professional crafter of artisanal queer tatterpigs | I'm the monster wreathed in smoke and orange blossoms


I looked at all the trees and didn’t know what to do.

A box made out of leaves.
What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else.
I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.

From the landscape: a sense of scale.
From the dead: a sense of scale.

I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.
Everything casts a shadow.

Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.

-Detail of the Woods, Richard Siken

  • Liza opens the game by breaking into Cora's sanctum with a snake, catching her while she was asleep. After some skeptical conversation about who she is and consulting her notes about who Liza was, she asks Liza to take her to this place that she resurrected the Architect at. Liza takes her through a side path using her snake- a tunnel reminiscent of Basilisk's burrow- and enters the labyrinth after exposing Cora to some truly rancid vibes1. They enter the mausoleum seed/core/heart of the labyrinth and find the open sarcophagus in which the Architect was interred, and the Architect makes her move. The mausoleum doors shut; guardian dryads made from insect and barbed wire emerge from the walls, and they drag Liza into the sarcophagus and force her inside, tearing at her with their barbs and crushing one of her hands in the process. Cora is brushed aside and is understandably panicked before the Architect finally enters the room and reintroduces herself to Cora. This would be a much messier conversation were Cora able to remember the Liza that was just interred in a sarcophagus, but instead she talks with the Architect and she assures Cora that she had a concussion, and gives her a faked and modified version of her notes about the people she knows. The Architect attempts to lead Cora to her office, but she slips away.
  • Ovida broods some more in the Grotto and is joined by He, Death again. They talk more about her life and her growth and how she's afraid of losing the spring, but not sure if she still needs it, and how other people think something is wrong with her. The Headmaster is supportive, and Ovida turns the conversation to Jasper and Jade. He inquires about how Jasper is doing, and Ovida asks him to describe his relationship with Jade. He, Death invokes a Transition to do so and we read the quoted poem. When we return to them, they talk more about her nature and her relationship with Theremin and Mara, and Death speculates that they are not beyond her reach as she and the Academy are growing into each other. Ovida doesn't disagree, but is worried that she may lose herself in it if she did. She also considers introducing him to Pitohui. She also asks whether he has friends, and gives her thoughts on the topic:

"I know I'm something strange. I know people get annoyed with me—I don't know how to be any different than this, so I try to act like I don't notice, but I've learned how to tell—you know, how to tell when they wish I wasn't there. But you talk to me. And you talk with me—about things that are beautiful and terrible and painful, and things that are beautiful because they're terrible and painful. We talk about those vast and lonely things... and then we talk about things that are small and that we can hold close. We drink sangria, or whatever else I can find that we've never had before. I don't think there's anyone else besides Theremin and Mara who has seen so many different parts or versions of me—the shattered versions and the growing ones.

"—And also, it's because you didn't just let me come to the Academy—you let me leave, too; you didn't mind that there are things in the world that are too precious to me for me to not make them part of me. You're still always trying to teach me, but it's always been alright for me to learn something different from what you hoped I would.

"You didn't have to do any of that. You didn't have to always have a little table beneath a tree ready for me whenever I came. You didn't have to be kind or patient. I know a lot of people—maybe actually most of them?—have only ever seen you be cruel. Probably you didn't really have to be cruel so much either. Probably you're even worse at talking to regular people than I am, since I at least know I'm bad at it. But it still makes me really happy that you're kind to me. It's important for monsters to be here for each other, because of all the times when no one else will."

  • Liza, currently trapped in a small dark stone box, panics and then gets angry, calling on her still extant ties to the principle of growth to use plants to fill in and replace functionality from her wounds. This works, but is still very uncomfortable for her since it doesn't technically fix anything.
  • Cora, drawn by having just been traumatized, her notes, and for some reason not having been close enough to Valter2 for him to get caught in her curse. She tells him she's having memory problems and asks for her address, and he gives her several copies in case she loses or forgets any. Arriving at her own home for the first time in five or so days, she knocks, and is greeted by Yulia, who immediately hugs her and who she kisses back. Yulia pulls her inside and tells her her worries and what's been going on and reminds Cora of how she wasn't alone during all the horrible things that have been inflicted on her. Yulia makes her promise that she won't do something like this again. Eventually the two of them emotionally recover enough for Cora to call Aysu and ask her to get in touch with Ildrasteia. She says she will, but suspects they're already nearby- at which point they announce themself from one of Cora's chairs. Cora restrains herself from trying to kill them and calls them cruel; they do not deny it, but promise that they will hold their end of the deal- when she confronts the Headmaster directly, the faculty will not interfere (though there may be some skirmishes beforehand). Their curse broken, they leave, and Cora remembers what happened to Liza; she immediately takes off, and Yulia comes with her. They travel to the Grotto to find Ovida, and find her braiding snowdrops into He, Death's hair, at which point Cora realizes that Ovida told Death about her plans. Ovida assures her that she told him it as a secret, and he can keep a secret, but the urgency of the Liza affair overrides further argument. The three of them leave, leaving the Headmaster to his own devices. They then travel to Pitohui/Klyatva and Opal, interrupting a moment between the three of them, and attempt to leave, but Pitohui takes none of this and comes with them.

Under the labyrinth there is a vault and tomb, the place where the Architect stores her most precious treasures, suspended over deep and dark emptiness. It is a dead place, a still place, a silent place, and the four disturb it to break open the grave their friend is buried in.

This is not a place for the living, and dead gods stir. The corpse of a Mystery, a past and present love, uncoils. All that is sure dissolves to uncertainty. The floor gives out.

So they fall


  1. discussion is had regarding liza's sick snake tattoo that protects her from aspects of her wife, and how it is in some ways similar to a womb tattoo

  2. owner of the premier cafe in old molder. seriously cora, he keeps catering your assorted life events and parties and is friends with all your friends.



geostatonary
@geostatonary

Surprise! Tonight was our second double feature of this year's parsha cycle and BOY does the two portions go places.
Continuing our current discussion of cleanliness and uncleanliness in Leviticus, we explore the following topics:

  • Pregnancy: we get an interesting peek into some contemporary medical knowledge around how they thought the fetus developed, as well as another commonly cited discussion from Ibn Ezra used to support abortion rights, how there are three partners involved in childbirth, and the question of why a woman who gave birth would need to offer a sin offering in particular
  • Leprosy (110 verses, unskippable): in addition to the variety of skin conditions you'd expect, we learn that cloth, animal skins, and even houses can contract leprosy. Some of the sages argued that those could only do so in Israel as a sort of manifestation of sins that would occur after certain conditions were met. We also learn that male pattern baldness is fine.
  • Ejaculation: the sages have a lot of descriptions of the color and consistency of cum in this one. Really funny to read when you're transfeminine and none of the descriptions given describe your cum.
  • Menstruation: we don't get descriptions of menstrual blood here, though they may have gotten it out of their system during the pregnancy discussion earlier in which they compare the blood issued by a woman to her "seed" due to the aforementioned medical theories of the time.

A recurring conversation we had was: who are these actually for? When and why would they become relevant? A lot of what we came back to is that these seem mostly relevant for the priesthood and their families, given much of these are noted to be about respecting the sanctity of the Holy Place. There was also a lot of discussion about the sort of implied medical rationale behind some of these rules, but also about how the medical rationalization is actually pretty misleading if you treat it as a sort of general principle for interpretation. Incidentally, the house leprosy was interesting because it sort of sets up a concept of building codes, namely that a house needs to not have weird shit growing in the walls to be habitable, which we drew back to some earlier discussions that were had about slavery and worker's rights in previous parsha.

Anyways, time for some quotes.

We weren't kidding about the old medical theories, but also Ramban informs us that it takes three to make a kid and then proceeds to only name two. ramban on babies Why does the woman give a sin offering after birth? According to Ibn Ezra, it's because when they give birth they swear off sex because fuck this i.e. on cursing during birthing Ramban describes the seed of women and makes it sound sick as hell ramban fountains of blood a scaly affection, you say 👀 the torah on scalies There was also a ritual that was described when purifying leperous people and objects involving two birds, cedar, pure water, and hyssop, where one bird was sacrificed and the second bird was dipped in a mixture of the water and blood alongside the cedar and hyssop before being let free. It was really interesting to see a more explicitly sort of mystic rite that occurs outside the bounds of how temple sacrifices are typically carried out! Also really wild because it provides thematic and textual support for how I named one of my tabletop characters that I never knew about before. free bird ramban on the ritual function of releasing the bird

Meanwhile in the haftarah, I found my twitter handle and a strong statement on the nature of horses worms are immune to death horseflesh


geostatonary
@geostatonary

Today... we actually didn't have study! It's unfortunate, but a natural consequence of having traveled 10 or so hours to Indiana and then back again to witness the total solar eclipse on 4/8. It's a shame, because while most of tazria is about leprosy, it's got some interesting ideas going on about what precisely can even get leprosy; next week, we'll get into some more of those ideas as well as some of the weirder rituals behind it.

In the meantime though, let's talk a bit about blessings.

With one notable exception, it is a Jewish practice to recite blessings before performing mitzvah1 or after witnessing certain kinds of thing; the general idea is that they function to sanctify life and bring glory to G-d. The composition of bracha also serves as a bit of a fun exercise in coming up with praises and recognizing the place of G-d in everyday life; they all follow a specific pattern, so there's a number of commonly accepted bracha in use. Once you get the hang of the structure though there's a certain joy in applying them and, in my experience, composing entirely new ones as needed.

So, what is the proper blessing for witnessing an eclipse of any sort?

There are two common blessings for witnessing the wonders of nature- one for small scale wonders, like beautiful trees, animals, or people, and one for large scale wonders, like mountains or lightning or landscapes. It is clear to me that an eclipse would be considered a member of the second category, so the following bracha would be used:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם עֹשֶׂה מַעֲשֶׂה בְרֵאשִׁית2

Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha’olam, oseh ma’aseh v’reshit.

You are blessed, our God, Ruler of the world, Source of creation.


  1. the blessing for the lighting of the shabbat candles occurs after the candles are lit rather than before because the blessing also serves as a recognition that you are within the time of shabbat; since you invite in shabbes when lighting the candles, it's considered more correct to perform the blessing afterwards rather than before.

  2. taken from ritualwell, but commonly available online wherever bracha for the wonders of nature may be found


geostatonary
@geostatonary

We return to the topic of leprosy in Leviticus, and then we get into questions regarding semen and menstruation. The leprosy section discusses the ritual with the bird again, as well as houses and the leprosy they can get, and the assorted sacrifices associated with the lepers1. You may also ask yourself why they specifically use birds in the leprosy scapegoating ritual- Rashi suggests the following reason:
rashi birds leprosy

After summing all that up, we move on to the topic of discharges, by which we mean semen, assorted seminal fluids, and menstrual blood. Lots of discussion here by what fluids they mean, actually, since the english translation is somewhat ambiguous for part of it whether they're discussing cum or the general case of fluids what can leak out of people. In this process we learn about how the sages describe different varieties of cum:
fluids from a member
As you may imagine, this section is another weird and uncomfortable one to go through, though while reading Sforno's2 and Ibn Ezra's3 opinions on period sex we did dig into some of the questions of how modern views on gender developed, and how the flip side to Sforno offering more "modern" and sophisticated political arguments is that he also had more recognizably modern ideas about women and original sin as they related to menstruation.

Anyways, we were all very sleepy so not too much in the post today


  1. interestingly, the sin offering does involve an element that calls back to the offering for the ordination of priests, in which they place blood on the right ear (amongst other places). the sages suggest this is because leprosy is an affliction of the soul

  2. against

  3. you shouldn't do it on purpose, but this shouldn't stop you from fucking your wife for fear that her period start