At one point or another, in Going Postal and Making Money we get Moist’s opinions on pretty much all the people he comes across via his internal dialogue. He finds a lot of things weird and he finds a lot of things disgusting and he’s pretty merciless in his judgements of some people, because he’s generally really perceptive, even though he always sees an opportunity to flatter them in the process.
One thing I noticed in Making Money is how he does not comment on Stanley and Hubert’s quirks. The fact that Stanley (”who went through life with the care of a man reading a manual translated from a foreign language”) needs to go through a script every time he knocks on his door is just met with patience, and even though Hubert is, by all accounts, ~weirder even than the clown accountant in this book, there isn’t a comment from Moist about his unusual behaviour – at one point Hubert falls silent, digs out a notebook and checks it before asking a pertinent, socially acceptable question to Moist because he’s run out of things to say about himself, and Moist doesn’t treat any of this as unusual. Not a mental note or commentary.
I like that Moist isn’t successful because of how he was raised, or because he comes from a good family, or because of previous connections having taught him how to make the right friends – he’s good at people, he can read their moods, and he isn’t uncomfortable with atypical behaviour (except if it’s unhygienic). In fact, he’s consistently more intimidated by performative masculinity than behaviours that don’t conform perfectly to what other people would find “normal”. I didn’t notice this some years ago, but I really like it.
latin: i’m such a nice language! everything makes sense and is mostly regular, come learn me!
greek: learn your third declension vowel-stems or you’ll never see your beloved ablative case again
There are roughly five and a half fucktillion extracanonical gospels out there. For the first couple centuries after Jesus bit it, his followers wrote a ridiculous amount of fanfic. There were a gajillion different headcanons floating around about exactly who and what he even was (God pretending to be human? human who got possessed by God at his baptism? human who got promoted to demigod after his death? simultaneously God and human all along??) and lots of early Christian communities ~conveniently~ discovered a Totally 100% Authentic Eyewitness Account that supported their pet theory (and also, proved that their fave disciple was clearly the best).
Big Name Fans argued about all the major disagreements, periodically throwing conventions specifically to bicker until they reached some sort of consensus (more or less – sometimes the hold-outs ended up saying “screw you guys, we’re gonna go form our own church!”) Toward the end of the second century, a guy named Irenaeus wrote a meta arguing that there were four fics worth reading – no more, no less – and they were ones that folks somewhere along the line started to claim were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This idea caught on as a popular bit of fanon, and over the next couple of centuries it gained so much support that it was declared canon.
So, what’s the point of this Jesus fandom history lesson? Basically, that the discovery of yet another extracanonical text isn’t particularly earth-shattering. Headlines like “Ancient Bible changes everything! Pope freaking out!” are bullshit, but that’s how it’s always framed cause more accurate headlines like “Old manuscript discovered – Historians say ‘Ooh, nifty!’” aren’t very good click-bait.
The actual history and politics of the various gospel texts are really fascinating though (if you’re a huge fucking nerd, like me). In the Gospel of Judas, he’s the only disciple who really understands Jesus, who told Judas to “betray” him. Also, God’s a Glow Cloud. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas has kid!Jesus smite other kids for being little shits. The Gospel of Peter is hella anti-Jewish, but has one cool bit with a character that’s literally a walking, talking cross. There’s a whole book called “Q” which has never even been found, but scholars are pretty sure exists cause Matthew and Luke copied a lot from it.
Seriously, leaning about this stuff made me go “woah, this is freaking awesome – why the hell did my parents’ church make the Bible seem so damn boring??” Well, probably cause all those white upper middle class folks didn’t want us kiddies to dig too deep and find out what a radical, anti-establishment bamf Jesus really was, but that’s another rant for another time…
Reblogging because this is what I live for. As a medieval history major, I got taught first and foremost that we’d be spending four years reading lies and biased half-truths and mythologies. Our job was to find the places they agreed and work the rest out from there. “Do the edge pieces first, Maggie.” I took an entire seminar on forgeries, because so many of the sources historians use to piece together the past are known fakes, but the best they can do is read between the lines or have no lines at all. There’s a reason why medieval historians read farm reports featuring travel descriptions and saints’ lives involving demons-living-in-buckets with the same attention to detail. Every dry history text you’ve read in your life comes from a pile of sources like this, bits of maybe-truth cobbled together with toothpaste and narwhal horn dust.
The moral of the story is be curious, and look for the lies in truth and the truth in lies. It’s pretty great: hello, history, riddle me this.
I want to reblog this as a reminder to people what I’m really working with here, and why I tend to be so critical of those who claim there’s only one answer to the question of what we do know, and what we CAN know about history. To reiterate the above:
Every dry history text you’ve read in your life comes from a pile of
sources like this, bits of maybe-truth cobbled together with toothpaste
and narwhal horn dust.
The moral of the story is be curious, and look for the lies in truth and
the truth in lies. It’s pretty great: hello, history, riddle me this.
The further you go down the research rabbithole, the weirder and more exceptional and amazing and interesting the narrative becomes. What we know about these times and places has been contingent upon the judgement of whoever has access to the primary sources, the dusty piles and the scraps of maybe-truths.
Now, with more and more libraries and museums digitizing their collections, we can all access these sources. We can watch or participate in the discovery of these narratives, which have long been pushed to the margins because those who had power to decide what is and is not “important” about history declined to mention them. Now we have the access to dig through it ourselves, for those who have the ability and the interest to do so, and see what amazing people, events, and narratives there are to be shared that we have decided are interesting and important.
And Santa’s all like, “You know, I can handle a few spelling mistakes, I got this,” and Lucifer is like “They’re addressed to me, fuck off, I’m doing it.”
Lucifer being protective of his fanmail is ceaselessly entertaining.
*deep and booming Satan voice* “Belphagor!”
“You summoned me, Your Infernal Majesty?”
“Belphagor, do we have any Barbie dolls in our stores?”
“We certainly do. Would you like one whose eyes glow red or one that chants Your praises in the middle of the night?”
*deep and booming Satan sigh* “Ugh, are all our Barbies possessed?”
“I am pleased to say so, Your Infernal Majesty.”
“Well, un-possess one of them. You heard me! Melody Lian wants a veterinarian Barbie, the one with a cat not the one with a dog. And Belphagor! Make sure the cat has the right number of limbs this time.”
“And let us see, Isaiah Stanfield who asked for a musical instrument will be receiving… a kazoo?”
“The instrument I judged to be most annoying yet still within his likely ability to play, my lord!”
“So young Isaiah will receive this miserable piece of plastic, apparently the finest gift you think I can offer him from my vast holdings, on Christmas morning only to have it confiscated by his parents by New Year’s. Leaving him with no present at all.” *Satan grows even taller, his voice drops dangerously* “Do you wish to make a fool of me, Belphagor?”
“N-no, Your Infernal Majesty! Please, mercy!”
“You will have a suitable present for Isaiah by the time I return. And I expect no more mistakes.” *Satan storms off, muttering* “A million demons at my beck and call and I still have to do everything in this Pit myself…”
MY BIRD IS SITTING IN THE TOP CORNER OF HER CAGE CALLING MY DOG’S NAME AND ASKING IF HE WANTS A TREAT AND IF HE WANTS TO GO TO OUTSIDE AND HE’S TOO STUPID TO REALIZE IT’S HER SO EVERYTIME SHE SAYS SOMETHING HE LOOKS AT ME LIKE
SHE LAUGHS EVERYTIME TOO AND NOW HE’S JUMPING ON ME AND BARKING AND GETTING MAD AT ME LIKE OLIVER TURN AROUND AND LOOK IN THAT HUGE ASS CAGE AND BEG HER FOR A FUCKING TREAT OR SOMETHING.
NOW SHE ASKED IF HE WANTS TO GO FOR A WALK
SOMEONE HELP.
NO OLIVER, IGNORE ECHO. NO ONE IS HERE
I PROMISE.
I’M 1000% DONE.
“OLI GO CAGE.” NO OLI
DON’T.
GO.
CAGE.
birds straight-up fuckin with other pets is my jam
this is eunotosaurus he is like turtle great great gr8 gr8 gr8 grandpa
him ribs big. then l8er u got later on there this dude who got big ribs 2
him name pappochelys we just found him
then those red things (they called gastralia) got real big n it make a plastron n u got the odontochelys
they got hard bellies n big ribs but shell doesn’t come for millions of years but then u got shell n u got proganochelys
he live with dinos he so lucky
shell happens to baby turtle because carapacial ridge goes over their shoulders instead of under wow
here is diagram of human and tortle skeleton after tortle has enslaved human and make him walk like dog for amusement
turtles might be cousins to either lepidosaurs (sneks, lizrds n tuatara) or archosaurs (crocs n birbs) but probably archosaurs turtles are probably related to birbs which is cool
i have a literal degree in zoology and my final capstone thesis was on turtle evolution and phylogeny so this isn’t misinfo buddy buster brown @vulpiximisa fear not
One year at Christmas Ginny is opening presents and she opens the one from her mom. It is a much too large crimson sweater with a G on it. She holds it in her hands out in front of her. Her brothers walk in wishing her a merry Christmas all wearing theirs. George’s midriff is showing.
Kimchi and Justice 