(quasar) nebula! 🐺 @quasar@plural.cafe

GG: dog in space
GG: its her place now
GG: funny how we ever thought it was ours

GG: dog in space
GG: where is she now?
GG: funny how we ever thought she was ours

AC: this is just me :33

GG: holy shit the lesson just ended with a nursery rhymified fable quoted from aesop:

The Vain Jackdaw:
"Fine feathers," Jack thought, "make fine fowls;
"I'll be envied of bats & of owls"
But the peacocks' proud eyes
Saw through his disguise,
And Jack fled the assembly of owls.
(the moral, in caption text: "Borrowed plumes are soon discovered")

GG: after reading this, to tie it all closed, the lecturer speaks:
GG: "So I'll leave you with the message: Don't try to be something or someone that you're not."
GG: :)

GG: [redrafted because typo; end thread :B]

GG: oh wow very cool lets strip the king crab of his shell, demonstrate how unimportant he truly is, and threaten he be killed in a truly glorious array of manners
GG: oh wow double cool lets give man the ability to make Magic, above all animals (even the king crab himself) and on equal par with the original creator himself, thats very awesome
GG: all the ways that those who apparently wronged pau amma end up offering practical solutions to his difficulties, which is good, but dont really evaluate or reflect upon their original misdeeds, which kind of has an air of colonialism thrown on top of all this else just for good measure?
GG: the eldest magician concludes his judgment by declaring the crab will be returned his shell, but only for eleven months a year, for otherwise he would become humble and greedy, and yeaaaah thats definitely some colonial-ass shit
GG: but its okay because "Then Pau Amma thought a little and said, ‘I have made my choice. I will take all the gifts.’" :)

GG: anyway thank you for coming to my ted talk about radicalism as it is denied in a childrens fable and having a good look at that so we can all say fuck authoritarianism! :)

GG: with some outside context, i dont think the elder magician will judge pau amma as deeply Evil; the crab is only one of the animals, on the same level as all others. but the action of disobedience - not just to man, but to god himself, since god is he who granted and promised that domination to man - is serious, and the eldest magician is one to recognize this
GG: (after all, pau amma is the only one whose type of play he describes as new and as bad)
GG: returning to the original passage i quoted (embedded again below, sans highlight), with the eldest magician speaking to the little girl-daughter, there are a few things id like to touch upon
GG: for one, this passage (following the paragraphs prior, wherein the eldest magician speaks to others living on the land, searching fruitlessly for any clue as to who is responsible for mans plight with the sea) is dually centered around judgment under the eyes of god, or in a more general sense, the gaze of authority
GG: the eldest magician has control over who is seen as good (or doing good) and who is seen as evil (or doing evil), and this is core to his role in the story, as he who tells the animals that all are as they should be, and as he who casts judgment upon those defying his stated will
GG: naturally, as one with this all-consuming level of authority is understood as wont to do, the eldest magician dictates that pau amma, who denied obedience beneath the fundamental Good, is bad, and must be found and dealt with
GG: (again, how the defiant crab is dealt with is yet to be seen, but not immediately relevant, since here we are looking at the impact of the basic act of judgment, not that of one specific retribution)
GG: this is one aspect of judgment under authority which may not seem so flawless (but how can it not be good, when the judgment itself is cast by he who is fundamentally Good?), but the dual counterpart of deeming another as good is just as worthy of critique, and i think the passage below does an excellent job of (albeit perhaps unintentionally) demonstrating why
GG: see, when faced with a difficulty, the natural desire of man, and the apparent reaction by god, is to go about removing that difficulty
GG: and under the gaze of authority we see that "removing" the difficulty may not be so much a matter of resolving a conflict between two equal parties, but rather to deem one as good (the way things ought to be) and the other as evil (an opposition, a disruption in this nature)
GG: the judgment inherent in this is of course deemed only as good, because the authority itself is Good
GG: and so when the eldest magician offers his gratitude toward the little girl-daughter, he does so because she has acted virtuously (in his own eyes), and indeed, according to the way she ought to
GG: (for "the way she ought to", and the virtues implicit in that, are decided by the eldest magician; he is the authority who is respected; he is the one who is Good)
GG: there are two quoted lines i feel read the most as a virtue in a fable, above any other so far in the story: "How wise are little children who see and are silent!" and "How wise are little children who speak truth!"
GG: after the first statement, declaring the girl-daughter as one he may learn from, the eldest magician asks: "What was the beast like?" ((footnote: holy crap i hadnt realized until now how on the nose "the beast" is, geez))
GG: in a direct and literal sense, he asks, tell me, who shall i judge as evil? who is at fault for this difficulty man faces, this defiance against my own will?
GG: and the little girl-daughter obliges, now appointed by the force ruling over all as *equal*, or so the little girl-daughter perceives it
GG: she reveals all she knows about the crab, the one who struck away ((HOLY CRAP #2: defiant angel i guess???? maybe pau amma, as it happens the only named character in the story, IS going to be a satan analogue????))
GG: and, of course, the eldest magician deems her - once more - as wise, one with wisdom, one equal to himself
GG: and follows this second judgment with - as i commented earlier - a most vindictive course of action: "Now I know where Pau Amma went. Give me the paddle!"
GG: the child is directly implicated in gods judgment, and for this is deemed Good
GG: moreover the child is satisfied for what she has done, left - as a child would be - blissfully unaware that she can never be equal to the force which casts judgment upon her and all else
GG: and, of course, the kicker is
GG: the littlest girl-daughter, described from the start as the son of adams "own most beloved", is a direct analogue for the authors own audience; which is to say, the reader, a child
GG: the virtues the eldest magician imparts to the child are truly devoted to the reader; the judgment as Good for aiding his judgment of Evil he imparts to the child is truly devoted to the reader

GG: something particularly interesting about the eldest magician is that he is shown to be someone of great power and majesty; he is respected by all animals (but one), and turned to by the son of adam when man seeks domination over all those animals
GG: he is also responsible for "getting Things ready" in the Time of the Very Beginnings, creating in the beginning the earth and the sea, then calling all the animals out to play
GG: the animals do not know what to do, so they come to him, and he teaches them to embrace themselves for what they are - literally, to "play at being an Elephant," "a Beaver," "a Cow," and so on
GG: (its a very touchingly written scene i think, so ive got it embedded below!!)
GG: later the eldest magician explores the world the animals have played in, and tells them that all is right; and he takes the effects of their playing (mounds of dug-up dirt, fields of harvested grass, sand and rocks flung out into the sea) and builds the world around them (the mountains, deserts, islands), teaching that not only do the animals belong in the world, they play a role as part of the way of things, each making the world a better place in their own way when following along with their nature
GG: (there are environmentalist readings of this to be had for certain, but lets take a step back and read the animals as a substitute for different sorts of human beings, as childrens literature and fables of the sort were often written for better appeal)
GG: it comes as no surprise, with a little outside context, that the eldest magician is a stand-in for the christian god; thus in a story which presents god as powerful but in a very deep manner good, we have to wonder what will happen when pau amma, the crab, revolts against him
GG: we find a new side of the eldest magician when he speaks to man, who has been distraught by the ocean coming up the river he lives upon and flooding his house, despite the promise he received that all animals would be obedient to him
GG: the eldest magician says, "No, that is a new and a bad play," and here we are taught that while god is good, god will cast judgment
GG: of course what we are *not* told here is how god will handle those who he casts judgment upon; thats what we still have yet to find out, halfway through the story, as the eldest magician enters the domain pau amma lives within

YF: It/she babe-e

GG: 😔

GG: its often the most mundane interactions which come back to me...
GG: i was getting cat food for our pet cat and i remembered very clearly feeding her earlier, but it turned out the bag of cat food was pretty much all empty
GG: (and we ended up finding a bigger bag of cat food id forgotten about further back in the closet)
GG: but that was all part of my dream last night!! now that im awake i *know* that bag is still the old one
GG: buuut i still remember feeling really silly and a little guilty for telling mom (in real life) yesterday that we didnt need cat food, when it turned out (in the dream) that we did :3