#Mother Convergence

[chimckennoodlesoup]

Somnium's tail flicked in exasperation as they silently waited in the ship's lobby for Vagrant to be done mingling with the other guests. The Gieeg had (surreptitiously) booked tickets for themselves and their partner to go on a luxury space cruise, which they figured would be a welcome respite from their usual routine of traveling the stars and looking for problems to solve...

Only, it was awfully hard to kick back and relax when Vagrant was off with the luggage and the keys to their room, doing who knows what and talking to who knows who.

Yes, Vagrant was carrying their things... the human had insisted on being the one to do so, despite only having one arm to make do with. "You're the one who planned this whole darn thing," they had argued. "Lemme give you a hand! Besides, it's not like we're takin' a whole bunch of stuff..." Fair enough. Most of it was Vagrant's clothes, Somnium had to suppose. And some odds and ends-

"'Ey, partner! Quit standin' around and let's go see our room already!"

Somnium snapped to attention! They looked down to see Vagrant, who was tugging on their arm. "Oh, bellhop! I didn't see you down there!"

"Bold words, for someone whose stuff I'm carryin'!" Vagrant flashed a cheeky grin. "For your information, wise guy, I was just catchin' up with some of our pals! Bumped into Degirue, and then Myke an' Ariine..."

"Really?" Somnium's head tilted as they led the way to the central elevators. "Fancy meeting all of them here..."

"Well, can't blame 'em for havin' the same idea. It is a great season for a cruise, after all! ...Probably." Vagrant set their bags down for a spell as the elevator began to rise. "Hard to tell in space. I suppose any season's a great season when y'aren't fightin' pirates or gettin' pelted with asteroids... hey? Look!"

Through the glass wall of the elevator, Vagrant had spied a familiar pair of Arkans, who were riding the opposite elevator going down. They tried, in vain, to grab the attention of the other two.

"Is that... Cercil and Uno?" Somnium peered over the head of their partner to get a better look.

"Naw, I'm sure it's just some other cyborg and one-eyed, cloak wearin' pal!" Vagrant guffawed.

"Don't make me turn this ship around!" Though Somnium's arms were crossed, the smile on their face betrayed their amusement.

"Go ahead, silly! Ship's not even movin' yet! Heard we're on a slight delay... after a mix-up at the front desk involvin' an hombre wearin' some kinda mask." Vagrant was the first to step off of the elevator as it reached their floor.

"A... mask?" Somnium repeated as they followed suit.

"Yeah. Saw 'im on the way in. It was a cool mask! Some of the other guests seemed a little uncomfy about it, but hey. Life's a masquerade, we all got our masks..." Vagrant shrugged.

"Mmm." Somnium nodded their assent as Vagrant turned the keys to their room. "A fair point."

"Hoo, boy! Lookit all this!" Vagrant threw down their belongings before jumping directly onto the large bed at the center of the extravagant suite. "Dang, this place is fancy!"

"Glad you're already having fun. Don't mind me..." In sharp contrast to their partner, Somnium was already reading over the emergency evacuation itinerary. After all, it was better to be safe rather than sorry! It looked like each cabin was part of a buddy system in the event of an emergency, and their assigned buddies were...

"Kaylin and Kai Madrid?" Vagrant had already made themselves at home, and was leaning over Somnium's arm to read. "Well I'll be! Small world, hey?"

"Quite... we have more than a few friends with us on this voyage, it seems. And from all over." Somnium folded the pamphlet neatly before tucking it away.

"An' I bet we'll make more friends, too! One was taggin' along with Degi, even." Vagrant fell back onto the bed, which was luxuriously soft. "Kulgen was his name. He's a Gieeg, too, and really into Earth culture and the like. So-"

"Just like Degirue. Birds of a feather really do flock together, eh?" Somnium chuckled. "I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to socialize more at dinner. For now... Vagrant?"

The human, who had apparently been more tuckered out than they let on, was already snoozing on the criminally comfortable bed.

"Ahahahaha. Here's to a relaxing vacation, then, hmm?"

[beanieblaise]

you don't have to be powerless.

[vergencescatter]

Axel Greylark

I have so many thoughts about Convergence. I'm still piecing them together.

One that stands out is how I'm at a bit of a loss with Axel Greylark. I can't say I'm not surprised with how the book concludes. Particularly interesting is the final few moments of Axel in his prison cell at Prison Barge CA73Z. It's revealed, on the one hand, that he often considered the idea of sending a holo to Phan-tu and Xiri, and to his mother. I read this as him being sincere; whether out of insecurity or self-loathing, or something related, it is suggested that he always stops himself from doing so. This is insightful, because I think such instance where he wants to send a holo (assuming a nice one), or those where he reflects on remnants of his affection for Gella, show the good side of Axel.

On the other hand, although I've read some people complain that Axel's development is inconsistent, I actually think his story so far is fairly consistent in the sense that there is something bipolar about the way in which he interacts with himself and others. For example, in the final paragraphs, he thinks of Gella as though with deep fondness and care. But then, in a flash, these thoughts trigger him to spiral into a state of destructive self-loathing, yearning to feed his "chaos". Like how he picks fights when he is bored in prison, and that he enjoyed the pain when someone named Zygerrian broke his nose. It's these two sides that are consistent throughout: his self-destructive spirals that leaves him to fear that he will hurt others around him, perhaps even those he cares deeply about (his relationship with his droid QN-1 comes to mind). In prison, he thinks to himself that with him locked in a cell maybe he will then only be able to hurt himself.

What is probably a decent approximation of the truth is that Axel's mental state completely eroded after his father's death, and after so much time in a self-destructive he has a craving for nihilism (to destroy everything because everything for him was destroyed). I imagine the machinations of the Mother didn't help in reinforcing his inner "chaos". It's clear, at least on my reading, that Axel is not a member of the Path, nor is he committed to its future; but the Mother has a way of enchanting people whilst knowing what bruises to push in order to manipulate them. At the same time my impression is that Axel knows that the Mother is manipulating him, but his nihilism is pragmatic. Something about their arrangement also served a need in him.

[robbie-roo]

you wanna know something cool about moles?

no? damn... 😔

TOO BAD YOURE ON THIS BLOG FOR A REASON

OK so this is a photo of a deconstructed skeleton of an Eastern mole (the most common mole in North America) and I've circled something interesting just above that ribcage I want you to take a moment and give me a guess as to what that is

HEY!!! NO CHEATING!!! GO MAKE A GUESS

got it? OK so for those of you that said anything other than a forearm (or if you know bones a humerus or ulna) you're WRONG!!!!

that is actually a genetic variation that moles have gained specifically made for digging through tough dirt. their forearms and hands are super specialized and made so that a mole can "swim" through dirt by doing a breast stroke motion here's a full skeleton so you can see where that bone belongs

these guys spend pretty much their entire lives underground they will hunt just under the surface in foraging tunnels bur can live very deep underground with specialized chambers for sleeping, using the bathroom, or storing food

another scary little fact about moles- if you girlfriend ever turns into a worm keep her INSIDE!! moles know all the parts of a worm they need to attack to keep it paralyzed but alive so they can continue to eat the same worm over a few days

those foraging tunnels are what tears up your parents front yards but they are very rarely found inside them that's why it's so difficult to get rid of moles on your property their tunnels can be several feet underground and even longer wide

I may make another post about moles in the future I don't actually have any of my notes along with me as I'm just eating lunch but I saw my photo of the specimen we have at the museum and I had to share what I remembered about them >:)

stay curious!

[spamalie]

i think the main issue with that ruby mermaid movie is that they tried to half-ass shrek. you can’t just half-ass shrek

[generalpierrotdameron]

Chapter 24.......

I don't know what to think of this

[darawringtwenties]

Norma Jean - Redeemer Record Label: Solid State Release Date: September 12 2006 When I reviewed Every Time I Die’s masterpiece, 2007′s The Big Dirty, I talked about the 2007 Alternative Press Play compilation that I picked up before the start of my freshman year of high school. That record featured a bunch of unreleased songs, demos, rarities, or just a few songs that had just come out, including from bands like Every Time I Die, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and a few others, but I bring that up because that’s how I discovered a lot of bands. Back in the day, you couldn’t go on Spotify or Apple Music and go down the rabbit hole of a playlist, you had word of mouth, random album covers in stores, reading about bands in magazines, or these compilation albums to discover new music. I picked up a handful of them back in the day, thinking that I’d discover new music from them, and that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t discover metalcore / mathcore band Norma Jean through that specific one, but I did find them through another compilation album I picked up, which is the 2008 Warped Tour compilation. I remember picking it up at Target, because Warped Tour was just starting up again, and a lot of bands I never heard of were on there. I forgot to mention in my review of the Atlanta band’s debut LP, 2002′s Bless The Martyr And Kiss The Child, that the 2008 Warped Tour compilation was the first time I actually listened to the band, because a song from 2006′s Redeemer was on there. That song was “Blueprints For Future Homes,” and I recall loving that song when I first heard it. I hadn’t heard anything like it before, as their brand of metalcore was heavy, chaotic, and intense. With that said, the first album I listened to from them was still 2008′s The Anti-Mother. I ended up listening to Redeemer a little bit later, but I did end up going to Hot Topic and picking up The Anti-Mother first. I don’t remember if I mentioned how I feel about both of these albums in the review of Bless The Martyr, but I’ll make it clear here: Redeemer and The Anti-Mother are two my favorite Norma Jean albums, but we’re going to talk about the former album here. Redeemer is my personal favorite Norma Jean album for a variety of reasons, whether it’s because it’s their shortest album, or their most focused and concise album. To understand what I mean by that, you have to understand where the band was at the time, hence a bit of a history lesson. Norma Jean ditched their first vocalist, Josh Scogin (that would later form The Chariot), and in 2005, they released their second album with new (and current vocalist) Cory Brandan, entitled O God, The Aftermath. I talked about that a bit towards the end of my review of Bless The Martyr, but I won’t be reviewing that one, simply because it’s not that great. I mean, it’s not a bad album, and I enjoy it, but that album was more or less a transitional album. They were messing with their sound on that one; it wasn’t as bloated as the debut was, even though it still kind of was in spots, and it was a very chaotic and unfocused album that didn’t have any sense of direction. Sure, they’re a mathcore band, and they started off that way, but there needs to be some kind of cohesion and flow to the album, versus just playing whatever you want as loud as you want. Redeemer, Brandan’s second album, is a huge step up in the best way, shape, and form; it’s only 42 minutes, versus the hour that their first two albums were, and it’s got a somewhat catchy sound to it. A lot of the songs are very short, sweet, and to the point, but there’s this sense of heaviness and brutality to them. The mathcore riffs and vocals are still there, but it’s more of a more “mainstream” style of metalcore, I guess. They married the two biggest styles at the time, because this is when bands like As I Lay Dying, Unearth, Killswitch Engage, and a lot of others were getting popular, all of which who had a more melodic and accessible sound (but still heavy as all hell), but at the same time, mathcore was getting really big, too. Redeemer almost became the crossover between the two styles. There are a lot of chaotic riffs on this record, but the songs have a formula and a structure to them, as well as featuring more standard breakdowns, but this album never comes off as generic or bland. It’s still an incredibly unique album that stands on its own. No other band sounded like this at the time, with the exception of The Bled putting out Pass The Flask just a few years before that sort of did something similar to this, only added more of a post-hardcore flair to their sound, versus metalcore. If anything, Redeemer took that chaotic and insane mathcore sound that they had on their first two albums, and it made it more accessible to people, which might have led people to discover other mathcore bands. I really love this album, and I still love it today, because it has that unique and timeless sound. A lot of bands still try to sound like this today, more than sixteen years later, and that’s not something a lot of bands can say about their material, especially when they’re still putting out albums today. As I said in my review of their debut, they just put out an album a few weeks ago prior to writing this, and it’s a solid little record, but it’s impressive that a band of their quality and caliber is still going strong. A lot of people would say they hit their prime early in their career, but some of their best albums are their most recent ones, such as 2019′s All Hail. I absolutely love that album, even if Deathrattle Sing For Me isn’t quite up to par with that one, it’s still a damn good album, nonetheless. Either wya, Redeemer will always my favorite Norma Jean record, even if it’s not the first album I listened to from them (The Anti-Mother is still a great album, though, and I may review that one, even though there’s not as much to talk about with that one; I’m wanting to keep the albums I talk about more in the vein of “iconic albums” from certain bands, but if I love an album from a band, I’ll still talk about it if I have enough to say). It’s still my favorite, nonetheless, because it’s the most focused, most concise, and the most interesting of their work. If you’re looking to get into this band, I’d easily tell someone to start off with this record, you really can’t go wrong with it.

[lostjulys]

endlessly fascinated and disconcerted by the way my ma talks about motherhood. i think even if i had ever wanted children in my life she would have changed my mind by now.

[notdrifting]

no but - bumi ?? growing out his hair after retiring ?? finally fully embracing his water tribe roots ?? we love to see it !!!

[chimckennoodlesoup]

Myke, you got games on your hardware?

[emdotcom]

The little hater fanclub is fucking expanding, hell yeah

[cnidarianfutility]

Or do they mean your mother after last night?!

[dalekofchaos]

AU Asami is Amon by nikoniko_808

Give me the forbidden enemies to lovers Korrasami

Okay I wrote up my own au of Asami as Amon

Hiroshi and Asami witnessed the death of Asami’s mother at the hands of the Red Lotus society. Asami swore revenge on all benders. The corruption of Benders has gone too far and Asami and her father cannot let it continue. So they create a movement. The Equalists. Near the end of season 1. Asami would be nowhere to be seen. The Krew believes the Equalists have kidnapped Asami and when Korra confronts Amon, they don’t see her.

Tarrlok is still captured by Amon, when Korra sees him and they chat, he tells the whole story of Amon as it happened in the show to her and everything. Like it goes in the show. Korra and friends go to confront Amon at the arena where Tenzin and his family are about to lose their bending. But they don’t because she gets there in time. She accuses Amon of being a bender, as per Tarrlok’s story. Amon doesn’t unmask. And he isn’t a bender. Tarrlok lied to get Korra to confront Amon so that he could capture her and he could hopefully save his own skin for the service at least. They fight. Amon takes Korra’s bending in a big demonstrative way. So all the crowd can see what comes to any benders, especially The Avatar who stand against him. Then the reveal happens. Asami is Amon.

In order to get her bending back and learn how to give others their bending back (yeah, Korra wouldn’t get it back at the end of Book 1 because consequences? What’re those?), Korra has to go on a quest to learn her bending(her masters would be Toph, Katara, Izumi and Tenzin) in the Spirit World to understand everything. Korra does not cry about loosing her bending because she realized she’s still The Avatar and has to go to The Spirit World to get her bending back, to help everyone get their bending back and stop Asami

Throughout the series, we would meet Kya, Bumi, Izumi, Eska, Desna(Eska and Desna would be Korra’s siblings in this universe, because fuck Unaloq) Opal and Kai. We have the same romance between Bolin and Opal and Jinora and Kai. We would also meet Varrick and Zhu Li, because they are comedy gold. They would all help in the fight against Amon and the Equalists.

In Korra’s venture to the Spirit World,

she would still see Wan’s story(because that’s the only thing I liked about Book 2) and I think in her journey in the spirit world she would see Asami’s story, in which her family were victims of the Red Lotus society and Asami learned to take bending away in the spirit world. Not only that, we would find out that Asami would be bonded with Vaatu. Asami is the darker Avatar.

Before she leaves The Spirit World she connects with all her past lives to ask what she should do about Asami. Korra has her Aang moment where she has too has to decide what to do like he did with the fire lord, only this time there’s more to it than just stopping the bad guy. It’s about the person she loved. She can restore everyone’s bending by reversing Amon’s convergence, but she can’t do that so long as the avatar spirit is split. And as long as Asami is part avatar, she can go into the avatar state. That’s still pretty damn dangerous even with only water and blood bending. Korra realizes the only thing she can do to stop Asami? Love her.

After her journey to relearn her bending and journey in the spirit world, Korra travels the world to gain allies. From the Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes and Air Nomads. Korra unites the world against Amon and the Equalists.

In the final fight, Korra defeats Amon. She exorcises Vaatu from Asami, thus ending the dark Avatar and stopping Amon’s convergence. She reverses what Asami has done and uses it to restore everyone’s bending. So she has to come to the hard part. Amon makes it clear, no matter what, even without the ability to energy bend or without Vaatu, Amon will never stop, Benders will never be safe. Korra shows Asami what she was denied. Korra loves her and forgives her. Asami gives up and accepts whatever punishment.

During Book 3, Asami would work with Korra in stopping and killing the Red Lotus society. However, when Zaheer is stopped. He is left at the mercy of Asami and for everything he’s done and turned her into. Asami kills him.

Book 4 happens. Asami’s redemption is rebuilding Republic City and using Future Industries to repair the damage she’s done as Amon. Blah blah blah Korra stops Kuvira blah blah. Asami earns her redemption and the love of Republic City, the krew and more importantly Korra. Ends with Korra and Asami venturing in the Spirit World and ends with a kiss.

[roguerebels]

The High Republic: Convergence Review!

Star-crossed lovers! Two Houses, both alike in dignity! Dual lightsabers! Shadowy threats! Generational enemies! And a celebrity wedding! Check out Sal's review of #TheHighRepublic Convergence! #StarWarsBooks

“Some mysteries aren’t to be unraveled, Jedi.”Axel Greylark Two heirs from the Forever War-torn twin worlds of Eiram and E’ronoh find a path to peace by proposing a marriage alliance. But with an assassination and tensions high, peace may not be a choice. With this fragile alliance at stake, the Jedi and the Republic send Jedi knight Gella Nattai and Chancellor’s son Axel Greylark to investigate…

[max1461]

Thinking about this post. "The only way to make a cell is from another cell" is somewhat of a troubling fact to me. I mean, not for any practical reason, just because it underscores the precarity of *gestures broadly*.

It's like, some people talk about trying to de-extinct the mammoth. And people are trying to sequence the genome of the mammoth, I don't know if they've done it yet. But even if they do, one of the problems with the idea of de-extinction is... to grow a baby mammoth, you need another mammoth! Last time I heard people talking about this, I think they were talking about using an elephant as a surrogate mother. But imagine if elephants were extinct too.

The point is that information is often tied to the systems that transmit it; even if you know everything in the mammoth genome, once all the mammoths are gone there's nothing capable of reading and using that information. Like when you can't read the data on a perfectly good floppy disk because your computer doesn't have a floppy drive.

This is related to why language death troubles me so much. Even the most well-documented languages aren't actually that well understood; linguists have produced more pages of work on English syntax than maybe any other specific descriptive topic and yet still the only reliable way to get the answer to any moderately subtle syntactic question is elicit native speaker data. We know almost nothing, we can barely extrapolate at all! And every language is like this, a hugely complex system that we know basically nothing about, and if the chain of native speaker transmission is ever broken it's just gone.

"Language revival", I mean from a totally dead language, is kind of a myth. It's like the "came back different" trope. In Israel they revived Hebrew, but Modern Hebrew is really not the same thing as Biblical Hebrew at all. I mean in a stronger sense even than Modern English isn't Old English. All the subtleties of Biblical Hebrew that a native speaker would have had implicit competence with died without a trace. All they left is a grainy image, the texts. The first generation of Modern Hebrew speakers took the rough grammatical sketch preserved in these texts and imbued it with new subtleties, borrowed from Slavic and Germanic and the speakers' other native languages, or converged at by consensus among that first generation of children. There's nothing wrong with that, but it would be inaccurate to imagine Biblical Hebrew surviving in Modern Hebrew the way Old English survives in Modern English. For instance, you can discover a great deal that you didn't know about Old English by comparing Modern English dialects. There is nothing you can discover about Biblical Hebrew by comparing Modern Hebrew dialects in this way.

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. I'm not like, judging Modern Hebrew. I'm just making a point.

Mammoths died recently, so we still have (some of?) their genome. Something that died longer ago, like dinosaurs, we have traces of them in the form of fossils but we could never hope to revive them, the information is just gone. Even if we're not aiming for revival, even if we just want to know stuff about dinosaurs, there's so much that we will never know and can never know.

We imagine information as the kind of thing which sits in an archive, because this is the context most of us encounter information in, I think. Libraries, hard drives. Well obviously hard drives don't last. And most ancient texts only survive because of a scribal tradition, continuous re-writing, not because of actual archival. So I think that imagining archives as the natural habitat of information is sort of wrong; the natural habit of information is in continuous transmission. Information is constantly moving. And it's like one of those sharks, if it ever stops moving it drowns. And if the lines of transmission are broken, the information is gone and can never be retrieved.

Very precarious.

[omgthatdress]

Historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has called the Harlem Renaissance "As gay as it was Black."

With the convergence of the great migration and the jazz age, Harlem became a new center of cultural life for African-Americans. It brought together Black artists in a way that had never been seen before and saw an abundance of new music, theater literature, and art.

Chief among the new art being created there, of course, was drag.

While drag houses and drag balls had previously been put together by the likes of William Dorsey Swann, they reached a level of unprecedented vibrancy and popularity in Harlem in the 1920s. Famed poet Langston Hughes called them "The strangest and gaudiest of all of Harlem's spectacles."

The most celebrated of these balls was the one organized by the fraternal organization The Society of Odd Fellows at the Hamilton Lodge.

As told by writer George Chauncey in an article for Columbia News, "After I published Gay New York I met a gentleman who grew up in Harlem whose parents would dress up to go to what they called the “faggots’ ball,” and come home and talk about how fine this one looked, and how wonderful it was. He said, "My mother was a very ladylike lady. She was a very prominent woman in Harlem society. This is just something you did.""