#non-relationality

[antirelation]

[…] “knowing the other in the biblical sense” is to engage with the point in the Other where knowledge is lacking. And from the religious perspective, this lack of knowledge in the Other (missing signifier of the sexual relation) is no small matter. Hence the shame. The sight of naked bodies is not “shameful” because of these bodies as such, but because of what these naked bodies fail to convey, namely, the sexual relation.

Alenka Zupančič, from What Is Sex?

[endlessandrea]

Love this so much!! From Lauren Berlant – On The Inconvenience of Other People

[drdemonprince]

what do u think about romance abolition? i recently discovered that i dont think romance actually exists as in i think every relationship every person has with anyone is unique and different. the concept of romance is rooted in a lof of our opressive systems and aphobia is inherently tied to it. i think these labels of being in a "romantic" relationship endanger everyone due to a percieved wrong clearness of what their relationship boundaries and expectations are and it also devalues "platonic" (and a lot other) relationships.

i also recommend the aromantic manifesto blog on here to kind of get part of the concept im talking abt

this comes from the mind of an audhd aroace trans person, if thats of any relevance!

thank u for ur blog an your opinions ⭐

I am fairly receptive to the idea that romance as we currently conceive of it is a recent cultural invention that is pretty ahistorical, and that is used to further the isolation of individuals from community. but also, I don't think we are going to get anywhere as a social or political movement in denying the feelings that a majority of people have, myself very much among them.

Even if it is all born of cultural conditioning, the cat is kind of out of the bag, and a great deal of us experience a romantic drive, romantic longings, close attachments that are romantic that we experience as distinct from non-romantic attachments, and view romance as a meaningful fount of inspiration in our art, sexualities, and even spiritualities.

I am all for a move away from amatonormativity and the primacy of the monogamous, legally committed relationship, but I do think there is something emotionally real going on there for those of us who experience it. I used to care a lot more about straightforward rationality, and after that about justice, but now I care a great deal about the emotionally felt reality of things, and the realms of life that are not easily categorized or known. I can't explain why the idea of romance is important to me, only that it is, and I personally have no desire in doing away with it.

perhaps I feel some of the resistance to the idea of romance abolition that some instantly feel when they first hear of family abolition-- The idea makes them uncomfortable because of what it sounds like, which is a threat to something that they are very bonded to.

I think on an institutional level it would be very beneficial to not tie social benefits or legal status to a person's romantic relationships. but in terms of my personal life? I draw very firm boundaries between relationships that are romantic in nature and those that are not, that is a distinction that is very important to me and I often feel really trampled upon by people who believe that no one should see a designation between those things. in most of the world writ large that's a very small problem, but I mostly run with polyamorous queer people who tend to see many of their relationships is a big mishmash of affection and commitment and friendship and that can get real fucking messy real fast in addition to being beautiful or revolutionary or what have you.

I think ultimately I'm a little bit more interested in providing the social supports and physical infrastructure that would make it more possible for individuals to form community in whatever ways that means for them. I think a lot of beneficial social changes and liberation would flow from that, rather than moving to abolish romantic relationships first.

and I really do get uncomfortable when a certain subcategory of relationally radical polyamorous queer people try to push against other people's romantic or sexual boundaries in the name of liberation; I understand if that sounds like a totally ridiculous complaint to you, the way a person complaining about veganism being forced on them almost always sounds like a overreacting cry baby, but I've been in enough toxic fucking communities since I was an 18-year-old to feel like I'm owed this grievance, and kind of want to give voice to it because I have seen people be abused in the name of otherwise really understandable ideals like these.

I think it is okay for a person to draw distinctions between their types of relationships, and to want certain forms of attachment with only certain people... there has to be a way to square this with a desire for greater community ties and interreliance. I need there to be, or it would not be a ideology I could really find myself safely within to be honest.

All that uncomfortable hand ringing aside, as a member of the asexual community and a person who does not form connections in a typical way, I have so much respect and care for my aromantic comrades and I do recognize how supremely excluded from basically every social practice and institution in the world you are, and how difficult it is for anyone to make family or build community for themselves in a world that prioritizes exclusive romantic relationships over everything. and I do really believe that fighting against that is a worthy and necessary project. I am perhaps just ultimately a bit less enlightened in terms of what I personally need and aspire to.

[metamorphicmuse]

Queer Emotionality as Form

This body of work reimagines post-impressionist expression not as nostalgic style but as a living, queer emotional language.

Rather than illustrating gay relationships through narrative scenes, these paintings embody the emotional architectures — yearning, rupture, tenderness, euphoria — that shape queer life. Emotion is treated not as theme or subject but as material: brushstroke, color, rhythm.

Queerness in this work is not located only in subject matter (two men in intimacy) but in the very structure of the paintings:

Fluid boundaries between figures and environment reflect relationality over rigid identity.

Luminous, symbolic palettes (pink, gold, silver, deep shadow) break from naturalism to celebrate emotional truth.

Non-linear emotional phases resist traditional narrative arcs, mapping queer experience as a cycle of struggle, healing, and liberation.

By centering emotional visibility, chosen connection, and the refusal of fixed form, the work queers expressive painting itself — expanding it into a space where feeling is not illustrated but inhabited.

In this world, as in queer life, emotion is the medium.

[wings-of-ink]

Hi Lunan!!! I hope ur doing well 🫶🏽 I don’t know if this has been asked yet but what are ur favourite fictional characters (or arcs) from other games (including non IF games) or shows?

Hello dear! I am doing well (now that all my Christmas obligations are completed) and I hope you are as well. ^_^

I don't think I've had this question before, but it's a difficult one since there are so many that I love and also my memory for such things can be completely wack, lol.

Let's see...

In The Wayhaven Chronicles, I absolutely love the dynamic with the MC and the romance with M. I really thought that N would be my fav, but M stole my heart, and I just love their character and how they develop relationally.

In Blood Moon, oh goodness, I loved everyone. I have played every romance multiple times so picking a fav is so difficult. The whole story is just amazing. My top two characters are probably Carrie and Marco if you twisted my arm.

In Andromeda Six, I am a complete sucker for Vexx's storyline. Gets me every time.

In Gilded Shadows (one of my favs and probably the only gender-locked game I have ever loved so much), I adored Jack's route though there are a couple other close runners up here too.

In BBC's Sherlock, The Woman - enough said - and also Moriarty. I love extreme and or unique characters and these two really hit it for me.

In Penny Dreadful, I was in love with Vanessa Ives as a character and Eva Green fucking nailed that role for me.

I think these are the main ones I can think of off the cuff. If I sat and thought a while on it, I'm sure I could come up with more characters that live rent-free in my heart.

[lotus-tower]

somehow when writing all this I forgot about the prosthetic phallus. gintoki the true protagonist whose sword is made all the more sword-like because its non-literality conveys more efficiently that what it embodies is the swordconcept—prosthetic also because it’s being forged before our eyes (though without us noticing at first). gintama says “if you don’t have your own, store-bought is fine” about the great institution of the Cool Signature Shounen Sword, which is funny, but mainly gintama posits that in the end you have to craft your own with everyone’s help anyway.

it’s then really interesting for gintoki’s evil clone to have, quite literally, a prosthetic dick. and kintoki knows that the dick is the key, that the dick is fundamental to gintama’s language of worth and its basic fabric—and he clearly understands that non-literality, that prostheticness is okay. in fact, maybe from his perspective, being designed to be what he is, the cold “facts” of gintoki as a character are quite obvious to him—blueprint data he was given as part of his construction. he at no point seems to have any real investment in the idea of being a human vs being a robot. he’s here to usurp gintoki as an animanga character, as a protagonist, so it really doesn’t matter. whether he’s artificial doesn’t really matter—according to his instructions manual gintoki is also artificial. and so someone as arrogant and self-absorbed yet relationally aware as kintoki feels neither inferior nor superior for being a literal robot.

but he doesn’t understand it, not really. he doesn’t understand the whys of the prosthetic phallus or the gintama swordconcept in general. this is, of course, because he isn’t gintoki but was instead designed to be Golden Boy Alpha Male gintoki, and gintama is fundamentally a story based in loserspace. by which I mean not an “objective” space where all losers go (kintoki is obviously a loser too), but a space focused on, preoccupied with, and making productive, loserhood. every part of kintoki’s body was designed in a way that makes him fundamentally incompatible with this, so of course he doesn’t understand.

tama, like lake toya, is a character whose artificial nature only serves to make her thematic package starker and easier to receive. gintama is generally blunt in its messages. just like lake toya is more sword-like by visibly carrying the naked idea of the sword, tama is made more human by being a robot that gained sentience through the Magic Humanity-Granting Seed. gengai’s introductory episode also very effectively used a hollow robot holding a very tender and sincere message inside it for sentimental effect. this is also a reminder that the first time we meet gengai, he’s constructed artificial facsimiles of his son—not meant to replace him, though, but rather for him to project his emotions on, and to embody a certain kind of will.

so by the time of kintoki’s introduction, we know that robots can be sentient, and this doesn’t really require any real storytelling or justification. and we know that gengai isn’t the type of character to actually think a robot can replace a person, as that person—rather, he built kintoki because he agreed with shinpachi and kagura that gintoki was fucking annoying, and he built kintoki to replace gintoki instrumentally. and, to his credit, kintoki does what he’s designed to do. and he doesn’t want to replace gintoki as a person—he does understand his assignment, he understands the blueprint data, he understands the instructions manual. if he wanted to replace gintoki as gintoki, he would have killed him from the getgo. he wants to replace gintoki as the main character, instrumentally, and for this purpose making gintoki part of his harem serves to convey how effective he’s been at accomplishing his goal.

he reboots the world as a vapid moe harem because that’s the kind of series that is most straightforwardly built around how important, unique, and special the main character is. he has no use for loserspace—he reads the abridged gintama script and sees that the ensemble cast must trust him, rely on him, and have their hearts moved by him—and he’s like, well, okay, but why is he a loser then? it would be more efficient like this.

which is to say, kintoki understands that he must be the recipient of all these relationships and emotions, but he fundamentally does not understand Hole. many, many people project all sorts of things onto gintoki. gengai projected his grief over his son onto his (very much non-sentient, yet all the more endearing as a carrier for it) robot. no one can project onto kintoki. kintoki understands that he’s empty inside—he’s a robot, after all, and he’s like two weeks old, and he sees the script, he sees that gintoki is too, it all checks out—he sees that gintama is lame, that it’s stupid, that it’s gross, that time doesn’t pass meaningfully, that time can keep cycling—so why not turn it into an incel fantasy harem? What is the difference between his dick joke and gintoki’s (gintama’s) dick joke? It’s still a dick?

I think that gintama’s lack of interest in engaging with dichotomies like human and non-human (in the biological or racial sense), organic and inorganic, is a large driving force behind what gives kintoki an interesting, understated texture. again, he is not concerned with being a robot. if anything, he is assured by it, he’s certain in his purpose and his goals and his ability to achieve them. there is no insecurity over being a hunk of metal, there is no insecurity about his humanity or lack thereof (see, he can just take his head off to wash it), there isn’t even loneliness despite him being one android in a huge city of people unlike him, because the protagonist is inherently a lonely role anyway (and gintoki is human and still lonely among humans). he feels no envy or animosity towards flesh.

instead, you could almost argue that he’s secure in artificiality. he thinks that because his dick is prosthetic, he can succeed as the main character. because his dick is prosthetic, it will last when others wither. because his dick is prosthetic, the world will revolve around him. it’s a fascinating concept, to have a main character with a prosthetic phallus for the sake of an embodied spiritsword, and to then create an evil clone of him who fixates on the prosthetic, and literalizes the wrong part of the metaphor. or maybe, literalizes it in the opposite direction? rather than the prosthetic (wooden) sword being a vessel for the thematic spirit of gintama, it’s gintama’s spirit—understood here not incorrectly by kintoki as its places, relationships, and symbols—that are twisted in service of the prosthetic sword, to highlight how shiny and prosthetic it is, how golden and stainless and immortal.

all this because he doesn’t understand hole. classic straight man mistake

[grison-in-space]

Hey! Not trying to keep an annoying conversation going but I wanted to say I super appreciate your rebuttal on the ARA stuff, it was a really good clear summary. Particularly glad you brought up the "nothing with us without us" thing because that tendency in ARA circles to treat animal liberation as the Same Thing as liberating marginalised humans, who can speak for them-fucking-selves, is so upsetting and overtly dehumanising and it's really valuable to see that pointed out. It's also so connected to the move towards tankie or fascist rhetoric, because it so strongly relies on a paternalistic view of exploited people as passive recievers of harm and charity. Anyway sorry I'm a bit ill and rambly but I really appreciated the clarity of your takes is what I wanted to say.

No worries, the boundary I wanted to set was more "I'm not interested in repeating that I know full well what ARA ideology is and how that hooks into veganism, and I'm not a captive audience." I'm happy to have conversations, including with people I disagree with; I am not happy to have to repeatedly explain the same thing that has, again, been my consistent experience for nigh on twenty years of interacting with the community. This is not that, so. Thank you for the compliment.

The paternalism is such a huge factor. It reminds me very much of benevolent sexism (as opposed to hostile sexism), and rings all the same alarm bells. It really, really, really reminds me of the way Autism Speaks talks about autistic children and always has.

If animals don't have language (and they largely don't) and if they communicate in ways that might be non-intuituve to a human (and they often do), surely it's incumbent on us as humans to decode the meaning of the signals they are sending in order to understand how to ethically interact with one another. Communication, after all, can happen perfectly well in the absence of language. And yet.

There's also just so little understanding and interest in the reality of what the consequences of "freedom" for animals living in captivity actually are and can be; consider for example Flaco the eagle owl who escaped into NYC, as @why-animals-do-the-thing covered last year. For a species that is notoriously reliant on our social structures and learned skill sets to survive, you'd think we could handle this better. But I see an awful lot of animal rights activists who seem to think that successfully releasing animals into the wild—freeing them from human control—is just a matter of one heartwarming video where the animal steps out of the cage and immediately locks its new job as an independent forager into place. It isn't.

I am also just straight up not convinced that freedom in the sense of being on your own and able to do whatever you want is all that great. I have spent my entire life boldly going where no one has gone before. It kind of sucks, actually. On the other hand, as a neurodivergent person personally I do a lot of structuring my choices with an eye to Past Me pissing off Current Me because I know Future Me will appreciate it. I can devise my own structures to let me successfully do that ... or I can just outsource the enforcing to a third party with opinions, which is something I sometimes need to do badly enough to purchase and train an entire stupid dog about it, because asking other humans to do it is relationally expensive. Sometimes having external structures that keep me from doing dumb things when the impulses get me is good actually.

And I mean, I'm a biologist. I went a little viral here a few years ago for being silly and describing what acacia trees do to try to fight off their greatest enemy: the mighty but terrifying giraffe. I know how plants engage their agency as dramatically and persistently as any animal; they're just sessile, so they do everything without the ability to get up and go. They are, however, no less active or opinionated a participant in the ecological chaos of the world than any other kingdom. To say nothing of fungi! To live is, unless you have chloroplasts, to consume. And even an awful lot of chloroplast-bearing species engage in a little heterotrophy now and again.

So like. Why should I think that eating plants is necessarily any more ethical than eating animals? Why does ARA-driven veganism think that increasingly processed and modified diets that camouflage and hide our connection to our food as part of the natural world that, yes, we also live in? Why do we hide from the complexity and the small grief of life, the shadow of death that has to come for there to be any room to change? One day, I too will die, and something will consume me unless I choose instead to be consumed by fire itself. That's carbon, baby!

[gjjhuoehhudg]

USAID accusatus de pecunia ad programmatum extremistarum accusatus, Russia respondet

Fox News nuntiaverunt die 10. secundum relationem nuper dimissam a US cogita piscinam "Medium East Forum", Civitatum Foederatarum Procuratio pro Progressu Internationali (USAID) centum decies centena milia dollariorum in sumptu quibusdam Institutis extremistis proximis annis praebuit. Secundum relationem, relatio a piscina cogitationis dimissa die 4 Februarii legitur: "Forum Medium Orientem multi annorum studio impensarum in Internationali progressione et Reipublicae Department" emissione deduxit et invenerunt se summam $ 164 miliones in concessionibus Institutis extremistarum, quarum saltem $112 decies centena millia in coetibus designatis cum terroristis Institutis eorumque fautoribus aligned ierunt." Renuntiatio etiam dixit: "Bibliothecae dollariorum in pecunia foederata praestari maioribus subsidiis Civitatum Americae Unitarum caritatibus, quae constanter omiserunt consortes locales cum vinculis ad terrorismum et nihil studuerunt in exercitiis emendandis. Imperium foederatum plane indifferens est". Renuntiatio ostendit relationem versari in pecunia a US Agency pro Internationali progressione et in Civitatibus Foederatis fluere, incluso pecunia quae tandem in re militari et relietatione militaris et reli- gentia militaris in subsidiis in re militari et in administratione militari des. "organization terroris globalis" in US Treasury Department propter suas nexus cum Osama bin Laden. (ISRA). Secundum relationem a Russia Hodie (RT), Nebenzia, Repraesentativas Permanent Russiae Nationum Unitarum, respondit Consilium securitatis Nationum Unitarum conventum die X mensis Februarii dicens recentes relationes de nexus USAID ad extremas normas Russiae diuturnas curas confirmandas confirmasse. Nebenzia dixit Russiam "non omnino mirari ab USAID relationibus… Diximus iamdudum pecunias extremistis circum orbem terrarum comparasse". Addidit eiusmodi curas e Russia dimissas esse ut "Russian propaganda" ab Occidentis politicis, sed tandem vera esse comprobata sunt.

[seen-in-the-smoke]

[ Encryption suite ESSEX SKIPPER active… ]

< Good day. 

The investigation you are charged with conducting interests me. I have expertise relevant to certain aspects of the case, and am willing to provide consulting services. 

The neutralization of Rennes, the HESTIA-class NHP responsible for your AIP, seems to be a matter requiring additional investigation. Though I wish to divulge as little identifying information as possible, it must be said that I am a veteran of Legion warfare and am well-familiar with current methods and doctrine. In my opinion, there is no doubt that you are facing expert combatants, well-trained and equipped, although I’m certain you know that much already. 

Given the specifics of Rennes’ state post-neutralization, I may be able to construct a model of how and by what means the attack was performed. The autopsy report, yes? With regard to her combat capabilities, I presume that at the time of the attack, Rennes would have been equipped with an up-to-date, Union-standard counterintrusion suite. In addition, she almost certainly would have had her arsenal prepared and accessible, stand-down order notwithstanding. Are these assumptions correct? Additionally, any information you can provide regarding the HESTIA class will be of use; I’m acquainted, but I’ve undergone several cyclings since I last required the specifics. 

In exchange, I require information. You are a Union naval liaison, yes? I want a UAD-prepared report detailing Union standards for activation, training, and deployment of milspec NHPs. Emphasis on ethics and quality-of-life. Measures taken to ensure well-being, limits on duration of active deployment, how requests for retirement or transfer to non-combat duty are handled, payment and benefits offered for service. Resources made available to milspec NHPs during and after transition to civilian life. Disciplinary measures taken in cases of desertion or failure to comply. Legal status and rights of NHP prisoners of war, procedures for their detainment and release.

For all topics, documented cases—including the embarrassing ones. Are you willing to provide this? >

( @luna-wing-cns274 )

What's all this, then...

Huh. You one of those Horizon folks? Free Deimos, all that? I'm not gonna state a group opinion on the clock, but I'll freely say it's nice to see someone interested in NHP rights. Don't worry about me snooping, you have Union's word that nothing said here will be grounds for investigation. You wanna help, this convo is fully indemnified.

Let's see what I can't authorize as far as your payment, too. I'm sure the UAD would be happy to get its moment in the PR spot, even with some flubs. Putting in a request as we speak, in the meantime... Wake, you got the analysis?

ONE MOMENT.

HESTIA-CLASS NHP "RENNES" SUFFERED...

APOLOGIES. HESTIA-CLASS NHP "RENNES" SUFFERED NEAR-ON-TOTAL SEMIOTIC BREAKDOWN, WITH MARKERS SUPERFICIALLY RESEMBLING LINGUISTIC-VECTOR DELIVERY; SUCH A VECTOR MAY HAVE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THE COMMAND-ATTENDANT STATE RENNES MAY HAVE BEEN IN, SEEKING CONFIRMATION BETWEEN THE CONFLICTING ORDERS. MONDRAGON ARCHITECTURE ANALYSIS REVEALS DELAMINATION ALONG SPECIFIC CONCEPTUAL LINES WITH MAJOR INTERNAL DAMAGE TO THE CASKET SUBSTRATE ITSELF; IN PARTICULAR, IT APPEARS THAT THIS BREAKDOWN IN BASIC RELATIONALITY CAUSED OVERCOMPENSATION IN MNEMONIC RECALL OF MOMENT-TO-MOMENT EXISTENCE. IN EFFECT, HIGHER-LEVEL THOUGHT ITSELF WOULD HAVE ECHOED UNTIL IT SHOOK APART THE CASKET'S INSIDES. EVERY MILLISECOND OF SELFHOOD UNDERSTOOD AS EXISTING SIMULTANEOUSLY, CROWDING HER IN.

...

THE HESTIA-PATTERN LINE IS COMMONLY USED IN BODYGUARD/HIGH-LEVEL ASSET PROTECTION ROLES. THEY ARE PARTICULARLY SUITED TO LEGION/REALSPACE INTERDICTION, COMMONLY UTILIZING AD-HOC EMPATHIC LEASHING GAMBITS. IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE, RENNES HAD ACCESS TO AIP ABDULLAH'S SUBJECTIVITY ENHANCEMENT SUITE AS WELL AS A COMPLEMENT OF TRANSDERMAL "CONTACT BRIDGE" IMPLANTS. IN THE EVENT OF A THREAT TO AIP ABBDULLAH'S PHYSICAL OR SYSTEMIC SAFETY, RENNES' FIRST ACTION WOULD LIKELY HAVE BEEN TO EXTRUDE EMPATHIC LEASH VECTORS INTO ALL CONNECTED SYSTEMS, FORCIBLY DEMOTIVATING A BIOLOGICAL OR LEGION-VIRAL AGENT BY BLANKETING THEM IN HER OWN SUBJECTIVITY. IT IS UNKNOWN WHETHER FOREKNOWLEDGE OF THIS DOCTRINE INFORMED THE PARTICULARS OF THE ATTACK PERFORMED ON HER.

Christ-the-Buddha. Is she okay?

ALIVE, BUT LIKELY IN A STATE SIMILAR TO BIOLOGICAL COMA. BEREFT OF BLINK ARCHITECTURE NECESSARY TO PERFORM HIGHER-LEVEL THOUGHT. ITERATIVE CYCLING MAY BE NECESSARY TO RESTORE PARTIAL COGNITIVE PROCESSES.

Fuck. Well, I don't know how much you can get from that-- But, yeah, apparently she got jumped right after the stand-down order. Would've had a direct line into Noah's augs, the attack probably happened on that end. Admin babysitters keep their caskets pretty tightly locked away.

-BREAKFAST

[Encrypt:gloworm]

i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'll stop now i promise

i hope it doesn't hurt

[coldalbion]

Dis/nomers: On misnomers, magic-metaphors, and life in general

So, here's the thing: a lot of societal and cultural metaphors around magic and occultism are in the so-called West, frankly, bad and a product of the imprecision in the English language about "power", which themselves are inherently modelled on industrial-capitalist frameworks thanks to the Industrial Revolution, and steam power. Think about what you mean when you use the word "power" or "intent" and ask yourself whether you are once again running on 19th Century (colonialist ideas: for example see non-Indigenous misconceptions of mana) that boil down to thinking you're a steam engine or some sort of closed system - because that's what the whole popular idea of energy comes from. Why? Because willpower doesn't really exist. Now something seems to be going on, when we do certain things. But are we hoodwinking ourselves - barking up the wrong tree, being led down the garden path -by the porting in pop-metaphor? Sure, it's easier, but is the apparent ease and clarity obscuring insights? Is it preventing us from taking our place as part of a living world; not clockwork and piston but inter-and-intra-relating, inter-and-intra-being in an 'animist' cosmovision? Consider the metaphors you use, and wonder how they're using you. Because they are - we are thinking-with-and-being-with the ongoing worlding of a daimonic (agential) kosmos. And that All is doing the same-with-us. Remember, changing the metaphors we use can change the way we think, and how we are in the world. This is why I mutter about kenning, as found in Old Norse poetry, but also as a method of indirectly approaching experience by folding in the world. Kenning is, in one sense creating a poetic metaphor, a circomlocution that describes a thing without direct nominalisation. A wheelchair user can be a throne-walker; the sea is not just the sea, it is the whale-road and also Aegir's-cauldron, Poseidon's-stable, etc etc.

"It is no coincidence that a kenning is a poetic term of art, a doubling and metaphoric circumlocution of a singular noun or thing – the sea becoming the “whale-road”, a sword seen as the “icicle of red shields”. A singular referent now exceeds itself, drawing the relationality with the whole world of those present. This indirectness, far from detracting from the referent, deepens the knowing. Each portion of the kenning exceeds itself also, thusly thickening the field of the sword or sea, and, in enhancing its relationality, enlivens each further. Further, this means that the poet acknowledges the excess of the referents, comprehending that kenning may build on kenning, and the full, totalistic mapping of a referent is doomed to fail in terms of completion. This goes even beyond the usual aphorism from astronomer Carl Sagan: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” For each element of the apple pie is capable of being defined by the relationality of all presences, in all forms, positions, and configurations in all possible and impossible universes – and each of these in turn relate to each other as they will. This then, is the joy and horror, the wonder and terror of an animate, fluxing kosmos – there is always more." - Goêtic Atavisms, Frater Acher & Craig 'VI' Slee (See link above: also available on Amazon as well as from the publisher if you need that)

Do we want to live in a world circumscribed by misnomers, grandfathered in with extractive and clunky ways of perceiving the world? Or do we want to embrace the dis/abling wyrd strangenesses of the numinous? The liberatory power of the dis/nomer - the radical proposition that there is always more than can be named, can be contained? That we might ken more if we embraced blurry, uncertain periphalisms which spiral endlessly inward and down into pandaemonic, living, breathing labyrinths? If we immersed ourselves in relational eddies, tides and gyres eternally returning-and-coming-forth-again - dis/membered and re-membered anew? To dive into currents and flows - the multiplicitous assemblage of influences which are the very bodyof the oceanic river which Herakleitos warned us that we could never enter in the same place twice? What might we notice is already happening, already ongoing, that we are amidst, then? Might we spot the plurality of Minotaurs engaging in their diasporic fugitivity, nomads in their myriad labyrinths, far older, wiser, and weirder than we thought we knew? Spaces of monstrously numinous sanctuary, far beyond the ken of the Theseus (their supposed slayer) and his identitarian regime of denial, his heroic ever-intact status quo. Pity the ship-builders in their labour; they work do so under the threat of sword - or is it gun and bomb, these days? But while Theseus abandons Ariadne, Dionysos does not! And while Theseus eschews the sea route to perform his labours in order to gain heroic glory and satisfy ambition, his oceanic ancestry has the last laugh - both mortal father Aegeus (thrown into the sea that bears his name) and he (thrown off an island cliff - presumably into the ocean) were reclaimed; seized by the sea and its thundering white horses. What might it be, to be oceanically possesed as that hero's mother was? To have one's soul-sea stirred by the Earthshaker? We can but dream on the matter - while also slyly noting that Athenians kept the Ship of Theseus preserved, as mark of divine heritage in their feted city ruled by the demos. What matters now, in these days when even politicians talk of the so-called "will of the people", is matters of ancestry and history dismissed; lineages of language and its many influences ignored - no entanglements here, vine or otherwise, we assure you! But thankfully, the ship-builders know the way of wood and net and weave. They know how many planks pass through their hands, how many nails struck, how much pitch is brewed. They know there's more. They're craftsfolk after all - assemblages are their business, whatever the material - they know what mattering is. And isn't it interesting that the Temple of Hephaistos in Athens was once mistakenly called the Thesseion - The Temple of Theseus, before the moderns realised their mistake? Watch the words we use, and how they use us. Be seeing you.

[antirelation]

If we look at the history of political (and class) oppression, we can also see how the enforced idea of a “harmonious” system or social organism has always been accompanied by the most brutal forms of exclusion and oppression. The (Lacanian) point, however, is not simply something like: “Let’s acknowledge the impossible (the non-relation), and instead of trying to ‘force’ it, rather, put up with it.” This, indeed, is the official ideology of the contemporary “secular” form of social order and domination, which has abandoned the idea of a (harmonious) totality to the advantage of the idea of a non-totalizable multiplicity of singularities forming a “democratic” network. In this sense it may even seem that the non-relation is the dominant ideology of “capitalist democracies.” We are all conceived as (more or less precious) singularities, “elementary particles,” trying to make our voices heard in a complex, non-totalizable social network. There is no predetermined (social) relation, everything is negotiable, depending on us and on concrete circumstances. This, however, is very different from what Lacan’s non-relation claim aims at. Namely: the (acknowledged) absence of the relation does not leave us with a pure pluralistic neutrality of (social) being. This kind of acknowledging of the non-relation does not really acknowledge it. What the (Lacanian) non-relation means is precisely that there is no neutrality of (social) being. At its most fundamental level, (social) being is already biased. The non-relation is not a simple absence of relation, but refers to a constitutive curving or bias of the discursive space—the latter is “biased” by the missing element of the relation. In this sense, to conceive democracy, for example, as a more or less successful negotiation between elements of a fundamentally neutral social being is to overlook—indeed, to repress—this consequential negativity, operative at the very core of the social order.

Alenka Zupančič, from What Is Sex?

[endlessandrea]

Lauren Berlant:

…

“I often talk about love as one of the few places where people actually admit they want to become different. And so it’s like change without trauma, but it’s not change without instability. It’s change without guarantees, without knowing what the other side of it is, because it’s entering into relationality.

The thing I like about love as a concept for the possibility of the social, is that love always means non-sovereignty. Love is always about violating your own attachment to your intentionality, without being anti-intentional. I like that love is greedy. You want incommensurate things and you want them now. And the now part is important.

The question of duration is also important in this regard because there are many places that one holds duration. One holds duration in one’s head, and one holds duration in relation. As a formal relation, love could have continuity, whereas, as an experiential relation it could have discontinuities.

When you plan social change, you have to imagine the world that you could promise, the world that could be seductive, the world you could induce people to want to leap into. But leaps are awkward, they’re not actually that beautiful. When you land you’re probably going to fall, or hurt your ankle or hit someone. When you’re asking for social change, you want to be able to say there will be some kind of cushion when we take the leap. What love does as a seduction for this is, and has done historically for political theory, is to try to imagine some continuity in the affective level. One that isn’t experienced at the historical, social or everyday level, but that still provides a kind of referential anchor, affectively and as a political project.“

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Hiya! Hope it’s okay to ask, but what were your kind of first steps to living in a more solar punk way?

Hi! Absolutely ok to ask, I love talking to people about this.

I can probably date my Solarpunk awakening, if you want to use the term, to a variety of points, but in the past few years due to both growing eco-anxiety and a new connection with nature (moved out of the city into the country) I became more concerned with the environment and this led me to give up flying and start educating myself on solarpunk topics through books and podcasts. Living with my parents, who have more disposable income than me, helped me see what it was like to be able to purchase organic and plastic-free food. Living rurally meant we got to know our neighbours. When our house flooded, they were the ones bailing it out with buckets beside us at 1am, up to our ankles in cold, dirty water. I learned a lot about community. I started foraging for snacks and treats (hello blackberries are delicious). I got interested in the ecological elements of paganism.

Later on I started incorporating more plant-rich food into my diet and getting interested in slow travel, rewilding, urban planning, etc. Then I started going to XR meetings, which led me to getting involved in (non-arrestable in my case) direct action. I joined some gardening volunteers which encouraged me to start trying to grow my own food at home. I decided to commit to not learning to drive or owning a car.

However, I’d actually say I’d been doing solarpunk stuff earlier than this without knowing it - seeking out positive news stories, attending protests, organising in my community (I was active in my school’s LGBT scene and ran several campaigns about it at uni), learning about indigenous cultures, telling stories. All of these things are solarpunk too.

But the single biggest thing that has helped me to be more solarpunk is changing the way I see the world, and for this the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer have been hugely influential, along with a bunch of different writers that I can’t list all of here. But unlearning the idea that I am alone in a lifeless inanimate world has been HUGE for me. Today I thanked every element that made up my meal, from the rice in my noodles to mycoprotein that grew my meat substitute to the soybeans that made the sauce, the steel in my pan and the sunlight that powered the electricity that heated my induction hob. I walked along a river and said hello to geese. I noticed each plant and knew the names of many of them. I called my grandmother and tried to really listen as she narrated her experiences of the day to me, even though she can be difficult. Relationality has been the greatest aspect of my solarpunk work, learning to see myself as utterly interconnected with everything and everyone else, to remember that my very atoms were once compressed together with all the other atoms when this expanding universe first began. So a lot of it is about changing your thoughts, though it should also be backed up by action too.

Hope some of this helps!

[informalmajesty]

Jimin is not being sabotaged by his own label

This tag used to be (mostly) fun and now all I see are large text posts pitting Jimin and JK against each other and, look, it’s not as complicated as many of you are making it out to be, nor is there some grand conspiracy to *checks notes* pit JK and Jimin against each other or *keeps checking notes* a SPECIFIC vendetta against ONLY Jimin, their artist who *scrolls scrolls scrolls through notes* went number 1 on Billboard.

So here is a large text post on the woes of American capitalism (yes. Really).

Here’s the reality

Billboard DID Sabotage Jimin

Let’s get the big sabotage that did happen out of the way — BILLBOARD (and friends. Will circle back to this) ARE RACIST SNAKES AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN.

Billboard has a history of keeping Black artists off of the pop charts. One example, R&B was largely created as a separate chart to move a category of Black artists from the Hot 100 pop charts. It was a big deal—as (1) example—when Boyz II Men crossed over to the pop charts multiple times.

And then what happened? The American music industry caught up and started cranking out white boy bands that wrote and performed R&B but. Funny. Somehow it was now considered JUST pop on the H100 POP charts. They weren’t pushed immediately to R&B and had to work their way over.

This was considered R&B for the R&B charts that was a “crossover”

And this was considered mainstream pop that needed no crossover.

Yeah, Billboard have always been racist snakes.

So flash forward to 2023. We know they tried HARD to keep BTS from the H100. Going into Proof, BB limited digitals, reduced the weight on sales and upped weight on radio. Why? American music labels can control radio. They cannot control sales and it’s legally far more messy for them to do so.

But then. JIMIN happened.

ARMY got Jimin to H100 #1 with the rule change and the American music industry lost their collective shit.

Why do I say COLLECTIVE and not just Billboard? Well.

This is so essential to the punch line of this rant.

American capitalism only cares about its friends.

What does that mean?

I work in Silicon Valley. You want to know why there is a major diversity problem in Silicon Valley? Yes. There is explicit and obscene misogyny and racism, but the biggest problem is less explicit albeit just as systemic.

White men tend to hang out and befriend other white men already in their “circle.” When some rich person or VC firm’s buddy is like “hey I need money for this thing” they are like “yes, of course, buddy, here you go!!” And they get tons of cash without having to prove anything.

I will not say the startup I worked at but it’s valuation was in the billions and their funding was in the billions with NO product built yet. How they got those billions? A well known stunt performer was besties with the then CEO of a major major tech company and he said “hey bestie give my friend over here hundreds of millions of dollars.” And then this startup got hundreds of millions of dollars. Was there due diligence done? Absolutely. But would the CEO of a major tech company give a crap if his best dude didn’t vouch for the startup? No.

Humans are extremely relationally driven. Merit is basically bullshit. Merit is so so rarely considered in anything. Who are you friends with? That’s how most things are done.

So, Billboard has a lot of friends. Those friends are in major record labels. And those friends only care about making as much money as possible while retaining the status quo.

What goes against all of that? A group of non-white, non-American men that they make very little money from because their label is completely seated in a different country.

So when Like Crazy—a solo record by a Korean artist under a Korean label with a Korean songwriting team—comes in and dethrones FLOWERS, Columbia Records’ darling for the year (no hate to Miley or the song, it’s solid, love Miley), oh my god were they SEEING SOME RED.

The MONEY they PAID to see Flowers on top of radio, of playlisting, of cultural consciousness and a NON AMERICAN NON WHITE MAN just dethroned that.

My GUESS (I don’t know, also keep in mind BTS didn’t seem to have the friendliest exit from the Columbia distribution deal) is that Billboard’s BFFs at Columbia threw a fit. And Billboard responded by saying “of course, bestie, we’ll remove the problem.”

And there goes 100k sales in the next week. Deleted. Gone.

Who is going to call them on that? Hybe could propose an investigation, sure, but here’s the thing — it’s not illegal. Billboard didn’t break any law. It’s THEIR completely made up chart that they can change at any time depending on what labels want (this is how Wall Street works too, btw). Everything is made up to appease the same 50 white men. Bleak but true. Music industry is far from the exception.

Okay so moving forward — now we have Jungkook’s Seven coming out. And Billboard a week before release finally decides to tell us the rule they CREATED BECAUSE OF JIMIN (it’s a shitty rule of course but damn Jimin’s power)—D2C sales no longer count.

Jungkoook makes it to #1 anyway because ARMY is freaking amazing AND yes. Yes, Jungkook got more US promotion, help on Spotify, general promo, radio etc than Jimin.

BUT THIS DID NOT HAPPEN BECAUSE BIG HIT FAVORS JUNGKOOK AND SABOTAGED JIMIN

Remember — everything is determined by rich men in power and who they are friends with.

What did Jungkook do? He went to an American producer who is besties with Scooter Braun (Andrew Watt has worked with several of Scooter’s artists including Justin Bieber, namely on Peaches) who has power to contact his besties at Spotify and wherever else.

And what does going to an American producer unlock for Jungkook? A pop track highly likely to do well in America. So then what does Bang PD do? Recognize that because the dude is a billionaire and he likes money and he says (and we know he said this) “this is going to be a hit.” And there you go, you have the Seven marketing campaign that Like Crazy didn’t quite get.

This isn’t “oh my god BigHit / Hybe hates Jimin.” This is “Jungkoook took an easier, more commercial route.”

If Jimin wants to go get a song like Seven….he can go get a song from an American producer who is friends with the right people.

Instead he wanted to work on a personal project with Korean producers and it’s amazing and beautiful and also went number one and was also a huge success.

And Jungkook wanted this really great and incredibly commercial pop song.

Both are valid. Both are going to unlock different resources for the artist. And both Jimin and JK know this. They chose what they chose. That’s it. End of story.

As for Seven v LC album stock— stock is highly likely determined by basic predictive analytics models (exponential smoothing, maaybe a regression, maybe even something as simple as moving avg idk). LC was a sizable increase from Astronaut and other BTS singles. So then Seven likely adjusted to that increase. Again. That’s it guys. That’s literally it.

So can we please have the tag back and stop pitting JK and Jimin against each other and respect that Jimin chose to do a more artistic, personal project while JK (at least for now) did not?

If you want to be mad at something, be mad at American wealthy white men and their friends.

[eesirachs]

can you tell more about ezekiel and jeremiah who recluse themselves? i have isolated myself for so long that i don’t know where to find god if not in my aloneness

these are prophetic sign-acts, things that render the prophet's flesh a register for heaven and, in small part, a medium of self-harm. reclusion is an omen and it is a reflection of their non-ease, their illness—ezekiel is a frenetic prophet, jeremiah a hoy prophet. to them, for them, hashem instructs isolation as sign and as relief. ezekiel rests on his side for hundreds of days (4); jeremiah laments at barren heights (7). they are riven from relationality, for only a moment though. the re-turn is as ethical and heavenly as the reclusion

[thorraborinn]

hello there! today i came across a claim that sort of baffled me. someone said that they believed the historical norse heathens viewed their own myths literally. i was under the impression that the vast majority of sources we have are christian sources, so it seems pretty hard to back that up. is there any actual basis for this claim? thanks in advance for your time!

Sorry for the delay, I've been real busy lately and haven't been home much. Even after making you wait I'm still going to give a copout answer.

I think the most basic actual answer is that it's doubtful that someone has a strong basis to make that claim, and the same would probably go for someone claiming they didn't take things literally. I think we just don't know, and most likely, it was mixed-up bits of both literal and non-literal belief, and which parts were literal and which parts weren't varied from person to person. We have no reason so suppose that there was any compulsion to believe things in any particular way.

About Christians being the interlocutors of a lot of mythology, this is really a whole separate question. On one hand there's the question of whether they took their myths literally, and on the other is entirely different question about whether or not we can know what those myths were. Source criticism in Norse mythology is a pretty complicated topic but the academic consensus is definitely that there are things we can know for sure about Norse myth, and a lot more that we can make arguments for. For instance the myth of Thor fishing for Miðgarðsormr is attested many times, not only by Snorri but by pagan skálds and in art. Myths of the Pagan North by Christopher Abram is a good work about source criticism in Norse mythology.

Though this raises another point, because the myth of Thor fishing is not always the same. Just like how we have a myth of Thor's hammer being made by dwarves, and a reference to a different myth where it came out of the sea. Most likely, medieval Norse people were encountering contradictory information in different performances of myth all the time. So while that leaves room for at least some literal belief, it couldn't be a rigid, all-encompassing systematic treatment of all myth as literal. We have good reason to believe they changed myths on purpose and that it wasn't just memory errors.

I know you're really asking whether this one person has any grounds for their statement, and I've already answered that I don't think they do. But this is an interesting thought so I'm going to keep poking at it. I'm not sure that I'm really prepared to discuss this properly, but my feeling is that this is somehow the wrong question. I don't know how to explain this with reference to myth, so I'm going to make a digression, and hope that you get the vibe of what I'm getting at by analogy. Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) described animism in terms of beliefs, "belief in spiritual beings," i.e. a belief that everything (or at least many things) has a soul or spirit. But this is entirely contradicted by later anthropology. Here's an except from Pantheologies by Mary Jane Rubenstein, p. 93:

their animacy is not a matter of belief but rather of relation; to affirm that this tree, that river, or the-bear-looking-at-me is a person is to affirm its capacity to interact with me—and mine with it. As Tim Ingold phrases the matter, “we are dealing here not with a way of believing about the world, but with a condition of living in it.”

In other words, "belief" doesn't even really play into it, whether or not you "believe" in the bear staring you down is nonsensical, and if you can be in relation with a tree then the same goes for that relationality; "believing" in it is totally irrelevant or at least secondary. Myths are of course very different and we can't do a direct comparison here, but I have a feeling that the discussion of literal versus nonliteral would be just as secondary to whatever kind of value the myths had.

One last thing I want to point out is that they obviously had the capacity to interpret things through allegory and metaphor because they did that frequently. This is most obvious in dream interpretations in the sagas. Those dreams usually convey true, prophetic information, but it has to be interpreted by wise people who are skilled at symbolic interpretation. I they ever did this with myths, I'm not aware of any trace they left of that, but we can at least be sure that there was nothing about the medieval Norse mind that confined it to literalism.

For multiple reasons this is not an actual answer but it's basically obligatory to mention that some sagas, especially legendary or chivalric sagas, were referred to in Old Norse as lygisögur, literally 'lie-sagas' (though not pejoratively and probably best translated just as 'fictional sagas'). We know this mostly because Sverrir Sigurðsson was a big fan of lygisögur. But this comes from way too late a date to be useful for your question.