Red sometimes talks about the "X" reason for something in a story meaning the in-world reasoning for an event vs the "Y" reason for something meaning the out-of-world reason (ie the writers reason for putting something in a story). I think X and Y are the names of writers or philosophers or something but I cant for the life of me remember what they are. I re-watched a few trope talks to see if I could find it but no luck in the ones I tried. I just hope someone knows what I'm talking about lol.

ANSWER: its Watsonian and Doylist respectively. Thank you Lord_Moa!

I'm sorry to post something like this. I ordered the sparkly Eros & Psyche pins day-of and the site says they're still in production. I'm trying to be patient but it's now mid-April and I don't have a reference for how long it takes for OSP merch to get out.

I just wanna hear that conversation again now that I'm getting into the series.

I had to suffer through this meme and not so shall you all!

So i've been thinking on the Detail Diatribe/Trope Talk on superman satire (I know its labeled as a Detail Diatribe but it feels like 'Superman Parody' is a trope in its own right at this point so im blurring that line) and i think its made me realise something about deconstruction as a narrative tool and why it tends to feel meaningless and bland (at least to me).

Its just the strawman fallacy right? Deconstruction that is, its just making a vaguely "trope-shaped" thing and then taking a hacksaw at the trope-shaped-thing and pretending it says anything meaningfull about the original trope.
Thats why it always feels so hollow and pretentious, because its inherently hollow (the deliberate removal of core traits, IE: Supermans without compassion) and pretentious (pretending these two are in any way similar after you've hollowed the OG out).

I loved the newest detail diatribe, one part because I love Shadow of the Colossus but also because it gives me an excuse to talk about this trope, which I don't really know if it has a name or if it's even fully classified as such though I think it happens often enough that it should.

That trope being a character, specifically in this case and all my favorite ones a *protagonist* who willingly risks or even fully dooms the world out of love (be it romantic or not).

Shadow of the Colossus was the first time I remember seeing this kind of story. I'll be honest, I was pretty young when I first played the game and I didn't fully understand a lot of the implications, but I was pretty far along in the game when I noticed Wander was looking all dark and spooky. On my second playthrough it kind of clicked for me and blew my damn mind. Loved it.

Another case of this that also affected me pretty profoundly was... well, look, it was a **BAD GAME** I fully recognize that. But honestly I loved it and have fond memories; there's no accounting for taste. Anyways that game was the 2008 Prince of Persia. Long story short, you spend the majority of the game as The Prince helping a girl named Elika travel all over and resurrect these trees to banish the big bad. The thing is, at the end (though it was pretty obvious very early on) it is revealed that Elika will die doing this, because she herself was brought back to life by the BBEG. While this 'plot twist' was obvious, what I *DID NOT* expect is that then the game actually ends with you running all over the map and destroying the trees you had just revived, thus dooming the world to the BBEG all over again... but getting Elika back.

Anyways, this trope is one of my favorite of all time. Just the idea of an other good man deciding to doom everything for the sake of love... now I have to admit, I'm a cishet man myself and a bit of a romantic so these stories that may otherwise possibly be read by other individuals as being something other than romantic love completely miss me in the nuance, but still I think the core of it stands.

Often times, characters who fit this trope (or would want to) are used as sympathetic villains, your Mr. Freeze types if you will. But I VASTLY prefer them as protagonists, because like Red said then they become more like tragedies than these bad guys who are only so because of one particular hangup.

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Anyways, this was mostly just a rant. Really loved today's video, thanks guys.

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Azure Lion (青毛獅子) The Golden Winged Great Peng (金翅大鵬雕) Yellow Toothed Elephant (黃牙老象)

I was recently downvoted to hell on another (mythology-related) sub because I dared to speak without a relevant Ph.D. and full bibliography. I explicitly stated that I could not quote a source, as I originally learned that version of the story decades ago and had been repeating it ever since (the romances of Hades & Persephone, and of Artemis & Orion). That said, I did however remember Red repeating the same or similar versions in her relevant videos, meaning I hadn’t imagined it or made it up whole cloth, there is a source for it out there somewhere. This got me further downvotes.

I was under the impression that OSP does significant research into topics and collates as many reliable sources as possible, in fact they sometimes complain that available sources aren’t to the standards they’d otherwise prefer. Have I been wrong this whole time? Does OSP just make stuff up? Have I been a fan of frauds?!

Almost certainly not. My suspicion is that the individual he started the berating just took personal offense that I was casually interested and engaged with pop mythology rather than dedicating my life to studying every detail and source of their precious mythology. I think the rest of the downvoting was just Reddit momentum at work. I don’t expect OSP to be always 100% perfectly correct scholarly sources themselves. I understand that to some degree they have to summarize so that their videos can be reasonable lengths, and they sanitize so that their videos can be family-friendly and safe for YouTube.

So then, the titular question: how much should we trust OSP’s research? Were my haters wrong, and they are actually the epitome of scholarly input? Am I the fool for believing anything they’ve ever said? Or really, where in the middle is the truth? How safe is it to quote OSP, and how much salt should be taken when doing so?

Me and the boys got a little drunk back in 1202.... our bad

Hi, long-time fan of OSP and mythology, recent fan of eclipses thanks to Red

I was doing a bit of reading on Wikipedia today after seeing the total eclipse (I was fortunate enough to live right under the path of totaliyt, it was awesome) and I stumbled upon this: there is some mythology around eclipses! I figured some of you would be interested, so here is the link to the book "Totality: The Great North American Eclipse of 2024" by Mark Littmann and Fred Espenak (just came out in last October), in which Chapter 4 is litterally called "Eclipses in Mythology".

https://academic.oup.com/book/51712

FYI to Red: I would love a video on the subject, even if I just read the chapter. Your explanations are just always amazing.

Felt this was the absolute best merch to rock!