#and with that i conclude my dissertation on:

[queenlua]

When Tibarn calls for the bird tribes to unite as one nation in Serenes, Reyson is skeptical, and Naesala refuses outright. But when rising ocean levels threaten to devour the islands of both Phoenicis and Kilvas, none of them have much of a choice in the matter.

This fic is now finished at ~138k words!

If any of these pithy/snarky summaries sound good to you...

"the bird tribes should've had a Hague, probably"

"Naesala has a bad time & then Reyson has a bad time & then they make each other worse <3"

"Leanne gets a fucking gun knife"

...there's a decent chance you'll enjoy this story; take a peek :)

(Also: peep the latest chapters for some beautiful new @gloamvonhrym art <3333 THANK YOU FOR ALL THE BIRDPEOPLE VISUAL SPLENDOR)

[thefinestbrandofeefa]

clocked this one earlier than i did asexuality.. i think what im feeling is.. executive dysfunction… WHO PROMOTED THAT IDIOT AMIRITE???

recently its started to take me 2-3 business days to complete an action that would take 10 minutes and even then, sometimes there is delays in delivery and the package gets shipped elsewhere.. its a mess

[eretzyisrael]

Every week we are reading about professions that are pushing out Zionist Jews from their fields.

In the field of international law:

...The professor saw a trend among the topics Israeli and Jewish colleagues were pushed to pursue. Those who continued their academic work in international law either wrote about Palestinians as victims or Israel’s violations of humanitarian international law. “Israelis would either write about IP law or business law, or about how Israel is being awful, violating human rights and all of that.”

This stood out because the professor noticed their colleagues from Latin America and China weren’t expected to work on topics that criticize their home countries as a condition for receiving faculty support. Yet when it came to Israelis, it was “clear to us this is what we need to deliver on.”

In the professor’s discussions with the senior faculty, especially the progressive liberal Jewish faculty, it came through clearly that support for Israeli students was conditioned on being the right type of Israeli, “and there were fellowships and scholarships and grants available to students who are willing to do that. In Hebrew we say that a person knows which side of the bread is buttered, right? So it’s pretty clear what pays off is to distance yourself from a mainstream Israeli kind of discourse.”

Understanding who holds the power and influences decisions is important in any profession, the law included. “You need to have the support and the mentors to advance in your career,” the professor explained, “and for that, you look for cues on what should I do, how do I make these people like me. Why would you bother, why would you take the risk of saying something that is controversial or put yourself in the position of protecting Israel or speaking on behalf of Israel when there is only a price to pay for that?”

“For example, there is an institute that gives out scholarships to doctoral students who are writing dissertations about Israel. I was advised not to take their money because then it’s going to be on my CV and people will interpret that as if I don’t have the right kind of politics. So even when there are economic incentives to write different kinds of scholarship,” under the current academic incentives, the professor concludes, scholarships and point-interventions will not work “because it’s more about selection and authority and networks and connections and less about economic incentives.”

Mental health professionals:

The anti-Zionist blacklist is the most extreme example of an anti-Israel wave that has swept the mental health field since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and the resulting war in Gaza, which has seen the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians. More than a dozen Jewish therapists from across the country who spoke to Jewish Insider described a profession ostensibly rooted in compassion, understanding and sensitivity that has too often dropped those values when it comes to Jewish and Israeli providers and clients.

At best, these therapists say their field has been willing to turn a blind eye to the antisemitism that they think is too rampant to avoid. At worst, they worry the mental health profession is becoming inhospitable to Jewish practitioners whose support for Israel puts them outside the prevailing progressive views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Authors:

Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing — where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression — is particularly alarming.

It feels like history is repeating itself.

Jews founded the Jews' Hospital in New York in 1855, now known as Mount Sinai Hospital, partially as a response to the need for a place that Jews could be treated without feeling like outsiders, as every other hospital at the time was aligned with various Christian groups. It followed the founding in 1850 of the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati. When Mount Moriah Hospital Mount Moriah Hospital opened in New York in 1908, the Forward reported that Jews "can open the door and enter as if to your own home without a racing heart and without fear."

Brandeis University was founded in 1948 "at a time when Jews and other ethnic and racial minorities, and women, faced discrimination in higher education."

Jews who were facing discrimination formed professional associations and schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, for physicians, scientists, and trades, like the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York and the Kehillah which attempted to be an umbrella of professional and educational associations in New York (and that the antisemite Henry Ford railed against.)

It appears that it is time for Jews in the professions where they are being blacklisted must start to form Jewish professional organizations, educational networks and institutions anew, where Jews can network and publish as they want without having to please the "progressive" crowds.

But the arc of history is going backwards, and this is only a Band-Aid. The problem is with America and the world itself, and Jews cannot solve this problem alone - the dangers of the progressive bigots are a threat to the free world and that needs to be addressed at the macro level.

[gunsandspaceships]

Many degrees of Doctor Stark

It is widely known that 616 Tony has several doctorates. The number varies from 3 to 7, but it doesn't really matter whether he is 300 or 700% Doctor. He is one. And he doesn’t use his title 99.999% of the time.

Ok, but what about the MCU?

It is never mentioned whether Tony has a PhD or even a master's degree. Kinda weird. Both the absence of mentions and lack of degrees, since Tony is so smart and productive.

Let’s check, maybe he actually has some.

Here we have a file from a deleted scene from The Avengers (2012):

As we can see, the work is sloppy – there are inaccuracies in his hair color (it’s not black, it’s brown), and the fact that he speaks French was not included. Can we rely on this paper? Let’s not 100%, but we can still use things that don't contradict the movies.

The fact that he received his BS in Engineering from MIT does not contradict this, so we can mark it as valid. He started in 1984 when he was 14 years old and graduated in 1987 when he was 17.

We see no further education in the file. But we know something that this file doesn’t. We watched the movies.

Remember, in Civil War at 0:13:25, in the scene where Tony sees his parents for the last time, Maria tells Howard, “Be nice, dear, he’s been studying abroad”. Tony is 21 here, this is December 16, 1991. Looks like he is on winter break.

But wait… Didn’t he graduate in 1987 and stop then? Well, Maria tells us he continued.

Between 17 and 21 there are 4 years. What could he have done in these 4 years? A lot, right? He is smart and productive, we know that. A master’s degree usually takes 2 years. Tony could earn it in 1. 1 or 2, we still have 2-3 years that we need to fill with some kind of studying. I doubt he just went back and got another bachelor's or master's. That said, he was working on his PhD.

We don't know where. “Abroad” is a very broad concept. Maybe he went to Europe to study at Oxford? We do not know. Perhaps he stayed at MIT and just went somewhere else for the fall semester. We do not know. But he did go somewhere for (most probably) a PhD.

The question is: did he finish it?

Well, his parents died in Dec 1991, and we know from the first Iron Man (0:04:50) that Stane was the interim president of Stark Industries from that date until 1992. Most likely, Tony became CEO before his birthday, that is, May 29, which corresponds to the stated age of 21. He had a few months between.

We don’t know where he was in his degree at that time. But we know he is smart and productive. He doesn’t need 4 years to write a dissertation.

So, there are 2 options:

1) He did not complete his doctorate and devoted himself entirely to the company;

2) He completed it in the few months he had and then took over the company.

Here’s the evidence for the second option:

“Confusing matters more, a recently deleted LinkedIn profile for Tony Stark indicated he received doctorates in engineering physics and artificial intelligence.”

Source: https://alum.mit.edu/slice/who-iron-man

Given all the information and analysis we have, as well as a little logic, we can conclude that Tony has a Ph.D. Even two. He had time to do them. Why doesn't he use his title? Well, maybe for the same reason 616 Tony doesn’t? He doesn’t usually brag. Check out this post if you have any doubts about my statement.

Here are some additional hints:

He gave lectures at scientific conferences (IM1 and IM3 - Bern 1999).

His scientific expertise was not limited to engineering and his company's affairs (all the movies, but specifically I can point you to IM3– the scene with Maya Hansen and her Extremis-enhanced plants in Bern).

“He must have graduated after 1990, because the '90 Brass rat was the first one with the skyline on the edge.” MIT alumni commentary https://alum.mit.edu/slice/who-iron-man

Conclusion (actual): call him Doctor Stark, guys, he deserves it. Despite his modesty about his scientific achievements, Dr Stark has a couple of master's degrees and at least two PhD degrees in the MCU - in engineering physics and artificial intelligence.

[atticsandwich]

SPOILERS FOR THE NEWER LESSONS IN NIGHTBRINGER - careful fellow followers of this blog <3

i love the current lessons so much actually because there is honestly so much underlying angst / potential for it! i doubt the devs will go that deeply into that direction and i don’t think it would translate well within the game anyway but just imagine mc getting more and more concerned about their own powers that also shape their relationship with everyone else… sure everyone loves mc but dia/barb and solomon have entire realms to protect and therefore wish to have mc on their side if push comes to shove (which has been a recurring topic in nb)… mc getting increasingly insecure / afraid that they’ll be seen as a tool / weapon first instead of a friend… i mean especially after being used as bait??? solomon showing his shady side again??? AAAH!!! THINK OF ALL THE POSSIBILITIES!!!

Yes yes YESSSS

also i love that we're given the option to be mad that the people mc loves are being used as "bait" to draw out their power. obey me has been very passive about how mc responds to situations sometimes that them being mad is a great thing!!

re: angst, yeah, i get you, they haven't really hit the mark on really leaning into angst yet, and although i doubt they'll hit this one, i still have high hopes about how it's going to conclude or how they'll handle the situation (the fact that they got teleported to babel + michael's texts to simeon makes me think raphael is FINALLY going to burst and let out all the emotions he's been bottling for literal millenia)

SPEAKING OF RAPHAEL. again, i love that tlhe's the side character focus on a season with the underlying fact of simeon's transformation to a demon - his reactions and avoidance of the situation, even though he's already made aware of it by michael, coupled with the fact that he still has hidden guilt over what happened during the celestial war....... MANNNNN IM SOO EXCITED FOR RAPHAEL DEVELOPMENT AND EXPOSITION..... hopefully this means mephisto and thirteen will also have their own time in the spotlight soon regarding glimpses of their backstories and developing realtionship with the cast (and mc in particular)

ON A SIDE NOTE. anyone else catch how barb reacts after solomon and mc chooses to keep the reason for mc's growing power a secret??? yeahhhhh he defo knows. dude raised solomon and is the demon of time, of course he'd know. knowing him, he probably just wants to see how it plays out, considering he's powerful enough to mitigate any real catastrophe from actually happening (hellooo he was literally contingency plan number 1 from the sf final) love the thought of him just going. heh. this'll be fun to watch :>

ANYWAYSSSSSS im gonna stop yapping now thank u for asking anon and for anyone reading my thoughts. granted i know a lot of these are very tip of the iceberg but i would rather not do a full dissertation on tumblr. knock knock tumblr staff can u add voice notes. no relation to me wanting to yap whatsoever................) (<- says the guy who made and posted an essay about celestial realm parallels to irl catholicism and power structure. WHATEVER!!!!!)

[olderthannetfic]

The main problem that I have with Youtubers who attempt to approach media analysis and fandom through theory and academia is that the vast majority aren't academics. Just being in undergrad isn't actually enough, contrary to the thoughts of many. Reading a Wikipedia article and reiterating what one may find in some Google, even Google Scholar, searches. Ideally, these would be topics approached by people involved in academia as a profession, people with doctoral degrees, who can discuss complex topics in a way that is easily understood by the masses. "What is the negotiation between gender and sex in BL?" "How does CMBYN articulate/complicate hierarchal roles within the gay novel?" "Could SnK express an alternative reading of the formerly isolated Japan?" These are complicated questions they attempt to answer in their video essays when they seldom ever understand the theories they employ.

Yes, I understand this can sound elitist, but as a Black afab person who is currently in a doctoral program for literature, there aren't "easy" answers to any of the questions they attempt to pose, and many Youtubers who primarily make long-form video essays lack the life experience and expertise to sufficiently discuss anything. They're usually too set in their thoughts to answer or explore the broader implications of their claims. Defending a dissertation forces you to do this. Forming a committee of experts in various fields and convincing them to aid you in the development of your dissertation forces you to do this. Being in academic and cordial communication with your peers from all over the world in your field forces you to do this. It's not easy to constantly intake new information from various eras and nations (depending on your topic), meld this information into a coherent essay, and continually make edits as you learn new information, thus changing your outlook on things. Also: it's really petty of me, but it's also incredibly annoying to grade poorly researched undergrad essays who, after some prompting in office hours, say they got these ideas on books, movies, and shows from breadtubers like Somerton, SZ, FD Signifier, or hbomberguy. Cue: me going to watch their videos and realizing they have no idea what they're talking about 88% of the time in terms of theory and application of said theory. Even the ones who frame themselves on being educators in real life, like Signifier, lack any nuance, depth, or media literacy to make a compelling argument if you know even the slightest bit of information. On the bright side, I now know why I've encountered several students with ideologies that are basically conservatism with a veneer of progressivism, or "conservatism in a queer hat."

This concludes my long-winded way of saying "Don't turn to Youtubers for media analysis. You're better off just reading articles by people who have to actually know what they're talking about. The majority of Youtubers (especially the breadtubers) don't have the bandwidth to discuss anything more complex than an episode of Blue's Clues."

--

I mostly agree, but I'd point to a slightly different problem. I'm hesitant to say that the PhD itself is the deciding factor, but I do think a lot of video essayists are insufficiently prepared.

I'm a big fan of Folding Ideas who does have some formal schooling in film, but I don't think it's that education per se that makes him great. He sets himself apart from other video essayists by actually doing his research and having an in-depth approach to his subjects. He doesn't resort to clickbait, and—here's the key—he often takes months or even a year to work on something.

Honestly, I think that's a big part of it: the hoops most youtubers who want to make a living at it have to jump through involve a lot of clickbait and pandering and a fast production schedule. They don't involve reputable peer review except by the court of shriek-y public opinion on twitter.

They'd like to present themselves as documentary filmmaking (which is essentially what Folding Ideas' longer videos are), but they don't actually live up to any of the usual standards of that either.

I think it can be elitist to say that someone needs to have certain letters after their name, yes, but what really strikes me about your average youtube media analysis type and the fanbase is that they want shortcuts.

Exploring the whole history of the gay novel so that you have enough background to talk about CMBYN means reading quite a few novels. Even if you decide to throw out all past scholarly opinion on the topic (which you shouldn't), if you're going to have a meaningful personal theory, you need to have read a lot of novels first. How can you hope to be the person providing the neat overview of the whole genre if you haven't familiarized yourself widely with said genre, and not just through a summary by someone else? That amount of reading doesn't happen overnight.

The trite, surface-level media analysis online is often from people who want to be hailed as great intellectuals but who aren't willing to put in the years it takes to do all the background reading and to develop their skills in argumentation, writing, etc.

Grad school is a convenient and probably faster way to go about all that, but I think you could do it outside of a formal framework... But you would need to actually do it.

I think it's driven by a bunch of people who were The Smart One in grade school and never learned how to work hard on long-term projects instead of pushing through in a sprint. They're used to relying on being the smartest to cut corners and do things before they get bored, only they probably aren't the smartest anymore anyway, and they mistake being smart at one thing for being smart at all things.

There's a real lack of respect for the entire concept of expertise.

[jpeg-dot-jpeg]

i want to ask about all of those SO BADLY lmao. but i'm most intrigued by Homo et Draconia 👀

ngl, i kinda completely forgot i had this wip going until this tag game lol

Homo et Draconia is a Tim Drake-centric fic (shocker /s) in a kemonomimi type world where people have a secondary species. Tim is, of course, a dragon, and develops typical dragon hoarding tendencies, except the thing he hoards is people. It's a low-key high-key stalker!Tim character study, but the fun part about writing it is that most of the exposition is provided by in-universe sources, like blog updates, articles in scientific journals, elementary school writing assignments, etc. Here's a little snippet!

It is important to acknowledge the extent of profiling within the psychiatric community in regards to second species. It is tempting to attribute certain behaviors to an individual’s latent non-homo sapien DNA, but even behaviors that are commonly associated with a certain second species can have causes completely unrelated to genetics. However, it is still essential for individuals to be aware of any health risks that may be associated with their particular second species. There is a delicate balance to be struck between predisposition and socialization. For example, in popular media and general public opinion, Homo et Draconia are heavily associated with behaviors of kleptomania, hoarding, and anti-sociability, but according to a study done by the Haynes-Davis Clinic, less than 13% of individuals with draconian DNA are convicted of any type of theft between the ages of 18 and 65. There is insufficient data to conclude whether social isolation is more the result of personal preference or discrimination. In fact, the condition draconian-humans are most often diagnosed with is OCD. An estimated 75-80% will suffer from OCD-related symptoms in their lifetime. Dr. Teagan Blackmore theorizes that this could be related to primal instincts that have outlived the situations they evolved for. Where kleptomania and hoarding were once methods of survival in times of resource scarcity, modern day draconian-humans with all base needs met might find these urges persisting to the detriment of the individual. Obsessive thoughts, feelings of anxiety, and repetitive compulsions are experienced by the large majority of this population, often focused in one specific area that varies depending on the individual. Unfortunately, Homo et Draconia is a species on the verge of extinction. Following the 15th and 16th century Dragon Genocides, the population has remained small and continues to steadily decrease. This scarcity of subjects and hesitance of draconian-humans to risk public exposure makes Homo et Draconia difficult to study. Nonetheless, further research is imperative if we are to fully understand the scope of psychiatric conditions among other Reptilia. The Intersection of Second Species and Mental Illness in Chordata Reptilia Chapter 2 of a dissertation by Lee Nguyen

thank you so much @ladytauria and @krizariel for taking an interest in my smorgasbord of wips <3

[jeannereames]

Hii😄, could you talk about Alexander and hefestion's skills? Whether militarily or diplomatically, I heard that Hephaestion was better at politics, diplomacy and logistics, and that in some ways his and Alexander's skills complemented each other.

I'm always a tad amused when my own research is quoted back to me as a bit of general knowledge. 😂 That's not at all a slam, btw! I'm quite pleased it's escaped out of academia to become part-and-parcel of what people know about Hephaistion. Means I made an impact on rehabbing his career.

But yes, those things are true. I wrote about them first back in 1998, in my dissertation, then published it as part of an academic book chapter in 2010, titled "The Cult of Hephaistion" in Responses to Oliver Stone's Alexander: Film, History, and Cultural Studies, P. Cartledge and F. Greenland, eds. Complete with tables! Follow the link to read it.

I am now, some years later, returning to Hephaistion's career with the current monograph I'm working on. I've altered my opinion about some things (primarily details), and modified my take, but it remains largely the same. I've even convinced a number of my colleagues, so Hephaistion as logistics officer now appears in most summaries about him. Now, if I can just convince them he wasn't either incompetent or the quarrelsome bastard he's often made out to be.

He did have diplomatic assignments too, although he's hardly the only one. Erigyios, Perdikkas, Ptolemy...they were also used for diplomatic purposes. Plutarch (in a long contrast with Krateros) says ATG employed Hephaistion for business with the "barbarians" and Krateros for business with Greeks and Macedonians, because Hephaistion agreed with ATG's "Persianizing" whereas Krateros kept his traditional ways. From Plutarch, that's not necessarily a compliment for Hephaistion. It's also not stated so anywhere else beyond Plutarch. I have some theories I'll be discussing in the book.

IF we can take the disproportionate assignment of logistical/diplomatic assignments as any indicator, it would seem that Hephaistion was more skilled in that realm than in combat command. That isn't to say he was no good at combat command, mind (I've had some read it so, as if "not as good" = "bad" because middle ground apparently isn't permitted).

It also doesn't mean he wasn't a decent fighter. He probably was, as he seems to have been assigned to lead the agema (Royal) unit of the Hypaspists, e.g., the king's personal guard in battle. According to earlier accounts of the origin of this unit, Philip created them to cut across regional divisions, picking the largest men and best fighters. The agema was, if Waldemar Heckel is correct, drawn specifically from the sons of Companions (Hetairoi). That would back up Curtius' description of him as "larger in physique" than Alexander. (That's what the Latin actually says, not simply "taller.") But keep in mind, the best fighters are only occasionally equally good at command. Those are two different skills.

Finally, his choice as Chiliarch may also underscore some of what we've already seen in his assignments. But it's this appointment that leads some scholars to conclude that he rose due to Alexander's favoritism, not actual ability on his part. That, however, seems to me to stem from several (erroneous) assumptions.

IME, competent people surround themselves with other competent people, at least for any length of time. Flatters may be tolerated, but they're not continually advanced. It's dictators who surround themselves with yes-people (and not all of them; they also need competent individuals). Alexander may have been called a "tyrant" by the Greeks, but he wasn't. He was a king. The Greeks/Athenians/Spartans/Others were playing politics. Macedonian kings had to court their courtiers. If Alexander had been manifestly unfair in his appointments, his men would have rebelled against those officers. They rebelled...but not for that reason. They wanted to go home.

For those who regard Alexander (and Philip) as tyrannical, and/or the enemy of (Greek) freedom, and/or megalomaniacs, and lucky rather than competent, then sure. It would follow that ATG would surround himself with asslickers. But if one thinks he was actually good at what he did (which is a different thing from approving of conquest, mind), and a halfway decent politician--then no, it doesn't follow that his top officers were yes-men. Curtius bluntly tells us that Hephaistion was freer than anyone to "upbraid" the king. Doesn't sound like a yes-man to me.

I think Hephaistion was appointed as Chiliarch for two reasons: Alexander trusted him AND he could do the job. Too bad he didn't live long enough for us to see what he might have done with it.

[iam93percentstardust]

so for the last four years, my pi has been complaining about a set of figures that she thinks are a bad representation of the data i'm trying to present. i can't provide a picture because it's unpublished data, but it looks kind of like this but silver and with little colored squiggles coming out of it.

she doesn't like the squiggles. she wants them to be balls instead.

and for the last four years, every time she's brought it up, i've told her "i don't know how to do that" and she's either told me to look it up in our past group papers, none of which contained anything like what she wanted, or passed me off to one of my other group members, none of whom knew what it was that our pi wanted or how to do that. so the figures haven't gotten done.

a couple weeks ago, she got huffy about them again (and of course only "remembered" that she'd asked for them in the past, not that i don't know how to do them). once again, i told her i didn't know how to do them, and then she bitched me out about not telling her that i didn't know how to do them which whatever, i'm used to her selective memory at this point. so after bitching me out, she passed me off to another group member yet again to teach me how to do them. turns out, once i described them, that this group member didn't know how to do them either but, unlike any of the others, she was willing to help me figure it out.

so, in sequence, here's what we discovered: 1. none of the programs that our pi has told me could do the balls over the last four years are actually capable of doing the balls. 2. none of the papers that our pi has told me to refer back to that were supposedly published by our group that would have examples of what she was looking for were published until three months ago so unless she sent me the drafts (and she hadn't) i was never going to know what they looked like. 3. the only software that is capable of doing the balls isn't compatible with a mac system (the only computers in the lab). in fact, it only runs on a linux system, which i could probably learn if i had more time but my dissertation needs to be sent off to my committee in two days. 4. it is possible to manually draw circles on the protein (it's just time consuming) but every paper that our pi has published using the actual software has had, at max, 7 balls on the protein. 5. i would need between 80-175 balls on my protein. look at that picture. imagine 175 circles on it. imagine how crowded that would be.

so after attempting to manually draw circles on the protein and getting through about 5 of them, we both realized that our pi was going to absolutely hate the representation and make me redo it anyway.

and that's where this saga concludes: after four years of listening to my pi complain about this figure, i've decided that fuck it, i'm not doing that, i'm submitting my dissertation as is, and she can get over it.

it's not like she's read my dissertation anyway.

[yamayuandadu]

I don't know how well versed in Canaanite or Phoenician stuff, but if so, what's the deal with Tanit? Did she originate in Ashtart, or was a separate goddess? I keep finding a lot of conflicting information on her, and the fact that she's associated with supposed child-sacrifice means a lot of the stuff I find on her has an air of sensationalism

I won’t claim it’s a major interest (recall that the only strictly Canaanite deity whose wiki page I wrote is Baalat Gebal) but I think I can help. However, bear in mind there might be significant gaps in my knowledge esp. regarding the various colonies across the Ibernian peninsula, Sardinia etc.

Saying anything firm about Tanit is not exactly easy since virtually all attestations of her are brief dedicatory inscriptions, theophoric names, toponyms (ex. Aqtanit, Aitanit, Kfar Tanit) and symbolic representations. No hymns, no myths, no theological speculation, not even much in the way of sources hinting at how her cult was organized. Such a body of evidence doesn’t let one do much beyond concluding she certainly was an actively worshiped deity.

There are multiple proposals regarding her name but as far as I am aware most if not all come from authors whose methods leave a lot to be desired, so I’ll leave that out. It’s really not possible to say much beyond the fact she was clearly regarded as the tutelary goddess of Carthage. There is also evidence for some degree of worship in Sidon from the sixth century BCE onward, Kition from the fifth (references to a group of devotees, theophoric names) and in the Mount Lebanon range (a single Carthaginian inscription mentions “Tanit in Lebanon”; see Spencer L. Allen, The Splintered Divine, p. 243-244 and 302). The only connection between Tanit and another deity we can be sure about is that with Baal Hammon, presumably her spouse. It’s best reflected in her epithet “Face of Baal”, found almost exclusively in sources from Carthage, the main exception being two attestations from Constantine in Algeria. What exactly this title entails is difficult to tell, though (The Splintered Divine, p. 242-243). An interesting Neo-Punic inscription pairs Tanit with Kronos, which would indicate the author was familiar with the interpretatio graeca of Baal Hammon, which goes back at least to Sophocles’ times (The Splintered Divine, p. 57).

Out of necessity the rest of the response will largely focus on explaining who Tanit certainly wasn’t. 

For starters, she definitely was not Ashtart in any shape or form. Aren M. Wilson-Wright in Athtart. The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age (the book isn’t open access, but you can find the dissertation it was based on here) points out that authors seeking to prove they’re related treat data from different locations and time periods as fully interchangeable, without taking into account deities change across time (p. 7). 

Ultimately the only real argument comes from a text discovered during the excavations in Sarepta dated to the sixth century BCE. It contains the compound name “Tanit-Astarte” (The Splintered Divine, p. 241). The problem is that the two were clearly viewed as distinct in Carthage, as evidenced by roughly contemporary sources. (The Splintered Divine, p. 244). 

Allen notes we might be dealing with a situation like Tanit being worshiped alongside Astarte and the double name designating her as an “associate” of sorts, or that similarly as in the case of Neo-Assyrian compound theonyms the double name indicates a form of Tanit with Astarte’s attributes, like how “Ashur-Enlil” was a designation of Ashur as the king of the gods and not an indication he was merged with Enlil (The Splintered Divine, p. 241).

Even with Ashtart out of the picture, the dreadful specter of interchangeability of goddesses refuses to leave the room, though. There’s an even more nonsensical proposal, namely that Tanit is, somehow, Asherah. We have Frank Moore Cross of Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic to blame for this one. As outlined by Steve A. Wiggins in A Reassessment of Asherah With Further Considerations of the Goddess (p. 131), subsequent publications making the same claim just rely on Cross, with no new material added. The equation is utterly baseless since it depends on assigning symbols to “Asherah” (really to Ugaritic Athirat) based on the pure vibes school of scholarship. Alleged leonine connections rest entirely on the deeply puzzling equation with the sparsely attested Qudshu (or however we’re romanizing her name this week), conclusively proven to be an Egyptian invention (see Christiane Zivie Coche, Foreign Deities in Egypt, pages 4-5) and thus irrelevant to this discussion.

It’s worth noting the only reason why forced attempts are made every now and then is that since Q. appears once - on a now lost stela, lol - with Anat and Ashtart - she CLEARLY must be a northern goddess of equal standing which somehow means Athirat (hardly attested outside Ugarit, and even then, Shapash, Nikkal, Pidray, the collective Kotharat are all equally if not better attested…). So, in other words: the Tanit link here was built on multiple levels of unsound foundations.

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Hope for the present, not the future

Reading the previous post on this blog by Christina, I can’t help but feel… a lot of déja vu, actually. I don’t mean to be blasé at all, because everything that Christina alludes to and talks about in that article is concretely, depressingly relatable. From this side of the Atlantic, I’ve been grimly avoiding looking too deeply into what “Project 2025” entails, because honestly? If it happens, it will happen and I won’t be able to do anything even if I know every up-to-date detail about it, so why borrow the trouble? I have enough in my own life (and country’s politics) already, but being geographically situated next to America is really uncomfortable, in that their problems are almost simultaneously ours, and if they’re not, the entangled political-economic-sociocultural mess makes it that way. And yet my reaction to news of upheaval, disruption, and impending doom is to say “okay” and then go back to my little solarpunk ways of living and being. Given all of the strife that bombards my consciousness on a daily basis, why am I still writing hopelessly naïve articles about compassion and optimism et cetera on the internet? It’s a serious question, not really a rhetorical one. I wrote this article to see if I could come up with an answer; I think I recognized a few different factors, but I’m curious to know what you think after reading through the article. Let me know in the comments.

My father is quite sure that Trump is going to annex Canada,* given our reservoirs of freshwater, and the fact that history is rhyming pretty hard right now in his view as the child of immigrants who left their home after the ravages of World War 2. That one started with Germany annexing Austria, and look how that went. He’s not alone in that opinion, either. However, and perhaps this is the anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants speaking, wars have happened before, a lot, and are happening now, a lot, and people living and dying violently happens pretty much every day; it might just be our turn next. Sucks to suck, but that just seems to be the way of the world, and living on this planet means running the risk of The Bad Thing Happening. Hm, maybe it’s post-car-accident trauma or whatever, but random happenings (not even malice aforethought!) ruins peoples’ lives every day and that’s the way of the world.

Maybe I’m more positive because my family (both sides; my Oma and Opa lived through the war as well before coming to Canada) lived through an apocalypse** that was a political violent upheaval and war in Europe; they were poor farmers already, they had nothing when the politicians decided that the war had ended, and they still managed to make a pretty good life for themselves and their families in the aftermath. So I’ve seen that people can live through these things, and their lives do get better. Eventually. You have to scrimp and save and deal with racist bullshit and work menial jobs for a good long while, but I am programmed to believe that you make it there in the end, because I am living proof of it. So I might be biased, and too focused on that end result.

Or it might be because I recently spent six years studying post-apocalyptic fiction and have read through a myriad of imagined ends … as well as the imagined worlds that come after those ends. Grant you, a lot of those worlds are pretty terrible places to exist! But they do exist. And there are people (the protagonists that we follow) who are working to make it a better place. Kind of like solarpunks are now, actually. To tl;dr the takeaway of the fourth chapter of my dissertation in a very blasé way, horrible death is already a foregone conclusion in the post-disaster/-apocalypse scenarios, so the best thing to do is to make life as good as possible for the people around you for as long as you can to the best of your abilities until you expire.

Looking at the news, it’s easy to conclude that the world is full of doom and gloom and awfulness. Just following the reports coming out of Gaza and the Congo alone makes it pretty hard to imagine humanity acting worse than we already are. But it’s not actually all of humanity committing war crimes and exploiting children and adults with literal slave labour. There happens to be a lot of people who think that behaviour is abhorrent, and are organizing against the inhumane treatment of others (including earth others); there are, in fact, many communities of caring individuals who will stand up for human rights. I don’t think it’s incendiary to say “Hm, maybe you shouldn’t hurt someone else even if they’ve hurt you.” I feel like this is something we try to teach our children and bake into our narratives of who is actually heroic and who isn’t.

The people in charge might be okay with the cost of their political agenda being human suffering, but it helps to keep in mind that, in many cases, they’re a pretty small percentage of a pretty large amount of people. It’s true that in a lot of the so-called democracies we have in the Global North right now, there is a lot of support for terrible people with terrible ideas - but it is also good to keep in mind that the political systems we operate in are, each of them, abysmal. As the saying goes, “democracy is the worst political system, aside from all the other ones.” Jokes aside, reading about the stats of First Past The Post elections, voter suppression, and more can be at the same time disheartening as it is encouraging: there are good people in the world, but a lot of their votes do not count for much … if they can vote at all.

Despite that, I think it is important to participate in one’s political system, no matter where they are located. Especially at the municipal level - that is where I find that some of the most progressive, exciting work is being done. In my opinion, if you aren’t especially thrilled about government, it’s not really very smart to disengage from it, because involved or not, you’ll still fall victim to those who manipulate the political system and you will not know how to fight back. Sun-Tzu says to “know thy enemy” and I’m not suggesting you embark on an entire political science degree, but if you have the capacity for it, participating in direct democracy, attending council meetings, volunteering with a local union or political organization will give you the skills you need to understand and become familiar with the policies affecting your life … and also give you the tools with which to change things. This piece (article and full poem “To Throw a Wrench in the Blood Machine”) by Kyle Tran Myhre discusses voting as just one tool in a toolkit in more detail, in a very nuanced although US-politics centric way, and the line “But those who fight monsters have taught me: short-term and long-term thinking are not mutually exclusive” is very relatable. Solarpunk is about both-and, not either/or.

People survive dark and dangerous times by organizing, by reaching out to each other, by enacting practices of care. Maybe caring for you takes the form of making a poster for your local tenants’ union and NOT going to the rally. Maybe it’s watering the little tree next to your bus stop in a heat wave. Maybe it’s organizing a neighbourhood potluck, or just showing up to the one that someone else organized, signalling solidarity with your presence. I have found that being a body that is present is often such a boon to an organizer, regardless of whether or not your participation goes beyond that.

This essay is rather wander-y and I hope not too Pollyannaish. But I’ve had the sinking feeling that life was only ever going to get worse since I was 23; that’s over a decade that I’ve had to get used to this expectation of future ruin psychically, so perhaps that’s coming out. I don’t really expect things to get better, and I don’t know that I ever have. The only thing that really interrupted my internal narrative of cynicism and doomerism was solarpunk! And I still have to dose myself up with it, deliberately choose to reframe my mindset, whenever I start to spiral. Because I do, a lot, when I think about futures. There’s a reason I’m medicated - there’s nothing off with my brain chemistry, though; instead, everything’s off with the world. I marvel that more people are not clinically depressed or diagnosed with anxiety given the state of things.

As far as I can tell, my hope is thus a very present one: it is sparked by other humans who get together in groups to make life better for other people right now. Life can be terrible, miserable, and dark. The universe can seem vast and uncaring. But somewhere there’s a soup kitchen, and a coalition of people writing their government officials for more affordable housing supports, and they’re caring in this moment about the things that are also happening in this moment and the people who live around them now, and they are not deciding not to act because of a calculation based on a possible future outcome (although certainly that is part of their assessment of the situation, it is not the deciding factor). So I might not be part of those groups, but just knowing that they exist and are working towards justice but also being just now and kind now and acting with compassion now… maybe sometimes that’s what I need to hold on to in order to keep the dark at bay.

I want to write one more paragraph that talks about why then, for me, solarpunk is more oriented towards the now, not to the future. I think I needed to start with a solarpunk that dreamed of possible futures so that I could actually begin to see how I could work in the now, and solarpunk futurism gives me a goal. But personally, solarpunk presents is where it’s at.

—-

*I find it darkly funny that our next prime minister is almost guaranteed to be the alt-right-courting Conservative politician Pierre Poilievre, who has on many occasions criticized our current PM for weakening / destroying / doing bad things to our relationship with America (economic/political/etc). If Trump gets in, Polievre will have to deal with him first hand - and he will either welcome foreign troops with open arms (as many Canadians wish they were Americans, oddly enough) or bumble his way into being bravely run over by tanks.

**I remember interviewing my Beppe in grade three about her childhood experience of WWII and she talked about evacuating down roads where there were dead and bloated cows and human bodies (mostly soldiers) torn apart on the side of the road. Before the end of the war they were eating tulip bulbs and potato peelings in the basement of their home while Nazi troops occupied the main floor. Very apocalyptic. I figured everyone’s grandparents had stories like this, though, and by the time I was fourteen I was so sick of hearing about World War Two, because our history curriculum seemed kind of obsessed. I got it at home AND at school. Ugh, apocalypse, whatever, let me get back to reading my Animorphs plz.

[somethingclevermahogony]

Talk about your writing and editing process?

(For the ask game) :)

Oof, I could give you my ideal process or I could give you what my actual process was/is. I'll go with the actual thing.

Start planning out the world, fill a bunch of word documents and journals with seemingly random bits of lore and doodles. Do this while you should be paying attention in your very expensive university classes

Create a script and numeric system. Scribble inane nonsense on the whiteboards during club meetings.

Lose the journals where said system was kept

Start writing in fits and bursts

Wait for an excuse to spend days and hours feverishly writing...say a pandemic?

Write one or two chapters every night, read those chapters to your partner while they're tired and just want to get some sleep. Marvel that they still agreed to marry you

Finish your first manuscript, it's 120,000 words long, maybe a bit long for your first, but that's okay.

Get a wee bit intoxicated and tell your groomsmen about your WIP at your bachelor party.

At the urging of your partner don't touch the manuscript for 3 months so you can start editing with a fresh mind.

Research literary agents even though that is months (years) away.

Meanwhile keep coming up with more lore. Remake the language and calendar. You're not even done with book 1, start plotting out sequels and prequels

Start a tumblr

Start editing! You plan just to do basic stuff first, looking for plot holes and gaps, spelling errors

Oh god, who let me write? This is ninety percent typos

"Editing" turns into just rewriting the entire thing.

Repeatedly add and remove the same character.

Finish a year later. You think you've been cutting out unnecessary stuff but somehow you've gone from 120,000 words to 230,000 words. How?

Move to another country, everything gets turned upside down, you forget most of your journals.

University and DnD takes up most of your time so you don't get back to the manuscript. Most of your writing related to your WIP is the stuff you post about on Tumblr

Finally get back to the manuscript!

Conclude that you just can't fit everything you want into one reasonably sized book, split into three.

Congrats you just gave yourself more work, start writing book 1 (luckily a lot of that can come from part one of the old book)

You're supposed to be writing your master's dissertation but you want to work on WIP. Procrastinate on both. Tell yourself you'll start really working on your dissertation tomorrow (I will, I swear this time)

Stay up until 2:30am responding to Tumblr asks

Profit?

[saviourkingslut]

me: has to hand in an introduction and dissertation outline in a month or so, should be handing in written pieces by now

me actually: almost in tears trying to figure out how to explain to my supervisor that ive been doing more source research as they asked to do to figure out my methodology and that i have now concluded that the project she hastily wrote with another professor and which i applied to nonetheless remains as structurally unsound as it was when i first mentioned this 5 months ago

[thatinsufferablenerd]

Post Spooky Update

The weather is slowly cooling off here finally. Spooky Season is over and another year has gone by without reading any scary books or movies like I say I’m gonna do every year. I’ve been enjoying all the festive content in my different social media feeds instead. Horror book recs from BookTube, video essays that analyze aspects of the horror genre, discussions of films or anime that set the mood. I probably should be more embarrassed of how much YouTube I watch, but seeing as I’m a housewife with a passion for learning and too many interests to succinctly sum up, I’m not going to lose too much sleep over it. 

I wish I did have some mood appropriate reads to tell you about. I love books, I love storytelling, I love getting lost in a good book, but my ability to actually get into–let alone through–books has atrophied so much I’ve concluded it’s a Me ProblemTM. When I was young, in elementary and middle school, I could read a book a day. I DID for a long time, exchanging the one I just finished for something new during lunch. And then I got older. I got into movies and writing, I had a job, then I had longer hours, then I had kids that I stayed home with. The library was too far to walk to, we didn’t have money to buy books, and I was too tired to read them anyway. It was easier to focus on honing my craft of writing because it was simpler to hit the backspace button when a toddler smacked my keyboard than risk a library book.

And I regret that. The act of consuming story and pure, distilled joy I get from them is a core part of who I am. If I didn’t love reading, I would never have developed a love for writing. If I didn’t love the stories and characters I read in books, I would never have discovered the love I have for analyzing and discussing them. I would never have learned about the relationship between literature and culture, that I love learning about historical context, the art of interpretation, or linguistics, things like that. Ever since I stopped reading piles of books or trade paperbacks of comics from the library, I’ve said to myself every few months “I miss reading”, “I want to get back into reading”. 

It’s not like I haven’t read anything since I was nineteen. Of course I have. I read all five books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series in the span of a year. I read monthly releases of DC comics for years, picked up pulpy romance novels ‘just as a palate cleanser!’, I tried starting book clubs with friends, promises of ‘I won’t buy or borrow any books until I read the ones I have’. And then I’d get through a few chapters of whatever I picked up only to put it down for the last time. I’ve made some progress! I read A Song of Achilles and Circe by Madelline Miller, Skyward by Brandon Sanderson, I accidentally read the sequel to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? In the last year. And I’ve gotten further in a lot of the books I’ve picked up than before. I’ve been reading manga more than anything the last few years. My Hero Academia, Spy x Family, My Dress-up Darling, Dungeon Meshi, Demon Slayer, One Piece, all stories I’ve enjoyed and have a lot to say about! I re-read the last six volumes of Demon Slayer a few weeks ago and wrote an entire comment section dissertation about it, the latest installment in a series that serves as the quiet void I shout into.

The first step for me was probably accepting that I’m never going to be able to read like I did in middle school. That’s okay, right? I might not have a JOB, but I am a grown-up with grown-up things to do. And it’s not like I’ve been sitting on my ass the whole time. I’ve learned so much, like how to actually form opinions, how to interpret text, how to analyze properly, how to do research, how to really write, among so many other things. Things I had to teach myself. I know, they say ‘the best writers are also prolific readers’. I believe that, I really do. I would never claim that I’m some genius writer and better than people who have gone to school for this or are so well-read that it improves their prose by default. What I am saying is that…I want to get there. I miss reading. 

So, I set a small goal for myself. There are so many books out there that I want to read. And sure, my little local library has a limited catalog, and Libby has at least two weeks’ waits on everything, and I can’t afford to buy books brand new, but we can only work with what we have, not what we don’t. I’ve decided to read one contemporary book, one classic, and one (ish) manga a month. Sure, there are going to be some blurred lines here, but I think we’re all mature enough to handle that. I’m going to define ‘classics’ as anything more than a century old. Slaughterhouse Five is newer than that but it is taught as a classic and on my TBR, so maybe it will count as a classic for that month. Who knows? We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. And if the manga is long, say, more than three hundred chapters, then I might split it into two months. 

With that being said, my picks for November are: A Hero of France by Alan Furst, Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf, and for the manga, Bleach.

My local library had a book sale recently. I bought a hundred and thirty books for eighty-five dollars in two trips. Not all of them are novels! I’m very proud of the memoirs and other non-fiction books I got. But that should keep me occupied for a good while yet. Not to mention the books I already have. That Furst novel is one of the ones I picked up last year at the book sale. It’s historical fiction about an agent in the French Resistance. I like historical fiction, I think it’s a versatile genre for both readers and writers. I read about half of a book called Lion’s Blood that was alternate US History last year that I’m gonna have to go back to because I STILL think about it. Anyway, that Furst novel. I’m about halfway through and I’m going to finish it. I’m invested enough to see it through, and I’m enjoying the experience. When I finish it and have had some time to collect my thoughts, you’ll be hearing them. 

While at that book sale, my almost nine-year-old became infatuated with a book. He liked the cover and title so much that he wanted me to buy it for him. I told him, “Buddy, this book would be a tough read for a grown-up.” He said he would figure it out, that he would ask for help when he needed it. The book was a dollar, so I bought it. I can’t say I’ve ever read Clive Cussler, but if I can help him understand it, I can be persuaded to read dry historical fiction. I know enough about WWII to explain what’s going on to him. It’s not on my list to get done by the end of November, but it is a high priority read. 

I picked Beowulf (and this translation) specifically because A) I know how influential Beowulf is on western storytelling, B) I’m a fan of Tolkien as a writer as well as his love of and gift for languages, C) I watched Monstrum’s episode on Grendel’s Mother and the Cardinal West YouTube documentary on Tolkien in the last few months, both of which I enjoyed a lot, and finally D) I’m a fan of Dr. Chase from The Best of Fantasy. My friend was kind enough to surprise me with a shiny new copy. It’s probably going to be a difficult read for me. I plan on taking notes and going slow to really digest it. I’m also trying to talk my mom into a buddy read, but we’ll see how the cookie actually crumbles with that one. 

Now, for how I landed on Bleach. I watched the entirety of Naruto and Shippuden (yes, even the filler) back in 2020, 2021, and then binged One Piece in 2023 into the early part of this year. So, of course, the insufferable nerd in me said ‘I want to be able to say I’ve seen the Big Three’. So I watched the anime. I wasn’t that impressed with it. Yes, certain characters stayed in my brain, yes I LOVE the Thousand Year Blood War (I’m currently behind), but it didn’t really hit me like Naruto and One Piece did. I thought the passion of the fandom might get me more into it. I tried art, lore videos, discussion, analysis, and that did help! But Bleach just…kinda fell by the wayside for me. A lot of fans say the anime isn’t as good as the manga, but it’s a long series. I didn’t have the time or energy to commit, especially when I had other series I was actually into to follow. I do follow One Piece, Spy x Family, and My Dress-up Darling on release. I followed MHA for more than three years week to week, only binging the last hundred or so chapters last month after its conclusion. 

And then AJ dropped his video titled ‘The Hollow Melancholy of Bleach’. It brings up some of the feelings I had watching the Fullbringer Arc and the Thousand Year Blood War and expresses something the anime just…didn’t capture for me. But that video and Geoff Thew from Mother’s Basement’s video on Bleach finally sold me. It took me a couple weeks, according to the notes I’ve been taking I started on October fourteenth. 

The manga is fantastic. I tried for thirty chapters a day and haven’t been as consistent as I’d like, but I’m in the two-sixties now. The art is beautiful, the character writing is great, the fights are intense, the vibes immaculate and the emotions are SO deep, so complex and resonant. I am so glad I jumped in, and I’m going to continue to take notes as I go. 

Reading isn’t the only thing I do, obviously. My first love will always be writing. I took a bit of a break cough-BookTube-cough, but picking it back up is always a joy. I’ll probably be spending some time in front of my white board in the near future working out some world building details that were not super relevant till now. I watched Jake over at Nerd Level Rising talk to Christopher Ruocchio and was sent into a PANIC over idiolects and regional dialect features, which I’ve been doing all along, just not enough? I guess? I looked everything over and did some light edits, took some notes to make things more consistent. Culture is a complex web, all interconnected and inseparable from the individual parts. Building them is hard work, a job that never seems to end, even if the document of notes is for me, not the hypothetical reader. 

You could say that I was too heavily influenced by long form stories with extended casts, because even though I’m closing in on a hundred and seventy thousand words, I’m in part two of…five? Maybe? In epic fantasy, there are so many moving parts to keep track of at any given moment aside from the nuts and bolts of prose and pacing. I worry all the time that everything I have is trash, and even if it isn’t, it would never get picked up by a trad publisher and I won’t be able to afford self-publishing. I’ve had some other sets of eyes on my prologue as alpha readers. Positive, encouraging feedback that I’m grateful for! It’s not the same thing as having someone who’s familiar with the story, who knows where my head is at, where I’m going. I don’t write to publish, I do it because I love it. But I’ve been writing for twenty years, and actively working to get better at it for fifteen of them. There’s just nothing to show for it. Everything I’ve finished has ended up in an old computer’s recycle bin or in a literal paper shredder, with abandoned works in progress along the way. As terrifying as it is to expose yourself to the light, it’s impossible to soak in the warmth of sunlight in the dark. 

I’m going back to the grindstone when I’m done here. I won’t give up. 

Other than all the YouTube distractions and trying to rightfully earn the title of bibliophile, I’ve been trying to watch shows again. Just a few things. I watched Kaguya-sama: Love is War and loved it, enough to put the manga on my TBR. I finally got around to watching Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End with the same result. I watched Dungeon Meshi twice, read the manga front to back. What a story! I’ve been meaning to write an essay on it, but I can’t imagine having anything to say that hasn’t already been said. I watched Mob Psycho 100 and can’t express enough how much it resonated with me. For the first time, I watched Over the Garden Wall. The kerfluffle on Twitter over it being removed and restored to Hulu recently had me digging that up. Quality Culture did a great essay on that series last year which I highly recommend. My friends have been obsessed with the new Interview With the Vampire series, enough to read the books, so I watched three episodes of season one and liked it a lot. I’ll get around to it. I watched Steven Universe: Future, which I’ve been wanting to for a while. We watched the main series with our kids and enjoyed it, and I thought the sequel series built on the themes and story well.

And like everyone else in the anime community right now, I’m watching Dandadan. It’s GREAT. The animation, the sound design and OST, the character writing, the action, all of it is just stunning. It’s funny and got a lot of heart to it. Momo and Okarun are so cute. I haven’t watched the new set of episodes in the Thousand Year Blood War yet, but I’ll catch up in the next week or so. I’ve been impressed with this adaptation, especially with the old series not really pulling me in until its final episodes. Not only is it visually enrapturing, it really hits on the atmosphere and emotions; not just in service to the story but truly elevates the material. 

With all the things I take in, it’s probably no surprise that there’s no less than five trains of thought going on at any given time. That video Tale Foundry did last week about Weird Tales and pulp fantasy, and this comment arguing that the fanfic community has stepped in to fill that niche? Yeah, I’m still thinking about it. Zoe Bee’s most recent drop about how metaphor influences the way we think and how that relates to politics? Of course I’m thinking about it! Not just about how it affects rhetoric but how it affects diction in prose, which is more my wheelhouse. Princess Weekes’ follow up to her ‘Tall, Dark and Racially Ambiguous’ essay surrounding casting Heathcliff gave me food for thought, and Jess of the Shire’s fantastic essay ‘Monstrosity & the Vampire’ did too. Tim over at Hello Future Me did a video about ‘Arcology: The City in the Image of Man’ and I’m still chewing on that one too. How could I not? The ideas presented there are FASCINATING, big picture questions about structuring society and the growing subgenre of solarpunk. Broey Deschanel and Final Girl Studios both doing amazing videos on The Substance? Of course I’m over here thinking about them! Final Girl Studios’ essay is called ‘The Simulacrum of Feminine Performance’, how could I not sit here and think about that, and what that is, and what that means?? And on top of all that, I opted into a DnD one shot in a couple weeks! Gonna need a character for that, one that’s PG…man, I’ve been busy! 

[power-chords]

Every time I see dumb regressive shit on my dash that is usually some fandom-related nonsense about Sexy Thoughtcrime (not a thing!) and how you can instantly, reliably determine someone's level of safety or morality based exclusively on what they fantasize about sexually or what erotic fiction they choose to read, I have to post about the decades of completely contrary research findings they are trying to undo:

What does it mean that some of our own fantasies and thoughts frighten us? Disturb us? We simply don't know. Do people who have these thoughts and fantasies ultimately act upon them? Do these fantasies become burning desires that must be satiated? Do they take over a person's mind and life, such that eventually, fulfilling the fantasy becomes the most important thing to them?

We just don't know. I frankly suspect not. Elsewise, from reading the research by Kahr, Nancy Friday, Seymour Fisher and others, works that reveal the large level of socially-unacceptable, and often frightening and disturbing fantasies that live inside the heads of the normal people around us, there would be extraordinary amounts of infidelity, incest, bestiality, group sex, homosexuality, and other behaviors, going on every day, amongst almost everyone in society, as opposed to the relatively low actual frequency of these behaviors. (I've received several thoughtful comments from folks who suggested that lumping homosexuality in with these other desires was pejorative — it's not. I'm speaking about frequency, but I can see the value in the comment. It's not my intent to pathologize or stigmatize these fantasies — I'm just saying that they are very normal as fantasies, and in many cases, stay fantasies.)

Fear of rejection and stigma leads people to keep these fantasies secret from everyone, often even their wives, husbands, and therapists. Friday has described that she has received numerous letters from people, all saying that they believed they were the only ones with such fantasies and that her works have led them to accept that they are not as sick or disturbed as they secretly feared. Seymour Fisher's 1973 work on the female orgasm also asserted that there was no relationship between any types of sexual fantasies and life characteristics, including health, sickness, education, or life success.

In fact, Kahr, who, as part of his research examined over 23,000 sexual fantasies (What a job! I clearly chose the wrong topic for my dissertation), suggests that "On the basis of the data, I must conclude that the minds of American and British citizens contain much diversity and complexity, and therefore, speaking about a ‘normal' fantasy may well be meaningless."

From "Sick Secret Sexual Fantasies," by David J. Ley Ph.D. and published in Psychology Today, 2010. Emphasis mine.

[eighteenoheight]

The vague stories of Mia Winters

Thought I’d go for a punchy title for this here tirade. Because much like any conversations Ethan tried to have with her, Mia as a character is all half-answered questions.

I’ve seen a lot of fans of the Resident Evil series really dislike Mia. For being a bio-terrorist, what her lies and deceit did to Ethan, never giving a straight answer. There’s so much drama surrounding her but we still haven’t gotten much of an explanation. Shadows of Rose concluded the Winters’ story for now, yet as is now common for Mia, I have a lot of questions. I haven’t been given enough information or backstory to know exactly or even partially what Mia’s deal is. Where does she fall on the morality scale?

The Connections are a gross organisation that, despite being a huge player in the last two games, has been flying under the radar this entire time. As someone working for these bitches, Mia would have absolutely spilled the beans on every last detail to the BSAA, otherwise there’s no way she would have gone unpunished to live in “safety” with Ethan. She clearly knew way more than we do at this point in the series for whatever reasons. Maybe we will find this out at some point, but as it stands now where is the truth?

Another part of why it’s hard to get a read on Mia’s character is we still don’t know what her motivations were, or her level of involvement in The Connections and the creation of Eveline. Did she know Evie’s true purpose? It’s a slightly rhetorical question because she most likely did but Mia girl, you’ve had enough time to tell us what’s going on. Stop keeping secrets ffs. And as for the BSAA keeping quiet about her involvement, she must have given a LOT of details in order for them to not only give her a free pass for bio-terrorism, but also keep Ethan in the dark about how much she truly knew about what was going on. She was a risk to his life, and ultimately paid that price in the end. And because they never let him know, his blood is on their hands. And I want to know for sure, did the BSAA relocate the Winters’ because the connections were after them because they got infected and experienced all that, or because Mia worked for them and needed to be dealt with? Will we ever know the truth? And if my theory is correct that the BSAA were using them as bait for The Connections, would this be revealed in the next game and how would Mia react to this after it cost Ethan his life? Sure she has her responsibility in what happened but, again, the BSAA played a huge role.

Despite the Winters’ story allegedly being over, I can’t see how this era of the story is going to continue without Mia. She has to be around in some form, likely through files or recordings. She’s the only link to the illusive company that we know of so there has to be more to her story than what we’ve been given. Because fans are still stuck on whether she’s a villain, a hero, an anti-hero, whatever she is, answers need to be given, otherwise we’ll be stuck wondering forever.

Also big shoutout to Katie O’Hagan because her voice acting was phenomenal and I don’t think she gets enough credit because Mia’s character is so confuddling.

Did I repeat myself in numerous places because I put this dissertation away a few times and add bits when they popped into my head? Probably most likely. We’ll just say I’m trying to heavily emphasise what I’m talking about even though we both know it’s because I don’t read what I write out and forget. I like doing these kind of word vomming essays on an interest because while writing this out I had another big thought. Very excited.