#postscriptum

[bocadosdefilosofia]

«Todo pensamiento lógico se reproduce en lenguaje abstracto sub specie aeterni. Pensar de este modo la existencia equivale a omitir la dificultad, es decir, la dificultad de pensar lo eterno en proceso de devenir, algo que uno, sin duda, está obligado a hacer, puesto que el pensador mismo se halla en proceso de devenir. Síguese de esto que pensar abstractamente es más sencillo que existir, a menos que por existencia se entienda aquello que usualmente piensa la gente, algo como ser una especie de sujeto. Tenemos aquí nuevamente un ejemplo de cómo es que el más simple deber es también el más difícil. Se piensa  que existir no es mucha cosa, mucho menos un arte. Es obvio que todos existimos; pero pensar abstractamente -eso ya es algo relevante. Pero existir verdaderamente, es decir, dejando que la conciencia penetre en la propia existencia, siendo simultáneamente eterno, incluso más allá, por así decirlo, y no obstante presente en ella en un proceso de devenir -eso es lo verdaderamente difícil.»

Søren Kierkegaard: Postscriptum no científico a las Migajas Filosóficas. Universidad Iberoamericana, A. C., págs. 309-310. México, 2008.

TGO

@bocadosdefilosofia

@dias-de-la-ira-1

[huldras-halbtraum]

* * *

Nur noch ein Mal! – … nur einen Abend. Nächte sind warm, seit du mir fehlst. Schwalbe um Schwalbe kommen die Märze. Gürtel um Rose flechtet das Jahr meine Gebete grasrauchverhangen in die Versprechen, die ich vergrub. Aber ich weiß noch, wie du gelacht hast, wie du geküsst hast. Sei dir bewusst: Wenn ich dich treffe, fällst du zu Boden wie eine Kugel, die mich erschlug.

[dandelionjack]

> new series release (space babies) coincided with the uk seeing the northern lights for the first time in years

> the devil’s chord coincided with paul mccartney’s long-missing hofner bass guitar being found, by a doctor who fan no less

> boom coincided with an actual meteor crash

> 73 yards is coinciding with a rise in bizarre supposedly-occult animal sacrifice rituals in britain (the folk horror part) and rishi sunak finally calling a general election (the political drama part)

> hypothesis: russell t davies has somehow managed to tune in to the universe’s divine frequency ??

> conclusion: messing with the forces of fate, cause&effect and coincidence, even if it’s for the pop culture franchise you’re showrunning, actually turns it into an egregore, but only if it’s been going for long enough (sixty fucking years to the dot) and watched by enough people (tens of millions). which it has

> ergo, postscriptum: television magick is real and is being unintentionally performed by the creators + audience of the world’s silliest science fiction show

> /jk. unless?

[thepiratesfiance]

Horst Janssen, Postscriptum für Nao

[a-mx-writer]

Postscriptum: Analysis

This was initially posted as chapter 49 of my longfic Marked for Life on AO3. The actual last chapter, 48, was inundated with upset comments; this is the response. Archived here on Tumblr as well now.

Story spoilers ahead!

After getting a truckload of comments about how the last chapter [of Marked for Life] is disappointing, came out of nowhere, feels like a plot twist for twist's sake, undercuts all prior chapters, etc., I'm getting tired of typing out explanations over and over, so here's the abridged version (detailed ones in the comments of said chapter):

This was always how it was meant to end: unhappily. I wrote this ending, nearly word for word as it is now, very early during the writing process (the earliest version I can find is December 28) and revised it very little after. I've been working towards this ending throughout the entire story and in my opinion, it is the logical escalation of the pair's relationship. They were never headed for "and they lived happily ever after"; I tried to set them up for failure as clearly as possible. Their entire relationship throughout the story has been shaped by conflict, by anger, abuse, and a disastrous lack of good coping skills.

They spend the first two years of this story hating each others' guts. They try to kill each other several times, they torture each other. It takes them two years just to get to a point of being able to work together. Just to re-emphasise, this is a relationship between a sadistic, genocidal imperialist and monarch, and her "common", tortured slave. I get it, we all love to see redemption and happy endings and overcoming challenges, but this is not such a story. If you feel misled, I must point out I specifically didn't tag Azula Redemption, Happy Ending, or anything of the sorts, and I pointed out the violent and complicated nature of their relationship from the start.

I ask you, if you hated the ending, to re-examine it under the following aspects.

Both of them are headstrong and assertive, steadfast in their belief in their own moral superiority and that of their belief system. Even when they get along, even when they get together, when Azula gets over her idea that Katara is a savage who needs taming, cultural and class differences still stand between them. Katara's disgust at the Fire Nation führerkult worship of the Fire Lord, at the rich people sport of hunting for pleasure, and her self-loathing at the realisation she has gotten used to servants; Azula's belittling of what she sees as Katara's naivety and her insistence that she will rule as she sees fit. Azula maintains that she is making peace not due to some ethical change of heart, but out of necessity. Under different circumstances, she would have campaigned until the world lay in ruins. She is making peace because it is the best way to ensure her survival and that of her nation, not because she suddenly sees how wrong the war is. In the same vein, she makes it clear that while she regrets torturing Katara, it's because she has since developed feelings for her, and her continued use of these methods, like incarcerating every associate – aide, family member, servants – of suspected traitors, or convicting innocent suspects to make sure they don't harbour resentment over their arrest, makes it very clear that her moral compass hasn't suddenly spun around. She remains fully convinced in her birthright to the throne, in the absolute nature of her authority, etc., and Katara takes extreme issue with that.

They put those differences aside for the more important cause of peace, but it's only natural that they would resurface once the external pressure of having to save their lives by making peace is no longer a concern. Imagine if they had married – a Fire Lady who calls into question the legitimacy of her Fire Lord? Who undermines the Fire Lord's authority, who rejects the culture of worship that she and her wife are entitled to? Conflict was always in their future.

Civilising Katara, Azula’s project. Bettering Azula, Katara’s project. Destined for friction, for collisions.

That is exactly what I meant. Azula would try to integrate Katara into her culture and class, whether outright and directly, or whether simply indirectly by taking issue with Katara's not fitting in, and Katara would try the same in reverse, trying to get Azula to let go of these traditions and political system. Because, in the end, can any of you imagine "I will never ignore people who need help"-Katara not trying to intervene in what she sees as an oppressive, indoctrinating system? And can any of you imagine born-to-rule-Azula just throwing 100s of years of Fire Nation culture out the window to reform it into a democracy with due process and civil rights?

But that's only one half. Because the other is the relationship between them, their emotional balance if you will.

I started them out quite violent. They both try to kill each other several times, they both get physically abusive towards each other. Azula burning Katara for fun and torturing her for information, Katara massacring half the palace in her escape attempts. The eventually reach an equilibrium of mutually assured death, but once they get together, that changes again. They're no longer looking to kill each other, but their conflicts get much more personal now, because while there's still the captor/monarch–prisoner imbalance between them, they ostensibly speak eye to eye, or at least closer to eye level, with each other. And here, they actually get more violent again. Katara slaps Azula, they beat each other up, etc. When two people who are in a romantic relationship take their conflicts out with violence, we tend to call that "domestic violence" and we consider that a bad thing.

But later, that happens less. They get in shouting matches, have from the start, but it lessens. When Katara speaks with Zuko, a clearly displeased Azula just says she doesn't want to fight about it. And a lot of readers took that as a good sign, as a sign of progress in their relationship. And it is, but it isn't solely good. Avoiding violence is great, yes, but what we have here is conflict avoidance. And that's not great. Because conflict is a thing that happens; even the most happy couple will disagree on something at some point. And the solution to that is to talk it out. Communication. Avoiding that instead simply leaves the conflict unresolved, or resolved to the dissatisfaction of one party. And that breeds resentment.

What will happen to them if this keeps happening? Azula will, time and time again, choose to drop a disagreement, rather than risk fighting about it. And she will be dissatisfied and angry each time. Over time, she will come to dread conflict, get pre-emptively angry at the prospect of disagreements, because she'll know it will end with her giving up to avoid a fight. And eventually, as they continue to disagree (like on any of the subjects listed above), she will come to hate or dread speaking to Katara entirely. Ask me how I know.

This transition away from physical altercations and towards bad coping strategies was intended to set up this ending and show that their relationship isn't getting all that much healthier, just less overtly abusive. That seems to not have come across quite clearly, because most of the comments celebrated the end of violence and took it as a sign of their improvement, which it really wasn't intended to be. And thus the escalation of that – Fire Lord Azula, later in life, removing herself from the international stage, and turning to isolationism and xenophobia for her people, taking conflict avoidance to the diplomatic extreme – caught many readers unprepared.

And then the last puzzle piece: the evolution of their characters.

One of the key themes of this story is the way Azula gets better while Katara gets worse (as measured by Katara's moral standards). Azula gives up on conquest, loses her lust for world domination; she discovers her own sexuality and in the process makes life better for many persecuted people in her nation. At the same time, Katara learns to manipulate Azula, she takes an incredible amount of lives, she bloodbends several times despite her vow never to. She becomes more comfortable than she'd like giving orders to Fire Nation soldiers, she integrates herself into the court, and she is an accessory to torture and execution. And she loathes herself for it every step of the way, and later hates how comfortable she's become with it all. As she says at the end, those three years have left scars on her. She will never be the same.

And this becomes evident in her fate after the story. She becomes the chieftain of her tribe and leads ambitiously. One could call it ruthless, one could call it driven, goal-minded, and standing her ground. And they point is, all of these are qualities she's possessed before. All I've done is dial them up a little, dial down her inhibitions a little, and infuse her with some things she's learned from Azula. Because Katara has always, throughout the show, been ambitious, never one to take shit from anyone (Pakku showdown), and occasionally morally quite flexible – waterbending scroll, Painted Lady, etc. And, crucially, she is very caring and places great value on kindness, helping others, and taking care of your own. As the comics show, she also cares a great deal about the future of her tribe (such as when she clashes with Sokka over the degree of industrialisation the South should or should not receive). I don't think it's a far reach to imagine her eventually (no, I didn't specify a time frame; no, it doesn't happen immediately after her return five years later) succeeding Hakoda as chief.

She has a chip on her shoulder regarding the Northern Water Tribe's culture of sex segregation and misogynistic oppression, so she doesn't conclude the reunification efforts begun before her ascension to the chieftainship. She feels the SWT is owed something for its destruction and the lack of help it received, so she claims now-unowned former Fire Nation territory for her people, stares the Earth King down over it and wins. She carves out a place for her people – without whom the war would not have been won – in the new world, to provide for them, to get what she sees as justice. She's always been ambitious and tough, and now she's gotten a taste of real power, real authority, from Azula and liked it more than she would have been comfortable with in the past. And perhaps being one half of the couple who made peace, achieved what none did before, has gotten to her head, but either way, she's used to getting what she wants now, she's used to calling the shots now, and she's already once delivered justice in the form of the peace. She's still the teenage girl challenging a sexist teacher to throw hands, she's still the girl who disguised herself to help people in need, and she's still the girl who snaps at her brother who disrespects her people's culture and arts. She's all that, but she's grown up, and the three years with Azula have shaped her.

If you previously disliked the last chapter, I hope at this point you're saying something like, okay, it makes sense like that, but where was all that in the story?

It was there.

I hoped it was quite clear enough; evidently it wasn't. I thought I had foreshadowed it extensively, perhaps not extensively enough. Throughout the story, I made sure to contrast good moments with bad ones. They get together, but not without a screaming match and a huge breakdown. They make out at the dojo, and then Azula goes all wrath-of-god on the servant and triggers Katara into a full-on flashback, and Katara has the realisation that she's been looking at Azula through rose-tinted glasses and that the cruelty is still there. They have a romantic retreat (if not quite voluntarily) to Ember Island, some domestic bliss – and then Azula has a panic attack and they fight. They make up, and then Azula makes it clear she is still who she was, will still govern as she sees fit, disillusions Katara as to her change of heart or lack thereof. They want to make up, they beat each other up when Azula says insensitive things. Katara is reunited with her friends, Azula insults her and calls her loyalty into question. She talks with Zuko and has a lovely afternoon, Azula snaps at her and then refuses to talk about it.

One step forward, two steps back, that was the idea behind writing all of that. The world gets better, in the end, but they've paid a high personal price for it, and every little bit of silver lining for their relationship is bought at the expense of being abusive towards each other, or mistrusting each other, bought with pain, heartbreak, or violence.

I hoped by showing that, and by sowing the seeds of their conflicts early – the class difference, the cultural difference, their wildly differing morals and ideals, and their inability to constructively resolve conlicts –, I would have spelled "doomed by the narrative" all over their relationship.

It appears that at least for some readers, a much more substantial amount than I assumed, it wasn't enough. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the ending, I really am.

But at the end of the day, I've told the story I set out to tell. I never promised a happily ever after. I made the two of them go, as one of you put it, through hell and back, and they've come out as scarred, hurting people. Nobody said going through hell was a guarantee for happiness.

I hope to have sufficiently explained my reasoning. I hate to ruin the lovely chapter count of 48, but I couldn't fit all of this into an author's note, and the stream of disappointed comments compelled me to explaian the matter once and for all, which I have hereby done.

This post on AO3

[diaries-of-a-travelling-hero]

(ooc) interesting fact: watermelons in totk/botw seem to be closer to older varieties of watermelons, probably wild watermelons (which would make sense since in hyrule melons are foraged, not cultivated) or their less modified (compared to modern ones) domesticated versions. this is the type of watermelon found on Renaissance and baroque (up until about 17th century (included)?) paintings

this variety is almost impossible to stumble across today although some gardeners manage to grow melons with patterns (usually on accident) (image found on Reddit)

also kind of a postscriptum: the swirls usually become dark red even in regular modern watermelons when the fruit (i remembered the word fruit by the end of this post) starts to rot, which would make sense here, since this rubbish dump is basically a midden. they're most likely rotting

[chasingrainbowsforever]

By Duet Postscriptum on Stocksy

[dumpingscreenshotshere]

⏩ Cover and blurb of the new book from RC Books — “Psi: Postscriptum”, approved and blessed for a bright future by the screenwriter of the original novel, Alexander Jester

Power is merciless, especially to those who tried to overthrow it.

Ivo Martin’s plan has failed, the Vicar has won, and Lou Reed, miraculously escaping arrest and death, is left completely alone.

Disarmed, she watches the execution of Irma, Tom… and Jonas, who was not only her friend but the man she loved. Now, revenge is the sole purpose of her existence.

However, Lou has no idea that Jonas is actually alive and, against his will, drawn into the planning of a new revolution. They will meet again, to challenge a system where truth is more dangerous than any weapon, and love is the only thing that cannot be taken away.

[felidarretreat]

C'mon, hop on my lap!

Hi! You may call me Kate or Mommy. This pinned post is as fickle as the wind.

About me

{Late 20s

{Trans

{Lesbian

{Femme4Femme (mostly)

What keeps me busy

{Magic the gathering

{General nerdy things

{Hiking

{Your tits.

Postscriptum

{Asks open. Please show off for mommy, maybe I'll put you on the fridge.

{Minors, Zionists, fascists etc. DNI.

Tags

#kates brain - textposts

[huldras-halbtraum]

Ein P.S. an den Sommer

Beizeiten träume ich (wie im Fieber) von einer Schwalbe, und sehe dann im sanften Fluss alter Wiegenlieder ein junges Paar unterm Viergespann

der unumkehrbaren Jahreszeiten am Waldrand stehen. Du küsst mich – und die Sternenschar tut die Innenseiten meiner sprunghaften Seele kund.

Wir flüstern Wahrheit. Wir lügen beide. Wir wollen streiten und brauchen Schlaf. Gespräche splittern wie alte Kreide,

zwei Münder spiegeln den Mond konkav. Doch jeder Mann, den ich nach dir traf, trägt einen Ausschnitt aus deiner Seide.

[dandelionjack]

slight case of derangement today! you’ve been warned.

anyway has anybody considered… what if ruby sunday turns out to be river’s daughter from the 24 years she spent on darilium with twelve. plenty long enough to begin to raise a child. river could have wiped the doctor’s mind of all memory of their daughter for some kind of safety reason, likely to protect ruby (not that it works for long). would explain her tabula rasa heritage, and, more importantly, act as the obvious reasoning behind the bbc adamantly refusing to reveal the name of the leaked future companion played by varada sethu after millie leaves post-s1/14: it would be a massive spoiler for the series finale since she’s a regenerated ruby, 3/4 gallifreyan (or 1/2 weird time vortex augmented human?? one heart or two for ruby then? what even is river species-wise? many questions zero answers) another clue backing this concept up is the nature of the ruby/doctor relationship being completely non-romantic from what we’ve seen, with the doctor probably finding a male love interest in s1. just imagine a final two-parter — the doctor and ruby are facing some world-ending stakes, the universe is in peril, ruby ends up fatally wounded and… her hands start buzzing with a familiar golden glow

one more tidbit in corroboration: in a recent panel at some con (i can’t remember the video link now but if someone asks for receipts i will find it) alex kingston was quoted saying that river’s journey “may not be over just yet”. of course this could mean big finish or it could mean nothing at all but what if it hints at her showing up in a flashback sequence. what if she’s behind the black cloak, carrying baby ruby to the church? what if the doctor didn’t approach the hooded woman because of a subconscious recognition…

now, disclaimer so none of you start weird discourse for whatever reason, of course this could end up being a completely idiotic theory that’s way off the mark. or it could accidentally turn out to be spot on. imagine if i got it right. what would be the odds. would i feel vindicated or disappointed?

p.s. adding stuff i initially left in comments because it completes the post

post-postscriptum: (mrs) flood… river… pond…

[89rooms]

How sad that my life has not come to mean for you what your life came to mean for me.

Joseph Brodsky - 'Postscriptum,' Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, translation George L. Kline

[cm-shorts]

Reality as a net of experience

A Markov transition graph is a way of modeling how something moves from one state to another, step by step, with certain probabilities. Each state is a node, and the arrows—or edges—between nodes are weighted to indicate how likely the transition is. The weights are probabilities: they tell you how likely it is to go from one node to another in the next step. Importantly, what happens next depends only on where you are now—not on how you got there.

Now imagine that each node of this graph is one experience—one coherent scene of consciousness, consisting of sound, color, mood, thought, bodily feeling, all momentarily arising together. There is no hidden world behind them. No physical matter. No “things” at all. Just experiences, arising one after the other, connected like pearls on a thread.

In this model, you don’t travel through a physical world. You travel through the graph of experience itself. One moment of experience leads probabilistically to another, depending on past patterns, habits, tendencies. But crucially, there's nothing outside this graph producing the experiences. There’s no hidden stage behind the play. The play is all there is.

This might sound strange at first, especially from a Western perspective shaped by philosophers like Kant. Kant said we only ever have access to phenomena—what appears to us—but that these phenomena are structured by something deeper, something we can never know directly: the noumenon, or “thing-in-itself.” In other words, there’s a secret world behind appearances, which somehow causes or sustains them.

But the idea of the experience graph turns that upside down. It asks: what if we stop believing in a hidden layer behind experience? What if experiences don’t need to be grounded in a noumenon? What if they’re not appearances of something, but just appearances—events in their own right?

This idea resonates deeply with Zen Buddhism. Zen doesn’t affirm a hidden reality behind the world of appearances. It also doesn’t deny the world. Instead, it radically accepts each moment just as it is, without attaching any ontological baggage to it. When a sound arises, Zen doesn't immediately ask, “What caused this sound?” or “What object is this sound coming from?” It simply sees the sound as just this moment’s reality—empty of any essence, and yet fully vivid.

The experience graph doesn’t require a traveler either. There is no fixed self moving through it. Rather, the “self” is just the path itself—a sequence of interconnected experiences that, together, give rise to the illusion of a continuous identity. In this way, the model also reflects the Buddhist idea of anattā, or non-self. There’s no one “inside” having the experiences—just the flow.

The transitions between experiences don’t need laws of physics or external causes. They can be modeled as probabilities, or habits. In the same way that we might expect morning to follow night, or a response to follow a question, certain experiences tend to lead to others. No need to postulate a solid world behind them.

Even memory fits into this. A memory is not a portal to a past thing—it’s just another kind of experience, one that feels like a trace of something before. It arises here and now, with the flavor of “having been.” In the graph, it’s a node with connections pointing backward. But all of it happens within the graph itself—no external timeline required.

This view invites a radical simplicity. There is no need for a world of matter, or even a soul to perceive it. There is just the stream of experience, moving through a pre-existing graph of possibilities—patterned, unfolding, and vivid. No ground, no behind, no scaffolding. Just this. And then this. And then this.

***

Postscriptum: On Internal State and the Possibility of Learning

One might still wonder how genuine learning can occur in a model where the graph of experiences is fixed and pre-existing. If each moment is simply a probabilistic transition to the next, how can there be growth, transformation, or the accumulation of knowledge? A compelling answer lies in introducing an internal state—a hidden vector that evolves along with the visible stream of experiences.

This internal state does not belong to a stable self, nor is it attached to the nodes of the graph. Rather, it co-evolves with the path taken. It is a kind of traveling memory: a compressed echo of the past that shapes what can happen next. The agent, then, is not a thing or a soul, but the path itself plus this dynamic memory trace. There is no entity apart from the unfolding, yet the unfolding carries its own inertia.

Learning, in this view, is not the creation of new nodes or the rewriting of the graph. It is the gradual modulation of the path’s internal state, which in turn shifts the probabilities of future transitions. Like a shadow cast forward by previous steps, the internal state subtly influences what is likely to come next—without ever becoming a fixed identity.

[regexkind]

When I regularly attended an evangelical Lutheran church, the beverage they served afterwards was, to the best of my knowledge, brewed by:

1. Boiling a large quantity of sawdust in greywater,

2. Catching the spit that ran from Pastor B—'s cornball homilies as he practiced them in the mirror.

At the unitarian universalist church I have been to, the coffee is quite good—I could believe the sinful touch of a coffee bean was somehow involved in its making.

By extrapolation from the property of "loosey-goosey theology engenders good coffee," I conclude that the coffee in the Terra Ignota universe must be orgasmic

---

Postscriptum: my girlfriend has been reading TI to me and isn't finished. Please don't tell me spoilers. I was going to wait to publish this post until she'd finished but Tumblr is probably going to die before then

[askcraneandmills]

Hello there Ichabod.

With the Halloween season upon us, I was wondering: what are your plans to celebrate this spooky time of year? Will you be out drinking with all your friends/teammates? Or spending a nice evening in with Abbie and little Grace?

Good evening!

Abbie and I spend considerably less time Out Drinking with friends since our darling has come into our lives. At first, purely from Utter Exhaustion, and later from.... No, I must admit, still utter exhaustion.

We shall be taking Grace Trick-o-Treating in the afternoon (Abbie complains that it Isn't The Same trick-o-treating in daylight as it was when She Was A Child and they went out at Night), and in the evening we shall probably Order Pizza, put Gracie to bed ('Say good night, Gracie') and watch a Scary Movie. By which I mean, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which Abbie has been Threatening to make me watch for a Year. I am, indeed, Quaking at the thought.

Yr servant,

Ichabod Crane

Postscriptum: I saw a Plastic Tombstone in a Craft Store last week with my Name upon it. It was, as Abbie would say, Surreal.

[jugendmagazineart]

Postscriptum - Hans Christiansen, 1897