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nikkifromtabs:

i wish i was capable of writing narratively because there is absolutely a fanfiction wanting to exist where the crew of ds9 collectively comes to the agreement that “wormhole aliens” is a really shitty and disrespectful way to refer to your coworker’s sincerely held religious beliefs re: her gods so the bulk of the episode has all non-bajorans randomly trying on different ways to refer to them without saying they are gods because starfleet has a stick up its ass about admitting any given religion can be provably correct. episode ends with an exasperated kira telling everybody that wormhole aliens is way better than anything theyve come up with so please just drop it

the comedy b-plot is odo futilely trying to recycle the euphemisms into explaining to weyoun that he’s not divine and the Founders are not infallible, but it’s small versus far away and weyoun just cant grasp it


Tags:

#oh look an update #story ideas I will never write #Star Trek #DS9 #language #embarrassment squick

staff:

Hello Tumblr 👋

Today, Tumblr’s owner, Verizon Media, announced that Automattic plans to acquire Tumblr. Automattic is the technology company behind products such as WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, and Simplenote—products that help connect creators, businesses, and publishers to communities around the world. 

We couldn’t be more excited to be joining a team that has a similar mission. Many of you know WordPress.com, Automattic’s flagship product. WordPress.com and Tumblr were both early pioneers among blogging platforms.

Automattic shares our vision to build passionate communities around shared interests and to democratize publishing so that anyone with a story can tell it, especially when they come from under-heard voices and marginalized communities.

We look forward to continuing to create products that empower your self-expression and sense of community and that build a better, more inclusive internet. 

We’re excited for our future together!

<3 Tumblr

Some things staff won’t tell you [link]:

  • They’re dumping it for–in the grand scheme of things–almost nothing
  • No, Automattic *isn’t* ending the NSFW ban
  • As for what this means for WordPress, executives from both Tumblr and Automattic will “look for ways WordPress.com and Tumblr can share services and functionality.” We wouldn’t expect any immediate changes, though.

I think my main reaction to this is to trust WordPress a bit less. The main appeal of the place for me is that it *isn’t* Tumblr, a separate platform with separate interests.

I’m going to continue my project to create a more stable copy of my Tumblr on WordPress. I’ll probably even continue my plan to start giving them money this winter (what better way to give people an incentive not to screw you over?).

But I’ve been wavering, lately, on whether to *also* look into self-hosting. Not as a Plan A, you understand: I’d *rather* not go through the effort of running the whole infrastructure myself. But I have put (am putting, will put) a lot of effort into making a specifically *Wordpress-compatible* version of my Tumblr, and this WordPress-compatible version is probably distinct enough to deserve its own backup. (After all, if I *did* end up self-hosting one day, that’s probably the software I’d use.)

WordPress export files don’t include images, which would make it a massive pain to re-instantiate my blog using only an export file (not *impossible*–all of the images are also stored elsewhere–but painful, and if I wanted possible-but-painful I’d just re-instantiate from a tumblr-utils scrape), but perhaps a tiny, local server to receive site-to-site exports, not to be made outward-facing unless necessary.

I’m not sure yet what the most practical option is, and how exactly one goes about it. I’ll have to look into it. But I *am* going to look into it.


Tags:

#in which Brin is paranoid #(but what else is new) #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #PSA #Wordpress #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #reply via reblog #oh look an update

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writing-prompt-s:

You can bring dead people to live again, but for every person you bring back, you have to sacrifice one body part

 

feynites:

Me: *plucks out another hair*

Sadistic Genie: Okay I know that technically counts but I really feel you’re not getting into the spirit of-

Me: *ceremonially sacrifices hair, very seriously*

Sadistic Genie: Like one time, just once, couldn’t it be a toe or a finger or something?

Me: Oh like how you so graciously go by what people ‘mean’ and not exactly how they’ve phrased things?

Sadistic Genie: …

Me: …

Sadistic Genie: …sometimes I-

Me: Just resurrect them already.

 

blackaquokat:

@forcesensitiveaurawielder Loophooooooole!!!!!

 

sweetiepie08:

Most dust is just dead skin cells, so in theory you could resurrect someone by emptying your vacuum.

 

tree-of-blue-squirrel:

Genie:

me: one ressurection per skin cell counts dude, it´s my body part

Genie:

tumblr_pc4rulpsrn1xas440o1_250

Tags:

#oh look an update #fun with loopholes #death tw

barackinaroundthechristmastree:

WHAT COLOR ARE MIRRORS

 

finnickodaired:

let’s reflect on this

 

youaresogayskarth:

fun fact! mirrors reflect each color equally, except for green. if you have ever seen a mirror perfectly aligned in front of another mirror, a.k.a. an infinite mirror, you can look through it and see that it becomes greener and greener. therefore, mirrors are technically green!

 

luminescent-love:

holy shit

 

petermorwood:

The glass is greener over here. Not a typo.

If you look edgewise through a sheet of glass you see that it’s green because of iron impurities (Google for it). Reducing the iron reduces the green.

Mirrors Are Green

Perfectly aligning mirrors to multiply reflections also multiplies the apparent thickness of the glass, and the green tint becomes more apparent the “deeper” each reflection seems to be.

Science is like history: it was never this interesting at school. :-)

 

elodieunderglass:

Yep! And this is because – I’m sorry to say – mirrors are not a unique or separate substance with magical properties. Mirrors are silvered glass. They have two colors: the color of the silver, and the color of the glass. The “silver” doesn’t have to be silver, though it usually is because mirrors are traditionally made with silver nitrate, because it’s a whitish metal. You can have mirrors silvered in gold or black or red. You take literally any piece of glass, pour a coating of silver on it, seal it, and call it a mirror.

You have to seal it because otherwise it tarnishes and spots. Even though the glass protects it from air, the silver oxidizes just like any other silver, which is why antique mirrors have that funky age-spotted look.

Mirrors used in science are usually pure clear glass with no impurities (so the glass has no color) and are silvered in gold or aluminum, so they are white or gold. A warm-toned mirror would have a pink glass and would make things have a rose-gold look. Phryne Fisher, in the books, has a mirror with pink glass.

(Mirrors silvered in silver – that is, most mirrors you’ve seen – are probably faintly grey from the silver and faintly green from the cheap glass, but it doesn’t need to concern you at all – even if you noticed a strong color, you’re often so used to looking in them that your brain edits out any discrepancy – like how your nose doesn’t get in the way of your vision even though it’s right in front of your eyes all of the time.)

 

beezelbubbles:

My grandmother had a mirror that was silvered in gold. It was a little disconcerting. The silver in mirrors is why vampires don’t have reflections. (And why the cutlery at Castle Dracula was made of gold.)

 

elodieunderglass:

IS THAT TRUE ABOUT THE REFLECTIONS BECAUSE IF SO THAT CHANGES ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING???

 

zamboni-whisperer:

It’s true!  (Source is The Journal Of I Read It Somewhere One Time, so take it with a truckload of salt, but I’m pretty sure it was a published book and not the internet, so like, only a pickup truck, not a dump truck.)

Watsonian explanation:  Silver as an entity and/or concept was upset about being used to pay Judas, so as some kind of compensation God gave it evil-fighting powers, and this is why vampires don’t have reflections in silvered mirrors as well as why werewolves are killed by silver bullets.  (Also works for vampires not showing up on film, because silver nitrate, although obviously that isn’t part of the ~*~original folklore~*~ and also doesn’t explain digital cameras.)

Doylist explanation:  A lot of things that are traditionally anti-vampire turn out to have antibacterial properties- the only ones I remember are garlic and silver, but I think there were others- so supposedly when anti-vampire treatments helped somebody out of a decline or whatever they were actually helping fight off an infection.

@elodieunderglass

 

elodieunderglass:

Ahahaha I love the conversations we have

 

idhren:

A lot of things that are traditionally anti-vampire turn out to have antibacterial properties

 

fromthemindofatwentyorotherlycan:

So would that mean vampires are weak to antibacterial soap?

 

thetruenomenfictus:

The power of hand sanitizer compels you!

 

ultralaser:

antimicrobial soaps were just banned by THE VAMPIRE CABAL

 

marquessbrie:

@unseelieaccords @t-raith @tarnishedcoins @harry-the-lizard

 

unseelieaccords:

Does that mean that a vampire would see themselves in a gold mirror but not a silver one?

 

amalthea-oberon:

What about a gold mirror with antibacterial soap or something sprayed on it?

And if it’s the silver in the cameras that made them not show up on film, that means that digital is entirely different (unless they use silver in the manufacturing – which i’m pretty sure they don’t – or if some rich person has a silver encased camera – but that still probably wouldn’t work because the lense couldn’t be encased in silver otherwise it wouldn’t work) so basically we need a modern story where the Vampires are having to come up with clever things to stay out of photos where possible because DIGITAL, but there’s that one vampire who photobombs everything and is famous on the internet for it because he’s literally everywhere.

@chipofftheoldsoul @moonlitfandom @marian-ette @iviegh @megupic

 

nanodash:

Some good scientific discussion in this thread

 

praise-the-lord-im-dead:

I’m 100% here for vampire hunters ferociously wielding hand sanitizer and cheap plastic spray bottles full of cleaning fluid.

 

marlynnofmany:

“THE POWER OF WINDEX COMPELS YOU!”
*spritz spritz*
*vampire hisses like a wet cat*

{(Side note: I left this tab open, scrolled to the bottom, and completely forgot how we got here from the color of mirrors.  Tumblr science is fun.)}

 

bloodthirstypandasfromthesky:

Fun addition: DSLR digital cameras still use mirrors to flip the image into the viewfinder (and do some fun light flippy shit). The Vampire would not show up when you look through the scope but would appear in your finished photo because the mirror gets flipped out of the way when you take an actual picture. Most digital cameras now are mirrorless (there’s no viewfinder, you look directly at the screen to see what you’re photographing). HOWEVER there are some trace amounts of silver in traditional LCD displays (mostly in the receptor strip… which may impact?) and plasma displays contain a lot of silver so the only way you would be able to see the vampire is if you printed a picture out on paper.

 

petermorwood:

This gets more interesting and convoluted every time it crosses my dash… :->


Tags:

#long post #vampires #oh look an update #may or may not have reblogged this before #(but it’s improved since last I saw it)

the chilliad: hour five

{{Title link: https://www.ofgeography.com/post/the-chilliad-hour-five }}

ofgeography:

both Ray Ban and Donut Mouth are quiet for a long moment. homer takes the opportunity to stretch a little, and to feel the hands on his watch. he wonders what is happening to the rest of them—he knows he wasn’t the only one who got booked.

the stupid part of all this is that homer really hadn’t done anything wrong. he hadn’t even shown up until after the fire, because calliope was teaching him guitar. they were going to start a band. homer was going to write the lyrics and she was going to sing them. thalia and cleo even said they’d join. homer and the muses. it was going to be dope.

“i am just struggling to understand why we never got reports of public disturbance,” Ray Ban mutters. “they fucked that whole café, man.”

homer shrugs. “delphi’s no snitch,” he says. “anyway, she and saph and manny cleaned it up.”

“manny helped?”

“of course manny helped. he made the mess, didn’t he?”

“well, so did paris, and he didn’t help.”

“yeah, so like, you kind of see why everybody wants to beat him up all the time.”

Donut Mouth gives a long sigh. “all right,” he says. “so—what happened after they fought at the oracle?”

“well, word kind of spread to the administration about the whole thing, and they got called in for a disciplinary hearing. i don’t know if they were really in danger of getting kicked out or not but that’s definitely what they told manny, so he was pretty freaked out. i kind of thought he had nothing to worry about, because the head of the disciplinary committee was an alpha sig when he was in undergrad, but—”

“hold up, hold up,” Ray Ban interrupts. “if nobody snitched, how did the disciplinary committee find out?”

homer rolls his eyes. “haven’t you ever heard of twitter?”

folks, pals, and readers alike:

many updates this week because, to quote kanye, my life is dope and i do dope shit. i know everyone is always like, “SENIORS RULE” but tbh i was kind of like, w/e about being a senior bc seniority means next year i have to uhhhhh get a job, and wtf kind of job is a disaster like me gonna get? two days ago i tried to make fresh orange juice and i somehow managed to break the burner on the house stove. i didn’t even — you don’t even need the oven to make orange juice?

(don’t worry, i live with athena metis, the goddess of being the best at everything, and she fixed it. i don’t want to embarrass her bc she’s extremely modest (lol) but it was vERY sexy, plaid shirt all rolled up to her elbows. it’s extremely lucky that she hasn’t settled down with a nice boo bc when she does there will be no one to fix my stove. :( i’m going to finally have to learn how to live competently as an adult, which: no thank you!!!!!! what’s that, chief? a hard pass??? a hard pass.)

a n y w a y, did y’all hear that paris got his ass HANDED TO HIM by manny atreus this week? i was there, it is true what they’re saying. please see below a brief collection of the most iconic dunks.

also, if you haven’t seen, whoever runs @ParisTheCoward is like, a deeply mean person but also VERY funny. sorry, paris, but to be fair you did throw like 6 mugs at manny’s head and then my beautiful moonlight girlf-in-the-making had to sweep up all the glass, so. kinda brought it on urself, buddy.

obvi i love the true light of my life, helen spartowski, & value her opinions, but even i gotta admit it was embarrassing behavior, on paris’s part. at least manford stuck around to clean up.

he’s actually like, really sensitive?

ok, that’s all the news. also i wrote this:

31

god must be real and she must love us,
to have given us you. across the counter,
learning forward with a smile to ask what kind of milk we want
with a voice so sweet i forget to ask for sugar.   

the way you laugh, it’s
my whole heart lighting up. i think you can hear it beating.
i take one look at your face and i’m
helpless to say anything. i can’t even breathe.

my tongue is heavy in my mouth, silent.
my skin is on fire, buzzing, everywhere you look.
i can’t see straight. i can’t see at all.
there’s a drumming in my ears; my own stupid heart.   

you ask again what i want and i
can only stand there, trembling.
i feel brand-new, and clumsy. i say:
“sugar.” i say, “please, give me something sweet.”

ugh, right??? love is unbearable.

TO CONCLUDE:

  1. am i Team Manny Atreus actually???
  2. it’s called “31” bc that’s literally the number of drafts i went through about this GLINT OF STARSHINE but none of them were able to capture the fact that the only explanation for her existence is that there’s at least 1 god and she loves me.
  3. anyway not to BRAG but YA GIRL GOT KISSED BYE

xoxoxoxo

saff

“full offense, saff, but what the fuck?” helen asked as soon as sappho picked up the phone. she kicked her feet up onto darius’s lap; he rolled his eyes, but engaged the lock on his wheelchair so that he’d be a stable footrest for her, which was why darius was the best. they were supposed to be actually working on the campaign today, but as per usual they’d all been distracted immediately and hadn’t even begun yet.

not for nothing but sappho was pretty sure they would never manage to leave the village they’d started in, which was a shame because her character would kick ass in battle, nun or no.

“what the fuck what?” sappho returned cheerfully. “are you jealous i finally got delphi to kiss me? because you had your chance. it’s too late now.”

“you’re TEAM MANNY ATREUS?” helen cried, not taking the bait, which indicated she really was upset. there were few things that helen loved talking about more than how much most people loved and adored her, sappho especially. “i can’t believe you put a link to the Coward twitter in a fucking NEWSLETTER.”

“it’s funny, melon.”

“it’s not funny! who runs it?”

“you think if i knew who ran it i wouldn’t have also put that in the newsletter, just for the drama?”

“saffohhhhhhh.”

it was hard to be the most beautiful person in any room. sappho knew this, because she had watched helen stand in line at the DMV and turn down dates from five different people, with steadily decreasing patience. but it meant that she was constantly needing reassurance that sappho did actually love her, helen, as a person, which was fine because sappho loved nothing more than to express her feelings at a very high volume.

still: “babe, you know that i am, in fact, team helen melon. i don’t care if both paris and manny drive off a cliff, i’m just saying that if i had to choose between the two of them, i dunno, i’m feeling kind of swayed by manny’s tears.”

helen was quiet for a second, then said, “he really cried?”

“oh my god, like a fountain,” sappho laughed. “i had to kick him out of the café because he was ruining the vibe i was trying to lay down with delphi.”

“clearly he didn’t ruin it,” helen said slyly, a grin in her voice. “bow-chicka-wow-wow.”

sappho grinned. the rest of the group began to trickle in from the kitchen, hands full of snacks and beer. AC and PK had come with bree, trailing along kind of awkwardly behind her; it was cute. AC was wearing a muscle tee that said BRO DO U EVEN LIFT? with a picture of disney’s mulan carrying buckets of water in her shoulders. sappho had always had kind of a low-grade crush on PK, the kind that meant nothing and was just a pleasant way to daydream during the only class they’d ever shared together, which was in underwater basket-weaving, for an art credit. “don’t be mad,” she cajoled helen. “team melonhead, ride or die.”

“don’t call me melonhead,” scolded helen, but the annoyance in her voice was obviously put on, and sappho had been forgiven. “and leave my love life out of your newsletters.”

“i will not, your love life is the most interesting thing happening on this campus,” sappho laughed. “but i will keep Paris the Coward to retweets only.”

“you’re a fucking menace,” helen sighed, then made a kissy sound and hung up.

emi kicked sappho’s feet off darius’s lap and replaced them with her own. “was that Heavyweight Champion Helen Spartowski?” she asked, a little meanly. “i heard she threw down with manny after paris ran away.”

sappho rolled her eyes. “yeah, she did,” she lied. “one-punch KO. you should have seen it. it would have had you shaking in your timberlands.”

she had never quite been able to get at what was at the heart of emi’s irritation with not just greek life but helen in particular — she thought maybe it had something to do with the increasingly impenetrable relationship between emi and olly, who had come to school attached at the hip and now only saw each other at parties and, presumably, at home. but chrys was kind of dating olly hunter and emi didn’t seem to have a problem with her, so who knew. emi was a mystery.

“she should come to dukes up, then,” emi grinned. “show off a little.”

“i am not allowing helen to join athena’s fucking fight club,” sappho laughed. “fuck off.”

“now that would be a fight worth watching,” heff mused, shouldering his way passed AC with a kind of friendly bullying. “i think you’d be surprised. helen is absolutely the type to fight dirty.”

“there’s no such thing as a clean fight,” emi answered, grinning kind of gleefully.

“anyway at dukes’ the only rule is—”

“don’t call the cops,” everyone chimed in at once.

read more


Tags:

#Iliad #fanfic #oh look an update #long post #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

the chilliad: hour four

{{Title link: https://www.ofgeography.com/post/the-chilliad-hour-four }}

ofgeography:

tumblr_inline_posnfagogy1qb7qql_500

homer yawns, stretching his arms out and cracking the joints in his neck. he definitely has dry mouth, despite the fact that he’s been gulping down every glass of water that Ray Ban and Donut Mouth have brought him, and brushing his fingers against his watch indicates that it’s only been three hours. three.

jesus christ, he’s going to die in here.

he doesn’t know where anybody else is. the last thing he remembers from the party is calliope brushing her fingertips along his knuckles and saying your poems are really good. you should do a reading.

calliope muse thought that he, homer, should do a reading. of his poetry. that he wrote.

“maybe she wants to date you,” muses Donut Mouth. “that’s literally the only reason anyone would ever encourage anybody to do a poetry reading.”

“that or she was trying to get him to leave her alone, since there is literally nothing less sexy than a nineteen-year-old poet with the beginnings of a mullet,” Ray Ban says.

“please be kind to me,” says homer. “i’m trying to tell you a story.”

read more


Tags:

#oh look an update #Iliad #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

{{previous post in sequence}}


humanfist:

prince-atom:

spockvarietyhour:

This might as well be a Brooklyn 99 cold open

“How did your meeting with the Commander go?”

“It was acceptable.  I understand he was irritated by my precise recitation of the length of time since we had seen each other, during the small talk phase.”

“Hmm.  You might try being less precise?  Or suggest some uncertainty in your estimation?  Like, ‘Five years, more or less,’ that sort of thing?”

“I have attempted such artifice in the past, yes, with Captain Jackson of the USS Ranger.”

“Was that any good?”

“It took me three days to convince them that I was not an impostor and that I should be released from the brig.”

Send him to the brig, he didn’t say how many minutes they locked him up.


Tags:

#oh look an update #Star Trek #DS9 #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog

Baptism

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comparativelysuperlative:

comparativelysuperlative:

comparativelysuperlative:

The way the metaphor works, you’re being lowered into the water (symbolizing a grave) and being raised (resurrected) as a new creation free of sin. (Symbolically. More literally, the “free of sin” bit lasts about 0.4 seconds until you have your first conscious thought, and then you probably need more sanctification.) The question nobody ever seems to ask is, what happens to the sin afterward?

I mean, that water ought to be downright toxic. Original sin is a big deal, and in most denominations they don’t even try to dispose of the waste safely. In fact, the pastor is often standing in it the whole time.

If you haven’t seen the sort of baptism service I’m familiar with, it involves a bathtublike container maybe a third the size of a Jacuzzi, with a church leader doing serial baptizing.  Any Christian can baptize someone, but usually it’s one of the ranking people in the church. Catholics probably bless the water first (it’d be weird if their religion includes holy water and they don’t use it for this) but in most denominations holy water isn’t really a thing. So there’s no confounding variable from that direction; it’s just water plus enough of humankind’s innately fallen sin nature to damn someone to Hell a couple dozen times over. And the pastor, along with whoever goes last, is standing in it.

But that very fact tells us it’s not all that dangerous. Concentrated evil sounds scary, but apparently a normal mustard-seed-sized amount of faith can protect people from it. 

image

There’s a ritual described in Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest places all the sins of the Israelites onto a goat (hence our word “scapegoat”), and then sets it loose in the wilderness. The population at the time was a bit over 600,000 (source: the for once incredibly convenient Book of Numbers). So we just have to find that goat (we can use my time machine), make it more intelligent until it’s capable of becoming a Christian, and baptize it. From a safe distance. Because seriously, that much concentrated evil is probably radioactive or something. We’re talking the sins of a nation here; this is a decent fraction of the stuff that motivates prophecies of Armageddon.

image

Sacrifices aren’t really a thing anymore. If I remember right, the branch of Judaism that eventually became the current one hasn’t done animal sacrifices since the destruction of the Temple back in ‘70. (The apostrophe stands for “A.D. ”) I don’t know how many Jews have lived in the last 1945 years, but it’s a lot. That many person-years worth of sin is going to mean one seriously scaped goat.

So that means, you just have to find the Ark of the Covenant, reconstruct the Most Holy Place, and get whoever’s in charge of the tribe of Levi these days to do the ritual. No time machine required. Then kidnap the goat, convert it to Christianity, and do the other ritual. The new convert rises as a new creation free of sin (in the process thoroughly messing up the parable of the sheep and the goats) and you’ve got a bathtub metaphorically full of more evil than has been seen in one place since the Crucifixion. Use it wisely.

And by “wisely” I do not mean point a squirt gun at the Pope.

WHEN LAST WE LEFT we were storing every sin committed since A.D. 70 by any Jew who was not also Christian inside a large bucket. It’s time to try more.

When you have an almost unprecedented amount of a thing, obviously you look for bonuses that stack. Several places in the Bible confirm that it’s possible to multiply sin (e.g., Isaiah here), but infuriatingly there’s no actual procedure stated for this.

The best I can find is a handful of lines from the Apocrypha, which is not canon depending on your denomination but is at least a really cool word. Sirach 3:11 says “they multiply sin who demean their mother,” which is nice and direct, but the person in question didn’t really have a mother. She was a literal goat, and probably not covered by any commands about respect for one’s elders. 23:11 says how to double a particular sin, but it only applies to oaths and doesn’t look very retroactive.

I think our best chance is in 23:16:
“Two sorts of men multiply sin, and the third will bring wrath: a hot mind is as a burning fire, it will never be quenched till it be consumed…” The first one is more interesting than the second, so let’s stop there. I don’t actually know what it means by a “hot mind” but actively trying to increase the amount of extant sin had better qualify.

So after you kidnap/rescue the scapegoat and uplift it to human intelligence, convert them to Discordianism or something first instead of Christianity. Something that’ll want to go along with this. Allow the multiplication to do its thing. (The Book of Ecclesiasticus didn’t say what the sin gets multiplied by, but it’s large enough that it matters when it’s an individual doing the sinning, let alone a civilization.) Then you convert them, get them saved by grace through faith, and steal the water after their baptism. Put it in the chemtrails of jets flying over your least favorite nation or something. Have fun!

If you’re wondering what was that verse’s second sort of man who multiplies sin: “a fornicator in the body of his flesh will never cease till he hath kindled a fire.”

In other words, it is actually an available option to start with an apocalypse-causing amount of violations of the law of God—

—which has to be one of the most horrible, terrifying, EVIL things you could possibly think of—

and MULTIPLY it

by SEX.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

We’ve got two thousand years of accumulated sin so far, multiplied by an unknown but significant amount. Let’s exponentiate.

Everyone knows that God is a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon their sons to the third and the fourth generation. And goats can have a lot of kids! If you have your super-evil goat start a new family line while still in its God-hating phase before being converted, we could be talking like 70,000+ sons. At this point it depends more on how many goats you can raise, ensoul, convince to maximize sin, and convert to Christianity than on anything hard like theology.

(Aside: Is the fathers and sons thing sexist? Not really. The word translated “sons” is really more of a gender-neutral “descendants,” and “fathers” mostly means “heads of families.” It comes across as “patriarch” because that’s what they had then. Since goat society is matriarchal, in Facts You Didn’t Know You Needed To Know, the genders would be swapped. But this doesn’t affect the plan here, so whatever.)

And of course, if you have enough missionary staff to reach each of the descendant goats, you can get the multiplications from mother-demeaning, hot-mind-having and/or fornicating in each generation. I’ve lost count of just how apocalyptically bad this is, but we’re in the ballpark of tens of billions of nation-years’ worth of sin? Got to be world-ending by now.

So does all this get you anything? I don’t know, maybe. You’ve got an evil leader with a large, even more evil herd, and in the Bible being a king means at least plot importance. (Don’t believe me? Look how many people are important only for being kings and not for anything that, you know, happens.) And there’s a relatively short jump from “king” to “god-king” to “god”: “king” (melech, M-L-K in a language without vowels) goes from Abimelech to Moloch, Melkor, mlekk, and former One Direction singer Zayn Malik.

One snag: when the ancestor-goat or anyone in an intermediate generation repents and turns to God, not only does their sin get wiped out but so does all their descendants’.  Theoretically this expires after a thousand generations, but you’re not waiting that long. To maximize the amount of used sin, you need to convince them to repent and be baptized from the youngest on up. Remember to reuse the same water for all 70,000 baptisms if you want it concentrated.

(If you do reuse the same water, the newly repentant goats and whoever’s performing the baptism might wonder why they’re using a very specific airlocked chamber and wearing hazmat suits with separate air supply. You probably don’t want to tell them! Getting them to do it anyway is a logistical exercise left as an exercise to the reader.)

Also, the other problem. If any of the goats die before conversion, by accident or I guess murder since this is sort of the most evil population in history, it’s probably bad. You made sure to engineer them to be easily manipulable, but intelligent enough to be responsible for their sins and repentances. If they die with their and their ancestors’ sins on their head… eternity of torment. Not good.

And of course, the specific variety of torment is a lake of fire. Which they’d go to because of the sin they inherited from their matriarch. Where sin-maximizing is exactly the thing she presides over. You would be boiling a young goat in its mother’s melech. Don’t do that.


Tags:

#oh look an update #puns #Christianity #overly literal interpretations #hell cw