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fff777 · 24 days

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watched renjun and jisung talking about aliens on look at science!

based on the previews, they are getting DEEP into scifi which i am really excited about. ever since i finished reading the remembrance of earth's past trilogy by liu cixin (aka the three body problem trilogy) i've been thinking a lot more about space and humanity (whereas it used to be a topic that i avoided because it freaked me out lol). and i'm also reading the children of time by adrian tchaikovsky which discusses similar themes of humanity in space and such. anyway i am excited to see what discussions this group gets up to!

wow we have a few scientists on the panel. other than the host jung youngjin, we have an astronomer ji woongbae, a physicist kim beomjun, and a biologist/astrobiologist kim eungbin. i'm really excited haha. i'm such a nerd.

aw the scientists are so earnest, kim eungbin studied up on nct before this show.

aw they're discussing renjun's chinese name. i wonder if this is a topic that would be more popular among an older audience :P

spacemates <3

deep thinkers :3

aw jisung is a fan of the show!

oh you little cornball <3

first topic: do aliens exist?

yo jisung is getting DEEP. so he thinks there is other life in the universe, but humanity as a whole may not be able to interact with them by the time humanity even comes to an end.

the host jung youngjin is doing a lot of the facilitating which makes sense seeing as how he seems like a pretty easygoing speaker.

renjun's theory on aliens is that it probably won't be something we can really fathom because humans' impressions of things, and humans' imagination is based on what we know on this earth.

jisung is a fan :3

ji woongbae thinks that renjun and jisung have really deep thoughts about their theories haha. kim beomjun said that jisung and renjun have probably thought about this before.

it seems to me that renjun is more interested in the social aspect of science and science fiction which i think matches his personality

kim eungbin brings up a good point, he mentions that life forms might not exist at the same time as us. so maybe a civilization existed somewhere else, but billions of years before or after humanity has run its course. which also falls into the 'not being able to interact with them' theory that jisung was talking about.

jung youngjin @ scientists: ...y'all are sus

lawki = life as we know it

lawdki = llife as we don't know it

this is really interesting, because i guess the concept of lawdki implies that life exists in ways different to what we know on earth which is creatures who breathe, eat, consume energy, etc. but perhaps there is a kind of extraterrestrial who is sentient but shares nothing else in common with life on earth.

i went back into boda's channel and i noticed that the older videos don't have english subtitles. i wonder if they knew they'd get a large audience for this video and that's why they added subtitles lol.

second topic: is there a star you want to go to?

i looked up starwalk and it looks like it's a stargazing guide

jisung doesn't want to go to a planet with no oxygen or water ^^;;

jung youngjin: would you go to mars?

jisung: yes, definitely

jung youngjin: even if you couldn't come back?

rensung: !!!

jisung said he'd go to mars when he's 40...so he'll spend his youth here on earth i guess XD where the fun things are XD

taking a page out of mark's book (it's only just begun etc. etc.)

kim eungbin said jisung's a philosopher lol

renjun said he'd go to mars too :o i actually didn't expect that

LOL do it for the gram

i get what he means though, it'd be one of the most unique human experiences ever, going to mars as a human

i am with you my guy

moving the discussion on to earth-like planets in the universe. they exist, but of course they are all too far.

learning that it'll take 100,000 years go to go the closest star X'D that's with our current technology

so this star proxima centauri (that's 100,000 years away) is smaller and cooler, but the earth-like planet is closer to it

wait i need to wrap my head around why the kid will be 18 lol. the way i understand it, if you are on the other planet and you are looking at a 10 year old child on earth, then that child is actually 18 years old because if you view earth from the other planet, you're seeing earth from 4 years ago. so if you see a 10 year old on earth from the other planet, then the kid is actually 14 years old. and then it takes another four years to travel? please feel free to explain this to me because i want to understand XD

ok this second question about seeing light while travelling at the speed of light is just boggling to me

lmfao this is me. i am just thinking emoji always

host jung youngjin has a lot of really cool questions, though we probably don't have time to explore all of them

ji woongbae says that whether a planet is fit for life, and whether life actually exists there are two different questions

renjun asking about how objects that are sent into space can avoid collisions

third topic: what would you think if humanity discovered other life forms in space?

now we're going into discussions of what life forms on other worlds would look like. how would they evolve to suit their environment? entropy, ability to react, ability to learn/remember were brought up

renjun thinks confidence is important for a life form, and he's not wrong imo. all life involves risk, but i think confidence in this case means a creature understanding their abilities before they do a thing, whether it's getting food, scaling their terrain, etc.

LMAO biologist kim eungbin quoted jurassic park

jung youngjin keeps giving the scientists shit for being very agreeable with renjun and jisung XD i mean, i know why they do it, they don't want the fans to get on their asses ^^;;

now discussing how life evolved from microorganisms on earth

so all of these are hypotheses, but we still technically don't have an exact formula for how life came to be

me watching this show

i understood that reference (plato: all i know is that i know nothing)

fourth topic: what would you need for a spacecraft to travel in space for 5,000 years?

physicist kim beomjun mentions a book "i am schrodinger's cat" by won jongwoo where humanity passes several civilizations on a ship. i came across this concept as well in death's end by liu cixin.

omg in this short story, humanity has forgotten why they set out on earth ToT that's terrifying because what if they run out of resources and haven't found a planet yet ToT i tried googling this novel but didn't find much so it might be a novel that hasn't been translated to english.

big science fiction guy in the haus

lol what a poser, jisung hasn't even watched dune 2 yet XD (i know, he's a busy guy, i'm just giving him shit)

astronauts have to keep their bodies strong on their way to mars because their bodies may grow weak from the 7 months of zero gravity on their trip there. and mars does have some gravity, so if they don't keep their bodies in shape, they might not even be able to handle mars' gravitational pull.

astronauts on the space station spend a third of their time on working out! wow. brains AND brawn.

the reason why space stations in movies spin is because that is how they create artificial gravity (is it the centrifugal force?)

microbes are affected by gravity too :o

fifth topic: why do humans want to procreate? what is the survival instinct?

kim beomjun says that life doesn't particularly have any goals. he mentioned evolutionary psychology and how back in the day, people who didn't want children didn't end up having them, and that we only exist because our ancestors had children. that made me think that the reason why we think living creatures want to continue their bloodlines is confirmation bias. we only see the results of those who decided to procreate. maybe a lot of people didn't want to have kids back then, but we would not necessarily know.

LMAO jung youngjin, what a guy. he was saying how perhaps we live because we imagine that amazing things can be attainable.

'why' in science is more akin to 'how'

biologist kim eungbin references philosophers a lot eh. he says that according to plato, the two ways that people leave memories is either through offspring or through great achievements. he also says that because we are mortal, we make every day count.

jung youngjin is saying that the meaning to life will change when renjun has a child haha. renjun was the one who brought up the meaning of life, and the direction of civilization. and jung youngjin counters that here with the fact that the protection instinct of parents towards their children is the instruction manual.

lol drag him

renjun brings up the topic of cloning vs offspring, and whether offspring is necessary if we can just clone ourselves. yes and no. if we can clone at will, then perhaps we might not need offspring. but the point of offspring is that the ones who carry our best traits will live on, so that each generation after us will be more able to survive in their environment via natural selection.

jung youngjin looks at this more from the emotional side, about how there's beauty in variety. i think it does come back to sociology a bit. with variety, then you have people who are good at different things, and they can all make the group stronger in different ways.

ah yeah, jung youngjin brings up the point i made earlier, about how civilization wouldn't advance if we were just cloning ourselves

oh interesting, so even microorganisms who reproduce by splitting (mitosis?) don't make exact copies of themselves 100% of the time.

even germs have herd mentality of caring for the young ones :o

hardcore fan

wait what. i too did not know that eggs are a single cell lol.

sixth topic: is there a creature that doesn't need water?

renjun going full neo culture technology and imagining AI as a civilization. i was thinking along the lines of a being that would survive on another chemical/substance.

kim beomjun brings up a good point. water is very unique because it can exist in different states very easily. it melts at zero degrees celsius, and it evaporates at 100 degrees celsius, both temperatures that we can attain easily naturally

jung youngjin: can alcohol replace water?

ah right, i remember polar molecules from chemistry...a long time ago lol. but i think the idea is that alcohol can't really change states naturally like water can.

ji woongbae explains that water is easier to find anyway, as it's a pretty simple molecule (H2O)

seventh topic: can humans live with AI in the future?

ah so the scientists agree that depending on the definition, AI could be defined as a living creature because it fits some criteria, such as being able to react to stimuli

oh man this is in kim eungbin's wheelhouse haha. he's saying that defining life itself is a challenge. they can't even decide if a virus is alive. and they also have to define life in order to be able to define death as well.

lol smoothie promotion time. it feels so random now.

aw jisung got interested in science and philosophy because of his dad and his dad likes the channel too :3

hi dad :3

jung youngjin: to nct fans watching this, please don't just watch the rensung supercut

this was a lot of fun!!!!!!! space and science are topics that interest jisung and renjun personally. so because they were so immersed in the discussion, i was as well. in addition, i appreciated that the scientists explain things well. it was a really interesting discussion!!!!

#screencaps & commentaries #nct #nct dream #huang renjun #park jisung #jisung & renjun #look at science

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infinitegest · 10 months

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Freshman Dorm (II)

Horny Plot Device University returns!!

“Oh, fuck!”

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, OH…”

…

“Do you want to keep going?”

“Oh, god, yes…”

Quark looked at their phone. “Sorry guys, it’s Noah. Poor little guy probably got lost again.”

The crew waved Quark off, saying to give Noah their best and worst wishes.

“Hey, nerd, what’s up?”

“Hey, uh… can you come over to my dorm? We—I need some help.”

“Uh. I’m with the crew right now, can I talk you through… whatever it is? Also, who’s ‘we’?”

“it’s… um… kind of urgent?”

“What’s wrong?”

“So, uh…”

“You bottled someone,” Quark asked, aiding the scene transition, “in the first week of the semester?”

“You keep saying ‘bottled,’ I don’t know what the hell that means.”

“That was a missed opportunity for a Princess Bride reference right there.”

“Bite me, I’m freaking out. What do we do? What do you mean bottled?”

The two of them were standing in the men’s residence halls, just outside Noah’s dorm. Noah was sitting on the floor, barefoot, shaking, wearing a hastily assembled outfit of a Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants.

“Context, you idiot, it means exactly what you just did.”

“There’s SLANG for this? That’s fucked up!”

“Not as much as you’d think. You have much to learn, my dumb-of-ass sibling. It’s not common, but it’s not exactly rare either. Little freshies get to campus, feel the difference, and get… overenthusiastic. Don’t know when to stop. Like you two just did, apparently. But it usually takes a few weeks, you guys might have broken the record…”

“What do we DO, though? My roommate gets back from work in an hour!”

Quark looked at their anxious little brother. Noah was a good kid, he just didn’t always—what’s a nice way to put this—think, very much. Not with his head.

They took his head in their hands, and said, “Listen to me. Things are going to be fine. You’re not in trouble, at most this is going to be an inconvenience. And, I hope, a learning experience. I’ll go in and talk to her, you go and get some water for both her and you. Stay hydrated, kids.”

Noah took a deep breath, nodded, and pulled away from their hands, heading to the common area.

Quark stepped up to the door of Noah’s room, fine-tuning their “everything is gonna be okay” face, and pushed it open.

Dear god, they did NOT miss these rooms. Just enough space for two beds, two tiny desks, closets, and a mini-fridge, and not much else. Not enough space for a third person, and definitely not enough for a third person who was currently much larger than they had been when they first entered the room.

Much, much larger.

In the bed, Quark saw a sprawled pair of pale, bare legs. They also saw the face of a slender girl, no more than twenty. The girl had a light spray of freckles and wavy ginger hair, pretty, though currently screwed up in obvious distress– tears streaked her cheeks, and she was making quiet, pleading “shh, shh” sounds. Between the legs and the face (along with a slim torso wearing what looked to be one of Noah’s Iron Man shirts) was a bump.

Actually, to call it a bump would be an absolutely absurd understatement. It was easily the size of a yoga ball, perhaps larger, and was very visibly roiling with activity. The girl was stroking the bulging mass, desperately trying to soothe the squirming horde of children Noah had planted inside her.

Quark cautiously, almost reverently, approached. “Hi! You must be Caitlin?”

The girl jumped, as much as she could with what looked to be nearly ninety pounds-worth of babies inside her, drawn out of her distressed reverie. “Oh! H- hi. You must be Noah’s…?”

“Yeah, I’m Quark. Nice to meet you. Tell me how you’re feeling.”

The girl almost laughed. “How I’m feeling? I feel like, fucking, a hundred bucks. Amazing. Fantastic.”

“I know this is kind of scary, but it’s gonna be okay. Trust me.”

Caitlin chuckled darkly, and Quark noticed a slight blush coming to her face. “We were… having a really nice time, you know? It was really good. And I started growing, and we– we kept going, and I grew some more, and it felt good, so we kept going, and…”

“You realized how much you were growing.”

Caitlin nodded, tears welling in her eyes again. “And it was a scary, but it stopped, so we thought ‘Oh, it’s fine,’ but then I realized I couldn’t get up and probably wouldn’t fit through the door, and Noah started freaking out, and I started freaking out, and now I’m stuck under this stupid giant belly and the babies won’t—stop–kicking—!” Caitlin started sobbing, grabbing at her massive stomach, trying to quiet her restless brood.

“Hey, hey,” Quark said, grabbing one of Caitlin’s hands. “I was just telling Noah—this isn’t as crazy as it feels right now. Lots of freshmen don’t know when to stop, and then realize they’re stuck in someone else’s dorm, or their own dorm. Some really dumb cases get stuck in storage closets.” They paused, hoping to at least get a smile from her with that. They didn’t.

They plunged ahead. “The thing is, it’s okay. Worst case scenario, you end up staying here for a week. You can go to classes digitally, your parents don’t need to find out…”

Caitlin’s sobs eased up a little bit. Good, Quark thought. Keep talking, distract her.

“Do you want to know a secret?”

Caitlin gulped, closing her eyes and dropping her head back against the wall again. “Sure, I guess.”

“The same thing happened to me as a freshman.”

Caitlin’s head snapped to attention. “What?”

“Noah doesn’t know, and I don’t plan on telling him. But yeah, a month into the term, I hooked up with a friend, and we went a little crazy, and I got bottled. Twelve babies, using my belly as a battle royale arena. I was stuck for about a day and a half before they could get me out.”

There it was– a quiet snort, and the slightest hint of a grin from Caitlin. Quark smiled back. “But listen, you’re lucky: I’d guess you’ve only got, say, ten in there, maybe? With a bit of elbow grease (and literal grease), I bet we can get you back to your dorm, or at least to a friend with more space.”

There was a knock at the door, and Noah stepped in with two bottles of water. “Hey…”

Caitlin smiled, weakly. “Hey.”

“Hey, nerd. Stop gawking, yes she’s beautiful, but you’ve got a job to do. Run over to the campus store, they rent out wheelchairs, and see if you can borrow lube or butter from someone along the way. Hop to it, Jeeves,” Quark said, grabbing one of the water bottles and handing it to Caitlin.

Noah saluted, took another lingering glance at Caitlin and her monument of a belly, and closed the door behind him. Then he popped back in. “Can I change my clothes, first?”

“You’re the one who owns a Hawaiian shirt in the first place, dipshit, walking across campus in that is your punishment. In a few months you’re going to be showing up to all your classes in pajamas anyway.”

“Ugh.” Exit Noah.

It was quiet for a moment. Caitlin shifted uncomfortably, pinned down by her crowded belly. “Thanks for telling me your story.”

“Sure. You want to know the crazy part?”

“I’m very nervous to hear the crazy part, but sure?”

“You know how I mentioned the few really dumb cases that get stuck in storage closets?” Quark slowly lifted a finger, pointing at themself.

Caitlin stared for a moment, and then laughed, genuinely laughed… which startled her babies and sent a visible spasm of movement rippling across her massive midriff.

“HA! … Ohhh… god.”

“Oof, I’m sorry honey. Is it bad?”

“No, no,” she said, “It was just really stressing me out when we were panicking, I guess. It’s fine now, I think.” Caitlin stared at her belly, mesmerized by the moving bodies within her. She slowly pressed deep into one side, and grunted at the chain reaction of kicks and punches. She shivered. “Oh.”

“Yeah?”

“It actually feels really, uhm.” The big-bellied freshman really blushed this time, her pale face turning pink as she slowly flexed her legs to press her bare thighs against the churning sphere. “It feels really. Er.”

“Ah, yeah. Been there, my dude, fuckin’ been there. Do you need a moment?”

“... yes,” Caitlin whispered, her hands sliding around her belly.

“Gotcha. I’ll be just outside.”

Quark left, glancing back just as the door shut. They caught a brief glimpse of Caitlin’s face tilted back, eyes closed, mouth wide in ecstasy, hands moving lower and lower along the great pale curve...

They turned and almost immediately ran into Noah. “Hey, where’s the wheelchair?”

“I got halfway to the store before I realized I forgot my wallet. Is she okay?”

“You can borrow my card. And yeah, I think she’ll be fine. Don’t go in there.”

“What, why not?”

“Because you, young one, must learn control.”

#cw body horror #mild body horror tbh #hpreg #hpdu #long post #my writing #stuckage #pregnant student #writing #rapid preg

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put-me-out-of-my-destiny · 4 months

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Spoilers for God Of War Ragnarök and its DLC, Valhalla, below.

I've considered before that of everyone in DMC, Vergil would fit in the best for a God Of War crossover. Not just because his shunning of modern weaponry would make him the least strange to the GoW cast, but also because he and Kratos have a lot in common. They're both extremely powerful individuals who've indirectly caused the deaths of countless innocent people due to a selfish quest, for power and revenge respectively.

The recent DLC has me thinking of this again. Given Týr's generally good nature, it wouldn't be so strange for him to reach out to a stranger from an unfamiliar realm and help him master himself with the aid of Valhalla.

The logistics of it are another matter. I think if the DMC universe even existed within GoW's multiverse sort-of-deal, I'd more easily imagine Sparda's conflict with Mundus being contemporary with the events of the GoW games than anything involving Dante and company, but that's beside the point.

Of course, Valhalla would look very different to Vergil than it did to Kratos. For the latter, it took the form of the nine realms he now calls home, then later the homeland he left behind. Like Kratos, Vergil would probably see places relevant to his own life: his childhood home, Fortuna, the Temen-Ni-Gru, the Underworld, Mallet Island, Redgrave City, and the Qliphoth.

Valhalla may take on a more Norse appearance when Vergil fights enemies chosen by Valhalla rather than ones from his own memories. Speaking of whom, those would definitely include Beowulf, Arkham (in some form), Mundus, Nidhog (not to be confused with the similarly named creature in Ragnarök), Elder Geryon Knight, and Dante. Lady and Trish could appear as well, since he fought them when he was Urizen, and perhaps Nero would too. Of course, Týr would want a piece of Vergil as well, and due to his longer life and greater experience, would probably give Vergil a significant challenge.

I'm certain Malphas would also appear in some way, but not necessarily as a boss. She was hostile toward V, but she served Urizen, so her role may not be entirely hostile. Speaking of allies, I'd imagine Griffon, Shadow, Nightmare, and perhaps even Phantom would appear for similar reasons. Their status as memories alone may be ambiguous, since they originated from Vergil's memories to begin with. His time in Valhalla may present an opportunity to really process said memories (as opposed to the demonic manifestations of them being murdered in a scene Vergil isn't even in 😒).

Also like Kratos, I imagine Vergil's journey would culminate in a confrontation with himself. But while Kratos only had one stage of his life to confront, Vergil has worn many hats. His younger self who joined Arkham to open a portal to the Underworld and claim Sparda's power, the black knight who completely lost his free will, the demon king who had completely given up his humanity, and the fragile human who risked it all to right his wrong. Plus, Kratos had already come a long way by the beginning of the DLC, while Vergil has only just realized that maybe jeopardizing innocent lives in the pursuit of power isn't such a good idea. Týr has his work cut out for him.

I've also been thinking about how Vergil would play in a God Of War game, and I think his moveset would translate rather well.

I think of all the elements in the game, Yamato's would be Bifröst. The purple-blue color fits better than any other, and the energy's association with realm travel could be connected to Yamato's portal-opening powers. It's basic attacks would apply Bifröst status, which can then be detonated with a Judgement Cut (probably done by pressing the triangle button).

Given Judgement Cut being on triangle, and Beowulf having no ranged abilities at all (save for Dante's fireball from DMC3), it's hard to imagine what Vergil's ranged attacks would be. Summoned Swords would make sense, but I think those would be better placed on the square button, like Atreus's arrows, because they're meant to be used without interrupting Vergil's animations. I also think moves like Drive and Round Trip would work better as Runic Attacks. So, I think it would be best to emphasize Vergil's skills as a close-ranged fighter, and use the ranged controls to implement his teleportation abilities.

As for Beowulf, light is an element the player can use in God Of War (2018), as it's the first arrow element Atreus gets. And much like Kratos's bare-handed attacks, they are useful for applying Stun status, so that's likely what Beowulf would do to. Also, some enemies who wield light can use it to temporarily "blind" Kratos, so maybe Beowulf can do something similar to enemies.

If Kratos deals damage while avoiding hits for long enough, he can activate Permafrost, Immolation, or Malestrom by pressing L1 and triangle, buffing the melee attacks of his currently equipped weapon. I think Vergil would use Judgement Cut End in place of this, because avoiding damage is precisely the prerequisite to use that move in DMC.

On a final note, I think it would be cool if Vergil's stun grabs took inspiration from V's finishing moves.

#devil may cry #god of war #god of war: ragnarök #god of war ragnarök: valhalla #my thoughts #crossover #vergil dmc #týr gow #quen speaking

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spiderqueenpc · 1 year

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The case for Kris Dreemurr's monsterhood

Last year, I made a reskin mod for Deltarune called Kris is the GOAT that "makes Kris a goat monster", as the summary states. Today, however, I want to show you why I believe that the canonical version of Kris is already a monster- just a human-bodied one.

Part 1: A crash course on otherkinity

(If you already have a decent understanding of real-life nonhuman identity, feel free to skip this part. This is for those who are new to the topic.)

Otherkin are individuals whose species identity is incongruent with their physical body. In real life, this definition is simplified to "identifying as nonhuman", but the broader definition is more helpful for talking about the Deltarune universe. Like, Toriel also identifies as nonhuman, but that's obviously not the same situation.

Some otherkin are fine with their bodies as they are, while others experience species dysphoria and desire to species transition. I believe Kris fits into the second category.

Different people ascribe different origins to their otherkin identities, some spiritual and some secular. There's a lot, but all you need to know for this post is that imprinting is a very common one.

Part 2: The evidence

Kris was literally raised by monsters, which is the prime condition for imprinting to occur. As I established in part 1, imprinting is a common cause of othekinity.

So we've established that it wouldn't be surprising for Kris to be otherkin. Now for the evidence that they are:

First, the horns headband dialogue. We've all seen it, but let's talk about it. Here's a refresher on exactly what Toriel says:

So, when Kris was a child, they asked when their horns would grow in. After that, their parents bought them a headband with horns on it so they wouldn't feel bad about not being able to grow horns. Kris apparently wore it for months, and the wording here implies that the reason they stopped wearing it was because it got lost, not because they actively chose to. It's likely that had it not gotten lost, they would have continued to wear it until it didn't physically fit on their head anymore.

That does not sound like the behavior of a child who sees themself as completely human. I also wear horns and trust me, even small ones can be surprisingly inconvenient. You would have to really care about having them to be willing to wear them all the time.

But that was when they were a child, you could argue. People change as they grow up. Is there any evidence that Kris doesn't see themself as a human now?

Well yes, yes there is! Here's the second big piece of evidence: the "How to Care for a Human" flavor text.

Some people have interpreted this text as Kris hating humans, but nothing in the flavor text actually suggests that. Kris doesn't slam the book shut violently, they don't throw it, nothing like that. Nothing that indicates anger. They just close it quickly. That indicates discomfort, but not anger. (Borrowed observation from JaruJaruJ on YouTube.)

Instead, what I believe is happening here is that Kris is uncomfortable with the reminder that they look like a human, that the body they're in makes others perceive them as a human. And perhaps worst of all, that their own mother perceives them as one.

In real life, nonhuman folks are pretty used to constant reminders that "this is what a human body looks like". But for Kris, who lives in a small town full of monsters, who possibly hasn't seen another human-bodied individual in person in years, that's not the case. It'd feel a whole lot worse for them, hence the reaction.

Before I move on to anticipating counterarguments, I would also like to address one more piece of evidence that is less direct: this flavor text for the mirror.

The primary meaning of this is pretty clear: It's about how Kris' body is, at the moment, really just a puppet for the player. However, I think this line of flavor text could potentially have a double meaning, with the second meaning being "this body's appearance doesn't represent you". It makes sense both ways and it certainly wouldn't be out of line with Toby's writing for a line to have an extra layer to it.

Part 3: "But what about..."

"...the fact that they don't react when the other characters call them human?"

If they are a monster they're obviously not out about it, so they're not going to correct anyone. Additionally, it's possible that they haven't fully realized why they feel the way they do, or that they don't have the words to articulate it.

And it's worth remembering that we rarely get to see how Kris feels about anything unless whoever we're talking to actively comments on their tone or expression. Nobody has ever commented on their reaction to being called a human. It wouldn't be surprising if they're hiding their discomfort.

"...the Prophecy?"

Alright, this is basically a whole 'nother theory. I'll try to make it quick.

I believe that the human in the prophecy is not Kris, but is instead the player soul. The major points of evidence for this are:

-We originally weren't meant to be controlling Kris at all.

-The world is only said to be covered in darkness when we hit quit instead of retry, not when Kris dies.

-Despite the fact that Kris is said to be the only one who can seal the fountains, when they get sealed Kris just kinda... stands there while the soul does a thing.

This isn't the only way to explain how the Prophecy and Kris' monsterhood can co-exist, but it's (imo) the most elegant and plausible, so I won't make this post longer than it already is.

In conclusion: Kris clearly has some complex feelings about their species and I believe that otherkinity is the most straightforward explanation. Thank you very much for reading. Please feel free to share your thoughts about this theory, just keep it respectful.

#Deltarune #UTDR #kris dreemurr #kris deltarune #deltarune thoughts #sorry if the writing here is a little unwieldy I've never posted my UTDR analysis publicly before

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demoisverysexy · 2 years

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You're the first person I've ever seen on this site that doesn't call Mormonism a cult and while I'm sure the people who started that had their points and/or their traumas, I'm not sure how it isn't a cult solely bc all I've heard in concise words is that it is.

I know that with Christianity, I've definitely met queer people who "reclaim" it and interpret it the way they want to, as opposed to the way organized religion teaches them. I assume with Mormonism it's a similar sort of self-reclaiming thing?

My ADHD makes it hard for me to read tons of long posts about things, makes doing my own research hard(it also doesn't help that most online searches just spin me back around to the cult thing or are from Mormons that are also conservative), so in advance I apologize if this is like, out of line or too much

Imagine, if you will, that you grew up Mormon outside of Utah. Growing up, Mormonism was never a source of great anguish for you, and that while it was what you grew up with, it was never forced upon you. Much of the learning about Mormonism you did was of your own accord. Also, you're a free thinker who has been encouraged to get involved with the community your whole life, and has mostly been surrounded by non-Mormons. You grew up liberal, and ended up being fairly (in my case, more than fairly) progressive, and you are more open than most Mormons to the stickier bits of Mormon history. You know, for a fact, that you are not a cultist.

And yet you are surrounded by people who insist you are. They look at you with a sort of sad pity and tell you to read the CES letter, or that they hope you leave soon. That they think youre stupid for believing in Golden Books or Jesus being American (we don't believe that) or that Native Americans are all just Jews (we dont believe that either). They listen to people who have had bad experiences with the church, and who insist that the church is a cult, then think that it is a universal truth that applies to the whole church, when in reality those toxic elements are mostly found in Utah, and most of the church is not located in Utah.

But when you are a cultist (or are called one) no one will believe you if you tell them that you aren't a cultist. Because cultists don't even know that they are cultists, and thus their personal testimonies are suspect. Even the people who claim to be most sympathetic to the "poor deluded cultists" still don't care enough to listen and possibly be wrong about us, because listening to a cultist is dangerous, because they might end up thinking you're not a cultist, or worse, they think you might try to get them into your cult.

But I'm not a cultist. Mormonism isn't a cult. It's just a large religion with a lot of institutional weirdness and conservative beliefs. Some congregations do take this into full cult territory, many more don't. Most are just run-of-the-mill conservative churches with a Mormon splash of paint. Which I'm not a big fan of, but hey. Could be worse.

In some ways, it is frustrating, because often the things they will use to smear Mormons to call us cultists are features that exist in other religions. Islam, for example, has a lot in common with Mormonism (dietary codes that forbid alcohol consumption, extra books of non-biblical scripture with questionable historicity, conservative social beliefs, desert religion, non-biblical prophets, polygamy) but people (on the left specifically) don't bring up those critiques in relation to Islam. I don't know why, but to me I feel that there is perhaps some underlying bigotry there, both towards Mormons and Muslims. On the one hand, Mormons are judged too harshly, and on the other, Muslims are treated as a wholly unproblematic, uncomplicated religion, which to me smacks of infantilism. This problem affects many other religions too, which are given a free pass to be uncomplicatedly good, whereas Mormonism and other Christian denominations are bad by default. The lack of nuance in such an appraisal is astonishing.

I just want to be heard. I want people to listen to Mormons for once, active or inactive, left leaning or not, and actually try to do the work to understand us, at least a little. Not everything that you find when you actually study us with an open mind is good. History, culture, and religion are messy things. But there is a lot of good to be found there, too. I do firmly believe that Mormon perspectives have a lot to offer, in the same way that folks on tumblr have realized that Jewish or Muslim perspectives have a lot to offer. That even if you don't buy everything we have to say, that we are interesting and diverse, and have lots of different opinions about what Mormonism even is, or what it means. In particular, I feel that voices like mine - queer left-leaning Mormon voices - should be privelaged, as we are often the most overlooked in the discussion of what Mormonism is, both inside and outside the church.

But of course, all that is ever said about Mormons, both in left wing and right wing spaces, is that Mormonism is a cult. Evangelicals and atheists alike agree that it is a foregone conclusion, and often end up using the same talking points. And since it is so uncontroversial to say that it is just a cult, that is what people will believe. If everyone is saying it, after all, it must be true.

Now, as to your question on whether or not I am reclaiming Mormonism. I don't think I am. For me, my Mormonism has pretty much always been a personal thing. In fact, one of the core tenets of Mormonism as it is written (but not necessarily taught by the institution as radically as it is presented in the scriptures, for obvious reasons) is the doctrine of personal revealation. In short, it posits that the only way to know spiritual truth is through personal study, prayer, and confirmation from the Holy Spirit. The Book of Mormon even invites you to question it, and is very open about how the only way to know for certain if it is scripture, as it claims to be, is to recieve confirmation from God. More, it even notes that it may have flaws which the writers may not have been aware of, and it is good if you notice them, because it means that you are better than they were. Such openess to imperfection is characteristic of a lot of the scripture unique to Mormonism, and it leaves a lot of room for people with more heterodox views, like me.

So I don't feel that I am reclaiming Mormonism. It was mine to begin with. Perhaps I am reclaiming it from the church in a sense, but my Mormonism has always centered me and my relationship to God first and foremost. More, I believe my readings of Mormonism, and Christianity more broadly, are more in line with the radical messages of their founders and source texts than the current leaders are. So in a way, conservstive christian instutions are working to reclaim their religions from people who were, in some ways, more progressive than them. It is a disappointing state of affairs.

In any case, I think that both Christianity in general and Mormonism more specifically are far more radical and forward thinking than the majority of their proponents, and that people should give them more serious thought then they have, both inside and outside these institutions. People are far too all or nothing when it comes to religions, especially Christian ones. But to truly appreciate what they have to offer, I believe that you have to set aside any preconceptions and dogmas you may hold so as to more fully appreciate them fkr wbat they are, and what they have to offer.

#religion #queerstake #christianity #asks #demo answers #mormonism

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petervintonjr · 10 months

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"True emancipation lies in the acceptance of the whole past in deriving strength from all of my roots, in facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of my ancestors."

As we come to the end of Pride Month 2023, I wanted to devote a little time to the remarkable life of Rev. Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray --civil rights attorney, Episcopal priest, scholar, and advocate. Born in 1910 Baltimore, their mother tragically died when Murray was only four, and their father succumbed to depression and was later murdered in a mental hospital, and so Murray was raised by an aunt and grandparents, in a time when the threat of violence from the Ku Klux Klan was never too far away. Murray later moved to New York City and graduated from Hunter College in 1933 (as Columbia College did not at the time admit women). Throughout the 1930's Murray grappled with sexual and gender identity --this is in fact when they took on the preferred male-identifying name of "Pauli." A gifted photographer but an even more prolific author, Murray worked as a teacher with the New York City Remedial Reading Project, which offered a great deal of opportunity to write and publish. Among other publications, Pauli's essays and articles about civil rights would regularly appear in The Crisis and in Common Sense (both publications of the NAACP).

Pauli took the unusual (and risky!) step of petitioning to apply to graduate school at the University of North Carolina (current events alert!) --at the time an all-white institution. Such a prospect was considered sufficiently unobtainable that even the NAACP declined to actively support this effort. Pauli had in the meantime cultivated the acquaintance of then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as A. Philip Randolph (see Lesson #68 in this series); associations which would later carry consequences. Pauli is listed as one of the founders of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), along with Bayard Rustin (see Lesson #5 in this series), and James Farmer (Lesson #17). In 1943 they published a hugely important essay: "Negroes Are Fed Up;" and also a poem, Dark Testament, both of which spoke to the Harlem Race Riot of 1935.

In 1944 Murray graduated from Howard University Law School --while largely identifying as a man but still presenting as a woman, Murray famously coined the expression "Jane Crow" to describe the experience. They then applied to Harvard Law for an advanced degree on a Rosenwald Fellowship but was turned down --reportedly not due to racism (exact same current events alert!) but definitely due to sexism. They instead opted for the University of California Boalt School of Law; their graduate thesis was titled "The Right to Equal Opportunity in Employment." In 1945 Murray was named deputy attorney general for the state of California; the first African American to hold that post. In 1951 Pauli published States' Laws On Race and Color, a book that would later be described by Thurgood Marshall as the "Bible" for civil rights litigation, and was conspicuously referenced during Brown v. Board of Education arguments.

In 1952 the scourge of McCarthyism caught up with Murray and cost them a number of prestigious posts due to affiliation with "radicals" like Marshall, Randolph, and particularly Ms. Roosevelt. Unbowed, Pauli went on to publish the gripping biographical account Proud Shoes, which led in turn to a job offer in the litigation dept. of Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton, and Garrison (as in, Lloyd), where she would meet lifelong partner Irene Barlow. In 1960 Pauli was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to the Committee on Civil And Political Rights, but the issue of intersectionality was never far from their priorities; notably in 1963 Murray took Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King to task for not including a single woman speaker at the March On Washington. Perhaps the most fascinating coda to this remarkable life comes in 1977, when in the wake of Irene Barlow's passing, Murray became the very first African-American woman Episcopal priest. Pauli died in 1985, having never come out publicly.

For a comprehensive listing of Pauli's writings, visit the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice: https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/paulis-writing

#black lives matter #teachtruth #dothework #blm blacklivesmatter #pride month #pride #pauli murray

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lemonhemlock · 1 year

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Do u think otto and alicent believe in targ exceptionalism? I know this benefits her kids and all but does she actually believe this?

I dont really like all the valyrian supremacy that hotd keeps pushing. It doesn't feel like they are critical to the targs/valyrian supremacy enough for the horror empire that valyria was. When laena said we are the blood of old valyria, etc... I got really annoyed coz with all the race swapping they did with the velaryons who are actually super white, a woc saying such things which are clearly white supremacist really was jarring and off putting. I wished they didn't put that line for her.

I mean they did make aegon the only one who seems to have an aversion to incest the worst.

Similarly do u think jace becomes disillusioned with all the fire and blood and targs are awesome stuff?

I have had this question sitting in my inbox for ages and I finally get 'round to answering it.

Perhaps controversially, I am going to say yes. And I suspect that anyone would believe in Targ exceptionalism if they were transported in-universe. They can form a super special bond with fire-breathing monsters that only listen to them & only them somehow via magical telepathy? And they can fly? Let's be real here. That would be super impressive for anyone.

Impressive & badass & cool doesn't equal good, though. A few select people having access to unlimited destructive power without any checks and balances is decidedly not a good thing for the population of Westeros or of any other place. The Targaryens can be exceptional and the world can also be better off without them - these two sentences are not mutually-exclusive. I would go so far as to say that this exceptionalism is proof that what they are doing is unnatural and violating the laws of morality in the most basic sense.

George is definitely keeping us in the dark about Valyria for now. We don't know how exactly the Valyrians came to master dragons or how dragons were created in the first place, but the crumbs we did receive do not paint a pretty picture: blood magic, human-beast experiments, slavery to fund and fuel everything via literal human sacrifice. It's very likely that the Valyrians had to resort to horrible ritualistic sacrifices to maintain their dragon relationship and after that relied on incest to keep their new pets bonded to their families.

So, yeah, sure, riding a dragon would be an incredible experience & anyone who could do that would be held in high esteem, but at what cost? The whole point is that this is not an avenue open to everyone. You have to pay a hefty price for such a superpower. How much of your humanity would you have to surrender in order to transcend like that? That's the question, isn't? It's deviant, abnormal, wrong. And like anything that bleeds into the sphere of the supernatural, it has no place in this world.

Interesting point about Laena. I'm really in two minds about the Velaryons being race-swapped. On the one hand, they are extremely (and I mean extremely) white in the books; the artwork for them looks like something out of an Aryan propaganda textbook. And they are problematic in their own way, but now criticism of them is limited as a result of them being the most prominent POCs in the show. The Velaryons may be the "blood of Old Valyria", but they were never dragonlords, and that placed them at the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid for nobles. So, while they were definitely better off than the common people, peasants and slaves, it does feel like they're kind of begging for scraps when appealing to legitimacy like that.

I don't think Jace becomes disillusioned; there's nothing in the text to support that. He is a staunch supporter of his mother's cause until the end. He suggests they should attack King's Landing on dragonback and lets the dragonseeds claim dragons to help them out militarily. Those are not the actions of someone rejecting their Targaryen legacy.

#anti house targaryen #anti valyria #targaryen exceptionalism #ask #anon #anon is currently off while i make my way through my backlog

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kitchfit · 4 months

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Year in Review: Books Pt 2

Rounding out the rest of my reading list. It's a short list, overall. One of my new years resolutions is definitely to carve more time out for reading, which may cut into my future bildeo bame time. Oh well! That's probably a good thing.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I hesitate to criticize the content of an autobiography, especially one as open and honest as this one. I listened to this through the audio book narrated by McCurdy herself, and she gives a great performance through the line reading. Almost as if she was a classically trained actor! Still, I wonder if her reading may have compensated for the quality of some of the prose, and I might not have gotten through it if I were reading it myself.

The title sounds a bit callous to those who haven't experienced child abuse, like myself, but I understand it's a common enough sentiment from those who have, and you come to understand her perspective. It's not a statement made from a place of malice, but one of acceptance that her life has improved without her abuser present, no matter the complicated feelings. The book is also not wholly about her relationship with her mother, covering her experience with bulimia, anorexia, the toxic environments of Hollywood, though her mother is at the center of all of it. It's also not a complete bummer! McCurdy injects a lot of humor throughout the book and covers some of the fun moments she's had in her career. Which is expected in a memoir, I suppose.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

This book is as fantastic as it is ridiculous. The story opens on our protagonist, Arthur, protesting the bureaucratic destruction of his home for the construction of a highway through the area, before he is whisked away by a bisexual alien hitchhiker just in time for Earth itself to be demolished by bureaucratic aliens to build an intergalactic highway. Every plot development acts as both comedy and world building. They nearly survive execution by giving shitty criticism to alien poetry. The president of the universe got his position as a practical joke. A whale is created by a cosmic RNG manipulation machine, and has an inner monologue on the nature of its life just before it explodes and dies.

The outside universe is chaotic and incredulous, and the excitement of wanting to explore that universe through the lens of a hitchhiker almost overwrites Arthur's existential dread on the destruction of his home world. While the book can handle moments of genuine drama, it never goes long before that drama is overshadowed by a joke, or perhaps the drama is itself the joke. This might be annoying to some, but Adams' writing style is slow fluid you don't really have time to be annoyed. It's a short book, and I'm excited to read the next one in the series, if SOME people would return it to the LIBRARY ON TIME. They probably have by now.

The Storyteller by Dave Grohl

I only recently became a Foo Fighters fan, introduced to the album "In Your Honor" by a friend in early 2022, which I immediately listened to ad nauseum until my sister noticed and got me the CD for my car. Thank You Sister! I was sad to hear about the passing of Taylor Hawkins only a couple weeks after I learned who he was. I already knew Grohl had lost a lot of people in his life. But his book is not about grief, at least, not exclusively. Like the title suggests, this memoir is full of stories! And Dave Grohl is, indeed, a good Storyteller.

The book follows his life in a reasonably sequential order, though framed through the lens of a father looking back on his life as he raises his two daughters. It covers his musical influences, his time in Scream and Nirvana, the creation of Foo Fighters. If you like anything from that scene, this book is a good time. It does get a bit name-droppy towards the end. But like. This guy is friends with Paul McCartney! Composer and performer of the classic song "Temporary Secretary," and nothing else! Who wouldn't bring that up at every opportunity?

The book always flashes back to the "present," where his eldest, Violet Maye, is following in her father's footsteps as a musician, which I now realize I've never heard. Give a second.

...

She's alright! Sounds a bit like those "Foo Fighter" guys.

Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

This is something I had previously read for college, but the translation we read was focused on accuracy for the original text, and I felt it was a bit buried under flowery language that would tickle under the balls of an academic, but hard to parse for a casual reader. That's not to say that Headley isn't an academic, but her translation focuses largely on readability in a modern context rather than textual accuracy, and for the first time I actually enjoyed Beowulf rather than just understood it.

For the uninformed, Beowulf is what 9th century monks used to read since they didn't have Dragon Ball. It follows the title character Beowulf as he heroically challenges three monsters (some bitch named Grendal, Grendal's hot mom, and a dragon) for the safety of the Geats and his own people, but moreso for the glory and spoils of the win, and the love of fighting. The story is always told in past tense, and Headley goes the extra mile of telling it from the perspective of a dudebro who relays the tale to his other bros. I truly think this is the version that would most resonate with my generation, but it probably won't get shown off in college classrooms for using phrases like "dude, they were fucked," and "#Blessed."

The Two Towers by Jolkien Rolkien Rolkien Tolkien

This is the second entry in my very slow read-through of Lord of the Rings. I have been called a fake nerd for not having read these books. And they were right for calling me that! I only have the distinguished and highly regarded appearance of a nerd, and that needs to be corrected! One book a year, apparently. I read Fellowship last year, and while I enjoyed the second half of that book a great deal, damn can Jolkien describe a hill. A significant portion of book one was dedicated to the hobbits journey to Rivendale and singing songs of old Middle Earth legends, which are probably more enjoyable on re-reads. Book two has much better pacing, imo.

Immediately, you are set into the action of a fractured narrative. Pipin and Merry are missing, Frodo and Sam left the fellowship to go on their own fruity adventure, Boromir is dead, and Aragorn, Gimli, and Orlando Bloom are left to figure out what exactly the fuck happened to everyone. I like how each storyline is told. From what I remember in the movies, everything is interspersed with each other, but in the book you have to follow everyone separately, creating a genuine sense of mystery that slowly unravels itself. Frodo isn't even in the book until halfway through!

Each storyline also introduces a new, fun element of Middle Earth that makes the world feel much more developed than in Fellowship or even the Hobbit. I fucking love Ents. And big spider... Frodo's relationship with Gollum is also fascinating; his desire to save this gross little freak working as a reflection of his feelings about himself. Will someone try to help me if I end up like that? Will my friends still love me? It's a very real possibility as he carries this curse, and by proxy makes me love Samwise that much more, since we know from his narrative perspective that yes, he will love and try to help Frodo no matter the circumstance. Even if the current little freak is getting on his last nerve.

The Shining by Stephen King

I've not read a ton of what I'd classify as "horror," outside of short form fiction, but apparently I love to write about it, so I wanted to take a look at the predominant Horror Guy from the 80s times. I love the movie that spawned from this, and knew that Stephen King hated it for some reason, and now I think I know why! The movie is definitely its own beast, and I think I may write a separate blurb for it if I ever rewatch it in the near future, so I'll refrain from too many comparisons.

The story follows a boy with psychic powers, and a haunted house that eats boys with psychic powers. The Torrances are a very loving family, or they would like to be, but their dynamic is plagued with generational trauma and the father's, Jack's, alcoholism. They are put in charge of the Overlook Hotel, which has to be maintained over the winter lest it be torn to pieces in the Colorado mountains. Why don't the owners hire more than one family to take care of this big ass hotel? They're a bunch of cheapskates!

I would love to make an entire deconstruction on Jack Torrance. He's a man who's been unbelievably shitty to his family and the people around him, saw the monstrousness in himself and desperately tried to back peddle. It is the Overlook, this entity that breaths within the hotel, that uses that darkness to carve him out from the inside and use him as a puppet to threaten his loved ones. It actually fails at first, Jack's love of his wife and son beating back the ugly thoughts the hotel plagues his mind with, and thus it had to get him drunk to make any real headway, force him to relapse into the man he wanted to overcome.

The mystery of the Overlook's origin is compelling. It clearly lures people with "the Shining" into itself to devour and maintain itself, but where does it's monstrosity come from? Was it always there? Or was it the violence and racism of its previous owners that left such a strong imprint that created such an entity? King's answer would probably be a mix of both, but that last interpretation makes the ending much more poignant to me. A monster that victimizes people who shine created by monsters who victimized women and people of color, ultimately overcome and destroyed by a black man with psychic powers, a housewife, and a little kid. Maybe that's too generous an interpretation for a book written by a white dude in the 70s, but I don't give a shit. Night of the living dead author and all that.

And that ends my reading list! I don't really expect too many to read any of this, let alone all of it, but if you did, thank you! This is not only to share what I've read this year, but also to go back and appreciate what it was I read, so it doesn't become a vague tear in the tapestry of memory. Wow that sounded pretentious as hell! I hope I made these books sound at least a bit interesting for you, because they're all genuinely good reads! And if you have a book you think I might like, please let me know! I'm always looking for new books to get halfway through and never finish.

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Rio Veradonir

As most of us understand it, social justice is a good thing. Definitions vary, but the common thread is a belief that society should actively work to expand access to social goods for all people, regardless of race, sex, or other immutable characteristics. Like all decent people, I support that noble goal. So it worries me that a vocal minority of extremists with dangerous ideas and toxic tactics have abused the concept in recent years, throwing it into disrepute. A cadre of activists today push a radical ideology in the name of “social justice,” one with none of its liberal principles. Because its proponents intentionally manipulate language to evade criticism, I will use the terms Liberal Social Justice (LSJ) and Critical Social Justice (CSJ) to distinguish between the original version and the new one.

Growing up in a Cult

My elementary and high school education took place at a private religious school, Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) to be exact. The SDA Church is a fundamentalist, Protestant Christian denomination that began in the United States in the mid-19th century — an era during which many separatist cult-like movements sprang forth out of American Christianity, the most famous being Mormonism. The SDA Church was born out of the Millerite movement whose early believers predicted, based upon an esoteric reading of the Bible, that the world would end on October 22nd, 1844. When that day passed, offshoots of the movement formed based upon one or another justification for the miscalculation. To this day, SDA Church doctrine states that we are living in “The End Times.” I was instructed by teachers who had no qualms informing students that Armageddon would probably come “during our lifetime.” Despite that certainty, some of those elders have since passed away without the pleasure of experiencing the end of the world.

Apart from being a bit kooky, that kind of eccentricity seems harmless enough. But beliefs invariably influence other beliefs. I was taught Young-Earth creationism — in Science class no less — and that anyone who tried to persuade us otherwise, even with credible evidence, was a tool of Satan sent to damn our souls. My early schooling was about two years ahead of public school in some subjects — but 200+ years behind in science.

Some of the indoctrination inevitably took root. I was a skeptical but otherwise upstanding SDA kid. I had no objections when my friends casually stated that they would never marry outside the Church. We were discouraged from even associating with non-Adventist kids. I remember taking an odd pride in that, like outsiders were beneath me. This went on well into my teens. Then something changed.

Escaping the Cult

My sexuality was pivotal to my relationship with the SDA church. I was aware from early adolescence that I was attracted to both boys and girls. At first, I thought little of it, but over time it began to cause cognitive dissonance. The Bible, as we were taught it, stated explicitly that homosexuality (and by extension bisexuality) is a sin. Did this mean I was supposed to resist temptation and just marry a nice SDA girl when I grew up? Perhaps. We were also supposed to follow other strict rules, such as not engaging in “secular activities” on Saturday. The truly devout would never eat pork or shellfish. Many were even vegetarian. In that context, everything seemed equally arbitrary — as illustrated by the common answer adults gave to pesky questions: “Because God says so.” By sixteen, I had outgrown it. I’d had enough of the hypocrisy and the dismissal of my skepticism. So, I tested out of high school early and started college.

Most of my SDA friends went to private Adventist universities where their indoctrination continued unabated, but I dove headlong into the belly of the beast: public community college, then a public state university. I flourished in that new environment. Whereas my skepticism and curiosity had been frowned upon by religious instructors, outside it was welcomed — even encouraged. For the first time, I felt free to fully explore the world of ideas, unconstrained by dogma. I quickly realized I’d been led astray not only in science, but in history, and even the arts, where only the most Christian-friendly material was covered. My intellectual experience had been filtered through the lens of a single subculture. It was a pedagogy built upon circular reasoning with the goal of reinforcing faith in SDA doctrine.

To compensate, I spent the next ten years immersing myself in a broad education — changing majors four times. In contrast to my prior schooling, these public institutions were founded on Enlightenment values — where critical thinking, logic, and evidence ruled — not blind faith. It’s not that tradition was disrespected; I was exposed to philosophical and religious traditions from all over the world. It was a breath of fresh air — life-giving. I appreciated my newfound intellectual freedom all the more because I knew firsthand what it was like to be arbitrarily constrained. My experience had fine-tuned my dogma-radar, and when secular education institutions began falling to a different but equally stultifying set of dogmas, red flags went off.

Warning Signs

It was in an advanced literature course in the late 2000s that I was first exposed to a school of thought called Critical Theory, which we used as an approach to literary criticism. I remember the professor saying, “The author’s intent doesn’t matter,” which meant that it was considered acceptable to attribute meanings to a work even if the author had explicitly stated that they never intended such. That rubbed me the wrong way. It begged the question “By what standard can we judge which interpretations are correct, or is it just anything goes?”

As the semester wore on, however, I gained a new insight: that language is an imperfect tool for communication, because “signifiers” (such as words) can only be defined by other signifiers. There is no way to directly access the “signifieds,” which are different for each speaker and listener because they are informed by our different experiences. In other words, it is never possible to ascertain exactly what the speaker means, only an interpretation of it, because we all have different associations with each word or phrase. That collectively adds up to substantially different readings of a given work.

I was mesmerized. It made sense. Applied to art, it resulted in more dynamic and interesting criticism. Besides, this was just one perspective out of many I studied at a school that had earned my trust by exposing me to a variety of differing perspectives. Little did I know, Critical Theory would escape its confines and expand well beyond literary criticism.

Queer Liberation

Southern Oregon University, the last school I attended, has repeatedly been recognized as one of the most LGBT-friendly colleges in the US. Still, I remember anxiously walking into the campus’s Queer Resource Center (QRC). Anybody who saw me might assume I was gay. What if people looked at me funny? I wasn’t ashamed of my bisexuality, but the fear of being judged by my new peers brought back latent insecurities from my childhood. The girl at the help desk was kind — and cute! After some flirtatious pleasantries, I asked her, “How do I meet other LGBT people around here? I’d really like to find a circle of bi folks.” She invited me to a dance put on by the QRC. I went, and I had a great time. Everybody was friendly and supportive. Nobody had anything to hide. It was another world, a freer one, compared to the insular and judgmental atmosphere of my youth.

After school, I got engaged and moved to Los Angeles with my fiancé, now my wife, so she could pursue her master’s at the USC School of Cinematic Arts in — notably — Critical Studies. We got involved with a wonderful social club for bi people called amBi. I’d finally found that bi circle! It was healing to be surrounded by tolerant, open-minded people — yet another liberating chapter in my life. Before long, we made a name for ourselves as event organizers, and then as volunteers at Pride parades and festivals. In time, I was invited to work for a nonprofit called The American Institute of Bisexuality. I readily accepted.

The organization, also called The Bi Foundation, shares the liberal Enlightenment values that helped me escape the indoctrination of my youth. But as it turns out, they are something of an outlier. The vast majority of LGBT orgs now take a different, illiberal, counter-Enlightenment approach. I would soon discover that the world of contemporary queer activism could not be more different from the liberal arts education I received in the 2000s or from the carefree bi social club I had since come to love. Instead, it was much more like the repressive environment in which I had grown up back in the 90s. It came to remind me of a fundamentalist cult, with a lot of the same qualities.

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

The first bi-related conference I attended was BECAUSE (Bisexual Empowerment Conference: A Uniting, Supportive Experience), in the Twin Cities, Minnesota. It began as a way for bi activists to network with one another. Upon checking in, I was asked to put on a name tag with my pronouns. I didn’t think much of it. I was asked to fill out a survey with questions about my personal history, including my preferred label to describe my “bi+ and gender identities.” That felt a little strange. Regardless, the conference was a positive networking experience with engaging speakers. There were early warning signs, though. The discussion groups were rife with virtue signaling. It reminded me of the religious one-upmanship of my SDA days, and the pride in perceived victimhood.

In 2016 I attended an LGBT event in DC hosted by the Obama administration as an invited bi activist. I didn’t know what to expect. I was hoping for something productive. What I witnessed was anything but. There was virtually no discussion of policy ideas that might make a real material difference in the lives of bi people. It was nothing but grandstanding. Panelists were competing in the Oppression Olympics, obnoxiously vying to portray themselves as both the most virtuous and beleaguered. Every speech began with a recitation of the speaker’s intersecting oppressed identities. The more intersectionality points, the more street cred. Poor chaps who had the misfortune of being born white, male, and/or heterosexual (and who weren’t trans) were admonished to “Check their privilege,” which meant that their opinions were worthless. The quality of one’s ideas didn’t matter, not that anything concrete was being discussed anyway. Instead, the political strategy amounted to nothing but endless shouting about how American society was irredeemably awful and needed to be torn down. It felt like the White House invited us so we would feel listened to, even though it served no other practical purpose. Of course Obama was not in attendance — I’m sure he had more important things to do — but I wondered what he would make of the weird, illiberal theater I’d witnessed. I thought back on his speech, delivered after attacks on his association with the radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright:

“… We’ve heard my former pastor ... use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; … they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country — a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America...”

No, President Obama would not have approved. He is a liberal, like me, who shares Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of inclusion as a pathway to integration and treating people the same, regardless of any immutable trait. I got into LGBT activism in service of that dream. Isn’t the whole point to bring about a future where everybody is treated as an individual, rather than stereotyped on the basis of superficial qualities? Shouldn’t we be working to break down barriers, instead of fomenting perpetual divisions for tribal warfare? Why were these activists, among the most privileged people in society, so full of disdain for the Enlightenment values that rest at the foundation of all that is good about this country and for the liberal values that made LGBT rights possible? Didn’t they understand that replacing one form of bigotry with another was not real progress? I reassured myself that this was probably just an eccentric group. It was just one day, after all. Surely most LGBT activists shared my liberal values. They had to, right?

I returned to DC to attend training sessions with a leading expert on social media strategy. A friend and colleague, who happened to be a cis white male, committed the cardinal sin: stating an opinion contrary to the Critical “Social Justice” (CSJ) dogma. When asked explicitly to give feedback, he expressed sympathy and understanding for the ideas presented, but dared convey concern that some of the more extreme language being used might alienate allies. He was brutally pilloried by several fellow students in the class, who claimed that his words had triggered them and amounted to “actual violence”, and demanded that he rescind his statement or be expelled. I was flabbergasted, and my friend was fighting back tears, which only elicited more yelling and taunting. We’d made real sacrifices to be there. It felt wrong.

Over the following years, we attended many more progressive conferences, including Netroots Nation (attended every year by Democratic lawmakers). They all had the same toxic culture — and it got worse by the year, especially after Trump took office. Eventually, almost every discussion group, presentation, or speech seemed narrowly focused on this emerging, illiberal ideology. With it, came more obnoxious behavior. Attendees who spoke up in defense of traditional liberal values were protested, shouted down, and disinvited. I witnessed outright racism against white people, sexism against men, and cisheterophobia — all coming from the movement that was supposed to be standing for equality and human rights. Even SSSS (the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality) eventually succumbed to the dogma. They were pressured into releasing embarrassing statements denying biological sex, reinforcing the irrational worldview of CSJ and undermining their scientific mission. There had to be an explanation. I needed to understand the motivations behind this trend.

The Cult of “Social Justice”

I looked to my better half for support. With her MA in Critical Studies, which was somehow related to this convoluted landscape, I knew my wife Talia could help me decode this riddle. She explained that Critical Theory, the obscure academic philosophy I encountered in a literature course, had expanded to become the dominant political principle and epistemology of modern progressive politics.

Madness! How did a single perspective of limited practical application come to capture half of Western political thought — and so quickly?! It wasn’t just the US Democratic Party — it had spread to the global left. I needed to research it further. I compiled a reading list of figures influential in cultural-left thought, including Hegel, Marx, The Frankfurt School, various postmodernists, and their contemporary successors. The common thread was a mode of thought much less grounded in rationality than the analytical, pro-Enlightenment thinkers I preferred. It was like going back to religious school all over again!

Religion, like social justice, is hard to define. Superficially plausible descriptions such as “A belief in god(s)” fall short, because not all religions have such beliefs. Scholars tend to prefer broader, less parochial definitions like “A particular system of faith and worship” or “A pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.” Contemporary thinkers have argued in all seriousness that some apparently secular ideologies can be regarded as religions. In “Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World”, theologian Tara Isabella Burton argues that the “social justice” phenomenon has all the key components of a religion: it provides believers with an all-encompassing worldview, meaning and purpose, clearly defined communal boundaries, and powerful self-actualizing rituals. Linguist John McWhorter’s “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America” maintains that a blind faith in systemic oppression (despite evidence of unprecedented progress) is a kind of fallen creation myth. Cisgender, heterosexual, white, and/or male people are “born in sin” and can never purge themselves of it — they can only endlessly atone by saying the right words and performing the right self-flagellations. Biologist Richard Dawkins, a notorious critic of religion, has come under fire for making similar invidious comparisons in his attempts to defend his own scientific field from related gender essentialism and science denial. Political Theory Professor Joshua Mitchell has argued that the boundaries between politics and religion are breaking down, and that CSJ has strong structural parallels with Christianity. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, in his book “Woke Inc.”, wrote that CSJ beliefs arguably “Meet the legal definition of a religion” and thus employers would be well-advised not to force these views upon their employees. Among others, CSJ shares with religions the qualities of blind faith, circular epistemology, self-referential exegeses, cynical apologetics, sacred testimony, indoctrination, authoritarianism, holier-than-thou attitudes, hostility to science and rationality, and the persecution and excommunication of heretics.

In Christian school, “faith” was the convenient get-out-of-jail-free-card for authorities who had no real answer to valid questions. Every dogma is reducible to an article of faith, which means that it requires no evidence to back it up. If there was evidence, then there’d be no need for faith. What matters is that we prove our loyalty to God and the Church by choosing to believe despite the dearth of evidence. The less evidence, the more faith is required, and the more noble and virtuous it is to believe. This creates a self-reinforcing, perpetual motion machine of irrationality. It would be harmless enough if people were content to keep those beliefs to themselves, but a great many religious people see it as their calling to force those beliefs onto others through indoctrination and even legislation. The Cult of CSJ is no exception. If someone asks heretic but otherwise perfectly reasonable questions calling for evidence-based answers, they are told that logic and science are tools of the oppressor. It is a symptom of our privilege (sin) that we have these doubts. In other words, we are supposed to take the central tenets of CSJ on faith.

Of course, that doesn’t mean proponents never attempt to offer logical reasons or evidence for their ideas. They often do, but it comes in the form of pseudo-evidence that is reducible to faith. In Adventist school, appeals to science and reason were selectively made only when the apparent facts aligned with the dogma. Any argument or evidence that did not was conveniently ignored or explained away as the devil trying to deceive us. But that isn’t how rationality and science work; you don’t get to pick and choose when their standards apply. Without consistent and universally applied principles, appeals to logic and science are insincere. Does this argument or data point seem superficially compatible with my cherished belief? If yes, then it is true. If no, then it is false. It’s just confirmation bias. Years of working in CSJ-dominated spaces have made it quite clear that this kind of dishonesty is baked into the ideology.

The same circular standard applies to sacred texts: At Christian school, it was the Bible, among other SDA writings. In CSJ circles, it’s the approved canon of scholarship. Religious schools teach a process called exegesis, whereby the sacred text is interpreted. You start with the assumption that the text is the infallible word of God (or one of his prophets), and you proceed from there. If something about the text seems inaccurate or incoherent, you must be misreading the text. After all, you’re a fallible human being — so who are you to judge God’s word? Any apparent failings of the text are thus explained away as user (reader) error. This is exactly how believers in CSJ defend their own core canon. If critics point to logical errors, claims contrary to evidence, or self-contradictions, CSJ defenders are quick to accuse you of “misunderstanding” the material. There’s nothing wrong with Theory — only you’re too dense to comprehend its wisdom. It’s the same tactic.

In religious traditions, apologetics is a discipline where practitioners known as apologists devote their lives to making excuses for the irrationality and immorality of their chosen faith. Is your church engaging in the systematic cover-up of child rape? No problem — put out a ten-thousand-word essay explaining why Catholic tradition is blameless nevertheless. CSJ apologists include academics with pro-CSJ dissertations that lay out the philosophical basis for the practice, and journalists or public intellectuals who apply them in defense of the faith. The underlying principle is blind devotion to the dogma. It’s easy to excuse bad behavior done in its name (or deny that it happens at all), because CSJ is The Truth. If you’ve felt gaslit by people telling you that your concerns are totally misplaced, that cancel culture isn’t real (or it’s a good thing), or that rioting, looting, and arson in the name of CSJ is justified, you’ve been in the company of a religious apologist.

Another form of “proof” used by the religious is sacred testimony. In my Christian school, much fanfare accompanied the testimonies of the “born again.” The testifier would recount negative life experiences such as drug addiction, criminality, or sexual deviance, and how coming to faith in the salvation of Jesus Christ our Lord saved them from a miserable, meaningless existence. Of course stories such as my own, where escaping the church was the liberating experience, were not allowed to be discussed. CSJ’s “lived experience” is the same thing as sacred testimony. We are told we must respect the lived experiences of oppressed groups, and that only oppressed bodies are qualified to discuss issues related to their oppression — which as it turns out, conveniently encompasses all issues. If the “lived experience” in question is compatible with CSJ dogma, it must be believed, and any skepticism is pure bigotry. But if the lived experience does not reinforce CSJ dogma, into the trash they go (even if the speaker is a member of the oppressed group). My experience as a bi person, triggered by the cult-like behavior that brings back childhood traumas doesn’t count for anything at all — because it makes CSJ look bad. Similarly, the lived experiences of black critics of CSJ, like John McWhorter, are also rejected. There are no real principles here.

Just as with religion, people are not born believing dogmatic ideologies. They are indoctrinated into these beliefs. In my childhood, that was accomplished by a curated revisionist history and science curriculum. The CSJ cult uses taxpayer-funded public schools. Every subject must be reworked to ensure students are only permitted to see the issue through a CSJ lens. Ideologues always prefer indoctrination to genuine education that teaches students how to think instead of what to think, because critical thinking, rationality, skepticism, debate, and free speech are the tools that dismantle nonsense. By contrast, dogmatic belief systems shut down criticism by punishing the critics and silencing free speech. Liberalism, with its preference for open and universal inquiry, is seen as dangerous because it steers people away from the virtuous path. According to “social justice” pedagogy, not only are there ‘stupid questions,' there are evil ones. The very act of questioning CSJ is “literal violence” that must be shut down — by punishing the student (or teacher) who does so.

This ideology is consuming every academic subject. It began in the humanities, but it is now infecting even the hard sciences and mathematics. Universal, objective standards for success in these fields are derided as oppressive. Science and mathematics are now “One way of knowing,” no better than any other, and perhaps even inferior — since they are the preferred tools of Western culture. Those who disagree with its tenets are pressured, intimidated, silenced, or exiled as heretics. Professors like former Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian and even administrators like former Harvard President Lawrence Summers are run out of academia; employees like former Google engineer James Damore and even executives like former Roivant CEO Vivek Ramaswamy are forced out of corporations, and in the nonprofit world I’ve seen the same play out over and over again — especially in progressive spaces like LGBT activism.

Give Me that Old-Time Religion

Religion satisfies a deep need for many people, and it is not my place to take it away from anyone. But religion has boundaries. The world’s first liberal democracy was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who understood that the best way to respect religious freedom was to separate church from state. The establishment clause of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution was devised to serve that purpose, as eloquently explained by Thomas Jefferson in his Letter to the Danbury Baptists:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

That wall must apply to all religions, theistic or otherwise. Believers of Critical Social Justice have every right to hold their beliefs. But the freedom of religion also means freedom from religion. Just as they must be free to believe as they wish, we must be free from having their beliefs forced down our throats. Taxpayer-funded schools should not teach the tenets of CSJ, and their ideas should not be applied to the pedagogy or curriculum of public schools. Corporations and nonprofits should have no more right to discriminate against employees based on CSJ beliefs than upon traditional (religious) ones. A liberal society should tolerate differences of opinion and allow ideas to compete fairly in the marketplace of ideas. CSJ cannot be granted special status, because that road leads to totalitarianism. The debate over CSJ isn’t likely to be settled any time soon, but we should be able to come to a consensus about its place in the public sphere. We need only choose between the liberty afforded by secularism or the tyranny imposed by theocracy. I know which I prefer. As a bi man who was liberated from religiously-induced self-loathing by exposure to a more secular environment, I can attest that liberalism and Enlightenment ideals are the path forward for our movement. Tethering ourselves to illiberal ideologies like CSJ is not.

“Social Justice” is Not Just

At the outset, I explained that I distinguish between two conceptions of Social Justice: the liberal one (LSJ) and a newly ascendant illiberal one (CSJ). Liberal Social Justice is the vision that has given us the progress we’ve made on civil rights; it is one based on the liberal principle of equal treatment for all individuals regardless of their membership in any identity group. It’s what was championed by the original feminists, LGBT activists, and anti-racist leaders. By contrast, Critical Social Justice, in the name of Neo-Marxist “equity” (equal outcomes), advocates for intentional systemic discrimination against historically “oppressive” groups. This is because you cannot have that kind of “equity” without violating the liberal principle of equality. The most informed and honest of its adherents will admit this if pressed.

A collectivist conception of “justice” breeds tribal warfare and tyranny. CSJ proponents are correct that there is a history of oppression against marginalized groups. But that oppression wasn’t in the name of liberalism; it was in the name of different illiberal ideologies: pre-liberal feudalism, mercantilist slavery, theocratic homophobia, and fascism. For a group that claims to value nuanced critiques of issues, CSJ proponents seem to miss a key fact about the West: we are not and never have been perfectly liberal. Progress has happened gradually, always slowed and sometimes reversed by various illiberal alternatives that have animated segments of our society all along. And, yes, the early liberal and Enlightenment thinkers were not perfect exemplars of their ideals. Nobody ever is. But this is to be expected. Utopia isn’t possible, which is why we channel inevitable human conflicts in productive directions through institutions like capitalism and democracy. Beware the cult that sells you a utopia, because any dictatorial action can be justified by such a false vision.

It wasn’t Critical Social Justice that liberated me as a bi person. It was Liberal Social Justice. For any individual to be liberated, they need a conception of justice that values individual liberty. CSJ proponents aren’t going to liberate anyone. They are merely justifying a new kind of prejudice by appealing to an old one. This is why they must deny that we’ve made progress on civil rights in the West. If they were to admit it, they’d lose their excuse for that power grab. Liberals should not be taken in by this con. CSJ isn’t the new frontier of civil rights. It’s just one of liberalism’s old enemies resurfacing and rebranded with a trendy 21st-century pseudo-woke veneer — one of many illiberal ideologies vying for the power to tear society down and seize control for itself. Given liberalism’s proven track record of progress on civil rights, we’d be unwise to ally, even temporarily, with a movement that opposes those ideals. We need an awakening, but a liberal one — which celebrates real progress and views collective action as voluntary arrangements between individuals. We need a new Enlightenment, not just another deluded cult. It’s time liberals wake up to the fact that Critical Social Justice is an oxymoron, a mockery, and a Trojan horse. CSJ might just as well stand for “The Cult of ‘Social Justice.’”

#Rio Veradonir #cult #cult dynamics #cult of woke #wokeism #wokeness as religion #woke #woke activism #critical social justice #social justice activism #illiberalism #civil rights #liberal ethics #liberalism #liberal values #woke cult #religion is a mental illness

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birdylion · 4 months

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on the metaphysics of current and old genii locorum of rivers (in Rivers of London)

With Yuletide reveals I can finally talk about the worldbuilding behind the story I wrote for my assignment. It's an E-rated smut fic about Peter, Beverley, and Old Beverley Brook. (Here's the link to my post about the story itself, so you can check it out and decide for yourself if it's something you'd want to read.)

In order to do smutty worldbuilding with these characters, I had to build a headcanon about how the connection between Beverley and Old Beverley works in general. So here are my thoughts about that.

There is some kind of connection between the current Rivers and their dead counterparts. Old Sir Tyburn has opinions about Lady Ty and vice versa, and Old Beverley Brook clearly knows (about) Peter in some capacity – after all, his first act after meeting him is to full on kiss him on the mouth. So what is this connection? The animosity between Ty and Old Tyburn suggests that they definitely aren’t the same entity. The kiss suggests that they can share information and possibly even experiences.

There are at least two ways to interpret the interaction between Peter and Old Beverley in Lies Sleeping: 1. (present-day) Beverley is acting through Old Beverley. His words („babes“, which is supposedly how Bev would call Peter) and the kiss itself seem to suggest that. 2. He is his own entity who acts on his own, which is what his knowledge about the other ghosts on that plane of existence seems to suggest.

The doylist explanation is probably „whatever Ben Aaronovitch needs to make the scene work“, and honestly, that was my approach too for making the sex scene work. But in-universe, I assume it works like this:

The ghosts of the old genii locorum are separate entities from the present day genii locorum. On a very basic level, the only connection they share is towards their river. The ghosts of the old rivers are images of the persons they used to be, and as such don’t have necessarily much in common with today’s Rivers. Sometimes they are lucky and have enough in common to have an amicable relationship (like I decided for Beverley), and sometimes they are unlucky and don’t really like each other (like Tyburn). That’s not to say they are enemies – they still have that connection through their river, and either Sir Tyburn was willing, or Lady Ty compelled him, to put his sword through the would-be assassin in The Hanging Tree. Luckily I didn’t need to make a decision on that, because I focused on Beverley.

I decided that there has to be a lot of fluidity in how such a connection can work. My initial idea of describing it was like looking through a window. At first the shutters are closed and you (as a modern day River spirit) perhaps don’t even realise that there’s a window. Than you realise that there is a window, and you can look through it into the other world. That’s how I imagine the connection in daily life – a window you can ignore, or look through, or even close, and depending on how much focus you put on it, it’s clear glass, or milky glass, or the window is … I don’t know, in a different place of your house depending on how much attention you pay it? The metaphor doesn’t work really well at this point, which is why I abandoned it, but my point is, I imagine there are a lot of ways the connection can work, depending on the individual character and relationship of the genii locorum involved. And, to get back to that heavy metaphor one last time, in rare cases such as Sir Tyburn’s sword and the assassin, you don’t just have a window, but can open a door and let the other one through. Or, in the case of Peter’s sacrifice to Lady Ty in her underground river, she can push him through. The same way of pushing someone else into that world is what I imagine Beverley did with Peter in my story. And how much energy it takes would depend on how well the connection usually is, so it would have a noticeable cost for Tyburn, but be easy as breathing for Beverley.

I decided that there could be some overlap in experiences and sensations, but again, not set in stone. So I decided that usually, Old Beverley doesn’t play much of a role in Beverley’s life. She has a busy life after all. Usually, the connection is more like the background radiation of everything that connects her to her river. Definitely present, but not like she talks to him or constantly feels his presence. Only when she focuses on him she would be actively in contact with him, and when she focuses on him even more and gets more into his world, she could herself immerse in it, and I stretched that so far that she can feel what it is to be in his place. But at the same time, she is in control of that, being the currently alive and powerful genius loci of her River.

For the mechanics of Peter being in that world:

There are several instances in the books when that happened. First in Whispers Underground, when he’s buried underneath the platform at Oxford station, near where the river Tyburn flows. He’s slowly running out of air, that is, he’s in the process of dying in the ‚real‘ world and Sir Tyburn draws him into his ghost world – to make it easier on him, because the sensations there are different. To distract him, give him (metaphorical) air to breathe, and perhaps out of curiosity; he says he’s been lonely there for a long time. He knows about Peter, at least his name and where he’s from. Meanwhile, Lady Ty learned about Peter’s whereabouts by, as she says, smelling him in her water. It’s unclear how much time passes in each place. (On a side note: it’s this meeting in which Sir Tyburn makes Peter aware of Punch’s wailing as he’s pinned to the bridge, and says that sooner or later Peter has to let Punch loose. Props to that bit of foreshadowing.)

I don’t quite remember any other times in between that Peter is in this world, but at the time in Lies Sleeping when Peter has his Game of Thrones episode, he’s falling from St. Paul’s bell tower towards what could well be his death, and time definitely passes differently in this other world, because in under 2 seconds, there’s a whole two chapters of stuff happening; a race through ancient London and a fight and a conversation, so there’s some time weirdness happening.

Then there’s the time when Peter makes his sacrifice to Lady Ty because he wants to ask her to send him into this world. While he’s in the world doing his things, his body is in Lady Ty’s river, I assume unconscious, and he doesn’t get out on his own but has to be saved by others. I think the implication is that being in this ghost world means that his body is unconscious or sleeping – suddenly as it comes, I imagine it’s closer to unconsciousness, but it’s not like we have any data. Peter would really have to get hooked up to an EEG to record his brain waves during sleep and during this.

Admittedly, it is a stretch to go from there to „being in this world means that Peter is slowly suffocating in our world“ which I used for dramatic purposes in my fanfic, so that’s definitely not worldbuilding I would extrapolate from what we know in canon. It’s an extension though, one that I don’t think contradicts canon.

Anyway, all of that was very interesting to think about, but I didn’t dare to openly talk about it lest someone connected the secret story to me xD Perhaps I was taking it too far, but I thought it would be suspicious if I was going from my usually near zero meta discussion posts to talking about this topic right when the Yuletide assignments went out.

This whole thing is very much not a meta analysis, but a meta interpretation, since I mainly thought it through in terms of „how can I write the story I want to write and I think my recipient is going to like“, so there are many arguments to be made that it can (or should) work differently if you’re following the canon closely, or want to just extrapolate instead of interpret.

#rivers of london #birdypersonal

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