GNU Terry Pratchett

i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out

brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad

Thinking about that one part of monstrous regiment where Polly talks about how both the igors and the nugganites view the body as clothing. And how that connects to the themes of the book of freedom of gender expression vs the harshly enforced gender roles of the nugganites.

The igors can change their body parts around, just like you can with clothing. "You" is not confined to the physical parts you have, but rather a more metaphysical concept. Body parts are just another facet of presentation to the igors, including gender presentation.

The nugganites share the same idea of a metaphysical soul, yet they view the clothes you wear as a part of you. A devout follower must conform to strict standards in order to not be an abomination. The clothes represent a projection of their true self, yet ultimately only fulfil a goal of not violating a strict, arbitrary code. To the nugganites, your body, sex, gender, and presentation are all unchanging truths about yourself that you must constantly project out to the world.

Do you get me.

Someone: I made it with my bare hands!

The StarKid part of my brain for the last 10 years: He’s got bear hands?!?!

Today’s society is no longer Foucault’s disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. The society of the 21st century is no longer disciplinary, but a society of the performance. Nor are its inhabitants called ‘subjects of obedience’, but ‘subjects of performance’. These subjects are entrepreneurs of themselves.

Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation. This is much more effective than the exploitation by the others, because it is accompanied by a feeling of freedom. The exploiter is the same exploited. Victim and executioner can no longer differentiate. This self-referentiality generates a paradoxical freedom, which, because of the structures of obligation immanent to it, becomes violence […] In this society of obligation, each one carries with him his forced labor field.

What proves problematic is not individual competition per se, but rather its self-referentiality, which escalates into absolute competition. That is, the achievement-subject competes with itself; it succumbs to the destructive compulsion to outdo itself over and over, to jump over its own shadow. This self-constraint, which poses as freedom, has deadly results..

No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression. The achievement-subject finds itself fighting with itself. The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself.

Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise. People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.

― Byung-Chul Han, extracts from The Burnout Society

Heaven-versus-hell type tabletop RPG where the lore is written in such away as to leave the reader almost, but not quite, certain that the author intended to use the word "seraphic" to describe the militarised forces of heaven, and that it's probably just a weirdly reliable autocorrect error that the actual text consistently says "sapphic".

The paradox of tolerance is only a paradox if you think of tolerance as some sacred and unconditional moral duty. Some ultimate and absolute law with no exceptions, and if you ever slip into the sin of intolerance, you must repent yourself and beg for forgiveness. Yeah no fuck that. Tolerance is a social contract. You're in the game as an equal player for as long as you play by the same rules as everyone else, and if you don't, your ass is fucking out. You're not entitled to the same respect you won't give others.

"Oh so you all tolerate each other just because you tolerate each other, but if I want to destroy you, then all of a sudden you want to destroy me?" Literally yes. That's the gist of it. What's not clicking. This equation is so simple it barely counts as math.

Je suis totalement d'accord si tu initie un fandom Les lames du cardinal ! Je n'ai lu que le premier tome pour l'instant, mais je le trouve génial ! C'est décevant qu'il y ait si peu de contenu en ligne à propos de ce livre...

Pourquoi faut-il encore que j'aille me fourrer dans un fandom anglophone, hein ? J'sais plus comment on écrit en anglais, j'ai oublié, et pis j'aime mieux écrire en français d'abord. Je vais finir par initier un fandom “Les lames du cardinal” ou n'importe quoi où il y aura des francophones, na !

headcanon: there’s a running gag in season 3 where people keep asking Muriel what happened to Mr Fell and after they tell everyone he’s in heaven the people keep offering their condolences, much to Muriel’s confusion.