[Discord]

The Fish Formerly Known As Spoop:
Hey.
Hey, @King Krix the Pink, buddy.

King Krix the Pink:
Hoi

The Fish Formerly Known As Spoop:
Think a little deeper about why the hero who said the word “spic” to some latino fellas would be agitated by the leader of a famous Neo Nazi gang staring at him.

King Krix the Pink:
I guess maybe he finds it hypocritical.

stronglight97:
A hero who got in trouble because it was caught on camera

King Krix the Pink:
Not sure why Kaiser is staring in the first place, for that matter.

The Fish Formerly Known As Spoop:
Krix.
He was annoyed because Kaiser was implying that Bastion was like him.

Fair enough. It’s kind of in the vein of what I was getting at with “hypocritical”, just with more self-awareness on Kaiser’s part – with “hypocritical”, what I was going for was that Kaiser might’ve been staring as if judging Bastion for his actions, which would be rich considering what Kaiser gets up to. But maybe Kaiser was staring more… favorably. “Look, dude, you can ditch those pesky do-gooders and join the Empire!”

Though of course, Kaiser might’ve simply been doing it to fuck with the guy.

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Sharks says:

Lrf, V xabj nobhg gur qvpr, naq V’z tbvat gb gryy uvz nobhg vg ng gur raq bs gur nep fb ur qbrfa’g unir nal cerpbaprvirq rkcrpgngvbaf ur qvqa’g neevir ng anghenyyl.

for you guys to translate with this site. (I have no idea what it is, all I know is it’s spoilers.)

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bEiNg a bItCh mEaNs i sTaNd uP FoR MySeLf, AnD BeLiEfS. i sTaNd uP FoR ThOsE I LoVe. I SpEaK My mInD, tHiNk mY OwN ThOuGhTs, AnD Do tHiNgS My wAy. I WoN’T CoMpRoMiSe wHaT’S In mY HeArT. i lIvE My lIfE My wAy. I WoN’T AlLoW AnYoNe tO StEp oN Me. I ReFuSe tO ToLeRaTe iNjUsTiCe. It mEaNs i hAvE ThE CoUrAgE AnD StReNgTh tO AlLoW MySeLf tO Be mE. sO TrY AnD StOmP On mE, dEfUsE My iNnEr fLaMe, SqUaSh eVeRy oUnCe oF BeAuTy i hOlD WiThIn. YoU WoN’T SuCcEeD. aNd iF ThAt mAkEs mE A BiTcH, sO Be iT! i eMbRaCe tHe tItLe, AnD I Am pRoUd tO Be bItCh.

So I’m rewatching some Your Grammar Sucks, and this comment immediately reminded me of the Bitch we all know and love from Worm.

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Of course it also reminds me of a certain clown from Homestuck, and now I can’t help but imagine juggalo Rachel.

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I wonder if Wildbow is a juggalo.

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thats-rough-buddy:

A cannonblade is more of a FF8 weapon: see gunblade on google. I’ll send some fan art of common designs for Chevalier though. Not so much history but a common interest in racism with those two. The bible belt has a big presence in the US, probably gained a boost when Scion came also, so it is very fair that when a kid from the belt triggered they decided to correlate the two and make a team out of it when they had enough. And tbh, Sundancer was very uncomfortable w/ the eye gouging at the time

Gunblades

Hey, nice. It still primarily makes me think of RWBY because I’m much more familiar with that than with Final Fantasy, and because “it’s also a gun” is so common in that show that it’s become a meme, but that’s cool.

[It’s not like either work invented the idea. Real pistol swords and other gunblades date all the way back to the 16th century.]

Bastion and Kaiser

Yeah, that’s fair.

Haven

True. It’s no surprise that there’d be teams of all-Christian heroes in a country like the U.S., and as my reaction was meant to indicate, it’s also not surprising that there’s be cases of a team itself being identified as Christian.

Sundancer

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I guess Taylor might be right, though it could still be a bit of both things.

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Re: Bastion and Kaiser: Kaiser is a racist villain in charge of a racist gang. Bastion is a racist hero. Any interaction he has with Kaiser isn’t going to look good. And Kaiser gets to stand beside him like “See, we aren’t that different.”

Good point, that’d look really bad for him. At least there wasn’t any press mentioned to be present, but still. The Triumvirate and other big shots were there, too.

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I think Kaiser is taunting Bastion by standing nearby and looking at him because Bastion just had a scandal showing him as racist. Kaiser is being like “I’m totally there if you decide to quit being a hero and join a group more in line with your ideas, just sayin'”

Or more generically but more clearly, “we’re not so different, you and I” mind games.

Yeah, this is kind of what I ended up with when Sharks asked me to think more on the matter. “Hey, feel free to come to me!”

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Kaiser is presumably playing “see, at least I’m *allowed* to be openly racist” mindgames with Bastion.

Heh, that’s certainly one way of putting it. 😛

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thebsdude:

That guy who talked about “determinism” is completely off-base. There’s no canonical indication one way or the other. He’s just one of those purple who draws the line out too far and thinks future vision requires predestination; as if observing an event *causes* that event to happen. Determinism means specifically that God made everything happen in an exact order, not that things will turn out to go a certain way.

Hm… If anything, Dinah’s power suggests a sort of probabilistic approach, but I can’t be sure yet whether the numbers she gives are the cosmic probabilities for a particular outcome, or if she sees all the possibilities and just can’t be certain which one is predetermined to happen.

I disagree with your definition of determinism, though. I personally consider myself an atheistic determinist and materialist, with the view that everything that happens has a cause, and if you follow the chain of causes backwards, you always wind up at physics, and from there it all goes back to the state of the universe at the big bang. So in theory, anything could happen, but they will turn out a certain way based on the initial state of the universe.

I’ve had lengthy discussions with a friend about whether this means no free will. I think we do have free will in that we can choose whatever we want, but what we’re going to choose was always inevitable due to simple cause and effect.

(Quantum mechanics kinda messes with my view, but I think there’s a good chance we just don’t understand it well enough yet.)

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it’s a little disappointing how a chunk of one of my favorite interludes was just incorrect information about pine trees and kurdish linguistics, followed by the conclusion that Wildbow didn’t do his research. Still hyped for what’s to come.

Yeah, sorry about that. I got a bit too hung up on the pine trees and didn’t know enough about the Turkish-Kurd conflict.

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Dude, when you’re going to start Act 8? We all wait here for you to finally start this arc. You’re going to postpone it again?

This is why I didn’t originally schedule my liveblogs. I’ll leave it at that, or I’d risk this response becoming even more rude than the ask.

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Why do you keep calling Trainwreck Roadblock?

Ah, fuck. It’s because I keep forgetting his name and ending up with the wrong one, and for some reason I keep thinking it’s Roadblock. I’m not even sure where I got that name from. Is that another character who’s been mentioned at some point?

Also, what do you guys think – should I go back and fix this recurring mistake or leave it as it is? Usually I only edit past writing to fix typos or tags, and this is kind of a borderline case.