Back in the early aughts, when many millenials were in high school, before Facebook and Youtube, The Game began. No one knows who started it, but the moment we learned we were playing it, we began to lose. The goal of The Game is to forget you are playing The Game for as long as possible. The rules of The Game are as follows: Everyone is always playing The Game all the time; at school, during breakfast, at night when you are asleep, etc. The Game never ends. The moment you remember that you are playing The Game, you lose and must immediately announce to those around you, “I just lost The Game!” thus making them remember they are also playing The Game and causing them to lose as well. Upon losing, you begin The Game again. Sometimes players could go weeks or months without losing, sometimes only minutes. At the height of The Game’s popularity, it became common to see people at events such as Comic Con or midnight movie premieres, wearing t-shirts proclaiming “You just lost The Game!” Once they were noticed, groans and shouts of “Fuck you!” could be heard for miles. These people thrived on the chaos, taking great pleasure in the cries of their victims. Most people eventually grew bored of The Game, and many began to claim they won by choosing not to care about it anymore. Some rely on a particular XKCD comic strip or Tumblr post to lend a sense of legitimacy to their feeling of victory. They are fools. It is impossible to win The Game. There is only losing. Only a few diehards remain loyal to the rules. The drop in popularity has allowed many to keep from losing The Game for years at a time. The growth of social media has caused a minor resurgence, although without the satisfaction of real time auditory feedback when causing others to lose, The Game will likely fade back into obscurity once again. Someday when we are old and gray, our grandchildren will innocently ask us to play a game of checkers, and we will shriek and shout until the whole nursing home joins us in defeat. Death is the only release from The Game.
As someone that has grown up surrounded by beaches and done surf life saving, I know how the sea works. Lots of people dont. Every summer multiple tourists die here because they don’t respect the sea, if you’re going to the coast, here’s a thing I saw on Facebook.
There’s another story that I like about a Chinese general who had to defend a city with only a handful of soldiers from a huge enemy horde that was in all likelihood going to steamroll the place flat within hours of showing up.
So when said horde did arrive, they saw the general sitting outside the city’s open gates, drinking tea. The horde sent a couple of emissaries over to see what was what, and the general greeted them cheerfully and invited them all to come and take tea with him.
The horde decided that this was a scenario that had “MASSIVE FUCKING TRAP” written all over it in beautiful calligraphy and promptly fucked off.
Whoever that general was, he was clearly the Ancient Chinese equivalent of Sam Vimes.
did he just invite us over for tea nah man i’m out
This just keeps getting better
I fucking love history.
ok but tbh that story misses a lot of the subtlety of the situation like ok
so this story is the Romance of Three Kingdoms, and essentially takes place between Zhuge Liang, resident tactician extraordinaire, and Sima Yi… OTHER resident tactician extraordinaire.
The two were both regarded as tactical geniuses and recognized the other as their rival. Zhuge Liang had a reputation for ambushing the SHIT out of his opponents and using the environment to his advantage, thus destroying large armies with a small number of men. Sima Yi (who kind of entered the picture later) was a cautious person whose speciality was unravelling his opponent’s plans before they began. So it was natural that the two would butt heads; however, since Sima Yi tended to have more men and resources, he started winning battles against the former. Which, y’know, kinda sucked.
On to the actual story: Zhuge Liang is all like “shit i gotta defend this city with like 10 men.” Literally if he fights ANY kind of battle here, he WILL lose; his only option for survival is not to fight. And that’s looking more and more impossible until he hears that his rival is leading the opposing army. And then he gets this brilliant idea. He basically opens all the gates, sends his men out in civilian clothes to sweep the streets, and sits on top of the gate drinking tea and chilling out and basically makes the whole thing out to be a trap
When Sima Yi comes he’s all like “yo come on in bro”
and Sima Yi is like “yeah he’s never been that obvious about his traps before. this is definitely a bluff” and he’s about to head in when he realizes
wait. he knows that i think he’s bluffing.
and so he gets it in his head that maybe, just MAYBE, Zhuge Liang has this cunning plan that will wipe out his army – recall that he has a pretty good handle on what his rival is capable of. And after a long period of deliberation (which is just like “he know that I know that he knows that etc.”), being the cautious man he is, SIma Yi eventually decides to turn his entire army around and leave.
Zhuge Liang later points out that the plan was based specifically on the fact that he was facing his rival; if it had been anyone else, there’s no way it would have worked. A dumber or less cautious person would have simply charged in and won without breaking a sweat.
and that’s the real genius here: it was a plan formed entirely just to deceive one man, and it worked.
Zhuge Liang is the most brilliant, sneaky-ass bastard in history. One time his side’s army was out of arrows, which pretty much meant they were screwed. So Zhuge Liang goes and does the logical thing, which is build a fuck ton of scarecrows and put them all on boats. Then he makes the men hide in the boats and sail them out on the river.
Well, that day was super foggy (which Zhuge Liang had predicted. Did I mention he was also a freakishly accurate meteorologist?). So the enemy across the river sees a fleet of boats armed to the teeth with what appears to be half an army of men. They panic! and start firing arrows like crazy.
Zhuge Liang lets this play out for a while, then he’s like, ”Ok guys that’s enough.” They calmly turn the boats around and go back to base, where they dismantle the scarecrows and pull out all the enemy’s arrows.
Zhuge Liang is legend.
I love this post. It just keeps getting better. Like seriously, I would have adored learning about this in World History.
If you want to see this in cinematic glory, watch Red Cliff.
Especially since it makes Zhuge Liang look like this:
Red Cliff is 50% bloody battles and 50% eye candy and about half of that eye-candy is due to Zhuge Liang
Steve Rogers did, in fact, realize that something was off when he saw the outline of the woman’s odd bra (a push-up bra, he would later learn), but being an officer and a gentleman, he said that it was the game that gave the future away.
No, see, this scene is just amazing. The costume department deserves so many kudos for this, it’s unreal, especially given the fact that they pulled off Peggy pretty much flawlessly.
1) Her hair is completely wrong for the 40’s. No professional/working woman would have her hair loose like that. Since they’re trying to pass this off as a military hospital, Steve would know that she would at least have her hair carefully pulled back, if maybe not in the elaborate coiffures that would have been popular.
2) Her tie? Too wide, too long. That’s a man’s tie, not a woman’s. They did, however, get the knot correct as far as I can see – that looks like a Windsor.
3) That. Bra. There is so much clashing between that bra and what Steve would expect (remember, he worked with a bunch of women for a long time) that it has to be intentional. She’s wearing a foam cup, which would have been unheard of back then. It’s also an exceptionally old or ill-fitting bra – why else can you see the tops of the cups? No woman would have been caught dead with misbehaving lingerie like that back then, and the soft satin cups of 40’s lingerie made it nearly impossible anyway. Her breasts are also sitting at a much lower angle than would be acceptable in the 40’s.
Look at his eyes. He knows by the time he gets to her hair that something is very, very wrong.
so what you are saying is S.H.E.I.L.D. has a super shitty costume division….
Nope, Nick Fury totally did this on purpose.
There’s no knowing what kind of condition Steve’s in, or what kind of person he really is, after decades of nostalgia blur the reality and the long years in the ice (after a plane crash and a shitload of radiation) do their work. (Pre-crash Steve is in lots of files, I’m sure. Nick Fury does not trust files.) So Fury instructs his people to build a stage, and makes sure that the right people put up some of the wrong cues.
Maybe the real Steve’s a dick, or just an above-average jock; maybe he had a knack for hanging out with real talent. Maybe he hit his head too hard on the landing and he’s not gonna be Captain anymore. On the flipside, if he really is smart, then putting him in a standard, modern hospital room and telling him the truth is going to have him clamming up and refusing to believe a goddamn thing he hears for a really long time.
The real question here is, how long it does it take for the man, the myth, the legend to notice? What does he do about it? How long does he wait to get his bearings, confirm his suspicions, and gather information before attempting busting out?
Turns out the answer’s about forty-five seconds.
Sometimes clever posts die a quiet death in the abyss of the unreblogged. Some clever posts get attention, get comments, get better. Then there’s this one which I’ve watched evolve into a thing of brilliance.
I accidentally created the most soothing drink in the world after trying to recreate the hot honey drink in Ponyo! I guarantee it will remove all stress and troubles, I’ve had like 3 today because it makes me so happy
This was so obvious when I realized it, but I think most people miss
it, because we’re so desensitized by D&D-style magic with immediate,
visibly, flashy effects, rather than more subtle and invisible forces
of magic. When Gollum attacks Frodo on the slopes of Mount Doom, Frodo
has the chance to kill him, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says:
Frodo: Go! And if you ever lay hands on me again, you yourself shall be cast into the Fire!
Frodo’s not just talking shit here. He is literally, magically laying a curse. He’s holding the One Ring in his hands as he says it;
even Sam, with no magic powers of his own, can sense that some powerful
mojo is being laid down. Frodo put a curse on Gollum: if you try to
take the Ring again, you’ll be cast into the Fire.
Five pages later, Gollum tries to take the Ring again. And that’s exactly what happens.
Frodo’s geas takes effect and Gollum eats lava.
On further reflection:
All the other people in the franchise who were offered the Ring declined to take it because they were wise enough to know that if they used its power – and the pressure to do so would be too great – they would be subject to its corruption.
Frodo uses the power of the Ring to lay a geas, and then five minutes later at the volcano’s edge, succumbs to its corruption. The Ring has gotten to him and he can no longer give it up. Because he used its power.
On further further reflection: I’d have to read the section again, but I recall that after throwing Gollum off and laying the geas, Sam observes that Frodo seems suddenly filled with energy again when previously he had been close to dead of fatigue. He hikes up the mountain so fast he leaves Sam behind – and doesn’t even seem to notice that he’s left him behind.
Could he have been drawing on the Ring’s power at this point in the story?
At this point in the story we’re relying on Sam’s narration, and Sam doesn’t know what’s going on in Frodo’s head, so it’s hard to say for sure.
Having used it once, after spending so long holding out against it, was that the breach in the dam?
Which means that the moment that Frodo succumbs to temptation is not the moment at the volcano – it was already too late by then. The moment he is taken by temptation was when he used the power of the Ring to repel Gollum.
If so, this ties in neatly with discussions I’ve seen about how Tolkien subscribes to a “not even once” view of good and evil – that in many other works it’s acceptable to do a small evil in service of a greater good, but in Lord of the Rings that always fails.
Re-reading Fellowship of the Rings, and I got to this passage in Lorien:
‘I would ask one thing before we go,’ said Frodo, ‘a thing which I often meant to ask Gandalf in Rivendell. I am permitted to wear the One Ring: why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?’
‘You have not tried,’ [Galadriel] said. ‘Only thrice have you set the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others.’
In other words:
Frodo asks Galadriel, herself carrying a Ring of Power, “Could I, hypothetically, use the power of the One Ring to do something magical aside from turning invisible?” and Galadriel replies, “Yes, hypothetically, you totally could, assuming the magic you want to do involves laying compulsions on others, but I strongly recommend against it, because it would fuck up your brain.”
This was in the first book. At the end of the third book Frodo uses the Ring to fuck Gollum up, forcing him to throw himself into lava if he disobeys Frodo’s commands.
Talk about a chekov’s gun.
Got to this point in my re-read and uh. This was a lot less subtle than I remembered it.
‘Down, down!’ [Frodo] gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring. ‘Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot slay me or betray me now.’
Then suddenly, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice.
‘Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.’
Then the vision passed and Sam saw Frodo standing, hand on breast, his breath coming in great gasps, and Gollum at his feet, resting on his knees with his wide-splayed hands upon the ground.
…
Yeah.
THIS IS GENIUS
This is excellent re-reading.
And all the way back in Rivendell, when Frodo wakes up after being rescued from the Nazgul, Pippin jokingly says something like “Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!” and Gandalf says “Do. Not. Even, Joke. About that.”
I’d noticed the laying of the geas, but hadn’t figured out that the moment of temptation was then, not later at the Sammath Naur. This is a brilliant deduction which deserves publication in a Tolkien Studies journal, IMNSHO.
uhHHHH I don’t mean to be dramatic or anything but I literally wrote 50k words in two weeks without fuckening trying,like won NaNoWriMo in 2 weeks,TWO WEEKS, after joining4thewords.comand I’m like
w h a t
OK so it’s pretty much like Neopets + Gaia Online + RPG, But You Level Up Through Writing
You “battle” cute online critters with your word count
You can dress up your avatar and whatnot and there are different regions and crafting quests
and my weird brain apparently responds VERY WELL to nerd gamification
because Holy Shit I wrote 50,600 words in 2 fuckening weeks
and am now 4thewords’ new hype squad
(also if you join, use the referral code PEUOC65061 so if you get a full membership, which I totally am, we will both be rewarded)
basically, wow I have never been this productive in my LIFE and I can’t wait for their July mini nanowrimo event (they’re doing a pride month one right now so you can get a rainbow shirt and fight rainbow beasties it’s freakin adorable)
and if this sounds like something you would enjoy, go for it, try to catch me, just do it, come at me friends let’s write some good shit together
willowfoot 