#EV myths

[codexofforbiddenknowledge]

Are electric vehicles truly "zero-emission" when their power comes from coal, gas, or nuclear plants? ⚡🔋

[diana-andraste]

[shushmal]

Happy turkey day to those that celebrate, I’m thinking about Steve who has absent, borderline neglectful parents but THAT’S ACTUALLY OKAY it’s actually perfect on holidays because Steve’s pretty extroverted and probably has a large group of friends extending from close to “we’re on the same basketball team and Steve will high five your face if you don’t get your hand up fast enough”

so really all he’s gotta do it bat those puppy eyes at some unsuspecting mom and BAM invited to holiday dinner. He probably does rounds, and thankfully he has teenage boy metabolism because he probably manages to fit 7 different moms’ dinner in in one day

And sure, after he graduates he’s not sure if it’s good manners to show up at old teammates’ doorsteps. BUT THEN Mrs. Henderson looks at him mid-November and totally claims him for the day where she’s hosting her brother’s family too. Except Dustin brags to Lucas and Lucas gets jealous so Steve then also has to show up at the Sinclair’s in the evening. Max is already there so Steve drives her home that night with leftovers. (Mike is very secretly butthurt about all of this and is really nasty to Nancy the weeks of thanksgiving and Christmas.)

(Robin’s family doesn’t DO thanksgiving but instead goes camping for the week. Robin hates this, and they wouldn’t let Steve join them even though he had his own tent so she hates it MORE. She tries to mutiny but her mom gives her these sad teary eyes and cries about Robin growing up too fast and robin’s fate is sealed. She and Steve instead have their own tradition of movies and junk food the weekend after, so Robin gets reintroduced real food again. So while Buckley’s aren’t on the thanksgiving rotation, Robin gets special Christmas privileges and Steve stays over on Christmas Eve.)

So by the time Eddie is in the picture, Steve already has standing expectations for his presence that’s not just a drive-by plate cleaning, and he’s kinda sad, he and Wayne don’t usually do much and Wayne has to work usually. But actually how dare he be sad, because Steve’s like “🤨 you’re coming too, stupid” and he Eddie and max go to each house like trick or treaters but for turkey.

Then Steve gets close with Eddie’s friends and they have to start splitting holidays like children of divorce.

One time Steve gets it in his head to hold friends giving the week before. He never does it again.

[sarnai4]

Ares: I just found out there's a holiday called Halloween.

Athena: Yes, it was originally called All Hallow's Eve.

Ares: Did you know it involves children being given sweet snacks?

Athena: Yes again. I'm planning on giving them candy as a reward for listening to my history lesson on the holiday.

Ares (yawns dramatically): The prize should be for not dying from boredom.

Athena (frowning): Well, what are you going to do? Scare them all to death?

Ares: No, I'm going to put all the sweet stuff in a pile in the middle of them. Whoever can fight their way to the snacks is the one who gets to eat.

Athena:...I actually like that plan.

Ares: Want to tag along?

Athena: I'll bring the weapons; you bring the candy.

(And thus, a new tradition was spawned from a war god high-five)

[greekmythcomix]

Silly Playmobil Olympian fun (on Twitter)

(I’ll add ALT tomorrow when I’m not so tired)

[thechibilitwick]

i don't remebebr how to drawwwww i hate artblock

[ananke-xiii]

The natural order is absent fathers.

I’ve been trying to understand what the heck “natural order” means in Supernatural until I’ve finally realized I was giving it too much thought than necessary because it was much simpler than what I had in mind: the natural order in Supernatural is…. Supernatural from s1 to s3.

I can explain.

First of all, the natural order is an “arrangement”:

EVE: You misunderstand me. I never wanted that. Not at first. I liked our arrangement. SAM: What arrangement? EVE: The natural order. My children turned a few of you, you hunted a few of them. I was happy.

Eve turns up in s6 after s4-5 madness and she’s unhappy: the arrangement has been broken. This leads me to think that the key-factor in keeping the natural order alive and well is honoring deals. When Crowley starts crossing boundaries in s6 Eve steps up to put him back in his place. However, she doesn’t realize who her real enemy is until it was too late for her. As always, the enemy of the natural order, the breaker of deals, the one you cannot expect to keep his word, the snake in the grass is our very Castiel.

Billie shares Eve's storyline. She’s also unhappy about the discombobulation of the natural order and she takes it on the Winchesters and then later on specifically on Dean. What's more, with Billie we see that uncontrolled resurrections without deals are a real problem for her. She fails to realize who her mortal enemy is twice: once when she’s a reaper and Castiel stabs her in the back and in so doing he’s breaking a stupid deal; the second time when they die together in s15. This time, though, they die because Cas is honoring a deal, but he’s doing it on his own terms, not waiting around wondering what true happiness is but taking matter into his own hands.  Although I have things to say about how happiness is framed in “Despair”, I’ve got to admit that, in its own convoluted way, it was a badass move.

Interestingly, when it comes to Chuck we don’t see the same respect and passion for the natural order that Eve and Billie seem to share. This is also where I think the writers sort of dropped the ball. In s11 it was established that Chuck had created nature and then nature “created on its own”. Here he seems to respect nature and calls it “divine”. In “The Trap”, however, he says the following things:

SAM: It'll be better. It'll be better. It'll be better. If we win – When we win – When we beat you, I will make it better! CHUCK: You can't, Sam. You, Sam Winchester, have been playing fast and loose with the laws of nature and magic for a very long time – you and your brother. Always breaking the rules. And that's what I love about you, Sam. It's so heroic. It's so...Promethean. But there's still so much about the fabric of the universe that you don't know... that you can't know. 'Cause you're only humans. But I'm God. Think about what I showed you. Look beyond the Mark, beyond you and Dean fanging out – heartbreaking, but not the headline news. SAM: The monsters. CHUCK: The monsters. CHUCK: Without me, it's a law of nature – dark forces prevail, monsters rule, and you, your brother, and everyone you love will die. Can you really live with that?

First of all I find it fascinating that Chuck, of all people, likes Sam and Dean precisely because they break the rules (but then he can't stand Castiel, looool, much to think about). He’s eventually angry at them because they don’t follow his script but he’s ultimately invested in these characters to such a degree that he calls them “Promethean”. Now, lol because didn’t Prometheus die, like, in s8 or something? But also: Prometheus is the hero who got impaled on the mountains of Caucasus because he defied Zeus (*cough* like *cough* Dean Winchester*cough*). So whether Chuck likes their "heroism" or not he only likes it up to a certain point (and this certain point is when their actions reveal his secret desires for self-destruction but that's for another day). For sure he wickedly enjoys when he vicariously breaks the rules and the natural order arrangement via Sam and Dean's actions. Not so much when it's Castiel who inserts himself into the fabrics of his story.

Secondly, “without me, it’s a law of nature”. What does that mean? I promised I wasn’t gonna go too philosophical so I went for the simpler route. If we leave aside the “dark forces” and “monsters rule” shit, what Chuck is saying is basically that without him the natural order will prevail. Which should be a good thing, right? Right?! Which also means that he himself is as much of a disruptor of the natural order as Castiel (oh-oh). Just like Billie, Chuck likes breaking the rules only when he or one of this favorite characters break them. Unlike Castiel and the Winchesters, however, he’s on a different plane of knowledge (therefore power) because there’s so much more about the fabrics of the universe that they can’t know but he can. After all, he is God and he (according to SPN) has created nature itself. So what’s Chuck’s signature on this "divine" masterpiece? What are the foundations of the natural order? I think the answer can be found in “Free to be You and Me”:

DEAN: The hell did you do? CASTIEL: I don't know. I just looked her in the eyes and told her it wasn't her fault that her father Gene ran off. It was because he hated his job at the post office. DEAN: Oh, no, man. CASTIEL: What? DEAN: This whole industry runs on absent fathers. It's, it's the natural order.

That’s it, that’s the natural order according to Supernatural: it’s about absent fathers. It’s on their absence that “this whole industry” runs. Which not so incidentally is also the premise of Supernatural and, like, the whole plot of the first two seasons (and beyond but I'm talking "Dad's on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home for a few days" type of absent father, that is John Winchester).

So if my understanding is correct, it’s accurate to say that Billie won in the finale because the natural order was re-established: nobody is resurrected, they all eventually die and Sam and Dean go on a hunt guided by their absent father’s journal, something we haven’t seen in ages, on a case that John himself had worked on something like maybe 20 years prior? Which is what they did in the first seasons of the show. They even meet a vampire from S1 who was there to signal precisely that: they're back in the past, only not in a positive way because it's a fictional past. A past with a mask.

Yes, the natural order is just the past through rose-colored glasses, a “let’s go back to the fun times of season 1-3 before all that angels-and-god-non-sense”. Which is technically possible but practically anachronistic. These two men are not in their 20s anymore, they're fully grown adults who've been through... let's just say a lot. It's a glorification of youth and a "forever young"ism that I find quite worrying. Moreover, with these premises Castiel couldn’t ever come back because, together with Chuck, he was one of the main disturbers of the natural order, aka the way Supernatural was before S4. Chuck's mistake was precisely inserting himself into the narrative because, in so doing, The Father is no longer absent while he must stay so according to the rule of the natural order. That's the arrangement. Chuck and Castiel's narrative fates are thus weirdly knotted together because the arrangement excludes deal-breakers/father-figures like them. Ironically, the ultimate absent father is not God but John Winchester, period. His absence is Order. It's the Law, aka what gives meaning to reality.

The implications of the finale are problematic because why on earth would you end your series like that? It's not even a positive "full-cycle" moment, it's just sad and uncanny in the freudian sense of the word. I know and understand that Dabb was working on his retelling so that we could all go back to the beginning but what is the point to go back without growth? Or to go back and then die? Or to go back and just leave? To me it doesn't make sense from a storytelling pov. I repeat, why would the people involved in this series decide to go down that road I cannot know. I suspect that they took the emotional, fake-happy ending road because Covid had destroyed the world as we know it so maybe they opted for an ending that would comfort people ("comfort" in the sense that's familiar to people, it follows an established path that's recognizable and doesn't destabilize them, which, for the record, I think they failed to do). Or maybe the intent was precisely the uncanny, that feeling of something disturbing and unsettling in what should be familiar and comfortable for us. As in: the story ends like it began, nothing has really changed and everything can only get resolved in the after-life. True happiness is not in the having, it's in just being (dead in Heaven with your brother). I don't know, two things can be true at the same time, but I'm not gonna lie I smell traditionalism, conservatism and heroism as a cult of death that's very Ur-fascist.

Not that anybody has asked for this but, unlike Eve and Billie, I’m actually quite happy because I’ve managed to find an answer to one of my own questions.

[luciferfalls]

paired poetry by @luciferfalls and https://ijuinenzan.tumblr.com/

i am a marred thing

an aberrant scar

slithering across

the most pure, perfect

holy

flesh

yet unnoticed by

any watchful eye

or protector

and what a shame

my estranged father’s perfect creation

formed around the rib

that now protects

her precious heart

and i know her man

as he is called

cares for her well

but it is not yet written

that thou shalt not covet

thy neighbor’s wife

and if it had been

i would not have cared anyway

for she was made in god’s image

and touching her

was better

than experiencing

divinity

i am a serpent

i am a fallen angel

i cannot give her

many things she needs

i cannot give her

what he can

but i can give her

the most precious thing i have.

this old, scarred heart

this bruised apple

i know that once she takes

that first bite

i will lose her forever

but the gift i am giving her

will live on in her children

and i will guard them

from the imperfect

dangerous world

outside this garden

like they are

my own

She

Wound around me

Scales rough against my unblemished skin

An apple

A sacred apple, sat in her perfect palm

"You cannot come back from knowing, my love

You can never be the same"

I'd never seen something like this

Wrinkled, with a dented bruise.

The Fruit of the garden was perfect, even after worms had broken its skin.

This was different, strange and beautiful.

It evoked a feeling in me, that bade me to look. Look closer, observe the green in its hue, rub the skin where it had loosened.

She broke the apple in her hands,

Holding out a half

The meat within glistened like starlight, dripping with juice.

I felt something I had never felt before, as the gleaming drop struck my finger

Curiosity.

She smiled, which I had seen her do so many times before.

But it was not perfect, like then. There was something more, I did not

Know

What.

She took my hand, lifted it up. I could smell the autumnal scent, as sharp as burnt orange behind the eyes.

She brought the drop to my lips, and I drank down its sweetness. Greed made me suckle, then reach for my half.

Immediately, I had been struck with a need. I needed to see the skin peel and rot, to watch the life ebb and flow within it. To watch its color change, and a fresh biome take it over.

I needed.

To Know.

It was frightening, and sudden, and awful, and beautiful. I looked up at her, and saw in her eyes everything she had gifted me. The vastness of everything I did not know was as infinite as the God that had put us here.

And I saw something else, something new. Tears rolled down her cheeks, while a smile tugged her mouth. She held me tighter, and I returned the embrace with both arms. I had never wept before, but I did now. Pain locked my throat.

With knowing, came a deeper love for her, for the man I had been made from, and for all the things God had gifted us.

With knowing, came sorrow

For she had given me something dangerous

And with knowing, I saw that there would be a cost.

— https://ijuinenzan.tumblr.com/

[generouskittentidalwave]

A Spooky Mistake

Odysseus is the type to take Telemachus to a haunted house for fun, laugh a little when his son gets scared, before then getting scared himself by the random zombie before proceeding to right hook said zombie and run off with Telemachus.

[uncle-cucky]

The first woman(s)

Weird teen gurlz

[noctilionoidea]

Happy new years! Originally I was planning to make a more dramatic piece leaning into other aspects and everything but yeah fuck that shit. Here’s Dionysos and Ariadne having a good time. That’s what I hope next year is. A good time. Hopefully also a time of liberation. Please remember that simply continuing to exist as yourself happily is enough

[justjudethoughts]

I think it's absolutely wild that there is an argument about whether Prometheus is more of a Christ figure or a Luciferian figure, and what makes it even more wild is that both arguments are actually compelling. It's like "here are extremely opposite interpretations, also you're not gonna have a clue which claim is better."

For what it's worth, I'm a "Prometheus was a pseudo-Christ figure" girly. I simply do not care what John Milton said. He was wrong about everything else, anyway XD

[scientistswishingwell]

If all I had to do was not eat the apple,

I too, would have failed

It is warm enough the air smells like apples

And I can imagine her, Eden-bound, barefoot,

Climbing the tree, shaking the branches

My love is nearby and what I want,

More than anything is to pick the largest

Or the smallest or the strangest looking

Or the sweetest or the reddest apple

And show it off and split it between us

There is sugar on my lips

I cannot imagine, perhaps because of her,

Perhaps in spite of the world,

Perhaps in spite of myself.

An apple tree I would not wish to pick from

A wall or a fence or a rule that would keep me away

If I were a child I would climb the trees and race between the rows

Instead I walk hand-in-hand with the most important person in the world

We talk about cakes and pies and cider but the apples will sit on our table,

Dwindling one by one by one by one

She walked away from Eden, with her love,

And in this moment I too can imagine

My whole world slipping away in exchange

For apple picking

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Right from the beginning the bible teaches that God has never had any trust or 'faith' in humanity. If he did, he would have created humans with knowledge and trusted us to make good decisions. Instead he put knowledge out of our reach and made it a crime to seek it. Why have faith in something that has obviously never had faith in you?"

Why do you worship a god who openly despises its own creations?