Samovar posted:

Fagtastic posted:

It actually makes no sense at all because if Allison was told exactly what she is about to do in every mundane decision, it makes no sense that she would just obey. Conscious minds are capable of decisions, and would be fully capable of defying any prophet. If you *define* your prophecy as infallible, all you've done is make a paradox by introducing an impossible thing. The impossible thing is either free will or determinism.

Spoilers: free will is not impossible.

CrocodileKingSaysNO posted:

We should improve Throne somewhat

DACK FAYDEN posted:

and as an added bonus she now can't fatally lose every fight for the next thirty-five years

she could go kick the jaggahog repeatedly! can't die! thirty five years!

this is why predestination in any story with violent conflict shits all over any pretense of stakes and I do not like it, send tweet

(seriously, the idea that "you should sit here for thirty-five years" produces the same lifespan as "tear off your own arm and pluck out your own eye and return to universe-shattering combat" is insane)

SimonChris posted:

...

Vagabong posted:

Also Jadis being omniscient but having no free will solves the whole 'doing the opposite of what she said ' problem. If she made a specific prediction and then someone did the opposite in response, it doesn't mean her knowledge is flawed, only her ability to communicate it.

Whybird posted:

can't believe that Thorsby started guest writing for Valhalla too

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

false knees
09JUN2018 - 05JUL2018
corn, corhn

Tunicate posted:

anyway, comics!

Splicer posted:

Sisyphus's punishment isn't the toil. He has been promised he can return to the mortal world if he pushed the boulder to the top. His punishment is hope.

barbecue at the folks posted:

This is also apparent in the story of Pandora. We take the end of the story to be an inspiring reminder that even if the world is full of bad stuff going on, there's still hope left, right? For the Greeks the story was probably meant to be a depressive reminder that the world has already gone to Hades and hope is nothing but false expectation. Greeks really didn't believe in hope.

Emzedoh posted:

Takako-san chapter 50

Inexplicable Humblebrag posted:

what are you basing this on?

Whybird posted:

can't believe that Thorsby started guest writing for Valhalla too

Kit Walker posted:

quote:

“The temple of the Eye Revealed, in its vastness, is an extremely dogmatic. Through countless interpretations of the etchings and mutterings of their corpse-goddess, they rule, as they say, from divine decree. I, for one, wouldn’t take my orders from a glorified slate, no matter how holy.”

-Payapop Pritram

quote:

“After running for three years and three days, Prim finally came to a tumbling halt. No matter how far she ran, no matter how fast her legs carried her, she could not find the end of the road. No matter how she scanned the horizon, or reached out with trembling fingers, she could not grasp her resting place. The road continued forever.

There was a way-angel there, standing on a pillar of basalt, who understood many things, and he said to Prim: ‘O piteous thing.” Struck by her dreadful appearance, he recognized her as the orphan of Hansa, for he was very wise in the world. ‘What seek you on the road, small one?’ said the angel, “Perhaps I can offer succor.”

“The end of the road,” croaked Prim.

“There is no end,” said the angel, and it was so indeed. For the road was the rim of the Wheel, which encircled infinity. There was, truly no resting place. For some, this would have been dread news, enough to strike the life out of them. Many had given up when they learned of this, and laid down to die, as was sometimes the way of men in those days.

But for Prim, it washed over her, and soothed her, and for her weary and torn heart was the sweetest balm in the world.”

-Prim Masters the Road

barbecue at the folks posted:

Looking into it, there's a tragic (hope is evil) and non-tragic (hope is good, actually) reading of the story, and I only now realized that I've always been partial to the tragic reading since it was also advocated by Nietzsche: Hope was put in a box/jar of evils by Zeus because hope is an evil that only allows man to continue tormenting himself constantly anew. Looking into it, there's unsurprisingly a large amount of scholarship on the issue and many people these days take the opposite view - Greeks had a non-tragic sense of hope and Hesiod's original meaning was not as clear-cut as the tragic reading would suggest. Teaches me to blast about classics

Tendales posted:

Also also, the Greek word elpis just means expectation, whether it's expecting good things or expecting bad things is a matter of context.

I'm partial to the very minority interpretation that the last evil trapped in the box was foresight, the small mercy granted humanity is that even though all of these inescapable evils are out there, at least we aren't doomed to know exactly which one will finally tag us.

Hunh might be thematically relevant here

Antigravitas posted:

World Famous W posted:

rocketbrah posted:

Owl at Home posted:

Anybody else have this book when they were a kid?



I have a very strong image in my head of how the illustrator drew Hope: a little dumpy, bald creature with tiny wings but no arms. Not happy--almost spooky, maybe even a little pathetic. I should get in the attic and see if I still have that book somewhere.