[1499] Little Reflections

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by SpaceCobraJoe » Sun Nov 26, 2017 5:43 am

Some admin forgot to install the new certificate before the holiday.

"This server could not prove that it is megatokyo.com; its security certificate expired yesterday."

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by Yl33 D4 N00b » Sun Nov 26, 2017 11:38 am

SpaceCobraJoe wrote:
Sun Nov 26, 2017 5:43 am
Some admin forgot to install the new certificate before the holiday.

"This server could not prove that it is megatokyo.com; its security certificate expired yesterday."
Yeah, I got that too; can't see any of the comics.

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by paarfi » Mon Nov 27, 2017 7:05 am

DarkMorford was going to take care of the ssl cert last night. He was just getting back in town though, so he may not have had time. Hopefully he can fix it today.

Edit: klange took care of it. Should be all good now. Thank you klange.
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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by iffy » Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:58 pm

Nobody ever likes the real stories behind us magical girls. They always make up stories about us that people like better. But sometimes these little reflections end up more powerful than we are. Like this girl here. Moeko was never healthy enough to do much of the magical girl stuffs. So in the end, this one did far more than Moeko did to save people and save the world. Didn't you sweetie?
This main part of the oration (without the aside about the portrayal itself) seems the more interesting/meaningful/important one to focus on, and wait for the follow-up to.

Yes, the sentiment also matches pretty well with what most anyone talking about the subject says, in some way or another. We've heard a couple of versions from each of Erika, Piro, Kimiko, Largo. Also bits of it from consciences, show-biz people like Sayuri and Mumu, others like Yanagisawa, Meimi, and Masamichi. We've seen that Ed/Dom/Ibara don't agree with each other, yet together, they display a story of their own. (Ibara tells Junko his version of things, then shows he didn't really well understand how it actually works. Ed does things suggesting Miho is herself the real story and one that people excessively love (not simply 'like better') even though her story isn't made up; then he goes and tries what he already knew he couldn't do, and believes he did it when he hadn't. Dom doesn't think Miho is anything, as she's showing him otherwise.) Supposedly the CoE people get it. Allegedly Junpei's (grand)mother has some clear insight into it. Miho herself has given a number of versions of it all to Piro in quite a few ways over time, but not always consistently, often contradictory, and missing large important amounts of information; so not very clear to him, if certain reactions are any indication. If any of that is correct exactly either, Analogue-wise, that's another matter which hasn't been answered.

None of which is necessarily particularly conducive to solving the mystery though - what did Erika do to save the world? Was it any of, supporting the illusions, helping keep society in line, telling off the fans, being a major part of what's going on now? Or something else in the realm of things to guess at. Or just a figure of speech and not literal. It's curious either way.

darrin wrote:
Tue Nov 21, 2017 6:45 pm
Okay no offense but "good thing I wasn't portrayed as a FATTY" is really not many degrees better than "that Erika sure is a FATTY".
I agree, saying she'd prefer not to be portrayed as bigger isn't necessarily all that different in terms of degrees than saying Erika is bigger, or that she's not fond of bigger or Erika or both or whatever. The question though was more which one was she saying, not how different they are.

Still, no matter how little the difference, expressing disdain about something you personally prefer less, especially in an abstract sort of way, it is different. Saying you don't like some side of things much, isn't calling somebody else that or doing so in a socially negative and personally insulting sort of way. So yes, Ririka could have been more diplomatic, during the aside, during the rant/lesson/monologue. Although there didn't seem to be malice, and the phrasing was somewhat neutral. And so, how little or great the degree, something like saying 'I'm not fond of plain or large' isn't 'I hate you because you are horribly terribly ugly and disgustingly gigantically monstrous'.

If the question covers who she might be referring to, it's not as much an exercise of trying to dissect the sentiment expressed or reasoning behind it. Not that we don't won't can't do that, but it's a different focus of activity.

If the question is if Ririka was talking about Erika, the answer in that topic alone would seem to be no. Whatever Erika is or might be called body-type and demeanor-wise, or how either of them think about that internally, Erika didn't play Ririka. The rest becomes mostly immaterial.

If we ask instead who was Ririka talking about, the answer there seems nobody in particular, especially since none of the choices available seem to match. That would seem to leave fictional character type presentations and representations. Actresses in costumes and makeup that are other than their actual appearance doing things other than their actual selves according to script and dialog. Or animated drawings that aren't people to begin with. That leaves generalizing some troped generic choices on some scale of wrong when it came to fictional representations of her.

That Ririka prefers something more than other things is hardly surprising, but unimportant if Erika isn't those things, especially if Ririka wasn't Erika's character anyway.

Then in the middle, what Ririka thinks about who did play her, whoever that was. In the realm of dressing up an actress or illustrating a character, that were not like she actually is, which one would Ririka prefer between wafer thin mint to large and in charge. Clearly, she'd rather have the image be a "thin, flat, pretty little blond girl" on some side of wrong. That that fabrication was better than the other side of wrong, where she was a "chunky big butt bossy bruiser". Although the way she says it, it gives the impression she thinks herself more like the second and not at all like the first. Some people would choose the second to be or to have, with varying degrees of comfort in being or liking. She doesn't. What's the problem?

Given what Ririka puts into that aside about who played her, in the context of the story she's telling, she herself has apparently also bought into the made up stories that people like better. Not being more like she thinks she really is, but being more like some fanciful and socially more acceptable type of illusion. Not how things are, but how things are supposed to look and supposed to be. We see that to some extent in everyone here, and it's another lesson for Yuki to perhaps be taught. Unimportant boring reality is less desirable compared to stylized exciting fiction, the fans want the second and so do many of the performers. Some often refuse to believe anything else; even when it's clear and in front of them, it's rejected. The illusion, they expect it, demand it, need it; all supported by the authorities both political and legal, as well as society itself.

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by Patty Acer » Tue Nov 28, 2017 5:35 pm

Ririka's monologue - great bit of exposition, and apparently we're about to get more of erika's backstory too. I look forward to that.

Erika/largo by-play - Largo is not using L33tspeak; ergo he's saying something serious. I like that he admits to jealousy over Erika...also I like that he literally 'has her back' here...hope to see more of what Erika thinks about this, later.

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by Patty Acer » Tue Nov 28, 2017 5:51 pm

chemi wrote:
Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:41 pm
It's pretty obvious from context that Ririka is referring to herself.

You'd think after this many years people would learn not to take Invisigoth's bait.
But why the hell does he feel the need to bait people in the first place? Isn't it F**king enough for him that he can claim to have some kind of inside knowledge of the story direction by dint of being one of Fred's story sounding-boards, and hold that over our heads, and use it to give his insults to our intelligence gravitas, when he attacks SDers' (perfectly normal) reads of the comic material? Why spoil everyone else's fun?

I'm not going to lie, his antics have basically driven me away from SD and are beginning to drive me away from reading Megatokyo altogether.

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by Invisigoth » Tue Nov 28, 2017 8:30 pm

Reality check, I don't troll. When I post something I either believe it or firmly think it's possible

I never reveal any sort of privileged information at any time.

Now Fred has chided me for needling people who take me too seriously. I'll admit to that :P

I probably developed some bad habits way back in the early days of the comic when there were people who actively organized to attempt to force the strip to go in certain directions and part of that included lobbying the mods at the time to ban people like me who have a much darker reading of the strip

Fred's writing is strongly influenced by CJ Cherryh and William Gibson in addition to scary myths and stories from a wide variety of sources, many of which I recognized when I started reading.

Read Idoru by Gibson then go back and work your way through his Sprawl Trilogy.

As for original stuff, Fred's take on kitsune gives me the creeps and that's pretty danged impressive.

I don't dislike anyone here and I don't want anyone to leave, seriously

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by chemi » Thu Nov 30, 2017 11:26 am

On top of that, what little "privileged information" Vis or I might get is always with the caveat that it could change the minute a gentle breeze works through Fred's hair and gives him a different idea.

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by Invisigoth » Thu Nov 30, 2017 1:29 pm

chemi wrote:
Thu Nov 30, 2017 11:26 am
On top of that, what little "privileged information" Vis or I might get is always with the caveat that it could change the minute a gentle breeze works through Fred's hair and gives him a different idea.

Damned straight Chemi :P

Fred: "Didn't you pick that up from the chat in Twitch last night?"

Me: "Uh....I must have been walking the dogs...."

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by NinjaDefenestrator » Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:47 am

Eh, perhaps I'm shortsighted for finding it so, but I thought Largo and Erika's little exchange was cute.

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by S1arburst » Sun Dec 03, 2017 1:34 pm

Patty Acer wrote:
Tue Nov 28, 2017 5:51 pm
chemi wrote:
Fri Nov 24, 2017 11:41 pm
It's pretty obvious from context that Ririka is referring to herself.

You'd think after this many years people would learn not to take Invisigoth's bait.
But why the hell does he feel the need to bait people in the first place? Isn't it F**king enough for him that he can claim to have some kind of inside knowledge of the story direction by dint of being one of Fred's story sounding-boards, and hold that over our heads, and use it to give his insults to our intelligence gravitas, when he attacks SDers' (perfectly normal) reads of the comic material? Why spoil everyone else's fun?

I'm not going to lie, his antics have basically driven me away from SD and are beginning to drive me away from reading Megatokyo altogether.
Agreed, I'd promised myself years ago I wasn't going to let him drive me away from SD, but when the most discussion traffic generated on the forums is from his hammering and hammering his black grucky POV, and skirmishes that opens up, I'm like, eh, why bother. Not that I'm consciously staying away for his sake, it's just losing it's glamor and I'm finding other things to do. To be honest, it's probably half due to the forum move though. Mind you, the coding wizards did an amazing job of trying to make this place homelike and seamlessly shift active accounts over. My password and everything worked, and I didn't even have any hiccups with my avatar until photoshack or whatever the site was pulled their cute little trick. There's just not enough dust here, and my addiction was more directly linked to the previous incarnation of the site :p

Since I'm here anyway, I might as well say I'm loving Largo the last few comics.
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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by darrin » Mon Dec 04, 2017 10:57 am

NinjaDefenestrator wrote:
Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:47 am
Eh, perhaps I'm shortsighted for finding it so, but I thought Largo and Erika's little exchange was cute.
You're not shortsighted, it is cute. Anyone who's read any romance (esp shojo) manga at all should immediately recognize the blush-with-"Baka" trope (as DracMonster mentioned on the first page of this thread); usually it's accompanied by a mumbled "quit saying/doing such nice things to me, it's embarrassing". Erika is not a native speaker of English and should be forgiven for not knowing that "baka" and "fool" (although frequently given as translations for each other) have different semantic "spreads", and that "dummy" or "ya big dummy" would probably have been a better choice in context. Anyone who thinks Erika is genuinely pissed off at Largo here is either completely ignorant of that trope or, as S1arburst put it, indulging in a "black grucky POV". :lol:

(A similar misunderstanding occurred the first time my wife called me "durachok", which is much closer to "baka"/"dummy" than "fool" in practice, but "fool" is what they teach you in Russian class. :()
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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by iffy » Mon Dec 04, 2017 12:55 pm

Original Erika would have broken his arms or something. But after much clarification of the rules starting around 683 it's beyond that sort of thing. Further insight at certain junctions such as around 849 and onward. In 1150. Such as 1260 and 1289, more.

In 1499, Erika appears to peer over her shoulder at Largo before blushing, but there is also that conversation about her going on. She has been more than fluent enough up until now to know what sort of connotations "fool" and "shut up" can have, how some people react to them being tersely said. Yet she's also a few times casually called him fool, to which he's never apparently been bothered by, and indeed he starts a joke about it here. So it looks like telling him to shut up is probably just about getting him to do so, without having to give a lot of explanation and details, so she can hear Ririka. What else we know suggests that any anger would be a lot more obvious. It's not at all obvious, which suggests it doesn't exist. But of course, nothing about that proves or disproves any of it.

For all that, we're all frequently arriving at incorrect conclusions because we lack critical information or have not been given enough of a context to accurately fit what information we do have into the proper spaces. Or it turns out most everyone in story has been knowingly or unknowingly untruthful, and thus our information can't help but lead us to the wrong conclusions, until correct information is provided. And maybe not even then. Like Piro/Miho/Largo, and Endgames; the various things we've learned between 96 and now that have clarified and reclarified many things, and what still remains that we don't know. Until something is answered in story somehow, what anyone thinks or says about that something doesn't really matter, we can only guess and overexplain why we think what we think at some given point in time.

Comic tells a story, and then story verifies if our perceptions were correct or not. Or to be more accurate, mostly doesn't verify our perceptions one way or another. Seeing what story comic says about things doesn't require insider status, and however comic is supposed to be before it's published is totally immaterial until it is published. And maybe not even then.

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by Invisigoth » Mon Dec 04, 2017 9:43 pm

There's nothing cute or romantic about a woman allowing a creepy stalker to take over her life. I'm really hoping that Erika can find her spine and tell Largo to go pound sand before it's too late

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Re: [1499] Little Reflections

Post by darrin » Tue Dec 05, 2017 3:52 pm

Invisigoth wrote:
Mon Dec 04, 2017 9:43 pm
There's nothing cute or romantic about a woman allowing a creepy stalker to take over her life. I'm really hoping that Erika can find her spine and tell Largo to go pound sand before it's too late
Don't get me wrong, I don't really give a third of a rat's ass about Largo; I find him relentlessly annoying, only marginally better than Ed and Dom in that he at least doesn't appear to be intentionally homicidal. Certainly Erika could do better, and I'm certainly not "rooting" for their relationship (not like I am and always have been for Yuki + Yutaka say, and I won't apologize for that one at all :P).

So no, I'm not saying "ooh, Erika and Largo are super cute, therefore she can't possibly be pissed off at him". But the thing is, even if I were nuts enough to find them cute together, I still wouldn't make that argument, because it's a bad argument. Just as it would be a bad argument to say "Largo is an ass and I hate him, therefore Erika must be pissed off at him too, here." The whole question is what Erika actually thinks about him and why, and (given we can't access the inside of Erika/Fred's brain) how we can reasonably justify inferences about her attitude from what's actually seen in the strip.

Is she pissed off in panel 8, or just cutely embarrassed? Well, in panel 7 she's certainly not pissed off; she's surprised, but not apparently in an unpleasant way, there's a tenderness in her expression not really consistent with her being pissed off. (It's not like Largo said anything super-complicated that is taking a while to process, she's had gobs of exposure to the goofy way he talks by now.) Leans more toward panel 8 being the "blush+baka" trope than her being pissed off.

Other side of the frame then, panel 9. If she's pissed off at Largo, why isn't she glaring sideways at him, trying with half her attention to listen to whatever Ririka seems so worked up about? No, whatever her attitude was in panel 8 to whatever it was Largo was trying so ineptly to say, by panel 9 she has completely forgotten about it, it's old news for her, she is fully focused on Ririka. Again, more consistent with mild embarrassment than her being pissed off at him.

Of course, saying "oh it's baka+blush, this is just a trope" would be a risky argument if anything important hinged on it; 95% of the time Fred is subverting these kinds of tropes, not just pulling them in unanalyzed. But when he does there's usually a reason for it, something plot-linked or at least visibly important in the surrounding strips. But again, here it seems pretty detached from the surroundings, over and done with by panel 9, not obviously all that important to Erika let alone anyone else.

Maybe the "baka+blush" thing is too simple an explanation for some; but until I see some signs in the comic that require a more complicated theory for what Erika's thinking, it's good enough for me.
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