#musings and ramblings

[thesargasmicgoddess]

Happy Birthday!!!! 43 looks great on you :)

Thank you so very much!

I think sometimes it's just hard for a woman to age because our society has consistently idolized and prized youthful beauty in a woman. Hence, as I've aged, I've really had to redefine what beauty and success mean to me. I've also had to do the work to find my 40's identity.

There has been an elegant fierceness to being in my 40s. It wasn't how it started, but that's where it's been going, and I'm ALL for it. During this decade of my life (so far), I've had this capacity to do things that scare the shit out of me, and I'm really proud of that. 😂

At 40, I worried about the loss of youth--both aesthetically and mentally. The pandemic had reminded me that life should be lived FULLY, because, things can shift in an instant. I wasn't getting any younger so I said fuck it, and tried OF to check it off my bucket list. It was a hilariously fun, irreverent, and thrilling 6 months of random nudity and smut 😂

At 41, I was restless and thought I wanted to retire from work work to travel the world, but then my brain got bored 😂. Then, a series of events happened that led me to decide to apply for a PhD program, just to see if I had what it takes......😂🤷🏻‍♀️

At 42, I worked, got into and started my PhD program (LOVE it!), and traveled the world.

And HELLO 43, I can't wait to see what's in store....😉

[demiclar]

Light Projections in the Red War

So I've been doing a bit of a deep-dive into the Red War Campaign for a fic over the last few months (ah how I miss her) and something occurred to me when I considered the Light and the Darkness and how they've both been portrayed and defined in the last few years. Now, D2 the Red War came out in like 2017, so maybe this is a case of a lack of planning and forethought, but if Bungie has shown us anything in the past few years of story content, it's that they really plan ahead, so I don't feel like that's it.

As a part of the initial D2 content, there was a series of missions for players to unlock their extra subclasses, for Warlocks you could do missions for Voidwalker and Stormcaller, for Titans it was Striker and Sunbreaker, for Hunters Gunslinger and Nightstalker (maybe they haven't gotten rid of these, it's been a long time since I've unlocked a subclass). On all of these quests, you'd go through the EDZ and towards the Shard of the Traveler and along the way you'd encounter a set of what Ghost called "Light projections," figures of either Guardians that used (or still do/at the time still did) wield the subclass you're trying to get, or are enemies that were defeated by Guardians that wield the subclass you're getting. They tell stories about themselves, or sometimes others tell you stories about Guardians that used the subclass you're getting, but they each are supposed to have some kind of lesson in them.

What gets me about this, though, is that these projections seem to go against everything we know about Light and Darkness from content like The Witch Queen. The Light is not a physical entity, that's fine, these projections seem to be manifestations of Light, we might be able to hear them, but they don't seem to exist per se or have any tangible mass. But, what's off about them is the fact that they're there at all. The Light, as we know it, makes a point to forget things. When Guardians are revived, they can't remember their past lives, their strength seems to come raw power, and maybe a few guns that get passed down, but nothing like this.

The Darkness, on the other hand, is grounded in memory, and things tangible. In Witch Queen we remade and restored objects using the Darkness, manipulating time itself. In Lightfall, we found the strings that tie the universe together and manipulated those. These projections then, feel a lot like the Darkness from Witch Queen, memories of Guardians past.

One theory could be that all of this takes place in a spot called the Dark Forest, emphasis on Dark. You move through the space, to the shard of the Traveler through a series of Taken portals, which seem to be pretty linked with Hive Darkness. Since the shard of the traveler is calling you to it, a question then arises, is the Shard making the portals appear? Does it have power over this Darkness? If that's the case, then maybe it's using Darkness to manifest these projections, but how does that work, because how can Light control Darkness? Not to mention, these projections, at least visually, seem to be built out of Light, not Darkness, aesthetically linked with all the depictions of Light we've seen at least in this campaign.

So, I don't get it. Maybe because this place is a meeting point of Light and Darkness it's just weird, but I'm having a very hard time making sense of these projections considering the context we've gotten over the past few years. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it!

[sargasmicgoddess]

Hi. Not cerebral, but have you ever made a random connection with someone so strong on a night out or whatever where you’ve just had to follow it up somehow, or take action there and then?

I have this devil/angel inner-voice trauma in those situations and the angel always wins so I’m always left with wondering ‘what if’. One day I’ll have the balls to just say ‘fuck it’ and see what happens. Sigh.

Ever seen the movie Before Sunrise?

That's what I always think of when I think about random connections that just work.

Most of my life, I've followed my passions. Of the mind and of the heart. Professionally and personally. "What ifs" haunt me, and I've consciously tried to live a life where I don't have to say that a lot.

Granted, it takes me to other places that have made me say, "WTF is WRONG with me?!"* And "Am I clinically, diagnosably, INSANE?!"**

Other times, I get hurt wearing my heart on my sleeve by being vulnerable with connections, but that's a willing risk I take. I'd rather feel too much than nothing at all. But at the end of the day, I'm almost always happy I took chances.

I regret nothing. It has shaped me into the person I am today.

Obviously, idk your specific situation, so use your own best judgment.

But more than ever, I've embraced unexpected connections, experiences, and moments in my 40s. I hope you can find your happy medium too!

* everything. But I'm cool with it 🤣

**debatable. I'm sure you'll find me in the DSM somewhere 😬

[st-just]

On average, in general, today is still probably the single best time in history to be alive

Oh my god is that such a low fucking bar you have no idea everything is so fucking awful everywhere

[elexuscal]

the longer i stay in fandom, the longer i think a huge amount of bad takes and discourse come from an... abundance of identifying with a character

to be clear, i don't think it's bad to identify with a character. far from it! i think that's part of what makes fiction so powerful.

and it's only logical people often attach to a blorbo because they're just like me, for real. a person will see some element of themselves-- their race, their gender, their sexuality, their hobbies, their family life, their specific flavour of neurodivergence-- and something just resonates. it gives them a way to explore and name this important part of themselves, a part they maybe didn't even know existed before it.

and everything is well and good until some split between them and the character shows up

because of course, no character, except an explicit self-insert written by yourself, will ever be a perfect 1:1 for your own experiences. so sooner or later-- maybe in canon, maybe in a fanwork-- your blorbo diverges from your lived experience in a huge way.

I think this is why shipping culture in particular gets so toxic. While it is by no means the only way to indulge with shipping, a significant portion is 'if i was in that character's shoes, i would choose X'. the fight becomes for your own self-identity.

but this gets expanded in other ways. a character who is revealed to be black when the majority of the fandom had just assumed they were white. or revealed to be queer, or maybe the 'wrong' flavour of queer. or fuck, even some more innocuous part of their backstory, one that's nonetheless so meaningful for SOMEONE, but now it feels like the story is saying, fuck you, we're doing something else

i don't know. i just feel acknowledging this perceived-attack-on-identity helps me understand why people react it what seems to be such outsized way to canon and fanworks alike.

at the same time, i think it's a really important thing to check in yourself.

it's nice, to see a character who you identify with. who resonates with for being like you. but it's also nice to acknowledge and appreciate the way characters are not like you at All. how great it is to get insight into this totally different lived experience. and to muse on how wonderful that recognition might be for someone who does have that background.

[pricillapeaches]

It’s weird that I just realized I like slowburns. I mean I love relationship dynamics, and what better way to explore all the complex and intricate details of a relationship than a slowburn? But that just never came to me??? My favorite (romantic) fics are long winded slowburns and my favorite (platonic) fics are all linked oneshots. I wonder what that says about me?

[owenthetokencishet]

Warhammer 40,000 as a universe is trying to do the impossible.

Warhammer 40,000 is, broadly, a grim satire of fascism. It takes the fascist's worldview, all the xenophobia, conspiracism, hypernationalism, and militarism, and amplifies it to a galactically ridiculous scale.

"The Imperium of Man has ruled for 10,000 years, warring endlessly against heretics, traitors, aberrant humans, and aliens galore, all of whom are so wildly different from humanity that peaceful coexistence will simply never be possible. The only emotion stronger than our hatred of them is their hatred of us. So, we war. We war and war and battle and slaughter until the end of days. We throw our sacred human form, untainted by mutation or the hideous sciences of our ancestors, against the barbarian hordes by the millions, most of us dying in the process. We revere and worship the warriors elevated by the hand of our divine god-emperor, the apotheosis of our glorious, eternal state. These warriors, reborn in the Emperor's image with His sacred eugenics, to become the ultimate fighting men. And yes, they are all men. We are never safe, while we must constantly be defending our borders from our enemies, we must also be ever-vigilant within. Anybody, from our comrades on the front lines to our commanders, tech-priests, preachers, or politicians, could be a traitor. Nobody can ever TRULY be trusted, and those who truly are heretics, must not only be destroyed, but erased. They, and all memory of them must be eradicated. One heretic can sign the death warrant of his entire world, and sometimes, for the preservation of the human race, billions must die."

Warhammer 40k presents a world where all of this(asterisk) is true (VERY BIG ASTERISK)

Through this lens, a lot of the more... questionable aspects make sense.

T'au Empire Mind Control: The T'au are how fascists view liberals. They CANNOT understand that an integrated, multicultural society could ever POSSIBLY work. They cannot FATHOM that different communities can just... agree to work together, it HAS TO BE the woke mind virus. "Can you believe these fucking idiots tried to NEGOTIATE with TYRANIDS???? These fucking losers tried to make PEACE WITH ANOTHER RACE??? PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT"

Why the chaos gods are what they are: The followers of chaos represent everyone of the 'ingroup' the fascist hates. Because nothing, not even their sacred ingroup, is sacred to the fascist. The followers of chaos are the germans who resisted, the jewish antizionist, the rebel (Khorne), the intellectual (Tzeentch), the sick and disabled (Nurgle), and the queer (Slaanesh). "There is no reason ANYBODY, ESPECIALLY not those of our sacred ingroup, could object to our glorious genocide. And the runts of the litter must be eliminated to not be a drain on the rest"

And EVEN WITHIN 40k, a lot of this is bullshit.

The T'au mind control thing is provably bullshit because the Farsight Enclaves exist. A whole T'au society that exists free from the apparent mid control of the ethereals

The imperium feeds as much into the chaos gods as the traitors do. A stagnant, decaying empire (Nurgle), with an incomprehensibly vast and byzantine bureaucratic structure (Tzeentch), where a select few live appallingly lush and lavish lives of hedonism and pleasure, completely detached from the people they're supposed to govern (Slaanesh), all for the purpose of making ever more destructive and bloody war with everybody else (Khorne)

There is evidence of peaceful human coexistence with xenos empires during the Dark Age of Technology, including one humanity CREATED, and many inquisitors and rogue traders will GLADLY incorporate xenos into their retinues. Trade and coexistence with aliens DOES still happen in the imperium.

Hell, the parody of fascism is in the very MECHANICS OF THE WHOLE LORE. Fascists don't believe in "facts" or "truth", if they did, they wouldn't be fascists. Therefore, in 40k, "Everything is canon, nothing is true". This allows players to EITHER

Think critically and try to connect the dots to form their best guess as to what "canon" is

Or buy wholly into one side or another's propaganda

And one of those groups is going to find a "truth" they can accept and treat as fact a LOT more quickly than the other.

40k lays out in perfectly plain low gothic, all of the bullshit and hypocrisies of the Imperium. They'll let entire sectors die in the interests of preserving human life. The way the imperial guard are lauded as heroes but treated worse than the lasguns in their hands. The way that in order to become a space marine, one of humanity's great guardian angels, you must have everything that makes you human either beaten out of you or surgically removed. The priests who worship science and technology viewing scientific progress as the most abhorrent of heresies. The divine worship of a man who scoured entire worlds for the crime of worshipping him as a god.

Actually hang on lemme derail the flow of this post and talk more about the emperor. The Emperor is the chief hypocrite in an empire of hypocrites. "I AM NOT A GOD" says the 10-foot-tall gleaming golden immortal psychic god-man, "NOW GO FORTH MY ANGELS ON YOUR GLORIOUS CRUSADE TO BRING SCIENCE AND REASON, and by science and reason I mean doing exactly what I say without question and turning a blind eye to fundamental truths of the universe, TO THIS BENIGHTED GALAXY"

The problem is that parodying fascism is impossible. Fascism is already so inherently, fundamentally ridiculous a worldview, for all the reasons explained above, that distinguishing sincerity from irony is nigh impossible.

If you, an antifascist, read The Turner Diaries, you will probably assume it's satire. The book ends with Earth as an irradiated hellsacpe where few can survive and nothing about its resulting culture is explained. But nope! This is fascist propaganda! It was written by actual neo-nazis who committed actual hate crimes! It is an enthusiastic YAAAAAAAAAY APOCALYPTIC WARFARE!!!!!! YAAAAAAAAY GENOCIDE!!!!!!!! At least all the black people are gone! Hell, when Rogue One came out, Lucasfilm got all sort of shit flung at them for portraying the evil space nazis... as the bad guys... which they always were.

This is why both we, the fandom, and Games Workshop as a company, are DIRECTLY pushing SO HARD against the fascists in the space, and must push harder. 40K IS NOT FOR THEM. And no amount of clever writing or obvious parody will ever convince them otherwise. It does not matter how unfathomably stupid you make fascism look to people with functioning brains, fascists will gobble that shit up. You cannot make fascism look worse than it is, and you cannot make it stupid enough to convince fascists its stupid.

The problem isn't that Games Workshop isn't doing a good enough job writing the imperium as bad (although they aren't), the problem is that it will never be an adequate mockery to make the fascists feel unwelcome. It's not a bad parody of fascism, fascism is just beyond parody.

[thesargasmicgoddess]

So funny that in my younger days, I would have never seen my body as a work of art. I hyperfixated on my imperfections and was incredibly critical of my curves and height.

20+ years later, I AM a work of art--body and soul. Though childbirth, illness, mental breakdowns, growth, triumph, and heartbreaks, my body and mind have carried me through it ALL.

My resilience and vulnerabilities are GORGEOUS, and I wear it proudly--physically and mentally.

And of course, I appropriately adorn it all with irreverent humor and whimsical sass 😉 i mean, a girl's got to have intellectual style 🤓

Carry on.

I hope you thrive today! ❤️

[ghosts-of-the-apocalypse]

FUCK YES!! sorry but I absolutely called it! Lucifer is a silly guy!

Excessive ramble/theory tid bits ahead!~

How can you look at him and think he won't be a silly little guy? People saying he'd be a big intimidating scary king of hell? No way dude just look at him.

And like the way he looks so upset in Ep1 when he lost his ability to create. That's not the face of a guy seeking revenge and filled with anger, that dude is just plain ol' depressed. The way he slowly just walks off screen...

Lilith on the other hand? She is the definition of girlboss.

She's out here inspiring all the demons. Look at that power. She's in control. She's in charge.

While Lucifer's in his depressive state she's out here trying to lead all of hell. She's vengeful, (ik reds are quite a common colour in Hazbin Hotel) but the way it emanates in a glow behind her combined with her pose. It's just shows so much power and malice. You cannot convince me otherwise that she hasn't been pulling the strings since day 1.

I'd even go as far as to say she was the one who had the idea to tell Lucifer to give Eve the apple. Just look at her stance as she stands back to see Lucifer going over to Eve, overlooking the plan. She knows what's up.

(Also just a note but Eve looks so sad here. Girlie is trapped with Adam like she's in her own personal type of Hell. Btw I'd like to throw a theory out there that Eve and Lilith are sisters)

Ngl I do think Lucifer and Lilith split because of this whole power dynamic. Like Lucifer just couldn't keep up with Lilith's ideas or didn't believe in them. Like, Lucifer tells Charlie in Ep5 that Hell and it's people are terrible. This contradicts Lilith's whole thing of wanting to round up all the demons and potentially lead a fight. She THRIVES in Hell. For Lucifer, it's just constant punishment.

I feel like Charlie despite looking up to Lilith, is experiencing quite a bit of miscommunication. They both want to save the demons but in different ways. Charlie's way being through redemption but Lilith's maybe being through a war against Heaven.

Now it's just figuring out where the hell (pun not intended but enjoy) she's been for the past 7 years. (Honestly, I think she's just been off plotting with Eve.)

Another side note, but like the way Alastor just stares at this portrait in the pilot for such a weird prolonged amount of time is not helping my Lilith and Alastor theories calm down. Bro is the radio demon and is broadcasting everything back to Lilith.

He 100% sold his soul to Lilith, tried breaking free, but couldn't.

[capriccio-ffxiv]

/pulls up a chair

what if the real "rejoining" is building bridges between all the shards and opening up trade

and instead of killing these split souls, opening a path for a way that the natural process of a reconnected Lifestream allows for a slow, gentle rejoining, with no sacrifice involved on the part of any of the newly born souls

what if we mend the broken world after all, but instead by building the pieces into something new, rather than trying to force the shape back to how it was

what if we fill our wounds with gold

and become transformed?

[st-just]

Not to be all 'yet you participate in society!' but I do find the number of people who are as or more online than me posting about how the internet was a mistake and destroying human connection and society peaked in 1999 and etc just very, like, bizarre? Truly cannot relate at all. Like for starters easily half of my most cherished social connections are largely or entirely mediated by Online but also, like - oceans of culture beyond anything you could ever conceive of, available at your fingertips! Compendiums of knowledge more expansive and accurate than the Encyclopediests' wildest dreams, free for the taking! Legions and hosts of awkward maladjusted weirdos, sufficient to support niche communities of every kind compatible with human psychology!

Like sure it has its discontents and pathologies, but overall I'm having a pretty great time. If it's a mistake it's one my life would be immeasurably, unrecognizably poorer without.

[bunnygirllover45]

testing brushes.

[fly-sky-high-bug-games]

"For how long do you intend to play this little game of yours with me? When will you cut to the chase already? Or are you afraid, Taka?"

"Do you fear I will burn your heart until there is nothing left of it?"

[heilos]

Still coming to terms with the fact that this 5th video is going to be our longest video to date when it's done and I think that's pretty neat.