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I keep dropping my phone. It's been like three weeks since I had weed and 1–1.5 weeks since I snorted [redacted] [[NOT really that bad at all]], so I am veryyyy tempted to get high just for the hell of it.

Okay, that's a lie. The reason I want to get high (on weed, I mean) is because THC is a bronchodilator, no? And I want to run even though I have asthma and I fucking hate it, because I feel so horrendous and I NEED to lose weight before I go to Meow Wolf with my friends (and hopefully wear a skirt?? Maybe) on Saturday.

Btw my phone randomly decided to break for kind of no reason, which makes it even harder to type!

For the record, my mouth is very numb.

Lol fuck this shit. Cheers

i would love to hear more about your criticisms of the BITE model! for me it always feels.. unfalsifiable? it seems to do poorly at distinguishing a cult from any other community, if you squint at the definitions

yeah so first of all i'm not particularly keen on even trying to defend the category of "cult" in general. obviously abuse and control methods can and do happen in groups, but i don't think it's particularly useful to talk about this like there's a strict dichotomy between evil malicious groups and all the others. and i think generally, when people do try to sort groups into strict categories like that, what you actually see is that the differentiating factor is less to do with the degree of control exerted by the group and more to do with how much the person doing the sorting is bothered by the group's ideology or doctrinal commitments lol. like, this is sort of baby's first cult concept critique but yknow, a group setting where you're being extremely openly financially controlled is your job and yet most workplaces, however abusive and surveilled and controlling, are not typically designated a 'cult' unless they're also peddling some kind of heterodox religious or medical claims or something.

anyway in regards to BITE in particular, yeah i think it does a really poor job of distinguishing between a 'normal' level of social pressure to say/do certain things, and the kind of control that ostensibly characterises a cult. for example steven hassan has called both MAGA and online trans communities cults, and a lot of this comes down to his persistent and pretty open belief in the power of 'mind control' and hypnosis as mechanisms of cult control. ofc any group of any political persuasion could engage in abuse and high-control of its members! usually this occurs by financial means, social isolation, etc. but hassan's BITE model isn't really good at identifying these kinds of material factors despite paying lip service to them, because it's more motivated by his desire to root out these kinds of shadowy quasi-occult forces of mental reprogramming that he fears.

i just find the whole model to be pretty silly and used mostly as a way of justifying dislike of lots of different social, religious, and political groups---some of which are genuinely mistreating members, some of which are just saying things their critics disagree with---because it's perceived as a reliable social-scientific designation and therefore name-dropping it helps the speaker feel that they're making some kind of objective scientific observation rather than a judgment dependent, as are all judgments, upon their own perspective and values. i think instead of this kind of haggling over Which Groups Count As An Evild Shadowy Cult it would be infinitely more productive and helpful to vulnerable people to talk about how high-control groups operate, what sorts of methods specific groups are using to control and abuse their members, and what sorts of resources those members are dependent on the groups for and need access to from other sources: financial and material provisions, social support networks, etc.

Is it better if John erased their memories, or if they came back that way and he just decided not to fix them?

It's immensely better if he intentionally mindwiped them. TO ME.

I'm a John fan. I think he's a tremendous tragic antagonist, and that everything he does in the HtN backstory is relatable if not painful familiar. He was under immense pressure, trying to mitigate the literal end of the world, having his mind and his whole self changed in ways he had no frame of reference to understand. He went from being desperate and trying to do his best to being carried away by circumstances to going absolutely fucking insane. There are many ways to rationalise John's actions all the way to the end, which is what makes it such an effective corruption arc. If you want to engage in some blorbo apologism, there are plenty of excuses to be found.

There's absolutely no fucking way to excuse mind-wiping his friends. THAT is why it's so important to me that he did it deliberately, in cold blood, justifying it to himself as a way to take their burdens upon himself so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. He removed their agency. He didn't want any peers in the world he'd created. He could have acknowledged what had happened, for better or worse, and tried to make amends - but instead, he chose to remove their knowledge that something had even happened in the first place. It's the turning point! I need him to go into that with his eyes fully open. He's doing it on purpose! He weighed the pros and cons and prioritised his comfort over his friends' identities.

EYE believe that his story arc is infinitely more powerful if there's a point we can look at and say "here is when John's story went from things happening TO HIM to John doing terrible things". Especially in a backstory that's ultimately about divine corruption and losing touch with your humanity, I think that turning point needs to be something that has a personal value to him, something that can't be chalked up to "he was high on death" or "humanity was doomed" or even "he touched the soul of the earth and went insane."

I think it's important, thematically, that one of his first actions after acquiring godlike powers was to make sure that no one would be able to remember his human self and challenge him on equal footing, even if he's still internally lamenting his own loneliness and wishing things were different.

Obviously, this is all coming from a known John Girlie™ and Eldritch Alecto Enjoyer — I interpret John's ascension to quasi-divinity as something that was mostly imposed ON him and he couldn't control, which is why I need him to cross the moral event horizon outright with the mind violation of his inner circle. Someone who views John as more directly culpable in the end of the earth might feel less strongly about the importance of the mindwipe in his story arc than I do, but TO ME it's the culmination of the tragedy. You've become the inhuman horror, baby.

/post that inspired the question

I think the stupidest thing about the whole bracelet debacle in 2x15 is the fact that Jess doesn’t know. He has no idea that the bracelet Rory wore was a gift from Dean and that apparently being his girlfriend means she is contractually obligated to wear it at all times to prevent a meltdown of epic proportions. All he knew was it was her bracelet and it was left right beside him after their friendly lunch/quasi first date…and that she never brought up the fact that is was gone after meeting with him. Jess wasn’t some master plotter or anything in this situation, he didn’t expect to start a fight with Dean or to upset Rory at all. In fact, the moment he finds out about the bracelet, he makes sure the house is empty and puts it right back in Rory’s room. And then Lorelai in all her infinite biased wisdom assumed that he…stole it off her daughter’s wrist without Rory noticing? Snuck in at night and robbed her jewelry box? What did she think happened exactly? And then Jess, who has had maybe 30 minutes tops to process the bracelet and all it’s connotations, hits back with the hardest truth of all. The one that Rory and Lorelai seemed determined not to think too deeply about: if it’s the most precious thing she owns, why did it take Rory two weeks to even notice it being gone?

I love that he says that, partly because I can’t always keep track of time skips in the show but also because it meant that Rory didn’t take it off for two weeks, didn’t put it on in the morning to go to school, didn’t fidget with it while she was distracted, didn’t have it bend a paper or get mashed potatoes on it, didn’t have it roll under her sleeve….she cared so little about this “symbol of Dean” that she was perfectly happy until he blew up about it being gone.

More Jazz Forms (click for clarity)

TW: disturbing content, body horror

1) Head only Jazz

+ She is a head that walks on a bunch of mysterious tentacles. She’s inspired by a CN novel called “Let the Villain Go” in a chapter where a demon pops up and is described as a head that walks on tentacles (I may be delulu and remembered it wrong).

+ Around 900 feet tall. Most of the height is her tentacles, but her head is still around 100 feet tall.

+ Jason is a little obsessed with how huge she is. When he is away, she stays standing over his apartment like a creepy water storage tank. Nobody can see her except liminals and ghosts, so she remains undetected by Jason’s side.

+ She is generally peaceful and doesn’t move much. She is a relatively quiet being with no explicit ability to defend herself or attack. I imagine her to be very dreamy, despite her piercing stare.

2) Celestial Object Jazz

+ She is a quasi-stellar radio source, AKA a quasar :)

+ Impossibly large and infinite. She is so big that her gravitational pull is pulling apart a piece of the universe. Jason thinks that she’s beautiful, and he looks for her every night. He uses special technology to see her on Earth and when he can, he sneaks onto the Watchtower to look at her.

+ The mass of the black hole that she is made of is around 150 billion solar masses. She is located extremely far from the Milky Way within the largest galaxy of the universe. Since she is technically both the black hole and the gas that surrounds it, she won’t be fading for awhile.

+ Her origin is unknown in this idea (but is related to her siblings, who have all become celestial objects themselves). Her existence is extremely old and that is partially Clockwork’s fault.

3) Corrupted Jazz

+ She has become corrupted from years of ectoplasm, death, and generally instability. The tentacles that come from her stomach is actually just pieces of her soul that are trying to reach for others. She calls for help, but no one but Jason has been reaching out.

+ She cannot be around people for too long, or she causes insanity, violent mood swings, headaches, auditory and visual hallucinations, paranoia, nosebleeds, and general weakness, even if they cannot see her. Jason is somewhat resistant to her, but she heavily restrains herself so the effects of her existence won’t hurt him.

+ She tries to stay away from Jason, but bc she’s so clingy, she watches him from a distance. Her presence brings shadows and darkness, so he’s also been getting a reputation of scaring criminals to pissing themselves whenever he comes by.

+ Her body is covered in shadows, but she glows a little from the ectoplasm, so her silhouette can be vaguely seen.

4) Monochrome Jazz

+ Inspired by Lady Dimitrescu and Hachishakusama

+ She dresses in all black and her skin is pale as well. A hat and face mask cover all available skin on her face. Any skin below the neck is also covered.

+ She is around 9 feet tall. She stalks Jason whenever she can and always follows him around. She is extremely hostile and dangerous and does not hesitate to attack when she feels even the slightest bit threatened. She is also completely mute.

+ She is both a ghost and an urban legend, hence why she looks like that. Underneath her mask is a mouth of razor sharp teeth like a moray eel.

5) Wolf Jazz

+ Inspired by Jason’s Red Hood motif that is similar to Little Red Riding Hood. That’s also why I associate Jazz with so many canine themes :)

+ Black fur, several pairs of eyes, and two sets of deformed ears. I am debating whether or not she also has 3 pairs of legs.

+ She follows Jason around like a dog, but does not behave like a pet. As such, he can’t order her around unless she wants to listen to him. Thankfully, she likes cooperating with him and the two of them terrorize the criminals of Crime Alley.

+ She is around 5 feet tall when standing on all fours, but when she stands up on her hind legs, she is around 9 feet tall. She is very fluffy.

Lore: The Bhaalspawn

Link: Disclaimer regarding D&D "canon" & Index [tldr: D&D lore is a giant conflicting mess and it's borderline impossible to cover everything. Larian's lore is also a conflicting mess. You learn to take what you want and leave the rest]

I decided to compile all of the information I could find/remember on the Children of Bhaal in one place; drawing on the original games, BG3, WotC "canon", and a magazine article written by the writers of the original games meant for playing Bhaalspawn in pen and paper games. There's a surprisingly large amount of information.

Also prodding a bit at the distinction between a Bhaalspawn, as in a quasi-deity, and their tiefling descendants, who are also called by that name.

As with all D&D lore, sources may conflict, but nevertheless, here it is.

-

There are technically two variants of being that can be referred to as bhaalspawn (three, if we count the Dark Urge as something separate).

The term "Bhaalspawn" is usually applied to a Child of Bhaal, a quasi-deity who has the Lord of Murder for a father. Most are Demigods, born of a mortal parent, although Bhaal has seemingly also produced at least one Titan, who has no mortal lineage at all (hi, Durge). With the exception of that last one, they were all sired before his death during the Time of Troubles. Many, if not most, had Bhaal's priests as their mortal parent - willingly conceived as part of the greater plan to resurrect their god.

As is the norm for half-planar-half-mortals, the offspring of a Child of Bhaal will be of the planetouched (tieflings, aasmiar, genasi). As Bhaal is an evil-aligned god, his grandchildren and descendants are specifically tieflings (or some humanoid equivalent, if they have children with non-humans).

Each Child carries the divine essence of their father, woven into their very being (the god himself specifically derides them as having "borrowed" existences). This divine essence wasn't distributed evenly, and some carried more of Bhaal's taint than others. Some were aware of his influence acting on them from birth, and others never knew what they were until their more powerful and ambitious siblings came knocking to tear their essence out of them.

Being so tied to Bhaal, the souls of his children are inherently tied to him and the Throne of Blood - when they die their essence returns to him and takes their souls with it. A Bhaalspawn can worship another god and receive spells as a divine spellcaster if that deity accepts them, but there is no other afterlife waiting for them except for their father's domain. Specifically, this is the Throne of Blood, a section of Banehold (Bane's domain) which should be on the first layer (Khalas) of the plane of Gehenna (also known as "The Bleak Eternity of Gehenna"). Every single game has placed the Throne of Blood on a different Lower Plane (the Hells, the Abyss, the Grey Wastes), but none have used the one actually given in the tabletop canon, for some reason. Mount Khalas is an active volcano, hundreds of thousands of miles high with slopes of at 45° at their very flattest. The slope is generally more like a sheer cliff face, and falling may "completely shred" the would-be climber. The mountain floats in an infinite void by the border of the Nine Hells. The ground is full of bottomless black chasms and magma flows fed by "waterfalls" of the stuff, and the ground glows crimson from the heat of the molten rock. The air is clogged with pyroclastic ash and it's impossible to see further than a dozen feet in any direction. It also features the River Styx, a river polluted by all the filth and evil of existence that flows through all the Lower Planes. The next layer of Gehenna, Mount Chamada, is visible overhead, glowing faintly, "burning like a small, bloody moon." The spirits of the dead who are sentenced to this plane are those who were consumed by greed and a ruthless and insatiable lust for power in life; in death they are selfishness embodied. The domains of the deities who reside there are carved into ledges on the slopes. Banehold - also known as the Barrens of Doom and Despair - is "an inhospitable locale, filled with vast deserts of black sand and huge plains of dark granite." The sky is blood red and sunless. The only source of water on the plane is the Styx.

Some Bhaalspawn feel the pull of their father's domain so strongly that their soul can be pulled into Gehenna before they die. Should these individuals become sickened or injured enough they will fall into a coma as their connection to life weakens and their soul is dragged into their father's realm in the Lower Planes. It will return to their body once they're healed and that the pull of life is strong enough.

Some Bhaalspawn have reported the ability to "feel" deaths occurring around them, which is also said to be a pleasant experience that calls to them.

Due to their inherently divine nature, every one of them has the latent capacity for sorcery, though not all will manifest it.

It was originally claimed that all the Children perished in the Bhaalspawn crisis, however a small ttrpg supplement published by the writers in a magazine article (meant for playing Bhaalspawn as tabletop characters) claimed that while many died, including all the most powerful of their kind, many "weaker" Bhaalspawn survived the crisis.

There is conflicting information about the free will of these survivors following the foiling of Bhaal's first resurrection. As per the original game's canon, Bhaal's command over them is gone once broken, and these Children were free to act out their lives as they saw fit - bar stuff like the occasional nightmare and inherent urge to go on a killing spree. The power in their blood is their own to repurpose.

Baldur's Gate 2 presented the possibility of a Bhaalspawn being totally cleansed of their father's taint and rendered fully mortal and free of all divine meddling. 5e has retconned this in both tabletop supplements and BG3 canon, and posits that while one of the Children can (seemingly) be unchained from most of Bhaal's control, his divinity is an inherent part of them and they may still become pawns in his designs.

Judging by the first two games it seems that a Bhaalspawn's ability to resist their father's control is related to their own willpower and how tied to death and negativity they are. Being sheltered from death and suffering allows themselves to distance themselves from him, while exposure and harbouring feelings of hatred will destroy the barriers and push them closer.

One of the things Bhaal may try to push his children into doing is interfering with the plans of Cyric, who originally killed him during the Time of Troubles and temporarily usurped him as god of murder.

Bhaalspawn grow in power with age and experience. While signs can start early, by the end of their adolescence they will all have begun manifesting various abilities and signs. What defines "growing in power" is rather nebulous - in game mechanics it's tied to character levels. Technically, a Bhaalspawn could manifest the ability to create supernatural darkness and turn into the Slayer at age 17 and, by the time she's 18, have manifested as much as eleven more powers (and a plethora of dark influences plaguing her to go with them, including an addiction to killing). Or she could go her entire existence never having more than those two traits, a nasty temper, and some horrific nightmares.

Quasi-deities are immortal - ageless and unable to die from natural causes. While theoretically, a Bhaalspawn might not manifest this trait, it would conflict with other established lore on half-deities (because D&D lore loves conflicting with itself). Bhaalspawn immortality tends to kick in at any point in adulthood, at which point their age freezes. They could be in their twenties - and is more likely to manifest at a younger age, but theoretically it could kick in when they're 87 or older.

A Child of Bhaal can usurp their father and take his godhood for themselves: They must prove themselves worthy of being Lord of Murder by deliberately orchestrating a thousand innocent deaths (the method can be anything). They must seek out a portion of their father's flesh. Remnants of Bhaal's slain avatars, such as the remains of the Raveger in the Moonshaes, or traces remaining in the Winding Water from the Time of Troubles are recommended. Bhaal's actual corpse would've been in the Astral Plane, pre-Sundering. What one is meant to do with this chunk of flesh is unspecified. And then one is meant to present themselves for judgement by the overgod Ao, who will decide if they deserve the job. This seems to involve some kind of epic quest in a very dangerous location to prove oneself.

-

The term "bhaalspawn" also seems to be applied to the tiefling children and descendants of the true Children. Tieflings descended from Bhaal show no outward signs of their heritage the way most other tieflings do, appearing as regular members of their species under physical examination and lacking strange quirks - such as those seen on tieflings descended from the god Mask, who cast no reflections. That said, planetouched descended from deities are known to bear birthmarks in the shape of their divine ancestor's holy symbol, so that might be the exception. Like many of the non-Asmodeus tieflings, they bear the taint of the lower planes in their being, and from birth they often feel it pushing them to bend to their whims. In the case of bhaal-spawned tieflings, these urges would be murder ideation and an obsession with death. God-descended tieflings are no more inherently powerful than the regular kind descended from fiends like devils, demons and night hags.

As with all of the non-Asmodeus tieflings, after the first tiefling grandchild the blood tends to go dormant and hide itself for generations, until it suddenly manifests in a child born to an unsuspecting normal family who is unaware that the taint of the god of murder lurks in their bloodline.

-

There are various abilities (and side-effects) a Bhaalspawn might manifest. Interestingly, while a Bhaalspawn can manifest the vast majority of them, they will never manifest all the possible powers available to their "family." Meanwhile, the most powerful of them will manifest all of the dark urges and traces of evil that threaten to consume their kind.

There are no rules given for their tiefling descendants. Tieflings have been known to manifest a variety of quirks and spell-like abilities, such as those that have been provided for the Children of Bhaal, it's not unthinkable that their heritage may cause them to manifest one or two of them. Going off of the tiefling creation chart from 2e, a tiefling will randomly manifest one advantage, and one drawback.

So a grandchild of Bhaal might have poisonous blood and be unable to control herself from going berserk from bloodlust in battle. One might heal at an unusually fast rate and give off an aura of death that causes strangers to respond to them like they're a monster. Another tiefling may be able to temporarily boost his strength to impressive levels, but be consumed by the urge to murder.

While only the most powerful manifest every trait, the signs of being a Bhaalspawn include:

The undead can sense a Bhaalspawn if they're within 60ft of each other - so clearly that they can pinpoint their exact location. Even protective magics that should hide them from the undead's senses won't keep them from being aware of their presence, it will only prevent them from being able to know exactly where they're standing. In BG2, a vampire named Phlydian describes it as being able to "smell the murder in [their] heart."

Being around the Children of Bhaal triggers the fight-or-flight instinct and makes others uneasy; they give off an unsettling aura that causes those nearby to subconsciously pick up on them as predatory, and Bhaalspawn have a harder time convincing others to like and trust them. Divination spells that reveal alignment and intention will detect them as evil, regardless of whether they truly are or not.

Bhaalspawn are harmed by holy weapons, and those who are particularly murderous can also be harmed by holy water.

Bhaalspawn blood is black and viscous, and the divine essence within it calls out to the lower planes. A bleeding Bhaalspawn leaves a "scent" that calls to all fiends of the Lower Planes, including devils and demons. Even if it doesn't have the texture and colour, the blood is poisonous. If their blood enters the bloodstream of another being it will immediately cause weakness and fatigue. If the blood is not purged, the individual will weaken into a coma and eventually die. Of course this won't affect beings immune to poison. According to Phlydian vampires find the divine blood of the Children of Bhaal irresistibly "sweet."

They experience chronic, horrific nightmares that are traumatic enough to impair the demigod's daily functioning. These visions can occasionally be resisted through willpower, but not staved off indefinitely.

Bhaalspawn always want to kill, and may lose control of themselves in physical conflict, trying to strike at everything within reach. They struggle to restrain themselves, and limiting attacks to non-lethal damage requires will saving throws. They are reckless in combat, paying attention to little except slaughtering their opponent/s - not even caring about their own safety, The urge to kill can be a fundamental need, If not met, thoughts of murder slowly overwhelms their willpower, thoughts and their awareness of their surroundings, until they're finally driven to kill somebody. This urge cannot be sated by anything except for the murder of a sapient being. (This is similar to the effects of some hungers that affect the undead, causing them to devolve into mindless, feral animals driven by hunger - it may look the same.)

They are possessed by a constant undercurrent of rage, and when humiliated or frustrated they must keep a grip on their anger or slip into a state of violent killing rage not unlike that shown by barbarians in combat - their strength and endurance is greatly strengthened as they attempt to attack the subject of their ire.

They may actually find their sense of free will is innately weaker than that of regular mortals.

They are drawn to the sight of the dying and the dead, and take involuntary pleasure in the sight.

--

Bhaalspawn are also known to manifest various quirks and spell-like abilities (which they can cast as three times per hit dice/character levels a day. So a level 12 Bhaalspawn with "death knell" can cast it 36 times a day). Again; not every one of them manifests every ability, many will probably never have more than two, but powerful individuals may still manifest most of them.

They are able to boost their strength to impressive or even superhuman levels (depending on base strength) for anywhere between 1-20 minutes.

They are immune to all poisons and toxins.

They are resistant to being wounded, unless the wounds are caused by an object made of or plated in silver. Complete immunity to being harmed by unenchanted weapons is also a possibility for the most powerful individuals. (I've never been clear on what damage reduction looks like - I suppose either it's harder to break their skin, or else the wounds simply close up or at least heal up a bit automatically.)

They can cure moderate wounds like a divine spellcaster.

If they touch a dying creature they can drain the remaining life-force from them, killing them and temporarily strengthening themselves (as in physical strength and hit points, as well as boosting the power of their spells) Some may manifest the similar ability to drain the life force from a target by looking at them, stealing their vitality to heal themselves. The target doesn't need to be dying, and may be perfectly healthy

They are unaffected by any but the most extreme of temperatures, to the point where they're resistant to elemental damage of that kind (this could be cold or heat, or both). Some Bhaalspawn are also resistant to electricity and any magic cast on them.

They can strike mortal dread into nearby beings.

They can use divine energy to smite their foes - or they can maifest it as a 20ft area of darkness and tangible evil ("cold, cloying and greasy" to the senses) that damages non-evil beings within it.

They can create supernatural 15-20ft clouds of impenetrable blackness that extinguishes all sources of light, as per the darkness spell.

One Bhaalspawn manifested the (involuntary) ability to instinctually teleport to safety whenever he panicked - this is just speculation, but I would assume this works the same as the ability available to Bhaal's Deathstalker priests; they can teleport to the Throne of Blood in the Lower Planes, and from there teleport back into Toril at any location not protected by warding magic.

And, last but not least, Bhaalspawn are known to be able to transform into the Slayer when particularly favoured by their father. In one, exceptional, case a Bhaalspawn was known to manifest Bhaal's other avatar; the Ravager.

         What is the family? So deep runs the idea that the family is the exclusive place where people are safe, where people come from, where people are made, and where people belong, it doesn’t even feel like an idea anymore. Let us unpick it, then.          The family is the reason we are supposed to want to go to work, the reason we have to go to work, and the reason we can go to work. It is, at root, the name we use for the fact that care is privatized in our society. And because it feels synonymous with care, “family” is every civic-minded individual’s raison d’être par excellence: an ostensibly non-individualist creed and unselfish principle to which one voluntarily signs up without thinking about it. What alternative could there be? The economic assumption that behind every “breadwinner” there is a private someone (or someones) worth being exploited for, notably some kind of wife—that is, a person who is likely a breadwinner too—“freely” making sandwiches with the hard-won bread, or hiring someone else to do so, vacuuming up the crumbs, and refrigerating leftovers, such that more bread can be won tomorrow: this feels to many of us like a description of “human nature.”          Without the family, who or what would take responsibility for the lives of non-workers, including the ill, the young, and the elderly? This question is a bad one. We don’t hesitate to say that nonhuman animals are better off outside of zoos, even if alternative habitats for them are growing scarcer and scarcer and, moreover, they have become used to the abusive care of zoos. Similarly: transition out of the family will be tricky, yes, but the family is doing a bad job at care, and we all deserve better. The family is getting in the way of alternatives.          In part, the vertiginous question “what’s the alternative?” arises because it is not just the worker (and her work) that the family gives birth to every day, in theory. The family is also the legal assertion that a baby, a neonatal human, is the creation of the familial romantic dyad; and that this act of authorship in turn generates, for the authors, property rights in “their” progeny—parenthood—but also quasi-exclusive accountability for the child’s life. The near-total dependence of the young person on these guardians is portrayed not as the harsh lottery that it patently is, but rather as “natural,” not in need of social mitigation, and, furthermore, beautiful for all concerned. Children, it is proposed, benefit from having only one or two parents and, at best, a few other “secondary” caregivers. Parents, it is supposed, derive nothing so much as joy from the romance of this isolated intensity. Constant allusions to the hellworld of sheer exhaustion parents inhabit notwithstanding, their condition is sentimentalized to the nth degree: it is downright taboo to regret parenthood. All too seldom is parenthood identified as an absurdly unfair distribution of labor, and a despotic distribution of responsibility for and power over younger people. A distribution that could be changed.         Like a microcosm of the nation-state, the family incubates chauvinism and competition. Like a factory with a billion branches, it manufactures “individuals” with a cultural, ethnic, and binary gender identity; a class; and a racial consciousness. Like an infinitely renewable energy source, it performs free labor for the market. Like an “organic element of historical progress,” writes Anne McClintock in Imperial Leather, it worked for imperialism as an image of hierarchy-within-unity that grew “indispensable for legitimating exclusion and hierarchy” in general. For all these reasons, the family functions as capitalism’s base unit—in Mario Mieli’s phrase, “the cell of the social tissue.” It may be easier to imagine the end of capitalism, as I’ve riffed elsewhere, than the end of the family. But everyday utopian experiments do generate strands of an altogether different social tissue: micro-cultures which could be scaled up if the movement for a classless society took seriously the premise that households can be formed freely and run democratically; the principle that no one shall be deprived of food, shelter, or care because they don’t work.

Sophie Lewis, Abolish the Family

my favorite MTG "combos" are the ones that require a level 3 judge with a college-level understanding of probability to determine if they end the game or not. the poster child for this used to be the classic "infinite mana + Filigree Sages + Wirefly Hive + opponent controls a Leonin Elder" thought experiment, but the D&D set supplanted it with the combo of Delina, Wild Mage + Pixie Guide being right there in draft. like, people did this on accident, which is INFINITELY funnier

the "combo" is that if you target the Pixie with Delina's attack trigger, you have a roughly 17% chance of creating so many copies of Pixie that it's almost (but not quite!) impossible to get anything other than the 15-20 range on Delina's ability. you would think this is an infinite loop that ends in a draw, but because you can technically break out of the loop at any time (with vanishingly low and rapidly shrinking odds), you can't shortcut it and have to sit there in nondeterministically quasi-infinite D20-rolling purgatory until the sun explodes or a judge issues you a game loss for slow play, whichever comes first.

or at least that's what would have happened without the day 0 errata, lol

anyways, i was considering building a Zedruu EDH deck that includes Delina + Pixie + R&D's Secret Lair + Wirefly Hive et. al. with the goal of "winning" by forcing the table to argue over college-level probability and/or obscure rules interactions. what other "combos" can i run? Opalescene + Humility is an obvious autoinclude, but what about funnier stuff, like targeting Platinum Angel with Illicit Auction? much to consider...

Come quando ti trovi a piedi nudi a camminare tra le dune del deserto... ad un tratto, come per magia scorgi il mare...

... si apre così, all improvviso davanti a te: la bellezza di un azzurro...

... la bellezza di quell' azzurro, azzurro infinito... e quasi stenti a capire dove va a finire l orizzonte ed inizia il cielo.

Ti auguro la magia di un cielo e mare... così.

Azzurro così.

- Sara-

01.07.23

Like when you find yourself barefoot in the desert dunes... all of a sudden, as if by magic you see the sea... ... it suddenly opens up in front of you: the beauty of a blue...

... the beauty of that blue, infinite blue... and it's almost hard to understand where the horizon ends and the sky begins.

I wish you the magic of a sky and sea... like this.

Blue like this.

-Sara-

Buon Sabato Sera 🥂⭒

@el-shab-hussein @quasi-normalcy @karpad @huzni @redstarovermoundcity this story is buckwild and has soo much stuff I don't even know which paragraphs to quote here. I do find this kinda funny

His journey towards Judaism was long. "It was not a sudden light from heaven that came down." When he was a teenager he met a girl who was interested in Judaism, and he read Mein Kampf. "I was embarrassed when I read it," he says. "How could people be so stupid as to elect a person who was writing things like this? It's awful." He blinks at me. "I don't think you can really understand how awful it is if you don't read it in German. I put it away. But I keep it here." Did he ever finish it? He scowls at me for the first and only time. "No."

the idea that mein kampf is uniquely trash in the original german is infinitely funny to me

Angels, demons, language, and culture: part 3

(Part 1 and Part 2 for those interested.)

"I play an ineffable game of my own devising. For everyone else, it’s like playing poker in a pitch dark room with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules and who smiles all the time." --God, Good Omens

This is just. Creepy and awful and so, so wrong for a quasi-omnipotent being. Ugh. Good Omens!God is an abject horror.

But if you're one of the poker players at that table, what do you do? You try to figure out the rules and mark the cards, naturally. Especially if leaving the table only happens via swan dives into burning sulphur, or getting kicked out of the only home you've known into a hostile desert with lions in it. While pregnant, yet.

So, I did a Bat Mitzvah back in the day, as it happens, and my Torah portion was from Deuteronomy. Which is, as I am hardly the first to notice, chockablock full of rules. Good Omens definitely leveraged (rather than inventing) the idea of trying to figure out Her rules and codify them in writing! Note, however, that the Bible per Word of Gaiman is a human thing. Codifying divine rules? Therefore also a human thing, minus I suppose the Ten Commandments -- though I can certainly envision a Good Omens in which Moses was, um, not exactly telling the truth about the source of the tablets; we only really have his word for it.

Angels and demons, who have a low opinion of literacy and just generally don't seem to be very good at it, never did this. We see that Aziraphale, Before the Beginning, has intuitively figured a few rules out: don't question Her, don't comment on (much less critique) Her decisions or designs, don't ever ever piss Her off. The Starmaker hasn't gotten this far, tragically, and our Crowley remains confused throughout the show as to what rule he can possibly have broken that earned him the identity-changing torture She inflicted on him.

Fundamentally, Crowley doesn't want to -- perhaps can't -- believe that She is capricious and cruel. He thinks there are rules, "don't test to destruction" being a major one. We know he's wrong, however. She straight-up told us so, in the quote at the top of this post! Aziraphale, too, knows, though he buries this knowledge as deep under the words "ineffable" and "Great Plan" (there is no Great Plan, She told us so, it's all a game to Her) as he possibly can -- I think as a coping mechanism -- and does his best to avoid drawing Her attention again after the Sword Incident.

But we see angelic and demonic confusion about the rules of Her game again and again. It's at the root of Aziraphale's successful Great Plan/Ineffable Plan hairsplitting at the airbase. It's why Aziraphale has to (with Muriel's help) dig through the contract for Job, and why Gabriel and Michael can't even be arsed to, even revising Job's reward on the fly. They're guessing! They're guessing about the rules based on what they've seen of Her caprices! She likes sevens!

It's how Crowley rules-lawyers the demons into letting the Whickber Street tradespeople go. If there are actual rules of Heaven-Hell engagement -- and there may not be! Crowley's pulled plausible-sounding lies out of his arse before! -- I'll bet you anything you like practically nobody in Heaven or Hell has actually read them. (My top picks for rules-of-engagement authors, if those rules actually do exist, would be Satan and the Metatron.)

And it's why Uriel has to ask the Metatron, as unsure and afraid as Uriel has ever looked in the entire series, whether the remaining archangels have done something wrong. The Metatron's response refuses to clarify what's at issue -- he, like Her, won't tell anybody the rules. If I'm feeling extremely cynical, I think She and he refuse to explain the rules because they're more powerful if there's no rulebook that rank-and-file angels can use to contest them with.

It makes me so sad. The legions of Heaven would assuredly have followed Her rules, if they only knew what those rules were! Fanart of the just-fallen Starmaker routinely breaks my susceptible heart, not least because the commonest expressions on his face are agony, sorrow -- and confusion. It's just all so damn unfair.

Same with Job, and Peter Davison sells it beautifully. Poor Job assumes he must have broken Her rules somehow, and blames himself for not even knowing how. That's totally on Her, though! If Her rules aren't clear enough for righteous Job to be able to trust his own righteousness under a horrible test, that's Her fault, not his!

The closest that Heaven and Hell -- and humanity, for that matter -- have to Her rules is prophecy. I probably don't need to spill many pixels on how vague and confusing prophecy is, how often it's counterfeited, and how pointless it is to try to live your life by (or trying to avoid) true prophecies; prophecies will invariably gotcha you. Good Omens is hardly the first work of literature to point this out. (Try the story of Oedipus. That's a good one. Yeesh. Or, if we want to be all Biblical about it, Moses again.) Agnes Nutter may well be the only genuinely well-meaning prophet in the entire history of prophets! Even so, her book is incredibly bewildering! Generations of her descendants try to figure it out, and mostly they fail -- look at the annotations we see on Anathema's index cards.

So when @thundercrackfic asks me what Aziraphale gets out of books, my first (though not only) answer is "rules for living." Not just rules for living as safely as possible around Her, though -- rules for living among humans, too. I headcanon (and posited in "Endgame") that Aziraphale has been collecting human etiquette manuals as long as humans have been writing etiquette manuals. Codified rules, like the ones in Deuteronomy, likely help him feel more secure.

I think this is also why Muriel characterizes books as portable people. Muriel is trying their sweet adorable best to figure out the Earth rules on the fly, since nobody Upstairs told them (or indeed knows, the Metatron aside) what those rules are. They do have Aziraphale to help them along -- Aziraphale is so much better than Upstairs! he doesn't condescend or insult, he just gently instructs -- but Aziraphale can't teach full-time, he has other things on his plate. So Muriel the scrivener, one of the few angels who would have a clue about literacy due to the nature of their job, gravitates to books and discovers that they too can be gentle and compassionate teachers.

The final question outstanding is how well Aziraphale understands and assimilates human books, especially fiction, especially especially non-literal figures of speech. It's an excellent and complicated question, and I don't think I have The Answer to it, but I'll see what I can do.

I rewatched The Social Network for its 13th anniversary. One of my favorite films of all time, and one that convinced me of Armie's extraordinary acting skills. The film is a masterpiece on every level, one of the greatest biopics of the 21st century. In my opinion also David Fincher's magnum opus, together with Se7en, if one could have more than 1. With an inimitable performance of the KILLER soundtrack.

And Armie Hammer was in it!!!

A few review quotes about Armie's performance:

* Hammer and Garfield make the glue that hold it together.

* Although the stand out award I'd like to give to Mr. Armie Hammer. His role is just Tailor fit, literally as his jacket. From his statuesque as a rower all through out as a dapper at Harvard, he is just believable in that field. He is after after all the Winklevoss BrotherS.

* Armie hammer is a best combination of grace and conceit how he played wealthy twins.

* David Fincher's cool, stylish direction and great performances by Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Armie Hammer make The Social Network a worthwhile watch.

* Now that some of the dust has settled, there’s one name that keeps coming up as a comic scene-stealer and awards dark horse: Armie Hammer, who plays entitled twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. In the movie, a Winklevoss twin declares, “I’m six-foot-five, 220 pounds, and there’s two of me,” but since there’s only one of Hammer, that meant the actor was often acting opposite a body double whose face he’d be digitally grafted onto in postproduction (and when you consider the notorious amount of takes that an exacting director like David Fincher requires, Hammer’s nimble pair of performances is all the more impressive). 

* My favorite description of the twins in the film comes from Alison Willmore's review, in which she writes, "Hammer is infinitely amusing in his dual role, exuding privilege and looking like something grown in a vat of J. Crew catalogs and Aryan race propaganda."

* No one could have played Sean Parker like Justin Timberlake, and Armie Hammer playing the Winklevoss twins is fantastic too.

* The quasi-pair of performances generated Hammer Oscar buzz at the time, and he has been a marquee mainstay ever since, appearing in films like J. Edgar (2011), The Lone Ranger (2013), The Birth of a Nation (2016), Call Me By Your Name (2017), Cars 3 (2017), Sorry to Bother You (2018), and On the Basis of Sex (2018).

* What makes Armie Hammer’s  acting performance outstanding is his use of specific body language with each of the two characters.

The different  way he moves, his vocal cadences , and facial expressions makes it so easy to believe that these were two different people on the screen. 

When Armie played Cameron Winklevoss, he played him more uptight and more formal. The formality also came out  in his dialogue. His diction was more precise.

When he played Tyler  Winklevoss,  he leaned back and was more laid back. His speech pattern was more fluid and he even used curse words as Tyler’s character.

I think that Armie’s performance was so great that I would easily see him being a contender for best supporting actor at the next Academy Awards ceremony.

This scene is epic! Great visual metaphor emphasised by this music piece.

#'In The Hall of the Mountain King' #Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross #Henley rowing scene

Can we normalize Seph calling Jenova mommy though? I mean 😍🔥💀😳

Low-key would make Sephiroth infinitely more pathetic and creepy imo. And a good way to showcase the subtle childlike aspects of his character. I mean after Nibelheim there is a symbolic regression. He ceases to be wholly himself and symbolically becomes someone's son instead. There's a lot of quasi-child-parent analysis you could add there.

.... something tells me that you didn't mean it that way though 🤣

do you have any life advice

ok here goes. follow your curiosity and learn as much as you can about everything--if you find yourself wondering about, like, the history of stove tops while youre cooking your meal, the internets at your fingertips. this ones difficult: try not to get mad at yourself for having emotions, whatever they are allow yourself to feel them, but avoid leaving them uninterrogated and never let that untangled version of them guide your course of action or paint your self-image. remember that you cant actually influence the world with your thoughts alone--for better and for worse, your mind is entirely private. for every thing you know theres an infinite amount of things you dont know, so its okay or even highly advised to sometimes just admit you dont understand or dont have enough info to participate in the conversation. dont be tempted to fall for some evopsych quasi-religious 'everything is simple and perfectly designed, existentialism is pointless, we already have all the answers, stop being ungrateful' shit, i see young people parrot that garbage all the time, its so smug and vapid and fosters deep incuriosity and a lack of compassion. try to understand that while it may seem like one's mind is its own universe, that's because the universe is in fact incomparably larger and so insanely far beyond the scope and capacity of a human mind, and rather than feel satisfied with own complexity, expand the impossibly narrow slice of it all that you get to comprehend. in a similar vein, some things can simultaneously be huge and overwhelming, and marvelously insignificant and tiny--and there is no judgment in which one it appears to be from your perspective. you are not ontologically incapable of harm, and no one is ontologically incapable of being harmed. the agreed upon definition of classical music and what is considered music theory are all eurocentric and white and beyond imperfect so jot that down and let go of that as somes sort of underlying unerring baseline. you cant just log into social media and successfully define what art is without leaving the majority of it out, you dont know nearly enough about the world and art to be able to define something thats been evading definition for as long as its existed. its chill man relax. nuclear families are a scam. thinness-as-default is a scam. money is a scam. being cis is a scam. country borders are a scam. a lot of things are a scam and even if its impossible to opt out just being aware theyre a scam makes things more bearable. be nice to your friends and be nice to yourself. dont spend money on gacha games. play pokemon white on nintendo ds.