The gods you worship are essentially part of yourself.
That might sound like a controversial statement. Maybe it is one. But I'll try to elaborate.
Gods as external entities are big players. They wield big powers, have big intentions. These days, their role as entities that serve to explain how things are happening is at an end. It's not Thor's chariot that makes thunder, and it's not Zeus throwing bolts that are lightning. Nature and how it works are on many levels understood, at least to the degree that we can say that there's some form of regularity that we can model that does not rely on the will and doing of gods. It works better that way, too.
That scientific method behind it is a very good way to ask questions, and in its course eliminate human biases that prefer answers we like in favour of answers that reliably deliver good predictions. This method is good at sussing out "how". It is not really applicable to "why", though. When trying to answer "why" we come to strange things like the anthropic principle, that asserts in smug circular reasoning, or over reified strangeness like the many worlds hypothesis. Reification of scientific ideas sounds as good to us these days as did deification back when. But when it comes to that, we have to ask ourselves - even if every possible quantum state belongs to a real, existing world, is it even feasable to think of quantum states that encode even a single human decision? And then why am I in this particular one and not the other ones, and what about the myriad viable combinations that do not correspond to a coherent decision? Unless we're doing an anthropic principle again on this, we're stuck. Which we wanted to avoid. Bummer.
So we're left with a space for gods after all, a space that has been methodically yet(?) unclaimed. This space is our relationship to the whys of the universe. This space is partially, but not wholly to be conquered with reason, because if we try, we are still thrown back to a divine power of a human being - to create sense where none is. Or choose to despair and surrender. As such, this space is not a fully rational space. So the nature of your gods is not to be fully rationally understood. It is a deeply personal, emotional, intimate connection, and can only be understood as such in your own capacity - since the other half is held by the respective god, bigger than you, strange to you, beyond your scope of understanding. As with your fellow human being, but exponentially more so.
What you do understand is an image of that god. Your personal god. An artifact of your understanding. Quintessentially, if true, a projection of that god into you. Part of you.
This has interesting consequences. Especially when hate comes into the equation with the god in question. Why do you worship something about yourself that you hate? Why is that worship tied to hate of someone on your own level of existence? That hate comes, in both cases, from you, and you should ask yourself why hate is essential in answering your questions about the universe, your place in it, and yourself.
Time to update my #introduction! (No, I did not move instances.)
I'm #queer in enough ways to qualify as bowl of letter soup, and go by ae/aer primarily and she/her pronouns. I am #polyamorous, with a heavy preference for the kitchen table variety.
I'm neurodivergent; diagnosed with cPTSD, ADHD, and strong suspicion of ASD - your basic, complicated auDHD-package. I'm #complicated, #obnoxious, don't have a good grasp on human interaction, and generally speak like a pedantic textbook.
I'm a polytheistic #pagan and turned my back on the Christianity that my father preached - I guess it's true what they say about the kids of the preacher and the miller's cattle.
I am #German by nationality, #Frisian by heritage, and after moving through Germany quite a bit currently live in the #LowerRhine region.
I speak #German and #English confidently, can understand enough #Dutch to possibly not get lost too much, and have a pitiful grasp of #EastFrisian. Thanks to #TheHu, I want to learn #Mongolian at some point.
I love #writing (if I can get myself to pick up the plotted out, in parts drafted 4 novel project again) and #photography. I have a complicated relationship with #sewing that contains a lot of profanity in the process.
I like #scifi and #fantasy, and would give a lot for a resurrected #Pratchett. The world needs his kind of anger now more than ever. I also love things #space! Always a bonus: a well-built #villain or not squeaky clean character.
I was born in the last year of the 70s (which would be 1980 😆). Talk nerdy to me.
EDIT: Tiny updates June 2024; neurodivergence update July 2025
My posts are missing something very sorely, and that's me being #lewd on main! Because I am that kind of person, too! So have a very small selection of my absolutely favourite photoshoot I did, even though the lighting equipment sucked and the room was too small.
We need to understand something really basic about the #queer community as a whole that pretty much sets us apart from pretty much most other minorities: we are by our very nature fractured, diverse, and spread thin.
That is because we do generally not grow up among members of our own community. Gay guys don't often have two dads, the trans kids don't just come from trans parents. Discovering who and what we are is an often painful, generally harrowing look into ourselves that those around us are not confronted with, and commonly, an isolated experiece at first. Our self discovery is part of who we are. At best, there's a family member instead of growing up with a shared culture and tradition among peers.
Culture and tradition? We come from all walks of life. Our commonalities are being reduced to "pervy sex stuff", generally at best tragic, often vilified, and mostly grossly misrepresented role models in media, and the struggle for either to not happen anymore, plus getting on par with the cis-het-allo-mononormative majority. Not ahead, no privileges, just on par.
In this light, easy access to the internet has been a blessing. The words, the ideas, the communities could grow an equivalent to a locality that by definition, we couldn't have before, apart from the handful of other weirdos wherever we lived, and there was no guarantee that you'd get along with any of them - if they showed themselves, even, because often, who we are is also completely invisible, or at least hidden behind shibboleths that discovering yourself on your own, you simple wouldn't know.
Queer identity is one of being born into a secret society that you as a member have to discover as rite of induction. If you fail, misery tends to visit you again and again, without having a good explanation for it, dissatisfaction, and shame from an unknown source.
In this light, the push to #AgeVerification for social media and internet access is especially awful. With "queer" being equated to sex stuff exclusively, queerness is effectively banned in the era of life where teens are supposed to discover love, and have first, clumsy experiences. But while the cishets generally experience queerness from porn and get their fingers sticky to what they view as fetish, it is so much more. Especially for trans kids, research on who and what they are is postponed to a time when devastating damage is already taking place, and a lot of it in fact irreversible, or a huge effort and cost to correct.
It will deprive queer youth of finding greater community, and put them at the mercy of parents that generally at best often have no clue, and at worst are openly hostile. For the queer community, the "little gay people on the phone" that they often won't be able to meet ever in meatspace can in fact be their closest peers, and a lifeline. Isolating people is a common tactic in indoctrination. Isolating queer youth is an attempt at conversion therapy.
You're venturing into unknown territory. You might have seen things from afar, and heard stories. But you, on your journey, have no idea where it will go, what you will encounter, and where you will end up.
No amount of preparation will be enough or adequate. There may be some things that are common enough that general advice can help you around. But mostly, you will find that your transition will be one of surprises. The constant is "expect the unexpected", so the best preparation may be an attitude of flexibility at what presents itself to you.
There is no way to be "sure enough" of anything. Professionals, your social circle, even you yourself will come up with arbitrary demands of you being sure about doing something. How could you be. These are all things that you've been denied. You're a kid raised on vinegar and mustard, and now you're wandering into an All You Can Eat icecream, sweets, chocolate, and cake buffet. Of course you can't be sure that this specific ice cream is what you want, you don't know how it tastes, or if something else will taste better! All you can trust is the longing when you encounter something. Have a taste, but don't feel compelled to stick with it. Have two or three tastes, because the strange taste might have to settle in your brain.
At some point, you will find a place in all this where you want to sit. Because that place is fine. Are you done yet? Who knows? Transition never ends, as long as you breathe and allow yourself to experience and grow. After all, we find those old people the coolest who try something new when society deems them "too old" for anything but lounging in front of the TV wearing beige. Statistically speaking, if you transition, you're already a total outlier. It makes no sense for you to conform, and it's a recipe for unhappiness if you try, because you're years behind the curve of "should be". So lean into that, and go your own way.
@tombofnull@voidwood.online My own things consist of: - Optical drive in an ICY-Box 5 1/4" external frame - EAC to rip CDs (combine with codec of your choice to get from WAV to compressed format) - mp3tag to tag stuff with all the things you want/need - I absolutely hate "media library" type things, because they inevitably mess up stuff, or don't handle music vs audiobooks well, so I have things in a file structure at home on a NAS. Very barebones, but easily accessible without specialized software. - foobar2000 can play things well from this, as it has a file structure view - to go, I have a decent-ishly big SD card in my phone. But honestly... you can put a lot of compressed audio on even just a 128GB. Bonus, no draw on data, no dependence on connection that way, no lag, no buffering, no ads. - speaking of phone, the Android player I use is Musicolet. - I just copy files over.
@tombofnull@voidwood.online Music discovery: ... at home, I have a very neat radio box that streams internet radio stations via wifi. Choice of radio station is of course dependant on taste, but there are good ones for nearly every taste. My personal favourite is "Radio Dunkle Welle", and if I hear something I like while doing the dishes, a quick glance tells me what that is, and then I can investigate further. Preferably, the interesting artist has their own distribution channel.
I'm sitting here and don't know what to do. Has my wife been abducted and replaced? Has she a partner on the side without telling me? Has she catfished me after all on a slow burn? You might ask yourself, why do you think that? Well, I caught @GoldenRetrieverGF enjoying "Münchener Freiheit"... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchener_Freiheit_(band)🤔
#neurodivergence is when you have thoughts about the statements "5 is the most even odd number" and "6 is the most odd even number" other than "That doesn't even make sense!"
The gods you worship are essentially part of yourself.
That might sound like a controversial statement. Maybe it is one. But I'll try to elaborate.
Gods as external entities are big players. They wield big powers, have big intentions. These days, their role as entities that serve to explain how things are happening is at an end. It's not Thor's chariot that makes thunder, and it's not Zeus throwing bolts that are lightning. Nature and how it works are on many levels understood, at least to the degree that we can say that there's some form of regularity that we can model that does not rely on the will and doing of gods. It works better that way, too.
That scientific method behind it is a very good way to ask questions, and in its course eliminate human biases that prefer answers we like in favour of answers that reliably deliver good predictions. This method is good at sussing out "how". It is not really applicable to "why", though. When trying to answer "why" we come to strange things like the anthropic principle, that asserts in smug circular reasoning, or over reified strangeness like the many worlds hypothesis. Reification of scientific ideas sounds as good to us these days as did deification back when. But when it comes to that, we have to ask ourselves - even if every possible quantum state belongs to a real, existing world, is it even feasable to think of quantum states that encode even a single human decision? And then why am I in this particular one and not the other ones, and what about the myriad viable combinations that do not correspond to a coherent decision? Unless we're doing an anthropic principle again on this, we're stuck. Which we wanted to avoid. Bummer.
So we're left with a space for gods after all, a space that has been methodically yet(?) unclaimed. This space is our relationship to the whys of the universe. This space is partially, but not wholly to be conquered with reason, because if we try, we are still thrown back to a divine power of a human being - to create sense where none is. Or choose to despair and surrender. As such, this space is not a fully rational space. So the nature of your gods is not to be fully rationally understood. It is a deeply personal, emotional, intimate connection, and can only be understood as such in your own capacity - since the other half is held by the respective god, bigger than you, strange to you, beyond your scope of understanding. As with your fellow human being, but exponentially more so.
What you do understand is an image of that god. Your personal god. An artifact of your understanding. Quintessentially, if true, a projection of that god into you. Part of you.
This has interesting consequences. Especially when hate comes into the equation with the god in question. Why do you worship something about yourself that you hate? Why is that worship tied to hate of someone on your own level of existence? That hate comes, in both cases, from you, and you should ask yourself why hate is essential in answering your questions about the universe, your place in it, and yourself.
Jenifry did not expect her life to end when she climbed up the small stool to hang some herbs to dry in her hut in the small village of Glenglass in the hilly woods of Niston.
Well. It did not literally end, but it sure changes everything when you get hit over the head, get bound and gagged, get carried to a creepy old sacrificial site in the woods, and wake up as gift of the village to placate a roaming werewolf. Not that Jenifry believed in werewolves, anyway.
She gets rescued by Elena, a knight of the order of the Argentae, who doesn't just believe in werewolves, but also hunts them - a lot of things Jenifry thought to be superstition turn out to be anything but.
With her small life in the small village not an option to return to, she follows Elena into the world, seeking a place where her talents as healer might come in useful. She hears of the Circle of Healers in Weslyn, and parts company with her rescuer, who remains on the werewolf's trail.
But is that the end of her adventures, when she just so happens to turn to Elena's sister Silvana to get her where she wants to go? Surely not, because adventure seems to find the sisters wherever they go...
Will Jenifry find her new life? What is up with that werewolf? Why is Elena so singleminded about that? How can a religious, noble knight be the sister of a barefoot rogue of the traveling folk? Will the world at some point make sense again? #writing#WIP#PinnedForReference
That Frisian Girl-ish
