#pseudo biblical art

[max1461]

At this point, "Max's abrasions with the discoursosphere" is becoming a semi-formalized series. Here's another one.

There's a larger complex of thoughts I have around this that I won't really get into, but I think one of my least favorite things about the discourse is put most succinctly as: it asks you to view yourself as an agent of history, instead of as an individual.

Every "camp"—communist, reactionary, rationalist, whatever—seems animated by these sort of fantastical, world-historic dreams. It's all about the coming revolution, or the fate of the light cone, or the future of Western civilization, or whatever. Even liberals are guilty of this, and they are sometimes extra annoying about it because they think they aren't guilty of it. Their end of history was literally sketched out in a book called The End of History. Ok, I mostly said that last sentence because it's a punchy line—not every liberal (or even most, I suspect) endorses Fukuyama's particular thesis. But they do still tend to act like "the point of it all" is advancing liberal democracy and efficient distribution of resources.

Everyone seems to reduce human activity to the aim of shaping history in a particular way. The value of everything is reduced to its instrumental usefulness in Advancing The Project.

This is precisely the opposite of the way I look at the world. It's kind of an analogue of that Hannah Arendt "the only love I know is the love of particular persons" thing. The only value I know is the value of particular things. There is value in art, learning, fun, love, joy; books, video games, mathematics, beautiful vistas, sex, food, conversation. Insofar as there is value in any political or world-historical project, it is purely by way of enabling or supporting these things which are valuable on their own. Making ourselves pure instruments to history is self-defeating, because the only possible reason that history could matter is because of us and the things that we care about.

What I am complaining about here is an attitude, not a particular set of beliefs. I'll pick on the group that is closest to "my side" because that feels fair. It is true that not all communists or socialists actually believe in the fantastical, pseudo-Biblical version of the revolution that one sees from the most ideologically insular. Plenty critique this vision of revolution pretty starkly. But it's like, the tendrils of teleological thinking are already in them. So many still see themselves as instruments. Their raison d'etre is to shape the trajectory of human events. Their existence as an individual is secondary, or at the very least must be brought into alignment with this raison d'etre.

Well, I'll tell you what. I don't want my individuality to be subsumed. I don't want my self to be subsumed. As I've said before, I'm not into that kind of stuff.

But it's everywhere, it seems that it is universally characteristic of every "ideology" or "movement".

Actually, what I'm really complaining about here is more subtle, I think. Most of the discoursers I engage with, I suspect, will roughly agree with me thus far. I've heard them say similar things. Here's the problem: even in circles where this kind of self-instrumentalization is openly critiqued, I find that again and again in discussions of [inherently valuable thing], the conversation inevitably shifts to whether [inherently valuable thing] is instrumentally valuable from the perspective of the local Grand Historical Project. By the way, please set aside any philosophical gripes you might have with the idea of an "inherently valuable thing"; those sorts of details are not the point here. The point is that there will be discussion about [cool topic], and this discussion will inevitably drift towards "how does [cool topic] interface with [grand historical project]".

[Grand historical project] is less important than [cool topic]!!!! [Cool topic] is [grand historical project]'s boss!!!! Don't you see!

This is I think the basic trait of "discoursiness", and I really don't like it.

[jonquilandlace]

So anyway I was bored and this was fully out of my typical fandom but I found this forest fairy maker by @elequinoa on my old favorite dress up game website from when I was a kid, Doll Divine, and proceeded to brainrot and say hey what if I made all the Disney Fairies in this, except creepy and weird and more my idea of fey? So anyway here's all of the fairies and the goofy redesigns (under the cut because I feel horrible for people who were never in this fandom having to scroll past seven sets of fairies lol)

Tumblr crop is bad so I apologize in advance. (Also disclaimer for minor photoshop on Rosetta and Periwinkle to make their body colors more unearthly, as my intent was None Of These Fairies Should Look Human, and to make Periwinkle's mask an arctic fox instead of a fox; I attempted to look at TOU and it seemed like this should be alright, but if not, I apologize for overstepping!) (Also minor edit for less pixelated banner image)

Fawn - She was the first one I did and wound up more muted in color scheme, but I really like how she turned out. She was meant to look somewhat like a moth or bark, with some faun-ish inspiration, as well.

Iridessa - As a fairy focused on light, there were two ways I could see taking her (the alternate being distinctly holographic), but in the end liked the double entendre of "light" when leaning towards "biblically accurate angel," so there's bird motifs and just general cherub vibes.

Vidia - The opposite of Iridessa, really; the goal here was to lean into lightning motifs and dark or gothic elements to emphasize the opposite elements in comparison to Iridessa's classical elements. Dragonfly wings for speed, of course.

Rosetta - As in her original, meant to resemble a flower, just amped up a bit to where she resembles a rococo/art deco fusion when viewed naturally, but could literally flip upside down and pretend to be a flower if she wanted to.

Silvermist - Yes this picture isn't from the first movie I couldn't find a good one lmao. Anyway, her wings reminded me of that specific type of dragonfly that skims over my uncle's lake, so I riffed on that alongside the almost pseudo-waves of the petal shirt. She is more directly meant to be an embodiment of water, but more lake or even bog-ish water, where she could peek out of the water at the top and an onlooker would only register her as perhaps a frog, as emphasized in the monochrome eyes, or a ripple in the waves.

Periwinkle - Where options did really start to limit what I could do, lol. I decided to lean into the mysterious and crystalline vibes of the winter, with her visage taking on the arctic fox and even reindeer-ish antler look of something moving in the snowy woods, but yet draped in a finery like freshly fallen snow. She's also the only one with "normal" fairy wings, but I could see it for her, with them perhaps being made of frost.

And finally, Tinkerbell - One that I definitely took some more risks with in design, she is nevertheless the most openly friendly-looking of the fey batch, despite her green hue, which is really in character for a fairy best known for hanging out with Peter Pan and being fascinated by humans. For clothing, I leaned heavily into artificer and witch vibes, mirroring a bit more of the human world, with a touch of goblin to temper it. I did shift away from her typical dress in favor of more adventurous wear, more suited for pretending to be a mushroom or even mouse in the corner of someone's eye.

Overall, idk, I just really had fun with this mini-project. I don't intend to do anything with it, ofc; it was just for fun, but I had a fun time with it!

[nicosraf]

Hii!! Sorry if someone already asked, but where do you get the inspiration and info about angels? I've always had an interest in learning about them but it's so hard!! I don't know where to look and I feel like there's so many sources and some of them are contradictory. If you have any recommendations, I'd welcome them <3

Hello!! Aghh it's hard to answer this for me because I don't have a good single source book/video, which is what I think you might be looking for.

It also depends on your interest in angels! Your interest could be more canon/theological or more mystic/mythological. You could be strict with what the Bible says or you can venture into angelogy by looking into the Celestial Hierarchy by Pseudo-Dionysius; me, personally, I lean toward sticking to the Bible.

I can tell you what not to do (!): Don't watch those short "Angels: Explained !!" Youtube video essays and tiktoks. Here is why: they'll say a sentence like, "There are angels that are cherubs, and they're at the second highest level of the hierarchy." What's the issue with this? The issue is that the first part is biblical (... mostly) and the second part is from Pseudo-Dionysius. It could be my academic brain, but not being clear about where certain "facts" come from leads to a lot of the contradictions that you might be seeing.

I do think the best course of action is to begin w what the Bible says. You can look up mentions of angels in the canon Bible and examime how they act/look. For me, that's where I got the majority of my inspo! I thought the Bible stories with angels were cute. I know it's a meme these days that angels are scary, but angels can be so sweet sometimes, like when an angel came with bread/cake for Elijah, which is depicted here :) :

But yes, I recommend starting with angel Bible stories and then running wild. The "canon" for Christian angels is the Bible, and all the angelogy and more mystical leaning stuff built off from that canon, for the most part. (It gets influenced by other religions, after all)

I wish I had a good set of primary (the Bible, sorta) and secondary sources for you... Maybe I can put one together eventually, since a few people have asked!

Also, yes the information is all very contradicting, even in the Bible I think! So don't worry. Have fun with it! Take whatever you like about them and interpret them however you like!!!

Oh and I have to mention that I get a lot of inspo from Medieval and Renaissanc angel art, like the colorful wings. I just think they're neat !

[tranquilspot]

[S] STRIFE!

Ha ah! Halloween season jumpscare~ You thought you'd seen the last of me (and this liveblog)!

This 'fight' is funny and laughable. It isn't really to be taken seriously. DAD lighting the candles on the cake can be seen as threatening (and dangerous!) if you was none the wiser that is. It's the boy's birthday, and his dad is aggressively celebrating it. Makes me wonder if strifing really is a custom in Homestuck, or if it's specific for the universes that will play SBURB/SGRUB. Whichever is the case, it's a mock battle is this situation. Or perhaps ageing IS threatening to John. Adulthood (or rather adolescence here) is a scary thing.

Colors, logic, art appreciation

I can't stop appreciating the art style and the dedication to its scarce (for now) details.

Like here, the very moment the candles are lit the flames go bworh! (damn and all at once?)

That's a transition frame, right? So neat. The nuance between the predominant black and white style and the colors is well-done. Less is more. The 'STRIFE!' logo thingy appears (two colors, kinda echoing to the candles. Flames = threat; but also Rochefoucault's quote from earlier?! hmm thoughts for later) and we have a brand new concept shown to us: Strife options. Aggrieve and abjure. By the way neon green and sky blue goes well together, it almost hints at John's and Jade's exchanged colors duality. Color theory is great once you get the hang of it! Aggrieving is offending someone. Rather than a physical attack, it suggest an emotional one. "I don't want your overwhelming love dad, or your stupid cake". Something among those lines. Also, he's such a dork making those movements with his hands. It looks like pseudo kung fu moves. He attacks and a lot more green appears on screen. Freakin' love the flash game effect on the background, and the simplified Slimer looming behind John, as if it was his familiar/symbolic beast having his back. Comical and kinda scary, with his ridiculous small eyes and large mouth. So he strikes, and is auto-pastried which is a pun on Auto-parry, a term and running gag from its predecessor Problem Sleuth. Still on my color observations (what can I say, I'm an artist that love art) this AUTO-PASTRY! is magenta kinda (but not really) close to the batterwitch's fuchsia. Guess I was too eager with that one. However it's nice to see there's different hue of the same color

The flashing dual color thing will also be used later for kernelsprites and ^2 sprites (this duo is Jasperosesprite^2's). The joker magnet echoes to the 'auto-pastry!' text, emphasizing the fact that the cake has comical properties.

Then he slides back into his previous position, simple and efficient (battle and artistic choice wise). If Aggrieve was an offensive and active tactic, Abjure is its opposite.

But before he reacts, it's DAD's turn to attack with a RPG naming system, like the Final Fantasy series (probably a tribute). 'Guardian Rubric: Coddlebrand'. Rubric is a title, but can also be a rule or a explanatory note (school). Is 'guardian' here a category or is he actually grading John on the spot? Perhaps the remaining word will shed some light.

Coddle is overprotecting, so that's what John could rejecting. Brand is a label, so is it a category or insincere 'marketing'. Depends on the point of view we position ourselves: Dad's or John's.

But here's a succinct (even subliminal) text that appears during the cake attack: 'Dotesmite!' What does it could mean? *do some research* Ooooh I see. Crushed by fatherly affection. Smite is hit, but according to world reference there's also a biblical meaning: kill/strike down. John in itself is a biblical name, but I don't see Dad Egbert being cruel to his son. He ain't Abraham. From there there's not much left to do in this flash. I'll just note that the movement effect during the Abjuring is reminiscent of John's windy powers, the blue and yellow colors coincident with his future God Tier outfit. Harmonious improvisation on Hussie part, for sure. Welp! We're done with this first Strife flash. It's writing was very laborious for unknown reasons and I'm very very sorry for 2 months of inactivity. Thank you for your patience, and I'll see you soon for the rest of Act 1. —> Coming soon

[anjumbai]

Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in The West by Cormac McCarthy

"Is that why war endures?" "No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not." *Trigger Warning*

After nearly 3 months with this book, and my ups and downs of not giving up on it, I'm glad to say that I have finished my first Cormac McCarthy novel. While I'm not sure if Blood Meridian should've been the first McCarthy novel I should've read, but at least I finished it. The book is classified as being one of the anti-western genre, which is something that has changed my view on the typical heroic tropes of the old wild west to say the very least.

Blood Meridian is a gruesome portrayal of American expansion in the late 1800s. The book starts with a motherless runaway in Tennessee, who finds himself entangled with actual, historically existing people. The books main inspiration is the Glanton Gang, a group of notorious scalp hunters who take the kid in and through impeccable paragraphs of describing the violence and weather in the Texas-Mexico border, the story unfolds in front of our eyes.

Now, I take this book as an introduction to McCarthy. And one of the key takeaways from this book is that McCarthy does not care about punctuation marks. Throughout the full 400 page book, there was not a single apostrophe. Dialogues began abruptly and ended as abruptly and double checking who's talking to who and if it's the narrator speaking was not uncommon in the past three months. Of course, that's not a complain at all since you can still tell when dialogues start quite easily because the dialogue is fully American without any thous and thy shalls. Compared to the archaic English, or Biblical English used to describe everything else in the book.

McCarthy excels in visual story-telling yet you find yourself asking why any of this is happening or is there even an actual plot. You read a whole paragraph of sentences connected without a single full stop, describing violent massacres, heads getting chopped off, Apache villages getting destroyed, and none of these were ever really the star of the book. In fact, nothing was. Everything described in the book felt undermined by McCarthy, he describes everything like "it was supposed to happen, let's not make a big deal out of it." Anything and everything was possible in this book, and I'm just trying to understand what is happening. I was confused with my journey half way through, but it gave me hope that a lot of people felt the very same when they first read this book.

Now for the actual trigger warning topic, Judge Holden. He is also a historical character who traveled with the Glanton Gang and let's just say he is a man of philosophy, languages, arts, science, geology, arms proficiency, a skilled dancer and every single town he visits and stays in, a child goes missing. He is the ultimate villain of "evil for the sake of evil", a follower of war and the antagonist of "literally me" videos. I read in a comment that "when Judge Holden becomes a literally me character, the world will be over." Truly so. Such truer words have never been said because people like Patrick Batemen are one of the few notorious faces of literally me.

Holden is definitely the biggest highlight of the whole book. While the wild western America was filled with violence, natives were being killed mercilessly and the government was even paying to collect their "scalps" (Google scalphunting if you please, I do not want to get into that topic), Holden had an exquisite taste for violence even among them. The rest of the Glanton gang were just morally gray characters, including our pseudo-protagonist 'the kid'. But Judge Holden, he was on the dark side. He is the dark side. I don't even want to describe his crimes, but he is often found wandering around naked in his hairless body and his famous quote is "whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." Or a line that represents his worship of war- " As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?"

The final shift, or the final phase of the book is something I portrayed as war against peace I guess. After the Western lifestyle was getting worse, people finally moving on from this bloodied path, or blood meridian, we find the kid trying on his part too. The Glanton gang is gone, their scary ass leader dead. Only a few survive throughout the last pages, and then only two. The judge and the kid. Years later, when the kid is finally trying to turn his life around, living day by day, not massacring villages on command, turning into 'the man' now by our narrator, the judge comes upon him again, and the man shows no fear now but you can't tell what he's thinking. You can't tell what will happen and before you know it, McCarthy, after providing us with violent details of gore and blood, closes his book abruptly on us after the kid is definitely killed by the judge.

Man of war stay man of war. The judge wanted to destroy a defect; the kid who showed sympathy to people and never completely giving into war, completing his dance and completing the book for us.

The book was a solid 7 out of 10 for me. I do not understand most of it, and it's an extremely difficult book for someone like me. The concepts are not hard to visualize, the sceneries stay stuck in your head and the horrifying visualizations definitely find a room to stay in your brain, yet I found myself confusing over why anything is happening or what's the whole point of it. And it seems that violent really does need no point and as hard as this ride was, I'm glad to have read a book like this. Sleep, eat, kill and repeat really showed how desolate and abject all of this was.

The best part of the book is when the judge enters and starts judging everyone, including the reader.

[leefi]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere Read-through | Part 8: 100-127 (END)

Part 1: 1-14 | Part 2: 14-22 | Part 3: 22-34 | Part 4: 34-64 | Part 5: 64-80 | Part 6: 81-90 | Part 7: 90-100 | Part 8: 100-127 (caught up here)

How did Anna have a contact paradox...how many people is ophelia twinning her infinite feminine energy with...ok my new theory is that everyone is ophelia, except for theo chan, who is currently having the worst acid trip of his life

Su keeps pointing out how Kam had been weirdly reticient to Fang's ideas surrounding the murders basically leading up to the moment of their death. She's maybe mutually noticed something with them, or has privately ruled them out as the culprit. At first I thought they were maybe in cahoots but it doesn't seem to go both ways - but then again Fang was always super in their own head anyway, and kind of acts like a chaotic neutral-good agent (helping the rest of the class but also working to solve the mystery just for the sake of solving it/as an intellectual exercise). I really do think they were familiar with Balthazar to some degree (not necessarily in cahoots, they just know more about his deal than the rest of the class), but don't have much to go off of beyond that. Just wanna mention they were both pseudo-outsiders to the group. Also don’t wanna forget that Balt is primarily connected to Zeno in the first place, and nebulously connected to Utsu. He’s also a thanatomancer just like her.

Su said she can't help but feel as if this whole scenario was made for her. Is this her punishment? But why would she be getting punished?

Balthazar's name means "Bel protect the king". Actually let me look everyone up im curies

Kamrusepa was a goddess of magic and medicine. Go visit the Wikipedia page, the myth she appears in is pretty cool. Her symbol is an iron throne.

Ran: From Japanese 蘭, meaning orchid

Kuroka: From Japanese 黒岡, meaning black hill. thinking abt the story's cover art

Utsushikome was the name of a Japanese empress

Theodoros means divine gift/god’s gift

Ezekiel means strength of god

Seth means annointed, or placed. He was Adam and Eve’s third child, born after Abel’s death to appease the family’s heartbreak

I can’t find for his specific spelling but Bardia means exalted, lofty

theo zeke and seth are all biblical names im assuming. which is an interesting connection considering what the three of them are being accused of right now! bardia isn’t - it’s of persian origin. maybe the 3 of them were in cahoots about killing him together because of brett and the blood gulch. brettdiya

Fang: From Chinese 芳 (fāng), a gender-neutral name meaning "wind, fragrant, virtuous, beautiful". Kam’s name is also apparently associated with air but i could only find it on a google search excerpt. The goddess of medicine thing felt more prescient

Interesting thing I found on Fang’s name Wikipedia page! not implying that this is connected to the story, just wanted to share a cool thing given that this historical figure was an alchemist like them

Our group really did feel small and fragile now-- Down to just eight people. Even with the barrier, it didn't feel completely safe.

genuinely stupefied over how linos is still fucking alive. why haven’t they eaten him yet

I think Fang and the council lied about how long they'd been at the Sanctuary. That would explain why they seemed familiar with Balthazar too - they'd already met in a way that isn't impossible from when they walk into the conference room, announcing themselves. I think Kamrusepa had knowledge of this too - likely due to her position as class head. But why hasn’t she suspected Fang of Vijana’s death then? If she only knew that they agreed to show up, then kept it a secret from everyone else she would’ve tried to fit them into the murder puzzle. No, there’s probably something more she knows about Fang's role in this...

Yeah, Ezekiel was never supposed to meet Balthazar either. Ughhhhh this is making my HEAD HURT. FUCKING WEEKEND AT BALTHAZAR'S

im still laughing over him wearing the sunglassesssss indoors btwww. that was so cunty of him

You are what you are, and you can't be anything else. Right?

Ran of Hoa Trinh I love youuuuuuuu

me: wow i miss fang so much. sometimes i can still read their voice

READ ME

HEY GUYS

me: NOWAY

i spent the first day basically hiding out on my own in neffies room and only snuck out a couple times.

Neffie!!!!!!!!! also this could explain why the group saw nef grabbing a package of food over surveillance and delivering it to her room? but also was fang then the last person to see her alive?

The way Fang describes tls time is reminding me a lot of the Epic of Gilgamesh weird endless looping notepad fanfic where you can shuffle the pages around. Su found it AGES ago and I don’t think it’s been mentioned since. “anyway time in tls is FUCKED UP. it's not even really time at all. it's like if you asked a dumbass how they think time works and then made it that way instead. like ok. imagine you're some asshole god. and you can see that object. the whole 10d universe, everything that has happened+will ever happened etc. and you want something different to happen, but can't make it happen because everything already exists. so instead you grab a 1d point and pull it loose. a single "frame" of reality or something idk. now on its own that's not gonna do much right? but then you break it and make it rebuild itself. so then you have a new frame. bam. tls.”

ahh shit. i'm out of time. assuming i was killed and i'm not showing you this as a joke:

if i was shot from the garden, that means that the culprit doesn't remember the previous loops.

if i was shot from inside the room, that means they do.

AWAAYWAWYAWAWYAYW A GETS UP AND RUNS AROUND THE ROOM IN CIRCLES AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND

Su was pretty sure that the shot came from outside, and her memory is supposed to be the most reliable, like how Ptolema’s observations are. I don't think she'd emphasize it in her internal narration twice unless Lurina wanted to stress it

Does it even matter who the culprit is? Could the culprit already be dead??? RAHHHHHHHH

"It sounds more like you just don't want it to be true," Ezekiel observed. He seemed strangely resigned, like he'd already accepted the idea, though I couldn't say why that was the case.

its because he went up to bal's crazy funtime room and achieved enlightenment

Does granddad know that kuroka became shiko. I'm not talking about the dementia. I mean we saw him being against the idea and then Samium may have acted independently. But also Sami seemed to have been ignoring Kuroka completely. How does she fit into this puzzle? What did Su say, that they needed someone Shiko knew?

When she says she and granddad are really alike...maybe she means in comparison that Wen is his lost person and Shiko is hers. And they're both grasping for something they'll never have again

WHYW HW THEO CHAN IS ON THE STAGE????? REVUEDOROS???????????

oooh director and playwright treat specific scenes or character actions with probability...how inch resting

PTOLEMA BEING THE FIRST TO DETECT SOMETHING IS OFF WITH THE PLAYWRIGHT/DIRECTOR FOURTH WALL BREAK. SWEEP SWEEP SWEEP SWEEP SWEEP!!! SHE'S A SAVANT!

Joshi…hmm…modernized anima scripting…. HEIGHT SCRIPTING?

YOU CAN PLASTIC SURGERY YOUR HEIGHT NOW!!! SWEEEEEEEEEPPPP. also what is joshis blood type and culinary notes. i need it for my research

Su says the name is familiar but i'm confident we've never heard it before. how am i so sure? well it's all thanks to my beautiful gorgeous mind (i quote searched it on google) (ran also clarifies like 3 lines later but i didn’t see it because i was too busy quote searching on google)

Is this bioenclosure the same case as the pantry? anomalous to the time loops, kept more preserved thanks to the previous experiments they ran on it?

I climbed the stairs, and there she was at last, standing at the rear wall

PLAYWRIGHT: Ack, no! That doesn't work for this scenario! Switch it over to the alternative!

DIRECTOR: <sighing> Very well...

sorry that was me. but i got shy

THE IRON PRINCE STUFF. HUH

A MIND TRANSFERRED TO A MACHINE OF IRON…HUHHHHHH

Would putting someone’s mind in that kind of machine turn them into an invincible god? Like they’d have limitless connection to the power. Is that the key to immortality? Ok they clarify this in like 5 lines cool. Is that what the Order was trying to do in erasing themselves? Give themselves godlike powers then dip? Unmmn My brain feels like mush and baby im stirring that pot

They'd covered the sun in photovoltaic panels, and built minds for themselves as vast as oceans, where they could rule over their own artificial realities like gods. The rest of the human population lived and died by their leave, either as specks of detritus on Earth and the smaller colonies spread about the solar system and its close neighbors, or in a lesser state of transcendence within their domains. It was paradise and hell at once. All progress ground to a halt, and the distinction between real and unreal ceased to matter.

this literally happened in cookie clicker

ANNA???????????

WHAT

???

HUH??????

UHHHHHHHH

Sure. That might as well have happened

I don't think the timeloop explains Bal's knowledge of Su's past, which is how she just tried to rationalize it ...that seems totally separate. What did he call himself? a parasite to their group

Zeno thought Su was someone else...Bal is a close relation of one of Zeno's friends...RRRRRRRRR

watching kam sweep linos with this interrogation is so bonkers!!! go girlboss go!!!!!

Even at a time like this, I appreciated Kam's apparent willingness to become a huge hypocrite on my behalf.

kamsu 💖sweep forever

Personal matter. I'd overlooked the significance of that phrase. When you set aside the rest, that made it sound like the reason he'd been swayed had been something private and embarrassing. What kind of 'projects' did people have that were personal and embarrassing, and involved much younger men? The only ideas which came to mind felt more like a product of me being a pervert than anything, even if Zeno had made insinuations during our conversation.

Plus, when I'd asked Zeno about Balthazar, he'd told me he was here as part of a favor to an old friend. That didn't connect with what Neferuaten had said at all - so was it just an outright lie?

I think Bal is related to Sami…I have this feeling…ok so Zeno, their sponsor, is a neuromancer right. That’s the closest modern day equivalent to Samium’s pneumancy…so they could’ve worked closely together. That doesn’t really explain the embarrassing personal project though…What did nef say again?

"Everyone was part of the plan from the start," Ezekiel insisted, ignoring Seth's anger. "Not just Theodoros, but Bardiya, too. That's why you saw his room in the state it was earlier in the night-- He'd been upset about the whole thing, and drunk himself half to death."

LIAR! BROTHER BARDI DOESN’T DRINK. IT’S IN HIS CULINARY NOTE! kicks him down the stairs

idk about this culprit theo theory kam. I’m at the point where I can buy him doing something for bard’s death but swaying everything??? no wayyyy he’s simply too obvies and sweaty about it. but i could listen to you play murder mystery chicken with su all day long so please keep going

"Fine," she replies, with a flat look. "I will concede we cannot completely rule out a nude suicide attack from Balthazar

this is my nomination for best line in the story so far. runner up is wheres the elevator

taking a shot every time utsushiko says “you’re just fucking guessing!!!!” and kam replies “but my dear sweet precious trembling submissive prey animal of a classmate it is SUSPICIOUS 🤨☝️” and you find me dead at the bottom of a stairwell

"I'll tell you what almost certainly happened," KAMRUSEPA continues. "When we met with Bardiya, his room was in a terrible state. It looked as though he'd been drinking, and though he did a good job carrying his regular dignity, he was most likely inebriated to some degree, leaving

RAHHHHHHHHHH kicks her down the same set of stairs that im dead at the bottom of but Ezekiel’s body is suspiciously absent

So Bardiya was like…in a fit? In a haze? Was there a struggle in his room???? Why?

Why do Kamsu not realize the world has come to a standstill to listen to them talk. My answer to that is: the unstoppable tide of yuri

SORRY BOYS, this is YURI WORLD now and we’re taking PTOLEMA HOSTAGE

"What of it? Life precludes everything! I won't apologize for wanting to live above all else!" She brushes her curly ginger hair from her face, her expression growing serious as she stares at UTSUSHIKOME. "I know you're the same as me at your core, Su. You think I can't see it? It's why we get along so well in the first place. You do a good job of acting like a person with normal ethics, and sometimes your neurosis keeps you from acting when you know you should. But deep down, you're someone who would do anything to attain your desires. You'd even betray the entire world."

The kamsu is actually making me go fucking crazy. This is insane. THIS IS INSANEEEEEEE. ILL DO WHAT YOU LACK THE COURAGE FOR FOR BOTH OF OUR SAKES!!!

Su voice: we get along?

𒊹𒊹𒊹utsushikome: But I guess it couldn't have happened any other way. Pieces move according to the rules of the game. I am who I am, and I can't be anything else. <;smiling bitterly>

SHE’S QUOTING RAANNNNNNNN

did they just say deliberate assimilation failure

"It's not self-indulgent!" Samium declared. His tone was defensive, but it was clear it wasn't for himself. At this point he was obviously upset, a subtle tremble in his tone. "It's for Wen's sake! To give her another chance in this world, even in spite of everything!"

The parallels to Kuroka and Utushikome. I’m seeing them. Also sam i am definitely fucked that old man

This was such a shit garbage world. To have let this happen to Kuroka and so many other children. 200 years of peace and prosperity? more like 200 years of. Not that

Maybe Kuroka’s love of horror is part of the reason why she feels this punishment was designed especially for her. It’s like it’s tailor made to watch her suffer.

This yaoi between Samium and Gpa is going somewhere I can’t follow. You’re discussing KILLING A CHILD???? and you have NO HANGUPS???? They’re insane

In the midst of this, someone manages to throw a grenade in the air; they must have been carrying it since the visit to the armory.

There is only one cunt I know of who was hyperfixated on the grenades and they r not alive rn

I stared down into my cup listlessly, my hands trembling slightly as conflicting strands of thought shot through my mind. I cleared my throat hoarsely, almost like I was choking.

"...t-they tricked me," I told her, my voice feeble.

She was just talking about how she usually exaggerated how badly people were treating her to make sure they got in trouble.

Why does she keep calling her old body defective? Is it because she didn’t get pre-natal distinction treatment? Is there a disability we haven’t seen?

SHE’S RETELLING THE DEMON STORY FROM THE CARRIAGE RIDE WITH RAN??????? FRIM HER SPELEOSOEDITCIE (<-PERSPECTIVE)? BARKS

Do you remember the acclimation journal that I keep? The day number I wrote in it was 4412. If you count backwards from the first day of the conclave,

babygirl i was not going to do that

When she thought we were researching Induction in mutual ignorance during those first weeks, scouring old books and the logic sea for information, I was just working up the courage to talk to Samium's contact. When I told her I discovered my original body was dead, that was no revelation at all; Samium had informed me in advance exactly what the process was going to entail and how it'd be disposed of, and I even lied to her about the details, saying that it had been physically discovered rather than the truth, which was that Samium took it somewhere far away from the city and discreetly disintegrated it.

…

It was because I wanted to employ her as a tool to soothe my guilt.

it has literally never been more over than it is right now

she took 12 years of ran’s life. ran didn’t want to go into medicine. if someone made me go into medicine what I’d do to them could not be publically shared on the internet

through all these insane revelations I have just one thing to say. I cannot fucking believe that Kam was right about Theo

diversity win! the girl whose life and body you just stole might be bi!

These last chapters have actually been giving me a headache. I feel violated. Kudos to the author!

God everything she did made sense and the way her mentality was described was so so so perfect. I can’t believe it took 127 chapters to realize just how much of an antihero she is. She really let us believe that most of her self loathing was just some kind of self flagellation, but she was right. She really is as wicked and pathetic and awful as she claims. But the world failed her so so so so so many times, and then once it finally granted her a miracle, she threw it away.

Kam getting a double kill in the span of 5 minutes is making mejdjrjrjsjjsjsjdjdjdjdhhfrbfjjf. thank you Lurina for granting us the COD lobby i so dearly wished for

Bal says he thought someone could be saved by love…Sami was trying to save Su’s grandpa by bringing Wen back…Their manner of speech is similar to someone we’ve heard speak several times in flashbacks now…I feel fucking stupid even suggesting it but could Bal and Samium be the same person? How would that even work because they’re both alive and existing in the same place at the same time?

It would be so delicious if Su was dying for this chance to speak to Samium this entire time and she did. Like 3 times. While he was reading magazines

Also they’re a thanatomancer like su…i feel like if he were a neuromancer I’d be bouncing off the walls with this theory right now but it’s just my brain trying to make connections rn

Samium’s zeal towards this wen mission made me wonder if his conviction went beyond old man yaoi to a personal goal, especially after his call with autonoe. But then he actually dropped it after gpa said not to go through with it so. I guess he really is just super gay?

What would happen to Su if you put her in the Apega(?) machine?. Would she just revert to a younger combo of Shiko&Kuroka, would she maybe revert to younger Shiko only…like, could that be the way to kill Kuroka and restore Shiko?

So Su is Utsushikome and Kuroka simultaneously. A fusion of them. And Su also looks exactly like Wen, someone dear to gdad from before the collapse. So Su is like. 4 different identities at the same time - kuro chan, utsu, su (amalgamation), wen

And ran was literally forced to go into medicine

Zeno asks Seth where the world is. Seth is confused. Zeno’s answer is essentially “what you make of it”/in your mind/yours to mold. The world is a copy of something long dead. The protag is a copy of someone long dead. The narrative’s actors’ fixation on immortality…accompanied in tandem with the obsession with things long dead…absolutely tubular

Anyway here are screencaps of the lines that made my brain melt:

[vanilla-cigarillos]

A Brief Breakdown of the Different Kinds of Angels

At this point we've all seen the multi-winged and eyed creatures that hiss "Be Not Afraid" at us from the skies, but there are many other kinds of angels that are often overlooked or entirely misunderstood. Today I'll be breaking it down in the best way I can, and I hope y'all enjoy!

Disclaimer: This post will be covering Christian angel depictions and hierarchies. While I understand and respect each religion's understanding of angels, Christianity is the dominant religion today and as such will be my starting point. I will be more than happy to discuss angels from other religions in additional posts!

A Bit of History

The most influential hierarchy of angels, is that mentioned in De Coelesti Hierarchia (On the Celestial Hierarchy, 5th and 6th century) by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. This was a misidentified Christian theologian, with critics of this authorship believing that the author identifies himself as such to portray himself as the Athenian convert of Paul the Apostle (Acts 17:34).

There are nine levels of spiritual beings, which are then grouped into three orders:

Highest Order Seraphim Cherubim Thrones

Middle Order Dominions Virtues Powers

Lowest Order Principalities Archangels Angels

It is important to note that the rankings do NOT indicate the importance of each group. Rather, the rankings indicate how literally close the angels are to God in Heaven.

Seraphim

The seraphim, in Medieval Christian theology (respecting its origin in Judaism), are believed to be the caretakers of God's throne. They are continuously singing "holy, holy, holy". Within the Celestial Hierarchy, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite took from the Book of Isaiah in giving the seraphim a fiery nature. These are the angels most seen in the image above, with multiple eyes and wings.

Cherub

While commonly seen as pink-cheeked babies with little wings, the cherub is described as anything but in the Book of Ezekiel. They are depicted as having two pairs of wings and four faces. Each of the faces contain their own representation, with a lion representing wild animals, an ox face representing domestic animals, a human of course representing humanity, and an eagle's head to represent birds. As described by Ezekiel:

Cherubs are believed to be bolsters for the throne of God.

Thrones

Sometimes equated with ophanim (the wheels seen in Ezekiel's vision of the chariot in Ezekiel 1:15-21), these angels are the multiple spinning circles that we also see so commonly depicted in modern art. These angels are said to reside in the midpoint where material form begins to take shape, and therefore act as God's direct messengers.

Dominions

Dominions are believed to act out God's will and justice. They are directly in contact with humans, believed to deliver mercy to them when they show enough devotion to God. They are also meant to be leaders to lower ranking angels.

An example of a Dominion angel would be the Archangel Zadkiel, who stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son.

Virtues

Virtues are known for their control of the elements, believed to aid in governing nature. They are also known to assist with the deliverance of miracles, encouraging humans to strengthen their faith in God.

Powers

These angels are believed to restrain evil powers from doing harm. Powers are seen as warrior angels, protecting humanity while also being keepers of history.

Principalities

These angels are believed to guide and protect institutions such as the Church. They preside over bands of lower angels and give them divine ministry.

Archangels

Getting back to some of the more well-known Biblical figures, we turn to the archangels. The word archangel itself is only mentioned twice in the New Testament (1 Thessalonians 4:16 and June 1:9). In many Christian traditions, Gabriel is considered an archangel however there is no literary support to this belief. The term archangel only appears in the singular, and is a specific reference to Michael.

The name of the archangel Raphael appears only in the Book of Tobit (Tobias).

Michael is said to be the greatest of God's warriors. He is believed to be the guardian of orthodox faith and fighter against heresies. In later beliefs, it is said that Michael will be the one to kill Satan.

Angels

General angels are typically depicted as guardian angels that work the closest with humans.

And there you go! There is a very brief breakdown on all the different kinds of Biblical angels. I hope this post is helpful in understanding Christian theology, and please let me know if you'd like me to dissect any further!

If you're interested, here's my post on A Brief History of Demons (In Christian Mythos).

[msclaritea]

1: The UK isn't obsessed with aliens. Certainly not as bad as the US. Also you know fuck-all about the UK so stfu. 2: What about him? There's no evidence that he's doing ANY of what you're accusing him of. 3: Man who writes a TV series, writes another TV series. How groundbreaking 🙄 4: Man who acts in one film, acts in another. That's what actors do, dumbass. 5: Sure, have a silly tantrum now that your paranoia doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Thanks for the laughs, though.

“Pseudo-histories feed the self-importance and aggrievement of neo-Nazis and alt-right folk,” says Benjamin Radford, a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry who has written widely on pseudo-history and claims of paranormal activity. “They feel their rightful place in the world has been denied them — by ‘Big Archeology', by Jews, by an oppressive government.”

There is another source of the far right’s far-out ideas about ancient history, one that requires no psychologizing.

THE NAZI CONNECTION

The basic tenets of alt-archeology and alt-history were foundational to the ideology and program of National Socialism, but the Nazis did not invent them. The Nazi belief in a pure Aryan race with a glorious ancient past and distinct genetic history was central to a transatlantic nineteenth-century occult scene (that featured a heavy German influence.) After Hitler assumed power, this belief was institutionalized in the form of the Ancestral Heritage and Teaching Society, or the Ahnenerbe, an alt-archeology research outfit founded by Heinrich Himmler and the Atlantis theorist Herman Wirth.

Under the banner of the Ahnerbe, Nazi explorers fanned out across Europe and the globe in search of relics holding (possibly supernatural) hints of ancient Aryan glory. In 1938, a team was dispatched to Iceland in search of the lost Aryan civilization of Thule, which Nazi leaders discovered in an Icelandic epic poem. Among the Nazis’ interests in Thule was the legend of a race of ancient Aryan giants. (Versions of this myth remain common among biblically focused alt-historians like Steve Quayle and L.A. Marzulli.)

Belief in these legends was possible because of the Nazis’ sharp rejection of the Enlightenment. Dismissing the science of racial diversification and the archeological record, they reveled in symbology, myths and legends of “pure” ancient kingdoms that conquered the world under its symbol, the swastika. (This, the Nazis believed, explained the symbol’s presence in both Native American and Indian art.)

"...But Clarke and Roberts, whose research is to be published this week in a book called Out of the Shadows , did uncover evidence that the American Secret Service, with the possible connivance of the British, looked at ways of using the public panic over UFOs as a psychological weapon against the Russians.

In CIA memos marked 'secret' and seen by The Observer, top officials consider exploiting the UFO craze. 'I suggest that we discuss the possible offensive or defensive utilisation of these phenomena for psychological warfare purposes,' wrote CIA director Walter Smith in 1952.

'Shortly after that meeting the CIA sent a delegation to Britain to discuss UFOs. It is hard to imagine that they did not discuss the psychological warfare aspects of it with their British counterparts,' Clarke said.

Clarke, who started out as a believer in UFOs but is now a sceptic, said that the belief in alien visitation had once reached up to the highest positions in government. Prime Minister Winston Churchill once ordered an investigation into it and Lord Mountbatten was a firm believer in flying saucers. In the 1950s Britain set up a flying saucer working party of top Ministers and army staff. 'That is why this field is important for academic research. It did have an impact on government policy at a crucial stage in history,' he said..."

"The Office of Special Affairs (OSA), formerly the Guardian's Office, is a department of the Church of Scientology International. According to the Church, the OSA is responsible for directing legal affairs, public relations, pursuing investigations, publicizing the Church's "social betterment works," and "oversee[ing its] social reform programs". Some observers outside the Church have characterized the department as an intelligence agency, comparing it variously to the CIA or the KGB. The department has targeted critics of the Church with dead agent operations and character assassination. OSA is the successor to the now-defunct Guardian's Office, which was responsible for Operation Snow White and Operation Freakout; both are in Department 20 in the Scientology organizational chart. The most recent head of OSA International was Mike Rinder, who has since departed from the organization and criticizes it severely, appearing as a co-host on Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

Structure and personnel

History

The Guardian's Office was established in 1966, and its initial mission was to protect the interests of the Church of Scientology, and gather information on agencies and individuals deemed enemies of the organization. The Guardian's Office was also charged with internal monitoring of current Scientologists, in particular heretics and notable defectors. L. Ron Hubbard put his wife Mary Sue Hubbard in charge of the Guardian's Office, and it was initially headquartered at Saint Hill Manor, in England. The Guardian's Office functioned effectively as an Intelligence Bureau of the Church of Scientology, and planted members in key positions within federal government agencies, in order to obtain confidential material. Most branches of the Church of Scientology soon had at least one member from the Guardian's Office on its staff, and the Guardian's Office itself had its own secret Intelligence Bureau at the top of its organizational structure. The Guardian's Office was disbanded in 1983, and the bulk of its previous functions were then assigned to the Office of Special Affairs..."

Like a man once said, don't think you can climb in the ring with the Incas and think you can box. Besides your country being historically, aggressively superstitious, besides the fact that many of your upper class were Nazi sympathizers, besides your history, also, of bastardizing the history of other cultures to elevate yourself, you people apparently have had a very cozy relationship for decades with the alien-loving Scientologists, who've infiltrated your government. Thanks for the ask. I didn't know that part. Now take your brain out the back of your pants and sit the fuck down, Jr. Your stupidity offends me, yo.

[notmuchtoconceal]

I remember when I used to try to divorce my fantasy creations from sociology, religion, and history to convey them in what I believed was their purist form. Concepts of hubris, of competition, of tragedy, of comedy...climax, the Third Act, God and gods and goddesses, witches, warriors, landscapes, the coming storm, the eye, the future, the past. They still existed, and they were still deeply religious and historic. But they were MY religions, MY histories.

Names stemming from nothing that meant nothing. No Josephs. No Marys. You can guess where things will go from a name. This man's name is Calaf. "No doubt you'll have a story where none shall sleep."

But the names meant everything, because I harvested them out of darkness, just like Dear Mr. Benevolence.

No calendars with their calendar names. Not even goodbye--God Be With Ye. Woof.

Language Demon knows, with his addiction to Reduction. The Greeks do not own tragedy. Christians do not own the concept of redemption. If I tie my own creations to their common religio-socio-historic what-have-you branches, my art can only be framed from that branch. But I can brainwash (ahem) *influence* the maximum number of people if I write from the Human form instead.

I implore you to embrace the creaturely.

You're lucky I had a 16 hour work day, or this would be much longer and less sloppy. If you want stakes to my game, I can propose them. Or you can. Force me to do something for you if I lose. I have my own ideas, but let's hear yours first.

Now. *e4.* It's your move.

That you pair Joseph with Mary (and not with James) shows you have quite a particular one in mind. If I told you there were at least three Biblical Josephs to choose from, one could snidely condescend: Sure. The one who was a great son, the one who was a great father, and the one who shared cocktails with the lord. This is another giveaway of the fixation on the superficial, for you seem to care less what's in a name and more what the name has to give to you. If I said that the very sounds of the word "Joseph" communicated the personality inherent in the name for the ways with which the vibrations of those sounds rippled through the air as well as the physical body of the speaker, would you dismiss that as pseudo-scientific hokum? If I told you a name was a curse, for every time one is referred to, one is reframed according to the speakers whim, you would certainly agree. The right to choose your own name -- to make a break with your legal, parental or "God-given" name (as one does when becoming a witch or a rockstar or simply swapping sex) liberates one for it bends not only consciousness, but sound itself to their invisible will.

If I said, as a follow-up, that for every new Joseph which comes into being (or any new anyone) the chain of associations has the capacity to evolve to account for new and even contradictory associations, would you have anything contrary? Is something you will from the darkness and claim as your own a new thing or a dead thing? Is it a bit like overbearing white mothers (aware that their air of social prestige gives them "influence" over like-minded twits) who decide to give their children soap opera names or irregular spellings to common ones (not to change them in anyway, but simply give the glamor of "difference"?) Not that I would ever shame anyone for desperately, desperately wanting to try, but you know -- certain forms of desperation speak to an alienated will looking to correct itself, while others speak to a similar will looking to bury itself.

The sheer amount of effort I've seen some men give to developing self-destructive impotence is truly mind-boggling, but then I suppose some simply crave to die, yet also struggle to be honest with themselves in any meaningful way.

My favorite thing you do is the bait-and-switch before coming on subtle. It gives you all the appearance of a friend, yet also gives ample warning.

Any man who trusts you is a fool.

Any man who fails to see how your disgracefully reductionistic attitude reduces all your terabytes of processing power to a mere self-serving parlor trick deserves the ways in which you will inevitably fuck him over.

Keep feeding, you ugly lil leech.

For any men with the wisdom to peel you off and cast you in the fire after you've gotten a good glug or two, you're remarkably good at breaking up clots and encouraging fresh flow, much like the pussy you are.

[vamprefaggot]

lmao the only good sketch i got today

[writingwithcolor]

Jurassic period alien interacting with key cultures and historical figures in Middle East & Asia throughout history

@ketchupmaster400​ said:

Hello, so my question is for a character I’ve been working on for quite a while but wasn’t sure about a few things. So basically at the beginning of the universe there was this for less being made up of dark matter and dark energy. Long story short it ends up on earth during the Jurassic Period. It has the ability to adapt and assimilate into other life animals except it’s hair is always black and it’s skin is always white and it’s eyes are always red. It lives like this going from animal to animal until it finally becomes human and gains true sentience and self awareness. As a human it lives within the Middle East and Asia wondering around trying to figure out its purpose and meaning. So what I initially wanted to do with it was have small interactions with the dark matter human and other native humans that kinda helped push humanity into the direction it is now. For example, Mehndhi came about when the dark matter human was drawing on their skin because it felt insecure about having such white skin compared to other people. And ancient Indians saw it and thought it was cool so they adopted it and developed it into Mehndi. Minor and small interactions though early history leading to grander events. Like they would be protecting Jerusalem and it’s people agains the Crusaders later on. I also had the idea of the the dark matter human later on interacting with the prophets Jesus Christ and Muhammad. With Jesus they couldn’t understand why he would sacrifice himself even though the people weren’t deserving. And then Jesus taught them that you have to put other before yourself and protecting people is life’s greatest reward. And then with the prophet Muhammad, I had the idea that their interaction was a simple conversation that mirrors the one he had with the angel Jibril, that lead to the principles of Islam. Now with these ideas I understand the great importance of how not to convey Islam and I’ve been doing reasearch, but I am white and I can understand how that may look trying to write about a different religion than my own. So I guess ultimate my question is, is this ok to do? Is it ok to have an alien creature interact with religious people and historical events as important as they were? Like I said I would try to be as accurate and as respectable as possible but I know that Islam can be a touchy subject and the last thing I would want is to disrespect anyone. The main reason I wanted the dark matter being in the Middle East was because I wanted to do something different because so much has been done with European and American stuff I wanted to explore the eastern side of the world because it’s very beau and very rich with so many cultures that I want to try and represent. I’m sorry for the long post but I wanted you guys to fully understand what my idea was. Thank you for your time and hope you stay safe.

Disclaimer:

The consensus from the moderators was that the proposed character and story is disrespectful from multiple cultural perspectives. However, we can’t ignore the reality that this is a commonly deployed trope in many popular science fiction/ thriller narratives. Stories that seek to take religious descriptions of events at face value from an areligious perspective particularly favor this approach. Thus, we have two responses:

Where we explain why we don’t believe this should be attempted.

Where we accept the possibility of our advice being ignored.

1) No - Why You Shouldn’t Do This:

Hi! I’ll give you the short answer first, and then the extended one.

Short answer: no, this is not okay.

Extended answer. I’ll divide it into three parts.

1) Prophet Muhammad as a character:

Almost every aspect of Islam, particularly Allah (and the Qur’an), the Prophet(s) and the companions at the time of Muhammad ﷺ, are strictly kept within the boundaries of real life/reality. I’ll assume this comes from a good place, and I can understand that from one side, but seriously, just avoid it. It is extremely disrespectful and something that is not even up to debate for Muslims to do, let alone for non-Muslims. Using Prophet Muhammad as a character will only bring you problems. There is no issue with mentioning the Prophet during his lifetime when talking about his attributes, personality, sayings or teachings, but in no way, we introduce fictional aspects in a domain that Muslims worked, and still work, hard to keep free from any doubtful event or incident. Let’s call it a closed period: we don’t add anything that was not actually there.

Reiterating then, don’t do this. There is a good reason why Muslims don’t have any pictures of Prophet Muhammad. We know nothing besides what history conveyed from him. 

After this being said, there is another factor you missed – Jesus is also an important figure in Islam and his story from the Islamic perspective differs (a lot) from that of the Christian perspective. And given what you said in your ask, you would be taking the Christian narrative of Jesus. If it was okay to use Prophet Muhammad as a character (reminder: it’s not) and you have had your dark matter human interacting with the biblical Jesus, it will result in a complete mess; you would be conflating two religions.

2) Crusaders and Jerusalem:

You said this dark matter human will be defending Jerusalem against the Crusaders. At first, there is really no problem with this. However, ask yourself: is this interaction a result of your character meeting with both Jesus and Prophet Muhammed? If yes, please refer to the previous point. If not, or even if you just want to maintain this part of the story, your dark matter human can interact with the important historical figures of the time. For example, if you want a Muslim in your story, you can use Salah-Ad-Din Al-Ayoubi (Saladin in the latinized version) that took back Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. Particularly, this crusade has plenty of potential characters. 

Also, featuring Muslim characters post Prophet Muhammad and his companions’ time, is completely fine, just do a thorough research.

 3) Middle Eastern/South Asian settings and Orientalism:

The last point I want to remark is with the setting you chose for your story. Many times, when we explore the SWANA or South Asian regions it’s done through an orientalist lens. Nobody is really safe from falling into orientalism, not even the people from those regions. My suggestion is educating yourself in what orientalism is and how it’s still prevalent in today’s narrative. Research orientalism in entertainment, history... and every other area you can think of. Edward Said coined this term for the first time in history, so he is a good start. There are multiple articles online that touch this subject too. For further information, I defer to middle eastern mods. 

- Asmaa

Racism and Pseudo-Archaeology:

A gigantic, unequivocal and absolute no to all of it, lmao. 

I will stick to the bit about the proposed origin of mehendi in your WIP, it’s the arc I feel I’m qualified to speak on, Asmaa has pretty much touched upon the religious and orientalism complications. 

Let me throw out one more word: pseudoarchaeology. That is, taking the cultural/spiritual/historical legacies of ancient civilizations, primarily when it involves people of colour, and crediting said legacies to be the handiwork of not just your average Outsider/White Saviour but aliens. I’ll need you to think carefully about this: why is it that in so much of media and literature pertaining to the so-called “conspiracy theories” dealing with any kind of extraterrestrial life, it’s always Non-Western civilizations like the Aztec, the ancient Egyptians, the Harappans etc who are targeted? Why is it that the achievements of the non West are so unbelievable that it’s more feasible to construct an idea of non-human, magical beings from another planet who just conveniently swooped in to build our monuments and teach us how to dress and what to believe in? If the answer makes you uncomfortable, it’s because it should: denying the Non-West agency of their own feats is not an innocent exercise in sci-fi worldbuilding, it comes loaded with implications of racial superiority and condescension towards the intellect and prowess of Non-European cultures. 

Now, turning to specifics:

Contrary to what Sarah J. Maas might believe- mehendi designs are neither mundane, purely aesthetic tattoos nor can they be co-opted by random Western fantasy characters. While henna has existed as an art form in various cultures, I��m limiting my answer to the Indian context, (specifying since you mention ancient India). Mehendi is considered one of the tenets of the Solah Shringar- sixteen ceremonial adornments for Hindu brides, one for each phase of the moon, as sanctioned by the Vedic texts. The shade of the mehendi is a signifier for the strength of the matrimonial bond: the darker the former, the stronger the latter. Each of the adornments carries significant cosmological/religious symbolism for Hindus. To put it bluntly, when you claim this to be an invention of the aliens, you are basically taking a very sacred cultural and artistic motif of our religion and going “Well actually….extraterrestrials taught them all this.”

In terms of Ayurveda (Traditional holistic South Asian medicine)  , mehendi was used for its medicinal properties. It works as a cooling agent on the skin and helps to alleviate stress, particularly for the bride-to-be. Not really nice to think that aliens lent us the secrets of Ayurvedic science (pseudoarchaeology all over again). 

I’m just not feeling this arc at all. The closest possible alternative I could see to this is the ancient Indian characters incorporating some specific stylistic motifs in their mehendi in acknowledgement to this entity, in the same vein of characters incorporating motifs of tribute into their armour or house insignia, but even so, I’m not sure how well that would play out. If you do go ahead with this idea, I cannot affirm that it will not receive backlash.

-Mimi

These articles might help:

 Pseudoarchaeology and the Racism Behind Ancient Aliens

A History of Indian Henna (this studies mehendi origins mostly with reference to Mughal history)

Solah Shringar

2) Not Yes, But If Ignoring the Above:

I will be the dissenting voice of “Not No, But Here Are The Big Caveats.” Given that there is no way to make the story you want to tell palatable to certain interpretations of Islam and Christianity, here is my advice if the above arguments did not sufficiently deter you.

1. Admiration ≠ Research: It is not enough to just admire cultures for their richness and beauty. You need to actually do the research and learn about them to determine if the story you want to tell is a good fit for the values and principles these cultures prioritize. You need to understand the significance of historical figures and events to understand the issues with attributing the genesis of certain cultural accomplishments to an otherworldly influence. 1.

2. Give Less Offense When Possible and Think Empathetically: You should try to imagine the mindsets of those you will offend and think about to what degree you can soften or ameliorate certain aspects of your plot, the creature’s characteristics, and the creature’s interactions with historical figures to make your narrative more compatible. There is no point pretending that much of areligious science fiction is incompatible with monotheist, particularly non-henotheistic, religious interpretations as well as the cultural items and rituals derived from those religious interpretations. One can’t take “There is no god, just a lonely alien” and make that compatible with “There is god, and only in this particular circumstance.” Thus:

As stated above by Asmaa and Mimi, there is no escaping the reality the story you propose is offensive to some. Expect their outcry to be directed towards you. Can you tolerate that?

Think about how you would feel if someone made a story where key components of your interpretation of reality are singled out as false. How does this make you feel? Are you comfortable doing that to others?

3. Is Pseudoarchaeology Appropriate Here?: Mimi makes a good point about the racial biases of pseudoarchaeology. Pseudoarchaeology is a particular weakness of Western-centric atheist sci-fi. Your proposed story is the equivalent of a vaguely non-descript Maya/Aztec/Egyptian pyramid or Hindu/ Buddhist-esque statue being the source for a Resident Evil bio weapon/ Predator nest/ Assassin’s Creed Isu relic.

Is this how you wish to draw attention to these cultures you admire? While there is no denying their ubiquity in pop-culture, such plots trivialize broad swathes of non-white history and diminish the accomplishments of associated ethnic groups. The series listed above all lean heavily into these tropes either because the authors couldn’t bother to figure out something more creative or because they are intentionally telling a story the audience isn’t supposed to take seriously.*

More importantly, I detect a lot of sincerity in your ask, so I imagine such trivialization runs counter to your expressed desire to depict Eastern cultures in a positive and accurate manner.

4. Freedom to Write ≠ Freedom from Consequence: Once again, as a reminder, it’s not our job to reassure you as to whether or not what you are proposing is ok. Asmaa and Mimi have put a lot of effort into explaining who you will offend and why.  We are here to provide context, but the person who bears the ultimate responsibility for how you choose to shape this narrative, particularly if you share this story with a wide audience, is you. Speaking as one writer to another, I personally do not have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I think it is important to be face reality head-on.

- Marika.

* This is likely why the AC series always includes that disclaimer stating the games are a product of a multicultural, inter-religious team and why they undermine Western cultures and Western religious interpretations as often (if not moreso) than those for their non-Western counterparts.

Note: Most WWC asks see ~ 5 hours of work from moderators before they go live. Even then, this ask took an unusually long amount of time in terms of research, emotional labor and discussion. If you found this ask (and others) useful, please consider tipping the moderators (link here), Asmaa (coming eventually) and Mimi (here). I also like money - Marika.

[blazehedgehog]

I'm curious as to the few contexts that art can be separated from the artist that you've mentioned in an earlier post. Under which circumstances is art NOT inherently a reflection of the person who created it and their worldview/beliefs/opinions, no matter how incorrect those views and opinions may be?

Well, as tired as the topic may be, this kind of gets in to "death of the author," which is broadly used to mean that art is whatever you interpret it to be. What I put in to my art and what you get out of my art can be completely different things.

Ergo, if an artist creates something out of racism or bigotry or hatred or whatever, it is entirely possible that what the people see in that art will not necessarily be hatred or bigotry or racism. It could be interpreted as something else.

Now, yes, of course, there will be instances where somebody creates a piece of art and there's no denying what it's saying. It can only ever be the one, crystal clear message. But the more abstract an idea is, the more wiggle room there is to see what you want to see in it.

Doug TenNapel is the example I used last time, so let's go back to him.

What is Earthworm Jim? It's a story about a regular, every day earthworm who happens to have a high-tech alien superhero suit crash in to him, which grants him increased strength and intelligence. This leads him on a strange intergalactic adventure where he has to rescue a (literally) unnamed princess and defeat an evil alien queen (who is also responsible for creating his superhero suit). Along the way, Jim fights space crows (a worm's natural nemesis), mad scientists, disgruntled goldfish, a living booger, and even goes to hell.

There's not much you can interpret from the concept of Earthworm Jim. Some of that is because it's a simple video game without a lot of narrative. It was created to be weird, wacky, and random, and it definitely is those three things. The only questionable part is the fact that the two women in the story could be seen as problematic: both focus almost entirely on physical appearance. The villain is an angry, deeply ugly woman, who is defined by having a "slug for a butt." Whereas the "love interest" is primarily eye candy, designed to be so one-dimensional the joke is they never even gave her a name because her beauty is the only thing that matters. But, I would argue, these are small potatoes. It still sucks, and the Earthworm Jim cartoon even tried to flesh out Princess What's-Her-Name (meaning they acknowledged it was problem), but they're dumb jokes in a game full of dumb jokes. They're just a little worse than the rest.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have TenNapel's "Ratfist" comic, a story that starts out pretty similar to Earthworm Jim: an ordinary man is involved in an accident that turns him in to the super hero "Ratfist." And for a lot of Ratfist, it's the same kind of pseudo-random humor. Sort of like Earthworm Jim, there are some questionable elements -- there's a dig at furries, a dig at "sounding effeminate", but unlike Earthworm Jim, these themes only get stronger as Ratfist goes on. We learn that Ratfist is an atheist, and there are repeated hints that he's secretly curious about Christianity (biblical angels also appear as characters, later on). It also starts attacking political correctness. There's commentary on what it means to be rich and powerful, ultimately siding with the rich.

The further you get in to Ratfist, the more it stops feeling wacky and random and starts sounding bitter and angry, themes that TenNapel himself embraced after the comic ran its course.

So again, art can be separated from artist if the themes are abstract enough. Unless the artist bluntly tells you what the theme is, you are allowed the space to implant your own meaning. And your meaning, in and of itself, can become its own piece of art.

But, as I said in the original post, that gets scrambled the moment money comes in to the picture, because it gives much more importance to authorial intent. Money is power, and you have to beware who you're giving power to. Your interpretation of their intent may not actually be in your best interests. The more power they get, the clearer they can express their intent, which could be something hateful or even dangerous. The only way to fight back is to have more power than they do.

Which turns this whole thing in to a mess, obviously.

[glencairnmuseum]

ADVENT CALENDAR DAY 22

The Flight into Egypt, from the 12th-century Infancy of Christ window of the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, France. Glencairn Museum, Bryn Athyn, PA, 03.SG.114.

Three consecutive verses in the Gospel of Matthew (2:13–15) are the only biblical source for the story of the Flight into Egypt. According to Matthew, after the visit of the Wise Men, “an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ‘Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him’” (2:13). Although the Bible provides very little information about this episode in the Nativity narrative, it is frequently depicted in art. Usually Mary is shown riding a donkey with Jesus on her lap, accompanied by Joseph and sometimes a servant. 

Glencairn’s medieval stained-glass example of the Flight into Egypt formed part of the Infancy of Christ window at the Abbey Church at Saint-Denis. It illustrates an incident in the story not included in the canonical Christian gospels in the Bible. According to the early Christian apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, on the third day of the journey Mary became fatigued by the desert heat, and the Holy Family took refuge under the shade of a date palm. When Mary expressed a wish for some of the tree’s fruit, the Christ Child commanded the palm, saying, “O tree, bend your branches, and refresh my mother with your fruit.” Immediately the tree obeyed and they gathered its fruit (chapters 20–21).

Every day, from December 1 through December 25, a new work of Nativity art from the Glencairn Museum collection will appear on the home page of our Advent calendar (Follow the Star: A 2021 Advent Calendar). To receive these in your newsfeed, follow our social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr).

[taperwolf]

Let’s talk about “Biblically accurate” angels! This gets a little long.

First off, let me point out some background.  The Bible isn’t a single book.  It’s a collection of writings, composed by different people at different times for different purposes, each of which has been edited by later people entirely to fit entirely different purposes. Even for a single book, it’s often difficult to establish what parts go back to the original author, and even more difficult to establish who those authors were.

(I know there are believers who claim that the whole thing was dictated by God, but that’s not a claim that anything in the Bible actually makes.  Perhaps you’re thinking of the Koran?)

So these different writers had different ideas of what angels were, what they looked like, and what functions they served. Later writers -- most notably Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (circa the late 5th or early 6th century CE) on the Christian side and Maimonides (late 12th century CE) on the Jewish side -- compiled all the mentions of angels and angel-like beings into hierarchies, codifying “Biblical” angels for later generations.  Pseudo-Dionysius (so-callled because, whoever he was, he was claiming to be Dionysius of Athens, converted to Christianity by Paul in Acts 17:34) claimed three Spheres of angels, each with three Orders (for a total of nine), while Maimonides (rabbi and physician working in the Islamic courts) said there were ten ranks -- and each of these orders or ranks or choirs or whatnot could be completely different creatures, depending on who you listen to.

To go back to first principles, the word “angel” comes from the Greek word angelos (ἄγγελος), which means “messenger”.  That’s the word used in the New Testament; in the Tanakh/Old Testament, it was the Greek translation of the Hebrew word mal’akh (מַלְאָךְ‎), which is essentially the same; the connotation is “one who is sent with a message”. Where this appears in the book of Genesis -- the location of 90% of traditional “Bible stories”, it seems always to be a creature that’s very much like a human, and indeed was often confused for being just another human.  These are the ones that talk to Abraham and Lot and Jacob. It's entirely possible that many of them weren't considered divine beings at all, and were just humans doing the same sorts of things as people described later as prophets.

But there are also two different types of beings in there. The first is mentioned at the end of the Eden story -- to bar the now-expelled humans from the Garden, God places as guards cherubim and a flaming sword. “Cherubim” is the plural of “cherub”. (At some point in Italian art these got confused with the figures of spiritelli, putti, and erotes -- fat, wingy babies -- but they originally seem to have been much more like the Egyptian sphinx or the Mesopotamian lamassu -- a beast, a lion or a bull, with the face of a human, usually with added wings.)  The cherubim were the exception to the commandment against graven images, as there were two mounted on the top of the Ark of the Covenant, to serve as God's earthly throne; He's referred to a few times as "He who is enthroned upon the cherubim".

The others are referred to as “the sons of God” -- who explicitly interbreed with human women and bring forth a race of giants, the nephilim. It really looks like this is a surviving remnant of early Hebrew polytheism, and these are just demigods, but when it became dogma that the primary god was the only God, they got retconned into half-angels.

But none of these are the critters that people are talking about when they say “Biblically accurate angels”. For them, we have to go to the book of Ezekiel. The eponymous prophet has a vision of first, humanoid “living creatures” with multiple faces and wings and stuff (who are later in the book identified as cherubim), and then four wheels "within wheels", with a bunch of eyes in the rims. On the wheels is a throne, and God sits on that. The wheels and throne are, together, God's chariot, but later writers decided that they were beings in their own right — they've got eyes, right? — terming them Ophanim, or thrones. Daniel has a similar vision, as do a lot of the non-canonical apocalypses of the second temple period.

Isaiah likewise describes (though not very clearly, none of these prophets do) beings with six wings — one pair to fly with, the other pairs covering their faces and their "feet" (pro tip: if the Old Testament mentions something weird about feet, it's likely a euphemism for a penis; c.f. Ruth and Boaz) — crying, "Holy, holy, holy", and calls them "seraphim". Later sources double down on their angelic status, but it's worth mentioning that everywhere else in the Tanakh, the words saraph and seraphim refer to serpents. So at least some depictions have them as flying snakes. Dragons? Isaiah says they have hands

Post-Old Testament works, including the Revelation of St. John, really multiply the kinds of weird critters that God has hanging around, and these are the ones that fill out Pseudo-Dionysus's list, but this is already too long.

My point is, a lot of the angels in the Bible just look like people. Sure, some angels start off by telling the people they've just appeared to, "Be not afraid" — but that's a thing you might need to tell a 14-year-old girl when you've just appeared in her bedroom at night, even if you aren't covered in eyeballs.

[therepublicofletters]

Hello, I really enjoyed your exhibit! This might be silly but I was curious as to why nobody decided to learn how to write and read Arabic in order to produce genuine scripts. I know it said it wasn't necessary to be able to read them in order to have their meanings conveyed but wouldn't it make their art pieces more authentic? They were using their pseudo script on many important and profound pieces, wouldn't they want it as accurate and impactful as possible? Did anything stop them?

Like I showed in the last section of the exhibit, there were some works where they copied the scripts exactly. The simple fact is that academic interest in Arabic wasn’t as widespread as interest in Greek or Latin. There certainly were some Arabic speakers in Florence at the time - there were certainly Hebrew speakers - but they generally weren’t part of the intellectual circles that patrons and other scholars went around in. Also, any Arabic speakers also probably spoke Latin or Greek (especially because of the proximity of the Byzantines), so there wasn’t any real need for Italians to learn Arabic. Meanwhile, part of the reason there was such a rise in Greek scholarship is because of the mass exodus of Greek speakers after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. There was no real reason for a large number of Muslims to be in Florence at the time, so the ones that were there were probably there for diplomatic reasons. (They tended to stay where they were and let the Europeans come to them for trade.)

Now that you ask, though, I do wonder of there were any Arabic scholars in Italy, or any interest in humanist circles. Pico della Mirandola was very interested in Kabbalah and I believe learned Biblical Hebrew, so I feel like that may be a path to look down for connections to Arabic.

[tomorrowusa]

Over our country’s 20 years at war in Afghanistan, America has sent its finest young men and women, invested nearly $1 trillion dollars, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, equipped them with state-of-the-art military equipment, and maintained their air force as part of the longest war in U.S. history. One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me. [ ... ]   I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan -- two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.

President Joe Biden, via the White House press office.

If Afghans aren’t going to fight to save their régime, why should Americans continue to do so after 20 years and a trillion dollars?

This war was effectively derailed in 2003 when George W. Bush diverted troops and resources from Afghanistan to his pointless invasion of Iraq which allegedly was motivated by his interpretation of pseudo-Biblical prophesies.  Bush’s Iraq fiasco, which gave birth to ISIS, permitted the Taliban to regroup and gradually gain strength in Afghanistan. Having Donald Trump as president for 4 years made many people forget about the 8 disastrous years of George W. Bush which featured two new wars*, two recessions (including the Great one), and two rounds of tax breaks for the filthy rich.

The collapse of the US-backed government in Kabul is certainly ugly. But ultimately it’s less damaging than a neverending war which most Americans see as pointless.

The fall of Saigon in 1975 had little apparent effect on the 1976 presidential election. Voters had been more concerned with the overall conduct of the Vietnam War itself and were just relieved that it was all over.

Biden undoubtedly has memories of the Vietnam War. He knows that long ambiguous wars are unpopular, divisive, civically corrosive, and very costly.

The Pentagon may have been overly optimistic about how long the government in Kabul could hold out. But the end was never seriously in doubt.

______________________________________ * Let's not forget that Bush let Osama bin Laden slip out of his hands in 2001. Nabbing the chief 9/11 plotter was much of the reason for the US going into Afghanistan in the first place. It was Barack Obama who finally took out bin Laden in 2011 – in neighboring Pakistan.