#unanswerable

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing.

If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from.

And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question?

Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?"

-- Carl Sagan

[howifeltabouthim]

There are no answers to my life.

Chris Kraus, from I Love Dick

[studyblr-perhaps]

25/08/24 || Sunday

I have a retest on Tuesday for a course I cannot understand for the life of me, and hopefully I pass. Or else next semester I will have to retake that course and I am not looking forward to that.

[suzuki-ecstar]

f1 teammates jarno trulli and fernando alonso goof off before their visit to renault’s ayrton senna complex — brazilian gp 2003, automoto tf1

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

Are you never going to respond to my ask about the "sexual revolution" or did it just not go through

what is this a press conference

[statementlou]

Hi there, This might be a stupid question, so I apologize in advance, you can ignore it.

I noticed that many old ladies are fans of Louis, which is very lovely and respectable.

Me as a young girl personally liked 1d era louis, I still adore him, but he is no longer my number 1 like 1d era. And I don't get it, I'm like how, why, what is the reason that old ladies interest in Louis

I guess that's me? I mean on the one hand like.... I'm just a normal ass adult age I think, I have a ways to go to be a proper old lady/ old whatever gender I am. But otoh there's nothing wrong with being an old lady so no point in caring about that and besides from what everyone says, the answer won't change in 10 or 20 or 30 more years. Anyway... it's not a stupid question! But I already know you won't believe me when I tell you, IT'S JUST NOT DIFFERENT. No one does until later. Everyone says it but when you're young you're like hmm but no... probably fake. True for them maybe but not for me, when I get to be like 30 I will be *DIFFERENT* and MATURE and put aside childish things and read Serious Books and go to see opera only! (spoiler: you won't. You will feel exactly the same only somewhat more assertive and less confused, but your general tastes and what you find entertaining will not have changed.) So yeah, literally the answer is, for whatever reason you are a fan, same reasons probably? It's true that I don't have quite the breathless confusing overwhelm around my fan feelings as I did about things when I was a preteen, but mostly, just being a fan of music and the people who make it, being enthralled by someone's presence and, in this case, their mind and gender and persona and appreciating a pretty face and nice ass, it's no different over time. I do not want to fuck him IRL and maybe that's different than you? But honestly that's much less about age (and honestly he's a man in his 30s is that even an issue) than my own complicated gender and sexuality issues and also maybe just not personally mostly actually wanting to fuck people I've never met even if it's fun to appreciate them aesthetically. The feeling of kind of wanting to crawl inside and BECOME the object of fan focus in some way I'm pretty sure is consistent from when I was a kid right up until the present though

[thecrimsonmonarch]

[Batfam on a group mission]

Robin: *did a good thing*

Batman: *offhanded praise* You're the best Robin

Red Robin: ??

Nightwing: ??? Was there a comma in there somewhere??

Spoiler: "You're the best Robin" or "You're the best, Robin"?

Nightwing: Yeahhh, B, which is it? Hm?

Red Hood: There's one correct answer, and that's me

Robin: *huffs* All of you shut up. The man said what he said. I'm the best Robin

Red Robin: No, he said--

Nightwing: We all know the first is--

Spoiler: Girls are the best--

Red Hood: I died and got reincarnated so--

Batman: EVERYONE

Batman: All of you are the best

Everyone:

Red Robin: Ew

Robin: Pick a side

Nightwing: Boring

Red Hood: You somehow found the answer that offends the maximum amount of people

Spoiler: Does B stand for basic bitch?

Batman: *sad dad noise*

[boyjumps]

No need to try to overcome death.

You were just born by chance. There is no need to seek 'meaning' or 'value' in life. Life is like crossing a river in a boat called 'self'. It is only a tool for the duration of the crossing.

'Self' is like a boat that we must tentatively use in order to exist in the world. As long as we are in this world, we must ride. That is the boat called "I". Even if you don’t want to, you cannot live without getting into that boat.

Many people believe that the boat itself is also valuable. However, the boat is valuable because it can cross the river, not because the 'boat itself' is valuable. If the tool is no longer useful, it is acceptable to throw it away. The boat is also disposable. If it is no longer worth it, it should not be at all regrettable to abandon the boat. So when you get across the river and life comes to an end, there is no need to be afraid or sad. You can quickly descend to the other side of the river without any unresolved feelings. It is said to be "an irreplaceable life", but in the end it's all in our own minds.

What is the greatest task in life is to die. The reason why it is such a big task is that no one knows what "death" is. If you know what death is, you can do something about it. But we don't know what the big task is at all, and as long as we are alive, there is no way of knowing.

The most popular image of death is that of going somewhere other than this world. The story goes that those who do good go to heaven and those who do bad are sent to hell. Because you are 'you' from birth, even after your body is gone, your 'you' continues somewhere other than here, and a transformed you remains. We all have that illusion.

The Buddha maintains an attitude of the “unanswerable questions” regarding the afterlife.'We don't know if there is an afterlife. We don't even know what will happen" is the only answer of Buddha. At this point, however, one thing is clear. There is no doubt that everything becomes meaningless there.

No need to worry. We can all 'die' without doing anything special. So you don't have to try to overcome death. Nor is there any need to seek 'meaning' or 'value' in the end of a life that was just born by chance.

[wraithsoutlaws]

how thE FUCK do you DRAW TRICORNE HATS

[howifeltabouthim]

It only seems to be a simple question—Where are you from? It can never be sufficiently answered.

Catherine Lacey, from Biography of X

[sableprince]

was talking about that one buckshot roulette OC template and how i Wouldn't participate because i would never put my critters in such a situation, but someone made a joke about a "dealcrow and a high-stakes game of scrabble" and i thought it was so funny that my commitment to the bit is stronger than my desire to protect my own creatures. i hope you get out of there, pilcrow!

[palin-tropos]

mazov and nilsen discovering they have different color qualia and being annoyingly lovey-dovey about it in front of everyone “wow what a beautiful sunset can you show me your version I love your yellow and pink” “of course comrade <3 personally I find your blue to be superior”

[hoverboards-and-dragons]

What makes a Sin? Do they need to have a certain power level or resonance with a particular ring and Hell’s power just chooses them? Does becoming a Sin have any effect physically and/or mentally?

The way Sins are chosen is an intentional mystery in my verse, Hell is an alien realm with an alien mind even to those living within it

Demons were just crawling directly out of hell like maggots out a corpse in the beginning, some died, some bred and started species and whole ecosystems and shit, Evolution sped run, like if every period of life was happening at the same time - Society was getting it's start at the same time fish were learning to walk on land. The sins were all from of this first wave.

The Sins started out as regular demon warlords fighting for control of the newly created Hell, they eventually emerged as the most powerful at which point they'd have an the inner realization that they are now A Deadly Sin, even without really understanding what that means

Now, they do not know if this is something they become, or discover about themselves, their power could be why they were crowned, or they only have such power because they were born a Sin

It doesn't feel like a transformation, if it is one they aren't aware of it until after its happened. The word 'Envy' or 'Wrath' pops up in their head and it just feels right

They also aren't sure if they take their sin from the ring or if the ring takes from their most prominent trait, (is Mammon greedy because he's king of the greed ring, or is it the Greed Ring because Mammon is greedy)

They're extensions of their Ring, have a similar sense for theirs as Lilith has for hell as a whole. They can feel shift and can communicate with it to a limited degree.

This comes with pretty complete immortality, which is also why they were so quick to seek each other out, find someone who Gets It

You would think Lucifer's appearance would help answer something but he just made everything worse by quietly assuming the Pride sin in a few months and everyone only realizing after the fact

Did it happen when he first arrived(was 'given' to hell)? Well the others didn't recognize him as one then, which Beph explicitly does later, maybe when Lucifer accepted Hell in, but he forged his connection directly with the first ring later, after he had already had the realization that he was Pride - and it had been feeding off his power beforehand, he was just letting it feed him back

Maybe it's planted, grows inside them over time, until it kills them or they survive it and the line where they end and hell begins is too blurred to matter. At least you get cool cosmic powers out of it.

Is a spore a fungus? When does it become one?

@fallentheatre you'll probably like this one too

[keingleichgewicht]

like, ok. disco elysium is mostly about bigger things than personal morality, and it is too smart to be interested in asking whether kim and harry are "bad people," because people cannot be ontologically bad* even if being a cop is very close, and the distinction in itself is a carceral conceit, it's not worth talking about in any model worth talking about. and that's probably part of the point, and part of the point is that There Is No Ethical [PLAYTHROUGH OF DISCO ELYSIUM]; existing in a world like revachol, or ours, and getting to stay morally decent, let alone while in the kind of positions of power kim & harry inhabit, is impossible but more to the point it's also a dangerous fable. it is a dangerously incorrect way to approach the ideas that the narrative is offering you.

*or good!

& that said, insofar as disco has anything to say on personal morality, i think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of the next world mural:

it is too late for us, and it is also too late for these two mean-hearted cold-spirited, bullying old cops; we have seen too many ages of the world already, we have failed to rise too many times. it is too late for true love and it is too late for good men. it is too late to be forgiven. "you can never save anyone nor can you atone for your sins", &c, "you shall not go down twice to the same river, nor can you go home again."

WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS

it is too late to be good men. harry and kim are never going to be able to be good men, because you can't fix what they've each done to people, or the kind of trigger-happy control-hunger that leads them to bully and steal and coerce, or the various steam-kettle pressures (racialized, in kim's case) that pushed them to become these people (pressures which are unlikely to let up any time soon, either, and hence why it's so unconvincing to pretend they're ever going to stop being cops.) and yet, you know! and yet! you can't aim for "redemption" because it's a bankrupt concept, and you also cannot pretend that you can just walk away from any of these things; not in this world; maybe in the next, not in this one.

but that isn't a message of despair, any more than disco is ever doing a message of despair! be vigilant i love you. you can go home again, as long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been. kim and harry are really not the point although by definition it is true for them as well -- but IS THERE A CHANCE FOR THEM TO GET BETTER? is functionally equivalent to asking IS THERE A CHANCE FOR ANY OF US TO GET BETTER? or even more fundamentally WILL THE RETOUR EVER COME? and the only answer disco has for us on this front is, i don't know, well will it???

[compacflt]

you're a legend for referencing lauren berlant and michael warner in relation to your top gun fic and I'd like to think that they would say the same!! the stories that you've created are beautiful explorations of some of the biggest questions posed in queer theory: who are we in public? who are we in private? where is the line that separates the two (spoiler: there is no way to actually separate the two, no binary) and what are the structural forces bearing down upon all of that bullshit! I for one would love to see your questions about privacy and respectability explored with rooster and ice and mav. especially considering the generational cliff between them, with the aids crisis in the background of rooster's childhood when they were all the closest, in your world. anyway! you are an incredible writer and it's been a privilege to read you work :)

thank you so much for this ask!! yes i have spent so much time thinking about this. In March i started working on a new-yorker-style interview that tried to address a bunch of these questions. Since I didn’t do wip wednesday yesterday (sorry) here’s some relevant sections of that wip related to your ask. I don’t think it’s spoilers since I’m not sure id ever post this anywhere—you can see for yourself how entertaining the writing is and it’s overly political and didactic. Just a lame hegelian dialectic where im interrogating my own characters (at least, my own interpretations of them) on their politics. And I’m not an expert on any of this stuff (currently on the slow uphill climb out of the valley of the dunning-kruger graph—trying to learn). Nor am I fact-checking it & that feels irresponsible to post For Real. so just take this post as a fun (for me) exploration of what i (20y.o., ignorant, no editorial oversight, smooth-brained) think Might be some political implications of my fics, trying to write from a lib-moderate pov (tough!)

talking points I wanted to address:

The politics of ice’s career, both internationally & domestically (some wild navy scandals happened under his “tenure” [fat Leonard most pressingly—would LOVE to know how actual TGM’s ice & mav felt about that bc it was SO FUCKING CRAZY, navy officers & admirals having wild sex parties paid for by a singapore defense contractor (the details are so fucking crazy i can’t even say them here—one anecdote involves 7th fleet officers using WWII/Korean war general macarthurs historical memorabilia during sex acts—go read about it) a couple PACFLT RDMLs were charged with actual crimes, 60 admirals (of the navys total 160 admirals) were under investigation & both my and TGM’s ice & cyclone would probably have been two of them, basically if you were a pacflt officer in the mid-2000s-2010s you were under investigation it was so fucking wild]) —and another geopolitical look at the implications of both top gun movies (reagan weighs in from beyond the grave)

Ice and mav who can’t win—they want their relationship to Not Be A Big Deal. leave us alone. We’re Normal. we’re not Weird or anything. —but can’t understand WHY their relationship is so sensational/political—yes, boys, it is a big deal, sorry!! mavericks probably the last Ace the world will ever see & ice is the secretary of the navy and they’re married, fuck yes that’s newsworthy!!!

my version of Ice acceding to SECNAV at the intersection of a couple crucial contextual moments for the navy/military as a whole: 1. Recruitment is currently fucked. This interview takes place in 2020/early 2021, and things were bad then, but the numbers just came out for the Navy this year, and hoooooly shit they are so bad. And blame is falling along partisan lines like always: Ds blame low recruitment numbers on lack of benefits etc, Rs literally i am not shitting you are mostly blaming low recruitment numbers on the military going Woke. The USN has long been seen as the most obnoxiously woke/gay (derogatory) service to conservatives & there’s a lot of political baggage that comes with having a SECNAV who, while not openly identifying as gay, is openly married to another man. especially with a recruiting crisis like this one. 2. Withdrawal from afghanistan obviously. kind of a shit way for ice to end his career ngl. It Did Not Go Super Well. 3. rising tensions in eastern europe pre RU-UA invasion in 2022, what that means for the MIC and procurement, etc. 4. The joint chiefs openly declaring they (& by extension the military as a whole) would not support trump’s coup attempt post-J6—the end of that extremely politically polarized presidency—what does it mean for the following Dem president to then have a gay secnav after that? It’s HUGE. SO no matter what, Ice as SECNAV is going to go down in history. He just wants it to be for his actions, not the fact that he’s gay.

Icemav’s relationship with their identities. We really really don’t want to be known for being gay. “Ask me what my proudest achievement is, I’ll tell you without a second of hesitation—my family. Without a doubt. But does any military man really want to be best-known for his marriage?” We want to be known for being the BEST at our jobs, which we are. We’ve earned that title! There’s so much more interesting stuff about us than who we got married to.

AND how that is a liberal-moderate-conservative median-50% meritocratic WET DREAM of an ideology. an interview like this one is a straight fluff piece pre-ice’s confirmation to secnav—it lets him prove to the moderate liberals that he’s left-leaning enough to protect social justice interests in the USN, AND prove to conservatives that he’s right-leaning enough to not let identity politics/“woke bs” get in the way of the navy’s mission of providing a lethal maritime fighting force. the merits of this ideology are up for debate.

maybe helping the conservative viewpoint of that ideology: The fact that the Kazansky-Mitchell-Bradshaw-seresin family is so not-stereotypically gay. Like, look at these four guys. 9-to-11 combat kills between them (11 in my universe where ice gets an extra 2, 9 canon confirmed) in a period of history/modern warfare when ANY air-to-air kill is/was massively historically significant. Extremely macho & tough. They present themselves about as traditionally and toxically masculine as you could possibly get. Theyve KILLED PEOPLE. They’re not “soft” by any stretch of the imagination. Physically & emotionally they ARE extremely conservative, and there’s something to be said about the politics of that too—molding yourself into the shape of what you think a man should look like, just to avoid persecution, and then performing masculinity BETTER than even the men who would want to persecute you…!

Related to your ask: the modern/young ppl inclination to make sexuality SO political and public. When asked how he could reckon with joining a DADT-ruled navy, rooster answers: “hope I could do something to destroy it before it could destroy me.” When asked why he DIDNT use any of his considerable power to influence the repeal of DADT, ice answers: “it was better than the blanket ban that came before it. And maybe I’ve always wanted neither to tell nor to be asked.” the conservative respectable opinion that your intimate relationships ought to be PRIVATE, doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight—just do your job, and preferably do it well. yeah, don’t ask and don’t tell. It’s not anyone’s business. ice doesn’t have a philosophical problem with DADT, because he agrees sexuality should be private & secret. —is it anyone’s business? whose business is it? How much of your personal life do you owe the public if you’re a public-facing individual like the COMPACFLT or SECNAV? all good questions!!!!

[privatejoker]

dude im so okay right now