#since space and time are fundamentally related

[weirdmageddon]

sorry for liking davejade in 2023 btw its in a cool way though

[unproduciblesmackdown]

mused on some thesis about how billions uses Indignity to illustrate that something someone does has failed / gone wrong in one way or another, and how the way this punishment is an Emotional one means that it can't land if the character just doesn't Feel that punished by it, or at least doesn't like attribute the supposed failure to something inherent enough to them to particularly stew on it, see for example people heightening/escalating their efforts to embarass someone if even that person doesn't Seem to sufficiently externally react in embarassment. winston able to truck along while (a) consciously crafting or maintaining some persona, of eternal and irrefutable dignity or whatever else is associated with "merit"/status, isn't much of a priority, when to him his skills speak for themself even though to others this is about their own merit in recognizing independently if winston's skills Happen to have use, and putting him down if he tries to speak to that anyways, and (b) he's also just able to move along from L's handed to him, whether he thinks it was warranted (like that he'll accept it doesn't count if he only thought it but didn't say it) or not (why can't you count to loyalty), when even if this resilience To How Others Treat Him isn't exactly peak realistic, that he thinks of himself in such a way that he doesn't need to be striving for some paramount official status, or think he's defined by never failing or indeed never possibly able to be seen within a "wow undignified / embarassing" framework so long as this winningness is recognized, or so long as anything is anything, is sure feasible enough.

but anyways thought about it like this thesis is just "i am cringe but i am free" like yeah that works

[relaxxattack]

i really liked these additional comments and thought they deserved to be in the post

every time i post about male favoritism in the fandom i feel like i need to wear a shirt that says "i am not trying to tell you that it is wrong to like davekat i literally also like davekat if you come away with the assumption that my message is to stop liking the boy ships in homestuck you are missing the overall point which is arguably more detrimental than never having interacted with what i was trying to say in the first place" flashback to that person in my inbox like "just admit that you don't like davekat it's pretty obvious based on your posts that you have a problem with it" do i need to draw them holding hands or something to get you guys to trust me and engage with what i'm saying. would it help if i also threw in a subway surfers clip

[tanadrin]

And God said, "Behold! I have created the fourth primordial force: the weak interaction!"

And the angels all clapped and nodded politely, and there was a long silence; and finally Verchiel, the Angel of Grace, spoke up and asked, "Er, what exactly does it do, O Fashioner?"

And God said, "What do you mean, 'what does it do?' It's the fourth fundamental force of the universe."

And Verchiel said, "You mentioned that. Um. But it's just that the other three sort of have a brand, you know? Gravity helps build large-scale structures, acts over vast cosmic distances, shapes time and space. The strong force is secret, hidden, binding together quarks and all that. Electromagnetism, very cool stuff, somewhere in between. We're all big fans of the whole magnetic monopole double bluff, very clever. But, er. What does this 'weak interaction' do?"

And God said, "It mediates radioactive decay. Sort of."

And Verchiel said, "Radioactive decay? All radioactive decay?"

And God said, "No. Just some kinds."

And Zephaniel, the Chief of the Ishim spoke, and he said, "A whole independent force just to mediate some kinds of radioactive decay?"

And God said, "Well. Not totally independent. Technically it's related to electromagnetism."

And Zephaniel said, "Wait, it's not even a real force?"

And God said, "It's totally a real force. It's just that it's one aspect of a combined electromagnetic and weak force. An electro-weak force, if you will."

And Metatron, the Celestial Scribe, scratched his head at this, but said nothing.

And Cambiel, the Angel of Transformation, said, "Maybe you can walk us through it from the top."

And God Sighed an immense Sigh, and said, "All right, fine.

"So the way it works is that all of space and time is permeated by a field that has imaginary mass."

And Cambiel said, "Imaginary mass, O Generous Provider?"

And God said, "Yes, imaginary mass. It's tachyonic, d'you see?"

And Sarathiel, the Angel of Discipline, said, "Wait a minute, I thought we agreed nothing was going to travel faster than light? All that 'c' business and the whole Lorentz transformation thing. What's happening with that?"

And God said, "Let me finish. The field is tachyonic. The particles in the field all move slower than light."

And Sarathiel had to think about this for a second.

And God said, "The point is, a field with imaginary mass has a non-zero vacuum expectation value."

And this really gave Sarathiel trouble, since he had never been very good at math.

And God, seeing this, went back to explain. "Most fields, like the electromagnetic field, have no effect when they are at their lowest energy state. It's like they're not there at all. If you give a field imaginary mass, then it vanishes only when it's at a very high energy state, and at a low energy state, it has a nonzero value everywhere."

And Sarathiel nodded, but he was confused, because he didn't understand why God would create such a thing.

But Verchiel thought he saw where God was going with this, and he was amazed.

"Truly, you are cunning beyond measure, O Only One Certainly Sound and Genuine in Truth! Only now do I understand your design! For in order to make the universe homogenous and isotropic, it is necessary that all large-scale fluctuations in temperature and mass must be evened out early in the history of the cosmos; and therefore, you have designed a field which will rapidly expand space after the Big Bang, many orders of magnitude in brief moments, and then swiftly and spontaneously decay as it gives up the energy it began with, giving rise to radiation and particles of all kinds as it does, which will condense into the material universe! It is a wonder to behold."

And God said, "What? No. I mean I did, but this isn't the inflaton field I'm talking about. This is something else."

And Verchiel said, "Wait, it's not?"

And God said, "No, I'm going to use a different field to drive cosmic inflation. The properties of this field are totally different."

And now Verchiel was also confused, and lapsed into silence.

And God said, "Like I was saying, this field is a scalar field with imaginary mass, and it does spontaneously decay to a ground state with a non-zero value. But it's not the inflaton field. Instead it combines with the W1, W2, W3, and B bosons."

And Metatron began to flip back through the pages of the Heavenly Record trying to figure out where he'd lost the thread.

And Zephaniel said, "The what bosons?"

And God said, "The W1, W2, W3, and B bosons. I'm sure I mentioned them. You know, the massless bosons?"

And Zephaniel said, "I'm pretty sure we only talked about the W+, W-, and Z0 bosons. All of which you said were going to have mass, O Owner of All Sovereignty."

And God said, "Yes, but this is how they get them, you see. Once this field acquires a nonzero value everywhere, the massless bosons interact with it and get mass. Well, some of them do. They turn into the W+, W-, and Z0 boson. And the photon."

And Zephaniel said, "…and the photon, O Accepter of Invocation?"

And God said, "Well, I did say I was going to unify the electromagnetic force and the weak interaction, didn't I? This is how. Above the critical temperature--right now I'm thinking 10^15 K, but I'm open to feedback on that one--electromagnetism and the weak force act as a single unifying force. Below that temperature, the field gets a nonzero value, you get three massive bosons to mediate the weak interaction, and the photon pops out seperately."

And Zephaniel said, "That seems… a bit overly complicated, doesn't it, O Reinstater Who Brings Back All?"

And God said, "No, it's exactly what we need. Look, that way the W and Z bosons have something to do, but the weak interaction still only travels short distances. Gravity is still the star of the show on cosmic scales, as it were. But now quarks and leptons can swap their flavor!"

And Zephaniel said, rather weakly, "Their… flavor, O Source of Good?"

And God said, "It's this new quantum number I'm trying out, to give the three generations of matter more unique identities."

And Cambiel said, "Three generations of matter? Now I'm really confused."

And God said, "I'm sure I mentioned this. You've got the lightest quarks and leptons, and then two heavier versions of each that can decay into the lighter versions."

And Cambiel said, "What do they do? New kinds of chemistry, is it?"

And God said, "Well, no. Mostly they just decay in a couple microseconds. Or even faster."

And Zephaniel began to rub his temples, and Cambiel sniffed.

And Cambiel said, "This all seems a bit ad hoc to me. Not really the stuff of an elegant and obviously ordered Creation. Why not have four generations of matter? Why not a trillion?"

And God began to grow irritable, and said, "Well, that's not really up to you, now is it? We're going to have three generations of matter, and the electroweak force, and that's that!"

And Zephaniel said, "As long as we are unifying fundamental forces, perhaps we could somehow also unify the electroweak interaction with the strong interaction, or even gravity."

And God hesitated saying, "Well, I haven't decided about that yet. I'm not sure I want gravity to be quantized, you know? Seems to take some of the geometric elegance out of general relativity."

And now it was Zephaniel's turn to sigh, and he bowed his head. "As you wish, O Possessor of Authority of Decisions and Judgement."

[thydungeongal]

Okay, so we know that Gygax was a misogynist and fascist. I read the forum posts with the infamous "nits make lice", and yes, it's a description of in-universe attitude, but he then went on a pretty fash rant about an eye for an eye being just and pacifism being "slave morality", so I don't see reason in figuring out his specific kind of bigotry.

Arneson was also a fascist. Guy who wrote Tekumel was so as well.

Were any of founders of hobby not racists and misogynists? Tunnels and Trolls looks promising, because there is a woman who was always a player but is credited in all editions for her contributions, so I hope misogyny is not foundational of hobby, even for generic fantasy games. But also one of spells sounds as a very bad taste racist joke (mind control spell was called "yassa massa" until 5th edition included), and I remember that in his space rpg from 1976 there was an illustration that was a very bad taste caricature of Israel-Palestine conflict (spaceship with crew dressed in stereotypical Arab clothing is being chased by ship in the shape of Star of David, I don't remember what did speech bubble say).

But what about the rest? Do you know how normal were contents of early editions of RuneQuest and other games that are considered foundational? Classic Traveller looks fine, but only because it doesn't feature any topics where racism or misogyny could be obvious, so I am not sure. Was there like, a sensible amount of women early in the hobby? I know there were some from reading old ass magazines that occasionally published materials written by women. But do you know more about it?

Not gonna lie, this is just me feeling guilty and bad because of one article that takes a pretty gender essentialist outlook on everything, but thinking that I enjoy something "fundamentally male" is Not Nice, girl

First edition RuneQuest is refreshingly lacking in a lot of the casual racism and misogyny of its time, and Greg Stafford was genuinely interested in culture and mythology. It's not perfect by any means but I think RuneQuest does treat the cultures he takes influence from with a lot of respect.

Traveller is funny because first edition Traveller has a whole bit about "we default to using he/him pronouns for characters but that does not mean that they have to be men, by Jove!" which is a huge dub for the he/him lesbians.

As for whether there were a lot of women in the early days of the hobby, I don't know. But I know that Iron Crown Enterprises (creators of Rolemaster) had at least some women in their employ, some of them credited as playtesters (in addition to the charmingly eighties attribution of "and various other young dudes and dudettes).

But ultimately, screw Gygax and his gender essentialist ideas. There have been lots of women in the space since its inception and while the roots of the hobby may have been male-dominated the very fact that so many women have flocked into RPGs is all the evidence you need that this is not a hobby that necessitates a male brain whatever the fuck that means. Gygax may have managed to catch lightning in a bottle with D&D but that doesn't mean we have to give him the final word on everything RPG-related forever. Also because he said a lot of other really dumb shit besides the "RPGs are for the male brain," so like he wasn't the esoteric genius people sometimes try to paint him as.

[bellanoche-oxo]

I'm sorry this isn't a commission, but I just have a question about your art. Feel free to ignore this, of course. I was really amazed by your Miku drawing from December 16th. Seeing such a high-level piece, I wanted to achieve something similar, but no matter how much I try, I can't replicate your shading and highlights. I was so genuinely curious that I couldn't sleep. Could you possibly give me any hints or advice?

Hey, sorry for making you wait so much for this answer, i've been finishing some projects and i barely had free time. Anyways i'll try to do my best on explaing my coloring and lighting methos and you also asked me to explain how i create the folings of the clothes. Please take in consideration that 1 i am not native in english so it's a bit difficult for me to explain myself sometimes in this language and i may have some misspelings, sorry about that, and also 2 i am not great at explaing my drawing process bc i kind of turn off my brain when i draw lol, but i can explain the fundamentals that i know and help me create! Last thing i want to let you know is that i've started glazing my art, this is a metho to protect the images for AI images generators and it leaves a kind of pattern /effect on the image that i did not put there during the drawing process.

with all of this said let me start explaining things!

Learn the basics:

This may come as a cliche i guess, but yes my first ever advise to anyone is learn the basic theory on lighting and colors (on anything related to art tbh). You don't really need to spend a lot of money on books and such as there are lots of resources online like videos and documents you can read for free. It's not necesary to be an expert and even the smallest mount of knoledge is enought to inpruve your art a lot! , i find it very interesting to learn the way things work too so don't think you'll get bored of it!

To be frank, i am actually not very good at lighting lol. My lights and shadows are not very correct, but since i do have a lot o control over my colors and i know very well how to used them it kind of compensates and creates a very recognisable (i think) style.

just u know basic shitty advise that everyone is going to give you but it works! if you have free time try watching some videos or reading some documents about color theory shadow and lighting!

Your working space:

So this is something that works FOR ME not everyone likes it, you can try it see if you like it and if you do, cool! if you don't … that's cool too! When drawing on digital i prefer it when my base layer is grey instead of white. It helps with my headaches too but it's more about the fact that starting in a middle tone when coloring (in my opinion) makes the process of briging out both shadows and lights easier, let me give you an example:

Drawing from complete light (white) to compplete darkness (black) may condicion you to actually lose control in the contrast betwen these areas, i prefer staring in a middle place (grey) and that way is i want to show darkness i'll use a darkr color and if i want to show light i'll use a lighter color, but if i start on white i can't use anything lighter. I think i did a HORRIBLE job explaing myself there, but yeah it just helps me control my color valius a bit more lol.

this is the color that i used:

Another inportant thing about your woking space is you brushes, in my case i prefer using textured brushes that mix well, and i prefer using very thick strokes, if it's too think i'll just color pick the transparent color and ease it! I work in CSP i don't know what you use, but just in case i'll give you the setiings of the brushes i use the most with their codes so you can find them

Sculpting with lights and shadows

As i said before, i am not very good with light yet, so this is something that i do to help me with the process. When you think about it, lighting is used in art to give volume to the piece, not in every case bc rules in art are not there to be followed but to asist us when we need to take a creative decision. The way that we can start with our Sculpting is by creating a very easy first guide othe the shadows and lights and to do it with very big block, so that we get the general shape first,we don't neet to get lost in the detailds yet

The actual coloring

When drawing my process is divided in three stages. I first create the doodle/lineart, that doesn't neet to be super neat as i will fix it during the rendering. The basic colors, and the rendering.

During the preparation for the rendering when doing the base colors i recomend that you give special atention to the focal points of your illustration, in this case for example that's her face and the top of the hair, that's why i gave so much more atention for this part in comparation to the shirt, that it's literally not shadowed yet. Then another step that i use normally before rendering and that i can NOT RECOMEND ENOUGHT!!!! GO WILD WITH THE COLOR CURVES!!!! OMG!!!! THAT STUPID LITTLE TOOL IS SO FUCKING COOL!!!!!!!!! like for real, it gives effects that i have not been able to achive in any other way and omggggggg use the fucking color curves pleaaaaaaseeeeee

ok i'm notmal again , lets continue.

For the rendering i usually convine all the layers of the drawing on one layer, then use a textured brush that has low opacity of mixes very well fot the actual work. Tbh here is very i can't really help you a lot, bc i have no idea what i'm doing when i render i just don't know, the only thing i recognise is that i try to esare or clean the lines from the doodle/lineart, and i focus a lot on creating volume in the places that are more important.

Skins

An specific thing that i do a lot when it comes to coloring skin is using an undertone in red (literally) I will put the basi color, use the brush to mark where i want shadows to be in a very vibrant red and then use a blue / green / pruple (depends on the skin) to finish the shadowing. Thios metho is nice for lots of occasions, but take in consideration that it doesnt work for example for very dark scenarios where the character is suppoused to be in the shadows, as that red tone works as a outline for the light. It just depends on the situation.

Clothes foldings:

Ok so here the only thing i can give you an advise with is to remember that the way that clothes fold dependes on gravity and that gravity works in curves most of the time that have two (or more) attachment points that are going to determinate theit trajectory. Example:

And remeber that this creates (again) a volume, that there is an inside part, that it's probably going to be draker, and an outside part, that it's going to be lightter. With this info you can start practicing with images of clothes.

this is as much information as i am able to recolect on my coloring process bc i am horrible explaining , spacially on text and in english, and i am also not very much aware when i draw, i kind of disconect. I still hope this is enough to help you a bit on your learning journy.

I may try doing a video at some point if i ever have the time so i can explain my coloring while i actually do it bc if not in that situation i'm not sure i'll be able to remeber what it is that i did.

My last piece of advise is to watch speedpaints and livestreams of artists you like during their drawing process and maybe even tray to imitate them while they are drawing to see what it is that they do exccly.

hope you have a good day and lot of lucks ! be proud of being able to create and be proud of being an artist!

[buffkitties]

Idk, even if there's a systemic ultimate/non-ultimate oppression axis outside of the game Komaeda wasn't just pointing out people's privilege, he was parroting the ideology at its highest extreme himself. An irl equivalent would be something like a gay person with severe internalised homophobia constantly expressing those ideas and trying to help a random straight person win the game, not someone talking about systemic homophobia and getting bad reactions for it.

The rest of them had zero autonomy over the killing game outside of- from their perspective- whether or not to go with Komaeda's idea to sacrifice everyone else to get one single ultimate out of the game, or to try to keep as many people alive as possible for as long as possible in case someone rescued them or they found a way to escape.

The former's insane to jump to at the very start of the game, knowing nothing about their broader situation, but Komaeda tried to force it immediately without discussing it with the group. He became partially responsible for Imposter's death in the process, justified it with rhetoric that reduced them to their Ultimate status and treated their lives as interchangeable, and repeatedly expressed intent to do it again afterwards.

On a meta level I hate how DR handles mentally unwell characters, Komaeda included, and I'll die on the hill of him being fundamentally good, but imo the others' ostracisation of him was completely understandable and not just avoidance of an uncomfortable topic. He wasn't the only character to cause problems, but he was a continuous threat that didn't show any intention of changing after the case he was involved in. And the cast were high schoolers with no expertise in mental health.

I finally have the mental capacity to respond, so here's the first thing: I don't know where you got me saying the privilege thing from since I've been saying this whole time that Komaeda makes them hyperaware of their privilege the way he talks rather than just mentioning an uncomfortable topic

Additionally, I think the gay/homophobia comparison in this case is a wrong example, especially since it wasn't taught to him, nor does he have anything internalised. A better example would be how religious trauma victims are born into a severely corrupt space and turn to cling to the only thing they know, while not exactly even believing it themselves.

I make the religious comparison a lot.

My original post was referring to the way Komaeda repeats things more directly and how he keeps to strict rules, including the toxic pedestal that society puts the talented on. While he does repeat them, that is because he clings onto the only ideals that he knows because they are the only things he could actually learn. Being a person who had to raise himself and distanced himself from people, only having access to media and probably limited human contact, he was merely observing. As a person who is a victim of talent and one who had to be observant of his surroundings and the people around him from a young age, he definitely noticed how worthless people are treated, and that the talented are superior in some way.

And while he doesn't believe in those himself, which is obvious by the fact that he is one of the only characters to see past talent and see the person—for example, Hinata in sdr2, who he definitely suspected had no talent, even in the prologue. Komaeda is perceptive, and there was no mention of memory loss at the moment, so the fact that Hinata did not remember his talent, a thing that mattered greatly in their society, and that defined him, told him all he needed to know. And even if you ignore that fact, he didn't know Hinata's talent (or lack thereof), yet he still treated him like everyone else, or better. But he implies through the entire game that he knows, even outside the free times, with things like comments about relating to Hinata and feeling the closest to him, etc. Yet, he believed in him, trusted him. He loved him. He believed he was worthy of the same things as everyone else. Or the others, and how he doesn't tolerate bullshit from them, and expresses distate for a lot of their actions and even interests, like he would towards anyone else.

And which is also obvious by the way he talks about them, with clear exaggeration and like he's using terms he doesn't even know the weight of, or like he's trying too hard.

He does that by speaking to them like he thinks he's supposed to.

I still stand by my word that he doesn't put them on a toxic pedestal because, to me, it seems like the opposite. It feels more like he's trying to be respectful because he believes that is how things are, and the hyperawareness of their social issues makes him act the only way he knows how toward people who are great compared to him. The only way it becomes toxic is because it has always been harmful and biased. And that's what I've been saying the whole time. Because people reduce this fact only to Komaeda and act like he invented the whole thing.

Moreover, I still believe that Komaeda was getting more frustrated/impatient with each chapter because everyone kept avoiding the truth and turning back to the same mindset and wanted to stop the killings, which was a meaningless situation for him. The way he talked about it seemed to prove it, especially with the "next time I'd appreciate it if you just talked to me and killed me" stuff.

While the others had no control over the killing game and their discomfort around Komaeda was understandable to some extent, his overall treatment is not okay.

They barely treat him like a person, and it's just pathetic that they hold so much hatred for him but then forgive the actual murderers. And yeah, they can feel uncomfortable. That's understandable. But they way they treat him? No, it's not. That's not justifiable, nor normal. To go as far as letting him starve? To constantly insult him? To act like he's not even a person? To treat him like he would be better off dead? To only consider him nothing but a bother? That's not okay. Avoiding him? Sure, I would understand that. It's a killing game, and the fact that they would go to the extremes is also understandable, but it goes beyond just the killing game, doesn't it? While I don't care for DR3 because it's horrible, I was talking about how people basically praise the cast for treating Komaeda like shit, and that includes that awful anime.

It was mostly aimed at how the fandom sees it and stuff

[mysticstronomy]

DOES THE UNIVERSE EXPAND BY STRETCHING OR CREATING SPACE??

Blog#401

Wednesday, May 15th, 2024.

Welcome back,

The evidence that the Universe is expanding is overwhelming. But how? By stretching the existing space, or by creating new space itself?

Raisin bread expanding Universe

Just as raisins within a leavening ball of dough will appear to recede from one another as the dough expands, so too will galaxies within the Universe expand away from one another as the fabric of space itself expands. In this analogy, the expanding Universe is described by space that "stretches," but that analogy doesn't work for every aspect of our expanding Universe.

The farther away we look in the Universe, the greater the amount that light, gravitational waves, and all signals are lengthened and dilated (or “redshifted”) by the expansion of space. This effect applies to all observations of objects beyond our own Local Group, but how, exactly, does space itself actually expand: by stretching, or by the creation of new space in the “gaps” opened up by cosmic expansion? The surprising answer is that both interpretations have their usefulness, but both analogies are fundamentally limited and will fail if you use them incorrectly. The expansion of the Universe is real, but no one analogy is perfect.

It’s been almost 100 years since humanity first reached a revolutionary conclusion about the nature of our Universe: space itself cannot and does not remain static, but rather evolves with the passage of time. One of the most unsettling predictions of Einstein’s general relativity is that any Universe — so long as it’s uniformly (or almost uniformly) filled with one or more species of matter, radiation, or energy — cannot remain the same over time. Instead, it must either expand or contract, something initially derived independently by three separate people: Alexander Friedmann (1922), Georges Lemaitre (1927), and Howard Robertson (1929), and was later generalized by Arthur Walker (1936).

Right at around the same time, starting in 1923, observations began to show that the spirals and ellipticals in our sky were actually galaxies: “island universes” that were well outside of our own Milky Way. With new, more powerful measurements, we could determine that the farther away a galaxy was from us, the greater the arriving light in our instruments was redshifted, or observed at longer wavelengths, compared to the light that was initially emitted. It was as though the very act of journeying through space altered the wavelength of that traveling light.

But what, exactly, happens to the fabric of space itself while this process occurs? Is the space itself stretching, as though it’s getting thinner and stretched out? Is more space constantly being created, as though it were “filling in the gaps” that the expansion creates? This is one of the toughest things to conceive of in modern astrophysics. If we think hard about it, however, we’re capable of wrapping our heads around it. Let’s explore what’s going on.

The starting point of our conversation has to be general relativity: our modern theory of gravity first put forth by Einstein. General relativity, at its core, is a framework that relates two things that might not obviously be related:

the amount, distribution, and types of energy — including matter, antimatter, dark matter, radiation, neutrinos, and anything else you can imagine — that are present all throughout the Universe,

and the geometry of the underlying spacetime, including whether and how it’s curved and whether and how spacetime itself will evolve.

If we inhabited a completely empty Universe, or a Universe that contains nothing within it at all — no matter, radiation, or energy of any form — you’d get the flat, Newtonian-like space you’re intuitively used to: something that’s static, uncurved, and unchanging.

But what if we then considered the absolute simplest case of a non-empty Universe? If, instead, we were to put down a point mass in the Universe, we’d find out that space was curved in a particular way: Schwarzschild space. Any “test particle” that we’d put down onto our Universe would be compelled to flow toward that mass, following a particular trajectory.

And if we were to then make our physical situation just a little bit more complicated, by putting down a point mass that also rotates, we’d get space that’s curved in a more complex way: according to the rules of the Kerr metric. It will have an event horizon, but instead of a point-like singularity, the singularity will get stretched out into a circular, one-dimensional ring. Again, any “test particle” you put down will follow the trajectory laid out by the underlying curvature of space.

These spacetimes are clearly much more complicated than a spacetime that’s simply flat. However, they are still “static” in the sense that any distance scales you might include or measure — like the size of the event horizon or the distance between two arbitrary points within this spacetime — don’t change over time. If we could somehow “exit” a Universe with this spacetime and return to it later, whether a second, an hour, or a billion years later, the structure of this spacetime would be identical, irrespective of when we returned to it.

In spacetimes like these, there’s no cosmic expansion that’s present. There’s no change in the distance or the light-travel-time between any points within this spacetime. With just one (or fewer) sources of matter inside, and no other forms of energy, these “model Universes” really can be static.

But it’s a very different game when you choose not to put down isolated sources of mass or energy, but instead to fill your Universe, uniformly, with “stuff” everywhere. In fact, the two criteria we normally assume about our Universe, and which are strongly validated by large-scale observations, are called isotropy and homogeneity.

Isotropy tells us that the Universe is the same in all directions: everywhere we look on cosmic scales, no “direction” looks particularly different or preferred from any other.

Homogeneity, on the other hand, tells us that the Universe is the same in all locations: the same density, temperature, and expansion rate exist to better than 99.99% precision on the largest scales.

As far as we can tell, our Universe, on large cosmic scales, is indeed both isotropic and homogeneous.

Originally published on https://bigthink.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, May 18th, 2024)

"WHAT IS THE DARK UNIVERSE??"

[opencommunion]

"My analysis challenges a number of ideas, some mentioned above, common in many Western feminist writings:

Gender categories are universal and timeless and have been present in every society at all times. This idea is often expressed in a biblical tone, as if to suggest that 'in the beginning there was gender.'

Gender is a fundamental organizing principle in all societies and is therefore always salient. In any given society, gender is everywhere.

There is an essential, universal category 'woman' that is characterized by the social uniformity of its members.

The subordination of women is a universal.

The category 'woman' is precultural, fixed in historical time and cultural space in antithesis to another fixed category—'man.'

... Merely by analyzing a particular society with gender constructs, scholars create gender categories. To put this another way: by writing about any society through a gendered perspective, scholars necessarily write gender into that society. Gender, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. The idea that in dealing with gender constructs one necessarily contributes to their creation is apparent in Judith Lorber's claim that 'the prime paradox of gender is that in order to dismantle the institution, you must first make it very visible.' In actuality, the process of making gender visible is also a process of creating gender. Thus, scholarship is implicated in the process of gender-formation."

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997) ~

"Feminist anthropologists of racialized peoples in the Americas tend not to think about the concept of gender when they use the term as a classificatory instrument, they take its meaning for granted. This, I claim, is an example of a colonial methodology. Though the claim that gender, the concept, applies universally is not explicitly stated, it is implied. In both group and conference conversations I have heard the claim that 'gender is everywhere,' meaning, technically, that sexual difference is socialized everywhere. The claim, implied or explicit, is that all societies organize dimorphic sexuality, reproductive sexuality, in terms of dichotomous roles that are hierarchically arranged and normatively enforced. That is, gender is the normative social conceptualization of sex, the biological fact of the matter. ... The critique of the binary has not been accompanied by an unveiling of the relation between colonization, race, and gender, nor by an analysis of gender as a colonial introduction of control of the humanity of the colonized, nor by an understanding that gender obscures rather than uncovers the organization of life among the colonized. The critique has favored thinking of more sexes and genders than two, yet it has not abandoned the universality of gender arrangements. ... Understanding the group with gender on one’s mind, one would see gender everywhere, imposing an order of relations uncritically as if coloniality had been completely successful both in erasing other meanings and people had totally assimilated, or as if they had always had the socio-political-economic structure that constitutes and is constituted by what Butler calls the gender norm inscribed in the organization of their relations. Thus, the claim 'There is gender everywhere' is false ... since for a colonized, non-Western people to have their socio-political-economic relations regulated by gender would mean that the conceptual and structural framework of their society fits the conceptual and structural framework of colonial or neocolonial and imperialist societies. ... Why does anyone want to insist on finding gender among all the peoples of our planet? What is good about the concept that we would want to keep it at the center of our 'liberation'?" María Lugones, "Gender and Universality in Colonial Methodology," in Decolonial Feminism in Abya Yala: Caribbean, Meso, and South American Contributions and Challenges (2022)

[satorugojowidow]

The original blog who screenshotted and shared this here has disabled the reblog so I'm going to repost in order to try to navigate the racism that is underneath this tweet.

About the claim of this tweet there is nothing more to say that the comparison is unacceptable not only because it lacks of any logic but also because trivialize the monstrosity of what genocide represent. Genocide is only equivalent to genocide, as the propaganda is an fundamental axis that allows genocide, its is a constitutive part of it. Nothing is equivalent or can be compared. This person is trivializing the genocide to people of Palestine while doing this comparison. Insult the victim with the only goal to make a point about the result of a tournament they didn’t like for any reason.

Argentina with all its political flaws and problems haven’t used football as political propaganda since 1978 (last dictatorship). And were Argentinians themselves those who have made a critical revision of the 1978 world cup, we don’t need someone from outside come to explain or call out what happened. Historiography has made their part and is part of the history teached in schools. 

President Milei's use of football is related to reform Argentinians football clubs from civil associations to shareholders of S.A. Argentina football clubs traditions are related to social purposes. Clubs like Boca Juniors and River Plate (the bigger) aren’t only about football but hold other types of sports, their objective of existence is to be a space where neighbors of the club (in the beginning of their history) can do sport. Sports clubs belong to their associates, who are the thousands of fans who follow their team. Milei and Macri want to allow the big shareholders to buy these clubs.the extractionist economic model but applied to football.

What this person in the tweet doesn't understand because of their ignorance and their contempt against our people is that football has a colonialist matrix as well. Football players are human resources that Europe takes from our clubs. That is why the players of Argentina National Team (the FIFA N°1) all come from big european clubs or usamericans club with lots of money. But they didn't started their career there, they were bought from clubs from Argentina, and they started when they were childs in small sport clubs that only exist to give working class people a chance to do sport. The first coach of Angen Di María was someone like many others that use their free time to teach childrens football, they don’t even live from that activity, because it is a social activity, not a business. Our football world champions come from working class families, they, like the huge majority of this country, are also descendants from those Europeans that came running away from poverty and those indigenous people who suffered the colonia. And if they weren’t the superstars they are, they were victims of racism because of their latinamerican condition. 

Argentina, like the rest of the countries of the world, has hierarchies based in economics, social and ethical status. As a country that is the result of European colonialism, still struggles with that inheritance. To this person, who may not like the Argentina National Team for random reasons, we seem like the only country that doesn’t deserve to win a tournament because of that. News for you, this is football, there is no “deserve”, you either win or lose. But talking about justice, it is fair that a country that is the home of the players gets to win. Not like European countries that win the world cup with the sons of those immigrants they so much hate, while African countries still struggle to position themselves in the tournament. 

The Argentina National Team has its flaws, but they still represent the working class people of this country and their dreams. They chose to celebrate the America cup with the prop guy, not like the Spain National Team that bent their knees to the king. And yes our current president is a pro Israel (and while in the protest against him the flag of Palestine flys) the National Team refused to celebrate the cup with him. 

And the fact that a third world country with players that come from working class families won, still has a meaning to the rest of the world that celebrated with us the 2022 victory in Qatar. We made that victory a huge popular celebration in the streets and everyone was welcome to celebrate with us. You won’t ever find a Argentina National Team fan that will tell someone from another country that they can’t use our jersey. With all our flaws, we still hold football as the sport of working class people. I guess some people can’t just understand it.

[zewik7]

Whats your fat story? like waht made you want to get so big and fat?

Okay buckle up because it’s REALLY effed up as a story.

BE WARNED!! THIS IS A REALLY LONG POST!!

I was JUST 4 years old when, in the solitude of my little bedroom, i played pretend within myself in my toddler crib: i was a little piggy and was destined to be fattened up.

Flash forward: i was 7, i was playing pretend still with that setting, and weighed myself before drinking as much water i could, and weighing myself after that too. I enjoyed seeing the little numbers on the scale go up so fast.

Flash forward: it was early 2000 years, i was 10 and a bit chubby, and the social fashion and new norm was being thin, too thin, so thin you could see ribs. I was regularly called fat, lardass, fatass, even tho i was of normal corporature. I was always angry about this, i didn’t felt fat!

Flash forward: i was 12 and EVERYONE called me fat because i developed early and already had big tits. The rest of my body was thin, i could feel the inter-ribs space with my fingers, but for the culture fo the time i was FAT. I started doing A LOT of sports, like swimming half week and karate the other half week, and that made me bulky, not thin at all. Fat-related bullying intensified at the point that at 13 years old i requested to my mother if i could go to a nutritionist for becoming thinner. She complied, but i got so stressed from the bullying, too much sport and trying on the top of this to be the best in my class, that i actually gained weight… the “wrong” kind of weight. The FAT weight.

I was 14 when i put my fingers on the minimal curve of my belly, the littlest pouch of fat i had when i was like 7 and never again, and pushed and squeezed it. And i loved it. I searched on google, in my mother tongue (italian): “what does it means if i like being fat?”. And it found a single 100ish people forum on BHM and BBW in italian, and i spent a week reading it, watching the SFW photos, i even requested access by registration to the forum.

And THERE. THERE i asked the fundamental question: “everyone i know wants to be thin… but i like being fat. I’d like to be fatter, even. I am wrong? Am i a bad person for feeling like this?”.

And response, gentle and welcoming and kind, was immediately: “no, you’re not a bad person for wanting to decide for your own body in your own way. You’re little for now, but one day you’ll get to choose for yourself what to do about it”.

But i was 14. And any 14yo ever existed believes they know everything in the world.

So i started using my allowance. Normally i’d store it in a box under my bed until i really wanted something (at the time i already spent like 200€ for an ipod touch, but i still had a decent sum remaining), but now i planned and invested my money in my fattening.

I started buying food on the way from home to school and returning, every place selling food knew me by name for the end of the school year. And i packed kgs like my body was so thirsty for them!!

In just two years (2!!) i went from 14 yo per 55 kg (155 cm height) to 16 yo per 115 kg (160 cm height).

I bumped into things with my body because i wasn’t used to being so large! And i was so effing soft!!! I loved it!!!

It was… interesting, from an external point of view, for sure.

My parents couldn’t wrap their minds around HOW i doubled in weight in just two years, for example.

And of course they had to stop me.

They stopped giving me allowance, reprised making me do sports (this time, swimming and modern dance), put me on a strict diet… but I LONGED for that freedom, that big quantities of food and sugary carbonated drinks, even the fatigue and short breath from running briefly… but more than anything… i hated i was losing my physical softness.

In other two years, from 16 to 18, i went from 115 kg to 75 kg.

Then my mother died and she left me some money, so i could go away from home (never loved that other parent too much) in 2015 and start my TRUE gaining.

Since then, I gained more than 125 kg (280 lbs).

[pikuniku53353358]

My au for "Rain world" - "Sinful world"

ATTENTION, FURTHER INFORMATION WILL TOUCH A LITTLE ON MY PERSONALITY AND INFORMATION ON MY AU on rain world "sinful world"! PLEASE READ ALL THE WAY TO THE END, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO ME! AND I'M ALSO OPENING AN ASK BLOG ON MY AU, SO IF YOU WANT TO ASK MY CHARACTERS ANY QUESTIONS, THEN YOU'LL HAVE TO HAVE AT LEAST SOME INFORMATION ON Sinful world ANYWAY! (Link to ask blog: @rw-au-askblog-sinful-world) (and this post was written with the help of a translator, so I apologize in advance for any possible mistakes^^") So, if someone doesn't know, then I'm Piku_Niku, but you can just call me Piku. I am 14 years old, I draw on my phone with my finger in ibis paint. I'm looking for different fandoms, such as: rain world, hollow knight, ori and the blind forest, just shapes and beats, gravity falls, fundamental paper education, etc.I will mainly draw art for the rain world game.My favorite ships for this game:

Saint/Monk

Artificer/Rivulet

Gourmand/Survivor

Watcher/Enot

Spear master/Hunter

I also have my own au related to rain world, and now I will tell you a lot of it. However, I will not mention one part of the information, since my Persians themselves will be able to answer it in the form of an aska (so do not hesitate to write me messages with your questions about my au :)), and I will not be able to mention other information since I am currently writing fan fiction on a Russian platform called "Ficbook.net " by This week, and it's not finished yet. Some of my readers are following me on tumblr, which means I won't be able to drop plot spoilers here. Don't worry, you'll find out in time, but it will take some time :)

AU setting: all SW actions take place in a kind of simulation. The world is quite realistic and is located in three-dimensional space, however, by its very nature it obeys game laws and logic, which means that the creatures there have an indicator of karma, hunger, cycle duration report, etc., in general, everything that is in the base game.

Characters: Inv (Enot)

Fear (THE REAL NAME IS STILL UNKNOWN!)

Developers

Monk

Survivor

Hunter

Gourmand

Cold-blooded Wind (Golden Eye)

Fragile Compassion

Big Heart

Feeling of Fault

Hate

(the list of characters will be updated over time, but at the moment there are as many characters in the fanfiction as written above)

The plot in brief:The developers have already created many different mini-worlds called "campaigns" and placed slugs with different histories, chaoacters and goals for life there. But that wasn't enough for the gods. They became bored with ordinary worlds that follow some kind of rules. Therefore, they hastily created the "Enota campaign" and created almost simultaneously one of their most important and dominant persons in SW — Enota and Fear (he was not called that before, so I will call Whity in this period of time, BUT this is not the canonical name of this character, but only a temporary code name)). They were both immediately told that they existed in a fictional world and that they were created only so that both poor slugs would suffer. And Enota was also given out how pathetic and insignificant he was, and then they threw both slugs into their world. An important clarification: Whity and Enot had not seen each other before, the developers created them separately from all the others so that they would not see each other inadvertently.

Enot did not know how to survive in his world, which is why he spent a lot of effort to survive his first cycle. All this was observed by Whity, which in fact is essentially the soul of Enot, which is imprisoned in his consciousness, into which Enot himself can penetrate only when he is asleep. And so, in a dream, the slugs met and became friends. The developers also informed him about their nature when creating Whity, and also said that if Enot commits at least one sin, it will affect his soul, that is, on Whity itself. He will be in terrible pain and constantly writhing in pain. And knowing all this information from the developers, Whity asked his friend not to commit any sins. The soul was terribly paranoid and did not allow Enot to enter normally and step in. He even forbade slug to pick up a spear in principle, and as a result, to fight in order to banal self-defense.

Enot did not know how to survive in his world, which is why he spent a lot of effort to survive his first cycle. All this was observed by Whity, which in fact is essentially the soul of Enot, which is imprisoned in his consciousness, into which Enot himself can penetrate only when he is asleep. And so, in a dream, the slugs met and became friends. The developers also informed him about their nature when creating Whity, and also said that if Enot commits at least one sin, it will affect his soul, that is, on Whity itself. He will be in terrible pain and constantly writhing in pain. And knowing all this information from the developers, Whity asked his friend not to commit any sins. The soul was terribly paranoid and did not allow Enot to enter normally and step in.

No matter how hard Enot tried to rid his friend of these sins, there were more and more of them, and at the same time the pain from these sins only became stronger and more unbearable. At this point, a Feeling of Fault appears in the plot. This character is metaphorical, we can say that he does not exist in reality, he is needed so that one can understand the thoughts and feelings of one of the characters, in our case, Enot. That is, it means that only Enot can see Feeling of Fault and talk to him. Because of the fractures in the relationship with Whity, Feeling of Fault began to tell Enot that he was still a loser and a weakling, which only added more oil to the fire and made the whole situation only worse. At some point, a real scandal broke out between Enot and Whity during which they stopped being friends. After that, after a while, Whity was completely consumed by sins, and Enot's Feeling of Fault became especially strong during this period of time. Enot's consciousness, in order to protect him, sharpened Feeling of Fault and began to gradually erase all painful memories associated with Whity. At some point, he completely forgot about his former friend and can be said to have started life with a clean slate. And it would seem that this is a good thing, now Enot has become completely free from the prohibitions of his former friend, and even now no Feeling of Fault will bother him, but... The thirst for blood still remained in him. At first, Enot tried to suppress her and he killed especially only scavengers, because they had caused him too much pain in the past, but over time, Enot's moral compass completely erased and he began killing everyone indiscriminately in rather cruel ways, eager to hear the screams of his victims and taste their torn flesh and meat. Enot-maniac was very strong because he faced enemies every cycle and learned to defeat them. He became so strong that the scavengers, realizing that they could not resist this psychopath in any way, began to hide in secret bunkers underground without proper food, heat and much more. Enot-maniac destroyed the lives of many creatures, and those who miraculously survived were left with many mental injuries. The most revealing of them will be my scavenger character named Cold-blooded Wind. As a child, an Enot-maniac tore off his eye, but he was able to escape, however, this incident affected not only physically, but also mentally (you can learn the details of the Wind's background from ask. Believe me, everything is much worse there than you think. This is the third most tragic character in SW)

He even forbade slug to pick up a spear in principle, and as a result, to fight in order to banal self-defense. It seemed to Enot-maniac that he had reached the top and found his happiness and the meaning of life, but... That's not so. He actually needed companionship and good friends all this time. He began to wish for it as soon as the developers abandoned him to his fate. Throughout his life, Enot has never been able to feel real affection and support from others, and as a result, the murders of Enot-maniac began to get boring. What's the point of killing everyone and everything like that? He had tried all possible methods of murder on his victims anyway, everyone had long ago realized that Enota was a maniac worth being afraid of... A small piece of forgotten memories was able to remind Enot-maniac of the void sea, which Whity once told him about and he headed to it in order to finally find his long-awaited peace. But plunging into it, Enot found himself in a dating simulator. He spent a lot of time in it, and during this time, Enot, communicating with other slugs and not killing anyone, realized that he was wrong. That killing is not an option and that he wants to find friends! That's just how to do it if you can't get out of dating sim? But who said that it is ABSOLUTELY impossible to get out of dms? Remembering what kind of drug addiction an Enot egg could create in a dating simulator, he threw it at one of the buttons in this space and it was swallowed up by a singularity. Then the walls cracked and behind them was the code of all slug campaigns, as well as the code of the dms itself, which was also swallowed up by this black hole. After that, this hole in space and time turned into a portal and sucked Enot into it.He found himself back in his campaign, but now some of the chips from dms are now working in his world (that is, the egg can now create fierce nonsense and drug addiction here if desired), as well as slugs from its campaigns appeared in different parts of his world. The Raccoon has a new chance to start this life from scratch, make friends and find his happiness by ascending into the void sea. First of all, he changed his name to Eve, since the name Raccoon was now associated with his dark past. After meeting the Monk, he realized that there were probably a lot of such popadans in his world, so Inv decides to create his own gang called the "VC Gang" (VC - Void Cats). At the moment, this gang consists of Monk, Survivor, Hunter, Gourmet, their tamed red lizard and Inv himself, who is the leader here.On the way of our friends, there will be many obstacles that will mainly occur due to Fear (as Inv called Whity when they met again), which, due to sins, received quite a lot of power and authority. In order to put obstacles to slugs, he sends a black parasite blob into the real world, which infects a creature nearby that is afraid of Inv, which means that he cannot infect the same Inv friends, because slugcat is obviously not afraid of them. However, other obstacles will be encountered due to Inv's dark past, which he tries to hide from everyone. Scavengers still remember the time when the Enot Maniac raged in their world, and this will have its consequences...

That's all for now. I remind you that you can safely ask me additional questions about my au. My characters will answer them in the ask blog (@rw-au-askblog-sinful-world). I hope at least someone has read up to this point and is interested in my QwQ fanfiction, and I'll also give you a link to my fanfiction just in case, maybe someone won't be too lazy to read it with the help of a translator: https://ficbook.net/readfic/13570641

Additional content by my au:

Designs by Cold-Blooded Wind and his friends - Fragile Compassion and Big Heart.

[andmaybegayer]

I rewatched Dune P.1 and it was a good idea. I got Catsed.

Getting Catsed

When I watched Cats The Musical The Movie for the first time I was like yeah, this is good, this is a weird way to go about it but I enjoyed this. The second time I watched it I was like hang on. This is missing crucial information that makes it really bad. I just filled in the things I know about Cats because I've had a twenty minute rundown of the complete plot of Cats loaded up and ready to go since I was 8.

To be clear Dune is good despite me getting Catsed. But it's missing so much stuff that it's a really different experience from reading the books. There's almost no politics! Which makes sense and arguably makes more sense if you're planning to make Dune Messiah and the rest, Paul wins politics at the end of Dune and fundamentally cannot be politically challenged after that, he's the Emperor, all his drama is Messiah-related.

All the obsessively detailed stuff about the Harkonnen-Atreides feud and links to the ancient Earth and the Empire's power and the spacing guild is not actually very important unless you really like the fun precise politicking of the houses. You can even comprehend Farad'n without really getting into the politics, you can just give his mother a personal desire for the throne.

Visual Style

Anyway that aside one of the things that stands out about the aesthetics of Dune is how much every scene looks like DeviantArt Concept Art drawn by a fan of the books. Detailed things are really detailed but there's very little clutter.

When the Hunter-Killer goes for Paul he's in his barren-ass concrete bedroom but the headboard of the bed is a super detailed gilt fish thing and that's a thing that's mentioned explicitly in the books!

When they're packing up Caladan there's a bunch of guys standing around huge empty caverns loading very specific items into crates.

The stillsuits and thopters are really gorgeously detailed mechanical things, every stillsuit has little unique features, but the landing fields are just open sweeping concrete, the city is monolithic sandstone that looks like an architectural scale model, it works and I think we're going to see a lot of people copying this style and getting it wrong by not having any of the details.

[transmasculineswag]

Transmasc Swag Polls- ROUND 1

Propaganda and other info under the cut.

CANONICITY LEVELS-

BOW: Subtext/ Coded (liked by the creator, but he has stated that he won't confirm anything because retroactively making something canon makes him uncomfortable) DIRK: Subtext/ Coded (so heavily that the author tried- and failed- to kill the headcanon in extended media)

MEDIA? She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Homestuck (and other related media) BOW PROPAGANDA- He's shown bathing in something that looks a lot like a binder, is included in the princesses group as the only man* and there's a whole episode that is constructed as a coming out allegory- Bow has to tell his dads he's a warrior and not a researcher/historian and has been lying to them about what he's been up to. The creator has stated he didn't intend for Bow to be read as trans but does like the headcanon. *Seahawk is also there but more as support to Mermista, Bow is integrated in the group from the beginning and even points out how "he's the only one here who's not a princess". He's one of the coolest characters and a great inventor, archer and best friend of Glimmer and Adora. Bow is such a great example of healthy masculinity, always ready to defend people in need but never aggressive or confrontational. His love of short shirts is so iconic he even cut his space suit to show off a bit of his belly- we love a guy dedicated to his fashion sense. DIRK PROPAGANDA- One of the last two humans on earth, the only source of how to be a human for the first like, ten years of his life until he meets Roxy is all the shit his Bro left for him and the archive of the internet. He decides he's not a fan of all the shit that's considered "girly" in the 2010s and 2020s bc he wants to be just like his Bro, so he's transmasc not bc of societal expectations but bc that's just what he's comfortable with. [Pollrunner's Note: I will not even pretend that I'm not biased here. Dirk is the character that cracked my egg so hard that I couldn't deny that I was trans anymore. He's a canonically gay boy handled with an extreme amount of grace in an era of media where that was completely unheard of, retroactively making one of the most popular and masculine adults in the entire comic gay as well, since it is revealed that they are one and the same. There's an entire passage in the comic in his and Roxy's introductions joking about chromosomes, textually making an observation that he and Roxy are in a 'reverse adam and eve situation'. He cares so, so much about his friends but is incapable of expressing those feelings because he's afraid that by his very nature as a person that he is both corrupting them and doesn't deserve them. Dirk's story has a lot to do with abuse, emotional neglect, and what it means to feel like you're fundamentally a bad person but living every day trying to break that cycle regardless. Textually he was based off of (accidentally and then later an intentional deconstruction of) Gurren Lagann's Kamina, a character I have described as the "platonic ideal of masculinity". The way he was written in postcanon lead to feelings so strong that I ended up having a conversation known as the "Dirk Rant" that my brother claims "changed the way he viewed media forever". He is THE transmasc blorbo of all time to a majority of the Homestuck fandom.]

[calangolengo]

The Dog and The Muse

They say old dogs can't learn new tricks

Ford knew there was a bit of truth as well as a bit of lie in this statement, he was certainly learning new tricks, even though he could feel in his bones how old he was getting. Ever since he got on that boat heading to Alaska and the anomalies he was supposed to study, he had learned several new tricks, some related to sailing, others to fishing and some more peculiar ones focused entirely on everyday life, such as cooking with the right spices, the exact amount of chocolate to mix with hot milk to extract the maximum flavor, how many blankets are needed to create the perfect nest where one can enjoy a rainy morning in bed and above all, learning all the details that made up his brother Stanley.

Stanley, against all odds, was sailing by his side, eating, waking up, fishing and working by his side, with all his memories in place, living and breathing as if they had never been apart. His brother, his hero, his best friend, his protector, always coming to his defense at the slightest sound of dissatisfaction that he makes, whether on deck with the boat's ropes, in his laboratory with any experiment that is not following the reaction schedule, or at the slightest sign of judgment that leaks from the mouth of any stranger who has crossed Ford's path in the ports where they stop to refuel or after his many post-nightmare episodes in the middle of the night. His presence alone healing wounds that he did not even remember were there.

Stanley was a creature like no other and despite both having the same appearance, his twin seemed to have developed a personality that transformed him almost physically into a unique person in his mannerisms and ways of dressing. Frankly, Ford had already lost count of how many pages of his new diaries now contained information that he considered crucial to be cataloged about his brother, not only that, he also began to notice that many of his projects, those that did not involve the repercussions caused by the opening of the portal, were almost entirely now focused on helping his brother, whether directly or indirectly.

Which led him to the knowledge that he was falling again on that old path that almost led him to ruin and the destruction of his family and, secondly, of the world. Reviewing his notes and the thousands of lines he had in his new diary, in addition to the most diverse anomalies he had managed to collect, in every corner there were notes, sometimes in small sentences, sometimes entire paragraphs, focused on Stanley, as if he were the new center of his universe, his inspiration to continue studying, his estrus, his Aegean.

His Muse.

Looking back, he should have expected this. For such an intelligent man, he seemed to have difficulty not becoming attached to an entity that he could call “Greater,” like a dog that needs its owner’s approval to feel truly accomplished when completing a task.

With Bill, it was the creation of the portal, flattered by all the praise from the one who was once considered his inspiring and benevolent muse, giving him all the means to improve himself to the best of his ability. That was what he had thought, without knowing that the material given was only intended for the construction of the altar on which he would be sacrificed in the name of that deity.

Looking from the outside, his relationship with Stanley it seemed no different. Since he was little, his brother has always had a free tongue when it came to praising Ford, and time did not seem to have softened this characteristic in him, always willing to give in to his affection as easily now as it was in childhood, whether for scientific work that he seemed to care little about or understand, focusing only on responding to the other's level of excitement, or when Ford took a moment to organize his belongings in order to make their lives easier in the small space of the cabin.

But there was something fundamentally different about this relationship, because when he stops and compares his old Muse to his new one, Stanley never asks him to do anything, not build a doomsday portal, not do anything to make his life easier, not do anything that would bring him any profit, not even do the dishes at night, he just approves of what Ford does, like the owner of a dog who rewards him by calling him a good boy just because he can and because he wants to, not trying to teach him new tricks or making him demonstrate the tricks he still knows. He is content to be by Ford's side, like a rock, a constant in a world of constant change, a warm light where Ford can rest his old, tired bones, a light that strokes his ego with little pats on the head and a scratch behind the ear.

Whether old dogs learn new tricks or not is a matter of no importance to Ford, because he knows that his Muse doesn't care, he knows that he will be rewarded either way and will always be loved, cared for and protected and that is all a dog like him could ask for.

[saintsenara]

As much as I love Dramione and that community. I stopped reading Dramione because of Ron’s characterization. Ron bashing is so normalized that it has become a Dramione convention and I’m not in for it. A lot of the faults that they give Ron are a lot of things that I can relate to (mediocre at school, procrastination, feeling like the lesser sibling) these are pretty standard Ron characteristics in Dramione. Usually the relationship with Draco start as a secret so Hermione is always alone in Dramione fanfics, her friendship with Harry and Ron is only a thing from the past that is occasionally mentioned. So a lot of Ron’s strong points are never there, I.e his loyalty, bravery, his defense of his friends, vast knowledge of the wizarding world. It is bothersome to see the way they portray students that do not excel in school, or have strong points that do not include academia.

Then also Astoria, she’s usually death or the crazy wife. Rose granger Weasley is non-existent while Scorpius Malfoy is a pretty common character, and Hugo… who is that ? The community doesn’t even mention him. I’m a bit disturbed by the way all of Hermione’s children in canon are just erased. Draco can be the dad, the widower, or the divorce but Hermione is the one that is single for a while, never married, haven’t had a proper shag, and ready to be the stepmother.

I always feel that they’re projecting their ex-boyfriends onto Ron, and Draco is the rich, intelligent, hot guy that they’d wished they upgraded for. In many stories Ron and Hermione break up because they always fight, but then they have Draco and Hermione quarrel just as much.

I would not be so bothered by it if I didn’t see all of this so much.

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

dramione certainly isn't my circus, but i find the same phenomenon occurring in my fandom spaces, since i'm someone with a preference for pairings which put harry with someone other than ginny - i've waded through so many fics in which ginny ends up getting turned into a complete bitch with no redeeming qualities and her relationship [both romantic and platonic] with harry is handwaved away in order to make her someone he never actually liked, who he only dated for a bit because he was forced to.

part of this is just standard slash subfandom misogyny when it comes to female characters, which we all need to get a grip on. but - as you say - it's also so prevalent in the fandom treatment of ron. and i find it really uninteresting!

i bang on a lot on here about how any ship is possible if an author has enough nerve - and how the reason for this is that love is fundamentally strange and unpredictable, and nobody can ever predict how it will strike.

but this comes with a flip side - that the strangeness of love means that its ability to last isn't always guaranteed. or - any ship can be disentangled interestingly and sincerely and [if that's an author's aim] canon-coherently with a bit of effort.

i think there are lots of really compelling things which could be done with the premise that ron and hermione don't get together or don't stay together - whether dramione ends up as the endgame or not - which don't need to reduce ron to the lazy, whinging boor he so often becomes.

and this includes thinking about divorce and co-parenting and blended-families in circumstances which aren't acrimonious. i think it's really striking that - as you say - there's an unease in fandom spaces with characters [above all female ones] having been married or had children in prior relationships. and there's also an unease about marriages which end for comparatively benign reasons - such as a couple simply not wanting to be in a romantic relationship with each other, but wishing to maintain a platonic one. divorces are always bitter - and the only time relationships break down without one partner becoming the bad guy, it's because someone [usually a woman] is dead.

this obviously isn't something fandom created, but it's still a wider cultural bleed-through into fandom which i find fundamentally boring.

and this is even though i very much understand the appeal of fairytale endings - draco malfoy as every disney prince rolled into one - as tropes. we all love a bit of self-insert fantasy, a bit of rom-com schmaltz, a bit of a knight in shining armour rescuing princess hermione from horrible ron.

but i think there's something valuable - and something no less fun, or moving, or compelling - about love stories which feel a bit less epic. second love, or friends-to-lovers-to-friends-again, or "there's no such thing as soulmates", or "this was fun while it lasted".

i genuinely think ron would be great as a divorced dad - not least because you know the single mams would be flocking to chat to him when it's his turn to bring the cake for playgroup - who remained best friends with hermione after they split.

and i think the dramione-specific comedy-of-errors of him and draco negotiating their new dynamic [mutual seething giving way to begrudging cordiality giving way to tentative respect] would properly bang as a premise.