#jesus christ oof

[jojotier]

thinking about judas as a tragic character both narratively and metanarratively because no matter what he's Doomed. if the christian god is real then Judas's fate was sealed the moment he was cast to be a dissenting voice to god's son if a different god is real he's trying to protect his community from a false messiah if no god is real Judas is misguidedly trying to secure a better future for the jewish community. no matter what for centuries theologians refuse to extend the same grace jesus extended to them to judas and in the inferno he's doomed to be forever chewed in Satan's mouth. all because it was his role in the narrative. because jesus needed to be betrayed by one of his closest men, because every terrible thing that happens to christ makes his forgiveness of mankind that much sweeter, and the guilt eats judas iscariot alive. is it not punishment enough to know you doomed someone you loved to death?

[hauntingblue]

chopper has become catholic

[veeisgayasf]

Is she TRYING to kill all the sapphics?

[chefbeepo]

This is going to sound. Like. Astronomically stupid coming from someone who pretends to know everything about brainstorm. With that being said.

I didn't realize that the other HALF of dark Cybertron wasn't included in the version of matter that I read.

So I had NO IDEA that Brainstorm was lowkey dead and a portal for the dead universe as Optimus prime literally erupts from his chest. What the fuck is going on.

[rowanthestrange]

(Personal ‘Being A Certain Kind Of Autistic’ Moment:)

(You ever think you’re too hinged? I was gonna say for the internet but since covid so many of the neurotypicals in real life are actually worse.

Like someone has an inappropriately strong emotional reaction to the benign, and you’re like ‘okay they’re triggered, walk away with no eye contact’. Then you see other people doing it. And more and more. Not about the same things, different things, random things. And you’re just… Is it me? Am I too hinged?

I’m not saying I’m never triggered but I always tell myself ‘hey before you interact with anyone, stop being such a freak’ if I feel like I’m in danger of being rude to or about a Human Person. And I know that’s autism training, learning to catch yourself; but also clearly not everyone bothers, even the neurotypicals anymore hence irl situations where you’re just watching some 55 year old woman go off on a receptionist over literally nothing.

Like you’ll watch people stew themselves to a rolling boil over things they’ve…made up in their head? When they could just…not do that? Or could assume the best? Like they pre-order rage for things that haven’t even happened yet. Not like political things where you could argue that it could incentivise action but like raging about how film/book in a series/event is going to be so terrible, beyond simple mental prepping for disappointment.

It’s like I feel too mentally healthy compared to everyone else. But even plenty of irl people I know who absolutely wouldn’t consider themselves (or be considered by me as) mentally unwell in any regard are like this.

I know me having the flavour of autism where ‘everything has to have a reason, but when you understand what it is you don’t feel the need to be upset about it anymore’ kind of makes this worse. Because that’s not how real people feel things. But I dunno. Feels like it’s getting…more, doesn’t it? I mean it is, must be, had a Doctor Who episode kind of about it a week ago. But it’s got me feeling autistic alien again. Even on the autism site.)

[helianthus21]

getting further into TVA like

[vaugarde]

finished islands

[annasvinyl]

i hate them i love them <3 costelloselby core <3 cruel to be kind needle drop..... u know shit's about to go down between them while everyone watches on as they come to blows Again. tears. blood. and then they're like please come here and comfort me and never ever leave me...... 🥴🥴🥴 insanely toxic self-destructive behaviour on selby's end. i don't think i've seen a relationship on tv quite like theirs. like when it's Bad it's hard to watch but you also can't look away.

[kradogsrats]

Hello ! You seem very knowledgeable about the practical side of life in the middle-ages and I love reading your takes on the TDP world-building... So, I am researching for the purpose of a fanfiction about Soren's illness and I intend Lissa to be a doctor. Could you tell me a little bit about what could the treatments for breathing diseases be in the TDP universe ?

HA okay so I don't think I actually know more about history than anyone else with an extremely casual interest, like I didn't study it in school except as adjacent to art history and I don't even read historical novels or fiction or anything? Though to be fair my mother-in-law is a legit academic medievalist publishing books about individual English manuscripts so maybe I just don't have a good calibration of "casual interest in history." Anyway, I don't have an answer off the top of my head, but that means I can walk you through my general research process!

Step 1: Decide on some parameters. Is there a real-life illness that you are applying for Soren? Is it a bacterial or viral illness, or a chronic condition like asthma? Are there additional symptoms that will need to be addressed, like fever? Do some research on the illnesses you are considering, and both their modern accepted treatments and "natural" remedies. (Ignore anything based on essential oils.) For example, some home remedies for cough and shortness of breath are:

Tea: with ingredients like ginger, honey, etc. which are believed to reduce coughing. Caffeine is also a natural bronchodilator, and since coffee is not naturally occurring in the TDP setting, tea is a good hand-wave source for it.

Saltwater gargle: more of a sore throat thing, really? But it might help with loosening mucus.

Other herbs: particularly mint (menthol), thyme, camphor, and marshmallow root. These can be incorporated into teas, or you can explore other delivery systems like more concentrated syrups or tinctures, breathing steam from infused water, or ointments applied to the chest/back.

You can also look at historical treatments for these illnesses, but that's sometimes actually quite hard to find information on. I'll usually look at anything from ancient Egyptian to the antibiotics era. Problems I've run into include things like "asthma was not acknowledged as a medical condition, so the treatment was basically 'breathe better'" or "pneumonia was so awful before antibiotics that you basically just died."

Step 2: Decide on what you're willing to allow in terms of stretching the setting. TDP is... not very medieval at all, actually? So I generally am willing to consider stuff that didn't develop until well into the 1800s. This can get particularly awkward with medical stuff, simply because we generally read any framework of medical understanding that predates the germ theory of disease and antiseptic sanitation as ignorant and primitive, and that makes having a medicine-oriented character come across as intelligent and informed is difficult. To that end, I generally just throw up my hands and say the TDP setting understands modern sanitation and germ theory.

The problem with that is that the germ theory of disease and corresponding antiseptic understanding required the invention of the microscope to be able to actually see bacteria. Prior to that, science understood contagion and various people theorized that disease was caused by some unseen particles or agent. (See the case of Ignaz Semmelweis and his discovery that washing your hands between touching cadavers and delivering babies reduced maternal mortality significantly, but was completely incorrect about why.) I would actually be willing to allow microscopes and the corresponding understanding of cells and bacteria into the TDP setting, I'd just describe them in a sufficiently old-timey and handcrafted way, but you may feel differently! (You can also just hand-wave it, of course... behave as if germ theory is common knowledge but never mention bacteria, etc. I mean, I guarantee that's what the writers would do if it came up.)

Generally my personal limits for something no longer feeling like it fits even the most advanced cutting edge of TDP science are things like petroleum products (the implications give me a headache), chemical electrolysis (eliminates a lot of synthesized chemicals), and penicillin-level antibiotics ("this cultivated natural remedy prevents infection when applied to a wound" is fine, but oral antibiotics for bacterial diseases are not). I don't take any of this into account when reading fic... it's just a helpful set of boundaries for consistency when I'm writing. (Also don't forget to check the actual source material: I somehow remembered the animal doctor using a stethoscope to examine the egg, but there's actually no stethoscopes anywhere in that scene or the later hospital ones. Which isn't at all to say you can't have them, but it would have been an interesting canon setting data point given that they weren't invented until the 1800s.)

Or, of course, you could ignore all of that and just go hard mode with Lissa struggling to balance Soren's humors via diet and bloodletting.

Step 3: Brainstorm how the more advanced elements you are allowing could be developed and transmitted. So taking the example of Lissa as a doctor (and oh my god what an idea, that's amazing): how and where was she trained (an apprenticeship, or are you going to include a university system)? What is the human medical community like (isolated individual clinics or some kind of guild network)? Where and how is research being done and how are practitioners informed of new discoveries or theories? (Is there a scientific journal-style circulation of pamphlets? Who verifies them? (That's a place where either a guild or a university would come in handy.) What is Lissa's level of interest in pushing the boundaries of medicine vs. delivering basic care, and how might Soren's illness change that?) A couple possibilities:

If Soren has an asthma-like condition that involves chronic inflammation, maybe she treats it with a form of Ephedra from the region between Neolandia and Duren. (I like trying to match biomes or environmental conditions when transferring real-world plants into TDP, but you don't have to.)

Maybe she hears of a mold that has been cultivated in Evenere that clears infections in wounds when properly prepared, and has to evaluate whether to attempt using it experimentally with Soren against the infection in his lungs.

TDP also has a whole secondary ecosystem of magical substances, which could be effective in various ways even without being used for dark magic spells. Plants from the Sun or Earth primal could have natural healing properties, and combined with ones from the Sky primal could particularly target respiratory symptoms. Basically, if you can't find a natural-ish treatment ingredient, make one up with a goofy name and say it's from Xadia. Maybe Viren goes to collect it himself at great personal risk.

Step 4: Consider magic! I assume part of what's behind making Lissa a doctor is exploring the relationship between magical and scientific medicine in intimate detail with her and Viren, which is amazing. How does the medical community (and/or Lissa personally) feel about magical healing? Is there animosity between practitioners of medicine and dark mages with healing spells, or collaborations that are stronger than either would be individually? Are there medical tools or equipment enhanced by magic (enchanted microscopes or stethoscopes)? Is there disagreement on whether magical Xadian ingredients are more effective than mundane ones for medicines? Does the medical community harbor feelings of resentful inferiority toward the powerful primal magic healing confined only to the elves, or pride in the completely non-magical accomplishments of human ingenuity? Is the overall future of humanity carried in the power of magic, or of science?

So those are overall the kind of things I consider and look up when doing worldbuilding for TDP fic. All the examples here are medical stuff since that's what was asked about, but it's basically the same for anything else from "I wish to intricately describe the fiber content and sources of this luxury clothing item and how it was made" to "I need to make it clear that this basement laboratory is equipped to deal with the possibility of small fires, because fantasy OSHA."

And here are a couple helpful links that I found while doing this:

Wikipedia - List of plants used in herbalism

Wikipedia - Herbal medicine (especially the section on preparations)

Wikipedia - Medicinal plants

Wikipedia - Timeline of medicine and medical technology

[indigoire]

Recently learned that Jesus went to hell after being crucified and he preached to the sinners in hell, so he knows the exact kind of torment retail workers experience on Easter weekend. Having to work in front of an uncaring mass of demons, that is. At least he got to ascend to heaven the day after.

[hauntingblue]

:)

[pass-the-5sauce]

MICHAEL AND MOOSE CONTENT MICHAEL AND MOOSE CONTENT

[glimmering-brainfamily]

so my gf and I just watched hbomberguy's new video

[gil-estel]

nothing pisses me off more than people praised for ~doing something amazing~ when the actual product is mediocre and the only reason they had to work so hard is because they failed to properly delegate.

[cq-studios]

Player?

[asilentfrenzy]

being a jonsa has given me a dash full of green stans lollll