When you step into sunlight, you honor Apollo. When you admire the moon, you honor Artemis. When you admire cloud shapes, you honor Hera. When you smell petrichor, you honor Zeus. When you laugh at a joke, you honor Hermes. When your body twitches to dance at a particularly upbeat music, you honor Dinoysus. When you enjoy the first bite of your breakfast, you honor Demeter. When you choose your peace over any conflict, you honor Athena. When you warm yourself up by sheltering yourself in blanket, you honor Hestia. When you listen to Ocean sounds, you honor Poseidon. When you smell flowers, you honor Persephone. When you admire the coolness of first day of Autumn, you honor Hades. When you wear your favourite jewellery, you honor Hephaestus. When you smile, you honor Aphrodite. When you exercise, you honor Ares. When you light a torch in a dark room, you honor Hekate.
Your body is a shrine to Gods, your being an act of devotion for them. You, by yourself, are enough for them.
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"Don't use Libby because it costs libraries too much, pirate instead" is such a weird, anti-patron, anti-author take that somehow manages to also be anti-library, in my professional librarian-ass opinion.
It's well documented that pirating books negatively affects authors directly* in a way that pirating movies or TV shows doesn't affect actors or writers, so I will likely always be anti-book piracy unless there's absolutely, positively no other option (i.e. the book simply doesn't exist outside of online archives at all, or in a particular language).
Also, yeah, Libby and Hoopla licenses are really expensive, but libraries buy them SO THAT PATRONS CAN USE THEM. If you're gonna be pissed at anybody about this shitty state of affairs, be pissed at publishing companies and continue to use Libby or Hoopla at your library so we can continue to justify having it to our funding bodies.
One of the best ways to support your library having services you like is to USE THOSE SERVICES. Yes, even if they are expensive.
*Yes, this is a blog post, but it's a blog post filled with links to news articles. If you can click one link, you can click another.
Please, PLEASE use Libby. OverDrive. Hoopla. CloudLibrary. Kanopy. Flipster. Freegal. Transparent Language. Mango. Jstor. Your library would not offer it if they could not afford it, and we afford things by reporting the number of people who use that service, so if you don't use the service we can't afford it. It's a cycle. Keep it going, keep using it, and we'll keep providing because we'll be able to justify the cost to the bean counters in government.
if you see this and think to yourself that you have some really compelling argument about political correctness or sjws please just know preemptively that no one cares + u are ugly
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I love love love the moment in Gideon the Ninth where the Third challenges the Sixth in a clearly unfair move, and Gideon, half-on-instinct, still faking a vow of silence, simply unsheathes her sword, at which Harrow doesn't miss a beat and says her "The Ninth House will represent the Sixth House" line, while Gideon just smiles.
In Gideon's head this is "I am not standing for this shit anymore. For the love of God, Harrow, please understand what I'm doing and back me up here. Oh thank fuck you've got it. I'm so happy I could kiss you."
In Harrow's head this appears to be "For fuck's sakes, Nav, what do you think you're doing. Ok, think. Can't give anything away. Have to project unity, but fuck you, Griddle, for making me do this."
But for everyone else this is the legendary, mysterious, terrifying, bone magicians of the Ninth House, with no warning, stepping between the Sixth and the Third. The skull-faced cavalier who hasn't said a single word simply drawing her sword. The shockingly powerful and inscrutable necromancer matter-of-factly declaring an alliance that no-one, even the supposed allies, knew about. The sinister smirk on the cavalier's face. And the line from Harrowhark: "Death first to vultures and scavengers."
I love it so much and I love additionally the moment that this sets up in the climax, which is essentially the same emotional beat, the key changes being 1) both Harrow and Gideon have become open and vocal with each other; 2) both Harrow and Gideon are working together consciously as well as instinctively; 3) their opponents don't back down so they follow through. "Nav, show them what the Ninth House does." "We do bones, motherfucker."
On this day where most Christians celebrate the birth of their Messiah, let’s remember there is a genocide happening in the place of His birth. Actions that He would not approve of in the slightest. In fact, he would probably be actively seeking to oppose it, and then just get crucified all over again.
Sorry, Christian atheists, but “Christianity traumatized me” is not a get-out-of-accountability-free card for upholding Christian supremacy through your treatment of members of minority cultures, reiterating Christian evangelism and colonialism but for your WASP brand of atheism, promoting Christian purity and hierarchy but with the serial numbers filed off, insisting that the Christian model of culture is the only one that exists and shouting down members of non-Christian cultures about their own cultures and experiences, etc.
Oh, you don’t like members of non-Christian cultures pointing out the ways in which your behaviors continue to normalize and uphold Christian hegemony?
As an Atheist, there is a place for Atheists calling out Religious Harm, especially if members of that Religion fail to, but it actually has to be harm. A person believing in some god and/or choosing to abide by some rule system you don't understand isn't harm. The best way I've found to look at religious harm personally is control. Does the religion force their views onto other groups, and/or force their own members to stay. When we are talking about freedom, people should have the freedom to believe in whatever they want, and they should have the freedom to consent to any system of rules they want (even religious ones), however they should also have the freedom to decide not to, and when they decide to leave they should be able to live completely free from those rules.
No, there’s a place for atheists in supporting and boosting the voices of people who criticize or want to leave communities said atheist isn’t part of.
When people who enjoy privilege from a hegemonic cultural background start going it on their own and criticizing the same minority cultures that their background marginalizes or tries to eliminate they, AT BEST, make fools of themselves and at worst align with white supremacists and other genocidal bigots.
If you want to mitigate or neutralize the harm done by minority cultures you’re not part of and whose practices don’t affect you, center the people who are actually being harmed. Don’t wank over theoretical harms.
I did specify Actual Harm did I not? I'm not one to support speculating on harm, but if there's people who are trying to speak out and their community isn't listening, there's absolutely a place for those outside to say something about what's going on. (Heck I even said cultural rules you don't understand doesn't constitute harm so long as nobody is being forced into following them). I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear enough.
And I’m saying the only place for your voice is in echoing and boosting the voices of actual members of the community.
Because when people outside minoritized communities try to lead, we get things like banning hijabs instead of what Muslim women were actually asking for.
I think the trick is that there might not actually be such a thing as "Religious Harm". There's definitely Christian Harm, but it's hard to pick out a form of harm that's common to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, the Cult of Reason, Satanism, Pastrianism, Jainism, Wicca, Sikhism, Chinese folk religions, Zeusism, Taoism, the Order of the Solar Temple, Jediism, Ashurism, et cetera, but never ever seen amongst agnostics or atheists. (Also at *least* three of the above are atheist-friendly religions, requiring no belief in any form of divinity. Jediism is included because people keep claiming it on censuses. Ireland had 1800 Jedi Knights in 2022.)
So if you're talking about the harm that Christianity does, call it Christianity. If the problem is authoritarianism, call it authoritarianism. Call it Christian Authoritarianism, if you like, when it's specific to Christianity -- but you do not require a religion to have authoritarianism, nor do all religions have a significant authoritarian faction.
Yeah, antitheists like to make religion out to be something uniquely mind-numbing, but there’s nothing religion does that non-“religious” ideologies don’t do just as effectively.
I also think it's incredibly telling that in general, very few atheists who talk up a generalized concept of "religious harm" actively acknowledge the fact that most cults / high-control groups today are not even religious in nature. The US in particular is drowning in extremely culty MLMs and non-religious wellness gurus, and many of these groups take even the completely non-religious elements their playbook directly and explicitly from religious movements such as Evangelical Christianity, and especially Mormonism. If there's a category of "Religious Harm" that includes missions and tithes but doesn't include LuLaRoe, then why the hell doesn't it? And conversely, if "Religious Harm" does encompass both actual religious doctrine and also a secular legging-based ponzi scheme, then in what sense is it useful to categorize the harm as "religious"? I think a lot of this goes all the way back to the (incredibly Christian) idea that religion and culture are separable – that a religion and culture that share the same fundamental fabric are nonetheless two entirely individual entities, with entirely individual harms. It's a very eurocentric way to see the world, and what's more, it's factually wrong.
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Note: we've already been seeing low-quality work because writers have been doubling or trebling up on jobs from the low wages. Yes, it will get worse. Shows you were liking will be canceled rather than find fair wages.
Studios execs will say they don't have the money. It's a lie. They don't have *the profit margin they prefer* which is very, very different.
Cosmic horror themed mecha series where, for Mystic Technobabble Reasons probably involving some sort of celestial alignment, only people who were born during a specific period of time can pilot the giant robots. The complicating factor? The last time that magic alignment happened was roughly sixty years ago. Thus, the fate of humanity depends on a dwindling pool of people aged sixty-plus who are still in good enough shape to pilot a giant robot into battle.
(For casting convenience, let's say that the magic alignment lasted roughly a decade, so there's some flexibility in the ages of the core cast, but all of them being sixty-plus is mandatory.)
They met on the 14th anniversary of the great void awakening, in an underground lab where the world's top sorcerers were conducting the early neural sync tests. They have been drift compatible for 57 years, and have been married for 53.
Two gleaming steel machines, man-like and giant sized, crouched upon the southern hill of the Tacoma valley, reclining against a ridge as a man would a well-used sofa. All about their feet and for miles in either direction, ground crews wielded smaller equipment; running power lines out to fortifications, erecting pikes the length of houses and digging trenches large enough to entrap the same. Voices faded in and out of a dozen channels, helicopters clattered by and the roaring of the engines of tanks faded off one by one as they arrived and parked in a long line, turrets facing North.
And the sunrise was beautiful.
It climbed starkly orange and lavender over the Cascade Mountains to the east, illuminating a curtain of fog upon their snowy slopes, then driving it away with its warmth as higher it climbed and more yellow it grew. But around 8 in the morning the sun grew dark again, and shrank to a half then a crescent then a sliver then nothing, as the chaos moon eclipsed it. Then thunder, black thunder in the Earth, as the valley clawed itself open and from the fissure, a mile-high tree suddenly grew and bloomed, with harsh purplish bark and leaves of jet black.
The taller of the two machines, a hunched, lithe, 4-armed contraption with a single horn in the middle of its helm, remained motionless where it sat. The shorter one, a compact thick-armed two-horned beast, had been gazing into its own lap, and miming with its enormous armored claws the delicate art of knitting, though there was no yarn in its hands, and the scraping and clashing of its gauntlet armor reached a mile. Safe inside an armored capsule within the machine's brain stem, its pilot was knitting for real, either forgetful or uncaring of the large-scale telegraphing of her motions. As the sun grew dark, the machine's fingers stopped their noise, and its armored helm turned its gaze north, toward the valley, and the darkness, and the tree.
"Well now, that's new!" the pilot said.
"It shouldn't be." The voice of the lady from ground control (Alice, a delightful young dear, though she was very new) replied. "That's the day's first void tree, Beth. That means the planes are aligning near enough that lifeforms from their world can leak into ours."
"No no no, I know that, what's this? Right in here?" The mecha waggled a finger into empty space, while its other hand mimed putting away its knitting supplies.
"...You mean inside the cockpit? That should be your tactical readout. It shows power, coolant, and ammunition readouts for you and your teammates, and a ranked list of most dangerous bogies in the immediate area."
"Oh! How senile do you think I am Alice, I mean they changed it from last time!"
"Did they? I wasn't made aware of, umm..."
Robert (an old friend) seemed to have taken notice of the dilemma, and leaned over into Alice's station. "It's a touch screen, Beth. You press it with your fingers. Instead of buttons."
"Oh." The machine mimed the motion. "Oh my, well isn't that something. Richard! Richard look at this!"
The other machine remained unmoving. She leaned over toward him and turned up her comms volume. He was nearly deaf, and got jumpy when anybody touched him in his sleep, so yelling was the only option left. "RICHARD!" This time it didn't work. She had to change tactics. "RICHARD! DINNER!"
"Hmm? Huh?" The thin machine creaked to life, and its helmet looked around. "I'm up. I'm up."
"Richard look at this!"
"What?" Richard's machine had its sword rested across its knees, and one gauntlet settled on the hilt when he saw the tree. "I know it's almost time, I know. I was just shutting my eyes for a minute."
"No Richard look at the tactical readout!"
"Hmm? What about it? ...Oh look at that, they changed it out, didn't they."
"It's a touching screen!"
"What's it do?"
"You touch it!"
The thin machine mimed a tapping and a sliding motion. "Oh." He grunted. "Dreadful."
"Oh be nice, you like it."
"Yeah." He grunted. "Yeah, heck of a thing. What'll they think of next."
"You'll find a reason to hate it."
"It's not got any buttons." He found a reason to hate it. "No knobs. I've gotta look at it to do anything with it."
"It's the tactical readout Richard, you'll be looking at it anyway." She shushed him. "The power plant and the radio are still the same."
"Hmph. I'm not used to it." He kept taping for a moment. "And what's all this stuff? There's more... Options. In here."
"Don't play with options now, Richard! We're almost going out to fight!"
"I know, I know, I just... Hey, how do I close this? How do I get back to tactics? Hey!"
"Swipe right." Alice said.
Richard's mecha made a grabbing motion with its right hand. "That didn't do it." He said.
"No, swipe. Sweep. Sweep right." Alice clarified. "Put your finger on it..."
He swiped down. Right. Up. Somehow got lost in the advanced communications settings, and managed to open a live video feed of his wife, as she sat in her cockpit. "Oh what!"
"Hmm?" She looked down at the screen, and saw him. "Oh Richard! Look at you!"
"Yeah, they've got a little camera in here somewhere." He made a grumpy noise, but he liked it. "You've got a camera somewhere in yours too!"
"Oh I do!" She waved.
"You look beautiful, dear."
"Oh shush you-" She giggled. "I-Ooh Alice do you have one at ground control?"
Alice glanced at her webcam. "I might."
"You should see if you can join! It can be like all three of us here together."
"Hmm." Richard agreed. "What'll they think of next."
"Oh who's our backup today?" Beth wondered. "Oh it must be Peter! He's stationed over at point beta! We should invite him on too!"
Richard's voice sounded suddenly sullen. "Don't want to be stuck with Peter all day."
"Oh don't be like that Richard! We like Peter!"
"We like him." Richard agreed. "We don't like him all day."
"On second thought, I can't join in." Alice decided. "They want me to keep to mission-critical communication. You two can keep the cams on if you want, I'm just here to coordinate support."
"Well, you've been doing a great job, dear." Beth reassured her.
"Stellar." Richard grunted.
"Well, thanks." Alice agreed. "And Richard, you can reset back to the tactics screen by double-tapping anywhere."
"Hmm?" His mecha made a double-tapping motion. "Ah. There we are."
"Do you still have the camera on?" Beth asked.
"Of course I do." He grunted. "I'd miss that smile, wouldn't I?"
"Oh shush you."
"POSSIBLE CONTACT!" Alice interrupted them. "Seismic activity in Eastern quadrant, bearing 31 degrees, range 8 kilometers. Stand by to confirm." Then a minute later: "Contact confirmed! Bioreactor emissions from three pedestrian-type husks. Do you have visual confirmation?"
The two mecha turned to look Northeast. Away toward the far end of the fortifications, one of the fissures was widening. Movement became visible around the rim, a darting and frantic thrashing reaching further and further up out of the pit, until it resolved into the scrambling of great clawed arms, of which Richard counted about 12. "Yup. 3 of em." He grunted. "Guess it's time we be going then."
"Copy." Alice agreed. "Huntsman Team Delta, prepare to deploy. Power handoff in T-minus 45 seconds. Final systems check, report!"
"Huntsman Chassis 04 reporting." Richard read down the diagnostics. "Bioreactor temperature holding at 200 degrees, coolant 185 tons, muscle electrotraction peaking at 2.2 gigapascals, sync ratio 93 and steady, all systems green."
"Huntsman Chassis 05 reporting." Beth echoed. "Bioreactor 190 degrees, coolant 212 tons, muscle electrotraction 2.1 gigapascals, sync ratio 89 and steady, all systems green."
"Sensors green. Comms green. Tactical matrix green." Alice nodded. "Huntsmen Chassis 04 and 05 prepared to deploy. T-minus 25 seconds. Stand by to engage internal power."
"Huntsman Chassis 04, standing by with internal power." Richard agreed, with a hand hovered over the controls.
"Huntsman Chassis 05 standing by too." Beth reached for her own controls.
"This is general Roggard, aerial resources have been deployed into diversion pattern charley niner. Ground forces standing by to assist."
Along the shins and tails of both machines, pyrotechnic charges blasted free a long line of enormous electrical plugs. Ground workers in radiation-shielded tractors hauled the cables away, while the pilots threw their controls. A loud banging echoed through the cockpits, as the mainline breakers engaged. Then from deep inside the machines, the low throbbing of alien heartbeats, as the bioreactors throttled up.
"T-plus 7, reactor green on Chassis 04." Richard reported.
"T-plus 9, reactor green on Chassis 05." Beth echoed.
"Team Huntsmen!" The general announced. "DEPLOY!"
Richard lifted his mecha's sword, planted it in the ground for support, and eased slowly to his feet. He reached a hand down to his wife, her gauntlet locked with his, and he helped lift her upright. She took a moment to dust the dirt off her machine's backside, then hand in hand, they started down the hillside toward the valley. The slope wasn't very steep, but he led the way carefully, using his sword as a walking stick, with a lookout for any canyons or large trees that might present a tripping hazard.
They were in no hurry.
Away down in the valley, the three void husks had dug their way out of the pit by now, and stood, screaming at the sun. Their heads were faceless pools of black slime, nothing but skulls with gnashing teeth and bulging eyeballs all stained a homogeneous inky pitch, and their hands were the same, but the rest of their bodies were pale. They stood as tall as the mecha, with long skulls and four arms, though they were unarmored, thin, and sickly; gaunt mocking puppets of the bodies of the giants that used to inhabit the other world.
While Richard and Beth made their walk, Helicopters pelted the husks with hailfire missiles, hovering far enough out of reach to be totally safe, but near enough for the husks to fancy they might be able to run and catch them. The missiles were mortal tools, and thus could not hurt them, but it got them mad enough to lead them away from the fortifications, toward open ground.
Once Richard and Beth had made their way into range, the helicopters held their fire and peeled away, and the husks were left confused for a moment until they saw the mecha. Then they screamed, and charged.
Beth's mecha pulled itself up a little straighter. A compartment slid open on its huge forearm, and the axe of ancients, Belond the Dasher, swung out and locked into its gripper, with a shine of light untarnished by years, and runes aglow along its blade.
Richard's sword was lifted clear of the ground now. The motion made him a little dizzy, and he rocked back on his heels a little (and Beth even moved in to catch him) before he found his footing. The ground here wasn't quite stable; the great weight of the machine caused it to sink up to its ankle in the bank of a little river, and he wasn't as fast to react to such things as he once was, but once he'd noticed and accounted for that, he took a stance he liked, and waited ready.
His mecha did not draw itself up to its full height, nor did it raise the great claymor Hill Breaker any higher than its knees, for it shared a soul with Richard, and Richard did not volunteer more effort than was necessary, and he happened to know exactly how much that was. He stepped a pace or two in front of his wife. The husks advanced.
The first one was 6 seconds away.
Then 5.
A loud metallic creaking noise echoed across the valley as he tightened his grip.
Then 4.
He closed his eyes.
Then 3.
Mecha were weapons of size and momentum. He began his swing now.
Then 2.
As his reactor ramped up to its exertion levels, the condensers were no longer able to keep up with the necessary cooling, and the bypass vents opened. A thousand pounds of steam jetted high into the morning air.
Then 1.
The husk had gauged the path of the blade, and its last second of life was spent in desperate futility, digging its heels into the soft ground to change its course. The sword's runes flashed red with ancient oaths and cries of curses rebuked, and as it passed cleanly through the creature, the black slime blazed into flame, and an eruption of smoke followed out the path of his blade. The husk's two halves took nearly three seconds to finish crashing to a stop on the ground beside him, and by then the second husk was nearly upon him, but by then, of course, his sword was on its way back down.
The third stumbled over the remains of the second, and reached Beth. Its torso and head parted ways around the blade of her axe, and as it fell, it managed to reach her with a single grasping claw, and left a small smear of black down her pauldron.
Richard opened his eyes, and smiled.
"Oh, you could have gotten all three." She teased.
"Well why would I? You just looked so eager." He planted the sword back into the ground, rested his weight on it as before. He turned around, looking for some solid hill to sit down on.
"Enemy lifesigns have ceased." Alice reported over comms. "Cooling confirmed on all 3 enemy bioreactors, no mobile curses detected. Good job you two."
"Years of practice." Richard reached a gauntlet out to wipe away the smear on his wife's armor, then smiled down at her face on the tactics screen. And she looked to him exactly as beautiful as she had years ago, when they'd done this the first time. Why, they were only children then. They'd been so scared. "Years of practice."
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