#logistics have largely been the same for like a century

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

[strangelittlestories]

Something interesting about archaeology is that it’s actually not that interesting: even when you’re on a dig, most of it is dirt and logistics and fragments.

Something scary about ghosts is that they’re actually not that frightening: even when you have a haunting, most of it is ectoplasm and low-key longing and echoes.

The fascinating bit about both is that, sometimes, when you piece all the boring bits together, you get a story; a story of how people used to live. It will probably be a story about something mundane, like how people cooked or what their bathroom solutions were.

For example: at this particular dig, we found fragments of large cooking pots in a few larger buildings. The smaller buildings that seemed to be individual homes did not have *any* surviving cooking pots (not even any copper remnants); however, they did have at least one well preserved earthenware bowl inscribed with runes.

These runes turned out to be a close match to an early rune of co-locating folk magic, seen primarily in the Katabasic region. The bowl was also adorned with a slate inlay, of a kind that was often used to write upon in chalk.

The apparent conclusion? This settlement operated a communal cooking operation that delivered food to order. We would assume the recipient would write their request in chalk on the slate inlay of their bowl, and the runes would briefly trick reality into thinking the inside of the bowl and the inside of the pot occupied the same space. Thus, the bowl would magically fill with food.

So, yeah. These folks had invented magical Doordash.

I briefly considered trying to replicate their system on my travel mug. The coffee on the dig site was *dreadful*, so I figured I could have my husband make some nice single origin cold brew back home (or maybe a nice pot of darjeeling second flush?) and teleport it in. But as it was likely tied to local hospitality folk magic, this would likely run across three problems: 1. Range limitations. 2. It may only work for community members. 3. Folk magic sometimes used local deities or spirits as intermediaries and popping a new request in the inbox of a dormant god was usually a bad call.

Oh, and reason number 4: the bowl we’d excavated was extremely haunted.

This may, in fact, explain why it was so well preserved. Theurgic suffusation is the term - if the spirit is clinging tightly enough to the atoms of the object, then time starts to think the material is just as undying as the soul.

You know how I mentioned the scary thing about ghosts is that they’re not scary? They only persist as fully ensouled beings as long as their unfinished business can feasibly *be finished*. Even with generation blood debts, they still tend to become unviable with a couple of centuries. Then the soul slowly starts to move on, leaving only an imprint on the umbra. That’s what’s scary about ghosts: even that which is undying will be eaten by history.

Except this blighter apparently.

So I ran a chemical analysis on the trace molecules left on the lining of the bowl. Then I ran the runes through a penumbral simulation matrix.

The bowl contained traces of calcified aconite. The runes showed an exploit in the magic; the teleportation could be hijacked by holy petition or speculative conjuration.

The ghost had been poisoned. Murdered.

And if they were still a ghost, then whoever killed them was *still around*.

I really really hope that I never meet whatever person or creature is apparently still alive close to a millennia after they murdering someone in a way that is both *really clever* and *really nasty*.

But oh buddy, oh pal … what I want may be immaterial. For surely do intend to figure out the whole of this story.

---

With thanks to Ellie for the submission of the Archaeologist (fearless, frightened, fancy) to the Character of the Month club.

Want to submit your own characters for my stories? Consider supporting me on Ko-Fi with a recurring donation https://ko-fi.com/strangelittlestories

[johnlocsin-johnyakuza]

Ever stopped to think about how terrifying Super Earth and The Helldivers must be from the enemies perspective?

Even though the game is satire, Super Earth and, most specifically, The Helldivers, are genuinely kind of terrifying when you see them from the enemy's POV. Not only do you have this massive galactic empire who took out a hyper-advanced race a century ago in the First Galactic War using considerably less advanced technology, but the same hyper-advanced race is finally back trying to square up against us again and getting their ass beat, all while our technology hasn't changed much since the first war. All of this because we are simply just too goddamn patriotic to our home planet to lose it. Our strongest weapon is literally our determination and devotion to Super Earth.

Think about it. You are an Automaton facing down a Helldiver. You ambush them from behind and blast a laser into their back. Without missing a beat, they jump forward, turn 180 degrees and pop you in the chest with their Senator. As you fall to the ground with your vision getting static-y and your systems shutting down, you see them stand up, stick a needle into their neck and shout "MY LIFE FOR SUPER EARTH!" as they sprint off unfazed to a random direction.

The Helldivers, despite how much Arrowhead seems to have wanted to make us look like glorified red shirts, are genuinely an elite force compared to standard SEAF troops.

Let's summarize this:

* We can handle multiple different types of weapons extremely proficiently, including being accurate while running AND diving to the ground, two things that are extremely difficult to do in real life.

* We can sprint for fourty minutes almost non-stop for multiple miles and back to complete our missions, not to mention do a variety of different moves that show off our agility such as the aforementioned diving but also sliding on the floor and climbing large surfaces.

* We can be set on fire, blown up, shot, fall from great heights and suffer multiple different types of terrifying injuries but not only manage to keep our cool but also recover from said injuries using simply some sort of highly-advanced "medicinal" drug that lets us keep fighting like nothing happened.

* A team of four is all that's required to be sent behind enemy lines to perform highly dangerous suicide missions that involve destroying enemy logistics, recovering intel and other types of sabotage in the style of WW2 Paratroopers. Keep in mind these missions are usually not done stealthfully at all and we're often fighting off entire BATTALLIONS of enemies that could easily crush any other 4-man squad. But not the Helldivers. The mental fortitude required to not cave in this sort of situation has to be extremely strong (and patriotic).

* Despite suffering major losses on multiple planets, we are still by all means winning the war and causing major damage to 3 different enemy factions. In one year, we have already killed BILLIONS of enemies on three fronts which is vastly more than our own number of KIA divers (though for full transparency, it is likely many more humans have died whether them being civilians our unseen SEAF personnel, but their numbers are unknown).

* Overzealously brain-dead fanatics, who not only lack fear of death but actively embrace it. (From a militaristic perspective, this is incredibly strong to the point of being absurd. Think of unbreakable units in Total War. All for Super Earth!)

* Exceptionally efficient killing machines. (Their flawless handling of both weapons and equipment suggests they've been trained from a very young age.)

* Access to top-tier technology designed to be both highly reliable and cost-effective. (You can literally drop a bomb on their gear, and it will still function perfectly. They just leave it behind and request a replacement like it's nothing.)

* Complete dehumanization of the enemy due to relentless propaganda. (With constant broadcasts and a star destroyer-sized screen blasting their ideals, even during downtime, they're never free from it.)

* An auto-regulating regime that enforces and encourages constant surveillance among individuals, making the populace their own "prisoners and wardens." (Ties back to the previous point.)

* Absolute obedience and fanaticism from both military and civilian sectors, ensuring a continuous flow of soldiers-whether motivated by "faith" or fear. (Again, see previous points.)

* A completely unstoppable war machine that will keep throwing bodies at you. No matter how many you kill, they'll keep diving. Again... and again... and again... and again...

In short…

BUGS, BOTS, SQUIDS, WE MUST KILL THEM ALL!

LEAVE NO ONE ALIVE!

BURN THEM TO THE GROUND AND SALT THE EARTH!

MY LIFE FOR SUPER EARTH!

Don't let the dissidents fool you into believing The Helldivers are just expendable fools who don't last long in the battlefield. If that were true, we would not be causing as much damage as we are now. Even with our heavy losses, each death is the torch of freedom passed from one soul to the next, be their survival time a mere 10 seconds or an outstanding 40 minutes. Democracy is smiling to us from the skies above and we are doing it proud!

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #5 – The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

I read Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea last year and, despite thinking it was ultimately kind of a noble failure, liked it more than enough to give his new novella a try. It didn’t hurt that the premise as described in the marketing copy sounded incredible. I can’t quite say it was worth it, but that’s really only because this novella barely cost less than the 500-page doorstopper I picked up at the same time and I need to consider economies here – it absolutely lived up to the promise of its premise.

The book is set a century and change into the future, when a de-extinction initiative has gotten funding from the Russian government to resurrect the Siberian mammoth – or, at least, splice together a chimera that’s close-enough and birth it from african elephant surrogate mothers – to begin the process of restoring the prehistoric taiga as a carbon sink. The problem: there’s no one on earth left who knows how wild mammoth are supposed to, like, live- the only surviving elephants have been living in captivity for generations. Plop the ressurectees in the wilderness and they’ll just be very confused and anxious until they starve. The solution: the technology to capture a perfect image of a human mind is quite old, and due to winning some prestigious international award our protagonist – an obsessive partisan of elephant conservation – was basically forced to have her mind copied and put in storage a few months before she was killed by poachers.

So the solution of who will raise and socialize these newly created mammoths is ‘the 100-year-old ghost of an elephant expert, after having her consciousness reincarnated in a mammoth’s body to lead the first herd as the most mature matriarch’. It works better than you’d expect, really, but as it turns out she has some rather strong opinions about poachers, and isn’t necessarily very understanding when the solution found to keep the project funded involves letting some oligarch spend a small country’s GDP on the chance to shoot a bull and take some trophies.

So this is a novella, and a fairly short one – it’s densely packed with ideas but the length and the constraints of narrative mean that they’re more evoked or presented than carefully considered. This mostly jumps out at me with how the book approaches wildlife conservation – a theme that was also one of the overriding concerns of Mountain where it was considered at much greater length. I actually think the shorter length might have done Nayler a service here, if only because it let him focus things on one specific episode and finish things with a more equivocal and ambiguous ending than the saccharine deux ex machina he felt compelled to resort to in Mountain.

The protection of wildlife is pretty clearly something he’s deeply invested in – even if he didn’t outright say so in the acknowledgements, it just about sings out from the pages of both books. Specifically, he’s pretty despairing about it – both books to a great extent turn around how you convince the world at large to allow these animals to live undisturbed when all the economic incentives point the other way, a question he seems quite acutely aware he lacks a good answer to.

Like everyone else whose parents had Jurassic Park on VHS growing up, I’ve always found the science of de-extinction intensely fascinating – especially as it becomes more and more plausible every day. This book wouldn’t have drawn my eye to nearly the degree it did if I don’t remember the exact feature article I’d bet real money inspired it about a group of scientists trying to do, well, exactly the same thing as the de-extinctionists do in the book (digital resurrection aside). The book actually examines the project with an eye to practicalities and logistics – and moreover, portrays it as at base a fundamentally heroic, noble undertaking as opposed to yet another morality tale about scientific hubris. So even disregarding everything else it had pretty much already won me over just with that.

The book’s portrayal of the future and technology more generally is broader and less carefully considered, but it still rang truer than the vast majority of sci fi does – which is, I suppose, another way of saying that it’s a weathered and weather-beaten world with new and better toys, but one still very fundamentally recognizable as our own, without any great revolutions or apocalyptic ruptures in the interim. Mosquito's got CRISPR’d into nonexistence and elephants were poached into extinction outside of captivity, children play with cybernetically controlled drones and the president of the Russian Federation may or may not be a digital ghost incarnated into a series of purpose-grown clones, but for all that it’s still the same shitty old earth. It’s rather charming, really.

[abeautifulblog]

Hi! You said you could help talk me through feudal worldbuilding, and I’d love to pick your brain!

Absolutely! Probably easiest to hit me up over discord (I'm _gremble) and then I would be happy to talk your ear off. 🤣 My wheelhouse is very narrowly focused on mid 9th century England (re: what Anglo Saxon society/military/governance looked like when the vikings rolled up), and iirc, some of the features you mentioned being interested in are more the product of later medieval political structures. I cannot help you with those, but I can probably help with some of the overall mental shifts, because a lot of the things we take for granted in the modern era were just............ not the way things worked back then.

In particular, the word "general" in your initial ask jumped out at me, because it brought up one of the exact issues that I'd run into. The character I was working with had been presented in canon as "the king's top general" -- not those words, but definitely those vibes -- that he was The Guy In Charge Of The Army. Except as soon as I started researching military structures in that period, I found out that that's not how armies worked. When the king needed to go to war, he would call on all his top landholding nobles to round up a bunch of their dudes -- which would be a large number of armed peasants, and a smaller number of fulltime warriors -- and bring their portion of the army to bear.

But these various segments of the army remained under the command of their various lords, marching under separate banners. The lords, in essence, were the generals -- there's not one guy commanding the entire army as a single unit (except for the king, sort of), and there's certainly not any non-noble who doesn't own any dudes getting to call the shots and dictate strategy. Talented and successful warriors might well get rewarded for their service, and given land grants that would generate tons of money for them and put a large number of conscriptable peasants under their control -- and might have the ear of the king if they're known to be good at tactics -- but they don't have authority over anyone else's forces.

The politically neutral, career military guy that we think of when we hear the word "general," who has no independent power of his own but receives a paycheck from his higher-ups to command their men for them, didn't exist yet.

It's a bit of a paradigm shift, because we're used to the military as something separate, that's subordinate to civilian leadership and works in service to it, not for those to be one and the same. We're also used to a norm of strong nation-states with one centralized army, which was very much not the case throughout feudalism/manorialism -- at least in the Anglo Saxon period, power was decentralized and delegated, and being king involved a lot of herding cats wrangling your nobles, not exercising direct control. The king was the guy who could get the most other guys to back him up.

(In the same vein, early kingdoms also tended to be a patchwork of other, smaller kingdoms that retained a great deal of their own autonomy and identity. The modern nation-state that we're so used to, with a single national identity, is an astonishingly recent invention.)

Anyway, hands-down the most useful and eye-opening book I've read on the subject is Clifford J. Rogers' Soldiers Lives Throughout History: The Middle Ages. It's like $80 to buy (😭) but the pdf is on Anna's Archive, and it's invaluable. It is, essentially, a social history of medieval warfare -- most military histories focus on the politics of a particular conflict, or the technology and tactics involved, but this book is all about what life on the ground looked like. A+++ resource for anyone writing war and military logistics in a medieval (or medieval-flavored) setting.

[undefeatednils]

On Twitter I legit saw people share the Jesusland map again...

It's been 20 years, and liberals still make the same stupid suggestion about having solid Dem states join Canada.

At the same time, it also reminded me that between 1968 and 2004, Virginia was a solid GOP state, and since 2008, it has voted for the Dems consistently.

At the same time, in the last ten US elections, Ohio has voted for the winner of the election (based on the Electoral College) every time. Except 2020. When Biden won but Trump still carried the Buckeye State.

In the 2004 map meme, both states were part of "Jesusland".

The new version I saw posted included Virginia in the list of states that "should" join Canada. Which would be legitimate border gore thanks to West Virginia.

At the same time, Virginia does feel incredibly volatile, like it's Democratic majority is largely based on DC-adjacent counties that are closely connected to government jobs. In a Trump 47 world, this could easily change, as these jobs will likely be reduced in number and become less career- and merit-based, but rather based on political affiliation with the current administration.

Any breakup of the United States is incredibly unlikely, yet it's also important to consider logistics for that hypothetical.

Ages ago, someone posted a semi-joking map of their most plausible US collapse scenario. It showed the US only losing the coastal states, with the rump USA consisting of the Greater Mississippi River Basin, including the Ohio River Basin and thus the Old Northwest/modern Midwest. Based on logistics and geography, it really does feel very reasonable. Though it lacks in cohesion when looking at demographics and economics.

In my mind, unless the US somehow first decides to move its capital into the interior (s. the 19th century proposal of creating a new capital, Metropolis, on the Kentucky-Illinois border), the only parts of the East Coast that might consider leaving are the states north of the Mason-Dixon-Line.

Maryland and Virginia are too connected to the political power center of DC to have an incentive to leave. The states south of Virginia with an Atlantic coastline meanwhile follow similar-enough politia and demographic trends to the Southern states bordering the Mississippi to go their own way if Virginia doesn't.

That would leave Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine in the northeast.

Delaware and Pennsylvania deserve an asterisk due to economic concerns. Delaware's economic niche of a domestic tax haven isn't unique. South Dakota is also competing for this niche. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, as part of the so-called Blue Wall/Rust Belt, is economically very similar to Michigan and Wisconsin and Ohio. But if Pennsylvania stays with the Mississippi Core, Delaware would effectively be surrounded by the rump USA. Plus, Delaware, too, is rather connected to the DC ecosystem.

Meanwhile, it should also be noted that climate change and internal migration can't be ignored either and need to be addressed.

The Great Lakes region is, together with the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, projected to "benefit" from it and to continue to enjoy high quality of life.

On the other side, parts of the Sun Belt will become less suitable for large-scale, safe habitation, and since it would become the primary center of economic and political power in such a scenario, that would be a recipe for disaster.

Anyway, this has been a geopolitics essay.

[penig]

Yes, but it's also common not to have one in a single-family residence. Usually, an en suite will be a second full bathroom off of the largest, or "master," bedroom, and is called the "master bath." Most floorplans with a master bath have another full bathroom accessed from a central hall, and some will have an additional half-bath, or "powder room," utilizing the same wet wall as the kitchen and laundry room. Two adjacent bedrooms may have a bathroom sandwiched between them and accessible from each, called a "jack-and-jill bath." Having all four kinds of bathrooms in the same house is unusual, but not unheard of, and implies a certain amount of financial security or extravagance.

Number and kind of bathrooms depend largely on the layout and history of the house, and the affluence of the household. Builders of McMansions seem to like adding bathrooms as well as bedrooms and public rooms as a point of conspicuous consumption. A multi-story house really should have at least a powder room on each floor.

My current house, which is over a century old, originally had one bathroom on the second floor at the end of the hall and accessible only from it. By the time we moved in, portions of the enclosed back porch and balcony had been turned into a powder room (on the ground floor) and two en suite bathrooms for the back bedrooms, but one of these was in very bad shape. Currently, after partial renovation, one of these en suites is our only fully-functional full bath; due to plumbing issues that present serious logistical problems, the original bath is now functionally a half-bath (with a disconnected showertub) and the second en suite has been combined with the adjacent sunroom to form the laundry/sewing room, an idiosyncratic arrangement that would suit few families but my own. The next owner may well decide to resume the en suite arrangement, or turn the whole back balcony into an enormous jack-and-jill shared by the rear bedrooms.

My husband's parents' house, which was built for them in the 70s, originally had a jack-and-jill setup for the two kids and another bathroom entered from either the hall or the parents' bedroom. When my husband was in high school, though, they finished the basement and put a bedroom with an en suite down there, ostensibly for guests, but my husband took it over. When you see a reference to an adult "living in their parents' basement" in the US, an arrangement of the sort is implied, and a basement arranged like that is fairly simple to convert into a rentable apartment, so in regions with basements it's a sensible expansion even for middle-class families, if they can bear the mortgage.

The vast majority of apartments have only one bathroom. I would not expect either a master bathroom or a powder room in any apartment with fewer than three bedrooms, unless it's in an area around a university or some other magnet for joint living arrangements. An apartment intended to be rented out to roommates might well have two bedrooms with an en suite each. Visitors would be impressed but not stunned to learn of them, and the landlord would certainly charge through the nose.

Hey real quick, I wanna check out something. I've been talking to a few friends who live in a different country and they told me it's normal for houses to have bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms over there. (Not saying where.)

[Definition in case it's needed: an en-suite bathroom is a complete bathroom, with at least a toilet, a sink, and a shower, which is accessed directly from a bedroom and is usually only used by the people who sleep in that bedroom.]

So here's my question: in your country, in normal dwellings (i.e.: houses, flats, apartments, etc, not hotels and such), is it normal to have en-suite bathrooms?

As usual, reblog for reach, and tag with your country / area and yes or no.

[hopefulvowel]

Letter to a spacefarer

Tell me spacefarer, when you look out, what do you see? What lies ahead on the cosmic horizon? Where are you headed? I think of you visiting far-flung outposts, orbiting space stations, and glimmering megalopolises. I dream of you touching pulsars, nebulas, black holes, and new stars.

Tell me spacefarer, what drives you? Why do you stay in that bubble of life surrounded by the endless void? Are you with family or are they far away? Does a corporation own your servitude, or do you fly for you? I imagine a large family onboard a generation ship excited to start their new life on another planet. I believe in an independent captain, who unites their crew when faced with overwhelming odds.

Tell me spacefarer, is your life filled with excitement? Is every week packed with new adventures? Or has your extraordinary voyage through the void become a repeatable exercise in logistics? Does your job inspire wonder or boredom? I picture your colleagues with titles like fusion technician, anti-matter analyst, or space folder. I envision them leap with excitement at their work, or dread yet another day at the same station.

Tell me spacefarer, how do you see us? Are we specs, stepping stones, or a bridge connecting humanity to the stars? Do you think of us like Verne, dreaming of an impossible submarine? Or are we the Wright brothers, only touching the surface of the inevitable?

I see a man, born in the late 14th century, standing on a dock looking at a newly built ship. He marvels at advances made to develop grander and faster ships that require fewer sailors to operate. He hears exclamations that within a decade these advancements will create new trading routes for all, a thought that intrigues and excites him. He dreams of brave explorers venturing out and imagines what they will discover by going further and faster than anyone before them. He pictures himself, aboard a huge barque, manning the helm and commanding the crew. The speed at which they travel astonishes him, enabling them to explore new lands with ease.

This man stands in his present and looks out to the horizon, the future, dreaming of what is out of reach.

Within a few centuries, whilst this man has long passed, his dream has become a reality. Ships have become so large and fast that they can move cargo from Europe to Asia and back within a year. New worlds have been found. Yet, with the wonders around them the sailors on board are no longer fascinated by the same advancements, but exhausted from the effort. They now see their role, not as brave explorers, but as employees in a repeatable exercise in logistics – often dreading the journey.

Spacefarer, you are my sailor. I look at you and marvel, even if you do not marvel at yourself. I stand here in my present, looking out at the horizon, and dream of what it must be like for you over the bend.

But, spacefarer, I do not write to you to tell you how I marvel. I write to ask you this: when you look out, what do you see? What lies ahead on the cosmic horizon? Where are you headed?

[halfbakedspuds]

One thing I'm trying very hard with Adrian and Lya's relationship is to avoid the overdramatic 'You are my heart, and for you I will die' way of writing romance. I don't mind it, but it feels a tad bit overdone.

I mean sure, they will die for eachother, there's no denying that, but their relationship isn't always this hyper-passionate baring of the soul that seems to permeate modern fiction. Sometimes it's just Adrian working out logistics forms late into the night while Lyanni is reading on the couch, both of them interspersing long, silent minutes of simply enjoying each other's company with some of the most spastic and nerdy discussions of the 27th century.

Sometimes it's Adrian seeing Lyanni passed out on their couch and quietly tossing his coat over her as a makeshift blanket, already knowing that his honour will demand he deny doing it come morning.

Sometimes it's Lyanni scooping Adrian up off his feet and carrying him to bed because he's been awake and working since Monday and Hestavi as her witness, she will force the stubborn human to rest even if she has to sit against his door all night to do it.

Sometimes it's Adrian's usually stoic composure faltering long enough for him to swear in frustration because he knows she won't hold it against him.

Sometimes it's Lyanni not bothering to put on any appearances of being fine before leaving her room after having had a particularly bad flashback, because she knows he's gone through the same hell, and will understand and try to comfort her.

Their relationship is, in this way, very different from their public life. Where they usually need to act out this facade of the almighty angel and the chosen one of the gods- living loud and large as a political tool, their private interaction tends to be a lot more subtle and far softer.

Because that's what they need. They stay together because they make eachother feel like regular people (Adrian doesn't treat her like the outcast monster her people do, and Lyanni doesn't hold him to some inhuman standard like the rest of the planet does). Their subtle interactions are, similarly, what they both want in order to be happy.

Ps: Sorry if my English is bad in this post, it has been... a bit of a day, and I'm honestly too tired to check subject-verb concord or whatever...

[bodaciousalliance]

The Heart of Mr Farouk, 48: Cinema

After their fantastic third date on Tuesday night, Nathan and Youssef meet up on Thursday to see a film and dinner date. But Nathan's determined to not have any 'unplanned sleepovers' on a school night, because of the morning-after logistics...

Youssef pulled up outside Nathan’s place at precisely five twenty-two p.m., and gave a beep-beep on the car’s horn. Nathan was so excited about seeing Youssef again that he was already halfway down the stairs when he heard the tooting. For their date, they’d planned an early film session, which would still give them time for a nice dinner. Given that they still had to front up for work tomorrow, there being still one more day of term left, Nathan was hoping they’d be able to stick to his injunction against ‘unplanned’ sleepovers.

Nathan got in the car. Youssef turned and flashed this beautiful beaming smile at him. It was like they hadn’t seen each other for a year and a half, instead of the day and a half it had been since Wednesday morning.

“It’s so good to see you,” said Youssef.

“Same here. It feels like I’ve waited forever for tonight to come around.”

This was the first time Nathan had been in Youssef’s car. When he’d finally taken in enough of Youseff’s handsome face, he noticed the adaptive controls. On the steering wheel was a metal ring attachment through which he anchored his hook.

“Is that how you drive?” Nathan remarked, “I’ve never seen such a thing.”

“I don’t really need it but the M.O.T. insists.”

The cinema was only a short distance away, in a large shopping complex. The place was very busy, so Youssef had to park right at the far end of the carpark. Of course, if he had a disability permit they could’ve parked right by the entrance, but he wouldn’t have any of that. This came as no surprise to Nathan.

It had been Youssef’s choice of film. They were going to see a period romance, an adaptation of a well-known nineteenth-century novel. Nathan was a little intrigued at this pick, he thought it might be down to the ‘classical’ nature of the film—Youssef seemed to have quite high tastes. He wasn’t sure, there was so much more to Youssef than what he already knew.

Nathan bought a largish tub of popcorn for them to share. Youssef had nothing against popcorn, he was fairly ambivalent about its taste. It was just too darned fiddly for him, reaching in and trying to grab a piece or two. When you had hooks, you really needed to be able to see what you were doing, which was not consistent with the darkened atmosphere of the cinema.

Nathan leant over, “Here…” he whispered, popping a piece of corn into Youssef’s mouth.

“Mmmm,” Youssef mumbled, quietly. The popcorn was rich and buttery, much more delicious than he remembered.

Nathan sent another piece of popcorn his way. And another, and another. It was all looking fairly innocent—to the other patrons��until Youssef started licking the butter off Nathan’s fingers. By this time they were starting to get so horny, they both found Nathan’s hand-feeding so erotic. It was just as well they were sitting in the dark, because their massive erections were creating really obvious tent-poles in their trousers.

Nathan dived into the popcorn again, this time producing a handful. He pressed his whole palm across Youssef’s mouth, for him to virtually inhale the popcorn in a great, satisfying mouthful.

“God! Nathan!” Youssef mumbled in ecstasy. This was a whole new dimension to the cinema-going experience for both of them.

“Shhh!” someone behind them was clearly getting annoyed.

The film continued. At some point in the middle there was a scene where, after a long absence, the heroine and her lover were reunited by a strange twist of fate. Youssef swooned. He let out an audible half-sigh, half-whimper. Settling lower into the seat, he leant against Nathan and rested his head against his shoulder.

Hmmm thought Nathan, this is why we came to this particular film. Dear Youssef, he really is a sweet, sentimental fool of a teddy bear. Nathan felt a warm glow through his whole being as his fondness for Youssef doubled at this very thought.

[curioushabitforarivergod]

If I may add some discussion/discourse to this subject:

I mention it this sort-of essay (and you mention it too) but castles in Scotland didn't appear until the 12th century, and it was thanks to King David I of Scotland, rather than Norman conquest. These castles, although taking on the Norman motte and bailey structure, were wooden rather than stone, with the exception of a few, including Castle Sween. So technically it's not impossible that Hogwarts was founded in Scotland, but extremely unlikely, and a rough 200 years later than suggested by HP canon and Pottermore.

I don't necessarily have issues with your concept of the castle improving and having additions added over time (more so the way it's portrayed in the films; a fairy tale castle built during the Victorian period), rather I would like to add issues surrounding Hogwarts and it's location in Scotland. Because Hogwarts, for half of it's supposed history, has been located in a seperate country from England, yet exists as an Anglo-British institution.

Logistically, early students would be speaking Middle Gaelic (with both Irish, Scottish and Manx variations), Old/Middle variations of Cornish, English, Welsh (the change-over occurred in about the 12th century), Old French (assuming the Norman invaders sent their children to Hogwarts over France) and potentially the dying Pictish and Cumbric languages (extinct c. 12th century). Latin could have potentially been used, especially with the names of so many spells being Latin based/inspired, but it was largely only used by religious institutions and the vast majority of people for most of the Medieval period were illiterate, so attempting to teach another language to students coming from across the British Isles, on top of teaching writing seems highly improbable. And if some sort of translation spell existed, we would've seen it in GoF.

There's the question too of how English came to be the dominate language of a Scottish institution. I can't imagine muggle politics was distanced from wizarding politics (especially since the statue of secrecy didn't exist until the 17th century) and how that was kept out of Hogwarts. At what point did Hogwarts become English? The Hogwarts we see is largely English (particularly Southern English), with the exception of McGonagall. I mention it in my essay, but I believe Scotland and England are seperate nations and not united as British in the wizarding world, which makes Hogwarts even more atypical and anachronistic (for lack of a better word).

It's not necessarily that I disagree with what you raised, op. I like your ideas of Hogwarts changing over time; I agree with it. But at the same time, I think the mess of canon and changes made post canon make it impossible to decipher Hogwarts as an entity with any sort of certainty. As a historian, the increasingly improbability of events in Hogwarts's construction and continued existence frustrates me greatly; Hogwarts shouldn't exist even in a magical world.

About Hogwarts Castle's Architecture

I think the history is wrong... Like, stone castles only became a thing in Britain when the Normans brought the practice over with them from France (Norman rule was officially established in 1066). And the first stone castles in Scotland were only built around the 1100s. Hogwarts was built around the 990s... so what's up with that?

(Like, there were some fortified stone structures in Scotland pre-normans (brochs), but no one would really call them a typical castle. Also, they were built in the Iron Age (Brochs were specifically built between 400 BC and 200 AD), so not the founders' times)

Also, many of the architectural details of Hogwarts in the movies/Hogwarts Legacy/any other video games/illustrations have much later influences, what with the Gothic architecture (which only came around in the 1200s) and elements from Victorian restored castles (I'll go more about what this means later).

And I have a Watsonian theory/headcanon to make it make sense.

What I think, is that the Hogwarts castle we (and the characters) experience, has been heavily reconstructed over the past thousand years. So Hogwarts likely started as a simpler, wooden structure (as was common in Scotland around the 10th century) and it changed and grew and evolved throughout the centuries.

So we'll walk through the history of castle architecture in Scotland and explain how Hogwats evolved over the years. (Becouse I'm an architecture and history nerd, sue me).

Pre Founders

Hogwarts is legend to have been built where the founders found a pensive:

The Hogwarts Pensieve is made of ornately carved stone and is engraved with modified Saxon runes, which mark it as an artefact of immense antiquity that pre-dates the creation of the school. One (unsubstantiated) legend says that the founders discovered the Pensieve half-buried in the ground on the very spot where they decided to erect their school.

(Pottermore)

So, the location probably wasn't empty, but had some evidence of past wizarding residence there. How much is unclear, but it was a place magic was practiced in before the founders.

990s

Hogwarts is founded as a school and sanctuary. Muggles at the time didn't really believe in witchcraft (the church considers believing in witchcraft heresy). So, it's not really to protect themselves together, but more to allow wizards to build a united community.

There is an element of hiding magic from muggles:

Why didn’t we choose to produce flying barrels, flying armchairs, flying bathtubs – why brooms? Shrewd enough to see that their Muggle neighbours would seek to exploit their powers if they knew their full extent, witches and wizards kept themselves to themselves long before the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy came into effect.

(Quidditch Through the Ages)

But it's not for the same reason as the later witch hunts. At this time, people who confessed to witchcraft would need to repent (not via execution, mind) because they'd be seen as delusional. After all, magic doesn't exist according to church doctrine at the time. and as mentioned in the book, the concern was to be bothered to help muggles with everything, not because they were hunted at the time.

Around this time there is the magical government in England at least, is the Wizard Council, also known as the Wizengamot. Due to the similar name, the muggle Wittengamot (the council of lords that chose the king of England) might be aware of their wizard equivalent, but they might also be completely unaware (explained in the next section).

Castles, in this time period in the UK, looked something like this:

Hogwarts, when founded, probably looked like this combination of buildings and not what we imagine as a castle.

with the Chamber of Secrets as a basement. It's canon that a Gaunt later added the pipe entrance from the bathroom, so it's original entrance lay elsewhere.

Note that this means it wasn't the founders who but the Common Rooms, Room of Requirement, or the moving staircases and that the in-universe history books are wrong.

Since Hogsmeade was founded by Hengist of Woodcroft who was a student of Helga Hufflepuff when she was alive, the village was probably founded in the century following the school's founding.

1000s-1100s

Here we get the Norman Conquest of England, and while Scotland wasn't Norman, the culture in Scotland was influenced by the changes down south. Specifically, castle architecture is something they copied from the Normans.

The reason I mentioned earlier the muggle Witengamot might've not been aware of the wizarding community is because we know William brought with him wizards in his army, like the Malfoys:

Like many other progenitors of noble English families, the wizard Armand Malfoy arrived in Britain with William the Conqueror as part of the invading Norman army. Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.

(Pottermore)

But many other pureblood wizard family names we can date back to the Norman invasion. Such as: Lestrange, Peverell, Wealey, Gaunt, etc. So, it's somewhat implied William won England with the help of wizards that the local Anglo-Saxon English didn't have fighting with them.

Due to these Norman wizards clearly getting positions of influence in the wizarding community (talked a bit more about this here[]), it's likely they or even William himself wanted to improve Hogwarts to keep the wizardibg population onside.

So, around the later 1000s or early 1100 Hogwarts would've looked something like this:

So, basically, the same structure as before, but the keep (where the Great Hall is, is built from stone. The Great Hall (AKA the most defensible place in the castle everyone fell back to in the Battle of Hogwarts) was the first built.

As for the inside:

We have geometric details on the columns and archways (which are round, it's not yet the pointed gothic arches we all know and love). The walls would all be painted white and then colorful and vibrant colors over it (somewhat visible in the picture on the left).

1200s-1300s

Throughout the next two centuries, more and more wings would be added to the castle. Many of the classrooms and dorms that were outside the keep in the outer buildings moved to these new wings inside the main stone castle. The outer walls & fortifications would also be improved and extended from the former ones and a proper gatehouse would likely be built:

And a few churches, since they tended to be more decorated on the outside and I want to explain this is when gothic architecture was a thing and that most of the styles we recognize for castles are from this period:

This is when the Room of Requirement, the moving staircases, the towers (the Astronomy Tower, the Headmaster's Tower, and perhaps the Owlery), and the various common rooms would be built.

(Note the castle on the left would've likely had a whitewash on all of the exterior back in the day)

At this point, the Great Hall, and the quad if we think of the typical Hogwarts castle would be built:

(Image from Hogwarts Legacy)

There would be no transfiguration courtyard area yet and no clocktower yet as they are likely later additions.

I'd also note the inside of the castle, would look something like this at this point:

The walls would be painted and colorful and vibrant. You might also see wall hangings like we see in the Gryffindor Common room in the movies, that's actually accurate (the wall tapestry/curtain things, not the furniture, the furniture is 17th and 18th century) except the stone would likely not be bear stone and instead have a whitewash over it and tapestries over the whitewashed stone. Bear stone wasn't an all that common look in this era unless they used pretty stones that were meant to be shown off (which was expensive, hence rare).

1500s-1600s

This period is still building in a style called Gothic (12th to 16th century), but we're adding more intricate detail, and the style for furniture changes quite drastically (because we've entered the Tudor area). I believe that around the 1500s and the 1600s, more wings were added, like the clocktower, the transfiguration courtyard, and the viaduct (a bridge was probably there before, but I think it was rebuilt with the new building):

The style of buildings we're looking at now would have this sort of exterior:

(Note the house on the left and castle on the white would've likely had a whitewash on all of the exterior back in the day)

And this is the interior we're talking about:

Also, up until this point, greenhouses weren't really a thing (at least not the glasshouse variety). I assume there was an Herbology Garden or that perhaps a Vegetable Patch Harry mentions exists next to the greenhouses and served as the place where they grew plants because glasshouses like we think of when we read the word "greenhouse" were only started being built in England late in the 16th century. So the Greenhouses are likely a 17th-century addition since the wizards probably adopted them a little later than the muggles.

1700s

This is when indoor plumbing was introduced to Hogwarts and the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was changed:

When first created, the Chamber was accessed through a concealed trapdoor and a series of magical tunnels. However, when Hogwarts’ plumbing became more elaborate in the eighteenth century (this was a rare instance of wizards copying Muggles, because hitherto they simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence), the entrance to the Chamber was threatened, being located on the site of a proposed bathroom. The presence in school at the time of a student called Corvinus Gaunt – direct descendant of Slytherin, and antecedent of Tom Riddle – explains how the simple trapdoor was secretly protected, so that those who knew how could still access the entrance to the Chamber even after newfangled plumbing had been placed on top of it.

(Pottermore)

1800s

Now, back to what I mentioned in the opening paragraph about Victorian castle reconstruction. So, during the Victorian era, many rich people bought castles to restore and preserve them. Victorians in England were kinda obsessed with the Medieval period (and Ancient Egypt, but we're not talking about that right now) so they wanted to be able to walk around castles, and they had a lot of castles in the UK that fell into disrepair and just stood there empty. The thing is, the Victorian people who restored castles had no idea what Medieval castles actually looked like in the Medieval period. So all the castles you see with this sort of interior (which are most reconstructed castles, btw):

That's a Victorian reconstruction. They built how they imagined medieval castles looked like according to their own tastes and aesthetics and what they saw from more recent Todur castles, not how medieval castles actually looked like.

That being said, Hogwarts was continuously used throughout all these years, so I imagine some of these Victorian elements would make their way in, but not to the same level as these reconstructions.

Basically, different locations in the castle would look different depending on when they were built. Most furniture is likely to have been replaced more recently and would at most date back to the 1500s. So, we'll see a lot of dark wood furniture that isn't painted the way they would've painted furniture in the medieval period.

I'd also expect that some of the older walls/ceilings are still painted very vibrantly (which fits with the wizard's sense of style overall).

Basically, I think the Hogwarts we experienced in the books wasn't built in one year as a monolith by the founders. It was added to over time. Rooms that look older Medieval, and ones that look like a Tudor addition would all exist within the same castle. Areas in the older sections would have 18th-century wooden paneling because reconstruction was needed. I personally think that's the right way to go about designing Hogwarts since most castles in Britain are like that (and in the rest of Europe).

Castles changed and grew according to the needs of whoever lived there at the time and the technology available. And since, well, at some point castles weren't needed as fortified structures anymore, they lost fortifications for aesthetics. We have no surviving castles that actually look the way they did back when they were built. All the preserved ones had wings added, walls paneled with wood, and the windows replaced. And in many of them, you can actually see the patchwork in the bricks, the window style changing from one window to the next across a single wall. I think that's part of what makes castles gorgeous and it always made sense to me Hogwarts was like that too.

[princessanneftw]

Royals ignore Princess Anne at their peril

The Queen’s wisest child would be a more respected adviser than her brothers and could help secure the monarchy’s future.

By Libby Purves for The Times

One asset of the British constitution is how rarely we have to think about it. Law by law we wrangle but some old rivers flow smoothly by, turbulent only when someone chucks in a rock: parliamentary sovereignty, independent judiciary, constitutional monarchy.

The last of these is today’s preoccupation, so devout republicans turn away — you are one in five of us and may triumph one day but probably not soon. The nation still overwhelmingly votes the Queen as our most popular public figure, the Cambridges not far behind.

But at some point we will have a new monarch. HM herself has been visibly, unfussedly smoothing the path for this, with the sangfroid of a nonagenarian Christian unafraid of mortality. So if the useful system of constitutional monarchy is to carry on, elegantly representing national identity beyond politics and avoiding ghastly contests for an elected head of state, we should pay attention to how it works. Especially right now. For heredity is at monarchy’s core, and families include problems.

Of the nine nearest in line to the throne five are small children and two of the others unthinkable. The Duke of York is disgraced, barred from royal duties and deleted by charities and regiments. The Duke of Sussex has emigrated, rejecting royal duty and reticence in favour of Californian showbiz contracts and an exiguous PR role as “chief impact officer” for a coaching business.

Yet despite these two squeaky wheels and the grating matter of the senior heir having his pet charity investigated by the Met, the royal carriage creaks on. An unappreciated aspect has it that after the Prince of Wales and his son William, the renegade York and Sussex are the other “counsellors of state”: half of a quartet deemed able, under the 1937 Regency Act, to take over responsibilities from the Queen if she were incapacitated. This means granting royal assent to bills, summoning parliament, appointing judges, QCs and others.

These are of course ceremonial functions but like it or not the monarch is part of the legal machinery of British government and assumed to be always available.

It would be rare for both Charles and William to be abroad or ill at once, but all the same it is shocking to note that of four counsellors of state one is a disreputable sleaze and another a commercially compromised émigré, legally able only to hold the role because he has a “UK address” rental at Frogmore Cottage, despite considering it “unsafe” to visit Britain.

But what grates more, in a free 21st-century country, is that this group omits the Princess Royal, Anne (who held the role before William reached 21). Older than Andrew, infinitely more dedicated to Britain’s interests than Harry, the Queen’s daughter is bypassed.

Nor is she even decently placed in the line of succession. In 2013 — not before time — government ended male royal primogeniture but insultingly didn’t backdate it: only girls born after 2011 count. Thus Anne, one of the most intelligent and diligent members of the family, is only 17th in line. Ahead of her lie not only Prince William’s three children but Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor in Montecito, plus the Duke of York’s baby grandchildren Sienna Mozzi and August Brooksbank.

I think this matters because for all the flummery and Zadok-the-Priestery, a constitutional monarchy has to move gracefully with the times and be seen to belong to its century. Scandinavian and Dutch royal houses grasped this long ago, but our progress is more hesitant.

We have had female premiers, ministers and leaders in every field; the science and business logistics of vaccine creation and rollout were largely owed to brilliant women. We are not a backward sexist country. But in this royal area we are starting to look that way: a respected Queen in her Platinum Jubilee year is officially backed by counsellors including a discredited sleazy playboy and a petulant transatlantic psychobabbler, neglecting a dutiful daughter senior to both of them.

It feels particularly raw because the Princess Royal is a clean bright gem in the battered family tiara. The hardest working in actual engagements, she is also properly engaged with her charities. I have encountered her often in such contexts — I sat on a victim-support committee she chaired — and she is always sharply across any brief, from child malnutrition to lighthouses. Interviewing her about the Mission to Seafarers (she visits ships, talks to often-ignored international crews about their lives) I incautiously asked her to define her value to the charity. Eyebrows raised, she delivered a staccato “Fig-ure-head!”.

I deserved that, but the point is she totally understands both the oddity and the usefulness of royal work. Like her late father she is brisk, practical and attentive but not unfriendly. A steady blue gaze, but more stimulating than unnerving to meet. Moreover, unlike the Duke of York she understood the dangers, refused titles for her children and urged them to serious careers. In her private pursuit as a rider she won international medals and made the 1976 Olympic team; in personal life, unlike two of her brothers, she divorced and remarried unobtrusively and without public rancour.

In a less stubbornly fossilised country you would think that the 2013 revision of primogeniture would have included righting the wrong done by history to all women. You would certainly think that the role of counsellor of state would have been quietly returned to Anne when the Duke of Edinburgh died, while a sensible royal house retired Andrew and Harry from it. It might yet happen. It ought to.

[warsofasoiaf]

Do you think old school thinkers, who happen to be left leaning, get more of a pass for problematic thought than right leanings ones? Specifically wondering why Karl Marx is still widely read and respected despite problematic views on the Jewish People and the British conquest of India, but also Che Guevara

Obligatory I hate the left-right political spectrum caveat. I hate ideas and people being categorized on it. It's simplistic, actively working to deny understanding and greater comprehension. But I've had a little whiskey, so who gives a shit now?

If you're talking about academia, yes. Academia has been loathe to call out Karl Marx for his anti-Semitism. It's not just the anti-Semitism though; we've had extensive time with which to see Marx's predictions, the ones which asserted actual data figures that we can measure like the rate of profit to fall over time, have failed to materialize. At this point, Marx is exclusively junk philosophy and pseudoscience; it has no place in rational theory, but it's still there. Chomsky is dismissed for his largely bogus political takes and genocide denial, but still held up as a serious academic even in his field, despite the numerous failures in the Propaganda Model (though it has some value in the conceptual level). Now, this might be me, but I see the failures of Manufacturing Consent as part of a long-running tradition of conspiracy theories within left-wing movements far older than Chomsky that are easily debunked (I particularly hate the "First Red Scare killed the American socialist movement" myth). I hope one day academia will engage with its blind spots and include the Soviet Union in its examination of colonial studies and 20th century authoritarianism, or hold its treasured thinkers to the same standards, but I won't hold my breath. Academics do not take kindly to non-academics thinking that they are wrong.

That's academia, though, America outside of colleges don't really listen to Marx at all - even American left-wing movements these days cleave closer to a European social democratic model and plenty of left-wing students don't actually read Marx, they quote him but haven't actually went through his books (some have, and sadly, they are usually quite authoritarian). In that sense, it's all about who evaluates it. If you look to other places, you see them engage in a similarly uncritical fashion with their own pet theories that similarly flatter the tribe. So, I think that's less of a function of the left-right political spectrum and more of a function of a political interpretation of history that promotes the in-group as a historical protagonist. It is cringe to see someone espousing the horrors of racism from someone wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, but it's also cringe to see someone say "America means freedom," without even the barest hint of recognition that the United States brutalized blacks, Native Americans, etc. to the point where they could rightly say that America took great pains to keep them out of the American Dream and reacted violently when they succeeded anyway - consider actions like the Osage murders or the Tulsa massacre; it was not enough to keep minorities out of prosperity but to violently pull it from them when they succeeded via theft, arson, and murder. Howard Zinn is a polemicist writing bullshit history, but so were plenty of other textbooks in the 1950's. The Trumpist movement largely gives life to "Stop the Steal" absent all empirical, logical, and logistical evidence, rather than accept that Trump just fucking lost under the same rules that he won in 2016. They'd rather establish an autocrat than realize that maybe, just maybe, that people just told them that they didn't want them in charge, that he failed to deliver and the American public decided for something else - it's the same energy that animates Chomsky's writings in the 1980's. Stupidity and tribalism are omni-partisan; it's in the nature of tribal movements to glorify the tribe by denigrating others outside the tribe. And given how easy it is, particularly in liberal societies given the liberal paradox (the real one, not the fallacious one proposed by Amartya Sen), to fall into tribal enclavism, I don't think that's changing any time soon.

Thanks for the question, Cle-Guy.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[theme-park-concepts]

You know I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone ask the question, let alone try to answer it, a question that should be at the core of theme park design.

Why rides?

Rides have been at the core of theme park design for nearly a century, they're my favorite part, I daresay the favorite part for most people that go, but like really why use rides to tell stories? There's a lot of ways to tell stories, and if you really care about storytelling you should really be invested in finding the best medium for the message. And notably not all theme parks choose to use rides. Puy du Fou famously is only large spectacular shows and walkthroughs. Things you'll also find in theme parks all over.

So why rides? I think the lazy answer is that that's what's expected from theme parks. Because of the prototype laid out by Disneyland and the lineage of amusement parks.

So another argument would be throughput. I think this is a much better argument, and basically draws its lineage from worlds fairs. If you're going to make a show, or an exhibit even, and you want to have thousands and thousands of people see it per day - way more than could fit in a traditional theatre or who would linger in a museum...a ride system is a great way to do it. It's literally the same reason factories have assembly lines, thanks Henry Ford 👀. Of course you could also just build giant theaters that sit thousands and thousands of guests - like Puy du fou. But those shows become necessarily grand. there's a lot of reasons to do it that way, longer show times for one. But that also could lead to longer wait times, or at least a static wait, and not every story wants to be a grand spectacle. Though interested most rides turn out to be. A ride can get you a show that's told relatively intimately while being able to show it to a huge audience. Maybe intimate isn't the right word - perhaps personal is better. A ride can tell a story that's just for you or at max a couple dozen other people.

So throughput and personal connection are reasons. What else? I think the other element has to be visceral experience. Motion and movement are an additional source of story and emotion that no other medium has access to. Books don't have background music (audiobooks excepted), movies and theatre do. It's an extra dimension of storytelling that we find almost essential these days. Movement is another. Is it essential? I don't think as many people would say it is, but it certainly can be for certain stories. If you're story is about flight, feeling the flight is kind of inextricable. Though at the moment I'd say most people expect movement to be diegetic to the story. Non-diegetic movement isn't something we've seen a lot of, baring just the physical logistics of a moving omnimover etc.

So it would seem the main reason to build a ride is to tell personal stories, with high throughput, and/or that ideally benefit from the use of physical body motion/sensations to tell it. Are there other reasons? Probably. What do you think they are?

[frustratedasatruar]

What do you think the palestinian people deserve?

Same thing as the Israeli people deserve, really; self-determination in their own indigenous homeland, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, etc and so forth.

Israel is ruled by a capitalist-paradigm representative democracy, with all the issues that entails. Bibi has been holding on to control by the skin of his teeth, using various procedural tricks and stalling tactics to avoid being removed from power, as his alt-right coalition government grows ever shakier and less popular.

Much to his aid is Hamas, which also doesn't want Bibi to leave office. A situation which, to me, reminds of Bin Ladin's work to help Bush win reelection in 2004.

Palestine is, largely, partitioned between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. The PA's president (Mahmoud Abbas) is coming up on the second decade of his four year presidential term. He's also a Holocaust denier and general shitbag, but, y'know, its not as if the Palestinian people have the power to remove him.

Hamas is a hard-right theocratic authoritarian movement. I'm not entirely sold on describing them as fascists; I've yet to see a real breakdown of their precise policies and ideological beliefs as compared to Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism, which I would consider the gold standard for resolving the question.

That said, they are a splinter group of the so-called Muslim Brotherhood, which itself directly collaborated with the Nazis. So, y'know, less than un-fascist, certainly.

Hamas's de facto secession from the rest of Palestine torpedoed the previously-in-progress normalization process, under which the Israelis had already evacuated Gaza, including the forcible relocation of all Jews out of the strip, in compliance with their end of the deal. By failing to stop Hamas from breaking with their government, the PA has failed to demonstrate their ability to keep a state together, and for-reasons-unclear-to-me-because-I'm-not-a-scholar-on-the-region, this has served to delay Israel's withdrawal from the West Bank. Presumably, this has something to do with Hamas's violent hostility to Israel, their provocations long predating the Simchat Torah Pogrom, and how Israel would not want to withdraw from the West Bank in the same way it had already done Gaza unless they could be sure that doing so would not immediately turn the whole West Bank into a giant platform for launching missiles into Israel.

I believe that the Palestinian people deserve control over their own government, something they have in neither the West Bank nor Gaza. (It is however, perhaps ironically, something that Palestinians in Israel have, at least up to the limitations of representative democracies, ie, they have as fair a say in the Israeli government as the rest of the Israelis do.).

I believe that they deserve freedom of expression, something else they do not have at present, at least not in Gaza: Hamas will literally throw you off a building if there are strong enough rumors that you might be Queer.

What does your utopia look like?

I'm an Anarchist.

So firstly, I don't believe "utopia" is achievable; rather, I believe that the moment we declare the revolution complete is the moment it fails. That the moment we say Anarchy has been achieved, and thus we need not continue to strive to bring it into being, is the moment our victory shall slip through our fingers.

That said, in the spirit of your question; I want cooperative, locally organized governments for everybody. Everybody has a say, and nobody goes without. Freedom of religion, from religion. Freedom to live, and live without fear, be it of violence, of hunger, or otherwise.

Logistically speaking, setting this up world wide will be the work of centuries. And I wouldn't be surprised if de facto city states persisted essentially indefinitely, as economic and cultural influences dictated. As long as these city states are equitably organized, with the wants and well being of their people taken care of, etc, I don't think that an otherwise-global coalition of Anarchist communes would have any need to oppose that.

The southern Levant is, frankly, one of the biggest, longest standing political snarls on earth, with oppression dynamics that echo forwards from the end of the bronze age.

Lets cut off the first third-and-change of that, so we don't need to talk about the Babylonians, the Philistines, or any of the other invaders whom have been gone since before the end of the BCEs.

But, y'know. The past isn't over. Its not even passed.

In the early second century, the Romans crushed the Bar Kochba indigenous revolt and, as a fuck-you to the Judeans, renamed the province from Judea to Syria-Palaestina. This, of course, to reference two of Klal Yisrael's historical enemies-and-conquerors; the long-extinct Hellenic Philistines, and the long-collapsed Neo-Assyrian Empire (though the Assyrian people survive to this day).

From this point, the accepted Colonial name of the region becomes "Palestine." The region is then under (Latin) Roman subjugation, which eventually bleeds into (Greek) Roman subjugation, for reasons which didn't matter if you were one of the people being oppressed by them. The Romans and the Persians are both swept out of the picture by the rising First Caliphate, which brought Arab imperialism to the area. We go through a few Caliphates, including a Shi'a one, as well as some (usually turkic) Sultanates and some Crusader States. The Mongols are there for a bit too. What they all have in common is their enmity for many-or-all of the indigenous peoples of the area; not just the Jews, but also Samaritans, Bedouins, Druze, various christian-but-not-the-right-kind-of-christian minorities, and, yes, Arabs.

These back and forth imperial powers all get swept away by the Ottoman Empire, which rules with an Iron fist for a number of centuries. Late in, they absolutely devastate the region of Palestine with various imperial mismanagement projects, including (I understand) cutting down most of the trees in the entire region for use as raw material for railroad construction.

Which, y'know, kinda fucked up the ecosystem. But the Ottomans didn't have to live there, so they didn't care.

I've seen some Kahanists talk about what a wasteland the area was when the Jewish indigenous land restoration movement got going in the late 19th century, and use this for various racist purposes against arab-palestinians. But, you'll notice from my telling, at no point in the previous all-of-human-history had arabs-who-lived-in-Palestine ever been in charge of the place. Any and all land mismanagement can only really be set at the feet of the Ottomans.

The Ottomans are on the loosing end of WWI (although, people forget, they held out longer than the other Central Powers), and perfidious Albion arranges to receive the area as an Imperial Mandate through the League of Nations. They make a lot of promises to a lot of people, and keep none of them naturally, but one of the big ones they don't keep is the original agreement as to what to do with the territory.

The British had agreed that the Mandate of Palestine was to become an independent Jewish State. Notably, this never happened. For one thing, the British unilaterally cracked off three quarters of the Mandate to become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

But also because the British worked hand-in-hand with various Nazi collaborators (recall I mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood before?) to make sure that Jews fleeing the Holocaust would not be able to come to the Mandate to escape. Because the British can only listen to the opinions of locals when its racist.

My point being that any and all simplistic readings of the region are bad and wrong. Similar to the Quechua of many parts of the Andes, European colonialism has created a very odd dynamic for the Arabs of much of SWANA, of being simultaneously colonizer and colonized. (I know you're gonna say that the Ottomans got there before the British, but technically Konstantiniyye/Istanbul is in Europe so I'm not wrong!)

How do you believe we should get there?

Anarchism starts at home. In matters of boots, defer to the bootmaker.

I don't live in SWANA.

This would be why I don't tend to talk about what happens there as much as I talk about things people in "the west" do because they feel like events in SWANA gives them an excuse! I cannot do much of anything to effect Israel or Palestine, but I can speak out against bigotry when it happens in my spaces.

I made an oath to the Thunderer himself, Friend of Humanity, that I would do just that. And Antisemitism is the largest, most pervasive form of bigotry in the world. I am Oathbound to confront this, in which ever way I can!

Frankly? I'm not doing enough. If my health permitted, I'd be doing more; there's a synagogue in my town, I know the street, and we are in deep red territory.

And when I say "red" I sure as Hel don't mean communist.

If my health improves, I should really get in contact with them; I've heard that some Jews appreciate having gentiles walk with them on their way and back, for safety. I should offer. That I haven't yet is a personal failing. Maybe I'm not close enough to really help, its not like I have a car, but I should find out for sure.

How do we get to my ideal world? By doing the best we can in every moment.

If we declare any form of bigotry, such as antisemitism, above criticism then we have already failed.

I'm not interested in gish-galloping with many of the variously-unreasonable claims you make up post of your three questions for me. I will answer this one; you point out, sort of, that I mostly post about antisemitism on my page. This is true. In no small part, this would be because, at this point, tumblr is mainly just the platform I use to peruse @the-library-alcove's posts, particularly the ones about antisemitism. I have some mutuals I'm friends with, and I don't want to loose contact with them, but tumblr is just increasingly unpleasant. I've essentially abandoned my dashboard since October 7th, and I don't have the heart to re-curate it. So, naturally, that would be the majority of the things I post about on tumblr.

This is how cause-and-effect works.

I follow some blogs that since Oct. 7th have come out in support of the Israeli genocide. However that is always implicit.

Specifically with @frustratedasatruar I have noticed that they regularly reblog posts that take actions from pro palestinian groups, which at times are not strategically well thought out, and instead of ever actually engaging with the political demands, focus on how these actions do not strategically hit the target they want to hit.

I would like to point out, to both parties involved, that a group participating in the protests against the genocide of the palestinian people blocking a performance of Fidler on the Roof is in line with Israeli state propaganda. If Israel represents and speaks for all jews world wide, if Israel is equivalent to the jewish people it makes sense to attack jewish culture and jewish performances. It is not in line with an internationalist analysis but anti-jewish hate.

I will also point out that taking issue with that action, only ever focussing on the problematic parts of a very broad movement and at the same time taking no issue with thousands of dead civilians only because they are not the right race is racism. Deeply rooted in white supremacy. And this is not hyperbolic, the tumblr user in question has literally equated calling for a humanitarian ceacefire with advocacy for killing jews for political purposes. That was ~today~, August 10th 2024.

As a Polytheist I believe that everyone should have the right to worship whatever god(s) and in whatever way they like as long as it does not inhibit the freedom of others. As a society we should encourage and help people to find community in that. I also believe that people have the right to live in peace and dignity. The palestinian christians, muslims, atheists or, yes, polytheists in Gaza are mostly refugees from the rest of palestine. Homes forcefully taken from them, many with dead families. When you are targeted as a group, when your rights are stripped away for who you are you must act as a group and you must do so with all it takes. Be it for example as a queer person, a woman, a religious minority or as a palestinian.

That is why I repost pro palestinian content on this blog.

@frustratedasatruar What do you think the palestinian people deserve? What does your utopia look like? How do you believe we should get there? I genuinely hope I get an answer from you. Because otherwise I really liked your blog. Since october it is almost exclusively pro-Israeli propaganda.

[licncourt]

Why did Lestat decide to stay with a closeted, homophobic, and frankly unproductive Louis while being an 'out & proud' bisexual guy? Atleast, Nicki embraced it all 'with pride' if only to spite God (the courage counts). He was ambitious and create 'goodness' out of it. He would also have an impressive academic background which is more than 'reading pretentious books'. How did all of these translate into Louis as 'the chosen one'?

Alright, so this ask has been in my inbox a little while mainly because some of the implications really bother me, as well as other assumptions seeming to directly contradict canon. I have no idea if this ask is in good faith or not, but I'm going to go through it and break down what my issue is.

First of all, I'm going to start by saying that I would not consider Nicki or Lestat to be "out". Lestat never seems to struggle with any shame over his orientation, but he is very much closeted. He and Nicki never give any indication of being public about the nature of their relationship, and why would they? France was less severe in its legal treatment of sodomy than most other places, but the social penalties would've been extremely severe. Being confident in your sexuality =/= out.

As for Nicki, I would disagree that "the courage counts" when what he's essentially doing to fully embracing his internalized homophobia to the most extreme extent. What he's doing is self harm of a spiritual type. Hurting himself and Lestat with his acknowledgment of his orientation is very sad and unfortunate more than it is courageous. It's also rather hurtful to suggest that someone is objectively better than another if they use their pain to make art ("goodness"). No one is obligated to make their suffering something for consumption.

Regarding the fact that Louis is/was closeted and dealing with internalized homophobia...I really dislike the implications here. Louis was obviously extremely ashamed of his orientation and had no desire to share it publicly. And why on Earth would he feel any other way?

He grew up in the 18th century in a Catholic area where he would have been at best shunned from his community and family and at worst killed if he was outed. A gay person who doesn't feel safe or ready to come out is just as deserving of love as someone who is. It's not a moral failing or a strike against them as a person. Besides, even if Louis felt exactly the same as Lestat, there's no way they would've been out advertising it any more than Lestat and Nicki because of sheer logistics.

As far as being "unproductive", I mean, yeah. But Lestat was certainly not a productive member of society either. By definition, vampires are leeches. And Louis and Lestat are wealthy landlords who literally feed on humans. They spent seventy years doing absolutely nothing of value. If Louis is unproductive, Lestat is equally so, if not more because at least Louis ran the household and business.

Finally, the academic background is a strange thing to bring up. There's no indication that this is something that matters to Lestat in a partner. He himself is uneducated in the formal sense and it doesn't ever appear to be something that attracts him to Louis or Nicki. And if we ARE comparing (which there's no reason to do, Nicki and Louis are both very intelligent), I disagree with your assessment. Nicki was from a rural family and attended a few months of schooling at the Sorbonne for law. Impressive, but he was ultimately a drop out who never wanted to be there in the first place.

Louis is from a very wealthy family nearby a large city. We don't know if he attended college (it's possible, maybe unlikely), but he would've had private tutors all his life and possibly something like an elite boarding school education. And yes, reading is not formal education, but he clearly cares about and enjoys learning and I don't think what he accomplished on his own should be discounted as just "pretentious books".

At the end of the day, love isn't determined by a pros and cons list or what looks good on paper. Louis is the "chosen one" because Lestat loves him. Utimately, they're compatible, probably more than Lestat and Nicolas (I've talked about why here and here) and it works. Personally, I'm glad love doesn't work on a rational system like the one being described in the ask. Where would we all be if it did?