Mecha Eevee

As usual and expected from a blog titled A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry, it does take a long (but very interesting and worth reading) read to get to that point, but I'll point out the interesting thing in this context:

Here, "Big Man" is a stand in for the nobles and rulers and landowners of agricultural societies. While more urbanized and industrial societies may have a use for coinage, what do these societies based in interpersonal relationships can give you as a reward for a quest, as a reward for solving a problem? Social power; a title, a relationship, a promise of support. And not only that, but this isn't often a reward but a necessity in the first place. To have a horse, to have armor and weapons and the means to wage war (go adventuring) in the first place, you don't go to the medieval store and buy them with 20gp, you often have people supporting you and even , you are a man-at-arms, part of a noble retinue a noble yourself, maybe part of a holy order, or in more early-modern scenario, part of a mercenary group.

However, this doesn't happen often in fantasy because of these reasons reasons:

The idea of the selfless hero who doesn't choose glory or fame but instead continues questing endlessly to do good or defeat an ultimate evil. Making a hero have a patron feels like selling out (but I will address that)

Even with those characters who aren't selfless and would probably take the power and titles, it seems to tie them down to a place or obligation and this makes adventures boring (but I will address that!)

Dungeons & Dragons

People say that every generic fantasy world is inspired by Tolkien but I will argue that he's the grandfather of modern fantasy, the father is Gary Gyax. The ideas baked in D&D have been present in ALL over popular fantasy for decades now, even more prominently than Tolkien (and of course D&D 'borrowed' a lot from Tolkien). Now what this means in this particular case is the idea of wandering "adventurers" solving problems for "gold" in "dungeons", often with the undertone of a frontier or decaying civilization full of monsters and bandits to be killed and tamed into civilization (some other people have written about this better than me)

Nevertheless, even beyond the setting implications, there are deep gameplay implications that have filtered down popular fantasy. Dungeons and Dragons is a survival/combat game. It's a survival game because you have to rely in your abilities and limited equipment (which you buy with gold) to survive in a dungeon, through combat. Of course you can do a lot more than that, but this is the core of the game, what it was designed for: buy equipment, go into a dungeon, survive, get treasure, use it to buy equipment, go into another dungeon. Here "dungeon" can mean many things... combat, travel, puzzles, but the loop is clear.

There is no "gain a patron and get social capital" loop in the game, though it might be simulated, it isn't fun. So there is a lack of interest on exploring this, or really, anything beyond the "quest". And since again, it's D&D, not Tolkien, that shapes most popular fantasy, we see popular fantasy repeating this deeply baked in idea of fantasy once and again and again and again. Sometimes even making them into actual, literal points inside the world: making literal worlds with Adventurer Guilds and Dungeons and Quests and sometimes even Levels and XP as part of society (they're only lacking the dice... and that's because D&D is also the main influence behind videogames).

El Cid is both a real person who lived a very interesting life and a folklore figure, and both are very interesting as inspirations for fantasy "adventurers". El Cid was considered (by the social standards of the time) as an ideal knight and a tragic figure. But his whole life is defined by the society he lived in and, as any knight (or noble warrior in general), how he walked the interrelationships of his society; his back and forth of loyalty and betrayal with King Alfonso, his loss and recovery of honor, his service to the Muslims rulers of Zaragoza which indeed gave him his title (these constant intercultural interactions were very common in medieval Iberia, which makes it a very unique and underused setting inspiration), his rulership over Valencia. Over time, El Cid changes and seeks patrons and his changes in his social status (and his dependence on them) are a major part of the story both in real life and fictionalizations.

But this doesn't mean that the life of El Cid is boring or lacking in combat and travels. He gets "adventures" all over the place, he travels and fights over the whole breadth of Iberia, he has countless legends to his name. He wasn't a "murderhobo" that got gold from each adventure and then went to the store to buy a new sword, he took command of armies and he even took power and governed his own realm, but his life wasn't lacking from excitement, he didn't just sit and became a paper-pusher. I need to be very clear I'm not saying El Cid was a hero, I'm saying he led an exciting, interesting life, worthy of most fictional adventurers, but he wasn't just going from place to place asking for gold... well, technically yes, but this involved his status, his honor and his place in society. Which makes for a rich story.

this has been dropped from later editions because of the difficulties you mention when it comes to the fundamental gameplay loop of d&d-as-it-was-played (which is to say, a bunch of guys go into a big dungeon, kill everyone there, and take everything valuable, then go do it again somewhere else).

this is not me saying to avoid the service, I don't know shit about cell phones. I'm just really really fucking irritated at the misleading advertisements and I want to show you how far they go to be misleading about it.

one of the primary selling points in their ads is how it's $15 a month no hidden fees, no price scaling, it's just $15 a month, so easy and nothing is hidden in the fine text and to prove it and we're making the fine print into large print on a billboard so you can see

well okay let's take a look at the fine print. let's go to the mint mobile website. down at the frequently asked questions section (which calls you stupid if you ask these questions by the way)

notice how it does not actually answer the question? notice how also there's another drop down for infrequently asked questions? let's see what's down there

so I had to scroll down to the FAQ, realize my question had not been answered, click another button to open up another drop-down menu of frequently asked questions and scroll the last question on the list to get an answer and the answer is that the price goes up after your introductory offer. but that goes directly counter to every single advertisement I've had to hear tumble out of Ryan Reynolds stupid fucking mouth.

they set up a cheeky little segment where they have listed out the plan details as if they are nutrition facts.

see how it has monthly price in Big Black bold letters at $15 and then immediately in fine print they have this is the introductory price by the way the regular monthly price is higher

Round Two, Bracket 6

Propaganda below the cut:

okay fully sincere question: how has this scene been landing for you when you watch this movie, like what's your read of this interaction?

to me this scene is 100% explicitly and textually incestuous. the text is that ginger is making advances to turn brigitte into a werewolf that she, as a character in-universe, is intentionally framing as an act of incest. and the most straightforward rebuttal i could imagine here is "well yeah, it's being framed as incest but what's happening in this scene isnt incest" but i don't know, i just can't see it like that. is incest textually something that happens in the movie? no. is incest textually something that this character is thinking about? i think you would have a pretty difficult time convincing me otherwise. the "you know we're almost not even related anymore" line seals the deal on that one for me

originally when i was replying to those tags up there i went looking for the screenplay because i thought that would be the simplest way to pull the dialogue i wanted. but that line actually is not in any version of the script i could find.

and so the fact that this line was added either in subsequent drafts or during shooting just solidifies my opinion that it is intended to remove any ambiguity from how this scene is supposed to read.