i choose joy

IT’S TIIIIIIIIIMMEEEEEEEE !!!!!! ✨✨

The Cosmic Selector Vol. 0

This was inspired by this Black Parade playlist! We wanted to put together a playlist dedicated to before the jukebox made her appearance in the world of Lord Huron.

Links to listen: Spotify / Tidal / YouTube Music (provided by @mx-trap-house)

Tracklist below the cut!

Is there anybody out there?

I don't believe in any state's right to kill their citizens.

I don't believe in the death penalty.

I'm pro-abortion in the specific way that stems from a belief no one has the right to another person's body, even if it would save lives.

I mentioned Abby "PhilosophyTube" Thorn's "Abortion and Ben Shapiro" video before, but short version: say, hypothetically, the world's most gifted and important violinist is going to die due to needing a kidney transplant. By some weird fluke of medicine and genetics, your kidney is the only one that will work. There isn't time to find another rare donor. Your sacrifice will save this important, 'valuable' person's life... but you'll be on dialysis daily for the rest of your life.

Believing in absolute autonomy means no one can force you to agree to that. Even if it will result in someone's death, you cannot be compelled to give up your body for a righteous enough cause. In the same way, no one should be compelled to give up their body to a fetus, thus pro-abortion. (The reason you abstract it this way is to side-step the ingrained misogyny of "well you had sex so really this is your fault.")

Anyway. Eva Stratt is a much worse version of this. Grace was asked to sacrifice himself. He said no. She overruled him and in fact was always going to overrule him. The security people with the sedatives were ready to go before Grace even gave his answer. Making it a question was a polite fiction to spare Eva the trouble and trauma.

By doing it, she saves not just Earth but another populated planet altogether.

Grace said no. And he fought. He ran for his life. He was terrified. In the book, he calls it murder. In the film, he's begging them not to do it. In the book, the flashback happens as Grace-in-the-present wonders about how he must've known he could pull this mission off, he volunteered after all!

Then remembers: no he explicitly didn't.

In some way, it works better for me than Omelas. In that parable, the sacrificial child has no concept of why its happening. In PHM, Grace does know, and makes the informed decision to say no, and is overruled.

Does it stop being a fundamental, foundational wrong because it saves Erid and Earth?

How about the fact that Grace lives, does that make it less wrong?

Does the threshold change based on if Grace dies as expected or not?

Was it the only option or if they spent two weeks on the issue would they find a replacement and make up for lost time?

What projected death toll do you have to meet before Eva's decision becomes the Right Thing To Do?

Where do the scales tip?

Did the scales ever actually tip?

Other people may think they did. But for me and the absolutism I (try) to maintain about life and autonomy... I don't think they ever did. But I have to ask myself to really contend with that question.

And in the film, she did all that, and I still feel tremendous sympathy for her.

you can never get a clear listen to him. his primary sense node is covered in "hair" and the part that isn't is hidden by two crystals that refract sound waves in a pleasing but disorienting way. he covers his body in billowy cloth at all times. not snug and sensible and unobstructive like eridian coverings, but loose and layered, draped and flowing.

the most clear part of him are his internal organs. because yes, the alien's carapace isn't sound-proof. his single heart beats insistingly in his core, his lungs exchanging gas constantly, his long digestive tract always bubbling and contracting. his thorax is packed impossibly tight and it's all moving and singing.

and it shouldn't be possible, with how fragile he is, for that internal pressure to maintain. how does the thin membrane of his external organ (another horror that sends eridians reeling) keep it all contained? his "skin" is so easily pierced, cut, bruised, burnt, how does he not split open under his own mass?

when savior rocky first arrived home and described the environmental needs of his alien, the scientists thought he'd made a mistake in his frantic panic to get everything out. it isn't possible this being lives at such low atmospheric pressure, at half the gravity, and in a gas that's nearly double the weight of ammonia. in a gas so dangerous, so caustic. and if it does then how is it obligately terrestrial like rocky claims? shouldn't it fly or float instead? (and then to see it in the water, learning that it can float or sink at will.)

and this alien has come bearing gifts that will not only save your species but launch it into impossible heights of technological and intellectual advancement. he has discovered the solution to astrophage and bred it to thrive on threeworld and translated his instructions into eridian. he has given your people the complete sum of his people's knowledge, advanced in ways the eridians can't believe and behind in ways that seem ludicrous. and he has given his life for your people to have these things.

he knows how your solar system was formed. he knows how the universe started.

his name means beautiful and generous and relieving.

the eridians experiencing cosmic bliss.

they knew that space was there because they can perceive it directly. it's literally right overhead all the time for their entire evolution. they know the faces of thousands, millions of stars, as soon as they tip their faces up. eridani is a name from two thousand years ago. all their stars have been named and known and watched and sung about for longer than any individual human civilization. they have always known the eridian star was there.