dearprofessorcelestia

[dearprofessorcelestia]

A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life. Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.

[dearprofessorcelestia]

the thing I really like about The Good Place is that it thematically revolves around ethics and what makes a person good or bad (both in the sense of– how do we define good and bad, and in the sense of–what aspects of someone’s formative environment and social group influence how they will treat other people). 

and the conclusion that the show comes to over and over is both that it is possible to become a better person, and because it’s possible we owe it to each other to keep trying to be better– for all eternity if we must. 

there’s no end to it, and (should I make a prediction) no real “good place” where you’ve gotten to the finish line and “won” at being a good person. it’s an eternal commitment to other people. 

you create your own good place, because whether you’re in a good place or a bad place is defined by how people treat each other. when your community has collectively learned to respect, value, and help each other, you experience the peace and support that you might have once imagined in the abstract being awarded to the truly “good” 

[dearprofessorcelestia]

As a piano nerd, allow me to reassure you that the reason that many Classical keyboard compositions sound terrible to you isn’t because you lack the background to properly appreciate them. I mean, you do lack the background to properly appreciate them, but they’re also objectively terrible, and the fact that you need the proper background to understand them is big part of why they’re terrible. They’re so preoccupied with demonstrating the technical skill of the performer that they totally forgot about actually sounding good, producing pieces that are comprehensible only to other keyboardists. And even we don’t really enjoy them – we just play them to torture ourselves, because all serious keyboardists are also masochists.

[dearprofessorcelestia]

taako with the flaming raging poisoning sword of doom

[dearprofessorcelestia]

So, please correct me if I'm out of line. But I was reading one of your posts and you mentioned that Jews don't have a concept of Hell. And I was wondering what kind of afterlife that the Jewish religion believes in.

my favorite jewish answer is “idk i’m not dead.” 

But there is no universally agreed upon concept of an afterlife, as My Jewish Learning (.com) puts it:

Though some Jewish scholars have tried to clarify these ideas, it would be impossible to reconcile all the Jewish texts and sources that discuss the afterlife.

also please note no one needs to be jewish for this stuff to apply it’s like…universal in terms of good people are good people regardless of their jewishness. 

anyways there is Gehinnom which some people think of as “bad” and where you might be “punished”, and other people think of as…more like a necessary part of the process of the afterlife. The Chabad website likens it to a soul-washing machine. Their metaphor for explaining it is roughly: “if you were a sock, you might be worried about all that boiling water and soap and vigorous spinning around in a cycle, but the purpose is to clean it, not cause it eternal pain and suffering. Eventually you leave the washing machine, hit the dryer, and come out smelling nice and fresh. But instead of being a sock, you are a soul, and instead of a washing machine you have gehinnom and also you still rest on shabbat.”*** 

the timeline of being here is one year maximum. if you are a really bad egg and a year can’t cleanse your soul, you cease to exist probably. i mean i don’t know, but this is a theory. most people go to gehinnom because well, we all have grass stains and dirt nothing to be ashamed of, you just wanna get that scrubbed off before you hit the sock drawer. Sheol might be another word for this place, or it might be a word for like “oblivion” of the spirit or might just be a place of like…rest of the soul. 

*** side note: a good jewish story about gehinnom/gehenna says that if a jewish person was in the habit of visiting their rabbi for dinner on shabbat but is in gehenna and their rabbi is in Gan Eden already (the clean laundry, basically) your soul is allowed to continue to see your Rabbi for shabbat dinner, and most rabbis smuggle their congregants into Gan Eden and don’t give them back. they hide you after you come over for shabbat dinner. but this is a story i mean who knows. 

there is gan eden which is the “nice place” probably. This is closer to what you might think of as heaven, because it is wonderful and feels great and is like experiencing shabbat x 30985734985723089. presuming it is a real place, only the very righteous go there directly after death. 

then there is also olam haba, or “the world to come” which is maybe the same thing as gan eden, or maybe an era of the world that could in theory exist, here on earth, where everything is great and wonderful, and we are obligated to make it happen here on earth by being good people right now and fixing/repairing the world (tikkun olam). 

so ultimate the answer is: well uh, we have some theories about this maybe but the issue is being a good human while you are alive, because living as a human right now is not a speculative exercise, but actual reality. 

anyways i stress again i’m not dead so i don’t really have any firm answer to that. 

[dearprofessorcelestia]

Imagining a fraggle with cracks of black opal showing through its skin is going to ruin my ability to sleep more than the large spider hovering over by the fridge in here.

People have all these Headcanons about which Jon Jon is but have you considered...

…actual, I-swear-I-am-not-making-this-up, childhood character CONVINCING JON from Fraggle Rock.

The evidence: Convincing Jon was a motivational speaker who could convince anyone to do anything: his first appearance involved him convincing people to stop doing things they enjoyed, even when the result almost destroyed their home. He is ultimately unable to undo the negative consequences of the disaster he has created.

Sound Familiar?

I rest my case.

[dearprofessorcelestia]

Yawara finally made it!

a fucking concept .

[dearprofessorcelestia]

Hustlecat Print! (photoshop)

If you didn’t know, a bunch of my best pals are kickstarting a visual novel called Hustle Cat!  If the kickstarter gets to $30K, everyone who backs at $60 or above will receive a copy of this print!  But act fast, there’s less than three days left!!

The game is super cute and there’s a buncha playable demos that you can play RIGHT NOW IN YOUR BROWSER!  I’m utterly smitten with the main character Avery and how customizable they are. ♥︎

[dearprofessorcelestia]

[Drawing of a yellow cat saying “You have stories worth writing and you have the talent to write them. You can do this.” in a purple speech bubble on a green background.]

[dearprofessorcelestia]

…. gurl.

[dearprofessorcelestia]

[dearprofessorcelestia]

Has anyone done this yet?

[dearprofessorcelestia]

I think the western literature part here is definitely relevant too, because as far as I know dragons in Asia tend to have more godlike powers and can be both evil or (at least relatively) benevolent.

I did love the Pern books in middle school though, so this is cool to hear.

George R.R. Martin: dragons are huge ferocious beasts who answer to a master  

Tolkien: dragons are annoying, talking assholes

[dearprofessorcelestia]

My fiancee and I were discussing the worst metal to use to make armor, and the obvious answers are lead and gold, but she cunningly suggested mercury. Which is a fair point, but then I wondered if solid mercury is any good. Googling told me that the melting point of mercury is -38° c (-37° f), so first you get it really fucking cold. At that point, it turns out that mercury has a tensile strength of 1900 mpa, compared to lead’s 18 and steel’s ~500-940 (depending upon the kind of steel).

Now, I know that tensile strength is not necessarily the best measure of a material’s ability to function as armor, but I’m a liberal arts major and didn’t care to actually do that much more research before going straight to, “EVIL ICE DEMONS IN MERCURY ARMOR. THE PCS CAN’T LOOT IT BECAUSE WHEN THEY PUT IT ON IT MELTS AND KILLS THEM.”

[dearprofessorcelestia]

“nocturne”

a new princess tutu print i made for this summer! it’s also in the store now. it’s been over a decade since i first watched princess tutu and it’s still my favorite anime.

[dearprofessorcelestia]

(via simonlauchlan)

[dearprofessorcelestia]