering to ourselves in turn. Whether or not they feel pain when they are killed, the overwhelming majority of the plants that you eat are grown in conditions that cause environmental, cultural, and economic suffering. Producing the that energy you use to power your home, work, and transportation between the two causes environmental, economic, and political suffering. The same goes for water and waste. Unless you're very lucky, even the labor that you provide causes suffering at some point up or down the supply chain. In light of all of that, the only absolutely moral decision for me is to kill myself and feed my body to hungry cats, but since I'm mostly content with living for the time being, even though it means moral compromise, I just do my best not to eat too much meat or use too much electricity or make too much trash. Fixating so much on a single axis of suffering as an absolute, seemingly because it is easily identifiable and relatable to you personally, seems myopic in light of all that, especially if your best argument in its favor is guilting people with the suffering that they are currently doing their best to minimize.

That's mostly the movies, though, and everyone knows Shirow is gross. The two seasons of TV really didn't trade in the overt sexualization of the Major, and then Kenji Kamiyama made a series that involved literally thousands of naked dudes, including the main character, onscreen for minutes at a time. Eden of the East wasn't very good, and that's a shame, because I want Kenji Kamiyama to be someone I can count on...

I'll reply to the rest later, but you're not getting shit for saying animals are morally equal. You're getting shit because you keep connecting any disagreement with your position to racism, for some reason. There are appreciable differences between a mosquito and a black man, even just in terms of the experience of pain, but mentioning any of those is represented by you as misunderstanding. And, you know, thanks for the rest, I guess? I don't think it's particularly crazy to say that that responses to harm and signals of danger from any living creature constitute suffering, but I can see how you wouldn't want to agree, considering your views on the morality of suffering.

I don't know that I agree with you. A cursory search of Google shows a multitude of articles like this one: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pain.htm There is clearly evidence, although not definitive, that plants can suffer. Are you just operating on a continuum of suffering, below which it doesn't qualify as immoral, or does only anthropomorphic communication of suffering count?

I was just being an angry dude, I just remembered that the Kenshin movie is supposed to be good. English adaptations, maybe?

It drives me crazy, because it's manifestly untrue, but I know several websites that must be convinced this is their audience and they might as well cater to them. Like I said a long time ago in this very thread, Erik Kain seems to have made that bed for himself, and he's got some talent outside of his opinions of #GamerGate, so I can imagine a lot of other journalists, especially those with established followings among the manchild crowd, feeling (or fearing) the same thing deep down.

Scarlett, so hot right now. Scarlett. The whitewashing bums me out, not just because we live in a racist society and that's awful, but also because they'll have either have to i) come up with some kind of in-universe justification for her whiteness that will steal screentime from other parts of the script and probably be dumb in a way that does violence to the really interesting fiction of Ghost in the Shell, like saying that her body was made in America even though America's a fragmented mess after a civil war, or ii) set the movie in America, removing the uniqueness of the fiction entirely as well as the previous two issues. It's just a bad idea and I'm sad. It wouldn't happen anyway, but I'd like to believe that casting an Asian woman, possibly older, would force the director and screenwriter to consider the setting more carefully, especially what makes it unique, in a way that having cyberpunk Black Widow as the protagonist wouldn't. Who am I kidding, it's going to be shit no matter what, name a good live-action adaptation of any anime ever.

Yeah, that's been my takeaway. I understand the reasons that people take more stringent moral stances, but they're not something I personally find sustainable, so I just try to behave as ethically as I can, without seeing an absolute as the ideal state.

I dated a vegan for half a decade and lived with two vegans, so I don't think I'm too out of hand saying your living situation, in terms of location, transportation, and access, must be much more fortunate than most vegans I've known. It's also good for the purposes of a productive and bilateral discussion if you don't assume that your body and metabolism are representative of the entirety of all people in this thread, vegan or not. In general, I'm fine debating the morality of the decision not to eat meat. I think the utility of the decision not to eat meat is a different question and one that has been handled horribly by most people here, myself included. "Works for me" and "Doesn't work for me" seem to be a good stopping point, if we can't progress beyond anecdote.

Actually, and I won't get into it too much because Twig will probably jump all over me, but it bugs the hell out of me that Scarlett Johansson has that part. She's a great actress, but the compelling thing about the Major is that she's a hyper-competent lady in her forties who's fought in wars and seen shit. There's a chance to reflect that with an older actress who'll bring some real gravitas to the role, but instead we're just abiding by the rule that every female sci-fi protagonist has to be Scarlett Johansson now.