#sequence generator transformation example

Yes... you read that right. Hellenic polytheism has closed practices, many of which you probably haven't heard of or heard about in passing or maybe you even know somebody who claims these.

No worries, hellenic polytheism is generally open.

Closed practice: a practice you must be initiated, born into, or formally accepted. Knowledge and rites are restricted. Practicing without that access is considered inappropriate or invalid

✧ Mystery Cults ✧

Mystery cults weren’t closed because of ethnicity or identity. They were closed because of initiation and ritual safety.

A mystery cult (mystērion = “that which is shut or hidden”) was a religious system where knowledge was experiential, not textual, sacred actions were revealed gradually, participation required initiation, and certain rites were protected by oaths of silence.

Mystery cults changed your ritual status. After initiation you were considered: ritually altered, bound to the deity in a new way, and subject to different obligations and taboos.

Letting the uninitiated perform or witness mystery rites would break the ritual logic, collapse the symbolic transformation, and void the rite’s meaning.

The closure of mystery cults is because of integrity.

Initiates swore real oaths to gods, to the polis, and to the cult community. Breaking secrecy wasn’t just rude, it was impiety (asebeia), it endangered the cult and it invited divine punishment. This is why we have no written records of the mystery cults from initiates themselves.

Cult rites often included darkness, dramatized death, disorientation, confrontation with fear or grief, or altered states and intoxication. Initiation ensured that you were prepared, ritually clean, had guides (mystagogues), and were reintegrated afterward. Revelation without preparation was spiritually harmful or useless.

They were not closed because of ethnicity, nationality, bloodline, gender (many were open to women), or social class (slaves could be initiated). Eleusis explicitly accepted anyone who spoke Greek and had not committed murder.

Now...

Why can't we have mystery cults today?!

Yep. We can't have mystery cults in our modern times, regardless of how bad you wanna be in one.

We lack the full ritual sequence, the sacred objects (hiera), the priestly lineages, the civic sanction, and the living ritual container. So modern “mystery initiations” are symbolic, inspired-by, and/or are new religious movements.

You can still worship the gods involved in mystery cults (Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, etc.) reflect on themes of mystery (death, renewal, liberation, etc.) but you cannot claim Eleusinian initiation, reconstruct secret rites, pretend secrecy equals authenticity, or pressure others into “initiations”.

✧ Specific Priesthood Roles ✧

Priesthood itself isn't closed. But, there are certain roles in ancient priesthood that cannot be reconstructed today.

What is priesthood?

They were a ritual office-holder, appointed by a polis, sanctuary, or lineage, bound to a specific god in a specific place, and responsible for maintaining ritual correctness, not personal gnosis. They were not freelance mystics or pagan Tumblr hoes who post long, wordy rants about historical inaccuracies and pet peeves in the community (...wait).

The Pythia is a prime example of a closed priestess role. The Pythia wasn’t just "Apollo’s mouthpiece." To be the Pythia you had to have:

The Delphic sanctuary: the omphalos, the adyton, the sacred chasm, and Apollo’s seasonal presence A full priestly system: prophets (prophētai) to interpret utterances, priests to prepare sacrifices, temple attendants, and civic oversight Formal appointment: chosen by Delphic authorities, sworn into office, serving Delphi, not herself. Strict ritual timing: only on specific days, only in Apollo’s season, and only after purification and sacrifice. Remove any of these and you're not the Pythia.

"My friend claims to have all of these, are they the Pythia?!"

Well... unfortunately Mx. Made Up Voice To Further My Point. You literally cannot have all of these things in modern times because...

The Delphic sanctuary is no longer around. No Delphi, no Pythia. Priesthoods were place-bound, time-bound, and legally defined. The Greek government doesn't elect Pythias anymore so... no Pythia.

The Pythia never claimed that Apollo chose her because she's special, she claimed that Apollo chose Delphi to speak and she was nothing more than a tool for him to speak through.

Plenty of ancients (and modern practitioners) prophesied, entered trance, received dreams, and heard gods! But that didn't make them the Pythia because the Pythia was a legal and locational role.

Other closed priesthoods include: Athena Polias (embedded in Athenian law), Hera at Argos (hereditary, state cult), Zeus at Olympia (linked to Olympian games).

You can always honor these gods and be priests for these gods but you cannot hold their ancient offices.

What you can be today: devotee, ritual leader, oracle, priest/ess of a modern tradition, medium, seer, and diviner.

Using a title like "Pythia" implies: continuity, authority, legitimacy, and public sanction.

This is why scholars and most reconstructionists push back hard on modern claims.

if someone says that "I am the reincarnated Pythia", "Apollo chose me as the new Pythia", or "Delphi moved to me"... that's their personal belief and you are not required to believe them.

Priesthood roles like the Pythia are closed because they are offices without buildings, cities, or laws anymore.

Historically Accurate Breakdown of Frollo's Wardrobe

Decided to do a two week dive into 15th century research to figure out what dear old Claude's clothes would actually look like. I was spurred after recently reading some fanfiction involving him in various states of dress and undress.

Hit my ask box with questions, character suggestions (thinking of making this a series?), or if you want to see some research collages.

Also excited because y'all get to see something in the realm of my professional rendering style for once! :)

Detailed notes on each look (including where I took some liberties) + "naked" Ken doll version for anyone who wants to treat him like a paper doll under the cut.

May I ask what you thought of the last episode of The Sun from another Star? I adore this story, they got me obssessed with them but some scenes in the last episode got me feeling, i don't know, a bit uncomfortable? Arthrit was quite pushy and I wonder if that's the kind of behaviour he used to have (which would explain why people are saying he is a bad person)

I am still enjoying this series tremendously and I cannot believe it's almost over but those scenes got me thinking. I will miss them so much, I might need to read the novel!

This post by @chibipandaao3 and @befuddledcinnamonroll gets at a good number of my thoughts about the series directly.

@doublel27 also pointed out in our dm's about the show "Daotok’s trauma with relationships is that his ex didnt actually want him and went after him for a dare/money, so part of what he needs to know is that Arthit is actually interested in HIM Daotok and isn’t just seeing him as a challenge. Or won’t get tired of Daotok being difficult."

On a broader level, I think the whole of the BL fandom could gain something by exploring the nuance of consent in BL and beyond. The whole sequence of Arthit's pursuit reminded me of one of my favorite contemporary sexuality theorists, Avgi Saketopoulou, and her distinction between 'affirmative consent' and 'limit consent' in her book Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk Race, Traumatophilia. Affirmative consent is the kind most tumblrinas of the mid-2010s will be overwhelmingly familiar with: no means no and the enthusiastic yes! As she explains "violations of consent are real and deserve our attention.” Affirmative consent developed from the informed consent model in the medical field, which was such an important step forward in disability rights and general patient care, especially for marginalized communities. This kind of verbal clear-sighted consent can absolutely be sexy!

However, "affirmative consent imagines a subject that can be fully transparent to herself." Being able to articulate what you want clearly and verbally can be a break-through, a joy, a sign of trust and self-awareness, but it depends on individuals, real or fictional, who can and want to do so. "Where affirmative consent imagines a subject that can be fully transparent to herself," Saketopoulou argues, "the self cannot be fully known...we are always somewhat opaque to ourselves." Do we really know everything we want or don't want? What pleasures might the unexpected hold for us? What displeasure might our desire return to us?

The alternative to the affirmative consent model should not swing the pendulum so oppositely that it dangles into the belief that an individual knows exactly what another person wants and ought to be able to act accordingly. Instead of an outside authority determining another person's wants, limit consent is thusly named how this kind of consent comes from an individual's choice to let another person transgress the limits of one's own boundaries and therefore one's own concept of exactly who they are (limit experience). "While the usual paradigm around consent is about maintaining control of a situation, limit consent is more about giving up control." Under limit consent, we agree to let someone explore with us without a pre-mapped plan or script for how things will go.

Limit consent can obviously be about sexual experiences, but it's also a kind of consent we admit throughout our lives as we accept people and experiences in that could likely change us. Saketopoulou has a particularly edifying example in her book.

"A colleague, whom I will call Imani, is playing with her four-year-old daughter, Lumi. "Be the monster!" Lumi instructs her. Instantly transforming herself into an imposing ogre, Imani leaps forward. She snatches Lumi. "I will eat you!" she growls mancingly. Lumi squirms from within Imani's firm grip, squealing with delight. She fights back, giggling in abandon. Then suddenly, she yells, "Stop!" Imani stops immediately. They look at each other; a moment passes. Clearly, they have done this before. 'Again!' Lumi commands. Imani instantly leaps forth. Again she grabs, again the scary monster, again ominous and frightening. Lumi is laughing. 'Stop!' she commands anew. Imani stops. They rehearse this scenario a few times. Several repetitions later, Lumi looks vaguely unsatisfied. Then, a solution! "We'll play a different game," she announces. "I tell you to be the monster; you grab and scare me; I say stop; but this time"--she punctuates each word--"You! Don't! Stop!" "I don't?" Imani now hesitates. "No," Lumi replies confidently, "you go on and on, more and more." "What if it gets too much?" Imani asks anxiously. The little girl, however, seems utterly disinterested in this adult question of safety and careful calibration. The question of safe limits does not appear to worry her: "You have to not stop, or else it won't work!" she says impatiently. "Don't worry, let's just go on and on, more and more."

Lumi wants to relinquish control, perhaps in trust of Imani, perhaps just to explore general risk, with its potential for both the good and bad. Either way, she wants change to her experience. This is what Arthit and Dao have been circling in their relationship to one another, for me, albeit with less enthusiasm than Lumi, and for Dao, much less verbalization of that desire. But in his allowances and the subtle expressions Oat has been masterfully playing across his character's flat affect, its clear there's desire, which hits a limit on his swan-long neck.

In affirmative consent, transgressing past another's limit is the site of betrayal. ArthitDaotok would be done for. In a limit consent model, though, "the relative safety of the relationship is what puts in place the 'facilitative circumstances' that [psychiatrist Emmanuel] Ghent suggests can enable passibility and the risking of an encounter with opacity. The safety in question, however, is not that things will not go wrong but that if they do, which they could, both parties will stick around to process and hold the injury together." Isn't this exactly what we see Arthit do here, as he apologizes, discusses his urges, and remains to let Daotok know that this artsy beauty's boundaries won't dissuade the beast's heart? Through accepting the affection of his friends and Arthit, Daotok is confronting the opacity of the walls he's built up after his experience with his ex and childhood of exclusion. They're gradually bringing him into a place to recognize his own desires for connection and belief in his own desirability.

BL in particular is interested in characters who are quite unclear about themselves and their desires, characters who don't want what they want. Like The Sun from Another Star, the pursuers are rarely arguing "I know you want it." The pursuers just know what they themselves want and, taking a leap of faith past the mixed signal they're receiving, go about it...sometimes aggressively, to say the least. This is a capital-D Dramatic tool after all! I'd generally condemn this exact method in real life, but as a piece of queer fiction, it gets at a queer feeling to me, and maybe just a feeling experience by anyone who's asked to repress their sexuality by society.

Some queer folks can confirm their sexuality openly and independently, but many of us went through a period of simultaneous wanting and not-wanting for same-sex relationships, compartmentalizing our desires from our ideas about ourself. Within the conflicted emotions, there's a dream for someone to bust open the locked door and make it possible. For all the closeted years the feeling was experienced, its no surprise that the erotic fantasy can persist, too. In my reading, the dubious consent and so-called rape scenes can sometimes symbolically get at this feeling in a way one-to-one representation can't always manage to dramatize. (And that's why I'm really interested in Thai writer Chim who seems to be trying to explore the realism of PTSD from sexual trauma alognside BLs use of dubious consent to eroticize the above queer fantasy.)

Going into a general experience as a viewer of art, such as BL, we can draw on limit consent as a model for accepting complicated aesthetic experiences. We consent to view most art--we go to museums to see paintings and sculptures, we go to theaters or turn on our screens to watch tv and film--and we don't know what we're getting ourselves into. Now, in an affirmative consent model, the viewer might presume some idea based on the genre, the type of museum, the network, and more broadly on their expectations for societal standards and art, generally. They've signed up for a specific experience and have a right to feel betrayed or trespassed if the art does not subscribe to the expectations to which they consented.

Under a limit consent model, however, the viewer consents to the art's full extent of possibilities, including the possibility that the aesthetic experience of viewing it goes beyond their comfort, understanding, and stable sense of selfhood. They've consented to be transformed by a work, which can come with surprise, risk and quite ugly, disturbing thoughts and feelings. In fact, artworks could leave you with completely unresolved and even traumatizing emotions. I mean, it could leave you feeling ecstatic or enlightened, too, but there's the rub of releasing yourself to art. Maybe you'll want to avoid viewing it ever again or giving it another thought. The thing is, the art isn't forcing you to stay or abandoning you and leaving you to process it alone. People forget that. It will remain for you to revisit when you're ready to face the parts of yourself and your understanding that proved to be so challenging to face when you viewed it.

Some people have constrained ideas about what BL must be, what queer representation must be, and series offend their sensibilities when they don't ascribe to that notion. I feel that, too. But I've increasingly learned not to react so quickly (nor to write my hate down hastily for others to read on main). Instead, I'm trying to become more curious about what limits of myself I can't yet access to appreciate it. And the secret parts of yourself aren't all dark, either. The erotic torture romance of VegasPete could be as eye-opening as the fluffy chaste joy of 2moons. There might easily be wells of joy you didn't know were possible! You are vast. Limit consent is a way to explore those multitudes.

okay when i saw part 1 and started thinking about how they'd do part 2, i felt like they'd put a buffer before thank goodness to get some more worldbuilding in, and they did, and i...kinda wish they hadn't?

don't get me wrong, the opening sequence? epic. it's so over the top superhero (elphaba skateboarding on her broom for no reason other than she can, she is in fact that girl) but it's so freaking good? give me rebel elphie! gimme that worldbuilding about how she's actually resisting the wizard! DAMN it was sick

but everything in the emerald city felt kinda clunky and i almost wish they had jumped straight to the engagement party after elphaba's attack on the yellow brick road

glinda flashback! listen i love baby glinda. i love her. in general, i love the added moments of reflection we get from glinda, even though i do think parts of this movie were rushed and deserved more time (looking at you, wicked witch of the east, but we'll get there)

but what i love the most about it is that baby glinda's wand showed her reflection, and adult glinda's wand absolutely does not. she can't see herself anymore, she doesn't know who she is anymore. and she certainly can't see her own smile (it also ties so well into the bubble symbolism. the bubble she's in as a little girl, the bubble bursting as an adult. idk SYMBOLISM man)

Elphaba's new song. i...didn't like it a whole lot, although i suspect i'll like it more on a rewatch/relisten (because tbh for so many of the things that were different than the musical i did have to fight through moments of 'but that's not--' and it's a kneejerk reaction and it's fine). BUT i love everything that the song represents. i love where it sits in the story. i love the interactions with the Animals. i LOVE dulcibear coming back, oh my god how good for elphaba in that moment (and how tragic, too

this, combined with actually showing her rebel acts, does a great job of actually doing justice to her cause. which is something that the stage show, understandably, fails to do. giving us tangible examples and actually taking the time to examine why and how elphaba fights puts so much more depth to everything she's fighting for

and and and! showing how morrible is sabotaging her at every turn! extremely well done and i loved it so much

okay. wicked witch of the east

first of all, i adored that first sequence where nessa is the last ruler to sign Animal rights away. i love her and boq speaking to each other like humans, like they still know each other. it's like the last dying breath of their friendship, and it shows that they were actually friends this was something i really loved about part 1, and they continued to do it justice here, and it just adds so much more tension to nessa's transformation

i also adore the little detail of nessa opposing Animal rights because she doesn't want to be seen as supporting Elphaba. gimme that political intrigue! gimme that commentary on politics vs morals and how personal motivation gets tangled up in all of it, ugh it's so good

the scene with boq at the train station? harrowing. brilliant. i so wished they touched on it again, showed more of oz being affected by the spreading oppression, but i understand why they didn't (once again, i am begging someone out there to make a dark wicked years miniseries oh my god)

i do like that they changed some of the dialogue between elphaba and nessa, because changing it to 'you never wanted my help' 'i do now' was necessary. i think they did a lot of brilliant buildup with nessa in part 1 and they did a good job of keeping all of it relevant in this scene

howeverrrr, it feels like they didn't quite stick the landing with the wicked witch of the east scene. the dialogue leading up to nessa's spell felt fumbled somehow. i don't even know if it was, or if it's just me being 'it's different' and getting needlessly grumpy over it. but i do wish they'd spent even just another minute or two in this scene

flashing back and forth between nessa singing, elphie casting, and boq transforming was brilliant

(in general, the way they depicted those super violent moments with boq and fiyero, by flashing back and forth to it and only showing glimpses, was brilliant. it's a great way to have that heaviness and those consequences while keeping the feel of the stage show where it all happens off-screen)

nessa: you just want to go to the city to see fiyero again

elphaba: goes to see glinda for literally no reason other than to just see her again

i know what you are elphie

actually that entire scene in glinda's room was so so beautiful and i loved every second of it

i actually liked glinda being part of wonderful. it feels right, it adds so much to the moment, it's great. but it also felt extremely scripted, like glinda and the wizard had planned every detail of it, and like, that makes sense, they could have so easily done that and it would've been great, but that's not what happened?

i liked wonderful! i really did! i think i have to watch it again though because something about it just didn't quite click the way i expected it to

maybe it felt a little open-ended too, since it's like. glinda runs off to go get married and the wizard disappears conveniently for a minute so elphaba can find the Animals and it's like. welp. show's over now. bye. on with the plot

but! elphaba finding the Animals

i was hoping Chistery would show her dillamond and i was not disappointed (side note i loved chistery, and the monkeys in general, they were so well done throughout, no notes, 10/10, added to every scene they were in)

the flip back and forth between glinda walking down the aisle and elphaba walking into the room with the cages. brilliant. perfect. no notes.

this might be nitpicky but i think my least favorite thing in the entire movie was how morrible was a weirdly comedic villain in the first half (glinda: it's okay, stay calm. morrible: she's going to kill us all!)

and like. it's a fair depiction when you think about stage morrible. but in part 1, most of morrible's comedic moments were given to miss coddle. idk man, i just don't think the woman standing in her tower and conjuring a cyclone while dramatic music plays can be the same woman who got knocked face-first into a big cake the scene before. it just doesn't work

also side note michelle yeoh? brilliant beautiful breathtaking. the outfits were 10/10 the sinister vibes were impeccable the fight with glinda after march of the witch hunters was everything i've ever wanted and i loved every second of her in this film even when the tone felt off so you know what, there are worse things to complain about

moving on because jonathan bailey and just the writing in general make movie fiyero so much more likable than stage fiyero. however. they still fall into the trap of fiyero and elphaba being simply unable to compare to the relationship that is so slowly and richly developed throughout the entire rest of the story. ALAYM was beautiful and they were both so good but it still felt kinda jarring that they're suddenly singing about being passionately in love when they've talked to each other like 3 times in their lives

(i feel like the movie almost got away with this too, but by cutting the friend group scenes at shiz and by keeping elphaba's line of 'we barely even know each other' at the train station, they really do undercut fiyero and elphie's relationship)

((although i did find it hilarious and adorable when elphaba was like 'oh no fiyero hates me too now' and she had a flashback to the poppy scene that was like 90% her and glinda being cute together. elphaba come on that's the wrong crush you're thinking of))

i loved elphaba's lil mangrove hideout so much i was kinda sad when she moved to kiamo ko

even though kiamo ko. holy helllllll it was so cool

anyway this is the point of the movie where everything was absolutely perfect, like from the cat fight scene on i was obsessed, relishing every single second, it was so good

the cat fight. precious. adorable. and maybe this is me being biased but as it went on and as they started teasing each other while trying to fist fight it really felt like they could make up. like they just had to get through this scrap and they would cry and hug and make up. and i think that adds something to the scene, and adds something to the fact that they're interrupted. they're going to be fine, but then the guards come and tear them apart, emotionally and physically

the monkeys swooping in with fiyero! like i said, they added so much to every scene they were in

even though i was begging them to stay with him. elphaba's flying to safety! she doesn't need protection! you do, fiyero! aw, dammit, he's done for

i think the end of the cat fight is my favorite glinda and fiyero moment, and oh my god jonathan bailey and ariana grande killed it

also right before elphaba flies off, when both fiyero and glinda tell her go. they both just love her so much and want her to be safe

no good deed

no you don't understand, no good deed

easily the best moment in the film. my jaw was on the floor and i could hear other people in the theater reacting and just being in awe, it was everything

i mean we been knowing. we knew. of course we knew cynthia erivo would deliver but oh my god it was e v e r y t h i n g

the people in my theater genuinely cheered and they were right

march of the witch hunters was everything i have ever wanted. it being this sort of send-off for dorothy, seeing the emerald city turn dark and chaotic and violent, calling for blood. glinda and boq's little moment where they look at each other and both have to face what they've become. absolute perfection

(i actually have so many thoughts about boq in this. the way he embodied the tin man, the violence that stemmed from his character arc, the way he truly does feel like he lost his heart. nobody from the shiz group makes it out okay but he really does truly feel cursed, and it's so well done)

Glinda's song. i liked it more than elphaba's, but it did feel a little bit out of place pacing-wise. but i loved it, it's glinda's defying gravity, and of course her break free moment is quiet and tragic, of course it happens before she ever takes action. a careful plan rather than an emotional outburst. i think it represents glinda's journey so well, and once again, i love the little introspections we get with both her and elphaba throughout

also the song ending with her reflection in the bubble, it's time for the bubble to pop, yeah yeah symbolism BUT then glinda leaves the shot, and it's not her reflection in the bubble anymore, it's the emerald city's. symbolism.

i am physically in pain over the fact that they cut the scene that explains why glinda has elphaba's boots in her closet

but who cares about that because her taking feldspar and riding off in disguise, that moment when it clicks who was riding across the bridge at the beginning of part 1, OH MY GOD

it was. it was good. real good. i liked it a whole lot

okay. for good

i don't even know what to say. it was perfect. like genuinely flawless. like a technical masterpiece

it was always going to be, especially with these two. and just. them. and the torchlight in the background. and the tears in their eyes. them. it was perfect.

but then

THEN

elphaba tells glinda to hide, and she leads her to the door, and and and

listen i was fine during for good. a lil teary-eyed but fine. stable. perfectly okay.

but then they had to go and say "i love you" to each other. and THEN elphaba closes they door and THEY BOTH BREAK DOWN. it's that moment we all imagine with the trapdoor, glinda crying and elphaba unable to reach out and comfort her

idk man. elphaba putting on a smile and telling glinda it'll be fine. lying because someone is looking to her for comfort. but glinda knows how this works, she's been in that position, she knows elphie is lying

and the way they both immediately break, both of them holding on through the door, their last moment together being them standing there, a wall between them, mourning each other already

man i haven't cried that hard in a movie theater since carrie fisher showed up at the end of rogue one

anyway

glinda returning to the palace with an army of Monkeys, AS SHE DESERVES

we got rebel elphaba and badass glinda in one movie, my resistance dreams are coming true

okay i lied my real least favorite thing in the movie was teh comedic camera pan back to glinda during NOMTW reprise. it's just uhh not for me personally. but the rest of that sequence was fantastic

i love that we got proof of glinda restoring the Animals. just like they actually showed us elphaba fighting for her cause they actually show us glinda starting to do good <3

i also absolutely adore the moment when she tells morrible she's not good, not yet. gosh. that's my girl <3

okay some closing thoughts:

all of elphaba's outfits were great. i love her cozy lil cardigan, her ragged capes, the dramatic af cloak the Monkeys put on her? brilliant.

i also loved glinda's dress, i loved the pink streaks in it, and i loved how it looked like she has little wings at her shoulders, but the fact that she re-wore it so many times feels illegal???

also glinda's sweater thing in the poppy scene flashbacks looked like a wedding veil when the hood was up like oh my god that's gay

i think fiyero's scarecrow design was. eh. i mean, idk, i don't think it was bad i just think something was off about it. the hair? the eyes? maybe just the fact that compared to boq's intense transformation and reveal, and even the lion getting an earlier appearance before he shows up with dorothy, fiyero's reveal felt very...fleeting? brushed past? i have no idea how you would fix that though, so maybe i shouldn't complain lol

glinda going to the defying gravity balcony and elphaba looking back at oz for their final duet. the way the grimmerie opened for glinda after they sang their goodbye, as if elphaba was sending her off with the magic. i'm so fragile rn (so is glinda)

For what it's worth, we've actually made a shocking amount of progress against cancer - especially the most common cancers like breast cancer, and especially in the past 30 years.

Cancer rates have been falling, often dramatically (x, x, x, x, x, x). One of the best examples it that breast cancer deaths in the United States dropped 58% between 1975 and 2019 (x).

Right now, we're at the beginning of an absolute revolution in cancer care that promises to increase survival rates even further. This revolution has been going on to a lesser degree since the first human genome was successfully sequenced in the early 2000s (and in fact, the first gapless sequencing of a human genome was finally finished just two years ago, in 2022), and to a greater extent since CRISPR DNA-editing technology was first successfully tested in 2013, and since medical digitzation/digital communication and vaccination were massively spurred ahead in 2020, by the COVID pandemic (x, x).

Right now, the results of this revolution are only beginning to trickle out into actual treatments. But I guarantee you, in the next one to three decades, the way we fight cancer will be massively transformed.

We're talking personalized genome sequencing for each person with cancer - not just for early and better detection, but even to figure out what types of treatments will work best. (x, x, x, x)

We're talking using CRISPR-based DNA editing to literally cut cancer-causing mutations out of your DNA, to edit the genes of immune cells to better detect and kill cancer cells, and to kill cancer-causing viruses. (x, x, x, x)

We're talking using CRISPR-based screening to figure out how chemotherapy resistance works, so that we can overcome it - and even weaponize it. (x, x)

We're talking using CRISPR to edit immune cells so that they recognize and target the mutations of a single individual's specific tumor. (x)

We're talking new types of testing that can predict if cancer will return years before it shows up on scans. (x)

We're talking using (non-generative) AI to massively increase the accuracy and earliness of cancer detection - which by the way is already starting to happen, there are several AI-based systems that detect cancer earlier and more accurately than doctors do. (x, x, x, x, x, x)

Also, the more we transition to a green, sustainable, and ethical future, the fewer cancer-causing substances will be in the environment (fossil fuels, oil drilling, and mining are massive sources of carcinogens at every point in the process).

Now you know I had thoughts, and it looks like the writers are cooking with gas with these tarot references.

There are spoilers so be warned!

Btw absolutely love your art it gets me acting feral during ovulation.

I feel like I don’t give very good advice…

When I first started drawing VP, I just said “random bullshit go”: my sketches that I posted were horrendous and super messy. But maybe that was truly the way to start?

So Tale Foundry looks into what makes fan-theory tick.

It's a good watch, but it spoils very little for me to leap off on my little side tangent here.

Fan theory isn't about "predicting" or "solving" stories, it's about telling Them.

I've maintained for a long time that fan theory is a nondiagetic genre of fan fiction. Rather than telling the story in a narrative format or a fan-comic or whatnot, you build a fanfic way of looking at the work.

Most fanfic is written from the standpoint of authorship, whereas Fan Theory is fanfic written from the standpoint of a literary critic. But they're both making a new story. When theorists talk about 'solving' the lore they mean they've written a fic that links all the lore bits and fills in the gaps. It's "big fanon" if that makes sense.

For Examples, I'll be going over some of my favorite Fan Theories:

Subspace/unspace mass-shunting in Transformers was a long-standing fan theory. We didn't call it that, but characters would shrink when they transformed, or Prime's trailer would just happen, or you'd get stuff like this:

In the usenet days, subspace was used as an explanation to the point we called it fanon, but today it would be called a fan theory. Eventually it became the official explanation but at the beginning it was just a minor fix-fic for animators making characters grab accessories from out of nowhere and use toy features that bent the rules of logic.

The classic Marvel No-Prize was essentially an ongoing fix-fic fan theory contest.

For those that don't know, back in the day Marvel had the "No-Prize". You find an error in one of the books, you'd write in and you'd win, well... "no prize." (there may have been certificates at one point, not sure).

But you couldn't claim a no-prize by pointing out a flaw on its own. You had to present it with an explanation for why it wasn't actually an error. Which was a brilliant piece of ludo, turning the process of finding a flaw from a disappointment to a game that simultaneously make you engage more with the fictional universe than one that takes you out of it.

I can probably credit an early childhood desire to win a No-Prize (never did) with the way my brain always looks for a way to fill in a story gap with a reasonable diagetic explanation when confronted with plot holes and story errors.

There Are no Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park

Like any genre of fiction, there's well made and poorly made fan theories, fun and boring ones, trite and creative ones. And sometimes, they do border on the profound.

Tale Foundry at one point laments that he'd rather be digging into the characters and themes than finding something to predict or pull apart. But sometimes those can dovetail, and when they do, it's amazing.

One of my favorite fan theories is that there are no dinosaurs* in Jurassic Park.

Not even these guys:

I forget where I first saw it, but it's been one floating around fan circles for decades. But the short version is: DNA's halflife means that, at least with our current understanding, there's no way to get a gene sequence out of amber-coated mosquitos. If you did, you'd mostly be getting mosquito DNA.

When Hammond's scientists found this out, that wasn't the end of the project. They just switched to modifying extant animals through gene-splicing. We've got cassowaries, we've got hoatzin, we've got crocoiles, lets make us a velociraptor.

Malcom, Grant and Sattler aren't there for a general "endorsement" they've been brought in to make sure that the genetic freaks Wu and the boys cooked up would fool actual experts, because if they can't fool Dr. Alan Grant, there's no way they're going to fool the parade of dinosaur-obsessed children they want to bring in.

There ought to be way more surprises than the dilophosaur venom, all kinds of soft structures and body coverings that wouldn't fossilize easily. But we don't see feathers or quills or brightly colored throat sacks or long rows of keratinus spines on the Brachosaurus's dorsal ridge. For the most part, the dinosaurs are exactly what we expect from 1990s paleontology.

And this theory dovetails beautifully with the themes, because Hammond all but confesses it.

Ellie was right, it is all just a flea circus. She's just more right than she imagined, and Hammond is even more of a reckless fraud. Because there's nothing to learn from these pseudosaurs, except that capitalism will eat you.

*non avian you semantic na'er-do-wells.

And there's meta-fan theories too.

Street Fighter (1994) is a G.I.Joe Movie.

My own personal fan theory is that the script for Street Fighter is clearly a G.I.Joe script. The writer claimed he wrote the script over a weekend for the pitch, and either that involved a lot of cocaine or it involved reworking a script he already had in his back pocket.

I went and made a separate post, but really. You could rotoscope the G.I.Joe cast over that movie and it would still make 100% sense. And would be a better G.I.Joe movie than any other live action effort outside of the accidentally perfect/perfect accidental G.i.Joe Movie, Megaforce.

So, to sum up, fan theorizing has more in common with "My Immortal" than with CinemaSins. There's no real difference between Fic and Theory at the core, just in delivery.

And one you figure that out, as Tale Foundry does, the fun can begin.