On the Shores of Metahemeralism

A place for random ramblings about whatever I'm currently obsessed with (currently rereading the Locked Tomb - other common topics includes Arcane, Disco Elysium, as well as real-life politics and history)

[importantpics]

[capitalismsbiggesthater]

Gideon and Harrow at Canaan House

[lukeofe]

Some of you may not want to hear this, but sometimes autism accommodation means giving that socially awkward person who said something that came off as passive aggressive or uncomfortable the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone is capable of reading social rules and cues effectively, I thought this was autism 101.

[marzipanandminutiae]

you can always ask for clarification or (NICELY) explain how it came off to you, remember!

I have an autistic coworker who used to say really uncomfortable things to museum guests while making small talk. like bringing up active, controversial revolutions in their countries if they were international, and such. finally, after a group of Hawaiian guys got visibly angry when he asked if they were "in the military or just rich" to be able to live there- meant to be a cost of living joke -I said, "hey, personally, I try not to talk politics with guests. sometimes it may upset them and we don't get paid enough to deal with that"

he looked thoughtful and said, "oh, I never considered it that way." turns out he was just a geopolitics nerd and didn't realize people might react emotionally to what he saw as a purely intellectual discussion

he hasn't done it since

[vivisofthevalley]

“i hate misty because she destroyed the plane transmitter and is probably what got them stuck out there” yall are a bunch of ungrateful bitches me personally i say a prayer of thanks to the quigley before every meal for allowing me to witness season three fagged up shauna shipman

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

O certe necessarium Nebulosae peccatum, quod Jacobae morte deletum est! O felix culpa, quæ talem ac tantum meruit habere Ductricem!

[holocrone]

ANDOR 1.05 | The Axe Forgets

[troublingtribble]

this show is one of the most important pieces of anti-fascist media ever made and I really truly believe that

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

*takes the hand of a period drama writer gently* A queen consort is not a queen regnant. A dowager queen is not a queen regnant either.

There is very little intrinsic institutional power in queenship. The power a consort, dowager, or queen mother has depends mostly on how much the reigning sovereign (usually a man) is willing to grant her. Needing a queen to serve as regent is exceptionally rare, and the regent is more often a male relative.

I know this is a bit of a bummer. I'm sorry.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

For clarity:

Queen regnant: woman who rules in her own right, not on behalf of someone else.

Regent: Someone who temporarily assumes the powers of the monarch on account of the monarch being too young or too incapacitated to govern.

Queen consort: Woman who is married to the monarch.

Dowager queen: Woman who was married to the monarch. The monarch is dead, and she is owed support as his widow.

Queen mother: Woman who is the mother of the monarch. Usually the dowager queen, though there are exceptions if there isn't a straight line of succession.

[stracciatellino]

France actually had a fairly long streak of queen mother regents, particularly in the early modern period with the two Medici queens (Catherine multiple times in the late 16th century as she had multiple children ascend to the throne in succession, Mary in the 1610s) and Anne of Austria for a full 18 years from 1643 to 1661. All of them were also powerful political players in their own right, with Mary of Medici even going to war against her own son multiple time after he ended her regency. That's especially interesting considering that France's succession rule was strictly patrilineal (that's kinda why the Hundred Years' War happened). Conversely, Britain has had multiple regnant queens but almost never had a queen as regent (only example I can think of is Isabella of France, lmk if I forgot someone).

As far as surprisingly good times to be a queen though, it's hard to beat 18th century Russia, which saw multiple consort Zarinas stage a coup against their own husbands to actually take power, most famously Catherine the Great. You wouldn't think of Imperial Russia as an early bastion of feminism (and to be clear it very much wasn't), and yet!

So while op is broadly right, there are ways for queens (and more generally, women with a close family connection to the reigning king) to play a major political role, and those can sometimes defy the conventional stereotypes of their time and place. Studying real historical examples can be a great way to make your fiction writing both more believable and more unique!

[stracciatellino]

I've been listening to both "leftist" and "liberal" (those are vague and not super helpful labels but let's not get into that, hopefully everyone knows what I mean) commentary on US politics for a long time now. Been pretty thoroughly disillusioned with both for a while, but the fresh new hell that's been unleashed since January 2025 has really been the nail in the coffin.

Some naive part of me was really hoping the actual present reality of a fascist consolidation of federal power - which has included, among other things, masked thugs murdering people in the streets with impunity, a takeover of independent media by oligarchs friendly to the regime, and most recently, the legalized mass disenfranchisement of minorities by a hideously corrupt Supreme Court - would have convinced everyone it was time to set our differences aside and form a united front. A popular one, even, we might perhaps say.

I've seen some people meet the moment, but overwhelmingly it's the same old mutual recrimination about who's more at fault for 2024 and the dangers of letting "the wrong" kind of Democrat win. And by golly, there's plenty to hate about Democrats! There's very few of the current crop I can bring myself to respect, let alone feel excitement for. I don't like Newsom. I don't like Platner. I don't like Jeffries. I don't like Ro Khanna. I don't like Schumer. I don't like El Sayed. All of these people have dropped the ball in various ways and can be said to be part of the problem in a real way. But can I bring myself to feel passionately about any of them at this point in time, while the Trump admin is labeling pro-trans organization as domestic terrorists and proclaiming "we will find you and we will kill you"? When he's currently conducting an illegal war that has killed civilians, plunged a whole country into misery, and threatens to collapse the entire global economy? Am I supposed to be invested in whom Dems nominate for Senate in Michigan or Maine or wherever when their Republican opponent is going to continue to aid and abet all of this? I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm just. I'm sorry. We can talk about various factions' faults and flaws - there are many and I have a lot of thoughts on them. But can we please start from the premise that the MAGA cult needs to be stopped at all costs and that no matter who wins this or that primary or what stupid or incendiary comment this or that politician made, when the time comes we will all be standing together against it no matter our differences? Can we please get our fucking priorities in order for the first time since 2016??

I'm afraid I know the answer, and it's not the one I was hoping for when this nightmare began.

[randomalistic]

I think making character playlists is good for you and connected to analysis skills in a very fun way and low investment way. I know its seen as quite trivial but to me it operates the same way looking at a lot of art builds ur skills passively. Yummy enrichment activity

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Lincoln in the Bardo ma per quel cimitero a Roma dove sia Andreotti che Togliatti sono sepolti

[marzipanandminutiae]

never forget that the US had incredibly widespread public transit- electrical, in the case of many local elevated rail and trolley systems -by the 1890s

if anyone ever tells you we can't do it because "the country is too big for that" or whatever, they're full of shit. because we not only could, we DID

we definitely could again- but for auto lobbyists, and conservatives taking funding from infrastructure

[beguilingcorpse]

we talk far too little about augustine canonically giving ianthe cooking lessons aboard the mithraeum. like hell’s kitchen except you almost have to feel bad for gordon ramsay

[oh-jod-dammit]

Honestly I think about this and their friendship in general so much. Like yeah he trained her with swords and could be harsh about it and threatened to stop teaching her if she didn't improve in time. (You know. Because if she was going to be more liability than asset in the RB fight that they were all afraid either way would be their last then he needed to focus on himself and the others who could fight and keep her out of harm's way until after.)

He taught her to cook. She fawned over him and played teacher's pet and whatever else to endear herself and it absolutely was the typical Third social maneuvering to gain a stronger ally but she also genuinely found his stories fascinating, and tells Harrow that part when he's not around too. They just have a similar blend of fancy bullshit and mean blasé humor. She's the first to jump in behind him critiquing Mercy's art. She takes up smoking because she think he looks so cool.

He still wants to involve her in the fight but let her stay back safer away from the stoma at the end and Mercy accuses him of swaddling her like a squalling baby.

His brother was his other half and from the sound of it might have been a lot like Corona. (The peacemaker, the diplomat urging everyone at Canaan to stay united, useless but a darling (and actually very useful), a great big bimbo (smarter than she lets on), the banker, the woman accused of selling her birthright for economics. Guy who killed himself to force Lyctorhood, girl who apparently threatened suicide to coerce Ianthe their whole lives.) Augustine is what her Bad Ending looks like.

How many traded stories were just about their siblings? "You should see my sister." "You always say that."

She kicks him into the stoma and saves John but if she hadn't it might have killed her twin too and I really have to imagine he'd be disappointed but Get It. And then she still speaks highly of him. She emphasizes his power to Pal in TUG. She quotes "poor old Augustine" unprompted in NtN.

They were friends. She genuinely admired him. He taught her to cook. And no one talks about it.

[stardusted-penguin]

I’d rather carry you.

•

Something about the ghosts of the 6th.

They make me so sick😭

A big thank you to Josh for typesetting this, rendering it and essentially making my silly little drawings look better than I could’ve made them. Please follow him on Twitter (@BeAstronomica1) and check out his work!

[stracciatellino]

I'm not usually one to go "I want to wipe my memory so I can experience it anew" about works I've liked, but two years or so since I first played it I can safely say that's how I feel about Disco Elysium.

It's probably something to do with the format. With a show or a book, the beautiful, poetic, meaningful writing is presented to me without effort, and I can always enjoy it again at my leisure. Sure, it won't feel like the first time, but every rewatch/reread will bring with it direct reminders of my first experience.

Disco Elysium is different because it made me work for every writing gem I uncovered - I had to actively go and seek it out. And boy, how I wanted to. I've never felt such a burning desire to explore every nook and cranny of this strange, wonderful, terrifying world. Every new discovery was a thrill and a joy. It was addictive, to the point of kinda fucking up my sleep schedule.

And now it's over, and no replay experience is ever going to compare to that. The next best thing, though, is to see my friends (@canastigone @mayasaura @lucillewalterblack-main) experience it for the first time!

[apolladay]

Setting aside any positive or negative nationalistic feelings, and ignoring the subject matter of the lyrics, do you think your country's anthem is a good song?

They should be dropping it in the club

It's great

It's pretty good, maybe not the best

It's just okay

It kinda sucks

It sucks definitively

I genuinely believe it's the worst one out there

Nuance/other/my anthem is bald

Voting ended onMay 12

[stracciatellino]

Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán ousted after 16 years in European electoral earthquake

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has conceded defeat after what he called a ″painful″ election result, ending 16 years in power for a d

Viktor Orban was the role model for the new crop of wannabe fascist autocrats across the world. Since 2010, he systematically undermined the rule of law, taking over the judiciary and the media with the help of his oligarch buddies. He used his power to turn Hungary into a banana republic, lining his pockets while living standards stagnated. And of course, he turned his country into a Russian vassal that used its position within the EU and NATO to undermine them. But that was fine because he was "keeping the scary migrants away" and "sticking it to Brussels". It's no wonder everyone from JD to Meloni to Milei to Le Pen went all in for him: he was the living embodiment of everything they wanted to accomplish.

After 16 long years, his reign is finally over. The Hungarian people have finally had enough and decided to send him home in a landslide. Such a massive landslide in fact that he couldn't even try to steal it. This is a momentous shift in the European balance of power and one that will have immediate consequences, for example in terms of support for Ukraine. It is also proof that none of these tinpot dictators are as unbeatable as they'd like you to believe. Let's all take notes, and hopefully we will send out own fascist overlords packing very soon too.

[stracciatellino]

Hungary's new PM Magyar sworn in after landslide victory over Orbán

Nearly a month ago Péter Magyar steered his Tisza party to a landslide victory, sweeping away 16 years of rule by Viktor Orbán.

At last!! Change has come to Hungary.

[yuck-pfaugh]

What is the Biggest No-No in HtN—?

serial killing planets

grooming a vulnerable teenager with tea and bikkies

multiple brutal attempts to murder said vulnerable teenager

someone else mercy killing that same vulnerable teenager

making static noises at the Saint of Joy

extinguishing Dominicus as a side effect of killing God

shoving your lover out an airlock

reuniting with her by means of necrophilia

SOUP

something quite else (please elaborate in the tags!)

Voting ended onMay 8

[crustystherat]

Random thing for people to consider is that since Laika is the saint of one way trips should Felicette be known as the saint of safe landings since she did make it back to the ground safely

[somefishycat]

tu LANCES félicette ? tu lances son corps comme la fusée ? oh ! oh ! prison pour les scientifiques ! prison pour les scientifiques pendant Un Mille Ans !

[bug-yogurt]

You can understand the French perfectly fine with only context but the English translation I got still had me floored

[grynwood]

"I don't let go. It's my one thing"