User talk:The Merovingian

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Regarding your RfA

Hi Ricimer, while your RfA did not pass, I firmly and wholeheartedly believe that you are fully capable of passing the RfA, should it come up again within, say, six months. If you have any concerns, feel free to address them with Peter, myself, or any of the other major contributors. Have a happy New Year! -- Joe Beaudoin 12:31, 30 December 2005 (EST)

I have yet to play my trump card. --Ricimer 12:32, 30 December 2005 (EST)

Should I be afraid? *wink* --Day 20:21, 31 December 2005 (EST)

Battle Template

You're the guy who came up with this, right? Do you think that a) the thing could be made into an actual template (like the Character Data one with dissappearing/reappearing fields, etc) and b) it could be re-designed to look like the Character Data one (in terms of looking like the rest of the theme (the red/black is the default theme, isn't it?)? I don't know how these two things would be accomplished, but I thought I'd put this out there and see what you thought as far as feasability and also as far as should we do it. --Day 17:00, 18 January 2006 (EST)

User name change

Just letting you know that I changed your name from Ricimer to The Merovingian. Let me know if you encounter any issues, not that I'm expecting any but just in case Murphy's Law decides to come and play. -- Joe Beaudoin 23:19, 7 February 2006 (EST)

Also on this topic: You should probably update the first sentence of your User page to reflect the name change. If you want, I could probably get a decent screen-grab of the identically named character from the Matrix. Unfortunately, I don't have a DVD from which to grab pictures that stars any of the folks who founded Paris. --Day 01:24, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Yes, actually, that would help immensly. I need one of The Merovingian when he's in Club Hel, standing at the balcony looking imperiously down at Neo. A shot that shows his whole body instead of a closeup would be preferred. --The Merovingian 02:13, 8 February 2006 (EST)

You should watch "Revolutions" again. Merv isn't peering down at Neo but at Morpheus, Trinity, and Seraph (Neo never visits Club Hel in the movie series, although the Path of Neo video game takes him there while the Club is closed). I'll also try to get a screencap for you if time allows. My Matrix knowledge may be better than my BSG knowledge (note witty, illustrated user page; I've been almost tempted to change my user name to something more appropriate... ;) By the way, I like your revised user page. Merv is one of those characters whose deserved more exploration on the same level as the Oracle and the Architect. --Spencerian 10:45, 8 February 2006 (EST)

"Neo" just came out; I was thinking Seraph & Co., just typed the wrong thing. (That little Judas! I'm going to have him killed and buried in a shallow grave, then dig him up and kill him again...That's the beauty of a shallow grave!) --The Merovingian 16:52, 8 February 2006 (EST)

I actually took a philosphy class and my choice for a paper was on The Matrix. Basically, I've made several of the more...insightful speculations about The Merovingian on his Wikipdia article. You see, Morpheus and Neo represent Socrates: wanting to get out of "The Cave" to the real world beyond, etc. However, I believe (and I'm the only person I know of who's thought of this; I didn't read it anywhere, but thought it up after reading Leviathan) that The Merovingian is the embodiment of Thomas Hobbes in The Matrix. He spouts off Hobbesian thought all of the time. Hobbes said that "choice is an illusion" that the only constant is "cause and effect", and that the best thing we can do with our lives is kind of movie along with the flow of causality in such a way that we enjoy all of the *physical, transient* pleasures that we can, while we can. Live a life of comfornt and luxury, etc. The Merovingian *lives out* this ideal: He's living in complete luxury, like at Le Vrai, the Chateau, Club Hel (and he has affairds with women all the time, etc), he wields a great deal of physical power...yet recognizes that it's all just "a game" devoid of purpose; it's transient, etc. He's stopped seeing any higher meaning in anything. --->Hobbes was a big critic of Socrates, and his philosophy was the polar opposte of Socrates' thought. In the same way, The Merovingian opposes Neo and Morpheus' philoshpy of getting out of the Matrix.

I hold with the theory that he's a former One, that got his brain pattern scanned into a computer to outlive the death of his body. But he got so disillusioned with all of the lies and how the quest for freedom was just a reset button, that he turned against all of this and became the master of the Exiles, living the complete opposite of all of this (note; he really hates the Oracle, and views everything Neo says about her with extreme sarcasm). Plus, the initials "LV" on the walls of "Le Vrai" are Roman numerals for "LV" = 55. Now, we've already seen 303= Trinity, 101= Neo. So there's something about The Merovingian and the number "5". On top of this, when we first meet him there are 5 glasses set out in front of him (and Persephone, his Trinity-analog, has 3 chocolates on her plate). --->There have been 5 "Ones" before Neo. I think the Merovingian is the first "One". --The Merovingian 17:01, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Yeah, that theory and his Hobbes relationship (I think--it may be in a book I read) is on the Wikipedia article. I edited the article in dispute of Merv being a past One. It all comes down to some logic points. Why does he hate the Oracle so much? Because she succeeded where he failed. She stabilized the Matrix by adding true choice, where Merv was likely tapped by the Architect earlier to program basic cause-effect subroutines in the Matrix code as well as manage the root-programs in Matrix-beta-2 that could be used to help with these changes (these programs he now holds for his own purposes). The Architect realized the utopian flaw in beta-1 and thought that simple cause-effect (combined with the root-programs--the monsters of myth) would be sufficient to convince the human minds. He was wrong, of course. Remember that the Merovingian is big on cause-effect, and the Oracle states that he is one the oldest of them all, which makes his human origin very unlikely as the machines by then were fully distrustful of humanity and saw itself as a steward, not bothering to hear out humanity anymore than we would listen to the needs of an ant. The One is purely human; if the Merovingian were a "One", he would have been generated within beta-2, and, as a result, would not be like the Ones that base their power from true choice (particularly the power to disbelieve what they see and act otherwise). To add to that: Merv could also be very mad at the Oracle because, in the Oracle's version of the Matrix, any powers he may have had in beta-2 are practically non-existent. (You gave me a new take the character now from that...hmm.) Oh, and "La Vrai" means, "The Truth", which is just Merv's way of protesting of what's around him..vulgarities of "choice". Only in his establishments, by the name implication, will the populace understand the "truth" about what is illusion to him (choice) and real (cause and effect).

I wrote a paper about the origin of the One (with a bit on Merv) for a SF convention that will BLOW. YOUR. MIND. If you like, I'd be happy to send you a PDF of it. I've not published this as yet, so it's a unique read that incorporates the above. --Spencerian 17:29, 8 February 2006 (EST)

I would like to BLOW. MY. MIND. as well... the preceeding, signed comment and small recommendation that Spence forward me a copy of his insightful paper on Merv was made by Joe Beaudoin on 17:47, 8 February 2006 (EST) :-)

Actually, Spence... Could you just, maybe, copy it to User:Spencerian/Matrix or something? It might save you from forwarding it to a billion people. If you don't like that idea, then put me on your forwarding list. --Day 00:19, 9 February 2006 (EST)

There, I must disagree with you. The Merovingian is not "the oldest of us" but "one of the oldest of us", which would still fit my interpretation. Further, in Leviathan Hobbes goes on a tangent where he says that because everything in life is "cause and effect", logically, we should in theory be able to predict the future, because life has no external factors (god, random choice, etc. Fate/causality rules all). But he adds that in practice, this is impossible, simply because there are so many variants that the human mind cannot grasp at once--->it reminds me of discussions of psychohistory in "Prelude to Foundation"; hen Hari Seldon originally presented his first paper theorizing that psychohistory was possible, he explained that he did not yet have a working model because his paper essentially just proved that you could actually analyze all of the "antecedants" of life in a computer model. I.e. if the universe is so compex that the only functional "model" of it is something as big and complicated as the universe itself, such a model is useless. However, he said that you could actually make a model smaller than the universe itself..

Well, the point is that according to The Merovingian's own Hobbesian principles, he is in a possition SIMULTANEOUSLY A) He believes the world to be governed by nothing but causality, and therefore, he should be able to predict the future, but B) THE VERY SAME principles that idea is based on also state that predicting the future is Practically impossible. This might get a little annoying to him. --->So then there's The Oracle, who CAN predict the future, while he cannot (though in theory, he should). Therefore, this adds another level of hate for her, and he wants the "eyes of the Oracle" (which he's "Wanted ever since I came here) because he's jealous. And who's to say the Machines would not want to tap the talen of the "grotesque" human mind in designing/running a more human world (beta-2)? I digress. P.S. Don't get me started on MXO's Agent Pace...--The Merovingian 18:13, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Yes, Merv is one of the oldest, not the oldest. Merv was only half-right, which is why his Matrix worked only halfway. Predicting the future is not impossible if the events in the world work like a computer program does. He wanted to predict things logically--but, with choice involved, prediction becomes far less logical or predictable. When people in his Matrix version realized they, too, could guess the logical cause and effect, they lost believablity in their Matrix. The Oracle's Matrix has no such problem for the most part. Hey, you haven't an email address to send you my paper (Joe just got a copy). You can send me your address privately to my email if you care not to post it publicly. --Spencerian 19:57, 8 February 2006 (EST)

Tangent: I once tried to start up a Matrix-themed MUSH which was to be placed in an unspecified previous iteration of the Matrix, only a few years after the death of the One that started the thing. We had some lengthy debates about how to implement the Oracle or make any sort of assertions that would A) be specific enough so as to be cool when they came true but, b) be vague enough so as to be possible in a roleplaying environment that included, well, choice. Eventually, though, all the staffers got busy doing other things. *wink* --Day 00:19, 9 February 2006 (EST)

A Revelation I've Had

[AgentSmith]Let me share a revelation I've had [/Agentsmith]. In case you are new, most here are of the consensus that my attitude towards edits is overall blunt/brusk, not "polite", etc. (it's just letters on a screen, so I just never gauged "politeness" much; not that I make personal attacks, just that I "cut through it" and say what I'm thinkin'). Anyway, Day summarized some of this pretty well on Talk:Perry when he said just now: "your jumping off the cuff with aggressive language at people who simply disagree with you. It may be a matter that would be handled by inflection, were you interacting in real life, but you should realize that when you're dealing with text only, you have only very gross control over inflection: normal, bold and italics. And they can be construed as meaning many things. As a side note, I've noticed you like to use bold and such a lot and so, sometimes, you do combinations or all-caps or asterisks for further emphasis. I mean this in only an entirely constructive way, but... I have no idea how to interpret those passages except as very loud, so they're more confuysing to me, personally, than helpful.". Well, I think I've finally realized what the crux of the problem was:

Loss of essence. A profound sense of fatiuge, a feeling of emptiness...caused by terrorists trying to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, through water fluoridation. It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core terrorist works. He hold no value for human life, not even his own. Well, I can no longer sit back and allow terrorist infiltration, terrorist indoctrination, terrorist subversion and the international terrorist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.--->Hahaha, sorry. I can never resist a good plug for the old Dr. Strangelove routine.

But I digress.

No, seriously. I finally realized what the crux of all of this friction has been: As you know, I am a prolific poster on the official messageboard. I think the problem is, I've been posting on BattlestarWiki as if it were a messageboard. You see, messageboards aren't as formal and a lot of, well, yelling, arguing as part of debate, etc., is actually the norm there. Further, when it comes to my overuse of **inflection** ....I'm just *used* to typing that way because that's how you highlight and emphasize stuff on messageboard posts (it's sort of how you make up for not being able to see visible social cues, etc.) Also--->Posts on messageboards can sometimes fill an entire Microsoft word single-spaced document page. They can get really long. So you've really got to highlight the beginning of every new idea or paragraph like that to make your point, etc.

But on the whole, it's just a different atmosphere, more "pack-mentality" to establish dominance through a show of force (GREAT Farscape joke about that one in the first episode of the fourth season...but I digress.), and a fanatical amount of information, etc.

I realize it took me a while, but I've finally come to the full realization that My Talk page posts, etc. seem kind of rough because I'm just typing like these are messageboard posts. (Messageboard posts disappared practially after 5 minutes, so you try to have as big an impact as possible, while here they just stay there for long periods, etc.)

So, I've realized that that's what's been going on, and I realize now (from experience) just how different a wiki is from that, so I will alter my tone accordingly. (Of course, I'll still highlight stuff that might seem important, but not go overboard). --The Merovingian 03:36, 10 February 2006 (EST)

Excellent! That's an angle I hadn't considered. The signal to noise ratio is definitely much higher here than at some other places. Heck, the fact that people were still discussing a question I asked around the first of December is an excellent demonstration between the way things happen around here and the official board. I hope you have begun to see that the people here value what you have to say/contribute (without the need to clamor to be heard above the din). --Steelviper 09:30, 10 February 2006 (EST)

That may be a very apt metaphor, SV. Reading Merv's posts is sometimes like listening to someone who thinks your in the other room, but really you're right behind them. Roughly, "Hey. I'm already listening, Dude." *wink* Anyway, I hope this is exactly the issue at, uh... issue, here. --Day 16:24, 10 February 2006 (EST)

Recent Rollback

Hey. I rolled back your last edit on Louanne Katraine because we don't use quotes with single episode citations enclosed in parentheses. So, if I wrote an episode name when discussing an episode in this sentence that talks about, say, "Scar", it doesn't look like a citation like this (Scar). For consistancy we do quotes within parentheses in a string of episodes cited, with the exception of the Miniseries name, which is not an episode name per se (Miniseries, "Scattered", "Fragged"). --Spencerian 17:19, 10 February 2006 (EST)

Yes, thank you. I was confused on this. --The Merovingian 17:22, 10 February 2006 (EST)

Re-imagined Series definition: Battlestar Group ^{(TRS: "Water")}. It also doubles as an acronym for the television series itself.

Re-imagined Series definition: initial skills training; can refer to basic military indoctrination, and arms and ground training ^{(TRS: "Fragged")}; and basic flight training ^{(TRS: "Miniseries")}

Galactica 1980 definition: Dillon is called both a terrorist and a chauvinist by Jamie Hamilton during their phone call from the police station; he asks Troy "what's a terrorist chauvinist?" ^{(1980: "Galactica Discovers Earth, Part I")}

These are terms directly relating to Galactica 1980, some of which are based from the Original Series. For terms from that series, please refer to List of terms (TOS).