#shape of reality

[thursdayisbetterthanfriday]

The shape of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

One of the great things about having more time is the opportunity to read more research papers. This one, which was recently released by the Max Planck Institute is beautiful.

Linguists, or people familiar with language study, might be familiar with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For everyone else, it can be (overly) simplified to:

The language someone speaks can affect the way people think about reality

It was proposed in the 20th century by two very prominent linguists, who didn’t have the experimental neurological evidence but used theories based on behavioural observations. For Edward Saphir, it was the anthropological study of Native American languages which were rapidly disappearing from the continent over the course of the 20th century.

Now, neuroscience is catching up. Max Planck Institute effectively found evidence that the language we speak shapes the connectivity in our brains that may underlie the way we think.

The researchers took MRT scans of people who spoke two different kinds of languages (Indo-European morphosyntactically complex language {ie. German} and a Semitic root-based language {ie. Arabic}) and found that the respective German and Arabic speakers brain's language networks had specifically adapted to each language. 

Now, this isn’t definitive proof of Sapir-Whorf by any means, and the study is limited to only looking at two types of languages (amongst other limitations), but it’s a promising bit of evidence which could shape our understanding of how language informs our view of the world. Press release: https://www.cbs.mpg.de/2113362/20231603?c=2482 Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811923001015

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

In the shape of you, something new.

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[adragonthatwrites]

I think, in our desire to make Shen Qingqiu a little guy who loves monsters in fics (very good, wonderful, we love this, BUT), we have missed the opportunity to make him the monster in the AU. I raise to you:

LiuShen Naga AU, where Shen Qingqiu is the naga.

Monster hunter/supernatural pest control guy Liu Qingge who gets called to a small rural town because there's some sort of monster about. The locals have not sighted it, but the behavior of their livestock and sudden dip in wildlife population indicates some sort of large, likely supernatural predator has moved in.

This can be modern AU or cultivator AU! The only important thing is this; nagas are not something Liu Qingge would normally deal with. They're huge and incredibly dangerous, with extraordinary stealth skills. If a naga's around you, you won't know it unless they want you to, and by that point it'll be too late. Their venom is also legendary. So whatever the context of the AU; a naga is something above Liu Qingge's roster of things he'll go after, simply because while bullheaded, he is not suicidal.

So, Liu Qingge investigates the mountains, but finds almost nothing to suggest the kind of beast he suspects to be there. He makes several trips over the course of several days, each time going deeper and deeper into the mountains beside the small village. He finds what he thinks are signs of something there, though he doesn't recognize exactly what could have made them (nagas are very solitary and exceptionally rare, and signs of their presence difficult to find or identify. Liu Qingge has never encountered one before this, nor is he expecting to, so he doesn't recognize up the signs for what they are)

The moment of realization comes when he's deep, deep into the mountains one evening and stumbles upon an odd object on the ground. Large, green, slightly translucent. He lifts it, and feels his blood run cold as he sees the pattern of massive scales and realizes he's holding the shed of a naga.

A fully grown naga, who absolutely knows he's here. Who's den he's probably standing dangerously close to, if there's a shed. A naga who, undoubtedly, has been watching him for the better part of his time searching these mountains, without him ever realizing it.

His heads whips around, searching the area around him. He's been allowed to move within and leave the territory unimpeded thus far; he may be able to get out now, provided the naga hasn't realized how close he's gotten to it's den. If he moves quickly...

It's at that moment his eyes catch on a shadow, falling strangely on the forest floor. He pauses, eyes faltering, before with a sudden harsh chill he finds himself starring directly into a pair of vibrant green eyes with sharp slit pupils. He can just make out the shape of a massive emerald green naga crouched in the underbrush, less than a hundred feet away from him.

And he feels the rush of cold harsh terror only experienced by a prey animal suddenly realizing it's in the sights of a predator.

[pandadrake]

Horses. I really like that other movie that Hobie's voice actor was in.

IDK why I ended up putting so much effort into the rendering this was just supposed to be a shitpost.

Hobie's pose is heavily referenced from a shot from the movie Nope (2022). The background texture is also from the same frame.

Miguel is cast as the stressed-out, half-Latino, tech guy with an angel name who watches camera feeds all day and bitches about his life to people he just met.

[genderqueerpond]

We don't talk enough about the fact that Amelia Pond, s5 Amelia Pond, before the timeline is reset, isn't just a normal orphan. Her parents didn't die, didn't abandon her, and didn't send her away. They never existed in the first place.

And if her parents never existed, then Amelia cannot exist. She is a causal impossibility.

"People fall out of the world sometimes, but they always leave traces." A photograph. A face carved into an apple. Yes. Sure.

A child.

Now that's too big, surely.

But that's what she is. She is exactly the same as these things. A trace. An echo of something that could never be, never was, never could have been.

And the universe should never allow it. A whole person, that's just too much. She could not have continued to exist indefinitely, in normal circumstances, after her parents never existed.

In normal circumstances.

Because the Doctor didn't just save her from things coming out of the crack in her wall. He saved her from going into it. And he didn't just save her from the threat of going into it simply because of its vicinity.

No, by arriving when he did, he interrupted a process that was probably already in motion. And then by arriving again only moments later on a cosmic relative timestream (too quickly for the process to complete) and yet in the local relative timestream, years later --- years of a potential future caught midway through the process of rewriting -- he solidified that existence. Amy is a creature from another timeline, caught in amber. The Doctor prevented her from never existing, but only after she could already never exist.

And so, no one around Amelia thinks about it. Neither does she. There's some kind of consciousness block, because if you thought about it, really thought about it, for two seconds you'd realize she cannot exist. And the human mind can't deal with that. So, to protect itself, everyone's brain simply slides off it before ever noticing. They just assume that her existence makes sense, and don't question it, and don't notice what they don't question, that is staring them in the face.

But of course, to some extent they do notice. They can't think it, but they notice subconsciously that there's something they can't think. They notice there's something wrong with her, something uncanny. And they don't like it, and they alienate her even more because of it.

"Does it ever bother you Pond that your life existence doesn't make any sense?"

[bitchthefuck1]

I love how the conversation between Harmony and Helena shows the tension that Helena becoming severed creates in the power dynamics, because even as a temporary PR stunt under a different name to clearly delineate them, Helly's existence is still a huge crack in the Eagan mythology. Cobell, Milchick, and Graner could be drinking the kool-aid by the bucketful, but watching a descendant of Kier allow themselves to be severed and then being placed in a position of authority over them would still have a massive subconscious impact on the way they view Helena, and by extension their perception of the Eagan's as a whole. It's a direct threat to their illusion of divinity, and you can really feel how that colors their interactions.

[hotrodmccoolgal]

No Promises.

No Demands.

Love is a Battlefield.

[iambecomeyourvillain]

i see andrew minyard and neil josten everywhere i look.

[mayasaura]

sorry this is a very silly ask but. asking as a fellow fan of both TLT and TMA: what entities do you think the lyctors would serve?? personally I’m a big fan of Extinction!John, Flesh!Mercy, and Stranger!Cytherea (the not-Sasha parallels are too strong to ignore lol)

Oh boy oh boy!!!

John - I am a huge fan of John as an avatar of the Extinction. There isn't any need to fudge a damn thing. He went through an ascension almost beat for beat identical to an Avatar's, and checks every box we ever saw for the Extinction's domain.

Augustine - Belongs to the Eye. He could never stop looking for the truth, examining every variable he knew and carving away at that niggling doubt, that inconsistency, until he had ferreted out the key to John's most closely kept secret. He trades in secrets with Mercymorn, using them as leverage. If he has secrets all his own we never discover them, but I'm still comfortable aligning Augustine with the Ceaseless Watcher.

Mercymorn - I agree that Mercymorn is the Flesh. Her anatomist's specialization and the power it gives her over bodies would be qualifier enough, but the Flesh also manifests as dysmorphia, the fear of being physically changed, reshaped, and shaped from viscera. I firmly believe that if tma had ever addressed reproductive horror, it would have fallen within the domain of the Flesh. When Mercy delivered the "sample" to Wake, that was in service of the Flesh. The dripping viscera mixed with invitro paraphernalia that creep through the Canaan bubble under Wake's influence are a consequence of Mercy's plan made manifest, and could have been plucked straight from that Fear's domain.

Gideon - We know less about Gideon the First, which makes it harder. Most of the applicable Fears—the Lonely, the Stranger, the Spiral—he is decidedly more a victim than an avatar, but we saw him vividly put the fear of prey in Harrow. Gideon the First serves the Hunt.

Cytherea - She's the Stranger, you're so right! She's not-Dulcinea, of course. A stranger replacing a beloved friend, and no one can tell the difference. The Stranger also covers taxidermy, or, in Cytherea's case, the Beguiling Corpse. And for a hat trick, the Stranger also encompasses performance as the art of lying, a deception that breaks down one's sense of self. Cytherea worked that art on Gideon, apparently just for fun, chipping away at her with pretty stories and sharp compliments until Gideon was ready to die as the perfect cavalier.

I don't know if you meant just God's Duplicious Sluts, the Horribly Old People, but since I'm warmed up:

Ianthe - She's a servant of the Web, The Spinner of Schemes, The Hidden Machination. Power and control, baby. We still don't know what her game is, or how much of what she's done was intentional vs. improvisational, but one thing we do know is that she covets having control over others. She's even described once as a spider (tucked inside a shoe).

Harrow - Deeply embedded in the Buried. When Harrowhark is not crushed by responsibility while literally living in a hole in the ground, she's drowning in salt water and debt.

Thank you for asking, this was a lot of fun!

[bonefall]

i just thought of something about frostpaw’s design having a wolf motif and her huge autopsy scar - it reminds me of how in multiple fairy tales (particularly ittle red riding hood, like you mentioned in the design post), the wolves in those stories have their stomachs cut open. i just thought that was cool :3

I hadn't even considered that, but it makes it work even better. The fairytales don't even just have the wolf get their belly cut open-- they also get filled with stones and tossed in the river.

There's a clear image in my mind that when Frostpaw is put under the human tranquilizer, her mind falls backward and plunges her into liquid void. A dream takes hold, bubbles forming in the dark, her body cradled by clear water as far as she can perceive.

The unspoken knowledge of her dream tells her that she's in a raindrop, the river, the lake, and Riverstar Himself. The embodiment of water. And He is endless.

Her problems are washed away by the sheer vastness of his being, and she's just beginning to wrap her head around the marvel of it all when she opens her eyes in a den. Warm, comfortable, surrounded by hay.

The vision sloshes in her mind like dancing waves. She has a boiling desire to understand what it meant-- and the only thing that comes to mind is the Tribe of Rushing Water's philosophy that all things are connected by the river. That living by the Lake, fed by the southern delta, which rushes down from the mountain's waterfall, makes their cultures kin.

She decides to start there, and will go further south if need be. Thus begins Book 3 of BB!ASC, The Source of the River.

[aingeal98]

The funny thing is I do agree with Bruce fans who say Batman's become such a big cultural character that he gets written badly more often as a result. Like at this point he's more of an icon than a character who can be analysed by a single run or issue or storyline. He's been around for so many decades he's constantly reflecting the American political landscape. Unfortunately since America in general is an evil country with an overall terrible cultural mindset, this reflects in almost every iteration of Batman. The fan myth of the compassionate billionaire who fights primarily due to belief in rehabilitation is a nice concept but what we actually get on paper and on TV and in the cinemas is 7 different versions of the ideal patriarchal hero of American capitalism, complete with all the toxicity and violence and copaganda and abuse that it entails, and deliberate underwriting of any character who could challenge that narrative. And then there's usually one decent run going on at the same time where they just focus on some of the more redeemable aspects of Bruce's character concept. Everyone flocks to it and goes this is my Batman! And gets mad if you acknowledge the larger more consistent and prevalent characterisation of him and how it consistently drags down other characters in his orbit.

[thatsmybook]

Some of my thoughts since the last episode of Agatha All Along:

The most earnest show of religion in an MCU property is being done through a queer kid. I like that the wider world is learning about the intersectionality of identity. I believe that Billy is as Jewish as William because a) the only family he knows has 'raised' him Jewish and b) his love of witchcraft and ritual and finding ways to explain his world intersect with the rituals and traditions of his faith. Even William was deeply fascinated with magic and witchcraft and journeys of discovery.

Marvel fans are aware that Wiccan is a strong character. The fact that this symbol of masculine strength can be found in a witch boy who is raised to be strong in his sense of self by women in his coven, is awesome. He is drawn to feminine strength as inspiring instead of looking for male heroes. He is attracting feminine forms of protection (Alice), feminine disruptors of the status quo and stereotypes (Lilia), strength in the feminine aesthetic and belief in your innate power (Jen), feminine quest for knowledge and ambition (Agatha). He is being shadowed by death (Rio), but even death gives life in its reincarnation (as we return to earth and feed the earth with our life-force to continue on in new forms).

I believe that Wiccan is/can be as important to the MCU as Spiderman is. Spiderman is a teenager who could be any and everyone. Spiderman looks up to Iron Man, especially but also seeks male role models and approval. (A big part of Iron Man's humanity and softness came from mentoring Peter Parker - I see parallels between Agatha Harkness and Iron Man in this way too).

I believe Wiccan is a version of masculinity to teens that can see that women hold the depth of knowledge and power that he is more interested in unlocking and that their experiences with adversity will be better guides for him as he grows to be the most powerful magic user in the MCU. He is also chosen as a witch and not a sorcerer/wizard/warlock.

Will we be getting little boys and girls and theys aspiring to be wiccans and spidermen equally?

[cookiedough77]

i be forgetting that chat noirs "tail" its just... a belt... like i KNOW that but also its not lifelike usually so like when i draw it it technically should just... dangle... because.. its a belt- BUT I DO WHAT I WANT I HAVE FREE WILL