This is genuinely one of the most infuriating things I've read about recently. This girl just straight up DIDN'T DO THE ASSIGNMENT. Then complained about discrimination because the person grading it was trans.

She got a ZERO because she didn't do the assignment. She didn't even properly CITE her source, which was the bible. There is absolutely a proper way to cite the bible, btw. And she didn't do it.

This was the assignment, btw:

She did not do almost ANYTHING this assignment required. She deserved that zero.

this was the TA's reaction, btw:

"Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting point for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive. "While you are entitled to your own personal beliefs, there is an appropriate time or place to implement them in your reflections. I encourage all students to question or challenge the course material with other empirical findings or testable hypotheses, but using your own personal beliefs to argue against the findings of not only this article, but the findings of countless articles across psychology, biology, sociology, etc. is not best practice. "You argue that abiding by normative gender roles is beneficial (it is perfectly fine to believe this), but to then say that everyone should act the same, while also saying that people aren't pressured into gendered expectations is contradictory, especially since your arguments reflect a religious pressure to act in gender-stereotypical ways. You can say that strict gender norms don't create gender stereotypes, but that isn't true by definition of what a stereotype is. Please not that acknowledging gender stereotypes does not immediately denote a negative connotation, a nuance this article discusses. "Additionally, to call an entire group of people "demonic" is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population. You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn't a vague narrative of "society pushes lies," but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved. You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn't change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that, biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed. "I implore you apply some more perspective and empathy in your work. If you personally disagree with the findings, then by all means share your criticisms, but make sure to do so in a way that is appropriate and using the methodology of empirical psychology, as aligned with the learning goals in this class. If you have any additional questions or concerns about this or would like some additional educational resources, I would be happy to discuss this further and provide you with them."

(all typos are mine, I had to type it out from screenshots in this article, which ALSO CONTAINS THE WHOLE ESSAY SHE WROTE)

Can we talk about how PERFECT this response is? This TA did their due diligence when grading this paper. The essay? It was hot garbage. I read the whole thing.

The other instructor for this course AGREED WITH THE TA!

"Samantha, I am the other instructor for this course, and I have also take the time to read your paper. I concur with [redacted] on the grade you received. This paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment. "Everyone has different ways in which they see the world, but in an academic course such as this you are being asked to support your ideas with empirical evidence and higher-level reasoning. "I find it concerning that you state at the beginning of your paper that you do not think bullying ("teasing") is a bad thing. In addition, your paper directly and harshly criticizes your peers and their opinions, which are just as valuable as yours. Disagreeing with others is fine, but there is a respectful way to go about it. That goes for discussion posts as well as reaction papers. "Please employ more thoughtfulness in your future assignment."

There is genuinely no reason, at all, for this TA to be placed on leave. The TA was just doing their goddamned job.

As someone who had to write all kinds of essays about all kinds of things in high school (and in college, but that's somehow less relevant to this). I was able to write about being pro-gay marriage (before it was legalized in the US), being pro-abortion and being LGBTQIA+ AT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL. And I still managed to get As. Do you want to know how? I used real sources and cited them. I actually followed the assignment while still getting my point across.

It is absolutely possible to write essays disagreeing with the premise without completely flouting the assignment. I promise you it's possible.

I could vent about this for HOURS. That's how much it pisses me off.

The essay is intentionally bad. You cannot write an essay that bad unintentionally, and even if you could, you would not then cry discriminating for being part of the biggest religious group in the US.

This woman saw that she had a trans woman in front of her and decided to try and ruin that trans woman's life to kickstart her own career in the reactionary talk show and podcast circuit. She already had an appearance on Fox, iirc.

First, a biangle is an actual shape with a mathematical definition. Biangles are two-dimensional: they occur on a surface, and they don’t have a thickness. A triangle has 3 sides and 3 points. A biangle has 2 sides and 2 points—so it only works in geometry based on shapes where two straight lines can intersect twice, like spherical geometry:

That crescent shape is a biangle. If you want a physical example, you could make a biangle out of an orange peel.

The Effulgent Biangle occurs on Gath. Presumably, because it emits light, we can expect that it only occurs in the atmosphere surrounding Gath, which explains why it takes the shape of a biangle: it likely triggers as an electromagnetic phenomenon between the two poles of the planet.

Problem: Zood and Zern are tubes. Here’s the map:

Biangles can’t occur on the surface of a tube. You can’t make a closed shape on the surface of a tube with only 2 points and 2 straight lines. Further, Brennan suggested that there is atmosphere dividing Zood and Zern, so that would also be in the shapes of tubes. Thus, a biangle cannot occur on the surface of Zood or Zern in the same way that the Effulgent Biangle occurs on Gath. At least, the Effulgent Biangle might not occur naturally in Zood or Zern—which is probably why Torse doesn’t believe there is a way to return to Gath.

But wait. There is a sphere in this world that might have the conditions necessary to experience the Effulgent Biangle based on electromagnetic events, such as solar light and wind. Brennan also described the moon as a "perfect" circle... which is a little ominous when combined with the fact that this is depicted as pure black, and there is no white moon on the map.

Regardless, there might be a way to use the Effulgent Biangle on that land mass to get back to Gath. We need more information to be sure.

However, the Colefactory Biangle seems to generate heat. Unlike light, heat can permeate solid matter, so the sphere where the biangle manifests doesn’t necessarily need to be limited to the atmosphere around a landmass. It might even be smaller. Maybe like one of the phenomenon we saw in the opening cinematic:

That opening may be a biangle with a very wide angle, and the color seems to match the description of the Straka energy. That might be the Colefactory Biangle at the Ectic Research Station. If they can be that small, stable,and contained (using seawater as a coolant), then it’s not a stretch to think there are Colefactory Biangles in both Zood and Zern that Comfrey has been using to go back and forth.

We need to know more about how heat and cold are distributed in Zood to be sure. Brennan has given pockets of exposition that the climate is very strange. it's possible that there sections of Zood that never get warm/cold, and perhaps they host biangles relating to that circumstance. We'll see.

That leaves the third: the Obtenebrate Biangle, which has been associated with dark, water, and mirrors. The Eyeless Hand’s materials located among Comfrey’s research at the Ramansu power station were the only thing that mentioned this one. Other factions might have info on it, but the Eyeless Hand is particularly interested in it.

One hiccup has been that Mordecestershire is a member of the Eyeless Hand, and there have been members in Zood for centuries. I think that perhaps Comfrey got The Eyeless Hand's assistance in Gath (specifically, from Mordecestershire) by offering to locate the Obtenebrate Biangle, not the Effulgent Biangle. In episode 2, he didn’t specify:

Mordecestershire: Did she find it? Max: Find what? Mordecestershire: The Biangle!

If Mordecestershire was primarily interested in the Obtenebrate Biangle rather than the Effulgent Biangle, and Comfrey had either worked with the Eyeless Hand or actually joined the organization, it would explain numerous loose ends and line up with what we know about Comfrey:

Comfrey repeatedly picked up financiers to support her research and drained them for all she could until they turned hostile.

Comfrey had "captured intelligence" and correspondence from Mordecestershire in the Ramansu power station--perhaps because it was her correspondence and they gave her these materials to study.

If Mordecestershire already knew how to intercept the Effulgent Biangle, that explains how he caught up to the Zephyr quickly as it fled the South Pole.

Mordecestershire hit the ground running in Zood and murdered Haunch Saxon with incredible efficiency; if he had previously been receiving reports via Comfrey's interplanar radio (whether from her or the Eyeless Hand) about what to expect before he made the trip (and before he lost contact), he could have been ready to do that for a while.

Mordecestershire's lack of knowledge about Ramansu doesn't undermine the previous point; if Comfrey was taking him for a ride, it makes sense that she'd have kept the Ramansu base (financed by the House of Fehujar) secret from him and the Eyeless Hand.

Comfrey didn't seek free assistance from the people of Zood and instead got additional financing from the Bank of Fehujar; perhaps she was jealously guarding her own research and didn't want to do favors, and perhaps she didn't want to leave a trail that the Eyeless Hand could easily follow when they realized she wasn't devoted to their cause.

Even if only some of those are true, it seems as though the Obtenebrate Biangle is what Comfrey is focusing on currently, though we don't know to what end.

In episode 3, at the South Pole station, Marya and Max explored some architecture that seemed to be from an old castle. Brennan gave the following description:

The center of a circular, stone chamber, lichen covering the walls inside. You see that there is a faint outline—in what be ash or soot or pure shadow—of a hand on the back side of the door, as though it was reaching for this latch: a circular iron ring latch on the back of the door. In the center of the chamber, the floor is ice, pure ice, and in the center, a massive, almost naturally formed, craggy hole that drops into darkness.

The cast hypothesized that this castle room had been airlifted and brought to Gath from Zood. At the very least, the ceramic and crystal device that was hidden in the well was made to detect light and an opposing force (presumably darkness), which is more relevant to Zood technology than Gath technology so far. Whether it was the materials or only information came from Zood, there has to be some level of travel or communication occurring in that direction. It also seems that an early hint of the Eyeless Hand was left inside the room. (This also bolsters the theory that interplanar radios had been used casually by at least Comfrey’s teams.)

In episode 8, the crew found another stone room in Ramansu power station with another well in the center with another ceramic and crystal device. Brennan did not specify if it was circular, and the players didn't ask.

However, the structure of the circular room at the South Pole is interesting with respect to the Biangles. If the Colefactory Biangle can be as small as the image from the opening cinematic, then who's to say that an artificial Effulgent (or Obtenebrate?) Biangle couldn't be created in a spherical room? What if Comfrey had been going back and forth from Ramansu in Zood and the South Pole in Gath through those rooms? We can't be sure, but it's a possibility.

However, the most tantalizing loose end about the Obtenebrate Biangle is that Comfrey's notes at Ramansu theorized that it's not "a true biangle." That's a strange way to phrase it. Currently, we do not know why these phenomena need to be in the shape of a biangle. If they could be in other shapes, then spheres would not be necessary, and perhaps it would be easier to create an artificial method of traveling between Gath, Zood, and Zern. However, presuming that something very close to the shape of a biangle is necessary, why not refer to the precise shape (triangle, square, etc), angles, points, etc?

I think the takeaway is that an imperfect biangle requires an imperfect sphere.

(We could get really pedantic that Gath is not a perfect sphere and therefore the Effulgent Biangle is not a true biangle, but the atmosphere around Gath is probably the actual sphere where the Effulgent Biangle spawns, and so the geography of the surface wouldn't impede that.)

If not for the phrase that the Obtenebrate Biangle might not be a "true" biangle, I would have expected that the shadow on the moon of Gath could be it. However, because Brennan described the moon as a "perfect circle," I have some doubts about that. Maybe it could be the location of an Effulgent Biangle, but probably not the Obtenebrate Biangle.

Which brings me to Van Chapman.

In episode 3, while Siobhan is working on the encoded message after narrowly escaping at the South Pole (when her arm went to the red for the first time), Brennan narrates, “I think you stay up working on it because to go to sleep, you’d have to close your eyes, and when you close your eyes, you see the dark.” Maybe Brennan is just getting in her head, but I don't think he would so casually connect Van to the Eyeless Hand's obsession with the Obtenebrate Biangle and also emphasize this specific fear to Van. He could have evoked any number of feelings of water, tides, etc. to instill fear of the ocean and the curse, and instead he chose darkness.

In episode 8, Monty reviewed Comfrey’s file on Van, where Comfrey had kept note of "a workroom in the inner tower," which is the stone room where all of the Eyeless Hand materials were, as well as the Eyeful Hand (which could be Van's severed hand). All that reinforces the crew's theory that the Eyeless Hand needs Van for something. The crew even hypothesized in episode 9 that maybe the patron of the trade that caused the curse is this Nameless God.

Assuming that the Colefactory Biangle is indeed the strange construction from the opening cinematic, then we can conclude that the Biangles aren't necessarily required to be as massive as the Effulgent Biangle that streaks across the sky of Gath. They can be smaller, about the size of a submersible or Straka. If the rooms at the South Pole and Ramansu are methods of creating artificial biangles, then even the size of a room.

There is a very common imperfect sphere that features what looks like a biangle on its surface, and it is primarily used to process light.

Gimme some of that yeller

Now every time I notice myself taking things too seriously, my ears are filled with the sound of Siobhan's voice bellowing as Van Chapman. Encouraging me to consider, does this need to be taken this seriously? Can I have a sense of whimsy?

IT ONLY TOOK 2 HOURS!!!

full screenshot below the cut:

Disabled people often die from a lack of support. A lot of disability aids are not a luxury, but a basic need in order to live.

“Well what happens if—” people die. People hurt themselves. People hurt others. Disabled people don’t magically become abled if our needs aren’t met.

If a bedbound quadriplegic is caught in a housefire, and there’s nobody there to save them, they’ll probably die. They won’t magically become able-bodied out of sheer will.

If a nonspeaking/nonverbal autistic is denied access to alternative methods of communication, they’ll suffer in silence. They won’t spontaneously become capable of speech.

Tabira City!

The first of the tableaus in Cloudward Ho - these MASSIVE illustrations were a collaboration: I did the layout, lineart, and color keys. Character designs by Simon Roy (@simonroy.bsky.social) Background colors by @domirine and Character colors by @galacticjonah ♥

Here's some chopped versions to enable closer inspection - get your magnifying glasses, everyone! ♥