#lack of structure

[simonoliverseville]

“I feel like my cognitive processing speed takes a hit every summer.”

“It probably doesn’t. The heat and the lack of structure just combine to make my mental faculties feel like soup.”

“Jeanette has proposed a fun idea of working on a Nature Guide while camping and that sounds like just what I need to scratch the intellectual itch.” 🤩

[fishandshesmygills]

they should invent an understanding and intellectualizing your feelings that makes them go away!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Who is this sassy lost child?

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[honehonn3honey]

A protection that becomes more creepy

Azul in my heart. You can see the original art here and read the monster list here @lustlovehart

[Alt under the cut]

My first concept, since my style could not simulate the texture of slime in its purest state

It is quite thick so water can not enter or wet. Only small puddles where you can accumulate

It is a monster and that, magic, but I can imagine that it can only reach a height by the pressure, it can come out expelled sometimes

[beaft]

funny to think that when i was a kid i was all "i REFUSE to ever work an office job, i am a wild creature, my spirit is free and tempestuous and cannot be contained within cubicle walls" and now at the age of [REDACTED] i'm like please. please give me an office job. please give me a sensible office job where all i have to do is get up at the same time each day and clock in and send emails and clock out again. i am on my knees begging.

[asamis-jodhpurs]

God the thing about Phineas and Jonas's dynamic in season one that makes it so insane-making (and unfold so badly) is that what Jonas thinks he has is a mild-mannered assistant with social anxiety who just needs a little more confidence and chill to really shine, when what he in fact has is a traumatized attack dog on a short leash who is ready to snap the second he feels even the slightest amount of slack. With social anxiety.

[rookflower]

remembering the "is squirrelflight or leafpool holly jay and lion's Real Mother" discourse being really big and that people seemed unable to conceptualise that both of these things can in fact be true at once

[texanmarcusdavenport]

I really like the idea of Marcus being a "failed android". His programming isn't seamless; he has odd reactions to certain events, he gets confused easily, he's overemotional. His internal world/self-esteem is entirely based on others' direction and approval. He's messy and disorganized while also having a perfectionist, compulsive personality. He gets fixated on odd things. His hearing is sensitive but not good at picking out distinct sounds; his vision is 70/20 but he's incapable of seeing 'the bigger picture'. He can't recognize faces. He can't see or touch screens that well. He's not a programming whiz or math genius; he actually hates technology.

He may be a feat of engineering and a mechanical marvel, but for all intents and purposes he's a fairly average autistic dude with a personality disorder.

[noxcorvid]

i know it's bc skyrim is held together with spit and duct tape and having too much city per city would likely cause problems + only so much mapspace to work with, so that's the doylist explanation as to why solitude doesn't have any sort of fort or anything on the other side of the karth river where it feeds into the sea of ghosts (bc that seems like a logical thing to do for your capital for defense, to have watchtowers at the opening of its river) but i think the potential watsonian reason as to why there's nothing there is that the entire other side of the river is swamp so almost anything solid/stone they've tried to build there has sunk into the ground after a few years and at this point in skyrim's history (post-oblivion crisis, general state of the world seems to be pretty broken) they've given up on it

[newlyy]

I’m so fucking sick of rent being so high. Why do we just accept that to rent a one bed, one bath apartment is almost 1k a month. Who decided that. And we pay other costs on top of that, like electric and internet. Where does the 1k go? To the garbage pickup once a week? To the once-every-three-months maintenance call to fix something? Because these generally aren’t nice apartments either. I saw one listed on Facebook marketplace that not only had a very high rent for the outdated, unpleasant aprtment, but wouldn’t rent to you unless your income was three times the price of rent per month. That’s ridiculous. Why do landlords think they’re god.

[tired-reader-writer]

Something possessed me these past few days (as I was coughing my lungs out T_T) and I just for no reason started collecting snippets from the Khorda Avesta site? Anything and everything that caught my attention????

I'm still not sure if I can formulate these into a proper post since I was aimlessly exploring when I picked these up but... I'm gonna try—

[EDIT: I suddenly remembered the reason as I was compiling the quotes in the drafts! I was curious about the royal bracelets' design (which @innerchorus pointed out likely drew inspiration from tauroctony scenes as they were described as being engraved with a design of a young man on the back of a bull, stabbing the bull in the head with a short sword) and I thought, okay, why does specifically this imagery indicate royalty? And so I started looking around about the tauroctony, then Mithraism, then Mithra, then cue me scratching my head and screaming in confusion, then going around for the actual prayers 😭]

I won't get too deep into the tauroctony stuff (mainly bc there just isn't much to get into in the first place) but long story short it's a Roman thing, not a Persian thing, it was the cult of “Mithras” and though they shared a deity/name, I don't think there was any substantial link between Mithraism and Zoroastrianism— David Ulansey even apparently said that “there is no evidence that the Iranian god Mithra ever had anything to do with killing a bull” and I think I am inclined to agree, considering that he in Zoroastrianism is a protector of cattle instead. (In the hymn dedicated to him, he is repeatedly referred to as “lord of wide pastures”).

So anyways, I don't currently have a concrete explanation on why imagery connected to Mithra (kinda, not really) was used to indicate the potential royal status of three characters in the second part of the novels, but I may have concocted... something.

Bear in mind that this has nothing, nothing to do with real history, do not take it as such, by me trying to adapt things to fit the ArSen narrative we've already left the harbor of historical accuracy. So here goes—

I posit that in Pars, Ahura Mazda, Mithra, and Anahita in particular are revered as “civilization-building” deities, aka foundational to the prosperity and functioning of a nation as opposed to individual and spiritual righteousness.

Yeah, this still doesn't quite explain the tauroctony imagery, I got nothing for that, I think I might just end up changing shit, we'll... see...

Mithra is the divinity of covenants, light, oaths, justice, the sun, contracts, friendship, and also a judicial figure, an all-seeing protector of Truth (Asha), the guardian of cattle, the harvest, and the Waters (Anahita)— which, a lot of it sounds pretty essential to a prosperous civilization functioning, doesn't it?

Mithra is invoked in several royal Achaemenid inscriptions:

“Ahura Mazda, Anahita, and Mithra protect me against all evil” — Artaxerxes II's inscription at Susa and Hamadan, where he “beseeches them to protect what he has built”

“Ahura Mazda and the God Mithra preserve me, my country, and what has been built by me.” — inscription of Artaxerxes III

Mithra is also featured in rock reliefs depicting the coronations of Ardashir II and Khosrow II

Mithra is considered a member of the “Ahuric Triad” along with Apam Napat (this one is complicated, more on that later) and none other than Ahura Mazda himself

“The ruffian who lies unto Mithra brings death unto the whole country, injuring as much the faithful world as a hundred evil-doers could do.”

×

“Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, gives swiftness to the horses of those who lie not unto Mithra. Fire, the son of Ahura Mazda, gives the straightest way to those who lie not unto Mithra.”

(I... will get into the whole Mithra-Asha thing later on, I promise, I'm assuming “fire” here refers to Asha due to the truth divinity's associations to fire)

“We sacrifice unto Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, who is truth-speaking, a chief in assemblies, with a thousand ears, well-shapen, with ten thousand eyes, high, with full knowledge, strong, sleepless, and ever awake; To whom the chiefs of nations offer up sacrifices, as they go to the field, against havocking hosts, against enemies coming in battle array, in the strife of conflicting nations.”

×

“We sacrifice unto Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, .... sleepless, and ever awake; Unto whom nobody must lie, neither the master of a house, nor the lord of a borough, nor the lord of a town, nor the lord of a province. If the master of a house lies unto him, or the lord of a borough, or the lord of a town, or the lord of a province, then comes Mithra, angry and offended, and he breaks asunder the house, the borough, the town, the province; and the masters of the houses, the lords of the boroughs, the lords of the towns, the lords of the provinces, and the foremost men of the provinces.”

×

“We sacrifice unto Mithra, the lord of wide pastures, .... sleepless, and ever awake; Who upholds the columns of the lofty house and makes its pillars solid; who gives herds of oxen and male children to that house in which he has been satisfied; he breaks to pieces those in which he has been offended. Thou, O Mithra! art both bad and good to nations; thou, O Mithra! art both bad and good to men; thou, O Mithra! keepest in thy hands both peace and trouble for nations.”

— Mihr Yasht (Hymn to Mithra)

A lot of nation imagery there!!

So then, my attention was drawn towards the rest of the Ahuric Triad, but I'm choosing to make it that for Pars in this fictional setting, Anahita is there in Apam Napat's stead.

Here are my reasons:

It is very likely that Anahita, even irl, gradually usurped the position of Apam Napat in the Triad, causing the latter's place to be lost and his veneration to become limited to the obligatory verses recited at the Ab-Zohr.

She is described as “life-increasing, herd-increasing, fold-increasing, who makes prosperity for all countries” in the hymn dedicated to her.

Anahita is featured in a rock relief depicting the coronation of Khosrow II, the same one Mithra featured in

As a river divinity, she is responsible for the fertility of the soil and for the growth of crops that nurture both man and beast.

The hymn dedicated to her features like. Multiple stanzas(?) of multiple people praying to her “that [they] may become the sovereign lord of all countries” which is super interesting

I don't know how related this is to everything else I've written so far but I also found it interesting that apparently, due to the association between water and wisdom, she is “the divinity to whom priests and pupils should pray for insight and knowledge”.

Anyways here are some of the verses I yoinked:

“Offer up a sacrifice, O Spitama Zarathushtra! unto this spring of mine, Ardvi Sura Anahita, the wide-expanding and health-giving, who hates the Daevas and obeys the laws of Ahura, who is worthy of sacrifice in the material world, worthy of prayer in the material world; the life-increasing and holy, the herd-increasing and holy, the fold-increasing and holy, the wealth-increasing and holy, the country-increasing and holy;”

×

“To her did Haoshyangha, the Paradhata, offer up a sacrifice on the enclosure of the Hara, with a hundred male horses, a thousand oxen, and ten thousand lambs. He begged of her a boon, saying: "Grant me this, O good, most beneficent Ardvi Sura Anahita, that I may become the sovereign lord of all countries, of the Daevas and men, of the Yatus and Pairikas, of the oppressors, the blind and the deaf; and that I may smite down two thirds of the Daevas of Mazana and of the fiends of Varena." Ardvi Sura Anahita granted him that boon, as he was offering libations, giving gifts, sacrificing, and entreating that she would grant him that boon.”

(there were multiple instances of multiple people asking her for a boon, and she either gives that boon or withholds it depending on who's asking)

“Offer up a sacrifice, O Spitama Zarathushtra! unto this spring of mine, Ardvi Sura Anahita... Whom Ahura Mazda the merciful ordered thus, saying: "Come, O Ardvi Sura Anahita, come from those stars down to the earth made by Ahura, that the great lords may worship thee, the masters of the countries, and their sons.”

— Aban Yasht (Hymn to the Waters)

So yeah. A modified Ahuric Triad of sorts being revered for the more “practical”, society-wide, civilization-related domains. Or, well, Ahura Mazda is Ahura Mazda. One can't not include him as he is the god of light and everything good. (Tanaka seemed to have taken Ahura Mazda out of Pars' faith entirely, oh whatever I'm putting him back in)

Yeah. Still haven't really... figured out a way to connect the tauroctony to any of this. Maybe I'll have the design to feature Mithra and Anahita instead, blessing a royal birth of sorts (Anahita is associated with fertility, after all! She is said to purify the wombs of women and the seed of men, as well as encouraging the flow of milk for newborns. Plus, it's a royal birth. Surely something could be bullshitted here?

(as for Ahura Mazda, I saw in the Zoroastrianism subreddit that you can't really depict Ahura Mazda, he's just a strong, pure light, he can't be captured in image, which probably is true? I haven't been able to confirm it but I think it makes sense. ANYWAYS—)

Also very neat how Ashaya (the secret royal child who rejects their origins) has like, people who kinda sorta represent Mithra and Anahita in her life— Farangis' entire existence, of course, but also Shapur keeping the promise he gave to Sâyezân, the whole Mardi clan situation coming from a broken oath, and then the Mardi clan embodying the whole life-increasing herd-increasing healing fertility thing with their magic and such.

And I based her name on Asha, the Zoroastrian divinity of... ah, fuck. I'll just leave this here:

Asha (/ˈʌʃə/) or arta (/ˈɑːrtə/; Avestan: 𐬀𐬴𐬀 Aṣ̌a / Arta) is a Zoroastrian concept with a complex and highly nuanced range of meaning. It is commonly summarized in accord with its contextual implications of 'truth' and 'right' (or 'righteousness'), 'order' and 'right working'. It is of cardinal importance to Zoroastrian theology and doctrine. In the moral sphere, aṣ̌a/arta represents what has been called "the decisive confessional concept of Zoroastrianism". The opposite of aṣ̌a is druj (Avestan: 𐬛𐬭𐬎𐬘, lit. 'deceit, falsehood').

Look, for the purposes of this post I'm gonna grossly simplify it into “truth” and “righteousness”. It's more complicated than that even in the AU Parsian society, but I don't think I'm equipped to get into it.

(also I've been referring to Asha as feminine all this time before this post, apparently the hymns refer to Asha as a male... do I wanna modify this or not................ arrrrrrrrrrrgh)

Remember that “Fire, the son of Ahura Mazda” thing? So I've been thinking about it. I don't think Zoroastrianism has a genealogy and such like say the Greek pantheon situation, but maybe for the AU version of the Parsian faith (which I'd named “khuda-yasna” for “khuda” being the Persian word for “god”, more than likely referring to Ahura Mazda but let's just say that here the meaning expands to the other divinities as well) (kinda kills me inside a little that faith and religion in ArSen is just flattened down and lumped in with nationality like “Parsian faith” like, could you not have named it?? Also the Yaldabaoth religion? Does it not have a name??) (anyways back on track) I had imagined taking this snippet rather literally. Asha is the child (or the closest child) of Ahura Mazda the holy light. And Mithra is who serves and protects Asha. They're both really tied together, aren't they? Truth and oaths and lies and such. Maybe, in Pars, in this setting, Asha is the spiritual and moral righteousness that must be nurtured in every individual person while Mithra has to do w those civilization/society stuff. Not that I think Asha would be any less revered? Just different axes, different paradigms of worship and veneration, if that makes sense?

Anyways here are some snippets that caught my eye:

“He will smite the most oppressive of the oppressors of men, he will afflict most oppressive of the oppressors of men.”

×

“The most lying words of falsehood fled away; the Jahi, addicted to the Yatu, fled away; the Jahi, who makes one pine, fled away; the wind that blows from the North fled away; the wind that blows from the North vanished away.”

×

“He smites the most lying words of falsehood; he smites the Jahi, addicted to the Yatu; he smites the Jahi, who makes one pine. He smites the wind that blows from the North; the wind that blows from the North vanished away.”

— Ardwahisht Yasht (Hymn to the Highest Asha)

(the part about smiting oppressors in particular made me go 👀👀👀)

Anyways I just wanted to lay out some stuff for the AU worldbuilding to help myself make heads and tails out of this really, I don't have a conclusions, uhhhh hope y'all enjoy this

[wiklm]

literally going INSANE thinking about murderbot and under pressure by queen it’s like THE murderbot song ever to me especially the bridge. i’m rolling around and screaming. mbs capacity for love is so crazy despite all its claims that it doesn’t really care except for it’s closer friends. like it loves people who are practically strangers and random bot pilots and it puts in so much effort to protect clients (friends. it won’t say it but friends) that it has known for like 1 day (ex. the cracker wrapper in the sink crew. it was so sad it couldn’t do anything to save them from their contracts and it keeps me awake at night) and AGHRJHGHRTR. i’m specifically going so absolutely bonkers thinking abt the lyric “love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves” bc of THREE AND ART. i love thinking about how mb knows deep down that even if it says it’s not a person that can’t be true bc that would mean that three isn’t a person and ART isn’t a person and it KNOWS that’s not right. mbs self perception has been so fundamentally altered both by its love for others and other’s love for it and AHHHHHRHEHHH AHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHAT IF I SAILED AWAY!!!!!! ough my thoughts about this are so scrambled and dumb but i wanted to share and i hope u can go insane with me also. i dream of an alternate timeline in which murderbot is adapted to a beautifully animated show and i can make an under pressure amv that changes my life

[lights-at-night]

i really do want to musically adapt tsv i have Ideas. the flesh boat encounter starting in wordless, five-part harmony and have faulkner join in with it while carpenter stands in silence. slow charity's song in the start of ch5- could have her humming it when the audience still thinks she's just a hiker, and have gareth's transformation being him singing there's them that lead and them that chase repeatedly as a tenor line with charity singing the melody over it. the babble episode being improvised, dissonant singing in the background instead of the whispers. adverts and propaganda being sung throughout as transition bits or background noise. season one finale of carpenter and faulkner singing to the trawlerman in tandem. the echo angel episode being a song with only one repeated phrase in the vocal line and having that motif come back in season 3 with rane. there could be so much of faulkner singing one thing but the stage visuals showing something completely different (eg at the katabasian's trial, his return to the gulch in s3, his addresses to his fanatics, the withermarking of glottage). hembry could sing in place of narrating his own actions, and paige and hayward would have to join him. val's lies and monologues being sung in a call and response with her singing acapella and the instrumentation replying with the result of the lie, which could then be subverted when she tries in vain to bring sutler's weald back and is met with silence, and as her power fades she would start to sing in free time and the instrumentals would get shorter and thinner in texture, and her last meeting with carson being met with piano like how gymnopedie played in the podcast. and the saint electric workers' strike in ch37 starting as a work song and the melody being disfigured in crescendo until they're chanting a new song in protest. paige and hayward singing to each other in their radio conversation in different rhythms at the same time, rendering their words incomprehensible but the feeling to remain. shrue starting to sing in their final broadcast after the "they have built this world in words and words are how we have to navigate through it, so i have no choice. words it is". you could have the how can i refuse to join in a story that's hurting him thing (the carp nightmare episode, chapter 38, and the twin mouths finale reunion) be with one person singing on their own and the other speaking out of rhythm. sadly tsv could never be adapted to a traditional musical format because it is in 3 parts and it is long as fuck. but a boy can dream

[blueskittlesart]

ds botw hyrule castle doesnt exist 😭😭😭 i'm sure they had to cut structures to get it to a playable state but still

[dykedvonte]

A crazy thing about Mouthwashing is that Pony Express lost communication with one of its freighters for months and didn’t send anyone to check.

A genuinely reputable company, or at the very least a decent one, would have sent someone, something out to check after about two weeks of silence. Two months is when the crew start questioning if they are even being looked for which implies they were already expecting it to take a while cause P.E just doesn’t care.

They don’t care about who they hire. They don’t care about the conditions they place their crew in or how safe the safety measures actually are. They just don’t care, made rules and regulations so they can care less and succeed in getting away with it with how little those ideas are discussed.

[algrenion]

i stayed up too late and caught a blackbird land on my windowsill to eat the walnuts i left out last night !!!!

we live on a 3rd floor flat and they NEVER fly this high up !!! that is SPECIAL !!!!!!!!!!