#but they would contest that God is a thing that actually exists in material

[professor-doc-emeritus]

it's incredible to me how some christians online will be like "you stupid atheists just don't understand Christianity, it's really like this!" and then go on to describe a heresy that would have gotten them burned at the stake 500 years ago

[batsplat]

I’m gonna sound like a boomer but we’re never gonna get any rivalries on par with vale’s feuds or actually any pre late 2010s feuds anymore. and I think social media is definitely one of the major reasons why. now you have to watch what you say bc it’s gonna be immediately broadcasted and some your 253655665 followers or insta or twitter are gonna overreact and go hurl abuse in another guy’s comments. and this is so lame.

right there with you anon. I've been wondering about the 'why are athletes these days so boring' question for years (not in motogp specifically) and one theory I've seen touted is just the increased professionalisation of sports, how much more all-consuming it is from childhood onwards - essentially suggesting athletes today don't have the time to develop a personality or cook up feuds lol. and I think there's probably something to that theory - the current demands of professional sports are inevitably producing some singularly single-minded athletes, far more pr-friendly and moulded into being acceptable to the average consumer... but the other part of the equation just has to be the incredible levels of scrutiny they're subjected to. social media and the rabid fanbases it helps cultivate have to be a part of that

I'm always wary of speaking too definitively about the vibes of an era I wasn't around to experience - obviously controversies back then were also, in fact, controversial, sometimes athletes had to walk back their comments, fanbases certainly were rabid... but it's all a question of degree, isn't it - and how relentless the content consumption is, the ferocity of the news cycle, how inescapable everyone's opinions on everything end up being. if you look at the general tone of the alien era, I just don't think that kind of thing would be possible nowadays. it really wasn't just valentino either, and it's always worth remembering the context of the time in which valentino rose through the ranks. his first major feud, after all, was with a notoriously abrasive rider who was hardly beloved by his non-valentino opponents - and let's not forget how he was physically threatened by two riders after his very first grand prix (to be clear, I am not endorsing threatening seventeen year olds and think it's probably quite good they don't do that anymore). god, if casey said some of the stuff he used to come out with nowadays, and not just about valentino either... the discourse, it would be bad. the jorge/dani feud too would surely have reached cataclysmic levels of toxicity

and there's a lot of people who say, 'well, why don't you think competitors can just be respectful to each other, why can't athletes just be tough in competition and friendly outside of it, why do you need everyone to hate each other' - look, I think it's fun! sports is supposed to be about extreme emotions, heightened emotions about these artificial contests that feel larger than life. in one sense, it really isn't that serious, but on the other hand it obviously couldn't be more serious. more important than life or death, as the cliché goes, or that orwell 'war minus the shooting' quote mat oxley is ever so fond of - but that's only because we ascribe it meaning. which allows it to exist in this fun zone where we can live out these bizarrely dramatic stories that are high on emotional stakes, but for all intents and purposes are rather less high on material stakes (certainly for the fan). it's a release of a kind, sometimes an escape. now, personally, I enjoy my drama with a little bit of edge, of nastiness, which I understand is a personal preference but don't think (as is sometimes suggested) means I am any less invested in the sporting side of the equation. it is the substance of the sport that provides the scaffolding for the human interest stories it generates, but fundamentally nobody would give a shit about sports without the human interest element - and to me, a feud is simply an extension of that principle

another probably controversial critique of the 'why can't everyone like each other' stance is that I just fundamentally believe it to be dishonest. or, look, maybe there are some competitors out there who can feel nothing but warmth and love in their hearts for the opponent who has just beaten them - which is very lovely for them, they're clearly far better people than I am. but I don't buy everyone feels that way and I also don't buy this is something that has changed with a generation or two. obviously, the norms within any given sport end up shaping how the athlete approaches competition, what they believe is acceptable to say or do, or even to think or feel. the emotions might be visceral, they may even resemble hate, but the question is to what extent we allow them to be expressed. if these people don't like each other, if they think uncharitable thoughts towards each other, then, y'know, let them have at it as far as I'm concerned. respect is overrated. and even when it's not just earnestly felt emotions, even when they really are just playing games, attempting to fuck with their rivals... well, that's the other question, is it. is it acceptable to deliberately attempt use 'psychological' tactics, perhaps even intimidation, to win a contest or not? to me, the answer is 'obviously yes' and 'that's how sports works', but I accept not everyone agrees lol

I have particularly little patience with this stance in motogp, I think, because the belief that 'riding in a manner that could physically hurt another human being' is an acceptable element of competition but 'not conforming to social niceties afterwards' is not feels viscerally absurd to me. now, the former just has to be countenanced to some degree or other as part of the moral calculus you are performing in even engaging with the sport, because fundamentally you cannot 'objectively' determine how much risk riders can acceptably put each other in before it crosses a moral line. as far as I'm concerned, then, you might as well have at least some patience for the latter too - we're already morally firmly in the grey here. and intimidation still happens, after all, mind games are still all the flavour... but there's this constant need for subtlety, to keep the nastier side of competing hush hush, that I find deeply tedious. sure, sometimes subtlety can be nice, but at this point it feels less like a personal preference and more an ironclad requirement. and this is the thing, right. sometimes, people are arseholes. professional athletes certainly are. sometimes, just like their fans, they feel violently extreme emotions. especially if they've just been competing. but of course, if every single controversy attracts such out-sized vitriol from fans, a moral referendum on everyone involved, a boiling pot of feverish partisanship... well, it's unsurprising if athletes try to steer clear from all that, isn't it

I also don't think we're going to get another feud that can get mentioned in the same breath as valentino's offerings any time soon, though perhaps next year we can have a good go at it. (ironically, of course, this is still an extension of one of his feuds - you have this built-in vitriol which I reckon at times allows it to worm its way past the filters all of these people have developed.) which, you know, I don't need them to artificially cook up feuds just for the sake of it. beyond broader trends between generations, obviously this is also a question of individual personalities and how they happen to interact with each other. if valentino's feuds are as good as it gets, I can live with that - I do still enjoy the sport plenty, am grateful to valentino for providing me so much good archival material to pour over and dissect, and don't want to ask for too much here. god knows, the current version of motogp is still highly dramatic by the standards of my main sport, and unfortunately I still watch that shit all the time. but it's still a bit of a shame that competitors don't seem to get a lot of choice in the matter these days. and it's a bit of a shame that fans seemingly prefer it this way, going by the vitriol they heap on athletes over any and every offence. it's also a bit of a shame that it feels like there's no real escaping the relentless partisanship of online fan spaces. personally I'm not all that into discoursing about whether things are 'good' or 'bad' and more into establishing whether something's 'interesting' and then thinking about it some more, which doesn't feel like much of an option if you for some reason ever get struck by the desire to interact with other fans online. but it is what it is, y'know. at least we'll always have that time valentino put a curse on a guy

[heylittleriotact]

I read the rules AFTER replying to the post. The title that most intrigues me is Senna Origins, because yeah, Senna. I might be a lil obsessed.

For you, anything! Thank you, friend 🥰

This is a portion from Senna’s backstory, which mostly focused on their upbringing and youth in the Feywild, and their activities within the Seelie Court as a young adult. I actually have yet to finish this because in the campaign that Senna exists in, they’re 472 years old and have spent around two centuries in the Material Plane and having to account for almost 500 years of being alive is… well it’s a lot.

I was picking them off one by one, pulling away pieces of a war machine that was driven by greed, privilege, and hubris. Lillian was becoming more and more powerful, her ideas were holding more sway, and I was becoming far too big for my britches: It was no longer enough for me to control the ebb and flow of the Seelie Court with my humble influence. I decided it was time to bless the Unseelie Court with my unique knack for taking out the trash as well.

(It’s vital to understand that the following decisions resulted in me ultimately drinking for roughly a decade straight in the Material Plane, and then sleeping for another 24 years to nurse away the cumulative hangover.)

Back when we had our silly little pissing contest with the Unseelie Court and Lillian and I were put on the front lines for a short time, the biggest battle we fought was against a monster named Baron of the Withering Spiritual Resilience - We called him Bows’r - He was big. He was mean. He was a graceless oaf (but really probably a lot more graceful than you know… un-Fey standards), and he led a battalion of four thousand to near victory against our own force. He was high ranking in the Unseelie Court, and I figured if I’d defused the powderkeg that was my own court, I may as well balance it out on the other side too.

I approached this differently though. There was a lot of sneaking, a lot of cloak and dagger, a lot more cloak, and a lot of being really, really careful that this didn’t get back to Lillian, or the rest of the Seelie Court, who still at best barely tolerated me.

See, my goal wasn’t to take down just Bows’r. My goal was to take down Bows’r, by goading him into an attempt on Oberon himself (actually knowing full well that I didn’t really have any kind of personal issue with Oberon, aside from the fact that he was one of them, and back then that was enough. Yes. I was an idiot, thanks.)

It would have worked spectacularly if I hadn’t suffered a betrayal within my own ranks which tipped Bows’r off, led him straight to Lillian instead of Oberon, and ultimately squared things such that the might of both Bows’r and Oberon were unjustly laid upon Lillian.

This was not just a matter of mistaken identity, a few bruises, and a socially awkward situation. The world of the fey is not so droll. No. This treachery meant that Lillian was implicated in the plot that was mine, and for the fact that Oberon’s name was even mildly associated, the perceived challenge was answered with the swift, practical retribution of The Hunter.

My love was taken away. Pierced by thirty-seven golden arrows even as I sought to buy her freedom with whatever means I could.

I watched it happen, I saw her face - content, relaxed - safe. I saw it fall to fear and surprise as the Green Lord appeared and took his prize, as triumphant and gleaming as any god would be in a tale told to you by someone else. I saw her curl, stretch, curl, shudder, and succumb on her feet to the wounds inflicted on her.

There was no time to explain, you see. Between my fatal error, Lillian’s false implication, and her blood on the mossy ground, less than a few hours had passed. There was no room to talk my way out, no way to talk her out, no army at our back, and nowhere else to go but… anywhere. And if you know even the loosest concept of anywhere, you know it means little to Oberon.

All I could do was watch as the Green Lord stooped and shouldered the body of a woman much larger than he, and all I could think of was the image of a hardened hunter hauling off a well-earned kill. Her blood trailed down his green shoulders and arms as he looked at me, without words.

“Release her,” I managed, from my broken and pitiful position on my knees. The hot tears that carved down my cheeks felt foreign and terrible. I felt, for the first time in my life, that I might be sick for the fear and grief that ruled my body now. I was no longer an instrument to the music: I had been swept up mercilessly in its unyielding fury.

The Green Lord’s cheek curled in a wry smile. “Set a trap, spring the line, and request from me that which is mine?” Lillian’s form was shifted up higher on the shoulder, and I swallowed back the gag that forced its way into my throat when I heard a bit of blood drip out of her own onto the forest floor. I forced myself to my feet, horribly aware of the soil and plant-life wedged deeply under my fingernails, horribly aware of the dryness of my own mouth and the wetness of my pants as I ignored the quaking in my knees and the sharp metallic flavour of fear on the back of my tongue warning me that my life was in very severe danger. I breathed in as deeply as I could - a shallow and sad attempt at best - but I forced my head high, forced my expression blank, and willed my forsaken knees still. There was music in this nightmare too. There had to be. I just needed to listen.

I looked Oberon in the face. In the eyes. And I said (as if it mattered, which around the Feywild, it very may well):

“Let her go, please.”

And he laughed in my face and disappeared from the forest in I don’t know… a fucking raincloud or something probably.

And he took Lillian with him. He took Lillian. My love, my queen, my hero. My best friend. My only real friend.

The problem - the real problem aside from him murdering my lover in front of my eyes for a crime that was not hers - was that he also took my child. My child that Lillian had only told me about moments before Oberon’s intrusion.

My beloved, and my future: Gone in the time it takes a leaf to fall from a tree.

[fraudulent-cheese]

LINDSAY AND IZZY

LIZZY

I have a feeling i know who sent this-

God anon just asked about my favorite AND one of my favorites at the same time! Ahhh this is gonna be a long reply-

Lindsay is the girl of all time man! I really like her voice and her personality's really endearing! Girl's just nice. Period. And she loves her friends!!! She also has a really interesting arc from post Island after she stood up for herself that's followed up in Action, with her actually taking charge and occasionally succeeding against Courtney of all people! Her elimination that season SUCKS SO BAD :( she deserved so much better man!!! Basically, she's dumb in the intellectual sense but she's smarter emotionally, or at least that's how i see it.

She's also really fun to draw, especially since you don't need an excuse to draw her in a variety of outfits since she's a fashionista in canon people! And it's really fun to play around in fan content :D Honestly out of all the contestants from G1 im surprised more people aren't making Lindsay be one of the people with the most friends with how much of a sweetheart she is, or at least be on good terms with.

OK NOW TIME TO GUSH ABOUT IZZY AHEHEHE I LOVE IZZY SO MUCH MAN!!! SHE'S SO FUN IN THE SHOW :D

i AM. NOT IMMUNE TO ABSURDIST HUMOR. She gets into so many schenanigans during the show it's kinda crazy. I wished the show used her way more, she's so fun! She's canonically supposed to be crazy smart too, and even in the canon of the show i'd belive it! As i've said alot before, i am a beliver in the 'Izzy Isn't Crazy' theory in the sense that i think she's exaggerating her crazy to hide her intelligence and general competence. There's just so many little bits about her that i love!

She's also one of the contestants with the most material with AUs! Obviously there's the theory i just mentionned, there's the fact she comes back in the later seasons of the first run as a mutant spider, AKA working for Chris, there's her conflict with Chef, her crazy claims all series long, Team Escope in general! Hell even the fact she's temporarly in Heather's alliance on Island is something alot of people seem to ignore (which granted, she's just next to them and sets up the Trent fake kiss but shh) or that her crazy would make her bounce off a ton of different characters in fun ways!

As for Lindzzy? I'll be real even if i've seen a couple things with them im not convinced? They're cute! They would have fun interactions! I don't have many thoughts! It exists!

[omaticwriting]

Art dumps from Twitter 6/6 - The stories before GA

Hello everyone! this is the last of all my art from Twitter and no better way to end than how it started.

Of course, how it works is the character on top is when I finally started my story while the rest are more so what came before it.

The Anthology

I never had a Title for this story, but it was an anthology about a city where Magic and sci-fi technology co-exist, with the first story being an underwater city, granted it was heavily inspired by BioShock as this version of Selene and Willa being the impoverished locals that help Nic and Daniel escape and escape in turn to live better lives.

Race Against the Seasons

This was less of a story and more of an abandoned rp I used to run on Discord with Friends, the plot of it was similar vain to Frost punk, however, along with extreme winters there were extreme summers where everything becomes a desert, with short springs and autumns in between. I wanted t write this rp in story form, however, I scrapped it

GA: Beta

This was the first instance of GA, however, its plot was much more sci-fi related as instead of a world fused with magic, it was an inter multi versal death game, run by bored gods, which they eventually outsmart and get those that remain to go home, with the minor consequence the teams that escaped fused their realities together.

Daniel filled the role similarly to the protagonist of Bioshock, albeit he is more aware of it (which he hated and grew fearful of) and used more physical weapons than the "ADAM" equivalent of the story.

In RAtS he played a more minor role as one of the people who searched for materials and people outside of the cities.

Beta Daniel was more of an insufferable genius jerkass and at times he was a genius for a reason since he was the one who outsmarted the gods that ran the show, but at least he toned it down as he spent time with his version of the group.

In the anthology, I haven't exactly done much to add depth to Willa's personality, she was simply the "feral girl" of the group, I'm glad that I did do more as I wrote. RAtS Willa was the least feral if at all, she was part of a church that followed the religion of the great cat and goat and played as a rival to Nicolas in terms of ideology.

Beta Willa was in a similar role to the anthology, however, the world she came from was far more primal than compared to Daniel's and had worked well with Nic in this story.

Anthology Nicolas acted as Daniel's older brother figure of the story and was the one to use magic in the story, though I wasn't sure if he played any bigger roles.

RAtS Nic was an apprentice Engineer in the story and waved the flag of the story equivalent of order in frost punk. though not much was thought of him then, he at least played an important role in helping fix the generator that kept the city both cool and warm, albeit with the cost of his life

Beta Nic was a lot more survivalist in terms of mentality, screwing over other contestant's chances of winning, all to help himself and his team, as for his reality it was more similar to the ice age, with him being more trollish in terms of complexion.

Anthology Selene Was the more reasonable character and was a lot more pessimistic, along with being one to do all the exposition of the underwater city.

RAtS Selene played a minor role compared to the others, she was an apprentice to the doctors of the city and would eventually save Daniel in an accident that he could have avoided if he didn't risk things.

Beta Selene was the deuteragonist and worked alongside Daniel in outsmarting the hosts, and was the closest to Daniel emotionally, actually, she was the one to tone down Daniel's Jarkass-ness.

And that should be all my art from Twitter, I hope you enjoyed that. now I have a question to ask you all.

[astaroth1357]

The MC is a Valkyrie

Demigod MC Series: Intro

Greek: Aphrodite, Hermes, Hades, Dionysus, Demeter, Athena, Hades Pt. 2, Poseidon, Ares, Hestia, Nyx

Norse: Valkyrie

A bit of a change of pace this time! No worries, I'm not done with the Greeks or anything. I just had this idea and wanted to get it out. 

Valkyries aren't really demigods, but are a part of Norse myth as the minor divinities that help choose and deliver fallen warriors to Valhalla to join the ranks of the einherjar (the souls who will fight when Ragnarok comes). Valkyries are depicted as women who are fierce warriors in their own right. Despite their place as the gatekeepers of the Chosen, they've been said to sometimes take heroes and mortals as lovers or take residence in Midgard posing as daughters of royals/nobility. 

Lucifer 

At first, they thought they grabbed an heiress - which would have been bad enough - but then the MC grew wings, drew a spear, and asked who among them wanted a glorious death...

How hard is it to find ONE damn human on Earth? Isn't that realm supposed to be full of them??

Diavolo was thankfully able to talk their winged friend down from skewering Asmo and accepting the exchange on behalf of the human wo-… Midgard. 

Living with a Valkyrie is different for sure. The MC is a proud woman who takes her role very seriously and she's seemingly deemed him and his brothers as candidates for einherjar (despite being demons).

He's tried many, many times to explain to her that they're not interested, but she's unconvinced. Now the MC watches his brothers like a hawk waiting to cart one of them off to Valhalla! Any mortal wound could be an excuse...

He's had to save Beel and Satan twice from getting dragged to that infernal palace… For whatever reason, she seems to have taken to them the most. Is it old Norse culture to favor the brash and strong? He has no idea...

At the very least, she knows better than to try to drag him into her little plans. Though he's sure he could qualify for the einherjar (obviously, why wouldn't he?) he has no interest in leaving his life here behind.

To think he'd actually have to put surveillance on his own brothers for their safety… But they're not going to get drafted into some ancient Norse war, not if he can help it.

Mammon 

She’s an heiress… An heiress!!

Well, her human world identity is an heiress to a well-respected (and rather magical) rich family but that still technically counts! She’s crazy loaded back there! He’s in love!!

The only problem is that in the Devildom she doesn’t have a cent.

… and the fact that she keeps trying to get him killed. That’s also a problem.

In a way, things are not as bad and exactly as bad as that sounds. The MC apparently wants him to go to Valhalla (dope) but she can’t just take him there… He technically has to die in some kind of “vallent battle” first.

Her solution? Pick fights with nearly anything that moves and drag him into it!

Honestly, it’s pretty annoying… Sometimes he just wants to have a fun night out without getting into a barfight, you know??

At least the MC can handle herself… Hell, he was her "babysitter" but she barely even needed him. A lesser demon once made the bad idea of trying to cup her ass and lost a hand for his trouble…

Though, what this amounts to is the MC starting something then fighting alongside him like back-to-back badasses while looking for any excuse to scoop him up and fly him to Asgard!

Why does he put up with this? Well for starters human world rich is still rich, all he has to do is get himself a portal then he's living the high life! And secondly, well… what's the harm?

Sure, she technically wants him dead but he's the secondborn! The list of people who can take him down is so slim that it's not like he's in any danger. She even fights with him so things are a piece of cake!

Is this a case where he's 100% more forgiving because she's rich? Yes. Absolutely. But a golddigger's gotta eat somehow, right?

Leviathan 

Is it weird to be jealous over someone not wanting you to die...?

Okay, that's an oversimplification but Levi can’t help but feel snubbed that the MC doesn’t have any interest in taking him to Asgard. Like, none! And why not??

He’s strong! He’s tough! He’s part snake too! Don’t the Nords have a thing about that? Like, there’s a giant snake they’re all worried about?? Maybe he could communicate with it!

Logically, Levi knows that he really shouldn’t press her on this… MC is pretty much a Grim Reaper with a Norse coat of paint and Asgard doesn’t really sound like his speed. No anime, no video games, not even cable! It’s just eat, train, and drink all day… Ew.

But still… What makes him an odd one out? 

At best, she just knows he wouldn't be happy there. At worst, she's underestimating his skill… or maybe she's gauged him just right? He's always known he was weak!! 😫

Oh well... at least she's not a bore to be around. Far from it. She treats EVERYTHING like a life or death trial - he's pretty sure that if he challenged her to rock, paper, scissors she'd commend him for his bravery and swear on her sisters that she won't lose.

He once made the mistake of inviting her and Simeon for a game of Devil Party and they both got so into it that they nearly had a duel to the death as a tiebreaker… 

Thank Devil that the game had a pre-programmed minigame for that kind of thing… It would have gotten messy otherwise.

Well, even if his other brothers go to Asgard, he can just chill out here with Lucifer and Asmo… right…? Actually, no, that sounds horrible! MC, he changes his mind!! Take him too!!! 😭

Satan 

How many times does he have to say that he doesn’t want to go to Asgard?!?

Well, okay that’s not entirely true. Out of scientific curiosity, seeing the godly realm of the old Nords would be fascinating but he doesn’t want to stay, which the MC seems to have trouble understanding…

He’s not even sure why she's singled him out for einherjar status… Any one of his brothers are powerful beings in their own right and he’s not particularly, uh, “even-tempered” himself...

His best guess is she saw him wipe out a handful of lesser demons at some point and declared him Ragnarok material. He always ends up throwing around at least three of those idiots a week so checks out… 

If he's being honest, her very existence raises so many questions… Does this mean that Ragnarok is real? Will the human world be swallowed up by the sea? Will the gods of Asgard fight and die as a new world is established? When??

Unfortunately, the MC won't tell him when it all will come to pass (he suspects even she doesn't know) just that Loki will trigger it… Someone keep tabs on that guy.

Until then, he just has to put up with her attempts to convince him but his patience is wearing thin… He's pretty sure he threw a bookshelf at her once but she caught it anyway so yeah...

He did challenge her to a proper duel too but… well let's say she's a Valkyrie for a reason and leave it at that. (Being saved by Lucifer was so humiliating… He's done here, move on already!!)

Asmodeus

First things first, she's gorgeous. Beautiful! Divine! (Literally 🤭)

Now that that's out of the way… She may also have a screw or two loose.

Like, he gets it. She's a Valkyrie and snapping up strong souls is her thing but come on… Mammon? Really? Why would he get into Valhalla instead of him, huh??

Why can't he get to go to the beautiful afterlife of the old Norse with all their strapping warriors, lovely maidens, and endless partying?? It's not fair!!

Ugh… and now she's got him sounding like LEVI! How frustrating…

Well, it may not be that bad. According to MC, he'd have to do battle training in Valhalla and that wouldn't really agree with his beauty routine. Like dirt, sweat, blood, and muscles? No thanks! Not for him.

He asked MC if he could get some kind of pass, but no dice… Maybe he could still convince her to let him vacation there… Or go for a visit? Just one? Surely that couldn't be so bad right?? He's heard that Thor looks NOTHING like people think he does and he's so curious!!

The closest he's ever gotten was challenging the MC to a fashion contest for a visit, but he dropped that idea quick when she proposed that they somehow include a wrestling match in the dressing room (and he knows she didn't mean the fun kind...)

As much as he'd love to get skin-to-skin with MC, the idea of getting locked in a chokehold was less appealing for some reason. 🤔

Ah well, he'll just have to make due admiring her wonderful body clothed for the time being… There's something to be said about muscular ladies, no?

Beelzebub 

So she’s almost convinced him to join the einherjar like twice now…

He’s not the best at making decisions when he’s hungry and the MC keeps hyping up the food… Apparently it’s really good up there and MC says that she’s never seen an empty platter... Just thinking about it makes his stomach do backflips.

Thankfully for him, Lucifer usually steps in before Beel can sign his soul away and reminds him that he can’t just abandon the family for a meal, even if it is a feast.

You'd think he'd be annoyed but Beel isn't really bothered by her habit of trying to bring everyone to Asgard. At least not on a personal level.

Like Lucifer, he doesn't want to see his family broken up so he'd rather she wouldn't… But she's a Valkyrie right? It's what she does. It's not like she can help it.

In a weird way, he also thinks she means well. She just respects them and wants them to have a good afterlife. It would be kind of sweet if they didn't have to die for it first…

If he's being honest, he's not that worried about it anyway. His family is pretty tough, not a lot in the Devildom can take them down. As long as they're careful, everybody should be alright. 🙂

Maybe he could get MC to make some Valhallan food for them in the Devildom… Or he could get one of those immortality apples?? Though those would extend his life wouldn't they…? Oh well...

Belphegor 

Belphie's attempt to kill the MC went something like this:

Belphie: *switches to his demon form* "I can't believe you actually trusted me!"

MC: *blinks* "Oh. So you want to challenge me then?"

Belphie: "What?"

MC: "Ah, now I see! You want to fight to prove your valor then die by my hand??"

Belphie: "What are yo-??"

MC: *summons wings and golden spear* "I like your spunk, demon!! Fight me with all you have and perhaps I'll take you to Valhalla! May you join us in our fight as a brother!!"

Belphie: "What the hell are you talking about!?!"

To his credit, he put up a good fight and probably would have gotten into Asgard if Lucifer hadn't intervened to save his life.

It can be said that the MC's Valkyrie-hood took Belphie completely by surprise. Sure, he thought she was a little weird for a "human" but challenging him to a duel to the death? That came out of nowhere!

His uneasiness about her only grew after he found out that she's been literally trying to get Beel killed! How in the world were his brothers so relaxed about this?? She's insane!!

So say what you will about the MC, but she's managed to do the impossible. She got Lucifer and Belphie to make up and work together on something! (i.e. making sure she doesn't send them all to their deaths)

Between Lucifer monitoring his brothers and Belphie watching the MC, they'll keep everybody in the Devildom where they belong. That's a promise!

[heartslogos]

the executive assistant to the batman [62]

“Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Don’t even consider acting like I exist in the same room as you,” Tam says. “Of all the times for you to — seriously! Right before the big restructure of our west coast branch and redistribution of our logistics pipeline across the states?”

“Tam. I know you must be feeling very negatively right now. But it’s for the greater good. If I took real sick leave then the entire thing really will be fucked over. At least this way I have some sort of…sense of control about it. I’m not actually leaving. I’m still around. Sort of. But this way I won’t have to turn the front half of Wayne’s office into sick room. How unprofessional is that, Tam? I’ve worked too hard for this. Years of my life dedicated to turning my job into something people actually pay attention to.”

“Greater good my ass,” Tam glares at him. “Who gave you permission to get a collapsed lung? Work from home? You? Work from home? What about the rest of us who have to work here while you’re not physically present? You think we can stop the Waynes if they’re about to do something stupid? If you’re work from home they’ll act like normal. You should’ve just taken sick leave. If it’s sick leave then they’ll attempt to behave until you come back out of guilt or something.”

“Shouldn’t you be nicer to me?” Tim scowls. “I’m the one who has a collapsed lung and pneumonia.”

“Speaking of, how did you get both of those? Does the universe hate you that much? Who did you piss off? Aside from me and the rest of this company?”

“It’s not like I’m asking for it to happen! I’m not happy about this either. I’m the one who’s getting my home invaded by my job. At least you get to go home and put your phone on silent and pretend like you have a life outside of work. I’m being forced to bring my work home with me for a few weeks.” Tim directs his glare at the several boxes that some poor interns are currently packing up to be transported to his apartment.

Tim had to fight to be present for this. Thankfully someone had seen reason about the fact that Tim can’t work from home if he doesn’t have the proper materials.

It didn’t stop any of the extended Wayne family from fluttering in and out of the room like anxious bats and birds.

The only reason they’re not here right now is because Tim said he was hungry as loudly as possible, sending the assorted family members scattering to every region of Gotham to procure their own versions of what a sick and convalescing person should be eating.

Tim expects to be laden down too much take out for one person to reasonably consume in a week. He might even have a grocery delivery waiting for him at his apartment right now.

He shifts uncomfortably on the sofa, headache slowly creeping up at his temples and carving out a space for itself behind his eyes.

Tam’s expression softens, just a little. “You need to take better care of yourself before that family decides that they’ll do it for you. I don’t think you could survive the Wayne brand of tender loving care, Tim.”

“Let’s never find out,” Tim replies. “I am sorry, though. You know that, right? It shouldn’t roll down to you whenever I’m out but — well. You’re capable.”

Tam shakes her head, running a hand through her hair as she rolls her eyes towards the ceiling.

“The curses of being capable in Gotham. Suddenly everything’s your problem. How come these things never get down to Li?”

“Because Li would collapse the economy if anyone tried to make her take on more than she wants to.”

Tam rolls her eyes.

“Tam, I’m being serious.” Tim’s eyes flick towards the door. As though saying Li’s name could summon her from the austere and perfectly coordinated circus of a department she runs. Like the devil but also Clippy or an extremely judgmental Alexa.

“No, I know you are,” Tam says, “But it’s funny how you think she’d stop at collapsing the economy. Li could probably cripple governments through sheer force of disdain if she wanted to. Let’s never give her a reason or a chance to try. I don’t know where you find these people, Tim. I really don’t. Mandy’s shaping up to be a terror. I’m still trying to get her to consider applying for management positions.”

“Agreed. Mandy’s still in school though, isn’t she?”

“Didn’t stop you from shooting yourself to the top of the corporate ladder at the tender age of — what was it, sixteen?” Tam checks her phone. “Just got a text from MeiMei. She was on the second floor of the lobby and she saw one of your Wayne’s coming back with an entire armful of take out containers.”

“Was MeiMei kind enough to say which Wayne?”

“Nope. Says that their face was covered by the stack of take out and tall with black hair doesn’t rule anybody out. Especially after Damian’s growth spurt. Is that kid ever going to stop? You’ve had that kid re-fitted for suits five times this year.”

“Tell that to Damian.” Tim slowly pushes to his feet. “Alright. I think that’s everything I’ll need. Let’s get this loaded for transport. I do not want to be here with every single take out option in Gotham.”

Tim can picture it now. They’d probably try to make him pick one to eat then and there. God. And they’d probably consider it as some kind of strange contest to see which one of them he likes best. They’d hold it against him and sulk for weeks.

“I need to find a different job,” Tim groans as he and Tam quickly head towards the elevators, interns at their heels with dollies and carts loaded with banker’s boxes of documents and equipment. “Or I need to find some sucker to throw at them so they can get attached to and fight over them instead of me. Half the work of this job is appeasement.”

“The curse of being capable,” Tam repeats, “Should’ve played stupid like the rest of us. Too late now. You could fake having aphasia and they’d still go to you for everything.” Tam pauses. “Don’t try to fake an aphasia. They’d turn over the entire medical research department and create a whole new set of gone-bad doctors with with some sort of weird language theme. The Riddler might shit himself over the sudden brand incursion.”

“I don’t think the Riddler is that kind of doctor.”

“Oh, yeah, Tim? That’s the detail you want to nitpick? What kind of doctorate the Riddler may or may not have?”

[qqueenofhades]

Hi, I hope this isnt annoying to ask but w the old guard ive seen a lot of people mixing up catholic and christian when it comes to nicky. when by todays standards theyre not interchangeable as catholic is a specific strain of christianity. i was kinda under the impression the crusades were a purely catholic thing since the pope. is that right or were other christians involved??

Hmm. Just to be clear what you’re asking, are you wondering whether it’s a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when talking about this time period or describing Nicky’s faith? And/or asking for a basic religious primer on medieval Europe and the crusades more generally?

First, it’s not a mistake to use “Catholic” and “Christian” as synonyms during the crusades, especially since a) Catholics are Christians, no matter what the militant Protestant reformers would like you to think, and b) until said Protestant reformation, they were the dominant and almost (but not quite) singular Christian denomination in Western Europe. Our source material for the period doesn’t describe the crusaders as “Catholics,” even if they were; they call them Christians or Franks. (Likewise, the word “Frank,” i.e. “French” was often used to describe Western European crusaders no matter which country they were from, since so many crusaders came from France and that was where the crusades were originally launched, at the council of Clermont in 1095.) To call them “Christians” points us to the fact that the crusades were viewed as a great pan-Christian enterprise, even if the reality was more complicated, and nobody would need to specify “Catholic,” because that was implicit.

In short, medieval Europe had two major strands of Christianity, which developed out of the centuries of arguments over heresy, the contents of the biblical canon, the nature and/or divinity of Christ, their relationship to Judaism, paganism, and other religions of late antiquity, and so forth. Eventually these two competing branches took on geographical, cultural, and linguistic associations: Western (Latin) Catholic Christianity, and Eastern (Greek) Orthodox Christianity. The Great Schism in 1054 split these two rites formally apart, though both of them had at least some thought that the internal divisions in Christianity should be healed and dialogue has continued intermittently even up to the present day (though they’re still not actually reconciled and this seems highly unlikely to ever happen.)

The head of Western Catholic Christianity was (and is) the Pope of Rome, and the head of Eastern Orthodox Christianity was (and is) the Patriarch of Constantinople. Both of these branches of Christianity were involved in launching the crusades. To make a long story short, the Byzantine (Greek) Emperor, Alexios Komnenos, appealed to the Catholic (Latin) pope, Urban II, for help in defending the rights of eastern Christians, territorial incursions against Greek possessions by the Muslims of the Holy Land and North Africa, and the city of Constantinople (and Jerusalem) itself. So although the actual French and Western European participants in the crusades were Catholic, they (originally, at least) joined up with the intention of helping out their Orthodox brethren in the East and “liberating” Jerusalem from the so-called tyranny of Islam. To this end, the accounts of the council of Clermont focused heavily on the brotherhood of western and eastern Christians and the alleged terrible treatment of these Christians by the ruling Islamic caliphate in Jerusalem. At that time, that was the Isma’ili Shia Muslim Fatimids (who had replaced the Sunni Muslim Abbasids in the early 10th century -- there are many names and many dynasties, but yes.)

However, despite this ecumenical start, relations between Western and Eastern Christians started to go bad very quickly over the course of the crusades, indeed within a few short years of Clermont. Alexios Komnenos wanted the crusade leaders to swear loyalty to him and pledge to return formerly Byzantine lands that might be recaptured from the Muslims, and the crusade leaders did not want to do this. There were deep cultural, linguistic, religious, social, and political differences between Greek and Latin Christians, even if they were both technically Christians, and these caused the obvious problems. The Greeks were obviously located in a different part of the world and had a different relationship with their Islamic neighbors (they fought them often, but also traded with them and established diplomatic ties) and this caused constant friction during the crusades, since the Westerners always suspected (not entirely wrongly) that the Greeks were secretly in league with the Turks. Albert of Aachen, writing his Historia Ierosolimitana in the early 12th century, referred to “wicked Christians, that is to say Greeks,” and our primary source for the Second Crusade (1145--49) is Odo of Deuil and his De profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem (Journey of Louis VII to the East.) He spent the entire time grousing about “treacherous Greeks” and blaming them for the crusade’s struggles (though the Second Crusade pretty much sabotaged itself and didn’t need any outside force to blame for its failure). There was some truth to this accusation, since Byzantium was then engaged in a war against Sicily (Louis VII’s ally, though it had its own connections to Muslim culture and indeed had been Muslim before the Normans conquered it in 1061). The Greeks had thus been working with the Muslims to undercut the invasion of Western Europeans into this contested territory, and this was not forgotten or forgiven.

The best-known example of Western-Eastern relations during the crusades going catastrophically awry is in 1204, at the sack of Constantinople as the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Basically: the crusaders were deeply in debt to the Venetians and had already attacked the Catholic city of Zara (Zadar in Croatia) in hopes of getting some money back, then got involved in the messy politics of the Byzantine succession, went to Constantinople, and eventually outright attacked it, sacked and destroyed the city, and raped and slaughtered its inhabitants. This obviously poisoned the well all but permanently between Latin and Greek Christians (frankly, in my opinion, it’s one of the worst tragedies of history) and Constantinople never regained its former wealth and pre-eminence. It declined until it was captured in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks and Sultan Mehmed II, and has been an Islamic city ever since. (It was renamed Istanbul in 1923, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the “founding father” of modern Turkey.) Obviously, Latin and Greek Christianity still had to work with each other somehow, but the crusades were actually the single biggest factor in driving the two branches further apart, rather than reconciling them.

The words “catholic” and “orthodox” both have connotations of universality, overall correctness, and all-encompassing truth claims. Therefore, in some sense, to a Catholic Christian or an Orthodox Christian, defining themselves as such, with both words, is repetitious; they are Catholic/Orthodox and therefore the correct sort of Christian (even if their theological opponents would disagree). However, historians obviously do use that convention to distinguish them, since the identity is important, and makes a big difference as to what religious landscape an individual is living in. As for heresy, it was an equally complicated subject. Numerous “heretical” (i.e. not mainstream Catholic Christianity) Christian sects existed in Europe for this entire period, most notably the Cathars. (They got their own crusade launched against them, the Albigensian Crusade of 1209--29 in southern France.) The lines between heresy and orthodoxy (small-o orthodoxy meaning in this case, confusingly, Catholic Christianity) could often be blurred, and religious practices were syncretic and constantly influenced each other. A big problem in the Albigensian Crusade was identifying who the heretics actually were; they looked like their Catholic neighbors, they lived in community with them, their friends and family members were Cathar and Catholic alike, both rites were practiced, and plenty of towns were just fine with this hybrid arrangement. Hence it was not as simple as just pointing and going “get those guys,” and indeed, one of the leaders of the Albigensian Crusade, when asked by a knight how to tell them apart, advocated to just kill them all and God would know who the good Catholics were. Welp.

Northern and eastern Europe also remained pagan relatively late into the medieval era (into the 10th and 11th centuries) and the Northern and Baltic Crusades were launched with the aim of converting them to Catholic Christianity. (You will notice that the crusades have a complicated history as both a vehicle of religious warfare and as an attempted theater of conversion.) Heresy was a constant preoccupation of the Catholic popes, especially Innocent III (the progenitor of the Fourth, Albigensian, and Fifth Crusades). Especially in the thirteenth century, splinter religious groups and localized sects of “heresy” were popping up like crazy, and it was a constant point of contention as to how to deal with them, i.e. by force, persuasion, reconciliation, dialogue, etc. No, the medieval Catholic church was not the stereotyped instrument of fear, oppression, and tyranny, and could never enforce its views universally on all of western Europe. Church attendance on the parish level could be so low that in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent issued an order requiring Christians to take communion at least once a year. So yes. The standard was very far from “everyone believed Catholicism fervently at all times and if they didn’t, they were immediately punished/burned alive.” The idea of burning heretics at the stake wasn’t even introduced until the early fifteenth century, and even then, it required an often-months-long formal church trial and wasn’t just something that the local village priest could hand out on a whim.

There were also monastic orders, and these (at least in Western Europe) were therefore Catholic, but they had different ways of practicing it and what their orders emphasized. The most common order were Benedictines (founded in the 6th century by Saint Benedict), who adhered to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which is still the basis for the following monastic orders. There were also the Cluniacs (founded in 10th-century France at Cluny Abbey) and the Cistercians (founded as rivals to the Cluniacs at the end of the 11th century, also in France). In terms of the crusades, the Cistercians were by far the most involved with/zealously supportive of them (Bernard of Clairvaux was a Cistercian) and took part in directly financing, preaching, and launching the Second, Fourth, and Albigensian Crusades alike. The better-known monastic orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, weren’t founded until the thirteenth century, on the tail end of the crusades, and didn’t take much direct part in them. The Dominican inquisition, however, took over the business of dealing with the Cathars after the Albigensian Crusade petered out, and their concern was often with heresy thereafter.

Anyway. This has gotten long, as per usual. But I hope this gives you some introductory sense of the religious landscape of medieval Europe, the divisions within Christianity, and the fact that it’s entirely accurate to use “Catholic” and “Christian” interchangeably when discussing Nicky’s crusades-era faith and counterparts. The crusaders themselves did not specify themselves as being Catholic, and the crusades were (at least initially) viewed as a pan-Christian movement, even if eventually fatal tensions with Orthodox Christians left a permanent scar. The idea of identifying the precise denomination of Christianity is also another Protestant Reformation-era innovation, and wasn’t, at least in this case, necessary to do.

[yurileclercseyeliner]

A Dumb Rant About A Webtoon

Okay so I’m actually super into reading webcomics (I read them on both Webtoon and Tapas), and although this has nothing to do with my blog (I AM considering making a side blog for webcomic content/reviews tho) I sort of feel like ranting about one that I saw. I’m sorry, but if you like Athena Complex this is probably going to piss you off. Admittedly, I couldn’t get far into the comic without being upset about this so I stopped reading a few chapters in, so that may affect my opinion here. This is mainly my opinion though, and if you disagree with me it’s fine.

So I did mention in my Fire Emblem kelpie beast unit post my opinion on mythological adaptation. Essentially, I believe that when you adapt any sort of mythological being into your story you need to keep these two things in mind:

The recognizable features/symbols/abilities: by this I mean what physical features is this being known to have, what are their physical/magical abilities, what objects are they most associated with, etc. You don’t need to have every single thing that is mentioned in the source material, just a decent combination of them that can allow the reader to easily connect the adaptation to the source material.

This factor mainly applies to individual characters as opposed to a full species or classification of creatures (I have read a decent number of mythological adaptations and have seen a mythical species depicted as evil in one adaptation and benevolent or neutral in another and enjoyed both, it all depends on if it makes sense in the context). What are the character’s main personal views, goals, and motivations? By this I mean how do they think and what are their views on the world around them, and what is the context surrounding that? Essentially, what can their main personalities and motivations be boiled down to and why?

After those two factors, I think that you can then go buck wild with any other characterization as long as it isn’t contradictory and makes sense in your story.

Now that I have set that down here’s my deal with Athena Complex. Athena Complex is a Webtoon based on Greek mythology that follows Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and strategy. She falls in love with Poseidon, the god of the sea, and is rejected by him. Fueled by vengeance and a desire to win his heart she takes the form of a high school boy in order to take revenge on his reincarnation. Basically, this entire Webtoon is practically a public execution of a large part of what makes Athena, well, Athena.

First off, I will give credit to Athena Complex for at least getting the symbolism correct, Athena is a goddess of wisdom and war and when in the form of a goddess her design reflects that with her armor, among other things such as her association with owls, so the first aspect that I mentioned is fine.

Additionally there is the fact that they also did heavily tap into the prideful aspect of Athena’s nature. Essentially in the source material Athena is a VERY prideful goddess and will take any opportunity to prove her worth if someone attempt to upstage her, and gets very angry when she fails or is insulted in the process (ie the story of Arachne, the story behind the double flute). This aspect could also be seen slightly in Athena Complex’s Athena’s behavior, which I can also give them credit for.

But that’s where a lot of the similarities end. Tbh a large majority of these issues surround the second aspect, the basics of the figure’s personality and motivations.

First, Athena’s stance on romance. Original Athena...literally wanted nothing to do with any sort of romantic relationship. Seriously it’s one of her main things one of her epithets is literally “Parenthos”, which means virgin. No lovers, no sex, no marriage, no intentionally created children (I say intentionally bc she and Hepheastus accidentally created a child when his snot got onto a torn piece of her cloak, but that’s a different weird story), nothing. She solely focused on the expansion of knowledge and learning. She had no time for any sort of relationship. Making Athena in Athena Complex heavily motivated by an unrequited romantic attraction literally rips one of her main core values to shreds.

And this in my opinion one of the worst offenses, MAKING THE SUBJECT OF THAT ROMANTIC ATTRACTION POSEIDON. Literally one MAJOR thing for the original Athena and Poseidon is that they HATE each other. (Also Athena is literally Poseidon’s niece, but tbh that’s a less heinous crime bc Greek mythology was weird about that shit, multiple gods married their siblings/cousins/uncles/aunts/nieces/nephews/etc., it’s weird. Also in Athena Complex Poseidon acted the main person raising Athena, which is ALSO really fucking weird and concerning, anyway back to why they hate each other).

The Contest for Athens: Basically before the Greek city of Athens was called Athens the people were looking for a patron deity, and both Athena and Poseidon tried to lay their claim. In order to determine who the city would go to, they decided to have a contest of who could give the city the best gift. Poseidon gave the city some horses (for transportation and farmwork) and a small spring in the middle of the city (note: the water in the spring was salt water and therefore undrinkable). Athena gave them olive trees (for food, making oil, wood, etc.). The peoplr decided that Athena’s gift was better and thus named the city “Athens” after her, leaving Poseidon incredibly salty.

The Medusa Incident (TW: possible rape/non-con): So Poseidon was having a nice little affair with a mortal woman named Medusa (you notice how this name is familiar, right? that’s important). It’s a little iffy on whether or not this affair was fully consensual on Medusa’s end due to the sort of victim blame-y aspects to this story, hence the trigger warning. So Poseidon his having his fun and decides to find a nice little place they can go to do the nasty. Where does he think would be a great idea? One of Athena’s temples of course! You know, a literal place of worship dedicated to his rival who is known to dislike involvement in romantic/sexual relationships? Nothing could go wrong at all! They of course get caught, and Athena, being pissed, decides to curse Medusa with snakes for hair and the ability to turn people into stone just by looking at them (see why the name was familiar?) For good measure she also curses Medusa’s two sisters with the snake hair. The sisters are then dubbed the Gorgons and then go live in isolation on a island until they are killed by Perseus (a hero that Athena was helping).

So this Webtoon completely ignores the context behind this hatred and decides to make it into an enemies to lovers story based on unrequited feelings (the feelings of a person for their childhood caretaker too...still weird). I guess they wanted to do enemies to lovers and such based on a rivalry dynamic, but in doing so they erased most of the actual substance behind that rivalry by making it romantic and destroying the characterization of one of the main characters.

I can understand taking creative liberties, but before you do so you NEED to have a full understanding of the characters that you are adapting. If a mythological character is known for a certain practice (refraining from romance) or for having an extreme distaste for another figure (Athena hating Poseidon), INCLUDE IT. You NEED to have all of the bare bones basics before you start taking liberties.

For example, the original Athena:

Goddess of wisdom and strategy

Association with owls, olives, carries a shield known as Aegis

Highly values learning and knowledge

Prideful to a fault

Virgin goddess with no interest in romantic or sexual relationships

Extreme hatred for Poseidon as a result of repeated negative encounters

Those are the bare bones basics, after that you can do what you want.

Honestly I don’t think that this Webtoon is necessarily BAD, but it is VERY annoying when you have the context behind these characters (hence my frustration and inability to make it past 10 chapters). In my opinion, if the author wanted to write this storyline, they should have made their own OCs as opposed to butchering a pre-existing figure’s characterization.

(Also I’m so sorry I know that this isn’t relevant to my argument BUT THE POSEIDON REINCARNATION LOOKS SO BORING HE LOOKS LIKE A BACKGROUND CHARACTER WHERE IS THE FLAVOR????)

[mihidecet]

Sbi&CO d&d AU: A Familiar Face (1/?)

WELCOME WELCOME EVERYONE! Today, the tournament arc begins! I do hope you’ll enjoy this ahahah

I dedicate this to all the wonderful people of the Au’s Discord - hit me up if you wanna join! Also, a special thank you to @traitorous-bisexual and @awebo without whom this arc wouldn’t exist <3

Finally, before we start: make sure you check out @whatimevendoinhere , @spout1nk and (soon) @julius-ranch for art and fanfics about the AU!!

It was a lovely morning. 

The sun shined through the tinted windows, turning the light a soft orange glow that lessened the glare of it against his eyes. 

It was a welcome respite: during the months that involved preparing the tournament, days were quick to melt together, nights becoming just darker afternoons as Scott and everyone around him hurried to make everything look ready for the contestants' arrival. So, not having the sun shine directly into his eyes as he looked over the final challenges that had been chosen for the tournament was a relief. The cup of warm tea by his desk was also a saving grace.

Stifling a yawn, Scott figured that he could let himself take a stroll. Maybe open up his window, let the room freshen up a bit. 

With his window overlooking one of the many parks inside the Academy, maybe he could distract himself for a moment and see if his protege had finally started warming up to his teammates. 

That plan had flown out of the window almost immediately. Or maybe it would be better to say that it had flown into the window, along with a green tipped arrow that had suddenly appeared in his field of vision. 

Now, Scott hasn't been adventuring for a while, but it would be foolish to think that he's forgotten how the world works - with a flick of his wrist, a translucent dome of purple arcane energy materializes between him and the incoming arrow, which impacts with the barrier a split second later. The tip goes through, piercing the veil of his magic, and for a terrifying moment Scott thinks it's not gonna stop, but it simply stops, held in place as if caught in a web. 

Which is a relief, the amateur that tried to attack him - an Archmage, in the middle of his own Academy - failed to get their first shot in and this will give him the time to step back and call his most trusted in order to quickly and efficiently get rid of the problem at hand. He has other more pressing matters to attend to, he's not going to waste his time on this. 

As his Shield spell fades, it congeals like a shimmering second skin over his upper arm. Maybe calling the guards isn't that pressing, he's got this. 

Or maybe he doesn't, he thinks as he get a second, much more terrifying surprise - in the span of a couple of seconds, he really can get no breaks.

A figure materializes in the air in front of him, with a dark hood over their head that covers most of their features except for a huge - terrifying - grin and an intricate bow strapped to their back.

The figure appears with a puff of iridescent smoke, crouched in the air as if they'd been in the process of jumping before they decided to teleport, and- crashes into him, the force of the impact and the shock of it happening making him lose his balance and start falling back. 

There's a moment where Scott is confused: is this some sort of strange tactic? Did the stranger misjudge their trajectory? Are they going to wrestle on the ground as if they weren't both magic users? 

Then, a brief split second of panic - he didn't look what the stranger was holding, and he is currently falling on his back. He is going to get stabbed, at the very least, and that conviction is only made stronger as he feels the stranger's arms close in around him. 

But then, Scott has simply enough time to blink in shock, as the arms just wrap around his back, before his world is literally turned upside down.

One moment he is falling on his back, already anticipating the pain of a knife to the back - please no vital organs, spare him the need for an extremely expansive healer. The next the is wrapped in a hug and grunting in pain as his knees impact with the ground. 

"Ah, fuck that hurt- Scotty are you alright?" 

Scott refuses to believe this. He pushes against the chest under him - the arms give, letting him go - and finds himself face to face with a sight that is both very familiar and weirdly unusual. 

"You-" Scott says, tone an unconvincingly mix of menacing and angry as he jabs a finger into the not-so-stranger's chest -"Are lucky to be alive. I could have murdered you."

Hbomb's worried glance instantly brightens, despite Scott's best hopes, and he throws his head back to laugh. No matter how irritated he is at his friend, he can't help but huff out a laugh himself, and a moment later they're both chuckling together on the floor. By all the gods, it has been some time.

"You are a dumbass, H. You couldn't just use the door? You know, like a normal person?!" Scott asks, holding himself up on his left elbow because H has always been one to laugh with his whole body and Scott is still recovering from jamming his knees into the floor, he's not in the mood to be jostled around by an enthusiastic ranger. 

"Aw, Scotty, aren't you happy to see me?" The half-elf asks, putting a hand on his chest as he fails to pretend he's insulted. Scott flicks his nose. 

"Ah- that hurt!"

"I know, I meant it to hurt. Now, do you want to tell me what you're doing here? And what is that doing on your face?" Scott demands, serious at first until he realises that H has been growing out his beard well past what he considers to be a good length - H's pout is barely visible under all that scruff.

"Well, now, that is unnecessarily rude. I've been traveling for a while now, and I wasn't gonna risk injuring myself-" Scott grabs a wandering hand and brings it back on H's chest. 

"H." Hbomb has a tendency of gesticulating when his hands aren't being kept busy, and while he did figure that his friend had simply forgotten to shave, he has known him long enough to be able to recognise when H is going off on a tangent - which is perfectly fine - and when he's changing the subject because he doesn't want to answer. 

He knows he's right when H simply shuts up, eyes wide like those of a deer - quite fitting, considering where he enjoys spending most of his time. But instead of looking pensive, or starting to answer, H just … looks down. At where their hands are. 

Normally, he wouldn't think much of it. But H looks almost sheepish, and his eyes keep moving from his face to their hands, so Scott looks down. 

His brain screeches to a halt, and suddenly he stands up a little straighter, sitting on the floor next to H as he grabs his hand in his. 

Around his fingers wraps a perfect replica of a silver winged fae dragon, while in his palm- one of the most accurate representations of the different Planes. 

Scott turns his stare to his fiend, who looks more calm than Scott feels he has any right to, and when he speaks he sounds almost breathless. 

"What happened to you?"

The tale of how Shubble's patron reached out to him to grant him powers is exhilarating. Not in the "funny" sense, more in the "my friend who is usually not that fond of talking and interacting with people especially when he's not in a place he is familiar with, was transported to a different plane and spoke with a being of transcendent power". So maybe a bit in the "funny" sense. 

The only negative side of the whole affair is the fact that Shubble is currently not present. 

She actually teaches at the Academy, so H was right in his assumption that reaching this place would have helped him out, but he just barely missed her by a couple of weeks. She's recently left, called out on an urgent mission by her patron themselves, and a part of Scott's mind can't help but feel like it is an extremely weird coincidence: he respects power gained through pacts, but he fears deeply the machinations of otherworldly beings' minds and the power they hold over his friends. He'd much prefer dealing with forces controlled by his own self, so that when a spell backfires comically he only has himself to blame. 

But all things considered, he's glad to see H is still alive and seemingly doing better than ever. He looks fine, happy and more confident than the last time he saw him - the way he stands and moves more firm, more secure, filling his space in a way the Hbomb of some time ago wouldn't have. 

It's nice to see him like this. 

What isn't nice is the way his increased confidence leads him to suggest how good of an idea it would be for him to take part into the tournament. Which is a horrible idea. 

"Listen, I know I am banned from playing again-" H starts, arms spread open with a mischievous grin on his face. Scott has sudden flashbacks to all the times he'd seen that grin from the other side of the battlefield and shakes his head firmly before pointing a stern finger at his chest.

"You still have a year before you can." 

H huffs, shoulders falling, and he adopts the most fake-innocent expression Scott has ever seen. 

"But I'm just here to say hi!" Scott levels him with a blank stare, using all of his willpower and internal strength to avoid bursting out laughing. Because for all that his friend's expression is hilarious, this is really no laughing matter. He can't have him win again. 

"I said what I said." H's head hits the desk with a groan of protest. 

On the other side of the table, Scott pinches his own arm in order not to laugh. 

He fails.

H still manages to pout his way into getting a free room to stay in for a while - just like the old times, come on! - and seems to be alright with being left to his own devices for the rest of the morning. 

Knowing him, he'll take it as the perfect chance to snoop around, make new friends and bother the tournament's contestants. 

As Scott turns back to his schematics, the only thing he does is chuckle to himself. 

[sparkkeyper]

Whumptober 2020 Day 17: Dirty Secret

Aziraphale is repressed as heck where Heaven and his bosses are concerned, but drunken rambles with Crowley are cathartic.

***

"Aziraphale!"

Aziraphale nearly jumped off the park bench as the archangel clapped him jovially - too hard, always too hard - on the shoulder. "Gabriel!" He had a smile pasted on his face in record time, trying to cover up the shock of his boss' sudden appearance. "What a pleasant surprise! I-I wasn't expecting to hear from you for some time yet."

"Well, looks like your lucky day." God's messenger beamed down at him - it never reached the eyes quite right, must be a defect of the corporation - keeping the principality's shoulder in an iron grip. "It's been a while since we had a good chat, so I thought I'd stop in to give you your next assignment personally."

Aziraphale's face hurt from the smile. "How thoughtful. You're, ah, you're always welcome, of course!" He gestured to the bench beside him but Gabriel remained standing - he didn't even acknowledge the motion - his eyes alighting on the book in the principality's lap.

"Aren't you done that by now? I thought you were reading that...thing...last time I popped in, half a century ago?"

"Oh, this?" Aziraphale closed the pages to show off the cover. "I-It's a new book, actually. Much different than the one I was reading before. That was fiction, this one is an educational work on--"

Gabriel grabbed the book right out of his hand and every muscle in Aziraphale's body tensed up - to keep from doing something stupid, anything stupid, stay still, and don't let him see how stupid you can be if left unchecked too long - as the archangel flipped through the pages. "'A Brief History of Time'. Why would you ever need to know this? You've lived through Time since She began it. You haven't misremembered significant events from history, have you?"

Aziraphale chuckled - too tremulous, too nervous - but Gabriel did not smile back. "No, no of course not! I remember everything perfectly, as She intended." He swallowed. "The book is an introduction to quantum physics: the current science humans have developed in an effort to understand the workings of the universe. Quite a bit of it is wrong, of course, all that silliness about the galaxy being billions of years old, but they try. And they have managed to get some of it right. They've made such a lot of progress in the past few thousands years, for such short-lived individuals it really is remarkable--"

"Why do you need to bother reading this?" Gabriel's expression was blank - not blank, condescending, judging - "You know the workings of the universe, or at least all those that we need to know. The rest She has decided to keep to Herself, and we have no need to understand."

"Of course, of course!" Aziraphale's fingers itched to grab the book but it hadn't been offered back to him yet. He straightened his bowie instead. "But I...I must know how humans think the world works, you see. In order to communicate with them properly. I can't go giving away Heavenly secrets when humans haven't figured them out yet, can I? I've got to keep abreast of what they know and don't know so I can...speak to them on their level, as it were."

"I gotcha." Gabriel tossed the open book back to him, and he fumbled to catch it without scrunching up the pages. No such luck. "They're so bafflingly simple! It must be exhausting for you, having to dumb down every conversation you have with them. Don't know how you do it."

Aziraphale dared to smooth the pages by hand exactly once in Gabriel's presence - don't care too much for material things, don't care too much for the people who make them - and smoothing them by miracle was out of the question. "I manage."

"Excellent. And you can keep managing." The archangel handed over a folded slip of paper with a golden seal. "Next assignment. We'll need you in Algeria next month. Big earthquake planned, you'll have the opportunity to do a lot of Good there."

"I'm...looking forward to it."

"I bet you are. See you at your annual review." And with a shimmer, Gabriel was gone.

Aziraphale tucked the assignment into his pocket and closed his eyes, the only outward reaction he allowed himself to show. Inside he was hollering. Inside he was sagging and baring teeth and kicking up a fuss.

Stop it.

Of course he wasn't doing any of those things because he had control of himself, and after all they were completely uncalled for. Completely. It was just a visit from Gabriel. He had no reason to react in such a way.

It took several minutes of sitting perfectly still on the bench to convince his body of that fact. It was difficult when his heart was racing and his fists were clenched but he managed. He always managed. He had to.

When he opened his eyes to return to his reading at last, he found a small scrap of paper tucked between the pages like a bookmark. It certainly hadn't been there when Gabriel handed - threw - the book back to him. Flipping over the note, he recognized Crowley's untidy scrawl.

Dinner tonight? If I don't bitch to someone about my coworkers I'm gonna explode. -C

Aziraphale did sag this time. Just reading the words was like a weight sliding off his shoulders. He tried very, very hard not to think about that fact. Or the fact that such a note had shown up right after a visit from Gabriel.

He gave himself a moment to exist - revel - in the feeling of relief, then very carefully collected himself and reached into his pocket for a pen. He scribbled a reply on the paper and with a snap, willed it back to wherever it had come from.

Be here by six and not a minute after. - A

***

Dinner was Italian, and delicious. The wine afterwards in the bookshop's back room was equally Italian and equally delicious.

Crowley sprawled across the sofa, one leg up on the back and several bottles in, and ranted about Hastur in a series of increasingly-less-eloquent turns of phrase. Aziraphale leaned heavily over the arm of his own chair, an equal number of bottles in, and agreed emphatically to the insults the demon heaped on his boss. It was relaxing to listen to Crowley ramble. If his unfortunate interactions with his lower downs seemed familiar... Well, best not to think on it. And he didn't have to think on it, not with Crowley. He could sit back and listen and add in a few scornful words against whomever had ruffled Crowley's feathers this decade.

"Not an ounce of doco...decorum between them," the demon was saying. "Not a one. Rude as...rude things. And your higher ups, bet they're just the same. How've they been lately?"

"Oh, you know," Aziraphale waved the question away, steadying himself on the chair as the motion overbalanced him. "Can't complain." It was true, he thought, and giggled a bit at his private drunken joke. He couldn't complain. No matter how much... Well. He couldn't.

"Aw, come on, I gave you all the juicy bits." Crowley hung his head backwards off the arm of the couch to regard the angel upside down. "There's got to be something ol' Gabe does that gets on your nerves. Or Michael! Real stick in the mud, that Michael. Stick in the mud and straight up the arse."

"Oh hush, you." The angel tossed a coaster at him. "They're perfectly stand-up people, as they're supposed to be. Divinely dictated and...and such." The demon, still upside down, pulled a face to let Aziraphale know exactly what he thought of that. "Although, d'you know--" Aziraphale hiccupped, "--Gabriel doesn't even know to clip the...the whatdyoucallits. The thread on the back of new coats that keep the tails closed. The ones you're supposed to clip. Just...walks around with the thread still in like...like someone who doesn't know how to clip things."

Crowley cackled, rolling upright again and contorting on the couch in a manner Aziraphale didn't know was physically possible." Bet he doesn't know to clip the thread holding the tiny pockets closed either."

"He doesn't!" the angel exclaimed with far more delight than was necessary. Something warm and petty and satisfying was settling under his ribs. Threads and pockets were good. Safe. Unsafe thoughts still hovered just beyond the edges of his mind, but he didn't have to look too closely at those when there were safe things like fashion faux-pas he could inject their venom into. "He was telling me just last month how silly humans are to make pockets that are decorar...dectora...just for show, and he used his own coat as an example! I tried to tell him, I said, I said 'Gabriel, you can cut those open you know' or at least I would have said it but I couldn't get a word in edgewise. And he still hasn't figured it out!"

"Point for me!" Crowley stabbed the air like a contestant on a game show. "I came up with those, didju know? Sewing the tiny pockets closed? And I got an archangel with it, so plus one to Hell!"

Aziraphale barked out a laugh that was too loud, too explosive, but heavens did it feel good. "Did you really? Or did you just take credit?"

"Absolutely came up with them." Crowley puffed up his chest with pride. "Annoys loads of people when they wear clothes out for the first time and go to put something in the pocket but find they don't have any scissors. I wrote a whole report on it for Hastur--" he lowered his voice to a hiss and leaned in conspiratorially. "But mostly I just think it's funny." He broke into a drunken giggle and Aziraphale followed. "Pro'lly never read the report anyway, Hastur." The demon tried to pour himself another glass and missed, missed, got it. "Tha's another thing that drives me up the wall, nobody reads the blessed reports half the time!"

The angel groaned in commiseration.

"I spend all that time putting the thing together, crossing the I's, dotting the T's--"

"You don't dot T's," Aziraphale interrupted.

"Dot my T's if I like," Crowley shot back.

"They'd look very silly."

"I'll dot your T's."

"Suppose we'd look silly together at least."

"Damn straight." Crowley paused. "What was I taking about?"

"T's," the angel supplied helpfully.

"Reports! Right, nobody reading the fu- You spend all that time on them and nobody appreciates the work!"

"Aggravating," agreed Aziraphale sourly, because of course it wasn't against any rules to repeat someone else's whinging back to them.

"Exasperating!"

"Infuriating!"

"And you know what else is infuriating?" Crowley put both feet up on the coffee table and stretched. "They had me Downstairs doing paperwork all last month and Ligur comes by while I'm trying to cross reference soul contracts and just snatches the ledger away while I'm working."

"The nerve!" Aziraphale snorted disdainfully, taking a long pull from the wine.

"I know! Had so many ways I wanted to react I couldn't choose!" Crowley gestured to him, and if Aziraphale had been a touch more sober he might have caught a glint in the demon's eye. "What would you do, angel?"

"What?"

"You. Imagine you're in Hell, doing paperwork and minding your own blessed business, making sure all the T's are dotted, and Ligur comes up out of nowhere and snatches your book away! What do you do to him?"

"I should like to snatch it right back!" Aziraphale slapped the cushion next to him. "And then give him a good whack with it! Serves him right!"

"Aye! Serves 'im right!" Crowley echoed in fierce delight, lunging forward to clang his glass against the angel's in a sloppy toast.

And when the wine wore off several hours later, Aziraphale would admit to himself that he felt so much better.

***

*The book is 'A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes" by Stephen Hawking

**The 2003 earthquake in Algeria killed ~2200 people. Gabriel is an asshole.

[togglesbloggle]

So, @argumate is up to some more prosocial atheistic trolling.  As is usual with such things, the conversation isn’t particularly elevated, but it does make me nostalgic for the old bbc days.  So I thought I’d be the Discourse I’d like to see in the world.  This is the post that kicked things off; correctly noting Platonism as a philosophical foundation underpinning most versions of Abrahamic faiths.  And it’s probably the most useful place for me to target also, since hardly anybody just identifies as a Platonist but most westerners are one.  So, without further ado, a halfhearted and full-length defense of Platonism:

Well, strike that.  A little bit of ado.

I’m not a Platonist myself, so this is a devil’s advocate type of thing.  Or maybe you could call it an intellectual Turing test?  As I discuss here, my philosophical commitments are mostly to skepticism, and for instrumental reasons, to reductionist materialism.  That combo leaves me some wiggle room, and I find it fairly easy to provisionally occupy a religious mindset, so I can generally read and enjoy religious polemics.  I also have a fairly deep roster of what are often called ‘spiritual experiences’; I’m probably in the set of people that are by nature predisposed to religion.  I am not religious, and I approve of Argumate saying things like ‘God is not real’ a lot.  This is in no way a retread of the arguments in The Republic or Plato’s other writings; you can go read those if you want, but I’m going to play around with stuff that I think is better suited to this audience.

Attention conservation notice: yikes.  This got pretty long.

Anyway, on to the argument.  Argumate’s main point is pretty clear, I think: ‘forms’ in the Greek sense are a function and product of the perceiving mind.  Birds don’t conform to bird-ness; instead brains naturally produce a sort of bird-ness category to make processing the world easier, and to turn a series of wiggly and continuous phenomena into a discrete number of well-modeled objects.  Basically, we impose ‘thing-ness’ on the wavefunction of reality.  And there are some good reasons to think that it might be true!  Our understanding of categories gets a lot sharper when reality conveniently segregates itself, and whenever that boundary gets a little blurry, our ability to use categories tends to break down.  If the recognition of animal-ness came from contact with a higher plane of reality, you wouldn’t necessarily expect people to get confused about sponges.

But.  While there’s certainly plenty of support for Argumate’s position, it doesn’t strike me as anything near self-evident, or necessarily true.  So what I’ll argue is that Platonism isn’t obviously false, and that if we ever converge on a true answer to the question of our reality, then that truth could plausibly be recognizably Platonist.  My opening salvo here is, predictably enough, mathematics.

‘Mathematical Platonism’ is a whole other thing, only distantly related to Classical Platonism, and I only really mean to talk about the latter.  But nonetheless, mathematics really actually does appear to be a situation where we can simply sit in a chair, think deeply, and then more or less directly perceive truths.  Basic arithmetic can be independently discovered, and usefully applied, by almost anybody; ‘quantity’ comes naturally to most humans, and the inviolable laws of quantity are exploited just as often.  It’s also very hard to argue that these are ‘mere’ linguistic conventions, since fundamental natural behaviors like the conservation of mass depend on a kind of consistent logical framework.  In most chemical reactions, the number of atomic nuclei does not change, and the atoms added to a new molecule are perfectly mirrored by the loss of atoms in some reactant; this remains true in times and places where no thinking mind exists to count them.

There are a lot of debates about what math is, fundamentally.  But inevitably when we study math, we’re studying the set of things that must be true, given some premise: we’re asking whether some proposition is a necessary consequence of our axioms.  The so-called ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics’ suggests that the phenomena that Argumate mentions- hotdogs and birds and whatnot- are observed only within the auspices of a sort of super-phenomenon.  Loosely speaking, we can call this super-phenomenon self-consistency.  

We treat phenomena as having a natural cause.  Platonism, at its crunchy intellectually rewarding center, represents a willingness to bite the bullet and say that self-consistency also has a cause.  Plato himself actually provided what might be the most elegant possible answer!  Basically, posit the simplest thing that meets the criterion of being A) autocausal and B) omnicausal, and then allow the self-consistency of the cosmos to follow from its dependence on (in Platonist terms, its emanation from) that single, unitary cause.  The universe is self-consistent for the very straightforward reason that there’s only one thing.  Any plurality, to the extent that plurality is even a thing, happens because ‘the only real thing’ is only partially expressed in a particular phenomenon.  To skip ahead to Lewis’ Christian interpretation of all this, you’d say that humans and moons and hotdogs are distinguished from God not by what they have, but by what they lack.

And for present purposes, I do want to take a step back and point out that this does feel like a reasonable answer to a very important question.  Materialism fundamentally has no answer to the question of self-consistency and/or the presence of logic and order, and that is (for me) one of its least satisfying limits.  We’ve got things like ‘the origin of the universe’, sure.  But we probe the Big Bang with mathematical models!  That’s a hell of an assumption- namely, that even at the origin of our universe, self-consistency applies.  It’s not like materialism has a bad explanation.  It just remains silent, treats the problem as outside the domain.  If we’re adopting the thing for utilitarian reasons, that’s fine.  But if we’re treating materialism as a more comprehensive philosophy, a possible approach to the bigger questions, then it’s a painful absence.  In that domain, far from being self-evidently true (in comparison to Platonism), materialism doesn’t even toss its hat in the ring!

Which, uh, gets us to the stuff about Forms and shadows in Plato’s Cave and all that- the intermediate form of existence between the omnisimple core of Platonism and the often chaotic and very plural experience of day-to-day life.  And frankly, we’re not especially bound to say that the forms are exactly as Plato described them, any more than atomism is restricted to Democritus.  Whether there is some ‘bird-ness’ that is supra- to all extant birds might be contestable; however, it’s easier to wonder whether ‘binary tree’ is supra- to speciation and the real pattern of differences between organisms that we map using Linnaean taxonomy.

But, this is an attempted defense of Platonism and not Toggle’s Version of Platonism that He Invented Because it’s Easier, so I’ll give it a try.  Fair warning to the reader, what follows is not fully endorsed (even in the context of a devil’s advocate-type essay), except the broader claim that it’s not self-evidently false.  And on the givens we came up with a couple paragraphs ago, this is a reasonable way to tackle what necessarily follows.  So let me see how far I can defend a very strong claim: in a self-consistent (or: mathematical) cosmos, beauty cannot be arbitrary.

Remember that Plato never argued that his Forms were arbitrary, or even fully discrete as such; their apparent plurality, like our own, emanates from the unitary Thing What Exists.  And so, bird-ness is treated as a contingent thing, not an absolute.  It’s just not contingent on human experience.  And so for us to believe in ‘bird-ness’ is to believe that there exists some specific and necessary pattern- a Form- which any given material bird must express.

Let’s take an obvious example: any flying bird will, for fairly simple aerodynamic reasons, tend to be symmetrical.  Usually, this means two wings.  In theory, you could… have one in the middle?  Maybe?  Even that seems rather goofy to try to imagine, but you could probably get away with it if you were extremely creative biologically.  And if we see a bird with only one wing (without a prosthetic or other form of accommodation), then we will tend quite naturally to recognize that something awful is in the process of happening.

A fully materialist explanation of our reaction here would say: we think of the one-winged bird as problematic because A) we have been socialized to recognize and appreciate two-winged birds, and spurn deviations from that socialization, or maybe B) because natural selection has given us a set of instincts that recognize when a body plan has failed in the past, so things like ‘being crippled’ or ‘being sick’ are recognizable.  

Platonism, I think, would offer a third option, that C) we recognize (as emanations of The Real Thing) that a one-winged bird body is insufficiently reflective of The Real Thing, and that accordingly it lacks the ability to keep existing.  Plato had some… basically magical ideas, about how Forms are recognized, but here I’ll point out that ‘deduction’ is a completely serviceable kind of magic for our purposes.  It is, after all, our direct experience of the self-consistency of the cosmos, which follows from the fact that we are ourselves an expression of that same self-consistency; it meets the criteria.  

Materialists, obviously, would agree that deductive reasoning could allow a person to recognize the problems inherent in a one-winged bird, but as I said a few paragraphs up, their(/our) explanation of this process is rootless.  “Yes, logic and a few high-confidence assumptions let you assume that a bird with only one wing is in trouble,” they might say.  And we might ask- “what makes you so sure?”  And then the materialist must respond, “Well, let me be more clear.  It always worked in the past, and my Bayesian priors are strongly in the direction of the method continuing to bear fruit.”  True enough, but it’s not an explanation and doesn’t pretend to be.  The universe just does this weird thing for some reason; it works ‘by magic’.  So why not call it that?  Theurgy for all!

So, consider.  We recognize (deductively, let’s say for the sake of argument) that a one-winged bird is on the road to becoming nonexistent, absent some change in circumstances.  It may keep going for a little while, but it’s not in homeostasis.  And if we reasonably admit this very basic duality to our thinking- things which can persist, and things which cannot- then we start to recognize a sort of analogy between physical phenomena and mathematical propositions.  A lemma can be right or wrong, albeit sometimes unprovably so.  Basically, it can follow- or not- from the axioms we’re working with.  And in a softer but very real sense, that one-winged body plan is wrong analogously to the lemma’s wrongness.  Not ‘wrong’ as in ‘counter to cultural norms’, but ‘wrong’ as in ‘unstable given the premises, given the Thing That Exists Most’.  Look up research on fitness landscapes, if you’re so inclined- actual biological research isn’t totally unacquainted with the notion.  There exists a surprisingly discrete ideal or set of ideals, both for flying birds as a whole and subordinately for any given flying bird species.  And we have discovered this using magic.

Insofar as beauty is something to be admired, or pursued, or is otherwise desirable, then our sense of beauty must necessarily correlate with those abstract, and dare I say supra-real, qualities which allow things to persist, and which can therefore be understood deductively.  And that set of qualities does, effectively, meet the Platonic criterion of a ‘form’.

The immediate materialist objection is: hey, wait a minute.  The supposed ‘objective’ criterion of a bird is contingent, not absolute!  It follows from the strength of gravity, the thickness of the atmosphere, the availability of food sources, and on and on.  This is one of the most important reasons why genetic drift and speciation happens in the first place, because the ‘ideal’ bird depends on an environment that’s in constant flux.

True enough.  But!  How do you think the atmosphere got there?  It’s an old trick in religious discourse, but in this case I think a valid one.  The rightness of the bird depends on the atmosphere, the rightness of the atmosphere depends on the planet, the rightness of the planet depends on the solar system, and ultimately it all depends on that necessary self-consistency which (we proclaim) implies our unitary Most Real Thing.  This does mean that we can’t really think of Platonic forms as wholly discrete objects, unconnected to one another and without internal relation among themselves- unfortunately, that’s part of the original Plato that I don’t see as defensible, even with maximum charity.  But there’s such a thing as a ‘ring species’, and if we admit Platonic Forms of that type, a kind of dense network of paths being traced through higher-dimensional spaces that correspond to the shadow of That Than Which There Is No Whicher, then it’s more than salvageable.  It’s both satisfying to imagine and, I think, quite consistent with the spirit of the original philosophy.

One thing this doesn’t mean.  Even if we were to accept all of this, we aren’t obliged to resign ourselves to the lot of that one-winged bird.  Indeed, if anything this gives us a rich language by which to justify a prosthetic wing or other form of accommodation: we can talk about ‘making the bird whole’, and can see how our compassion for that bird might lead us to create the conditions of homeostasis once again.  But it does mean that if we take a position on the merits of existence- if we’re in favor- then we don’t treat a one- and two-winged bird as coequal scenarios.

Anyway, this has gone on hideously long already for what’s basically an intellectual exercise, so I won’t dive into immortal souls or any of the other ancillaries.  I mostly want to reiterate that, far from being obviously false, I do think that (some forms of) Platonism are quite defensible, and can provide coherent answers to questions that I A) care about very deeply and B) can’t resolve to my own satisfaction.  Of course, it is not obviously nor trivially true, either.  But one can be Platonist without being willfully wrong.

[welcometocaritas]

Elise + Eryka [The Tunnel] // Whenever You're Ready 

my twitters: bonnielextra, tocaritas

my instas: bonnielextra, yumagnas.home

So I made this for Round 2 of the #WLWContest hosted by the amazing Sil. The theme was taking a canon ship that wasn't endgame and changing their ending so that they did end up together. I actually had a lot of manips already ready for this ship (because I've been planning to do a video that gives them a happy ending for quite some time) but I wasn't 100% certain how much we were allowed to use from other shows, so I ended up only using two or three scenes Mostly, I just took clips from the actual show and changed the context of them or used photoshop to edit the text, email and letter so that they showed the poem from Pablo Neruda.

In the show, Eryka disappears after saving Elise's life and we never hear from her again. But in this, I've had Eryka start contacting Elise by sending her poems by Pablo Neruda (which fit because the last books Eryka gives to Elise are poetry books by Pablo Neruda, and the voiceover of her reading the poem is from their final scene together on the show). It takes time but when Elise is ready to let Eryka back into her life, she sends her a letter with the final  verse of the poem "I want to do to you what spring does to cherry trees", to let her know that she's ready. They meet up, have a talk about things, including Eryka's betrayal, and Elise lets her know that she wants them to be family (which is something that neither of them have anymore). It ends with them at the beach, happy together.  If I was writing the fanfic, it would be a lot more complicated than this, as there's clearly a lot the two need to workout and discuss, and a lot that stands in the way of them getting back together, but for the purposes of a video I just wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

I actually really, really hate this edit. I realized once I'd done the style that I hated the style - it looked too clumsy and weird - but by then it was too late to change anything.  To be honest, I had a hard time finishing this edit. My heart wasn't in it. I've been having a really rough time physically and mentally and then Naya died and then it was the anniversary of my dog's death, so editing for a ship that I wasn't passionate about at the present time was just making me feel worse. And then windows updated my computer and, like always, has caused so many problems so a lot of my programs aren't working properly (like sony vegas) and it's been so stressful. But because I'd started it beforehand and spent a lot of time on it, I didn't want to abandon it or not get it done in time for the contest because then it would have felt like a waste. But I'm honestly so relieved it's over with right now, even if I do hate the final product, because I just want to move on and edit something that will make me happy.

Eryka and Elise are one of my all time favorite canon wlw ships. Their relationship is just so beautifully written and I love each character so much.  They're fully developed characters in their own right, and extremely interesting. Eryka and Elise are the definition of two people who are perfect for each other, but whose lives aren't compatible. If they met in another universe, or if their circumstances were different,  I could see them being very happy together. I think if soulmates exist, these two are it.  They just didn't meet at the right time, and their opposing views and moralities (not to mention lifestyles) create an uncrossable divide between them.  Still I love them so much, I'm also a sucker for accents so Clemence and Laura had me so weak lol.   As someone who loved the original series, The Bridge, I also really loved The Tunnel (particularity s2) and I thought like it managed to become its own show, away from the source material.  (we're just gonna ignore what happened in s3, where they basically ruined Elise's life and emotional well-being and then killed her off. I don't accept that, nope. Especially since it happened after a change in writers. You could really see the change in the show)

Being autistic, I also related a lot to Elise’s character, same with Saga in The Bridge (though the two characters are quite different). I've read articles from people on the show that say she's autistic and then others saying she isn't. I'm going with the fact that she is. Because she has so many of the behaviors and thought patterns and honest to god we need more representation out there for women on the spectrum, and seeing one on tv who is also queer that I could relate to made me feel really happy. The fact of the matter is that she's written in a way that's heavily autistic coded, so stepping away and denying that doesn't really seem fair when there's so little representation out there.

Characters: Elise Wassermann + Eryka Klein Show: The Tunnel (French/English version of The Bridge) Actors: Clémence Poésy, Laura de Boer Coloring: shining dust

[jbrockwa]

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him”

Dr. Manhattan, himself, talks about his transformation as a sort of “death and rebirth,” because he marks this event as the sort of turning point in his life, the moment when his newfound relationship to external and internal sensations, and to life and death drove a wedge between his experiences (consciousness) and his humanity (material manifestation). Jon’s initial fascination with watchmaking is very revealing in terms of who he would ‘become” as Manhattan, of what a person like him would make of himself when endowed with the abilities of a god. 

Throughout Chapter IV, there is a recurring image of a black sheet of velvet which has cogs laid out across its surface, and the image is intercut between other temporally nonlinear story panels. The image is meant to draw a resemblance between the stars (as components of a larger “mechanized” universe) that dot the chapter’s background and the watch’s cogs (as components of a literal machine). Watches often have a peculiarly significant bearing on Manhattan’s fate, as each step that he identifies as having led to him being locked in the intrinsic field generator is connected to his fascination with repairing watches. The aforementioned image of the cogs first appears on the chapter's second page, and follows after a panel of Dr. Manhattan fondly recalling his father, formerly a watchmaker, who "admired the sky for its precision.” 

Manhattan says this while he himself is found gazing up at the stars on the surface of Mars, trying to find a “name [for] the force the put them in motion” (IV, 2). This nameless force is to the stars what Manhattan is in relation to the “cogs” of the watches he fixes; he sets them in motion, and transforms them from atomized “parts” into an interconnected system. The chapter’s title, “Watchmaker” is fittingly juxtaposed with Manhattan pondering what is behind the creation and existence of the universe, almost “answering,” his question; whatever “force” is behind the “setting in motion of the stars,” likely resembles him, as he is the closest thing to a legitimate deity, or god, in the story.

This sequence of combined images of and narration by Dr. Manhattan relates the character to his father, and uncovers the reasons for Manhattan’s fixation on “finer details,” on the way in which individual components interact and bring greatly complex “things” (i.e from the vast universe to finely tuned watches) into existence. To Manhattan, there is no discrepancy between the atomized components of a “thing,” and the “thing” itself which is made up of those components, because that “thing’s” existence is contingent on the interrelationship of it’s components, the relationship is direct, and therefore Manhattan views things in their totality, he sees the “bigger picture” as it were.

The next time this image of the cogs appears is on the following page, when Manhattan recalls the very moment in which his dreams were crushed by his father. A 16 year old Jon Osterman sits, fidgeting with a watch he is projected to fix. However, after hearing of the invention of atomic bomb following it’s “successful” deployment on Hiroshima, Jon’s father insists his son pursue sciences in atomic energy and forgo the family trade of watchmaking. 

His father then dumps the pieces of the watch he was working on over their balcony, the final twist of the knife, so to speak. As the cogs fall, the following panel jumps to 15 minutes into Manhattan’s future on Mars, where he watches as a meteor shower grazes the atmosphere of the red planet. This again draws similarities between the meteorites (shooting stars as they are often misidentified), celestial bodies that interact with one another to form of the whole of the universe, and cogs, which are obviously components of a watch. With what we know of Manhattan’s characterization up to this point in the story, we can see how his particular fascination with the intricate beauty of minutia has lended itself to his development.

At the end of the previous chapter, Manhattan is abruptly confronted with accusations that his atomic structure may be linked to the cancer found in Moloc, Janey Slater, among others who have found themselves “entangled” in Manhattan’s life. Here, after an interrogative bombardment on the part of the press, Manhattan is faced with a unique of vulnerability; he is overwhelmed, and for once he doesn't have an immediate, off-hand solution. Nothing that he can “materialize” out of thin air will be of any use to his current predicament. His omnipotence is made useless, and he breaks down because of his lack of foresight and readiness. More interesting, though, and more telling of his exact character, is his response.

After his meltdown he first undresses from his suit, which was more or less a "human costume" for the sake of his on-air appearance. He then teleports to Gila Flats, New Mexico, to revisit where he first met Janey, as the invocation of her name surely put the rest of his life in perspective and had him waxing philosophically about his past. He grabs an old photograph of the two of them before teleporting to Mars, where he reminisces on Janey and their relationship, the first time he was introduced to her, when he touched her hand at the moment she bought him a drink. Notice in his retrospective that he remembers the particular details of the situation that consolidate the image of his memory. This is reflective of how a watchmaker makes their living; looking at the whole of the watch will tell you little in terms to what need’s to be fixed, or what exactly has broken. You must put into perspective the exact mechanisms that allow the watch to function, or in this case which prevents the watch from functioning. 

When he grows tired of looking at the photo, his attention shifts to the stars, where he ponders their existence and remarks that they are merely "old photographs" of what they once were; by the time their light reaches us, they are gone and forgotten about by the void of the universe. Notice how throughout this sequence, while he appears to have a photographic memory that picks up on every detail, he actually has a tendency to focus in on things he personally fines "fascinating," or what he regards as simply beautiful. This is a defining characteristic of Manhattan, I would contest, as it essentially results in his “undoing,” or his detachment from humanity, keeping him distanced from the human experience. 

Manhattan is caught up with and sort of “stuck on” the necessary components of the “things” (i.e., cogs as they relate to watches, the physical beauty of his former and contemporary lovers, old photographs of his personal favorite memories, etc.) constitute his world. In his moments of awestruck wonder and analysis, he often ends up looking at the world around him for so long, that he is only able to see past it. In trying to understand the exact function and nature of larger “things,” he ends up missing the entire “point.” This reveals the flaw of Manhattan’s “godliness,” that cannot merely "be" or exist as an all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-being figure, and it has clearly contributed to his now broken and depressive mindset. It his not despite his “extra-normal” perception and senses that Manhattan is no longer able to find pleasure in his favorite activities, but is, ironically enough, because of these superpowers. His abilities work insofar as they provide him an unparalleled opportunity to get closer to the stars than any human could ever dream of, however this power does not, still, allow for him to fully understand their essential nature or origin or overall place in the universe as a whole; he fails to see past the "bigger picture,” even as a god.

Dr. Manhattan, in the same vein of a traditionalist, Judeo-Christian interpretation of God, has shaped the world (and as a consequence, forged the path of humanity) in his image. His “creations” are reflective of how he, an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being, operates in a world composed of crude matter. The radical progress in scientific, political, and social developments that America has made as a result of the arrival of Dr. Manhattan are in many ways aesthetic: new and shiny. They are upgraded models of American lifestyles and traditions: the roasted, four-legged chicken, spotted in the first chapter, the futuristic-looking cars, as well as the airships that dot the background of many of the story's panels, all of these progressive technological steps "forward" contribute to society perhaps feeling comforted, and safe; even Manhattan, especially as a means of preventing the escalation of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, is a sort of pillar of security and protection. 

However, these inventions reflect Manhattan's detachment from the true needs of humanity, which very obviously transcend the likes of material indulgences. In the midst of a Cold War, Manhattan's otherworldly might and power have produced what are essentially bandaids, comparatively speaking. In this way, these benchmarks of progress that have cemented themselves into the alternate history of Moore's Watchmen also mirror Dr. Manhattan's relationships, and his troubles with commitment, intimacy, attachment, and sociability, 

Manhattan's inadequate solutions to the ails of man are similar to his failure to reciprocate intimacy with Laurie Jupiter in the beginning of Chapter III, when he is seen sort of "cloning" himself to tend to Laurie while he is meanwhile duplicitously working on one of his many science experiments in the next room over. In both these instances, Manhattan creates a sort of distraction, one that he is able to imagine from the limited perspective of an at once out of touch and omnipotent being, one that will aesthetically please the American people and/or Laurie, but one that also fails to get to the root of the issues eating away at them. 

With Laurie, Manhattan assumes, two being better than one in his mind, that his partner won't mind his mental absence from them engaging in intimacy. Manhattan's intervention in society in general. as well as his interpersonal relationships with others, have worked merely to cover up the blemishes of the more deeply rooted issues by means of fast and fancy cars, genetically modified chickens, and kinky threesomes with clones. These inventions and gestures function as extensions of and, in many ways, metaphors for Dr. Manhattan’s mode of being; their inadequacy in terms of accurately diagnosing and treating the problems humanity is faced with prove that image of Manhattan as a Nietzschean ubermensch that society at large has come to associate him with is ill-conceived.

Speaking more on Dr. Manhattan as being perceived by the public as the "Superman," the character largely exists as a symbol of the best a man can be, a sort of “upgrade” from the prototypical model of “a man.” This indicates that he still possesses and is affected by the same woes and shortcomings that effect humans. This is reflected in his tendency, even prior to Osterman's transformation into Manhattan, to neglect his significant others and prioritize his scientific endeavors and pet projects over their needs. In this sense, we can determine he may not necessarily meet the qualifications for being a god, but an extraordinary man endowed with the ability of a god, and more importantly, left with the particularly human faculties to wield and process these abilities. Manhattan's "powers" certainly give him extra-human senses, such as his heightened perception of time and his teleportation abilities, but even these powers get in Manhattan's own way, and cause him to lose sight of the what’s important to his life and to humanity as a whole. 

This is evident from the very introduction of the character of Dr. Manhattan in the first chapter, where he is  boasted, before we even have a chance of seeing him, as the "indestructible man" by Rorscach. In his establishing panel, Manhattan is shown towering over Rorschach at the foreground of the image, yet in all his might and intimidation, he is distracted, tinkering with an unnamed piece of equipment in his lab, likely where he's been for quite some time prior to this introduction. This panel juxtaposes Manhattan's persona and image as a "God," with his cold detachment from humanity and subtly demonstrates how his God-like intellect, perception, and senses prevent him from seeing the importance of that which is happening right in front of him. Dr. Manhattan is, even in the immediate aftermath of a suspicious murder, a crisis, more concerned with the events occuring on a microscopic level, or dismantling, assessing, and reconstructing some futuristic piece of technology beyond any other character’s understanding; he won't even stop to heed his old friend's warning. 

It is, in addition, no accident that the story ends with Jon teleporting Rorschach in response to Laurie's complaint that he is "upsetting" her. Manhattan's response to her comparatively minor annoyance is performing the miracle of teleporting Rorschach away, outside the facilities. This moment works to show Manhattan can do whatever he chooses, it shows that he is all powerful insofar as he can relocate people to his choosing, can shape-shift, and telekinetically dismantle machinery, but it's more a matter of what personally concerns him, what seems pressing by his own metrics. It should alarm us that Manhattan doesn't see the difference between a living and a dead body, and that he is yet so depended upon in this alternate American timeline.

Finally, an aspect of Dr. Manhattan’s origin (and character as whole) I find most curious is that in the process of “rebuilding” of himself, he had to have had some understanding of what components would be necessary for him to “come into being” again, but in this process he was somehow “unable” to reconfigure himself as fully human. His origin story reveals him as having always possessed a genius level intellect, however, emotionally he has always been absent and distanced. Even before his omniscience allegedly “soiled” his relationship to the material realm and to life itself, he never had a barometer for complex emotional interactions. During the time leading up to his transformation he was a 30 year-old man who was clearly not prepared to be apart of a serious relationship with Janey. He was still mentally absent from her needs as his significant other. Even in that moment of “intimacy” with Laurie, he is constantly trying and failing to please her. This allows us to imagine what would happen if “God” was there to answer every one of our prayers. It would still, as Watchmen notes, leave us unsatisfied, because there are no real satisfying answers, even for a god.

[radicalurbanista]

What would be the "best" outcome for the election, in your opinion? What's the most likely?

Regardless of who wins the election, the next few years are going to be tumultuous and chaotic. I think the only difference will be in how the public reacts. I think the US has met a critical threshold on several criteria, and there’s no going back. There’s a lot of major factors that I don’t think have ever all existed before at the same time in the US, and because of that, there’s a lot of revolutionary potential. But that potential is coming at the expense of the lives and well-being of the poorest workers.

Pandemic: because of decades of denying universal healthcare, privatizing healthcare, and denying the pandemic, it is incredibly dangerous for the economy to function. The US has unbelievably high death and case rates. The longer its unaddressed, the worse it will be. And the worse it gets, the greater the public demand will be to stop the economy. And the more the economy crashes, the more people will be exposed to the virus through low-wage jobs, houselessness, and lack of medical care access. The pandemic is exposing the extent to which the US can’t provide adequate healthcare, and politicians still refuse to respond. That will radicalize people and is.

Economic depression: We’re at the historic height of global wealth inequality. Enriching a small few requires deeply impoverishing the masses. Things haven’t improved since the 08 recession, and the economy is collapsing even more severely and for god knows how much longer. The US has been able to keep its workers so poor for so long through propaganda and cheapening life. Propaganda like lying to voters that universal healthcare is too expensive and lying that people are poor because they deserve it, stigmatizing rest and inconvenience, and the idea that someone should have to give away 40 hours a week to survive. Cheapening through deeper labor exploitation in Asia and the Global South and industrial extraction. Goods are made more cheaply so that bosses can lower workers’ wages without the worker “losing” anything. But the things they’re getting now are worser quality. Before this pandemic, the economy was providing a barely livable, deeply cheap lifestyle supported on toothpicks that required nonstop production. Production has to keep slowing because of the pandemic initially, but now it’s because the economy is failing. Capitalism is a positive-feedback system, so more people in poverty means less spending which means a more depressed economy which means less spending which means...Everything is more privatized and in fewer hands now than in ‘08, so the depression will spread even wider into people’s lives. Public infrastructure is at its life’s end and is not prepared for climate change and the disasters its bringing.

Building on decades of revolutionary activism: activism has been building on major movements since the 60s, arguably earlier. We’re also more globally connected and can see protests in similar authoritarian governments and learn from them. The Black Lives Matter movement is 6 years old, and lead organizers have been learning too. Public perception is in favor of BLM for the first time. White middle-class gen x moms and dads are self-organizing again the police and in support of a Black rights movement. That white support is unprecedented and shows that the far left has in fact been bringing more allies in line with liberatory politics. The most insulated voting block is actually protesting for Black lives and against the police state. Black activists have been assassinated for their work because it has the potential to turn Americans against the state. The country is more polarized than ever before, and the far-right is a smaller  minority than socialists, communists, anarchists, and liberals sympathetic to the cause.

If Trump wins: this pace will continue. The right wing will continue to have an openly pro-America leader. Unemployment will continue to remove workers access to healthcare, housing, and food. Cities won’t concede to the demands of BLM protestors, and possibly a million will die from a pandemic we knew about weeks before it reached the US. There will be many unnecessary deaths and authoritarianism will further entrench itself in our lives. He and other republicans have proven that their supporters are willing to die and kill if it means Black and brown people suffer. The military and DHS will continue unchecked. I think it’s possible that a second term could accelerate radicalizing the left and even liberals, as it has this year, but I’m not sure if it will be enough in time to counter what could be even further fascist escalation. The DNC will blame young people for not voting for the racist pedophile. 

If Biden wins: this is more complicated, and I’m not sure what the long term effects will be. I think the immediate results could be more confusing and its long term results may be worse. For the BLM moment, I expect nothing to change. Biden, and every other democrat mayor supports the police and has allowed their violence. The police know they’re not accountable to anyone. Stimulus checks could continue but they won’t be adequate. The US still won’t have universal healthcare despite the pandemic. If a Green New Deal passes, it’ll be set up to fail through inadequate funding. There’ll be no changes to the material conditions of working classes. Unlike the presidential election in 08, Biden isn’t running on a platform of change, he’s running on things staying the same. And more people the status quo and realize its harms now more than before. Democrats are experts at quelling public dissent through optics and performances. Conservatives often exploit it while still providing nothing, but the American left-wing exists to stop voters from going further left. However, because conditions are so hostile (pandemic, economy, awareness of racist violence) left-wing voters could break away from the Democratic party. Trump could contest it in a variety of ways but dictatorships aren’t 1 man shouting, they’re organized systems of military, politicians, and media coordinating in the name of business and white supremacy. The same actions under Trump now could happen under Biden, and he’s shown he’s more than willing to approve it. The president after Biden could be an eloquent Trump, such as Mike Pence. If Biden somehow beats the systems and wins, it’ll be a strong sign of neoliberalism’s success and the continued extinguishing of any leftward movement. It could also mean businesses know something I don’t and had a better incentive to back Biden.

TLDR: Capitalism responds to crisis with fascism, its last hope is inflaming the racism and state violence liberalism normalizes. The people can respond with anything. Unless a critical mass opposes fascism, it will continue and grow. The people can choose something around socialism or communism, but the pre-pandemic America we considered normal is gone forever.

[hg47]

47 Reasons Why I Fear Islam - (Reason 1)

-1-I am suspicious of any religion that demands the death of any member who quits. Polls taken worldwide consistently reveal that the majority of Muslims in the world want the laws of whatever country they are living within changed to allow the execution of any Muslim who leaves Islam (if the laws do not already allow this).  The majority of Muslims in the world also want the laws of whatever country they are living in to make blasphemy of Islam an offense punishable by death.  The majority of Muslims in the world also want the laws of whatever country they are living within to allow for hand amputation as a punishment for theft. This frightens me because it indicates that so called “moderate Muslims” are in the minority, possibly far below the 50% mark of Muslims.  10%?  It also frightens me because it shows that Muslims are not inclined to assimilate into Western society; they will generally NOT acquire Western values.  A few will; but most?  No.  It frightens me because the bulk of Muslims expect whatever country they are living within to change and adapt to their own religion.  Most moderate Muslims fully expect to slowly destroy EVERYTHING non-Islamic, over a period of centuries. Western culture honors the individual, The Unique Individual, and tries to provide a framework for different people, with their differing backgrounds, to work constructively together. Islamic rulings deny the value of the individual.  People only exist so that their God will have worshippers.  And their God is delighted in proportion and intensity of the received worship.  (Asking for a Muslim who pretends to be my friend: Since a female Muslim is only worth half a male Muslim, does that mean that her worship only delights the Islamic God half as much?) As I write this, 9/25/2013 10:20 AM, significantly more than half the Muslims in the world want to kill any Muslim who quits their religion.  What does this say about Islam?  What does this say about what Islam does to people? One of my favorite TV shows is LIFE, starring Damian Lewis and Sarah Shahi.  It only ran for 2 seasons. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I24BTA/ref=dv_dp_ep4 Episode 4, Season 2 of LIFE is based on the Stanford Prison Experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment This Wikipedia entry details what the Guard/Prisoner Dynamic does to people. In the LIFE episode: “Us Against Them -- A university’s prison experiment goes horribly wrong when one of the students acting as a corrections officer ends up dead.”  The show demonstrates in a dramatic way, how civilized college kids can be made to behave in savage ways, doing terrible things they never could have imagined they would ever do, just by organizing them within a Guard/Prisoner Dynamic. I believe this is what Islam does to people: it sets up a Guard/Prisoner Dynamic.  Male Muslims are the Guards.  Female Muslims are the Prisoners.  Male head of a household: Warden.  Sons: Rookie Guards.  Religious leaders would be the Western equivalent of Rock Stars.  Super-Wardens?  Outside the prison walls: “Infidels!  We must make the prison larger!  Need more prisoners!”  Anyone who quits Islam: “Escaped prisoner!  Kill!  Kill!”  Obviously, I am over-simplifying.  But I think I’m onto something.  A useful First Approximation? Is Islam a force for Good, or a force for Evil?  You tell me!  Send me a tweet. ++++------- tweet ~ Islam theologizes the inferiority of Muslim women as being worth 1/2 of Muslim men. A non-Muslim has no worth unless impregnated by a Muslim ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Terrorism-teaches-Christianity-violence/dp/0884198847/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380596025&sr=1-1&keywords=islam+and+terrorism+mark+a+gabriel In ISLAM AND TERRORISM by Mark A. Gabriel, Ph.D., Mark tells how when he quit Islam to become a Christian, his father tried to kill him as he ran away: His own father, with tears streaming down his face, shooting bullets at him. ++++------- tweet ~ Christianity + Judaism + Technology = Man on the Moon (Reaching for Heaven?) \\ Islam + Technology = Rioting Muslim Mobs (Hell on Earth?) ++++------- http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Islam_and_Apostasy The majority of Muslims in the world want anyone who quits Islam to be killed.  The stats show that most Muslims are inflexible on this point.  Keep it in mind, before you convert to Islam.  Once in, never out. ++++------- tweet ~ HASSAN ROUHANI: “Iran only wants Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Medical purposes. Medical tests scheduled for Tel Aviv, New York, London…” ~ (OK, I’m joking!  But I do believe that is their intent.) ++++------- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/son-of-hamas-holds-islam-responsible-for-middle-easts-anguish/article2239037/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Home&utm_content=2239037 In this article MICHAEL POSNER argues that the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict is not about politics or security, but is all about religion.  He also argues that anyone who does not believe in Islam is under a Death Sentence. ++++------- tweet ~ Female Suicide Bombers in Paradise: “You are a brand new Virgin! We’re giving you to Male Bomber #45889! Happy Eternity!” ++++------- http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_3_muslim-economy.html In this article Guy Sorman gets into the whole sharia banking thing, how Islamic banks do all the formerly forbidden Infidel monetary practices like interest and credit, but just describe them differently so the imams back home don’t get upset.  Guy also brings up the point that any Sunni imam can define what it means to leave Islam and become an apostate under a death sentence, and that this tends to discourage any innovation.  Why try something new, if you might get killed for it? ++++------- I am amused.  Muslims, always concerned with the letter of the law, never the intent of the law, are now using forbidden Infidel banking practices of “interest” and “credit” which are illegal under Islamic law—but the Muslims just give these practices different names.  So, it’s OK! Is this Islam lying to itself?  Or is this an instance of Muslim banking specialists lying to Muslim imams?  Or are they all “in on the game” and cool with the Great Big Lie? This whole “describing things differently” thing to conform with Islamic law actually is an Islamic legal precedent, if moderate Muslims wish to take advantage of it.  Feminists, get on this!  If Muslim bankers can find a “description” of the hateful Infidel banking practice of “derivatives” which conforms to Sharia law, perhaps Muslim feminists can find a “description” of women which will give them equal rights with men under Islamic law.  There may be a better approach, but this Islamic legal precedent of “describing things differently” may be of some use.  Possibly “Infidels” might be described as “innocent future Muslims” so as to avoid bloodshed. ++++------- tweet ~ 66% of Protestant pastors in the US believe that Islam is “Dangerous” * (Harper’s) ++++------- http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9182/pub_detail.asp In this article, AMIL IMANI argues that Islam is not a religion, but rather a cult.  The way Amil Imani describes it, Islam does seem to fit the definition. ++++------- tweet ~ Which is the better TwitterName for that guy? Ahmadinedildo or Ahmadildojad? I love pushing a dildo into Ahmadinejad, does that make me gay? ++++------- http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-stifling-effect-of-muhammeds-life-and-teachings-on-muslim-society/ One of the things Hege Storhaug mentions in this article is the Pew Research study results that 84% of Egyptians want to kill anyone who leaves Islam. ++++------- tweet ~ ISLAMABAD (Reuters – May, 2015) - Pakistan has blocked all Western media indefinitely in a bid to contain “blasphemous” material. ~ (OK, I’m just trying to think ahead here.  It’s now 10/12/2013 5:06 AM.  But something like this may happen.  Iran is trying to set up its own Islamic-Approved Internet to control information and eliminate protest against the government.) ++++------- http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8622/pub_detail.asp In this article Diana West mentions the Pew stat about 84% of Egyptians wanting to kill anyone who leaves Islam. ++++------- tweet ~ US (Reuters – May, 2017) – Twitter begins filtering in deference to Muslims: Muhammad, Mohamed & Muhamad now appear in Tweets as GEORGE. ~ (Again, this is just me, circa 10/12/2013 5:11 AM trying to think ahead.) ++++------- http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-1206-muslim-poll-20101206,0,252922.story This article by Meris Lutz, Los Angeles Times, has more stats about Islam.  Muslims, by wide majorities in Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria want current laws changed so that anyone who exits Islam can be executed. ++++------- At present, Muslims who leave Islam are sometimes killed by family members or, occasionally, angry Muslim mobs.  So I can see why Muslims want the laws of their nation changed to kill those who leave Islam.  Let the state deal with it.  This would save family embarrassment.  I wonder if there are stats on what percentage of Muslims quit Islam and survive? ++++------- tweet ~ So which do the #TeaParty Tweople hate more? Black man Obama in White House? Or Shiite Muslim Rima Fakih as winner of Miss USA contest? ++++------- http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2009/05/terrifying-brilliance-of-islam.html Citizen Warrior, in this article, confirms that Islam is a Once-In-Never-Out Proposition. ++++------- tweet ~ Saudi Women are not allowed to drive, inherit, divorce or gain custody of children, and cannot socialize with unrelated men. Can they Tweet? ++++------- http://www.hudson-ny.org/1610/sharia-advancing-in-west This article by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is mostly about Islamic Banking in the West, and how the Sharia experts are setting the stage now for the eventual destruction of the United States of America.  The murder of apostates is also mentioned. ++++------- tweet ~ INTERPOL Agrees to Same-Sex Couple Conjugal Visits between Ex-President Ahmadinejad & Ayatollah Khamenei if they both surrender immediately. ~ (Yes, another joke.) ++++------- http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/10/12/26542/ This article by Brendan Carroll brings up Geert Wilders, and asks some serious questions concerning Free Speech, Islamic values, and Western Values.  It also notes that Muslim youth today have been radicalized compared with former generations of Muslims living within the West. ++++------- tweet ~ We have political ads on TV to influence voters; Iraq has clerics in mosque chanting for death. The real #Iraq ballots are bullets & bombs. ++++------- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451 Stephen Evans in this article notes that Muslims have largely failed to integrate as useful members of German society, instead becoming a drain upon the state and a threat to German values. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +Go-To-2+ +Go-To-Beginning-Of-47-REASONS-WHY-I-FEAR-ISLAM+