#life is finite

[catyuy]

Worst thing about getting older.

Realizing that those family and friends that were around before you were born are getting older as well. And as the years go by, they are more likely to die.

Grandparents, neighbors, actors, aunts and uncles. None of them are eternal. And learning to accept that is very hard.

Every time one of them dies, I think I've finally accepted that loss, only to be hit fresh when the next one starts to go.

How does anyone ever get used to accepting loss?

[chocodile]

Initially came because I saw the hot shark man ridge. Stayed for the masterful story you’re making. I love

Thank you! Here's a bonus doodle of Ridge, as a treat.

[userautumn]

one year ago today buck was tenderly kissed in his loft kitchen by someone who turned out to be one of the loves of his life and we all got to see it happen in real time. wild.

[weirdlookindog]

Vincent Serbin (b. 1955) - Life in a finite universe, 1987

source

[st-just]

Vitally important skill is being able to distinguish extremist political movement as in 'a couple dozen extremely miserable people in a crab bucket of a discord server' and extremist political movement as in 'probably the second largest party in the next Bundestag'. Very different implications in terms of how to treat members and level of, like, urgency involved. Even if the latter's ideas and policies are significantly less horrifying than what the former would do if they could!

[corvus-frugilegus]

Man I just like... One of the core questions of Lucanis's character being: How to live fully and what does that really mean? Paired with the experience of the Ossuary and this new found determination to LIVE that comes from it is so great.

Not that I think he didn't want to live pre-ossuary either, he just seemed resigned to this idea that he'd probably die on the job one day and probably pretty young too. Then he goes through literal hell and survives and has made a deal with a demon to LIVE. So now he's grappling with this question: What does it even mean to live?

Because he didn't expect to leave the Ossuary alive and he did and now he has to live.

Because he made a deal, and now the demon inside him is screaming for him to live.

(What is facing your inner demons and finding a new way forward if not beginning to live? What is starting to heal if not committing to living?)

Sure he was living before, but following a path someone else set for him. What does it mean for him to live on his own terms? What does that even look like?

[muaka-safari]

I have been thinking about the differences between Metru Nui and Mata Nui (the island) recently, and the prev post has reminded me again but - there really had to have been a mentality shift between moving from the former to the latter

for multiple reasons, but the one that's been on my mind is the lack of replacements

like, in Metru Nui, if you lose part of the workforce, a new batch will get created, no problem, but Mata Nui has a finite population. It's an inescapably dwindling number in a strange new world that is constantly evolving fresh ways to kill you

after 1000 yrs, how many had they lost? Were the Turaga counting their numbers and doing the maths - how long before there were none? Before their situation becomes untenable?

were the Matoran aware of this? Or had the memory loss of their time in Metru Nui dulled them to this realisation - that this wasn't the normal way of life, the way they were meant to exist?

they had lived with an ever-rotating cast of colleagues and neighbours in Metru Nui, there's a chance that the millennium on Mata Nui was one of the most socially-stable periods they'd ever encountered. Not only because there weren't new faces to learn, but also because it was a shrinking number

these are your neighbours, the last and only neighbours you'll ever know

[annabelle--cane]

I like the subtle world building implications in the differences between the usher foundation and the magnus institute. if the usher foundation and the magnus institute were meant to be direct parallels to each other, then the usher foundation would have been established in like the 1870s in boston or nyc, but no, it's in dc and was founded no earlier that 1955, and that gives me less "old respectable academia" vibes and more "insane reagan era project comissioned to weaponize the supernatural in the cold war that didn't work but was never officially shut down."

[cornedbeefhashtags]

🎄

[falloutnewnobody]

fuck painting gold embroidery all my homies hate painting gold embroidery

[umi-no-onnanoko]

Ho bisogno di...

(finite voi la frase)

[mandareeboo]

Y'know as a teen and young adult I was, like, super obsessed with having my specific label. Like I wanted to be dead-on accurate, and whenever I realized it didn't fit right the worse I felt. I agonized over this shit for hours. Was I transmasc or a trans man? Was I demiromantic or aromantic? Yadda yadda, over and over.

Now I'm 25, and that's not like much older, but it feels like it sometimes, and I just... don't give a shit? I'm Queer. I dunno what all I am anymore. I just really like vibing and I'm open to whatever.

[captainsparklefingers]

Actually, I got more thoughts re: the mortalification of the Exandrian pantheon (some of which have already been said), because while I think the way we got to this point was INCREDIBLY rushed and stupid and poorly executed, and I think there SHOULD be major world changing consequences that just...don't seem to be happening in canon...I DO think the idea is interesting, at least on paper.

Putting it below a cut because I'm not capable of shutting up, apparently.

Like, how would this work? Are the gods going to all be reborn as mortals at the same time or is it going to be a staggered process like it appears to have been during Downfall? Are they born with that immediate awareness of what they were, or, like with consecution, do those memories and knowledge come back as they grow up?

Would these mortal forms have powers greater than the average Exandrian due to, you know, gods, or have they really nerfed their abilities as part of the mortal experience?

And what happens at the end of these mortal lives? The fact that a Luxon Beacon had to be used as part of this ritual made it seem (at least to me) that this could be a cycle of death, divinity, and rebirth back into mortality that repeats over and over, because if this is just for one lifetime, what's to stop Predathos from coming back when the food returns?

Obviously there's the social and societal structural implications that come with the gods just suddenly being gone, and there SHOULD be consequences on divine magic... there aren't, but I wonder if one way this could be handled is that things are running on residual divine magic that's still hanging around, but it's a finite resource that's going to inevitably dry up. At least that's what I'd do if I went this route and didn't want an immediate impact on how paladins and clerics worked.

And what would this means for the gods as individuals? We know, for example, that Asmodeus HATES mortals, and now he's among them. The first time around nothing seems to have changed his perspective during his time as Father Milo; would things be different this time? Like. You're a normal person being raised by other normal people, you have friends and family and you love and are loved...and suddenly you start to remember this other life and this hatred you have. Would ANY of that be compromised by the lived experience?

And could that go both ways? Could, say, Pelor grow up as somebody who hates people or is not a good person only to remember all of this past stuff?

Would the experience of all of this be different for Vecna and the Matron, being former mortals who are now mortals again?

And then of course you have aspects that others have talked about, like 20 people pretending to be Pelor, cults of personality, the power vacuum left behind and how badly that could go, the demigods and pseudogods, what this means for the champions of the gods...

And what if they have families and children down the road? Tris's kids were demigods who had powers that kicked in and saved them and were implied to have important destinies. Do the children of these mortal avatars have unique abilities or are uncommonly strong themselves?

And the cults! Tiamat's cult, the Cult of the Caustic Heart, they still exist, Calli hasn't taken them out completely yet as far as I'm aware. They wanted Tiamat free and GUESS WHAT she's basically free now, just mortal! The Cult of the Whispered One! Other Betrayer cults! I can't see those going away any time soon and in fact I could see them getting WORSE because they know their god is out there somewhere and they might be able to directly get them involved in shit.

And what about fanatics? That village that was way into the Dawnfather and was using force to suppress the nature cults, what does this mean for them? Do they feel more empowered and get worse and more oppressive or extreme? Do they just kinda fade off and die out?

I do think it's an interesting idea. I like the concept on paper and some of the possibilities it could bring in terms of world altering. I don't like how last minute it felt, how easy it seemed to be to convince all the gods to go along with this, and the fact that everyone and everything seems to basically be the same after this happens.

And I don't like that there's so many ways this COULD go but it's not clear what, if any of them, will happen. Right now this was basically a decision that's changed nothing, which is disappointing because it could mean SO many different things or cause so many changes.

[howifeltabouthim]

Enough is enough with Dexter Fleming? No, not yet. She'd not had enough. At one point she would. She could see that. There was no way it would not end, but it was not yet. She had not had enough of him yet.

Susan Minot, from Why I Don't Write and Other Stories

[suddencolds]

// personal

how strange it is to observe yourself changing

[eastofedean]

do you guys ever think about, "The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them. When they're gone, it will hurt, but that hurt will remind you of how much you loved them." because I fucking do!