#to almost the point of deification

[screechingsandwichhologram]

aughh im reading a crossover fic and its really good and also now tho im thinking of several possibilities and !!!!!

[housemdork]

house md season 2 review!

season strengths, highlights, low points, and some house md blasphemy awaits you below.

what can be said about season 2 that hasn't been talked about to death? this was such an amazing watch. the stories are even more vibrant than on my first go-around, and the showrunners' confidence just oozes out of nearly every episode.

season strengths:

season 2 is all about the house md wow factor, and it's not just sequestered to the season finale. almost every case in season 2, and the corresponding storylines between the characters, are leagues more interesting than season 1's. does this come at the cost of some realism? of course lol. but i have to admire their growing ability to mingle batshit patient stories (i.e., "clueless") with whatever the gang has going on. it's hard to be bored during this season.

intertwining everybody. everyone has spoken to each other, disputed one another, said something kind and mean about the other, etc. more than that, things are MESSY! but it's BELIEVABLE! ever since "hunting," the PPTH staff have become increasingly wound up in each other. highlights ofc include chase/cameron, house and foreman as mirrors, the burgeoning saga that is hilson, and cuddy/house.

wilson. i'm serious. they could have gone either way with wilson at the end of season 1, keep up the crooked angel-on-house's-shoulder or give him his own rich personhood, and guess which one they went with!? 2x14-2x19 (sans 2x18) is one of the craziest runs of the entire show, esp for your resident wilson enjoyer. and every new piece of info we get about him, the "worse" his character seems on paper while also endearing himself to the audience. we really are in house's POV. plus this is the real foundational comphet wilson season. 2x14, i carry you close to my heart. he is Performing Those Rituals. Maintaining That Persona.

speaking of comphet wilson - everything is at least a little bit queer in season 2. is that the lens i am bringing to the show? absolutely. but would a 2000s doctor show typically lend itself so well to my kind of analysis? NO. there's such an intricate system of othering at play that links disability to homosexuality to gender performance and back again, and the characters weren't just not whole enough in season 1 to pull this off. it's not just comphet wilson; it's the Mega Queer Greg House of it all, too. and the number of times this season basically penalized/demonized heterosexuality lmfao.

catholicism/house's deification. my 2x08 recap wasn't so much about the episode at large, but more so a close-reading of just how much catholic imagery they loaded it up with, and that's been a consistent joy of mine to observe. watching house struggle with his own personhood and struggle to maintain control, while at the same time having characters like chase (mostly chase lol) symbolically worship house against their better judgment will always get me. wilson's line in 2x19 about believing in something but still failing to live up to it is so prophetic.

season weaknesses:

stacy's departure...where did she go? i mean yeah, she had a sendoff, but house md's quiet-killing of characters (re: vogler) is kinda awkward lol. i thought there would be at least one more passing scene with her, or even a reference beyond what wilson says in 2x12 to lay his cruelty to house on even thicker. RIP stacy warner. see you again in 8x22.

the wow factor giveth and the wow factor taketh. while "skin deep" isn't in my least favorites, it negatively impacts the season overall. sometimes we did, in fact, do Too Much. it's a calculated risk, plunging house into his worst states and expecting viewers' sympathy in return, and this is one of those rare occasions where it missed the mark because the episode, not just house himself, was punching down.

favs:

2x19 "house vs. god": i'm being so sincere when i say that this episode has quite literally everything i could ever want. it balances religiosity, masculinity, sexuality as something to be manipulated, and social othering, all wrapped up in the flag of Comphet Wilson. the notion of a "functional vampire" so clearly describes how we really do function in the world, seeking out validation via love and vice versa. it also establishes the enduring nature of house and wilson's relationship. when you leave 2x19, you have a deep-set, almost subliminal understanding that these 2 are inseparable, which sets the stage so excellently for the strain of season 3.

2x24 "no reason": this one was vying for first place and nearly got there! there's nothing unique i can add to our collective appreciation for 2x24. it's a case study in what makes house md tick, carried on the shoulders of hugh laurie's strongest performance yet. and the downright surety the showrunners have in fooling us into the climax is well-founded and well-deserved. house md's emphasis on internality is unmatched.

2x17 "all in": this is the house md equivalent of a fantasy royal ball episode and it means the world to me. on top of all its thematic work about house/god, we also get hilson cigars, which is something i hold so near and dear to my heart. cameron and cuddy look incomprehensibly beautiful. wilson won the poker tournament. he had pocket aces. "poker face" by lady gaga.

i know. i know. "euphoria part 2" isn't on my list. i already feel bad about it. my defense is that these are my favs not just for my Critical Thinking Reasons, but because i have a blast watching them, and 2x20-21 are such devastating blows to the psyche that i can't call them my favs. some of the best of the entire show? for sure.

least favs:

2x18 "sleeping dogs lie": suffered at the hands of its predecessor and successor, both of which are in my top 3 favorite of the season lol. as i said in my recap, i just think this one is repetitive and doesn't add much new to the table. 2x20-21 picks up cameron's characterization specifically in a much more innovative way, but i suppose that wouldn't be possible without 2x18, so i digress. just eh all around.

2x09 "deception": nothing major against this episode, i just didn't find it to be memorable. there were a lot of missed opportunities to expound on house's understanding/retaliation against munchausen's, and it's a good thing that we got a proper foreman era later on to make up for this bit.

overall rating: 9.5/10. maybe i'm just being like that one professor who can't give a 100% because nothing is perfect, but i just can't do it! 2x13 is a big hit to the season, and there is some repetition abound. but it hardly gets any better than this. season 2 is truly a delight, an impeccable improvement from an already great foundational season. this next phase of my rewatch was pretty exhausting and rewarding because the episodes are complex and worth your goddamn time! pay attention, dammit! there are gay people in the doctor show!

also, can you believe that we're a 4th of the way through the ENTIRE show?

favorite wilson moment:

no one is surprised.

[professorfcknmoriarty]

If this season doesn't turn out to be a great trans allegory about denying who you are for the people around you and transitioning into who you're supposed to be and being the real you (written specifically for Brennan's dear friend Ally Beardsley who transitioned since starting the show, but also for all his friends), I'll pull a Lydia Barkrock and cook 37 chicken parmesans.

There are SO many threads to pull, but to name a few:

In episode 1, Cassandra, who prior to JY used they/them instead of she/her pronouns and didn't look like a copy of Kristin, offered to theme herself around shakes and smoothies to make herself more likeable and relatable to Kristin, and episode 4 she says, "You saved me from being the Nightmare King."

In episode 5, Brennan offered, "Do you wanna use doubt as your weapon here, or do you want to use rage as your weapon here? Do you want to approach the goddess with her own gift, or is there something in here that you wanna go with?"

Later, Brennan says, "There's a moment where that red glows in her, and she says, "Why don't you let me get us out of here?" and turns to look at all of these rage shatter-star things. You see that she looks at them with recognition, and she goes, "How are they back here? I thought you were dead"."

And later something or someone said "She is at my side once more," and Brennan says "Kristen, your goddess is gone and a being whose name you do not know speaks to you with rage and malice from a realm beyond."

In episode 10, Siobhan/Adaine asked: "Was this god that seems to be missing a celestial god or a giant god?" And Brennan said, "On a 27, I will honor the specificity of that question. You think this god's domain changed over time."

From Lydia, we heard, "This god was a god of the Nine Hells, a god of, you know, fire and rage and torment, yadda yadda, all that stuff."

And later, Brennan says, "You start recording the moon, recording that. I think you find effectively what we would call MNA, magical nucleic acid. You're finding a string of magical sequencing. I'm gonna say from this point on, anytime you do any kind of Detect Magic or Detect Evil and Good, you will be able to see whether something is directly of Bakur. But you also find a deific, almost mitochondrial DNA of, oh, here's Bakur, but here's actually where he gets his power from -" and, "- So you're also able to be like, if you were to investigate anything else, you now have this magical sequence being like, is this of the deity that produced Bakur?"

To which Siobhan/Adaine says, "So Cassandra was married to a female or nonbinary or transmasc deity. Mitochondrial," And Brennan agrees that's what he could mean.

In episode 11, Brennan says, "Your worry as these things came out of your hand, the shards enclosed themselves. There was fear, right? Which is something that Cassandra, who in some other version of herself was the Nightmare King, is very familiar with," and while they're falling into the briefcase he says, "you're falling faster. As he (Baron) goes, he says, "The Nightmare King, very angry, once again in the arms of his loving partner. I think you should be very afraid Kristen Applebees, but not of sweet little old Baron from the Baronies. You have plenty of fish in your fish pot to fry with your fish oil." And disappears into the pages again. Very mad. So Cassandra's mad and with... They've both been corrupted again."

(Note that the Nightmare King used he/him pronouns, Cassandra used they/them at the end of SY, she/they before the mall. Baron used they/them pronouns in SY and he/they in JY.)

In episode 12, Riz said "I wasn't keeping him (Baron) a secret. I said I was dating Baron from the Baronies, but I made that up. But then, he became real." And Baron said "I am sorry that my romance partner, Riz Gukgak, has lied so much about my nature," And "(my stark father) wants to make your name something that cannot hurt you anymore."

And Riz said "-(this was) A clear lie that maybe other people could've picked up on, but didn't. And then, you know, Baron was manifested."

And later Baron said, "My stark father does not wish to ever be referred to by his name," and "Stark father, I call him, but there are other titles by which he is referred." And, "You will die here and then there will be none that remember her."

So Riz's refusal to think about or acknowledge his feelings or identity (aro/ace) and thus making up a partner that "doesn't go here" to keep his friends from suspecting or shunning him for his otherness manifested in magic from the Nightmare King/Stark Father/Cassandra. Baron isn't just a manifestation of his lies but a manifestation of his inability to accept his own identity and trying to be someone he isn't.

Random weird threads that seem somehow connected: Kristin's notoriously religious and bigoted parents have they/them pronouns in their title card AS DO Digby and Wilma Thistlespring but not every pair that often shares title cards (see the Barkrocks who have their pronouns listed separately).

There's so much focus so far on names, names that hurt you (what kinds of names hurt trans people? Dead names, usually), identity, changing, duality of self, being honest with and about yourself and I just-

There's also been a lot going on about how little correction that's been for misgendering or just completely changing the pronouns of previously nonbinary NPCs in this season. Given the fact that there have been so many details like this peppered throughout the season so far, I highly suspect that the lack of correction is to not alert the Players too early as to the overarching plotline.

(Also non-zero chance Bucky Applebees turns out to be trans and/or Kristin transitions by the end of the Bad Kids story arch)

[stupidnicknamehere]

I have finally finished reading Malcolm Folley's book Prost vs Senna. Honestly, I had very high expectations for this book as it is everywhere touted as the best and most objective analysis of the Prost-Senna rivalry. I was so excited that I devoured the first 100 pages on the history of F1 and its rich tradition as a British sport, as well as all the events he was involved in. What followed was the story of Alain Prost and his rise to the top category; his struggles, his teammates and his learnings which, although I already knew, was still worth reading.

However, that is where the good stuff ends.In a nutshell, this book is NOT objective: It is dedicated to painting a complete picture of Prost, elevating his version of the story as facts:

Prost: "In the race, Senna got completely ahead at the start... then pushed me off the track." That did NOT happen, and I have literally seen videos. De Angelis was the one who crashed into Prost.

I don't mind all the pages devoted to the crash at the 1990 Suzuka GP, but we definitely have a problem when the incident from the previous year, in 1989, is barely mentioned; you know, the one where it was Alain who deliberately crashed into Senna. (A bit off topic, but this is also a point that was repeated in the Prost documentary, and it really bothered me.)

The image that is painted of Senna, as a spoiled rich kid, obsessed with winning at any cost, clashes quite a bit with his actions throughout his career, such as the time he helped Martin Donnelly, saved Erik Comas' life and his crusade to improve safety conditions for drivers (this topic was already touched on in 1990), It also makes no effort to show his point of view, his own story to get to F1 and it is all limited to biased conjectures by the author. The people interviewed about Senna are either neutral observers (Ramirez and Leberer) or people who were not very sympathetic to him (Brundle, Warwick and Hill), of course we also have Berger and Ron Dennis, whose opinions are almost ignored.

There are times when it feels like the author was trying his best to justify Prost's actions and demonize Senna's who, we know, was neither a saint nor an innocent in this conflict, but the way he is described here just doesn't make sense to me. It just would be better to say: "Oh! Senna was a whiny brat, he complained about so many things... FISA is fair and unblemished, the problem was obviously him." Really?

In conclusion, if you are a fan of Alain Prost, you will love this book. If you are not a fan of Ayrton Senna, you will surely like it too. However, if you are like me and are just looking for an objective perspective on who these drivers were, on the rivalry that would give rise to a golden age in the sport, or if you are looking for another perspective on who Ayrton Senna really was outside of the deification with which he is portrayed in many propaganda outlets, you will NOT find it in this book.

Frankly, a huge disappointment.

[shouldhavestayedawayfromhere]

Mention of NSFW topics

So, I've been a bit reluctant about sharing stuff about my practice these days because it's been quite overwhelming, and I'm awkward about this stuff because I'm asexual and a weirdo. If it puts you off that's not my problem tho, so, don't bother me if you have a problem with this stuff.

So, here's a conversation I had with Lucifer. For context: I'm in a not romantic relationship with Lucifer, but I do love him and I fuck him.

We were talking about how he feels when I feel good. Like, if he gets anything from the physical sensations that I feel. And for a while, he just goes on about desires and how he likes it when I feel good and how I always get so cuddly afterwards and whatnot. And you gotta know that I have these conversations through handwriting with him. I just write down the words that come to mind in whatever way I receive them.

At some point I realize my hand almost falling slack and my eyes slightly unfocusing and my handwriting is getting messier and messier. And he starts talking about how much he loves it when I bleed (I was on my period lol) and starts talking in almost nonsense sentences about how it's "all for me, right? No need, it's okay, it's okay, just breathe. I got you. It's so nice, yeah?" And I was just sitting there, writing, thinking damn is he drunk? What is happening? By the end of it, I wasn't even writing on the lines anymore. I can barely read the words on the paper. My hand got so slack but also jittery, and I changed my handwriting to keep up, and it's a whole mess.

So I asked him. Are you drunk or something? And he's just like yeah, duh, I'm drunk on you. Let me. You allowed it. So let me. It's all for you in the end.

I got curious at that and asked him how him feeling pleasure is "all for me". At first he didn't directly answer my question. Just being a sap. Maybe still drunk. I can excuse that. But I do still want that answer. So I ask again. What is your pleasure doing for me?

"it's fair, no? You feel good. I feel good. That's how love goes. And I worship you more. My angel. I worship, okay? Let me. I was meant to worship. Was I not? But I choose my god, and my god is the most and the least divine of all gods—it is human. I worship human and human worships me. This is deification on both sides. Man becomes god, and god becomes man, but it's all in love and not at war. Isn't that beautiful? It's so beautiful, darling."

After that point, he got all "drunk" again. I'll keep some of those drunk thoughts of his to me, but he seemed to get into a sudden rage at the end of it. I'll try to decrypt the words as good as I can.

"I am not a deaf god, I listen and I answer, do you understand? My love is not a poem, it is truth, it's more than romantic bullshit. I can show my existence and I am not afraid of your doubt. Throw it at me, darling. Throw it at me with all your might, and let's see if I pass the tests. Test me. Do it. Test your faith, or else, it is idiocy. Don't be dumb. Didn't I teach you to doubt? Did I not? Doubt me. Doubt everyone but yourself. You are your only reliable truth. So test me and my abilities, not yours. You can still learn so much. Don't ever see the skills you don't have as a call for doubt. You are so perfect. Doubt me, love. My dove. Just me. Be the adversary. Be the accuser. It's all in love."

That's the last thing he said. It felt like he was almost yelling at me, but not in a mean or harsh way. More in a loving way. Like he's shaking me hard to say "wake up, please!" And yeah, that's probably exactly what I needed to hear. I've never experienced him like that, but I can't say I was put off.

[branwenjade]

Most Vulcans don't really believe in gods and goddesses, though they still hold the idea of them with a cultural reverence. Spock was a believer. Not in most of the supposedly mythical entities, but in a particular pair.

His Goddess was an ancient one, both male and female and neither and every possible combination in between. She blessed the unions between bondmates, especially those who were T'hy'la, he was a balm during pregnancies and births, they were the warmth in a content home.

Spock had studied his Goddess with reverence as a child, though he felt shame when he would desire to be as her Consort was. The records of the two deities were considered by most to be nothing but fictional accounts, but Spock believed.

To his shame Spock imagined he was the Consort, mortal born yet he had caught the eye of the Goddess, and she had granted him godhood. He was her constant companion, her guardian and her beloved to protect, the bearer of their offspring, and... her T'hy'la.

Spock had longed for that sort of connection, a bond even more complete than a marriage bond, and yet he knew that most Vulcans thought the bond, much like it's deific guardians, was nothing more than old mythology that had no place in modern society.

But Spock believed.

He'd memorized all the texts, and the ancient paintings of the duo were etched into his memories. He wouldn't speak the words to anyone, but in his mind he saw his own face in all the images of the Consort.

And his Goddess. She of the blonde hair, with the bluest eyes. She was exotic and beautiful, and if not for her slanted eyebrows and pointed ears, Spock would have assumed that she was Human.

Spock knows his devotion to his Goddess was part of the reason he left Vulcan to join Starfleet, to be even closer to people who would remind him of the object of his devotion.

And then one day he comes face to face with an almost perfect copy of his Goddess. The cadet is beautiful, stunning, so very Human and yet that face is the one Spock has worshipped his whole life. So he takes it upon himself to be Jim's guide and guard and confidant and hopefully one day his Consort.

Because Spock knows, as truly and completely as the fact of gravity, that James Tiberius Kirk is his Goddess reborn, and Spock will forever be his.

[connorsnothereeither]

What Hozier song fits your characters?

I GOTTA PICK JUST ONE EACH?? Damn, sick and twisted /lh /silly

It’s taken me a while to cook on this but I’m answering this at an appropriate time since I literally see Hozier live tomorrow-

Ulysses (Fable SMP): Now for a long time during Fable’s run I said Eat Your Young because it really fits early Ulysses and the Telchin, HOWEVER I think in totality as a character, Ulysses is embodied best by Empire Now. The sense of pained but freeing reflection, looking back on the pain and destruction caused by empire and greed for so long, and coming away from that bringing hope for a future that might not be perfect, but will be better. A future he does get to see. Hourable mention is that Ulysses and Vesperae are Sedated coded.

Virgil (SkyBound SMP): This was trickier than I thought, honestly, for both general vibes and plot reasons I can’t go into for spoilers. The issue is almost that Virgil is a very optimistic character at his core despot his paranoia, and it’s hard finding a Hozier song with exactly the right vibe. That being said, he is, after all, a carrion bird. And he is in a world that’s falling, trying to pull people closer as it does. For many reasons, Virgil is I, Carrion (Icarian).

Daniel Thorns (Cantripped): Listen… listen we all know it’s Nobody’s Soldier. We all know Nobody’s Solider just IS DAN. Beyond the individual elements, even down to smelling like a bonfire, the constant balance between being a folkhero and being a complete mess of a man. The desperation to hold onto the roughness of life so that he’s not sanitised to the point of deification, but being so unable to truly grasp the grittiness of the world because he is inherently seen as something more, and it puts a barrier around him. Honourable mentions are Arsonists Lullaby, cause Flamewalker and the baggage he carries with that, but also It Will Come Back IS SO NEPH AND DAN. THATS THEIR SONG. THATS DANPHRUS RIGHT THERE I POINT AT IT. I SHAKE THEM.

Leopold (Terramortis SMP): Again, there’s a lot of spoilers potential with assigning Leo a song, since we haven’t seen all of his story yet. I think I want to say Like Real People Do. The urge to just sit and ignore his problems. Choosing bliss through ignorance; not asking questions, not thinking hard enough about the bugs and the dirt. Just wanting things to be easier and live a little longer. Honourable mention that Too Sweet makes me think about Julius and Leopold… 👀

C.W Hare (Wild West SMP): Again there’s some spoilers potential here. I initially wanted to say Jackboot Jump. And that is incredibly CW coded… but I don’t think it’s perfect. The same with Talk. Both are so him, but not quite it. I think the most accurate as their songs is Abstract (Psychopomp). There’s so much about it, about the grasping onto glimpses of a life in those final moments. The desperation of holding onto a life. The animal motifs too just feel perfect “I will not be great, but I’m grateful to get through”, just… it makes me think about him a lot.

Honourable NPC Mentions:

Agent Paulie A. Morris (Cantripped - Goodes): Someone New

King Morgan of Eventide (Mer SMP): Through Me (The Flood)

[the-final-sif]

The godling/little god Dream & Dream XD is literally insane. This is so good. I cannoe put into words just how much I love it. The worldbuilding with the gods?? The tragicness, the unfairness, the sheer greed of those gods who want to live forever? This slaps so damn hard. And I know you might not want to say it yet, but I am SO curious how dream's cough cough actual godling status will work with his overall goal in the dsmp and the prison arc. Just, like, great job sif your hands are blessed

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I like having complex and fucked up gods, and it's a fun AU to build.

I think I've talked about it a little bit, but c!Dream up until the end of the AU both is and isn't a godling. The mask keeps his status almost entirely repressed cutting him off from both his hybrid side and his god side. Only a little bit can leak through.

This fucks him up over time for two reasons, first, exposure to XD. While XD does try to minimize his impact on c!Dream, the amount of time c!Dream spends exposed to a god does add up. It's part of why XD has relatively minimal contact with c!Dream during the SMP, since he's doing everything he can to avoid that poisoning going too far.

More importantly for the events of the SMP, at that point, c!Dream has killed his first god. He's growing up and his power is growing and starting to hit the limits of what the mask can contain. But the mask is still keeping him almost entirely human. And thus not immune to constant exposure to a god.

As such, he's effectively poisoning himself and the people around him to various degrees. He's got it the worst, but other people are affected to. So it's kind of like in medieval times where you just had an entire village of people tripping on ergot accidentally. Not quite as extreme, and certain people have more resistance, but a similar sort of vibe.

A big impact for his growing power is that he's also starting to get worshipers once the SMP gets founded. Full end gods don't really require worship and draw their power directly from the universe itself. But End Gods can still draw power from worship, and end godlings will often draw power from worship to complete their worship.

This extra power does come in handy once he's ready to kill that second god, but prior to that the extra boosts are significantly more dangerous and just make him worse. c!Sam, c!Punz, c!Wilbur, and to some extent c!Tommy are all guilty of a level of deification. It's mostly c!Wilbur's fault though because when he makes c!Dream the Big Bad Guy he starts that process of deification/dehumanization that helps push c!Dream over the edge.

Also while all of this is happening, XD is just kinda there biting his lip trying to figure out where he needs to intervene. It probably should've been awhile ago, but like, it works in the end, so whose the fool now?

[yamayuandadu]

Did ancient near east have any equivalent supernatural beings to nymphs

Overall not really, with small exceptions restricted pretty much just to Hittite Anatolia.

Jenniffer Larson in Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (p. 33) suggests the notion of nymphs - or rather of minor female deities associated specifically with bodies of water and with trees - was probably an idea which originated among early speakers of Indo-European languages. While I often find claims about reconstructed “PIE deities” and whatnot dubious, I think this checks out and explains neatly why despite being a vital feature of Greek local cults nymphs have little in the way of equivalents once we start moving further east.

Mesopotamian religion wasn’t exactly strongly nature-oriented. Overall even objects were more likely to be deified than natural features; for an overview see Gebhard J. Selz’s ‘The Holy Drum, the Spear, and the Harp’. Towards an understanding of the problems of deification in Third Millennium Mesopotamia. It should be pointed out that in upper Mesopotamia mountains were personified quite frequently, but mountain deities (Ebih is by far the most famous) are almost invariably male (Wilfred G. Lambert’s The God Aššur remains a pretty good point of reference for this phenomenon) Rivers are a mixed bag but in Mesopotamia the most relevant river deity was the deified river ordeal (idlurugu referred to both the procedure and the god personifying it), who was also male, and ultimately an example of a judiciary deity rather than deified natural feature.  Alhena Gadotti points out that there is basically no parallel to dryads, and supernatural beings were almost never portrayed as residing in trees in Mesopotamia (‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld’ and the Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle,  p. 256). You can find tree deities like Lugal-asal (“lord of the poplar”) but there’s a decent chance this reflects originating in an area named after poplars and we aren’t dealing with something akin to a male dryad (also, Lugal-asal specifically fairly consistently appears in available sources first and foremost as a local Nergal-like figure).

All around, it’s safe to say there’s basically no such a thing as a “Mesopotamian nymph”. Including Hurrian evidence won’t help much either - more firmly male deified mountains, at least one distinctly male river, but no minor nature goddesses in sight.

Probably the category of deities most similar to nymphs would be various minor Hittite goddesses representing springs - Volkert Haas in fact referred to them as Quellnymphen (“spring nymphs”). Ian Rutherford (Hittite Texts and Greek Religion: Contact, Interaction, and Comparison, pp. 199-200) points out that the descriptions of statues of deities belonging to this class indicate a degree of iconographic overlap with nymphs in Greek art. Notably, in both cases depictions with attributes such as shells, dishes or jugs are widespread. There’s even a case of possibly cognate names: Hittite Kuwannaniya (from kuwanna, “of lapis lazuli”) and Kuane (“blue”) worshiped in Syracuse. They aren’t necessarily directly related though, since arguably calling a water deity “the blue one” isn’t an idea so specific it couldn’t happen twice.

There is also one more case which is considerably more peculiar - s Bronze Age Anatolian goddess seemingly being reinterpreted as a nymph by Greek authors: it is generally accepted that Malis, a naiad mentioned by Theocrtius, is a derivative of Bronze Age Maliya, who started as a Hittite craftsmanship goddess (she appears in association with carpentry and leatherworking, to be specific). There is pretty extensive literature on her and especially her reception after the Bronze Age, I’ve included pretty much everything I could in the bibliography of her wiki article some time ago. Note that there is no evidence the Greek interpretation of Maliya/Malis as a nymph was accepted by any inhabitants of Anatolia themselves. While most Bronze Age Anatolian deities either disappeared or remained restricted to small areas in the far east of Anatolia in the first millennium BCE, in both Lycia and Lydia there is quite a lot of evidence for the worship of Maliya. In both cases there is direct evidence for local rulers considering her a counterpart of Athena (presumably due to shared civic role and connection to craftsmanship; or maybe they simply aimed to emulate Athens). There’s even at least one instance of Maliya appearing in place of Athena in a depiction of the judgment of Paris (or rather, appearing in the guise of Athena, since the iconography isn’t altered).

[faith-of-the-wheel]

Greetings, friends. How are you?

I too am well. This blog is gonna consist primarily of my personal interpretations of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European deities via comparative linguistics and mythology, and attempts to flesh them out in the name of detailed religious practice with possible syncretism (not at all uncommon for IE culture).

There will also definitely be some talk of other deities because I am deeply interested in reconstructing poorly understood deities and their roles, and I believe doing so can help us better reconstruct PIE deities.

The primary sources I use for establishing what deities to reconstruct(and how to do so) are the Senowera/Sénā Swedhā́ document, Arya Akasha, and Ceisiwr Serith's blog. The Senowera/Sénā Swedhā́ document has the widest selection of PIE deities, so it is often my jumping off point, although I do not agree with all of it reconstructions(for example, I find the evidence for Mawortes essentially non-existent. That doesn't wholly invalidate praxis, because of the PIE's clear deification of abstractions, but it's certainly not historical). I highly recommend checking out the Looking At the Deiwos blog here on tumblr. It's a great intro to the deities, uses most of the resources I've mentioned above, and is an all-around great resource. I often feel their entries on the gods are a bit lacking in detail but I am a nerd who obsesses over minutiae and my desire to explore some more complex and theoretical ideas about the gods is why I'm starting this blog.

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DISCLAIMER: I'm not an academic or a scholar, just a nerd. I rarely sight my sources and typically do so improperly because, frankly, that's tedious. I'm not trying to reconstruct the historic PIE gods entirely accurately, others who are far more qualified than I have done that to my satisfaction. I'm trying to, primarily, flesh out the underdeveloped deities with some more speculative reconstruction for current religious purposes.

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I also recommend Ceisiwr Serith's book on the subject, Deep Ancestors: Practicing the Religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. It adds a lot of detail to PIE theology, cosmology, and above all else it is an invaluable resource on ritual and it's extremely important structure. Incredible read for those of us who prefer a detailed and ordered look a such a religion. We are definitely gonna get into a lot of other things, as one of the main ideas behind my creating this blog is to expand upon the foundational resources by fleshing out the deities, albeit very theoretically and by potentially engaging in a little syncretism rather than focusing purely on what is reconstructable. We should remember that like most pagan paths, we will enver fully understand and reconstruct the historic practice and our modern one, however much do and should base it on the ancient ways, is still a modern practice. This applies doubly so when talking about Swedhu/PIE religion, as we do not actually have physical evidence of this pantheon even existing, it's pure reconstruction.

My reasoning for this approach is such:

1 - We cannot and never will gain as clear a picture of PIE deities, their characterization, and their function as we have for almost any of their descendant cultures. However, I consider this kind of understanding to be important, if only in a UPG sense.

2 - One of the main appeals to Swedhu to me, and I imagine many others, is its almost all-encompassing pagan nature, with the remarkable diversity of the many descendant traditions. A lot of pagans connect with the spiritual traditions of their ancestors but many also acknowledge a remarkable diversity of ancestry and consequently the many beautiful traditions, especially those of us in the US, whose ancestors can often be from all over world. Swedhu being the common ancestor of so many traditions has a certain appeal to it by encompassing, and sort of reverse syncretising them together if you will.

3 - Syncretism was extremely common among IE religions and seeing as recreating any of them perfectly is both near impossible if not entirely in a practical sense, not to mention the issue of compatibility with modern society, certain alterations are simply a fact of reconstruction. And we can use this to our advantage in the creation of a more detailed theology.

Let's get into it!

Proto-Indo-European Deities:

Rudlós

Part 1: Introduction and Cognates

Part 2: Comparison of Cognates

Part 2.5: Additional Possible Cognates

Part 3: Leudheros, Aspect or Son?

Part 4: Worunos, King of the Night Sky

Part 5: Who is Welnos?

Part 6: Character of a God

Ṛ́tkonā

Part 1: Introduction and Cognates

Part 2: Comparison of Cognates

Part 3: Character of a Goddess

Paxuson

Part 1: Introduction and Comparison of Cognates

Part 2: Welnos

Part 3: Character of a God

Leudhero & Leudhera

Part 1: Leudheros, Aspect or Son?

Part 2: Character and Worship

Proto-Indo-European Rituals:

A Place to Start: Introduction to Hearth, Gods, and Ancestors

Skuda(Scythian) Deities:

The Scythian "Ares"/Pṛta

The Scythian "Ares": Arms for the Arm God

Ossetian Deities:

Uastyrdzhi

Right hand of God

Tutyr

Tutyr, from the Caucasian Mountains or the Indo-European Steppe?

Hellenic(Greco-Roman) Deities:

Ares

Ares/Thracian "Dionysos", A cognate of Rudlos?

Raetic(Etruscan) Deities:

Intro to Etruscan Religion

Śuri

Part 1: The Black, Forgotten King of the Manes

Part 2: Indo-European God of fire

[projectproductions]

Whenever I imagine the Voodoopunks (New Albion Tetralogy) I kind of always imagine them being representative of different groups within each instalment.

During The Dolls of New Albion (DONA) the Voodoopunks are first being invented and are still feeling out what they are as a group. Since it's primarily composed of teenagers and young adults the Voodoopunks are foundationally a sub-culture within New Albion born from the cultural installation of necromancy as an everyday standard consumer's commodity. However I would like to argue that they are specifically a counter-culture within New Albion. It's stated that most people treat Dolls as accessories or objects of projection rather than as real people but - while the Voodoopunks aren't much better - the Voodoopunks seem to take an almost opposite stand to this. Instead of objectifying the Dolls to the point of dehumanisation, the Voodoopunks objectify the Dolls to a point of reverence or deification. Most people would begin to think of death as trivial in the face of being able to reverse it, but the Voodoopunks instead revere death more than they appreciate their lives - they revolve themselves around death rather than trivialising it. They're countering the cultural perception of the Dolls. This idea of them being analogous to a counter culture is also supported by their political motivations. Most sub cultures - especially counter cultures - have some ideological or political motivation within them which ran against the popular zeitgeist of the time (grunge came from the rejection of the idea that poverty produced only undesirable things, emo from the rejection of the idea that negative emotions should be hidden away from public view, etc). The Voodoopunks are an anti-establishment group, and essentially voting for them would have been a vote to get rid of the establishment of the DONA-era New Albion government (something which was known to be corrupt and unforgiving as seen throughout the tetralogy). What sets them apart from most anti-establishment groups within media however is their emphasis on spirituality born from the change in culture around death in New Albion. The society of DONA-era New Albion is very scientifically- and economically-centred, they prioritise the advancement of science and enterprise over civilians wellbeing or connection. The Voodoopunks counter this cultural president by embracing the inherent spirituality of spirit summoning and co-existence - spirituality being something often seen as antithetical to science. They're basically a youth counter-culture, young political ideological group, and a rising religion all wrapped into one born from the birth of an economic enterprise and the culture surrounding it. Each aspect runs both parallel to each other and intertwined with each other, one aspect never dominating the others - although it all stems from the inherent counter- culture of the Voodoopunks.

Compare this to the Voodoopunks of The New Albion Radio Hour (NARH). Due to a prolonged sense of isolation from the larger connection of New Albion society for around a decade (most likely longer), the Voodoopunks have all but basically lost their counter-cultural roots since they've been disconnected from the culture they were countering. Additionally the ideological aspect of the Voodoopunks seemed to have seeped and been absorbed into the now more religious fanaticism aspects of the Voodoopunks. This isn't to say that they aren't a significant political and ideological force - they are literally the face of the residents against the New Albion government after all - but their ideological aspects have some second to their spiritual religious ones. They're basically a cult now (not in the exploitative way, but in the collective of concentrated religious activity kind of way). They have their own religious wrights and rituals, they have self proclaimed hymns and chants and prophets. Thomas is literally able to recognise them by their sound of their singing alone. The Voodoopunks in NARH are identified by their religious aspects, with other aspects of them being second to their fanaticism.

Both previous installations of the Voodoopunks have been similar in the fact that they aren't the status queo, they were in fact counter to the status queo and actively against the establishment of New Albion. However in The New Albion Guide To Analogue Consciousness (NAGAC) they are the establishment, or at least they run the establishment. Something noticeable is that in NAGAC the only time the Voodoopunks are referred to as the Voodoopunks are in reference to the people, while in previous narratives the title Voodoopunks referred both to the people and what they represented as a group. No, in NAGAC whenever the Voodoopunks are referred to as a collective outside of its people they are referred to as Arcadia Corp. I think this is indicative of the fact that the Voodoopunks as a group have lost almost all of their back bone in the sense of counter-culturalism and ideological individuality. What are the Voodoopunks in NAGAC except for just being the people who run Arcadia Corp? A religious group? Not really, they've lost almost all of their fanaticism as they became more mainstream and palatable from the population of New Albion. The religious aspects they have left are all watered down, music sounding like it's been Christian Rock-ed and sanitised. Heck there isn't even a song called The Voodoopunks in NAGAC! There's "The Voodoopunks Ascension" but that isn't even the Voodoopunks main/signature song in this album - Kyrie is! Essentially in the shuffle of becoming the mainstream and publicly acceptable norm for the pursuit of power, the Voodoopunks as a group lost what made them themselves - ending up with the people being only the Voodoopunks in name until they too die out.

I find the development of the Voodoopunks so interesting. They're never truly all good or all bad, but they are a significant driving force in New Albion throughout the years in the pursuit of their own goals and desires until eventually they drive them into extermination.

It's a really good representation of how ideology, government and politics, economics and innovation, and culture all interact with and influence each other within history and the real world. Also on how as years go by often sub-cultures and counter-cultures will lose their connection to their original purpose and become almost bastardization of themselves as they become sanitized and stripped of their essence as they enter the view of the socially accepted public eyes.

[talenlee]

The Impossible Weight Of Love

There’s no Greater God of Love in Cobrin’Seil. In a Pantheon full of characters that embody easily explained, narratively significant ideas to a culture of people who love to tell stories, each one incarnated by a divine supernatural power capable of exerting its personality to influence those believes, it is a common point of research into the question as to why there is no great and iconic character to represent love itself.

The research is largely settled, mind you; the answers have been satisfyingly found, though there are always questrions of how and what they mean. No research is truly complete after all. But to understand the absence of the god of love, first, there needs to be an understanding of divine lacunae.

Gods are both a reflection of the belief of a community and a conscious entity capable of manipulating that belief. They are in a way the metaphorisation of media effects, an entity that people can point to that they have a relationship to and that in turn affects them through the relationship back. If a god of war is a massive asshole and everyone sees it, the assumption is not that he’s having a bad day but that the god of war is like that and as a direct result, war is, also, like that. Gods therefore exist in a nexus of being both representative of an ideal they want to express and also beholden to the needs of that expression. A god of war may want to be a pacifist but it’s not going to last, either the demands of the belief of what they are overwhelm them or the belief moves on from where they are; a god of war who puts down the weapons may find that people keep believing in ‘the god of war’ part and it just no longer refers to them, the agonising sensation of finding out your identity is a mis-filed reference that you now either need to run and catch up to, or worse, someone else can just step into and become.

This creates the notion of an idea of a ‘god space’ – a place where emotional energy and belief is directed, but where there’s no actual divinely sparked entity there. This can create odd effects; some believe that El is a ‘god’ in name only, and that he is subject to worship just because he makes a satisfying story as a god of secrets, effectively turning good press into magical prowess. If you could cut into the nature of what he is, you would not find ‘god’ underneath, but instead a living entity taking the form of a god.

Since several godhood stories in Cobrin’Seil describe the way a divine being was once a person who was not a god ascending to godhood, however, this particular convention is considered something of a distinction without a difference. If a person can become a god, then what method they use to use it isn’t exactly important, and the only suggested problem with El is that he hasn’t done it enough, or properly yet.

But what about the spaces that don’t have gods in them, but where people are pretty sure gods should be? This is the formation of what’s called in divine magic studies as a divine lacuna, a place defined by its absence. Lacunae are typically short-lived absences before either the belief in a deific power collapses (because of the absence of any proof that deific power exists) or because a divine spark, a ‘small god’ steps into the lacunae and takes on an identity that, more or less, works to serve the needs of that lacuna. Lacunae are usually connected to great times of social upheaval, revolutionary inventions, or rediscovery of ancient truths. Unwittingly, ancient gods have been ‘awakened’ long after their death by their belief system being discovered, and a small god steps into the space to take on that role and in the process, become that god again – not what they were, but what the new, modern people imagine them to be.

And then there’s love.

It’s not like cultures don’t try to determine a God – or Goddess, more usually – of love. Indeed, almost every major cultural centre has some deity that’s meant to represent love in their cultural place, but none of these gods have successfully ‘caught on’ as gods of love itself outside of those cultural bubbles. There are a host of reasons why, such as:

The god is singularly linked with a local population and doesn’t exert power outside of it

The god is known for something else more significant in the greater world

The god doesn’t even actually exist, and most commonly,

The god’s vision of love is not congruent with love in other places

As an example of the last point, in the cultures of Bidestra in particular, most orc clans regard ‘love’ as a distinct and different thing from the way even people in the Eresh protectorate regard it. They don’t even have an ambiguous word like ‘love’ for what they consider pair-bonding relationships. Common has the word ‘love’ which can be used for a family legacy, a sandwich, and a wife, all at once, and orc does not. Even then, the idea of a ‘god of love’ becomes malformed just by dint of who is asking. This creates gaps, and these gaps can be seen as either one huge lacuna, or many, many smaller interconnected lacunae.

Even within a culture with a shared common language, though, there are discrepancies. The Eresh Protectorate, Visente, and Dal Raeda all use the same common language (with numerous dialectal shifts from region to region that most people imagine don’t exist or are the result of being a bit stupid or whatever), but even across those three cultures there are vividly different visions of what ‘love’ is and what about it matters.

In Dal Raeda, love is often treated as preamble to a marriage, and that marriage is also lended significance by revealing after the participants commit to it, that both parties are politically important. Dal Raedan stories of love are often told in ways that suggest that whirlwind romances between nobles are very common, even if they were arranged to be wed ahead of time.

In Visente, love is treated as a sign of great value; stories often focus on wealthy people who cannot ‘buy’ love, finding someone poor and elevating them into being a love interest and the comedy that derives from their mismatch. Also, Visente produces a lot of dirty books about dashing heroes and heroine adventurers that sweep people off their feet in stories that maybe go wrong, in a very pulpy way.

In the Eresh Protectorate, stories of love are often about people from very different walks of life finding one another thanks to being part of such a wild and chaotic place. Eresh Protectorate stories suggest that even if your day job is ‘baker’ you might still wind up seeing a tradesperson from across the world regularly.

Now, any vision of what love ‘is’ is going to be able to represent a part of these stories, which is where most Small Gods trying to take the title of God of Love succeed. There are some tales of gods who have done it, and there are questions around how different cultures represent a ‘god of love.’

Glotharen has an ancient pagan goddess of love, who is depicted as being linked to a single specific tree that people who are concerned about matters of love travel to and offer up prayers. This god’s power is heavily isolated to one space, but also the worship tends to only involve attending to that space – people don’t seek prayers from her across the country.

There is a god of love stories venerated by the Abilen, who is explicitly meant to be a storyteller goddess who brings together narratives from all across the different beastfolk communities, meaning that there is no need for a single god to explain Gnoll stories of love and Tjosen stories of love, which are otherwise, pretty different.

A common representation of a ‘god of love’ amongst Orcs is a triune godhead representing the nurturing love of sleep, the rising love of starting something new, and the satisfying love of returning home. There are a host of different metaphors for these three characters, but notably, the evidence suggests these three gods were originally one god, shorn into three parts by assuming the lacuna.

Kyranou has a god of love that shows up in their fiction, as a fictionalised god meant to express clear information about love or its limits. Thing is, because this god is literally a fictional construct, its identity is incredibly fragmented, with any given author’s opinion about love informing it, and Kyranou is a place that makes a lot of theatre. These plays are in many cases meant to be arguing with one another, creating a god that will say completely opposite things from time to time, making it so that any small god who has tried to take the role winds up being deeply confused before they give up or get obliterated by the impossibility of its contradictions. One of the only commonalities in these theatrical performances is how commonly the relationships are explictly unable to have children, because children are so obviously a good thing, so being in love despite not being able to have children, is a sign that the love must be even more powerful.

Tjosen culture is often bound up in the idea of star signs and determining truth from the stars. To this end, some believe there is a god of the stars who weaves ‘love’ out of different paths. The problem is, if such a god exists, as the Tjosen perceive them, that god explicitly cannot interact with the world directly, because to interact with the world is to become tainted with its lies and lose your ability to prove you are true. This means that the Tjosen may or may not have incarnated a god of astrological love, but there’s literally no way to prove or disprove their existence.

The Lacunae of gods of love are dangerous and tempestuous places, where a small god that lacks a name can try and creep in and take on the responsibilities (and hopes) of that position, but just as much risk being ripped apart by the demands and impositions of the people who believe in them.

Love is too powerful for a mere god to represent.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed: The Little Girl of Hanoi

The Little Girl if Hanoi is a work of North Vietnamese propaganda.

Which isn’t a judgment of the film’s quality, but rather a neutral statement of fact. While the term has developed a negative connotation in recent years, its true function is merely to describe a story’s content: if it advocates a political message (particularly one endorsed and supported by the government in question), then it is, by definition, propaganda. Whether said message is “good” or “bad” is for the viewer to decide.

Given this context, how else am I supposed to classify a movie that depicts Ho Chi Minh (via repurposed archival footage) as a benevolent, grandfatherly, almost deific figure, generously distributing cigarettes to the brave, exhausted troops defending the capital? At one point, an old nanny comforts a sobbing infant by promising to protect him from Nixon, likening the president of the United States to a sinister bogeyman lurking in the shadows (a not-entirely-inaccurate assessment, to be fair). In an especially heart-wrenching sequence, the young protagonist’s neighbors not only escort her to the front of the local food line, but also ensure that she receives the maximum ration of rice for her household despite the apparent loss of the rest of her family—an act of solidarity that serves as the thematic anthesis of Isao Takahata’s unflinchingly pessimistic Grave of the Fireflies (which, in case you were unaware, is about a pair of abandoned Japanese orphans slowly starving to death at the height of WWII).

Obviously, the tone is unabashedly melodramatic, painting in broad strokes of pathos and sentimentalism. The characters’ joy in the prewar scenes is so palpable that it borders on comedic, as though their grins are permanently chiseled onto their faces; they likewise communicate their grief by gazing tearfully into the middle distance—a technique blatantly borrowed from Hollywood. This relatively exaggerated style of performance clashes with the dissonantly naturalistic setting; much of the narrative unfolds amidst the actual rubble of the titular city, which had not yet fully recovered from the still recent bombing raids. Tran The Dan’s cinematography omits no detail of the destruction: through his lens, the ruins utterly dwarf their thoroughly traumatized inhabitants, reducing the human subjects to insignificant specks that are barely discernible within the cluttered frame; his camera, meanwhile, swoops and soars like a disembodied phantom, mournfully observing the devastation from the world beyond.

A cynic might dismissively describe this blunt presentation of such potentially inflammatory material as “emotionally manipulative.” I must concede the argument to a certain extent: the film is unapologetically transparent in its intent to evoke sympathy and rouse the country’s fighting spirit. Nevertheless, I vehemently disagree with the notion that this is some kind of damning criticism—opposing imperialism, colonialism, and expansionism should, after all, be considered an inherently noble goal. Ultimately, The Little Girl of Hanoi is a hauntingly authentic portrayal of its creators’ lived experiences, making it an essential cultural document; for any jingoistic Americans ignorant of how our nation’s foreign policies are perceived by the wider global community, this ought to be required viewing.

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Interlude 1 Live Reactions

(This is me, writing reactions as I read, because why the fuck not. They're not complete, mature thoughts taken after I sit back and evaluate what I've read. Consider them as such)

You know, I'm making reading Worm harder on myself by doing this. :thinking_face: Or at least more prolonged.

“We don’t know how long he had been there.  Suspended in the air above the Atlantic Ocean.  On May twentieth, 1982, an ocean liner was crossing from Plymouth to Boston when a passenger spotted him.  He was naked, his arms to his sides, his long hair blowing in the wind as he stood in the sky, nearly a hundred feet above the gently cresting waves.  His skin and hair can only be described as a burnished gold.  With neither body hair nor clothes to cover him, it is said, he seemed almost artificial.

Scion! Everyone's favorite world-destroying genocidal golden freakshow!

“The golden age of the parahumans was thus short lived.  They were not the deific figures they had appeared to be.  Parahumans were, after all, people with powers, and people are flawed at their core.  Government agencies took a firmer hand, and state-” The television flicked off, and the screen went black, cutting the documentary off mid sentence.  Danny Hebert sighed and sat down on the bed, only to stand just a moment later and resume pacing.

While this is an important infodump, the 'character watching something on the TV' form of the infodump is probably the most... bland version of it, that's not just a David Weber style 'let's insert two pages on the history of hyperspace in the middle of this high speed chase scene' infodump.

It's fascinating worldbuilding, and it's always fucking hard to get it out, but this... not quite sure it works for me.

Also, Hi Danny!

Danny ran his hands through his hair, which was thinned enough at the top to be closer to baldness than not.  He liked to be the first to arrive at work, watching everyone arrive, having them know he was there for them.  So he usually went to bed early; he’d turn in at ten in the evening, give or take depending on what was on TV.  Only tonight, a little past midnight, he’d been disturbed from restless sleep when he had felt rather than heard the shutting of the back door of the house, just below his bedroom.  He had checked on his daughter, and he’d found her room empty.

It's 12:30 am! Do You Know Where You're Children Are?

Danny fucking doesn't! :rofl:

(I may have a bent sense of humor)

He had resigned himself to letting her reveal the details in her own time, but months had passed without any hints or clues being offered.

I can certainly see why 'Danny is a Shit Dad' is a take in the fandom, though most fics I've read thus far don't go quite that far.

Sure, he's not being a shit dad here, but he's definitely not winning father of the year here.

While it's good to give children their space, at some point you do need to push, and Danny is clearly not doing well with that.

Taylor hadn’t said as much aloud, but whatever had been going on had been mean, persistent and threatening enough that Emma, Taylor’s closest friend for years, had stopped spending time with her.  It galled him.

Danny's known Emma for probably as long as Taylor has, give or take. It should seem obvious to him, I think, but everyone has their blindspots, and Danny seems like he's been checked out - not really of his own will - for a while.

Like, based on what I've read so far, and what I've seen from discussions and in fanfic, the worm-verse sucks. It's all going to shit slowly, though Brockton Bay does in particular seem to be a particularly bad case of it.

But equally, there's just a lot of people who just don't really seem to be trying? Which, realistic, especially when it seems hopeless and pointless but I'm not sure it's entirely so likely people give up so damn hard.

And yeah, there are people trying, but honestly, the whole picture of the wormverse - I mean, there's clearly a reason why people call it 'grimdark' and 'grimderp' (if they're detractors)

And also, unreliable narrator and all, or at least 'narrator with a specific perspective' but when that's all we have, it's all we have to go on. Unreliabl/biased/etc narrator can only cover so many authorial and worldbuilding sins.

(Whether or not such sins actually are present here remains to be seen.)

 Danny Hebert felt a thrill of relief coupled with abject fear.  If he went downstairs to find his daughter, would he find her hurting or hurt?  Or would his presence make things worse, her own father seeing her at her most vulnerable after humiliation at the hands of bullies?  She had told him, in every way except articulating it aloud, that she didn’t want that.  She had pleaded with him, with body language and averted eye contact, unfinished sentences and things left unsaid, not to ask, not to push, not to see, when it came to the bullying.  He couldn’t say why, exactly.  Home was an escape from that, he’d suspected, and if he recognized the bullying, made it a reality here, maybe she wouldn’t have that relief from it.  Perhaps it was shame, that his daughter didn’t want him to see her like that, didn’t want to be that weak in front of him.  He really hoped that wasn’t the case.

Not that I don't understand why Danny doesn't push, and yeah, teenagers need their space to process shit on their own sometimes, but also, really, Danny, you need to make that effort.

I get it, I do, but fucking hell man.

 He was being cowardly, he thought, as if his clearing of his throat would give reality to his fears.

On the other hand, it is hard not to sympathize. He knows he needs to do better, but for so many reasons, he can't and won't and doesn't. He needs, wants to do better, and yet can't, at least not yet. And there's reasons why, both internally and externally and it hurts him to not, to see Taylor like this, but he's as trapped as anyone else.

It's a very workmanlike quality so far, writingwise, I think, but that's always something I tend to prefer. And even then, Wildbow does manage to evoke and imply a lot with that.

He was stopped by the smell of jam and toast.  She had made a late night snack.  It filled him with relief.  He couldn’t imagine his daughter, after being mugged, tormented or humiliated, coming home to have toast with jam as a snack.  Taylor was okay, or at least, okay enough to be left alone.

I mean, he (theoretically) knows his daughter well enough to say this with confidence, but eating after being tormented or humiliated could be a comfort thing.

Granted, Danny's not wrong here, and presumably he does know Taylor well enough, or did, for this to be a fair reading by him? Or are we meant to see it as an oversight from him, because clearly he doesn't know his daughter as well as he thought?

Relief became anger.  He was angry at Taylor, for making him worry, and then not even going out of her way to let him know she was okay.  He felt a smouldering resentment towards the city, for having neighborhoods and people he couldn’t trust his daughter to.  He hated the bullies that preyed on his daughter.  Underlying it all was frustration with himself.  Danny Hebert was the one person he could control in all of this, and Danny Hebert had failed to do anything that mattered.  He hadn’t gotten answers, hadn’t stopped the bullies, hadn’t protected his daughter.  Worst of all was the idea that this might have happened before, with him simply sleeping through it rather than laying awake.

Honestly, this whole interlude feels like it breaks several of the conventional rules of advice for writing - don't have a character spend too much time introspecting alone, don't infodump too much at once...

And yet, it works. Which both speaks to how... useless that conventional advice often proves to be, and how confident (justifably so) Wildbow was in this that he'd present us a big dump and then all the introspection character-work.

Then again, there's a target audience for both, which again brings us back to the issues with that advice.

He stopped himself from walking into his daughter’s room, from shouting at her and demanding answers, even if it was what he wanted, more than anything.  Where had she been, what had she been doing?  Was she hurt?  Who were these people that were tormenting her?  He knew that by confronting her and getting angry at her, he would do more harm than good, would threaten to sever any bond of trust they had forged between them. Danny’s father had been a powerful, heavyset man, and Danny hadn’t gotten any of those genes.  Danny had been a nerd when the term was still young in popular culture, stick thin, awkward, short sighted, glasses, bad fashion sense.  What he had inherited was his father’s famous temper.  It was quick to rise and startling in its intensity.  Unlike his father, Danny had only ever hit someone in anger twice, both times when he was much younger.  That said, just like his father, he could and would go off on tirades that would leave people shaking.  Danny had long viewed the moment he’d started to see himself as a man, an adult, to be the point in time where he had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t ever lose his temper with his family.  He wouldn’t pass that on to his child the way his father had to him.

What's that saying? "They fuck you up, your mom and dad, give you all their problems and then a few new ones" or something like that.

And here though, we have the reason why Danny isn't pushing. Why he's making a choice he knows is bad, because - especially right now - he's in no fit state to press her. And when he will be in a fit state, it probably won't be the right time anyway.

 Four years ago, he had lost his temper with Annette for the first time, breaking his oath to himself.  That had been the last time he had seen her.  Taylor hadn’t been there to see him shouting at her mother, but he was fairly certain she’d heard some of it.  It shamed him.

Broken people, break people. And Broken people aren't really in a great position to help other people who need it.

He would talk to Taylor in the morning.  Get an answer of some sort.

Well, whatever he does, he's obviously not going to get an answer. Wonder what'll go wrong.

[godofgrapes]

Well of Ascension Review

(3/5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐)

The actual rating for this book is 3.5/5 stars, but I’ve decided to round down as opposed to up. Well of Ascension was a very 60/40 book for me. 60% of the time it was a decently written, gripping political drama set amidst the backdrop of a siege with continuously mounting stakes in which the characters are consistently wound tighter and tighter until it all snaps in the last hundred pages into a glorious, if bittersweet release of emotion. 40% of the time it is, unfortunately, a rather weakly written insight into the anxiety-addled mind of a 19 year old acting tremendously more stupid and short-sighted than the narrative would have you believe she is. To a degree, this is understandable; 19 year olds are dumb, and there’s a strong degree to which various narrators have conflicting ideas about Vin. Most especially Vin herself. And had the book decided to ride the angle it hints at (that being the ludicrous weight of religious deification in the wake of something you did accidentally after your mentor and friend died without telling you that was always the plan) it likely would have been a tremendously more interesting romp through Sanderson’s truly fascinating world. Instead. We get Zane. Zane and all the horrendous emotional baggage that comes with his poorly thought out existence. Zane, whose character boils down to being almost a comical caricature of the hair flip emo boys did in the 2000’s whilst Sanderson, who is not and has never been a teenage girl, tried to sell us on the idea that there is any reason whatsoever for Vin to feel emotionally attracted to him in place of Elend. More clinically, Sanderson’s worldbuilding and character work remains top notch and deserving of a great deal of praise. His prose, however, still comes across to me as rather stilted and one note with little syntax variation. That is, until the last two hundred pages or so when he seems to kick into a higher gear and starts churning out truly engaging and gripping descriptive work of the battles and character actions. As a second installment in a trilogy, it suffers a lot from the things inherent to those. Not much happens until the last hundred pages, at which point everything happens and then we go into book three. It’s interesting enough and it CERTAINLY sets things up to be dramatically more interesting in the next book. But this one fell just a little flat on its own merit.

[margridarnauds]

The reason why you'll almost never see me reblogging posts about Historically Accurate Women VS Modern Girlboss Female Leads isn't even that I DISAGREE with them, but because they inevitably lead to takes like this that go the complete OPPOSITE way and are equally as wrong. (...Georgian Era women...you say...talking critically about reproductive rights....you mean like...Olympe de Gouges?) (Who was very outspoken in her belief that women should be more than reproductive vessels, that illegitimate children should have rights under the law, and that women should stand up for their rights?) (Like the main reason it isn't "reproductive rights" as we understand the debate comes from the fact that reliable birth control just does not exist at this point in time, but arguing for women to have rights even if they have children out of wedlock is really the closest you can have and she argued it.)

Anyway, point is -- I get tired of ridiculously modern protagonists, but there's often this nasty underpinning to the criticism...or to criticism that follows it, that says that ALL women at a given time period acted a certain way (and if they didn't act that way, they are "acting like men", which, way to toss GNC women throughout history under the bus), when it'd be more interesting, imo, to look up what real historical women were arguing (and not just about #TheStruggleOfBeingAWoman) and what led them to those conclusions than it is to just act like Oh, They Were Too Stupid To Think That. Like, tell me WHY your heroine has these thoughts, what led her to that conclusion, and ways that she still is flawed. (Personally? I don't like the pseudo-deification of Mary Wollstonecraft because I feel like she's painfully middle class and has a tendency of tossing women who are Not Mary Wollstonecraft under the bus...which explains her popularity among a certain brand of feminist. Which is GOOD because she was a real woman with real flaws.)