#aeondeug

these varying levels of heavens are the degrees of glory and are split into the celestial, terrestrial and telestial kingdoms. that shit does not occur until after everyone gets resurrected though. until then people are held in like a waiting room type place called the spirit world, with those who have accepted jesus and are deemed virtuous get to sit in paradise. non-mormons and those who are Bad People get sent to something called the spirit prison where they are taught the gospel and given repeated chances to accept it. failure to accept this leads to the person being held in prison for a time after the resurrection. but it's a temporary thing, after which they'll be resurrected in the telestial kingdom.

there is one exception to this apparently which are the sons of perdition, which is a very small group of people. this includes the pre-mortal spirit followers of satan. as well as mortals who deny the holy ghost after being presented with a personal witness and perfect knowledge of jesus christ.

the posthumous baptism thing is done as part of the initial judgement involves whether or not someone was baptized by someone with the correct credentials.

have people never researched the history of anthropology because like. shit's bad. there's problems now too but also the field is very much living with the burden of its extremely fucked up past.

i love anthropology but like i also just expect evil from it.

Basically every anthropologist I know has been working very hard to pull away from the ‘Mongoloid/Negroid/Caucasoid’ anthro past. It’s hard because I still see laymen using those terms and seeing absolutely NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. And they point to 100 year old papers as to why it’s totally cool. 

Anthropology is still a good ol’ boy field overall but it’s shifting. Slowly. 

People use ‘Caucasian’ all the time. All the fucking time. Who invented it? A fucking racist fake ass anthropologist. A disgusting ass racist who also was into phrenology. 

What is an actual Caucasian? Not white. They’re brown. They’re asian. Unless Iranians and Georgians suddenly became white when I wasn’t looking. The area is predominantly Muslim and Jewish.

But if someone from Iran gets one of those ethnicity forms and sees Caucasian/White? Well they ARE Caucasian, TRUE Caucasian. But they aren’t white.  SO what? They go to ‘other’. No choice to do otherwise. 

In no particular order except the order I think of them:

That moment at the party where Three Seagrass and friends start freestyling poetry, and Mahit just sits there realising that... she can’t. This activity is not available to her. She’s so close, it’s right in front of her and she could join in-- except she wouldn’t be actually able to. She could be the Foreigner Adorably Trying, but she couldn’t be the Worthy Collaborator. I think it might be my favourite scene. I really feel for Mahit there. And it’s also a scene that really illustrates the way Teixcalaan wants people to want it, shows off a shiny facade of ‘isn’t being a citizen so cool? don’t you want to be a citizen?’ while keeping being ~really a citizen out of reach.

The Emperor’s death. Like [sharp exhale.] It was one of those twists that for me perfectly rode the line between “WAIT WHAT?!” and “oh, of course! It makes total sense that is worked out that way!”

I forgot the name of it, the poisonous plant scene? That was real good. Especially because it happened at a point in the story where we didn’t know What Was Up with Nineteen Adze, and it was great in that it technically provided more information about Nineteen Adze, while in many ways leaving you more confused about what her deal was.

The “Haha, 2e Asteroid (I totally have no feelings about the language class exercise where I gave myself a Teixcalaanli name at all)” conversation.

I'M ACTUALLY RUNNING OUT OF DATES WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT