#what a fascinating individual

[future-crab]

The thing about TMA is that if I think about Sasha James too much I will cry and if I think about Michael Shelley too much I will cry and if I think about Agnes Montegue too much I will cry and if I think about Jonathan Sims too much I will cry and if I think about Naomi Herne too much I will cry and if I think about Gerry Keay too much I will cry and if I think about Tim Stoker too much I will cry and if I think about Jane Prentiss too much I will cry and if I think about Martin Blackwood too much I will cry and—

[sanchomps]

doom eternal being so obsessed with face reveals they forget the captivating mystic of leaving the helmet/hood on and letting people fill in the gaps with their imagination

[soath]

Of Contracts Between Gods and Men

On the Aeorian Kinsey-Deicide scale I’m a solid 5 (near exclusively god-preserving) which may seem surprising to my many dear associates who want those fundamental truths of existence wrecked. Without digging in any further, let’s do some quick religious history review on the question: Do you owe anything to the gods and do they owe anything to you?

The answer is not as universal as many raised in the nigh inescapable miasma of Christian theology may think! Reciprocal (or even unilateral) responsibility in religion comes and goes across history and geography. The Norse Aesir, for example, created humans but don’t owe them nada and only rarely bothered messing with them. The Greek pantheon are significantly more touchy on the subject of their pride but a person could manage offering no prayers or sacrifices as long as they didn’t promise any prayers or sacrifices. Probably. Compare this to Mayan theology, wherein both gods and humans have significant co-responsibility in maintaining balance; with ritual and sacrifice key to the continued safety of the polity. Divine-mortal relationships can be classified as nondirectional, unidirectional, or bidirectional with various advantages and disadvantages to each model. Gods come in lots of shapes and the demands they make aren’t universal!

A phrase that will often come up in any divinity studies is “covenant”. Originally a translation of the Hebrew berith or Greek diatheke, and also present in Islam, the Bahai’i faith, and possibly historical Phoenician religious practices, covenant theology has metastasized in Christian scholarship to the point it was genuinely hard to research this piece while dodging blogs by guys named Richard. But, broadly, it’s the idea of making an explicit deal with power(s) greater than yourself where you both have sides of the bargain to uphold.

Contract law is not the solution to every problem on earth or in fiction, but when the issue is a large disparity in power and mutual fears of future adverse behavior…. to quote Kate Bush “I’d make a deal with (the) god(s).”

Vitally, compared to other bidirectional pacts in world religion, Exandria has some advantages. For one thing, they have a godeater they’re right now helping to suppress. As long as the gods remain behind the divine gate they need mortal champions to effect their will—but that only holds true as long as the Divine Gate stays up. And unfortunately the problem with a fence someone else has erected is that you don’t know if they’ve kept a key.

If I was mortality’s lawyer? I’d ask for a second layer to that divine hamsterball I’d ask for anything left of the godkilling spark to be kept by the temples of Vasselheim—if they can’t be trusted with it no one can. And I’d promise cooperation from people of a certain degree of civic responsibility, not coerced or threatened out, whole hearted. But terms and conditions may vary.

Anyway, I guess the thesis is that it’s a terrible sin to destroy something you can’t comprehend with no idea of what the outcome will be (and a lot of you don’t seem to get the inconceivable joy of having/knowing/being a god, even just in fiction) but you can bring any monstrosity to the negotiating table. Don’t kill your gods, unionize against them.

[ahalliance]

every now and again i think about when the code finally (/)killed qétoiles and he had a one day depression arc in which it really felt like he’d finally fucking cracked for real . and then he fought the code again and won and was immediately back on his insane but normal levels of bullshit like nothing had ever happened

[mndvx]

[fabdante]

i was going to add some fun grunge fashion to that ask a few minutes ago like, in a reblog, but when i went to google grunge fashion i just got flooded with like ai generated images that all look like this:

so that's something

[topnotchquark]

Valentino Rossi talking about the significance of number 9 in motorsports in regard to his 9 championships.

Via FIAWEC on Twitter 21.04.2024

[emry-stars-art]

Hi again!

As fun fact in osteopathy there is actually a method to treat psychical trauma. It's part of craniosacral therapy and basically looks like some voodoo shit (i tried it on my two friends and it works 🤯) .

To do it u need at least 3 people, one holding patient's head, one holding their legs and one holding their hand in the areas like heart, liver and brain. People holding their head and legs must move them accordingly to patient movements ( which way is easier) and person holding hands above the organs need to check in which directions there are restrictions and work on them.

During this therapy people fall into a state similar to meditation or REM faze of sleep (they still can hear every louder noise so it's important to be really quiet). Our job is to observe what their reactions are. One of my friends started putting his hands into his jeans pockets every few minutes, it can be really anything that their memories bring back at that moment.

They can just move in a specific way but also they can start screaming, crying, suddenly sit up or roll on their side and if it's connected to any accident they can feel it like it is happening again at the moment ( my other friend told me that when she was the patient she felt like she was about to cry, started shaking and couldn't speak for a few minutes). It also may bring back memories that are bad but we erased them from memory as a defensive mechanism.

One of my instructors even said that he calls this method "casting out the devil" because of its effects 😅.

Personally I think it's very interesting and I didn't even know that something like this existed until two years ago. Also there are a lot of videos on youtube of people talking about how this helped them with their problems.

*quietly* wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf wtf

Okay so I’ve been looking at this for like two days trying to figure out what I could possibly say or add to this but I haven’t found anything, everything you need to know is here! Like!! What!!! This sounds so insane, I’ve never even heard of anything like it :o but that is fascinating I’m still reeling

Voodoo shit indeed, just thinking about an average person’s reaction to this back in whatever time the au is set in… yeah that some witchcraft right there for sure 😂 I’d have to do a lot more research but just the thought of there being someone that specializes in this stuff. Feels like when police depts would bring in psychics to help them “solve” a case or something except it actually works lol. Somebody comes in to the castle and all the medics or professionals are like “who are you” and then this happens?? My brain would have exploded

This is so rife with angst potential… I don’t even have to point it out. You’re reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about. But the one thing I got stuck on for slightly longer even than anything else was the recovery of repressed memories. Maybe it’d help in the long run but at the moment? Ow

Thank you for another great ask, it hurts my heart to think about Kevin, Andrew, and Wymack watching this, hurts even more to think about Abram allowing them to do it 🥲 well I’m intrigued and I’m gonna go look some stuff up, have a great day everyone

[age-of-moonknight]

House of M: Avengers (Vol. 1/2007), #1.

Writer: Christos N. Gage; Penciler and Inker: Mike Perkins; Colorist: Laura Martin; Letterer: Rus Wooton

[sysig]

You’re gonna die if you keep that up (Patreon)

[catsafari25]

My housemate (who thinks that I only (attempt to) write original stuff) (albeit slowly) walked in on me flicking through PHM (for fanfic research purposes) and assumed I was re-reading it, and I haven't had the heart to admit the speed at which I fall down the fanfic rabbit hole

(Also, not what I was looking for, but it looks like Stratt calls Grace "Dr Grace" at all times, all but for two exceptations: 1) when the research lab blows up and she's calling for him and 2) just as he's hustled off to isolation before the launch ("Just think of the kids, Grace"))

(In their very last conversation, she doesn't call him by any name at all)

[apotelesmaa]

My fave thing about the WxS dynamic is that emu/rui/miku are always like tsukasaaaa it’s 3pm it’s time to make you do incredibly dangerous and life threatening stunts!!! & tsukasa is just like ok 😔 into the cannon I go 😔 while nene (arguably the most normal and sane person in WxS who could easily put a stop to this) is like yeah see you later idiot. Bye. (Not looking up from whatever game she’s playing)

[saints-who-never-existed]

Look, I know this is very random but thinking about Manson and his Shetland origins brought me back to this video concerning Shetlandic/Shetland dialect, and I thought perhaps others might be interested to see it too.

It features Christine De Luca, who not only has an incredibly lovely, mellifluous voice but is also a celebrated poet who was made Edinburgh's Makar in 2014 and has long been an advocate for Shetlandic.

[dennisboobs]

most annoying thing about being me is that i cannot engage with like. any fanon shit about dennis because i'm constantly on some advanced derangement and the stuff i thought two years ago when i was first getting comfy in the fandom is still the way everyone else looks at dennis but i'm like. yes but its Worse than this. you're like a quarter of the way there. this isn't the interesting bit, this is a symptom of it, keep going.

[wishesofeternity]

"Stratonike evidently retained the Akkadian royal title used for her even after [her husband] Antiochos’ death, since the astronomical diary entry identifies her as šarratu, in logograms GAŠAN, which means “queen.” In earlier centuries under previous regimes this title could not be used of a royal woman unless she also ruled. As suggestive as this is, there is no direct corroborating evidence for Stratonike exercising rulership, unless we credit her influence with her children as a form of political dominance. The trope of the domineering dowager queen mother should be familiar enough from interpretations of other royal families throughout history. But the diary, normally fairly precise in noting royal family connections, does not call her “mother [or widow] of the king,” meaning that at least some people remembered Stratonike as a queenly figure on her own, without reference to male relatives. This is an interesting hint at how these royal women could carry out their duties so as to be regarded as individual rulers in their own right."

-Gillian Ramsey, "Apama and Stratonike: The first Seleukid basilissai," "The Routledge Companion to Women and Monarchy in the Ancient Mediterranean World" (edited by Elizabeth D. Carney and Sabine Müller)