[image description: three photos of an egg painted with fragments of a papyrus that has sappho 58 written on it. “fragment 58, tithonus” is painted on the other side. the fourth photo is of the actual papyrus.]
an installment of popova’s newsletter the marganialian that draws on the writing of roland barthes. popova begins by describing her repeated daily walking routes, drawing a connection between the repetition of movement and the repetition of speech and feeling– the recurrent declaration of “i love you.”
video with nobel prizewinning physicist roger penrose that explains his theory of “conformal cyclic cosmology”: that our universe’s deep past bears a similarity to its deep future, giving evidence for an infinitely cycling timeline. see the essay “time aftertime” by paul halpern for more on physics and cyclical time.
from ecologist and philosopher david abram’s book the spell of the sensuous. in this section, he distinguishes broadly between how space and time are viewed in oral cultures and literate cultures. he focuses on the alignment between oral cultures and a cyclical model of time, discussing why alphabets and writing might affect the way space-time manifests in a cultural imagination.
book by mythologist and literature professor joseph campbell describing his archetypical “hero’s journey” cycle, a basic multi-step plot shared by myths and stories across many centuries and cultures (also called a “monomyth”). for a condensed version of the hero’s journey, see this diagram by lisa paltz spindler designed for the gunn center for the study of science fiction.
essay by designer ross zurowski on how we divide and mark time, arguing that we should begin to divide our lives into more organic and useful phases. the essay is inspired in part by the sekki, short descriptive seasons used by farmers in ancient china and japan– you can see a list of sekki (along with twitter and ical notifications) at zurowski’s a guide to understanding small seasons.
book by british writer katherine may on literal and metaphorical winters. may writes about the necessity to periodically experience darkness throughout life, meditating on the winter solstice, cold water swimming, the northern lights, hibernation and fairy tales to illustrate how wintering can catalyze self-renewal.
medium essay about trauma that uses the ouroboros as a metaphor for the circular reconstruction of memory. lesperance draws from mystics and writers julian of norwich, anne carson, margery kempe, and flannery o'connor and their engagement with the repetition and recreation of wounds.
a meditation by poet brian blanchfield from his essay collection proxies about discovering a series of audition tapes in which the same scene is repeatedly recast with different actresses. he draws a comparison between the audition scene and poetic repetition, not only in the structure of poems but in our engagement with poetry itself.
The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1800 papyri that were carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (79 CE), constituting the only surviving library from antiquity that exists in its entirety. Now using new x-ray technique, these scrolls are being read for the first time in millennia
wanna hear them repeat “what’s wrong baby? tell me what you need.” while they fuck my brains out, knowing damn well there’s no way I can actually form any words.
Happy pride to one and all! These lions are proud of who they are and the community they represent, and so you too should be proud of who you are and the journey you have taken to this point. That’s me in the bottom right
“Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That’s what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice.” – Bethany Hamilton
by “good” I mean “this npc is enjoyable as a character”, not “this npc is moral”
1. I have no gender, only (pick at least one: an air of mystery, a bouyant outpouring of joie de vivre, a rare extra-large helping of calm common sense)
2. I’m old and I’ve been doing weird and questionably legal experiments, arcane or mundane, since before your parents were born, whippersnapper
3. Oh, hello! I almost didn’t see you there. Welcome to my place of work, where I am being very sexy, both by being a supportive listener and also having excellent hair.
4. as a former adventurer myself, I am so sorry to inform you that it be like that some times. Do you need a potion of healing or some tea?
5. I’M JUST A BARTENDER WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME SO MANY FUCKING QUESTIONS
6. annoying sibling, but in the end, ride or die
7. annoying sibling, who was evil all along
8. I initially come off as a reasonable and even helpful authority figure which will make my betrayal much more gut-wrenching
9. has justifiably been driven absolutely insane by the nightmarish surroundings in which they find themselves and is now going to seriously fuck things over for your party because you crossed paths with them, even though it’s really not their fault
10. WHY DID YOU BRING ME INTO BATTLE I KNOW YOU’VE IMPRINTED ON ME FOR SOME REASON, BUT I ONLY HAVE 6 HIT POINTS
11. I’m middle-aged, still extremely attractive, and I’ve been doing weird and absolutely illegal experiments, arcane or mundane since you were a child, and I’m going to kill you now
12. 1800s London Street Urchin, but make it D&D
13. I would gladly destroy the universe to gain personal immortality, also my voice is calibrated to be the exact timbre to raise the hairs on everyone’s neck (frequently overlaps with 11)
14. I have the misfortune of being a guard for the being against whom you have a vendetta and I am about to get one-shot killed by the rogue, because of course I am
15. I am a highly ranked authority figure in the realm, and you are a horrible adventuring party.
16. Loving parent who is trying their best in a setting that basically makes a cottage industry of murdering the heroes’ parents
17. WHY DID YOU BRING ME INTO BATTLE I KNOW WE’RE FRIENDS/RELATIVES, BUT I STILL ONLY HAVE 6 HIT POINTS (frequently overlaps with 16)
18. Crochety dwarf who sounds like they’re reading Scottish Twitter
19. I appear irritated but it’s only because you pretty insensitively interrupted my (pick one: sparring practice, study time); I have a soft spot for you idiots despite myself.
20. I am a small business owner specifically because I’m so fucking weird that I couldn’t make a living in any other capacity
okay let’s talk about thor fucking loki on a table. loki’s sitting on the edge with his legs wrapped around thor and they’re probably in one of their bedrooms or sth and loki just won’t shut up and thor is losing his damn mind bc loki is ofc known for his silver tongue but he’s in rare form with thor balls deep
“love that you fuck the same way you kill” “gods you’re barely a man right now, don’t stop” “are you going to take care of me, big brother?”
it’s provocation and love and need and thor doesn’t know what to do with it so he just fucks loki harder and harder bc he hopes that if he goes hard enough loki will stop talking
but it doesn’t happen loki drags him close and cums on him and just keeps. fucking. talking. and it’s worse when thor cums, buries himself deep while loki holds him in
“i want everything, fill me up”
and when thor is lazy in the afterglow loki petting his scalp and going “there he is”
