Introduction

Pertaining to Taylor Swift, "Female Rage" has deviated from its intended meaning after Swift debuted a new performance of The Tortured Poets Department during the Eras Tour. Now, according to Swift's use of the phrase, female rage is interpreted as public backlash against Swift's dating choices rather than as a response to the broader injustices against women and women's rights. This post examines Taylor Swift's flawed feminism, philanthropy, branding, and the controversial trademark petition for the phrase "Female Rage: The Musical". Swift's background as an entertainer, indeterminate politics, and alignment with capitalism over feminism pervades her legacy, again threatening her public tolerance as not just an individual but as a brand.

Once Upon a Female Rage...

If you were cognizant in the early 2010's, you've heard countless jabs at Taylor Swift in the media. Magazines, radio, or online. Music critics did not take her seriously as a songwriter; parents put a woman on an unrealistic pedestal as the ideal role model for their children; she dated too much and used men as lyrical fodder. No matter the story, it inevitably spread, conjoined with everyone's respective opinions, and you'd be left to wonder, "Why does everyone hate this girl so much?"
Taylor's target demographic has always been young or adolescent girls, more so when Swift herself was one. She made music that spoke to the awkward misfit, cultivating a para-social relationship with fans on MySpace, then later twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, where Taylor posted relatable vlogs showcasing the life of a homegrown American girl. Taylor had a delayed public "growing up" and, compared to her female pop contemporaries, Swift never "gratuitously sexualized her image and seems pathologically averse to controversy" (and, apparently, never even had a sip of alcohol until she turned 21). She was more than happy to spin this narrative to allude to an inherent moral superiority above other women in the industry (Better Than Revenge, heard of it?), engaging in the very slut-shaming that she herself endured (the Madonna and Whore archetypes). The victim complex arose with the need to prove Taylor as a different type of pop girl. Based upon her holy and clean image, Swift had been dubbed "a feminist's nightmare", and that "[To Swift] other girls are obstacles; undeserving enemies who steal Taylor’s soulmates with their bewitching good looks and sexual availability." Feminism and Tennessee-Christian country values don't exactly mix, it seems.
Years later, Swift befriended Lena Dunham and thus experienced white feminism osmosis, where Dunham taught Swift that real feminists defend rapists, makes insensitive jokes about rape and abortion, and prioritize all-white casts. Swift then declared herself a feminist in 2014, saying,

"Becoming friends with Lena – without her preaching to me, but just seeing why she believes what she believes, why she says what she says, why she stands for what she stands for – has made me realize that I’ve been taking a feminist stance without actually saying so."

I suppose the male-centric songwriting subject that permeates Swift's discography contained covert feminism and that we just didn't see that. Perhaps, the "Bad Blood" song and music video were written only in jest and not about poor Katy Perry, for Swift, as a feminist, would "never make it a girl fight" or tear other women down (though all Katy did was date your terrible ex-boyfriend and allegedly steal three backup dancers from your tour). In 2013, Swift said, in response to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's joke towards her serial dating, "There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."
There was that time in 2015 Taylor said that Nicki Minaj was "invited to any stage [she is] on" (as if Taylor expects to have access to every stage, award, and platform that Nicki might not otherwise have as a black female artist...yikes!) in response to Nicki's criticism of the white + thin VMA nominations. Later, Nicki responded with confusion, as Swift continued, "It’s unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot..". Of course, this 'beef' was 'squashed' when Nicki performed with Taylor at the VMAs, with Nicki quite literally only having 38 seconds of stage time without Taylor. Maybe all that parading around with a legion of famous white women - similar to the way Taylor might've done with her numerous 1989-era handbags - was in fact a stance against gender inequality, and that this display of "girl power" should be enough to constitute Swift as a feminist icon.
Even while Swift says that Dunham informed her feminist outlook, she dances around the exact contents of those beliefs: "what she believes, what she says, what she stands for" is not exactly insightful towards what beliefs Swift might have inherited. Taylor never broaches women's rights topics such femicide, FGM, forced pregnancy & marriage, sex trafficking, women in slavery, women's financial and political oppression, women's educational rights, women's health, or women's autonomy, so we can assume she only gives a fuck about "girls supporting girls" (whatever that fucking means).
Despite some questionable (and sometimes vindictive) behavior, Taylor as a young woman did not deserve every media lashing that she received. We cannot deny that most headlines and criticisms perpetuated a misogynistic rhetoric which has plagued Swift for a majority of her career. Acknowledging events such as the development of her ED, her sexual assault trial, "Famous" lyric and MV depiction of Taylor, and the explicit Twitter deepfakes, for example, as both disgusting and unfortunate things that happened to a young woman in Hollywood does not negate the fact that Taylor is mostly a performative feminist.

Get Your Fucking Ass Up and Be a Philanthropist, It Seems Like Nobody Wants to Be a Philanthropist These Days

In 2013, Taylor Swift cut the ribbon at the grand opening of the Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. The donation amount - $4 million - was the largest individual artist gift ever donated to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which is, of course, mentioned on Swift's website. The two-story facility features three classrooms, an instrument room, and an interactive children's exhibit gallery. Swift also performed at "All for the Hall" charity shows and has donated numerous artifacts from her career (such as notable guitars, tour costumes, etc) to the museum.
This was over 11 years ago, and it is still the only notable philanthropic contribution Taylor Swift has made.
For a woman of her net worth and stature, and a woman who recognizes the difficulties for women in film and music, you would think that Taylor Swift might establish a scholarship program for women to study the arts or something. Perhaps Swift might even consider becoming a member of organizations that support female artists, or one that supports LGBTQ+ causes (since she is now proudly an ally), yet she remains superficial with her graces. Broader philanthropy, such as donating relief aid to Palestinian women or women impacted by violence and discrimination will probably never receive any financial support from Miss Swift because then she'd be using her money towards philanthropies involving anyone but white entertainers.
She even says herself in Miss Americana, "My entire moral code as a kid and now is a need to be thought of as 'good'." Well, she's certainly thought of as good, though her actions say otherwise. She's more than happy to do a vaguely altruistic song and dance for a clip-worthy interview quote and mass appeasement, then fuck off to one of her mansions on a 20 minute private jet flight, rather than actually contribute to anything pertaining to the causes she has endorsed. Yet, far too many people continue to give a woman such as her their money, time, and energy, and she hoards these resources to herself.

I Like Some of the Taylor's Songs, But What the Fuck Does She Know About Feminism?

Swift continued with her self-proclaimed feminist campaign, positioning herself as a political activist and LGBTQ+ ally in the Miss Americana documentary. The primary focus of the documentary consists of the sexual assault trial, Andrea Swift's cancer diagnosis, Taylor's ED and body dysmorphia, media scrutiny, and, largely, finally speaking up about her politics publicly, mostly her opposition to the 2018 Tennessee Republican senate candidate, Marsha Blackburn, and Blackburn's beliefs. Swift says, following a scene discussing her experience during the trial,

"I just couldn't really stop thinking about it. And I just thought to myself, next time there is any opportunity to change anything, you had better know what you stand for and what you want to say."

We must ask ourselves, though: when has Swift ever spoken up to change anything? Okay, pulling her entire catalogue from Spotify because they didn't pay their artists enough and similarly pulling her catalogue from Apple Music are changes that she leveraged due to her revenue potential and power, but they are not pertinent to the average woman's rights. Moreover, these are issues that directly impacted Taylor's income, which was enough reason for her to protest in the first place. Swift has sold the most units for a female artist in first week sales, is the first female artist with 100k monthly Spotify listeners, is the first female artist to win the Album of the Year Grammy 4 times, and is the first female artist to do X, Y, and Z, all while being inoffensive and family-friendly to boot. The actual Taylor Swift seems unwilling to compromise the brand of Taylor Swift by contributing in meaningful ways to feminist causes, especially if it is for women outside of America and Hollywood.
The reason political anthems such as "The Man" and "Only the Young" of the Lover era feel disingenuous and corporate is because, well, it is. Taylor has taken every opportunity to advance her career or public image at the expense of other women. What is truly genuine to Taylor's outlook on other women is vying for male attention, taking down female competition, and vocalizing feminist injustices only if they directly impact her and her money. Some will argue that it's satisfactory for a woman with such a huge platform to even TALK about feminism, but that just isn't enough. It's even less impressive when you candidly look at the scope of her feminist lens: "If I was the man, then I'd be THE MAN", or "I really resent the ‘Be careful, buddy, she’s going to write a song about you’ angle, because it trivialises what I do", and, of course, "We all got crowns". Feminism, but only when it happens to me. It gets worse when you look at Taylor's track record of copying other famous women and removing other female artists as potential threats to her pop prowess.
It's good for PR to align yourself with certain blanket feminist and political beliefs, therefore good for branding, therefore good for ticketing and merchandise sales, therefore good for business. And Taylor Swift is a business.
She's not a feminist. Taylor Swift is a capitalist.

I Can't Pay Those Sweatshop Workers a Livable Wage or Benefits! How Else Would I Make My Billions?

Recently, Taylor's team filed to trademark the phrase "Female Rage: The Musical" after Taylor said during Paris N1 of the Eras Tour,

"So you were the first ones to see The Tortured Poets at the Eras Tour...or as I like to call it, 'Female Rage: The Musical'."

This trademark petition was filed last week on Saturday, and news comes about just as numerous unofficial fan-made merch designs have cropped up with this phrase plastered on Fruit of the Loom basics. I'm of the opinion Swift's team motioned for a trademark so that they can send out cease & desists to all those that make knockoff merch, which disrupts potential sales for Bravado, UMG's choice merchandising company; however, since it was filed earlier, perhaps Swift has bigger plans with the bizarre use of the gendered phrase. One Swiftie referred to the phrase "female rage" as "a funny Eras Tour joke". Could it be a possible fourth version of the Eras Tour Movie? Whatever the reason, the motion to capitalize off of such a concept is disgusting, but not unsurprising, for a woman that profits on her vain feminism.
Swift, through her company, TAS Rights Managements, has also trademarked over 200 phrases, including "1989", where she owns the property rights to this calendar year on keychains, phone cases, sunglasses, stationary, bags, beverage ware, clothing, entertainment services, your subconscious, and, of course, Christmas ornaments.
The vapid consumerism in Swiftie culture is, frankly, disgusting. Bravado's sustainability statement is non-existent, the quality control is abysmal, and the materials they use are horrible. The materials, such as acrylic and polyester, are made from petrochemicals. This means they are non-renewable, shed microplastics, and are quite toxic in production. The manufacturing process to make all of those lazy-rushed Eras Tour logo graphic tees is a huge blow to environmental well-being. Apparently, though, Swifties don't give a fuck. They sell out products in seconds and either have to face the manufactured scarcity or buy from a scalper that resells for 200% of the already ridiculous retail price. This doesn't include the environmental impact of vinyl records, CD, and cassette production, of which Taylor produces many variants that sell unsustainable amounts.
If we're talking about women's rights violations, why is no one acknowledging the women that work in the inhumane sweatshop conditions that have to pump out fugly t-shirts and hats? The millions of plastic microfiber dander they are inhaling, or the toxic dyes that touch their bare skin? Are they being compensated fairly for their skilled labour and are they in safe working environments? Do these women have minimal bargaining power, and do they have authority over their worker's rights? Is Taylor Swift female raging at their injustices? Does Taylor Swift ever feels bad that her wealth was built on the backs of women of color, disadvantaged by the demands of the global economy and garment industry? Do you think she ever says a little white feminist prayer for them before she goes to sleep at night?
What's even crazier is not that Taylor herself doesn't care, it's that Swifties don't care. There CANNOT BE ethical billionaires. You only make a billion dollars if you are exploiting other human beings for capital gain. Based on public perception of the possible "Female Rage: The Musical" trademark, it seems like Swifties are already asking for merch with this phrase. "If Taylor made it, I'd buy it." Oh, cool. So not only do you champion Miss Swift's avarice and billionaire status, but you also are unashamed to admit to your blind consumption of her music and merchandise, no matter where they might originate in production or sincerity. Just as Swift takes and takes and takes, Swifties' consumerism of Taylor Swift cannot be quelled.
The tortured artist's most vulnerable and sincere poetry...available now in 21 different versions!

I Am Tortured Poet, Hear Me Whinge

Look - even if Taylor's intention is to characterize TTPD as more "tortured" and "angry", the main thread of the album is "I was ghosted by my decade-long situationship with a controversial indie boy and my fucking stupid fans wrote a 'Speak Up Now' open letter prompting me to drop him" anger, which is adequately expressed in the lyrics and performances. The extent of Taylor's "female rage" on TTPD is on tracks such as "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?", which contends with relentless media scrutiny; "But Daddy I Love Him", where Swift firmly states she'll date whoever she likes no matter how "Sarahs and Hannahs" may react; and "The Albatross", a track mythologizing her reputation and the consequences of dating her. Of course, these coincide with deep psychological wounds that formed during Swift's early years in the media, and so, from her feminist perspective, these subjects tackle the misogyny and double standards that she faced.
Yet Taylor Swift still has no grounds to be claiming that TTPD best exemplifies female rage and therefore she, in the context of this album, is female rage incarnate. As the daughter of a stock broker and mutual fund marketing executive, Taylor was born into wealth and allowed privileges like trips and subsequent relocation to Nashville all so that she might get a record deal. Her father even invested at least $120,000 into the then-fledgling label, Big Machine Records, which ensured Taylor's place with Borchetta after leaving her dead-end development deal with Sony. The fact that her parents were able to buy her a fucking brand new guitar for Christmas and pay for music lessons says so much about the financial security and safety of her childhood.
Money is privilege and protection, and despite Swift's experiences with misogyny and loser boyfriends, she does not know what female rage is.
Her rage is derived from her frustrations with her obsessive fans pulling the moral superiority card on Taylor in response to her rebound with Matty Healy. That's literally it. She's just pissed that the monster she created is no longer obediant, it's become a feral, sovereign entity that depletes the world of its natural resources and thinks it is more intelligent than it actually is because it's mommy has started to talk to it with big words. Apparently, 'illicit', 'elegy', 'nonchalant', and 'precocious' are considerably big words for the oafish monster, and I find it strange that this level of literacy is present in a group of fans that allegedly have GPAs of 3.5 or higher, but I digress.
Taylor Swift has never been one paycheck away from destitution. Taylor Swift has never experienced racial discrimination. She may have instances of gender discrimination, but she possesses the ideal white, blonde American beauty standard and therefore reaps the benefits of being a conventionally attractive woman. Taylor Swift has sufficient social capital. Taylor Swift is a billionaire woman prolonging her victimhood though she, as a woman, has mostly had control over her image and music (unlike her contemporaries). Taylor Swift is NOT entitled to be championed for her "female rage", nor should she be. Taylor Swift has never even been the struggling artist, for fuck's sake. I don't give a fuck if she's trying to fill the empty lunch tables of her past. Taylor Swift purporting herself, her unpolished album, and her lukewarm feminism as a musical bleeding with female rage is asinine.

Sigh Try and Come For My Job, Poors

Out there in the world right now is a 23-year-old woman, a recent college grad, who works as a barista. She has to wake up and get ready to go into a minimum wage job because she cannot get a job in her field. She doesn't have healthcare benefits or sick time, so she has to go into work no matter how she's feeling. All day long she is berated by vicious customers and creepy men, and, exhausted from being on her feet, she knows she has to go home to her shitty roommate that never does the dishes and her roommate's shitty dog. To comfort herself, she considers getting a treat, but thinks against it when she remembers that matcha lattes cost $15 and they taste like milky dirt. She knows that she needs to buy groceries this week, and so the woman resolves to go home, but notices that her gas tank is low. She goes to put gas in the car, but the pump stops at $27.86 because that's all that she has in her checking account. The woman, bereft and reeling, sinks into the driver's seat. "Well," she thinks, her head in her hands, "at least I don't have Taylor Swift's job. I just couldn't imagine."
Fame is somewhat of a choice. If at any moment Taylor feels that she is misunderstood, misconstrued, or overwhelmed by public opinion, she can LEAVE the public eye - Lord knows she has the retirement fund and residuals to do so. In "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart", the TTPD song about meeting the demands of your career-zenith mega-tour while in the relationship trenches, Taylor ends the song by rambling,

"You know you're good when you can even do it with a broken heart...you know you're good...and I'm good, cause I'm miserable, and no one even knows!...try and come for my job."

Yeah, obviously we wouldn't know, you recently passed the billionaire threshold and are the most famous and in-demand performer in the world right now. Taylor Swift makes an estimated $10 to $13 million dollars A NIGHT on the Eras Tour. Furthermore, the Eras Tour movie grossed $261.6 million globally, (which, as the producer, Taylor takes home 57% of the ticket sales) not counting the streaming revenue from Amazon Prime Video and the estimated $75 million deal that Disney paid to have it on Disney+. We're not even considering the income from cheap plastic popcorn buckets and drink cups plastered with colored squares in her Era-specific likeness.
It's funny. Taylor Swift often said that being famous wasn't hard, that she "isn't complaining". I'm sure it is difficult to always have to present in a good mood, else you'll end up misrepresented in the media, and I'm sure it's invasive to virtually have no privacy or semblance of anonymity. Still, Taylor Swift shows up each night of tour and performs. For a majority of her career, she has penned her sad songs while on the road. Most of "Red", her breakup album, was written in the thick of the Speak Now World tour. Now, some Swifties say they almost "feel bad" for attending the Eras Tour with Swift's revelations in this song, that they have had a 'dimmed experience' upon hearing Taylor's misery whilst performing. Despite the fact that Taylor said that "this was the happiest she's ever been" at Gilette Stadium in May, the lyrics "boohoo, woe is me, smile for the cameras and make the fans happy!!!" are jarring for Eras attendees.
While Taylor Swift was making double-digit millions a night in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and feeling miserable, Ana Clara Benevides Machado passed away due to heat exposure. The concert promoters, Time For Fun, are now the subject of a criminal investigation due to their lack of adequate hydration and safety. Taylor Swift cancelled the Sunday show that was to follow and offered VIP tent tickets to Benevides Marchado's family, which was a kind gesture, but perhaps incongruous to the incident of which they were offered as consolation. Everyone grieves differently, of course, but I'm not sure attending the very show at the very same venue that my daughter or sister passed away in two days prior, where the singer CONTINUED the show despite her death, would be healthy for closure.
There was no female rage at the show as Swift never saw Benevides Machado pass out. There was no female rage towards the disregard for fans as humans while Swift elected to proceed with her Brazil tour dates despite the country being in historic heatwaves (at risk of overheatting herself). If Taylor Swift was so shaken by touring with a broken heart or a fan's passing, she wouldn't have added an additional North American leg of Eras just two months after the Matty breakup. She's brokenhearted but willing to mend the cracks with your money and move onward with her worldwide female rage induced pillaging.
No matter what happens, even if you die at a Taylor Swift concert, Taylor collects a big fat check and flies away. She doesn't know you as anything other than a conversion rate or earning potential despite what her nearly 20-year long parasocial relationship with fans might otherwise indicate. She knows that, while some Swifties are without disposable income, they feel obligated to spend on a "48 Hours Only!" exclusive vinyl variant instead of necessities because they are so entrenched in Taylor Swift's intoxicating celebrity, they'll prioritize materialistic fandom before their needs. This is good enough for her because this means she can expand her real estate portfolio and finance her cat's lavish lifestyles. They're worth an estimated $100 million dollars. Her three cats could pool their net worth and solve world hunger.
While you and I might be denied bereavement leave and barely surviving the current political and economic climate, Taylor Swift has to, instead of gets to, perform for stadiums at full attendance for three nights in a row across the globe. You and I might be replaced by AI at our longtime jobs, but Taylor Swift is threatened with losing more and more money each time you listen to a "Stolen Version" of her songs. If we don't buy every variant of all of her albums, then who is going to pay for the fucking cats?
It is tone deaf to spend as she spends and lives as she lives in this economy, but this is her reality. She was able to donate $100,000 to all of her tour truck drivers, and that's wonderful, but it leads me to wonder about the ethos of the 2020s where one woman can hoard such life-changing amounts of money. Remember in 2014 when she gave a fan $90 ($120 in today's money) to get Chipotle because she had no fucking clue how much it cost? This is a 34-year-old woman who is increasingly out of touch with the reality for working class people and women in general. Normal everyday adults must wake up and go to their thankless jobs, and yet Taylor Swift, despite all her riches, incessantly references the lows of her life and career as a public figure and entertainer to farm sympathy and drive sales. And still, the corporate women have latched onto "I cry a lot, but I am so productive! It's an art!" as their cubicle battle cry.
Do you think that, from up in her private jet, Taylor Swift gazes at the world through her poetic, tortured eyes, and thinks, "All the little people, in their cars, walking, going about their lives...all those girls that don't support girls...do they know that I've made an album about female rage?"

Conclusion/TLDR

Thank you for reading. I would love to hear your critical insights towards this entire ordeal: TTPD, the trademark, the implications of it all.
TLDR: Taylor Swift is a bad feminist and is delusional to think that the TTPD eras set exemplifies female rage at women's injustice.

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Hello! I just got back my MCAT and I was hoping to get help tailoring my med school list. Hoping to apply this cycle with no gap year.
Residence: Michigan (hoping to stay in state)
Background: ORM (Muslim, South Asian Female)
cGPA/MCAT: 3.64/519
LORs/PS: LORs are from two MD and two science profs should be average/above avg, and the PS is fairly basic discussing cultural competency in medicine mainly.
Shadowing: 110 hours in Oncology + 44 hours Pediatrics
Clinical: 100 hours in Phlebotomy (projected about 200 hours more)
Volunteering: 30 hours volunteering in general ward of hospital (restocking, patient surveys) + 100 hours Crisis Text Line (projected 50 hours more)
Leadership: On board of an advocacy/tutoring club, raised $3000+ for an initiative to help local community schools, about about a year and a half/70 hours
Research: Worked 300 hours in a wet lab where biological basis of neurological diseases were studied, 1 publication out of it (non first author)
Misc: involved in the campus Muslim Student Association, was heavily involved in student life/student organization logistics, was involved in secretary work at a religious academy, misc hobbies
Which schools are not worth keeping on here? Which should I add? I made this list prior to getting my MCAT back, so I'm not sure what is my best step after this. I'm hoping to mainly apply MD, is that a possibility with my stats/background?
School List:
University of Michigan Medical School
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Michigan State University Osteopathic School (only DO)
Western Michigan Homer Stryker School of Medicine
Wayne State University School of Medicine
Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine
Central Michigan University College of Medicine
University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences
Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine (reach >_<)
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Northeast Ohio Medical University
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
Howard University College of Medicine
State University of New York Upstate Medical University
State University of New York Downstate Medical University
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry
Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine
Albany Medical College
University of Calfornia, Davis
University of Cincinnati
East Virginia Medical School
Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
Tulane University
Albert Einstein College of Medicine (big reach, but that free tuition >_<)
Thank you!

AMA on expert network interviews, CDDs, B2B surveys, or entrepreneurship after consulting.
After 3.5 years in strategy consulting, 20+ CDDs and 100’s of expert interviews, I got fascinated by the expert network industry. That led me to start and exit an expert network, and then Inex One - the expert network marketplace.

Starting to get more things knocked out of the game and want to hit 100% mission/side mission completion and surveys and such but is it worth doing NewGame+ first to at least experience that once? I essentially don’t want to do all of these side missions/surveys finish the game then lose it all after NewGame+. I’m leaning towards halting the side missions and doing new+ once just to at least experience it then investing my time completing everything in NewGame+.
Thoughts?

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DAY: MAY 13, 2024

• 5-13-2024BIKING REVEALED TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH LESS KNEE PAIN LATER IN LIFE A study reveals that people who participated in regular bicycling over their lifetime had a lower prevalence of frequent knee pain, radiographic osteoarthritis (ROA) and symptomatic radiographic osteoarthritis (SOA). Rheumatologists often encourage regular physical activity for the prevention of osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis. However, some exercises are more effective than others.
• 5-13-2024STRESSFUL LIFE EVENTS CAN INCREASE YOUR RISK OF ALZHEIMER’S Stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one or divorce, put a person at greater risk of developing dementia in later life, a recent study has found. But only if the stressful event happened in childhood or midlife. The study included 1,290 people at increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers looked at 18 stressful life events and when in people’s lives they happened.
• 5-13-2024TIPS FOR LOWERING STROKE RISK May is National Stroke Awareness Month, and as part of everyday awareness, Mayo Clinic health care professionals suggest reducing stroke risk and knowing the signs. A stroke happens every 40 seconds in the U.S., and the likelihood of stroke increases with age, according to the National Institutes of Health. Preventing a stroke is a crucial aspect of health care, as about 80% of all strokes are preventable. The focus is on managing risk factors to reduce the long-term risk of stroke.
• 5-13-2024IT’S TIME TO USE TIKTOK TO TALK TO YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT OBESITY, SAYS RESEARCHER There is an urgent need to harness the potential of TikTok and other social media channels to provide scientific information about obesity to young people in engaging and accessible way . The popularity and broad reach of such platforms provides the opportunity to reach diverse audiences, including teenagers and young adults, explains lead researcher Dr. Antonella Franceschelli, of Unicamillus International Medical University, Rome, Italy.
• 5-13-2024WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER TAKE NUTRITION ADVICE FROM A CENTENARIAN It’s a cliche of reporting on people who reach 100 years of age, or even 110, to ask them some variation of the question: “What did you do to live this long?” Inevitably, some interesting and unexpected answer is highlighted. Fish and chips every Friday. Drinking a glass of strong liquor every day. Bacon for breakfast every morning. Wine and chocolate. While a popular news story, this is a relatively meaningless question that doesn’t help us understand why certain people have lived so long.
• 5-13-2024JUNK FOOD MARKETING ON VIDEOGAME LIVESTREAMING PLATFORMS INCREASES PURCHASES AND CONSUMPTION AMONG TEENS, STUDY FINDS Food and drink advertisements on videogame livestreaming platforms (VGLSPs) like Twitch are associated with more positive attitudes towards, and purchases and intake of, unhealthy foods that are high in fat, salt and/or sugar (HFSS) like energy drinks among adolescents aged 18 or younger. The concerning findings prompt researchers to call for stronger regulations on digital marketing of unhealthy foods to young people on these platforms, where there is currently no effective regulation
• 5-13-2024HIGHER BLOOD SUGAR LEVEL AT GESTATIONAL DIABETES DIAGNOSIS LINKED TO HARMFUL OUTCOMES FOR MOTHERS AND BABIES The higher the blood sugar level in pregnant women when first diagnosed with diabetes, the higher the risk of complications around and after birth
• 5-13-2024ASKING ADULTS WITH OBESITY ABOUT THEIR WEIGHT DURING CHILDHOOD COULD HELP DETERMINE THEIR MORTALITY RISK Being asked whether you considered yourself a normal weight, plumper or thinner as a child when attending a doctor’s appointment as an adult might appear like a very strange question to ask, but new research suggests that such questions can help identify increased mortality risk in adults living with obesity.
• 5-13-2024ENERGY DRINKS CAN LEAD TO SERIOUS HEART ISSUES IN KIDS AND TEENS, HEALTH EXPERTS SAY Hennessy Sepulveda thought she was going to die. “I began dissociating as I was driving. I was 10 minutes away from my house. My vision started warping and the lights were hitting me really bright,” she said. “I felt my chest pounding, I felt a wave of panic hit me—I knew something was wrong.” Sepulveda, a Florida International University student who was 19 at the time, was admitted to the hospital, and was surprised by the cause of her symptoms
• 5-13-2024A BLOOD TEST TO HELP DETECT LUNG CANCER? NEW TEST OFFERED AT 18 LOCATIONS Julie Harris had never been tested for lung cancer. A low-dose CT scan, the only recommended screening for adults at risk of developing lung cancer, was not something she’d ever found time to do. But when her primary care doctor recently suggested a new blood test to help look for signs of the disease, Harris was intrigued. She had her blood drawn the same day, in the same building as her doctor’s appointment.
• 5-13-2024STUDY SHOWS EXERCISING SLOWS OUR PERCEPTION OF TIME results of a new study show for the first time that individuals tend to experience time as moving slower when they are exercising compared to when they are resting or after completing their exercise.
• 5-13-2024BREAKTHROUGH THERAPIES ARE SAVING LIVES, BUT CAN WE AFFORD THEM? Harnessing the body’s own cells to fight disease, long a medical dream, is finally a reality. Now comes the bill. Last month, Stanford became the first hospital in the nation to use a new $515,000 cell therapy to treat a patient with advanced melanoma. A related approach, costing $420,000 to $475,000, is offering hope to patients with lethal blood cancers. Meanwhile, cells fixed by gene therapy can slow, even stop, the progression of intractable diseases like sickle cell or beta thalassemia—
• 5-13-2024RESEARCH FINDS DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME SPELLS BAD NEWS FOR HEALTHY HABITS
• 5-13-2024HOW READING HELPS YOUNG CHILDREN LEARN ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF PAIN
• 5-13-2024HEART FAILURE PATIENTS WHO DO YOGA HAVE STRONGER HEARTS AND CAN BE MORE ACTIVE, RESEARCH SUGGESTS
• 5-13-2024ITALIAN STUDY FINDS EVIDENCE OF BODY DYSMORPHIA IN PROFILE PICTURES OF PEOPLE LIVING WITH OBESITY
• 5-13-2024UNDERSTANDING AND PREVENTING BLADDER CANCER
• 5-13-2024OUR BRAINS TRICK US INTO THINKING CONSCIOUSNESS CAN RESIDE OUTSIDE THE BODY, RESEARCH ARGUES
• 5-13-2024YOGA SHOWS ‘MOST IMPROVEMENT’ IN RESTORING BRAIN HEALTH IN LONG-TERM CANCER SURVIVORS, RESEARCHER SAYS
• 5-13-2024DISTURBING NEW TRENDS ARE DRIVING UP THE NUMBERS
• 5-13-2024SUPPORTING WEIGHT-LOSS MEDICATIONS WITH ADEQUATE, TAILORED NUTRITION
• 5-13-2024WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE A SLEEPWALKER’S BRAIN?
• 5-13-2024COMING OFF OZEMPIC SLOWLY COULD PREVENT WEIGHT GAIN, STUDY SHOWS
• 5-13-2024STUDY SHOWS ALARMING RISE OF ELECTRONIC VAPING USE IN US ADOLESCENTS
• 5-13-2024UK SURVEY FINDS ‘DISGUST FACTOR’ NEEDS TO BE OVERCOME IF EATING INSECTS IS TO BECOME TRULY MAINSTREAM
• 5-13-2024SEMAGLUTIDE CAN YIELD WEIGHT LOSS, LOWER HEART ISSUES FOR AT LEAST FOUR YEARS IN NON-DIABETIC ADULTS WITH OVERWEIGHT
• 5-13-2024BETTER NUTRITION CAN HELP FIREFIGHTERS FIGHT CANCER
• 5-13-2024EXPLORING THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR RESILIENCE
• 5-13-2024REMOTE HEART FAILURE MONITORING DEVICE COULD PREVENT HOSPITALIZATIONS
• 5-13-2024IDENTICAL ODORS SEEM DIFFERENT WHEN GIVEN DIFFERENT NAMES
• 5-13-2024HOW CANNABIS AND PSILOCYBIN MIGHT HELP SOME OF THE 50 MILLION AMERICANS WHO ARE EXPERIENCING CHRONIC PAIN
• 5-13-2024AUTISTIC CHILDREN COULD BE THE REAL WINNERS FROM ONLINE GAMES
• 5-13-2024TEENAGE USERS OF HIGH-THC CANNABIS VARIETIES TWICE AS LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE PSYCHOTIC EPISODES
• 5-13-2024PEPTIDE-BASED HYDROGEL SHOWS PROMISE FOR A WIDE RANGE OF TISSUE AND ORGAN REPAIR
• 5-13-2024TO AVENGE OR NOT TO AVENGE? PSYCHOLOGISTS DIG DEEPER INTO HOW PEOPLE SEE REVENGE AND THOSE WHO DO IT
• 5-13-2024TRANSGENDER PRETEENS REPORT 13 HOURS OF DAILY SCREEN TIME
• 5-13-2024STUDY FINDINGS DEMONSTRATE BENEFIT TO PEDIATRIC CELIAC DISEASE MASS SCREENING
• 5-13-2024COMMONLY USED ANTIBIOTIC BRINGS MORE COMPLICATIONS, DEATH IN THE SICKEST PATIENTS
• 5-13-2024NEW PAPER EXAMINES POTENTIAL POWER AND PITFALLS OF HARNESSING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR SLEEP MEDICINE
• 5-13-2024VARIATIONS IN TELOMERE LENGTHENING GENES MAY PREDISPOSE SOME PEOPLE TO PAPILLARY THYROID CANCER
• 5-13-2024WHAT IS THE PROCESS OF AN ATHLETE BEING ‘MEDICALLY RETIRED’ DUE TO CONCUSSION?
• 5-13-2024NOT SURE ABOUT VACCINES? HOW MESSAGING IS FRAMED MAKES A DIFFERENCE, NEW RESEARCH SHOWS
• 5-13-2024NEW STUDY REVEALS THE KEY ROLE OF MITOCHONDRIAL PROTEINS IN CARDIAC REGENERATION
• 5-13-2024NEW SYNTHETIC BIOMARKER TECHNOLOGY DIFFERENTIATES BETWEEN PRIOR ZIKA AND DENGUE INFECTIONS
• 5-13-2024IN SEARCH OF THE BEST TEST FOR HEPATIC ENCEPHALOPATHY
• 5-13-2024ORGANIZATIONS PUBLISH JOINT GUIDELINE ON GLUCOCORTICOID-INDUCED ADRENAL INSUFFICIENCY
• 5-13-2024CLINICAL TRIAL INVESTIGATING AFICAMTEN MEETS PRIMARY ENDPOINT IN OBSTRUCTIVE HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY
• 5-13-2024RESEARCH INVESTIGATES LIMITED EFFICACY OF COMMON LOCAL ANESTHETIC
• 5-13-2024HOW SCIENCE CLEARED THE AIR OVER INHALED HEALTH RISKS
• 5-13-2024WHAT’S KEEPING THE US FROM ALLOWING BETTER SUNSCREENS?
• 5-13-2024PATIENTS CAN NOW STAY CONNECTED BY WEARING ONE
• 5-13-2024THERAPEUTIC OPPORTUNITIES FOR HYPERMUTATED UROTHELIAL CARCINOMAS BEYOND IMMUNOTHERAPY
• 5-13-2024RESEARCHERS REVEAL THE DOUBLE-EDGED-SWORD EFFECT OF OVERCONFIDENCE ON GAMBLING
• 5-13-2024TEAM STUDIES FACTORS RELATED TO A SENSE OF ECONOMIC INSECURITY IN OLDER ADULTS
• 5-13-2024PEDIATRICIAN OFFERS TIPS ON HOW TO SUPPORT HEALTHY MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN YOUR CHILD
• 5-13-2024NEW DEVICE COULD IDENTIFY WHICH BABIES WILL STRUGGLE WITH BREASTFEEDING
• 5-13-2024COULD FLIRT LEAD TO A SUMMER UPTICK?
• 5-13-2024RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS DRAMATIC INCREASE IN FENTANYL SEIZED BY AUTHORITIES IN LAST SIX YEARS
• 5-13-2024CHILD MEASLES CASE AT SACRAMENTO HOSPITAL MAY HAVE EXPOSED 200 PEOPLE, HEALTH OFFICIALS SAY
• 5-13-2024AN AUXILIARY CHD DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEM BASED ON MULTI-VIEW AND MULTI-MODAL TRANSTHORACIC ECHOCARDIOGRAMS
• 5-13-2024PROJECTED ESTIMATES OF CANCER IN CANADA IN 2024: STUDY
• 5-13-2024REPORT FINDS PRIVATE HEALTH PLANS PAID HOSPITALS 254% OF WHAT MEDICARE WOULD PAY DURING 2022
• 5-13-2024HOW OBESITY AND METABOLIC SYNDROME AFFECTS WOMEN’S RISKS OF BREAST CANCER AND CANCER-RELATED DEATH
• 5-13-2024CANCER AND COVID DROVE PATIENT TO DOUBLE-LUNG TRANSPLANT
• 5-13-2024CHOLERA OUTBREAK INTENSIFYING IN YEMEN, UN WARNS
• 5-13-2024RESEARCH TAKES ELECTRORETINOGRAPHY TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH A SOFT MULTI-ELECTRODE SYSTEM
• 5-13-2024NEW STUDY SHOWS CERTAIN COMBINATIONS OF ANTIVIRAL PROTEINS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR LUPUS SYMPTOMS
• 5-13-2024DID A WORM REALLY EAT PART OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.’S BRAIN?
• 5-13-2024REINING IN ROGUE OBAMACARE AGENTS WITHOUT SLOWING ENROLLMENT
• 5-13-2024IS ‘HERD IMMUNITY’ IN INTENSIVE CARE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD?
• 5-13-2024TOO MANY AUSTRALIANS AREN’T GETTING A FLU VACCINE—WHY, AND WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
• 5-13-2024RESEARCHERS FIND 13% REDUCTION IN ASTHMA IN CHILDREN BORN IN AN URBAN LOW EMISSION ZONE
• 5-13-2024RESEARCHERS USE DUAL DRUG STRATEGY TO ADVANCE MELANOMA TREATMENT AGAINST RESISTANCE
• 5-13-2024ENGINEERING MINI HUMAN HEARTS TO STUDY PREGNANCY COMPLICATIONS AND BIRTH DEFECTS
• 5-13-2024FOR TREATING RETINOPATHY OF PREMATURITY, RESEARCH PROVES THAT RANIBIZUMAB IS SAFE
• 5-13-2024STUDY FINDS SENSE OF SHARED SIMULTANEITY INCREASES WITH GROUP SIZE
• 5-13-2024WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
• 5-13-2024ATTACKING BIRTH CONTROL PILLS, US INFLUENCERS PUSH MISINFORMATION
• 5-13-2024UN NEARS LANDMARK DEAL ON COMBATING BIOPIRACY
• 5-13-2024VARIATIONS IN ‘ANCIENT’ IMMUNE CELLS LINKED TO PATIENTS’ SURVIVAL IN CANCER
• 5-13-2024SOURCE OF SUGAR MAY BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN AMOUNT WHEN IT COMES TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF OBESITY IN CHILDREN
• 5-13-2024UK STUDY INVOLVING OVER 80,000 ADULTS FINDS SMOKERS TEND TO EAT LESS AND HAVE A LESS HEALTHY DIET THAN NON-SMOKERS
• 5-13-2024TRIAL REVEALS ANTI-INFLAMMATORY POWER OF AEROBIC EXERCISE IN ADULTS WITH OBESITY
• 5-13-2024LARGE-SCALE FINNISH STUDY DISCOVERS LINK BETWEEN PREMATURE MENOPAUSE AND MORTALITY RISK
• 5-13-2024SOCIODEMOGRAPHICS TIED TO REHAB USE DURING CRITICAL ILLNESS HOSPITALIZATION
• 5-13-2024AVOID OVERHEATING DANGERS WHEN RECHARGING MEDICAL DEVICES
• 5-13-2024LOWER PREVALENCE OF EMPLOYMENT SEEN FOR SURVIVORS OF CHILDHOOD CANCER
• 5-13-2024BLOOD PRESSURE DOWN WITH SELF-MONITORING, SELF-TITRATION OF MEDICATIONS
• 5-13-2024PSILOCYBIN MAY REVERSE ANOREXIA’S COGNITIVE RIGIDITY
• 5-13-2024STUDY HIGHLIGHTS NEED FOR CELL-TYPE-SPECIFIC THERAPIES IN TREATMENT OF HIV
• 5-13-2024INTENSE ULTRASOUND EXTRACTS GENETIC INFO FOR LESS INVASIVE CANCER BIOPSIES
• 5-13-2024WEIGHT LOSS DRUG LINKED WITH REDUCED NEED FOR DIURETICS IN HEART FAILURE PATIENTS
• 5-13-2024EVIDENCE OF A TRAVEL DIRECTION SIGNAL THAT IS INDEPENDENT FROM HEAD DIRECTION IN HUMANS
• 5-13-2024STUDY SHOWS CHATGPT CAN ACCURATELY ANALYZE MEDICAL CHARTS FOR CLINICAL RESEARCH, OTHER APPLICATIONS
• 5-13-2024WHAT MAKES A MEMORY? IT MAY BE RELATED TO HOW HARD YOUR BRAIN HAD TO WORK
• 5-13-2024BIRTH BY C-SECTION MORE THAN DOUBLES ODDS OF MEASLES VACCINE FAILURE, STUDY FINDS
• 5-13-2024SCIENTISTS FIND SLEEP MAY NOT CLEAR BRAIN TOXINS

Hopefully they can use Ai as a tool to compliment the work engineers do.
“Although EV sales have been unpredictable, the survey found that engineering decision makers remain steadfast in seeking smart solutions to reduce costs and development time , which EngAI is expected to help resolve. Respondents expect EngAI to cut years, quarters or months in development cycles – including in cell characterisation testing (61%), module and pack testing (56%) regulatory testing (53%) and charging optimisation testing (48%). Meanwhile, they anticipate AI will help them achieve cost savings from $10 million to over $100 million in ageing and lifetime battery testing (37%), repeating tests due to failures (39%), thermal runaway testing (36%), and regulatory testing (32%).”
https://www.designnews.com/batteries-energy-storage/ev-battery-companies-worry-about-ai-s-impact-on-jobs

Intro

It’s not much of a stretch to say that violence is the primary form of interaction in video games. With a handful of exceptions, most video games involve guys whacking other guys, with varying degrees of brutality. Even chill games fall into this - Stardew Valley has sections with combat in them! Considering the pervasiveness of violence in video games, there has been a ton of amateur and academic commentary on the topic. However, while this is a well-established school of thought, I haven’t seen people try to apply this to Fire Emblem specifically.
So, let’s do that now! In this post, I’ll be exploring how violence in Fire Emblem is implemented - what limitations are placed on violence, how it warps wider game and narrative design, and what it implicitly says and does not say. I hope this post doesn’t come off as too early-2010s “makes you think”-y, but I do think there are multiple interesting things worth talking about here!
Despite the length of this post, "a brief discussion" is an appropriate title, as we won't be able to go into depth on everything. After all, video games are holistic works, so the attitude towards violence is relevant to every aspect of their design. However, I have managed to wrangle some of these threads into the following structure: first a discussion on the fundamental mode of interaction in Fire Emblem, then how stories are constructed with regards to violence, and ending with the aesthetics of violence and how they relate to characters. Also, as FE is a huge series, be aware that I am gonna be making some broad statements which may not apply to each individual plot point of every game. I actually planned to write 3 case studies around Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses (which have the most interesting attitudes to violence in the series IMO) which point out these deviations, but this post is way too long and full of tangents already. If people are interested, I’ll make a followup to this post which goes into them in more detail. Also also, because of the nature of this post, I’ll actually give a useful TL;DR for once:
TL;DR: Nintendo games must be fun mechanically, and they can’t be too uncomfortable narratively. If you try to provide a counterpoint by saying “oh this Kirby final boss is super dark it eats 100 morbillion galaxies”, you do not deserve rights. IntSys has to keep to this as a 2nd party publisher, but they also have to deal with the fact that their games are at least nominally about ‘war’ (or at least they put their toes into that particular thematic pool). This conflict between making a fun video game for children/teens and the wider framing of the narrative leads to interesting narrative and aesthetic tensions. also fun is cringe, misery is based

“Do you like hurting other people?” (or The Fundamental Mode of Interaction)

OK LISTEN I KNOW I LITERALLY JUST SAID THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO COME ACROSS AS A EARLY 2010s “VIOLENCE IN VIDYA BAD :O????” PERSON BUT I SWEAR I’M GOING SOMEWHERE WITH THIS
The best place to start when talking about violence in video games is to think about the primary form of interaction in said game. In the case of Fire Emblem, this is in the in-chapter gameplay. Sure, in objective terms the player moves arbitrary objects across a 2D grid which perform subtraction on arbitrary objects controlled by the computer, but this is always framed as controlling a squad of soldiers to engage in (typically lethal) combat with enemies (who are normally also soldiers). When you’re not doing this in-chapter gameplay, you are preparing for the next chapter of combat. This involves surveying the area of combat, preparing weapon loadouts, etc, however more recent entries also include light life-sim-esque elements. To summarize, Fire Emblem’s interactivity involves ordering violence as well as the preparations to order said violence.
For players, this strategic thinking is extremely fun and is the primary draw of the series! You have all these tier lists of who’s better at killing, discussion of the maps where you do the killing, complaints about the length of gameplay sections where you don’t do killing, etc. This is by design, as while I don’t know the core brand tenets of Nintendo, I imagine the Reggie quote “If it isn’t fun, why bother?” is carved into a solid gold statue of Mario in the office lobby. This then is enforced on all associated studios, including IntSys and so Fire Emblem. While I would disagree with that Reggie quote (especially the bit where he says “If it’s not a battle, where’s the fun?” which is a wild statement to make about an entire medium), this approach to making games is ultimately fine, and so IntSys tailored the strategic gameplay to be satisfying to your dopamine receptors. You could analyse what the normalisation of violence even in ‘just for fun’ games says about wider gaming culture, but I won’t get into that here. In any case, let’s dig into a few specifics of FE’s interactivity.
One thing that’s interesting with regard to strategy games is the detached perspective of the player. You order units and observe the resulting violence, but it’s not tactile, you don’t directly swing the sword or shoot the bow or cast the spell like with action games. This adds a layer of separation between the player and what fundamentally happens, at least within the framing that the game provides. It’s not like Call of Duty, where your relationship to the violence is very visceral, where you view everything down the barrel of a gun. OK, I probably shouldn’t use a series that I have very little personal experience with (I only listen to the supplementary lore material, so let’s talk about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. While you’re not directly in the driver’s seat, John Sekiro reacts to your every input with extreme responsiveness, so overcoming the game’s challenges i.e. stabbing people is incredibly visceral and satisfying. While this violence is fantastical in nature, there is sufficient blood and explicit sword-action to clearly say “oh yeah you are violently killing all of those bozos with a katana”. Coming back to FE, not only are you far more detached from the violence, it is presented in an extremely cartoony manner… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, we’ll get to the aesthetics later. Point is, Fire Emblem gives the viewpoint of a stoic commander, who Does What Needs To Be Done™, and not the viewpoint of an actual soldier who has to do the actual killing.
Now let’s view the player’s perspective on violence from a different angle. Fire Emblem intends for its combat to be relatively relaxed on the player side of things - the turn-based nature allows the player to calmly think through all of their moves, and you typically have perfect information on the enemies. The only exceptions to this are Fog of WaSame Turn Reinforcements, which are rare and typically unpopular amongst the fanbase. This leans into ‘combat as sport’, where (going back to the Reggie quote) you have a fun time picking apart a puzzle with the tools you have, and we all collectively enjoy this! This is a valid way of designing strategy games, and I like what IntSys has done. However, it’s not the only way of making these games - for example, in Total War you have to juggle all your battalions in real time whilst the enemy is bearing down on you, and the XCOM games always have Fog of War and limited information on the enemies, with you never knowing what kind of awful new monster is going to suddenly charge at you. Don’t get me wrong, neither of these follow ‘combat as war’, the principle that violence should properly mimic the stress, tension and unfairness of actual conflict. Hell, neither of them are particularly mature either - Total War is the strategy game equivalent of smashing action figures together, and XCOM emulates a pulp sci-fi alien invasion story. However, the additional pressures these games have make them hew slightly closer to actual conflict, putting you more in that mindset in a way that the clean fun Fire Emblem doesn’t really do. Again, I want to say FE’s approach to violence in in-map gameplay is fine, but when all three of these franchises have an explicit narrative framing of ‘warfare’, it does make Fire Emblem’s narrative a little more… stretched.
Finally, I want to briefly mention the maps. To steal from a brilliant Jacob Geller video, these are Worlds Designed For Violence. At least outside of the Kaga games, the maps you fight on are primarily designed around how the player interacts with them, i.e. fights on them. While I imagine the narrative designers and artists at IntSys are involved throughout the map design process, the gameplay flow probably takes precedence most of the time. Maps are not designed to resemble realistic places that you have to fight through, they are instead designed primarily to provide fun gameplay experiences before being dressed up by the artists to look realistic/fit the specific story beat. This is a more consistently entertaining approach to map design - heaven knows we have a lot of Kaga castle assault maps which are as fun as actually assaulting an entrenched position IRL - but this lack of friction could potentially take the bite out of the intended vibe, neuter any commentary on violence throughout the story.
You may have noticed that we’ve only talked about the “in-map” gameplay for now, when there’s an entire second half of these games, i.e. all the gameplay between the maps. Don’t worry, we’ll get to all of that, but this may fit better in:

Something something “ludonarrative” something something (or Narrative Implications)

(To clarify, here I’m going to talk about the wider plots and narrative structure as opposed to characterisation, as that fits more into the aesthetics of the series)
It’s not bold to say that the narratives of games have to warp around the core gameplay structure. Especially in AAA video game production, the narrative designers usually have to take a back seat to the systems and level designers, at least outside of the initial rough outline they provide in the original game pitch. In this case, the job of the writer is to form vaguely coherent connective tissue between individual levels, setpieces and expensive pre-rendered cutscenes. This must be a very difficult job, and is probably the reason why most video game stories are the way they are. I am not privy to IntSys internal meetings, but I imagine they abide by this paradigm, trying to give a reason for why you fight 20 battles which roughly align with plot beats that were decided years ago.
Put another way, the writers of Fire Emblem must contrive a reason why the characters fight a vast number of violent battles in a strategic manner. This has a pretty easy solution - war! We have found something it’s good for, as whenever the gameplay designers decide that an extra map is required, the writers can just insert “oh no there’s a blockade of enemy soldiers in the way, guess you gotta kill them all”. This is the case for almost all the games and is a fair enough narrative choice, as it’s frankly one of the few scenarios where you could reasonably contrive so many battles, but it’s worth examining this in a bit more detail.
Even in the framing of warfare, there are still a lot of skirmishes, which sometimes the narrative or tone fails to support - or at least, their presence means that violence isn’t taken that seriously. Let’s take an example from early in Awakening: Emmeryn sends the Shepherds to negotiate an alliance with Regna Ferox. On the way, they are ambushed by Risen on the Northroad (1), have to fight the border guards who think Chrom is a bandit I think??? (2), and then after arriving they need to take part in Regna Ferox’s ritual combat to secure their alliance (3). These beats aren’t necessarily bad, and I actually think Awakening uses these opportunities quite well: the Risen are established as a constant threat to the world (except not really in the main story but that’s a whole other thing), “Marth'' gets more development, we set up Regna Ferox as fighty people who like to fight, and while the middle encounter is very tenuous it does set up a funny joke in Cynthia’s paralogue. However, I want to communicate that if the map/encounter designers need X maps between plot points A and B - in this case, needing low-stakes trials in the tutorial period - then there’s gonna be a fair bit of narrative filler. That is to say, there must be multiple combat encounters that kinda just happen, which makes violence a lot more casual in the narrative. See also the myriad examples of “oh shit random bandits attack!”, used to have a lower stakes map, with bandits appearing and vanishing as needed. This works fine enough in the context of ‘combat as sport’, allowing your favourite scrunglo to build up a triple-digit body count, but this casual attitude circumvents potentially interesting ideas with regards violence. Taking the example further, banditry and its causes are never seriously explored, as bandits are just treated as a filler enemy (except in Based As Hell Thracia 776).
Another narrative consequence of needing so many fights is that… you need to fight. That is to say, any anti-war sentiment or appeal to diplomacy in the series is fundamentally undercut by a) strategic combat being a core appeal of the series and b) narrative beats needing to be structured around fighting enemies. It’s a struggle to have moments of diplomacy and reconciliation when you had a fight within 3 minutes of said moment, lest some people start screaming that things are getting boring. This also makes any appeals to pacifism kinda moot. Xander’s quote about “war bad” in Conquest is utter bullshit, as a huge part of the marketing around that route focuses on the coolness of the tactical combat and its challenge. Eirika and Ephraim can never be equal, because Ephraim’s “fighting is fucken awesome” is encouraged by the gameplay, and Eirika can NEVER save 11037 because we need a final boss and no-one else fits the bill.
Speaking of, in video games it’s best practice to have a big bad guy you fight at the end of the story, the toughest mechanical challenge coinciding with the narrative climax. In Fire Emblem, you have one grand final battle which decides the fate of the war and/or world, before cutting to a brief wrap-up and then credits. This is an attempt to make these games satisfying, which is fine, but this is at odds with an anti-war message (which FE often gestures towards) - that is, actual wars tend to be deeply unsatisfying in a narrative sense! Oftentimes, after a decisive battle, things just kinda keep going for a little while afterwards with casualties continuing to pile up until peace terms are agreed. In the few cases where there is a final battle, it’s more of a formality as the decisive moment occurred months ago. See World War 1 and… World War 2 for examples of each, not to mention a whole host of war-related books and films. The problem with doing this in a video game is that it would require having multiple one-sided fights past the most climatic fight, which would be unfun, and we return to that fucking Reggie quote again. While video games can effectively explore this anti-war narrative space - This War of Mine is a fantastic example - it just doesn’t gel with the fun games that IntSys wants to make. I bring this up in the context of FE because Fire Emblem has such an aesthetic focus on warfare compared to other video games, so it sticks out even further. Even in FE6/FE9 where the war is effectively over in the final few maps, the enemies still remain extremely challenging, because if they didn’t things would be boring.
A few minor things that didn’t fit in above before we wrap up this section. First of all, in making an action packed story, Fire Emblem neglects an important aspect of army life in warfare - the “hurrying up and waiting”. In the majority of cases, the breaks between fights is under 10 minutes, it’s just glossed over. Fire Emblem Three Houses is the exception to this, but there it’s more framed as school life. Some people may say “what’s the point in having large amounts of timewasting where nothing happens in my game about war” and to that I would say fuck you, I want to play Jarhead Emblem. Next, Fire Emblem involves fighting people AND monsters, but these targets are typically given equal narrative weight, outside of maybe a funny line of dialogue about someone being afraid of monsters. In 99% of cases, enemy soldiers you fight have no more humanity than literal monsters. The death of any of your beloved soldiers is a tragedy with big sad death quotes, the death of those poor fuckers is quite literally a statistic which is proudly used to rank how well your guys have done at the end of the game. Finally, the limited scope of the violence the series can show limits the potential impact of scenes. In some cases, this is good as the implication is enough, e.g. the ‘Monica’ scene in Sacred Stones is wonderfully grim and would be weakened by anything explicit. However, a number of other scenes are neutered by the limitations on violence. This fundamentally relates to the aesthetics of the series:

insert prozd tweet/skit here (or Aesthetics, Tone, and Characters)

I’ve been talking a lot about ‘the violence committed’, and this might have seemed a bit weird to you. It’s a true statement, but because the violence is mostly cartoony and abstracted - bad guys disappear into nothingness, there’s no blood, etc - it’s hard to think of it in that way. It’s basically impossible to place Fire Emblem in the same artistic sphere as, say, All Quiet on the Western Front. This aesthetic sense was partially tech-limited in the early NES and SNES games, which was grandfathered into the more graphically complex titles, but it’s also related to how the aesthetics unavoidably warp the tone of the work. IntSys needs their games to be relatively lighthearted and unconcerned with the consequences of its violence, as one of the core appeals of these games is the charming cast of characters. As you would expect, it would be a lot harder to appreciate your goofy blorbos and their lighthearted chats about nothing if you could see the brutal consequences of their triple digit body counts. If violence was more realistic, there would be a lot less “ooh I like training and/or this one hyperspecific food” or “I like peace, but I guess violence may be possibly needed sometimes” and there would have to be a lot more trauma and dourness. There are also age rating concerns, as you can’t exactly sell Come And See Emblem to pre-teens. And once more, to clarify: Fire Emblem as it exists now is fine! I like the lighthearted tone of this series, and I like the characters that reside within it. However, a few problems do arise from IntSys’s approach to violence, as occasionally they brush up against darker ideas but (due to similar reasons to the above) they can never commit to them, which neuters their potential impact. This is especially troublesome with regards to characterisation, as the little dudes are a core appeal, so if something is off that could cause problems. In a sense, at points we have severe aesthetic tension.
A fairly useful case study to see how this affects characterisation is with Mozu in Fire Emblem Fates. Mozu is a charming character, a genial country bumpkin with a bit of an edge at times, who has fond memories of her hometown. This lines up with the lighthearted tone of her recruitment paralogue, where (checks notes) her entire village gets massacred by inhuman monsters, with her mother literally being murdered right in front of her, and she joins up with Corrin’s party because there is literally nothing left of her old life. I understand that people who experience extreme trauma do still manage to live meaningful lives, and that IntSys wouldn’t want to have a character who is a barely functional traumatised mess for 90% of the campaign. However, this doesn’t explain the sheer dissonance between the relatively normal and well-adjusted Mozu who quietly remembers her lost loved ones, and the fact that her village got My Lai’d a handful of weeks ago in the game’s timeline. IMO this would work a lot better if there were a few survivors (instead of literally everyone else dying), with Mozu actively choosing to leave her old life to help others instead of being forced to leave by circumstance. This reduction in scope would mitigate the dissonance between the character and what actually happens to her. This is by far the most extreme example in the series, however I’m sure you can think of others. My issue here is not with having ‘normal’ characters, or with them suffering tragedies, my issue is the dissonance between the two when viewing the scope of said tragedies. This is just one way the series wants to get into darker territory, then swiftly backing off instead of delving into the consequences.
This aesthetic restriction also affects the potential impact of dramatic scenes in the main story, limiting what the focus of these scenes can actually be. This little bit will involve heavy spoilers for Genealogy of the Holy War and Spec Ops: The Line (I KNOW THESE GAMES ARE VERY DIFFERENT WITH VERY DIFFERENT INTENDED DEMOGRAPHICS IN VERY DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS, SHUT UP). Both have a very important narrative moment around their midpoints, involving fire magic/white phosphorus respectively. In each game, the deaths that occur are utterly horrific when you think about them. In FE4 the focus is on the drama of the plot twist and effects on the characters, with the actual effects of the violence being left to implication. We don’t know if this was the original intent of Kaga and the team, or if this was enforced by various tech- and publisher-related restrictions, but in either case we do not see anything explicit. In any case, in Spec Ops: The Line, the horror and graphic nature of the violence is completely inescapable, and therefore forms the core of the turning point of the story. The specifics of the violence itself are crucial - the game does not work if you don’t see the consequences of the white phosphorus - and it leads beautifully to the complete descent of its endgame. You may be saying “of course you couldn’t show that violence in FE, it’s a kids game” which is true, and in any case the scene in Genealogy is very good, even without showing the violence. I imagine if we get a remake in the year 202X we wouldn’t see anything explicit anyway, partially due to the publisher but also because the scene doesn’t necessarily need it. The point I am trying to make is that the aesthetics form a limitation on what Fire Emblem can explore, narrative space that the series fundamentally cannot reach.
One more thing, and this isn’t really about the games themselves but the impressions leading into them, and how the aesthetics can affect that. Do you guys remember when the intro cutscene of Three Houses was released a few weeks before release? I do, and I also remember the collective shock of the community when seeing the early previews. It was so drastically different to everything that had come before, and consequently was really intriguing - you can see a lot of speculation in the above comments. To clarify, I don’t want to pretend that 3H is some kind of super mature ultra gritty war story, or that blood = good game, but that beginning cutscene gave one hell of a first impression. Even though the game isn’t that much darker than any other FE game, the sheer unexpectedness put people off-kilter in a kinda awesome way. Does the game actually deliver? YMMV, but I think this (and some of the later cutscenes, such as the mid-game Dimitri one) work quite well. Sometimes, a little injection of harsher violence can go a long way.

Conclusion

Frankly I don’t really have a conclusion, sorry. As you can see, there are so many disparate strands, I can’t possibly make one grand thesis statement. Maybe the inherent contradictions of having warfare in a family friendly video game weakens the potential end result? I guess, but I don’t want to imply that what we have now is bad, as it is pretty good tbh. So, uhh…
…
OK, if I had to say something, it’s more about the process of making this. Having to try and think about how violence intersects with a video game you like takes you in a number of different directions. Ultimately, this process was really fulfilling for me, and I would recommend that you do the same (for FE or anything else)! Trying to analyse something you enjoy from a perspective not usually applied is pretty neat. If you guys have any thoughts (on the points above or your own), I’d be very interested to hear them!
Also, if people are interested, I’ll try to make a few case studies. I would focus on Thracia 776, Fates, and Three Houses, as (when thinking on this topic) I found that these games were consistently the most intriguing, with the most interesting relationships to violence. This would probably take a while though, as I am gonna be very busy in June, and I probably won’t have time this month either.

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WeWard Get Paid to Walk!!!
It’s not going to make you rich but I genuinely like the app and use it daily. If it encourages you to walk or run more then bonus.
WeWard is an app that rewards you for steps. It offers surveys but rates are low so I’d stick to other survey sites.
Each day you are given “Wards” (200 Wards = £1) for walking (based on steps).
The methodology for calculating steps to Wards has recently changed into what WeWard describe as "adapting to your pace". Essentially the target is personalised so people who walk more steps can earn even more wards. Previously the cap was 20,000 steps a day but now that can be higher.
For me this means I can earn 1 ward for 3,250 steps up to 42 Wards per day (up from previous 25) for doing 34,000 steps. Your Wards to steps ratio is personalised so depending on your level of activity.
Wards can be converted into cash once you have 3,000 Wards (£15). I received payment within an hour of requesting payout. Proof of payout here and withdrawn proof from WeWard here. Please don’t confuse WeWard with similar apps the 3,000 Wards for £15 hasn’t changed since I started using the app over a year ago.
Not the biggest earner but why not get paid for something you’re already doing.
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Hey guys I am currrntly trying to decide which of these 3 majors to pursue a masters degree in and am not 100% sure what the differences between them are (all have similar career prospects and outlooks).
For some background on me, I did my undergrad in finance and found my stock class, market research class, SQL class and survey design class very interesting which kind of pushed me in the direction of doing something analytical. Given this information, which one of those would be best for me?
Also for anyone who has dimes these degrees, what colleges did you apply/ look into?

About a year ago, I made a post seeking participants for a sit down interview. I got many more than I expected. Well, because PhDs take FOREVER (seriously so long, don't do it, save yourself), I am STILL in the research process and collecting data.
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That said, I recognize that it can be intimidating to sit down for an interview. 😳 So, I created a brief survey with some preliminary questions so you can get a feel for what I am doing. At the end, there is a spot for contact information if you would then be open to an interview.
Once I hit 100 completed surveys, the plan is to report back to the subreddit about some of my analysis.
https://forms.gle/CkT255mPjHby32Uk8

Hey guys, I need 100 or more responses for a survey l'm doing as my final project for my statistics class. I need to have the responses by Thursday Please fill it out and share the link. Thank you for your guys help! It's a short survey that ask if you prefer to live in rural or urban areas.
https://www.statcrunch.com/s/43318

Crushing reality falls on me like anvils of my own design Forged in mania and self delusion From the most authentic man in the world Which would lead to billions And dancing on stage with superstars With not one, but three Nobel prizes One of them for bridges not just burned But demolished by the tnt of psychosis And talking way too much Fortune favors them bold they say I suppose they never considered The reckless boldness of mania Leaving in its wake shattered lives Shattered husbands Shattered wives Children in fear of the onslaught And as in my case Families, careers, and finances ruined
Crushed by the 100% belief In something so ridiculous That to believe it Means you’ve gone crazy
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