Scaevola Writes Stuff

god fell out of heaven yesterday and we all started making fun of him bc the corpse is only like 5'3''

i have been thinking about this, because i am 5'2 and was raised catholic. in churches, the body of christ lingers ever in the air, on the back of our tongues, in every sconce and shadow. close your eyes. can you draw the shape of white jesus - bent and always muscled, rangy but masculine. i know the slant of his body from every tortured angle. his serene and pleading face - underfoot and rising above. white jesus is always either a baby or he is a 33 year old man, and the halo is goldleaf. jesus on the crucifix is almost always depicted sagging, a little hollow between his back and the wood of the cross.

god fell out of heaven yesterday, and fox news wasn't pleased about it, because god was 5'3". in our picture books, god takes up the whole sky. god can lift a mountain. god removed my brother's rib. my father is a deacon and showed me a diagram of the piece that adam used to form eve, and now "all women" have extra ribs. i was 7 and wanted to talk about if faeries are real or if trees can hear or if magic works, which was not favored. good catholic girls do not look like white jesus. they do not look like white old father-god. they might look like mary (virgin, always an adult, always demure). my brother is 6'0", so the lack of a rib did not stunt his growth. maybe i am smaller because the weight of eve's sin is pulling me down.

they didn't want to do an autopsy on god, which was ironic, because, like, didn't we say god made us in his image? and if god has (according to transubstantiation) been inside my body, can't we, like, get inside of god's body? that feels fair. i was mad particularly because when i tell people i am nonbinary, they talk about cutting open my grave and peeling back my gender so all the pulp of it shows. when i am dead, they tell me, they will uncover my "real" gender like a butterfly and pin her to the board. but god was 5'3".

the problem was that god was 5'3". first of all god was measured in imperial units which was kind of fucked up. the corpse landed inside of a townhouse in baltimore, which was bad for the insurance adjuster. that was not how the rapture was supposed to take place. also, the rapture is not covered under insurance, before you ask. the corpse of god was left overnight due to a confusingly-worded twitter update. i got in my car and drove south for over 9 hours, listening to the radio and my audiobook. i'm re-listening to graceling, but will always take good fantasy book recommendations. the radio said god's body made a strange hum - the announcer said like. well. it sounds like the living room fan from my childhood.

fox news had to say it wasn't god, because god is a man, and men stand up to pee. they had on male experts who talked about how yes, of course, god might have fallen from heaven, and yes his halo has singed through the first layer of the earth's crust - but this is probably not god. maybe one of the angels. micheal? rapheal? god cannot be 5'3", god lifts the rich from perdition and allows them passage into the fine life above us. god's body would be brave and tough and rugged like a lumberjack on a papertowel roll. god's body couldn't be like this - whalefall. nobody knew what to do with the body, so he was just lying there, alone in his crater.

i have a lot of reasons to hate god. i am not here to defend any part of the faith nor of god. unfortunately god was 5'3", and i am 5'2". and i guess some of us maybe felt the same way because i wasn't the only one getting out of the car. we all gathered around the crime scene tape and just stood there and looked at the body of god, who is a small man. god wasn't rotting correctly - his skin was flaking off like feathers overlapping. did i tell you? my girlfriend and i both saw the same god in our dreams, long before we met. we both described the experience as many hands.

all of us who were there bent down and picked up god from the rubble, which was blasphemy. we put him down in a clover patch. a bee rested on his cheek. what do you say at a funeral for god? he didn't look like jesus. people got mad then, because it wasn't funny anymore. they didn't want us to put god on the tombstone, and that made me laugh, and i suggested INRI. unfortunately i was raised super catholic, so that was only funny to like 3 people and of course the honeybee.

i think god would have liked swingsets and public transportation (when it works). i think he would have liked bodegas and good grilled cheese sandwiches. i think he would have lost his mind about dumplings. think of the humor behind getting god stilts or showing god mariokart. it is warm in baltimore so the ground is thawed. we talked about putting god under the ground and under many rocks, which is ironic because like - back in the cave you go. but it felt wrong to close him off from open air. god should sleep with his chest towards heaven, right?

god ruined my childhood and bored a splint through my eye and now i can never see this world without flinching. when i brought him in the clover i still laid him down with a care that almost felt parental. he was so small, is the thing. it was important to be gentle.

i found the tenth circle of hell: it's where your fave blows up on tiktok

This was shared as a "bad" joke but I was so charmed by it I've been thinking about it for days.

Moose at the next table: No they don't. I've been waiting here for an hour.

Transcendentalism is a hard word to grasp, so it's important to look at the etymology of it so you can parse its meaning. Trans - to be beyond or across Cen - one hundred Dental - Teeth Ism - the belief of So taken all together, transcendentalism means "the belief that one should have beyond one hundred teeth"

Hope this helps!

Reblog if you believe that you should have beyond one hundred teeth

Happy International Museums Day to the following people:

#OP WHAT DO YOU MEAN

While pretty and sparkly on the inside, the outer shell of a geode is incredibly hard, just like the man who was viewing them.

"This is my weird son. He can't climb for shit, but he is handsome and strong."

#cats be like#is anybody adopt that#and don't wait for an answer

Everything that isn't food is a cat from the perspective of a cat. Cats can look upon the true form of eldritch monstrosities and keep their sanity. They'd just see another cat. A fucking weird-looking cat, but a cat nonetheless.

An always-reblog. 😄

#this is one of those things that's obvious when you see it laid out#but I never would have realized it on my own I don't think

It's pretty wild how fast people's real-ass opinions sneak out as soon as they can aim an insult at an "appropriate target."

The number of "leftists" and "progressives" cackling at "butch body" as an insult has been...

... disappointing, not surprising.

Cute. Very cute. Love how people's nasty little Mean Girls bullshit comes out when there's an acceptable target in play.

I'm so tired.

So on FB, someone said this:

But. Like.

Absolutely none of that is justification for using someone's body shape, type, or features as an insult.

All you're telling me when you say shit like that is that you think insulting someone's body is okay if they're an "acceptable target," which is exactly my point.

There was everything in the world for Rep. Crockett to come after for MTG without making it clear that on some level she sees being butch as something shameful for someone who was AFAB to be. She wouldn't use that as an insult otherwise because it would not occur to her to do so.

You don't insult someone with things that you don't, on some level, also find to be worthy of insult. It's like when people say, "Oh, I was drunk." Bitch, the shit you say when you're drunk or angry is the shit that was already there. It can't come out of your mouth if it isn't, on some level, already in your fucking heart.

This is extremely common behavior on the "left," where you get people acting like this who aren't really very progressive or leftist at all. They're just bullies who want to have an acceptable target. It isn't new, either. Ten years ago it was "Ann Coulter is really a trans woman," it was "Trump has small hands and is fat," it's "Trump and Putin are secretly gay for each other," and then these past few weeks it's been "Trump has a little, funny-looking penis," and now "MTG has a 'butch body,' which is a bad and shameful thing for a woman or someone who was AFAB to have." All this does is reinforce the idea that being fat, being trans, being gay, having a small or "weird" penis are all things that people can and should be insulted for. That's the opposite of progress.

Y'all pulling this nonsense think you're so cute and funny and "turning their insults and ideas back on them," but all you're doing is playing right into their hands by reinforcing the idea that these things are wrong and shameful, because you can and do use them as insults.

The fact that people think that she gives one good goddamn about being seen as a hypocrite says a lot. She doesn't. What she and others like her DO think, though, is, "Now we can show what hypocrites these liberals are, because the moment they don't like somebody, that thing they say is totally fine and normal becomes an insult, so they must only think it's okay to be Like That when it's someone on 'their team.'"

Good job. Great work. Wonderful of supposed progressives to make sure people know that it's okay to insult people with "butch body" under the right circumstances. That'll really show 'em. 🙄

Yeah, I was not impressed with Rep. Crockett's comeback. She spat that insult out fast, which means she had it on the mind.

Like, y'all are elected officials of Congress.

*taps nose*

i'm always a bit unsettled by disdain for intellectual or creative labor in leftist spaces. there's this commonly held belief that academics are a bunch of rich old white men, rather than a wide variety of people who are barely getting by. most lecturers in universities are adjuncts living paycheck to paycheck. authors make very little money as a general rule. most researchers are overworked and underpaid. and yet there's still this idea that academics are overcompensated to sit around and smoke cigars together while making shit up

publishers are not writers. publishing companies are not the academics who submit to them. Science and Nature and all the big, rich journals academics have to submit to are Not the researchers who submit papers to them! your average academic is not the one asking for money to access their paper, and it is unfair to lump them in with those journals when you complain about barriers of access to information

James Whistler (American, 1834-1903) - Nocturne in Black and Gold - The Falling Rocket - c.1875

Rhianna Pratchett confirming her father wouldn't be a """gender critical""" activist (whatever the hell those GCs stand for) if he were still alive

The GCs are Terfs. A specific type of transphobe. Quite a few British celebrity got recruited to their ranks and they have the money and clout to do a lot of damage unfortunately.

Terry passed away before Rowling started her downward spiral and played a significant role in creating the current toxic atmosphere around Trans rights in England . It is good to see that his daughter ,who is also a writer, stands up for human rights.

That’s despicable trying to “recruit” someone who’s DEAD. Not to mention there’s NOTHING in Pratchett’s books—including the ones of essays, articles, and speeches—to suggest he join in if he was alive.

And obviously his own kid would know his private opinions so hopefully the assholes will see her tweet and back the fuck off.

(GC stands for “gender critical”, when you see that it usually means that you’re talking to/about terfs who are trying to rebrand their image).

For those of you who are wondering who else the original tweet is referring to, they are talking about Margaret Atwood, a very prominent feminist author (probably best known for The Handmaid’s Tale). Because she is a feminist the terfs assumed that she’d naturally side with them, and it came as a massive shock (for some reason) when she very publicly opposed and humiliated all of  terfdom.

But yeah I don’t know how terfs can possibly get through Discworld books without any kind of self-awareness but apparently they do. I’ve also seen them talking about how the Wives in the Handmaid’s Tale are all trans women (solely based on the fact that they are infertile). If you know anything about the plot or even the basic premise you’ll know how ludicrous that suggestion is.

Terf rhetoric basically revolves around throwing shit at the wall and then crawling around in anything that sticks, but the underlying transphobia is always present.

Rhianna Pratchett is the best.

“Terry Pratchett” is now a trending topic on twitter and everyone is just slamming the people who claim he would be transphobic. It’s been really nice to see

Also there’s this

And this. Bless @neil-gaiman

I’d already seen most of this on Twitter, but the Tom Hatfield tweet was new to me and got some laughs.

Also, this is the one that made me get all teary:

Time to remind folks of all this again, it seems.

The idea of english as a mother tongue is so strange to me, in my head english is how ppl communicate when there's no way in common to communicate, so english as a mother tongue sounds a bit like idk email as a mother tongue ykwim? Like english to me feels like the stuff that's used to fill the empty spaces between languages

Ok English is my native language and unfortunatly the only one I know yet, but this reminds me so much of that passage in Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Another example of how statistics are the Devil, and one must always be vigilant as to whether a claim of averages is referring to mean, median, or mode.

eXCUSE ME???????????????????????

I love semantic drift

Found my 53yo very-much-not-online father in the kitchen today meticulously arranging cutlery on the countertop and i was like 'what are you doing' and he looked up at me with the world's most shit-eating grin and said "Your mother told me this is how you rick-roll the Youth" and i looked over and it was fucking. Loss.jpg.