eschatologicalblank - Tumblr blog

[eschatologicalblank]

Doing more than one? Choose whichever you found the most helpful. ❤️

[eschatologicalblank]

I have a tragic habit of only getting halfway through Christian books, so despite having had a copy of Revelations of Divine Love for nearly two years now I'm still only on chapter 48. Which is a shame, because what I have managed to shove into my inattentive brain has been really great.

Like, every time I think about Thomas the Doubter now, I think about him in the context of chapter 38, 'In Heaven "the token of sin is turned to worship."—Examples thereof', which has a pretty self-explanatory title. In my mind he's gone from that guy who, in every sermon I've ever heard on the passage, is just there to be an example on the role of doubt and reassurance in faith - to the guy whose foibles and weaknesses led to a breathtaking outpouring of grace, the guy who was invited to touch the wounds from the crucifixion! And it's also wonderfully challenging to think about how that applies to my own sins - how in heaven these things that I am now ashamed of will become beautiful signs of how God has been loving and kind, of the incomparable riches of his grace.

[eschatologicalblank]

[eschatologicalblank]

if I had a nickel for every time one of my favourite media properties was inspired by Invisible Cities etc etc

Welcome to #DOMALoreDrop! 🎲

Each week our DM Ellie will be sharing behind the scenes info from the podcast 👀

Let us know what you think! 💜

[eschatologicalblank]

forget choosing what items to get, the real hardest part of Estival is choosing quotes for the wiki's historical page epigraphs

[eschatologicalblank]

Well, DoMA has reached episode 52, a full deck, so it seems like a good time to update these stats.

The average episode is now 20.2% introduction, the highest intro percentage so far is today’s episode, The Empty Village, which is 27.1% introduction. The bwams have reached a length of 4 minutes 5 seconds, and Katie has described Morgan as a wizard who can fly 10 times.

The longest Demisexual ____ may now be Muahahahahahahahahaa, depending on how you spell it.

DoMA stats

There's this really cool podcast I adore called Deck of Many Aces. It's an actual play podcast whose cast are all somewhere on the aro and/or ace spectra, set in a fantasy world undergoing an industrial revolution. (Also each PC's past, present and future has been determined by a card drawn from the Deck of Many Things, but that doesn't come up much.) One of DoMA's selling points is its very long, chaotic, banter-filled introductions, and because my love language is statistics I've compiled some fun facts about those intros!

Length

The average DoMA episode is 15.3% introduction

The longest introduction (as a percentage of the video) is that of episode 18, Out of the Closet, which is a whopping 24.9% introduction. The shortest is episode 2, Trouble in Tepmet, which is 7.4% introduction.

The last time an episode was less than 10% introduction was episode 25, Law and Disorder. The last time before that was episode 8, Snowglobes and Secrets.

Running Jokes

Each episode, the DM Ellie gives a different backronym for DM as part of her introduction, of the form Demisexual ______. As of today, the 1st of September 2022, they have yet to repeat a backronym. The longest backronym so far is Demisexual Man-I'm glad-to-be-back (Episode 14, At First I Was Afraid), and the shortest is Demisexual Mug (Episode 12, The Fig Tree).

Episode 6, "I've Got Five Temporary Hit Points and Nothing To Lose", saw the players suggest various possibilities for the backronym as Ellie struggled to think of one, including Mother, Montague and Moo. Although Ellie claimed in Episode 16, Murder in the Clockwork City, that Mother was used, in fact the backronym settled on was Masochist.

In each episode, the players will interrupt Ellie's spiel by all saying 'bwam!' (This is much funnier than I'm making it sound, I promise). Over the course of the 44 episodes released so far, the bwams have taken a total of 2 minutes and 51 seconds.

Katie is occasionally mocked for always introducing their character as a "wizard who can fly". However, in the 36 main storyline episodes released so far, she has only done this 7 times.

[eschatologicalblank]

Debbie Blue, Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to Birds of the Bible

[eschatologicalblank]

i fucking love estrogen

[eschatologicalblank]

Tongues

I have some Thoughts about languages and theology that have been just. rotating in my brain for ages, so I'm just going to vomit them up here.

the story of languages in the Bible begins in Genesis. God gives Adam and Eve - gives the whole of humanity - three pairs of gifts and responsibilities. the first - the gift of all the fruits of almost all the trees, and the responsibility to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - and the third - the gift of the world, and the responsibility to fill it and look after it - are talked about fairly often. but the second one does not, in my opinion, get anywhere near as much attention as it deserves.

Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

Genesis 2:19-20

the second gift is language, and the second responsibility is also language! doing word stuff isn’t just a thing that we do, it is a divinely given privilege and responsibility. there are plenty of good reasons to get angry about language deprivation - things like beating kids who speak in their native language in school, parents not teaching their D/deaf kids a signed language (or not learning it themselves so they have someone to talk to) - but I think this is another good one. language is a gift and a responsibility; where the heck do you get off, withholding a gift from their Maker, and preventing the fulfillment of a responsibility He has seen fit to bestow upon them?

the story then continues in Genesis, with Babel. God tells the people to spread out, they decide to stay together and build a giant memorial to themselves in the form of a tower reaching the heavens, God collapses the tower and makes them all speak different languages. pretty simple exegesis, the existence of multiple languages (and in particular the existence of language barriers and all the divisions and problems they cause) comes from sin and the fallenness of humanity and the world, etc etc. but like, what about Revelation 5:9 and 7:9, which specifically point out that the great multitudes of heaven are of every language? there’s a sermon in there somewhere about how even the consequences of sin will be sanctified, be made perfect in the new creation - and indeed, the new creation will be all the better for those things, it won’t just be Eden restored but Eden made better by its conspicuous repairs, like that thing where they stick pottery back together with little bits of gold (looked it up, it’s called kintsugi). idk, I’m not a vicar I just have Thoughts that I cannot figure out how to articulate.

and then there isn’t much (I guess the shibboleth thing? but eh) until Acts, and pentecost:

They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

Bryd hynny roedd Iddewon crefyddol o wahanol wledydd wedi dod i aros yn Jerwsalem. Clywon nhw'r sŵn hefyd, ac roedd tyrfa fawr wedi casglu at ei gilydd i weld beth oedd yn digwydd. Roedden nhw wedi drysu, am fod pob un ohonyn nhw yn clywed ei iaith ei hun yn cael ei siarad.

Acts 2:3-6

(yes, I do think I’m funny. thank you for asking!)

anyway, this passage is like. the entire theological justification for translating the Bible. and like, from a certain point of view it almost seems weird that you’d need a justification? but then, readings in synagogues are usually done in Hebrew (in addition to another language or on its own), and Muslims are generally expected to learn the specific dialect of Arabic the Quran is in in order to read it because they believe it was dictated word-for-word by God Himself. so I guess you kinda do need one.

and like, that’s had so many effects both on Christianity and language? there are a whole host of languages whose written forms were invented by Christian missionaries specifically so the people who spoke them could have a Bible translation in their language. heck, Cymraeg’s pre-existing alphabet was altered, k switched out for c, because the guy given the job of printing Welsh bibles didn’t have enough k’s to typeset an entire page of it, and it stuck because the efforts to get Welsh people reading the bible boosted them up to having one of the highest literacy rates in Europe at the time. some of the earliest Christians in Korea were converted not by a missionary, but by the pages of the bible which a missionary had brought with him and which a local official decided would make for nice wallpaper.

[eschatologicalblank]

man this sucks, being trans should have been an anthropological curiosity, not a political movement, it should have been a quirk of humanity, not a fight for survival, it should have been like being colorblind, or having six fingers, it should have been something science teachers taught their students excitedly because it was this interesting bit of trivia, it should have been no more exciting than being a furry or being born with edietic memory. it should have been this little vibrant community whose only care in the world was to share tips about how to customize your presentation it should have been an off hand remark while hanging at a bar to the tune of “hey, isnt joan of accounting trans? crazy stuff my cousin tom changed too and now is nora”

i look back at all those old news papers from like the 30′s and 40′s and the way they seemed to talk about the subject and is like fuck, how can we get that back

[eschatologicalblank]

Hey… guess what time it almost is in London?

HALLOWMAS! I am excited. I love Hallowmas in Fallen London. Even though you can get neat affiliations at the end, provided you did enough for that “spooky faction,” I always even up a moth (nightmares). There was talk last year that the Queen of Air & Darkness would not be attending London’s Hallowmas this year & would instead be rotated out for one of the others (since we now have four & only three spots in London for venues). 

If there is no Pavillion of Butterflies this spooky season, I will probably end up a demon or a crown. Or… maybe there will be a new faction in town!?

That would be exciting… though 4 menaces probably means four factions. Alas. (Or maybe 6 locations for 6 kinds of confessions? That could be fun…)

While there is a description of the Pavillion several places during the event, telling an AI ONLY that gets you some… well, greenhouses. But explaining who’s INSIDE the Pavillion? Gets you much cooler greenhouses. Adding extra touches (victorian era, architects, interior or exterior, etc) makes the outcome even neater. However, it also makes my brain start wondering how other people see the Pavillion in their mind’s eye. Do the candles give it a warm glow or do you think it’s all tinted a bit red because the Queen is there? Or maybe the colour is based on the butterflies inside? Perhaps it’s just an ordinary greenhouse, only made extraordinary by the festivities? 

Feel free to send a message or comment (or reblog) & let me know how you see it. I’d honestly love to know! Also, Hallowmas is my favourite Neathy holiday! So, if you want to share in the excitement, I’d love to see your posts about that too!

(If you want any other locations done, let me know… I get distracted easily by AI ideas & forget to finish my Fallen London prompts. @failbettergames)

[eschatologicalblank]

UUUUUU wanted to play around with maeking simple little pride edits so i did a small handful of edits of the generic master icon..... rainbow capitalism moments

[eschatologicalblank]

[eschatologicalblank]

so there's this dumb argument the terfs were making a while back, and it really stuck with me - for some reason my brain finds it fascinating. it's the bones one - 'when the archaeologists dig you up they'll know what sex you were' - and obviously it's fascinating on the level of 'how did this sentence make it from your brain to your mouth without you realising that cremation is a thing', and on the level of 'actually sexing skeletons is way less reliable than you seem to think it is', but mostly on the levels of motive and ideology.

motivation is simple; this isn't going to convince anyone of anything, the only purpose to saying this is to try and upset trans people. the cruelty is the point, etc.

but on the level of ideology - why do they think this matters? like yes, eventually I will die and everyone who every knew me will die and the people of the future will know nothing of the things about me that matter - but the same is true of them! just because their hip bones are a particular shape doesn't mean that their likes, dislikes, hobbies, politics, taste in music, religious beliefs won't all be forgotten too. "time as an ever-rolling stream bears all her sons away/they fly forgotten, as a dream dies with the dawning day"; this isn't some great win for them, they're just describing the human condition.

(and if I may ramble about religion for a sec - I think the reason I personally found the argument very uncompelling is best captured by these song lyrics: "And when you lay me down you'll only bury bones/for oh, my heart and soul are going home". Who cares what future people conclude from my grave - no part of me that matters will be present there.)

[eschatologicalblank]

Lamppost Stickers

Having at last finished my Master's dissertation, I find myself leaving Durham for - well, not the last time, I'll come back at some point, but certainly this is the last time in the near future I'll be spending a significant length of time here. And to commemorate my time here, I've decided to rate some political lamppost stickers I've seen in the last few days.

I'm not a graphic designer or an arts student (unless you count pure mathematics as an art, which isn't that unreasonable a stance I suppose), and I know nothing about colour theory save what tumblr has taught me, so don't expect that much insight.

Sticker #1: New Normal

[ID: A white sticker on a lampost. On it is a red flag, with "Fight for a new normal" written on it in white; below this are some raised fists in red, and below that red text reading "For an ecological society beyond capitalism and the state"]

We're off to a good start here. Good choice of colours, a nice eye-catching statement to draw people in and a more detailed (but still not excessively long) statement explaining what the sticker's about. 7/10.

Sticker #2: Trans Pokémon

[ID: Two circular stickers, one with an image of the pokémon Pikachu in a baseball cap and the text "Pikachu says TRANS RIGHTS", and the other with an image of the pokémon Eevee and the text "Eevee says TRANS RIGHTS"]

A formulaic approach to producing a variety of stickers is an interesting methodology. The use of the images of well-known pokémon to draw people in is also interesting - super effective against people who know anything about pokémon, but not very effective against anyone else. Alas, I must deduct points for the use of eevee in place of the trans icon pokémon sylveon. 6/10

Sticker #3: Mysterious A

[ID: A rectangular sticker, with the background divided along the diagonal from bottom-left to top-right - purple below the diagonal, black above. Superimposed on this is a venus symbol in white, with a capital "A" (also in white) inset into its circle.]

The most important function of a lamppost sticker is getting a message across, and this one abjectly fails to do so to anyone who doesn't already know what it means. Seriously, what the heck does this mean? The colour scheme and the "A" make me think it's something about asexuality, but that doesn't really fit with the venus symbol. Maybe it's something about feminist anarchists, but from what I know of anarchism the 'feminist' bit would be redundant. The only reason I'm giving this any points is that I assume it's meaningful to some people. 3/10

Sticker 4: Antifa Deluxe Edition

[ID: A rectangular sticker, with the background divided along the diagonal from bottom-left to top-right; red below, black above. Superimposed on this is the antifa logo; a black ring with the text "Antifaschistische Aktion", surrounding a black flag and a red flag (the red flag behind the black one) on a white background. In the bottom-left corner is written "black-mosquito.org", the website of the company that makes this sticker.]

Bold colours, historic and well-known logo, plus text that simultaneously communicates what the sticker is about, and that it isn't a solely anglophone thing. Excellent work. 9/10

Sticker #5: Antifa, but Gay

[ID: A variant on the antifa logo. The text in the black ring reads "Antihomophobe Aktion"; the front flag (which is usually black) now has horizontal stripes - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, hot pink and purple, with the purple stripe extending down the flagpole; and the back flag, usually red, is black.]

A variant sticker! A lovely way of communicating both the main message - i.e. there are people here willing to oppose homophobia by any means necessary - and also how the creator feels this attitude relates to the movement whose sticker it is a variant of. The rainbow flag is a bit odd, though - it's got the hot pink stripe of the original pride flag, and the other colours seem to match those of the original, but it's missing the indigo stripe and the hot pink is in the wrong place. Still, a strong effort. 6/10

Sticker #6: Antifa, but Trans

[ID: Another variant on the antifa logo. Here the text on the black ring reads "Anti-Transphobic Action"; the front flag has been replaced with the trans flag - horizontal stripes of light blue, pink, white, pink and light blue - with the light blue stripe continuing down the flagpole; and the back flag is in black.]

Again, love to see a nice variant. This one has the flag right, but for some reason has dropped the German text in favour of English - the German would be "Antitransphobie Aktion", so it's not like there'd be a comprehensibility problem.

The slight issue with this design is that it can be easily defaced, by someone scraping off the "-phobia" part. Fortunately, it can then be kinda un-defaced by scraping off the "anti-" part to just read "trans action".

[ID: An example of such a defacing, with both "anti-" and "-phobia" scraped off so the sticker reads "Trans Action".]

7/10

Sticker #7: Wrong Country

[ID: A rectangular sticker, with the background divided diagonally from top-left to bottom-right, red below the diagonal and black above. At the top in white block capitals is written "Abolish Capitalism"; on the left in a more cursive style is "Für ein Lernen, Lieben und Leben in Freiheit; and in the bottom-left is "www.black-mosquito.org". The right-hand-side of the sticker is taken up by a stylised flower in white, with white grass around its base and the centre of the blossom replaced by a capital "A" with circular arcs between its extremities.]

Here we see an ineffective use of German; instead of using it for a sentence with plenty of cognates so that the primarily English-speaking passersby can figure out what it means, they've used it for the explanation of why they want to abolish capitalism, leaving their sticker bereft of any persuasive capacity.

Also, I know the A is meant to be an anarchist thing, but it just looks like the Avengers logo. 4/10

Sticker #8: Wrong Country, Redux

[ID: A black sticker, with the outlines of four hands in different positions in white.]

I really want to like this sticker. It's charmingly cunning to spell out ACAB in fingerspelling diagrams, presumably so that only those 'in the know' get the message and their opponents don't tear it down. In fact, there's just one teeny-tiny problem with this sticker.

It's in the wrong sodding language.

They've spelt it out in fingerspelling diagrams from American Sign Language, which is in no way, shape or form related to British Sign Language. This sticker would be more comprehensible to people in Paris than Durham, and anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of sign language should know that. I am baffled and confused by the existence of someone who knows enough about ASL to make or buy this sticker, but not enough to know that it isn't the same as BSL. 5/10

Sticker #9: Monochrome Anticommunists

[ID: A variant on the antifa logo; the text on the black ring is "Anti-communist Action", and the flags have been replaced by a black-and-white cartoon of a person throwing a hammer-and-sickle symbol into a bin.]

Here we have a poorly done antifa variant. They got rid of the colour, so there's not that much to draw the eye, and they made the image very difficult to distinguish from an anti-littering sign - seriously, I fully walked past this one before my brain caught up to the fact that "anti-communist" isn't usually written on anti-littering signs, and then I had to go back and have another look before I saw they'd changed the piece of litter out for the USSR symbol. And again, they've inscrutably switched to English - except they've done a worse job of it than the trans variant did, because they screwed up the kerning on "action" so the tops of the c and the t merge together. 3/10

Sticker #10: Checkbox

[ID: A rectangular sticker with a pink background. On the left in black-and-white is a cartoon figure, with shoulder-length hair, stubble, chest hair, a necklace, mascara, a fishnet sleeve on their right arm, and what appears to be a bikini with breast forms over ace bandages. On the right are three checkboxes, with messy cursive writing next to them reading "male", "female" and "f*** you" respectively. In small text on the bottom right is written "Trouble X".]

This is a masterpiece of lamppost sticker design. The buckwild gender presentation of the figure, combined with the rather blunt third checkbox, do an excellent job of conveying the message of the sticker; a transness-as-essentially-revolutionary-and-political vibe recieved by the target audience, and a we're-here-we're-queer-like-it-or-not vibe for everyone else. 10/10

(there were other lamppost stickers I photographed, including other political lamppost stickers, but I think this post is long enough to be getting on with.)

[eschatologicalblank]

DoMA stats

There's this really cool podcast I adore called Deck of Many Aces. It's an actual play podcast whose cast are all somewhere on the aro and/or ace spectra, set in a fantasy world undergoing an industrial revolution. (Also each PC's past, present and future has been determined by a card drawn from the Deck of Many Things, but that doesn't come up much.) One of DoMA's selling points is its very long, chaotic, banter-filled introductions, and because my love language is statistics I've compiled some fun facts about those intros!

Length

The average DoMA episode is 15.3% introduction

The longest introduction (as a percentage of the video) is that of episode 18, Out of the Closet, which is a whopping 24.9% introduction. The shortest is episode 2, Trouble in Tepmet, which is 7.4% introduction.

The last time an episode was less than 10% introduction was episode 25, Law and Disorder. The last time before that was episode 8, Snowglobes and Secrets.

Running Jokes

Each episode, the DM Ellie gives a different backronym for DM as part of her introduction, of the form Demisexual ______. As of today, the 1st of September 2022, they have yet to repeat a backronym. The longest backronym so far is Demisexual Man-I'm glad-to-be-back (Episode 14, At First I Was Afraid), and the shortest is Demisexual Mug (Episode 12, The Fig Tree).

Episode 6, "I've Got Five Temporary Hit Points and Nothing To Lose", saw the players suggest various possibilities for the backronym as Ellie struggled to think of one, including Mother, Montague and Moo. Although Ellie claimed in Episode 16, Murder in the Clockwork City, that Mother was used, in fact the backronym settled on was Masochist.

In each episode, the players will interrupt Ellie's spiel by all saying 'bwam!' (This is much funnier than I'm making it sound, I promise). Over the course of the 44 episodes released so far, the bwams have taken a total of 2 minutes and 51 seconds.

Katie is occasionally mocked for always introducing their character as a "wizard who can fly". However, in the 36 main storyline episodes released so far, she has only done this 7 times.

[eschatologicalblank]

What’s the Neath tap water like

fizzy