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@mayleavestars / mayleavestars.tumblr.com

katia • 20 • she/they but i prefer they if u don't know me • personal longform blogging project • icon from disteal's picrew
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the satan: oh foolish mortal...i greet you, to reveal your desires unto you! me: ok hey what's up the satan: i have decided to test you, to-day, to discern your commitment to The Good me: sounds great! so, do i have to reject a kingdom of glory and riches or refuse to jump off a building and make God save me or— the satan: oh no none of that. this'll be much simpler. i am going to present you with a series of ethical situations! ahahaha! me: oh sweet i think about these all the time the satan: perfect...it is time for The First Situation! now, picture a city that is so perfect, everyone is happy and no one is ever sad and there's cakes and festivals and orgies and— me: is this Omelas the satan: me: like this is just gonna be the Le Guin story with the kid in the basement right the satan: ...yeah. ok so there's the kid and the basement and there's the torture, ok yeah you know this one. right. so anyway...you have just learned about the kid being tortured in the basement. what is your judgement here? me: well uh, i guess i walk away the satan: aha but i didn't ask you what you'd do, did i? me: oh come on you tricky little fuck. ok. yeah this situation sucks the satan: and why, pray tell, do you say that is, despite all the happiness and nonsadness and cakes and festivals and orgies and whatnot? me: i suppose it's just that none of that shit justifies torturing a kid in a basement forever. also all that shit sounds kinda gay when you put it like that. like some weird Dutch fag shit the satan: ah. well, moving on, you whimsy-hating homophobe— me: what, just because i say that sounds like Dutch fag shit makes me homophobic? i'm gay you know i can call shit fag shit if i want the satan: —moving on, you would agree with the statement that whatever the consequence, it is inherently wrong to torture a child, hmm? me: well yeah that sounds about right the satan: aha...! me: wait why'd you make that noise the satan: wh-what me: that clicking noise. that was you right the satan: oh no no noise of things clicking into place emanated from my nostrils me: you worded that pretty weirdly, you know the satan: it's time for The Second Situation! you have cro— me: damn you just straight up evaded what i was saying the satan: —you have crossed The First Situation, i was saying, so now it is time for round two. ahem. now, firstly, would you agree that, in general, lying and stealing and cheating are bad? me: well, yeah. i don't like lying, and in general it seems pretty fucked up to cheat and steal the satan: so now you have come across a man in the street who is starving and wounded. after one hour he will die if he is not fed and treated for his wound. there is a store nearby but you are flat broke and have no pocket money, and begging isn't an option. even if you ask your friends to PayPal you they will not be able to get back to you for another two hours. the ER is too far away and there's too much traffic for an ambulance to arrive and take him there in less than an hour and a half, but there is a clinic nearby able to take anyone immediately. however the clinic only accepts people with insurance, and neither of you have an insurance card. you are, however, fairly confident that you can make up fake details that they would be willing to accept. me: what are you trying to write a Jacobin article or something. i'm already a socialist, you don't need to lay out how fucked up our healthcare system or whatnot is, i already know— the satan: okok sure this would never happen under socialism blahblahblah the point is what would you do in this situation me: but in the last one the point was my judgement not what i do. this is getting confusing the satan: DIFFERENT SITUATIONS HAVE DIFFERENT RULES OK?? GOD JUST LEAVE IT AT THAT FOR NOW God: OH HEY SATAN DID YOU JUST CALL UPON ME the satan: HOLD ON I'M STILL TESTING THIS GUY GIVE ME A SECOND God: OH OK THAT'S YOUR JOB AFTER ALL. I SHALL LEAVE YOU TO IT. JUST DON'T BE TOO MEAN

the satan: FUCK. ok. ok. anyway here's the question. assuming you're also relatively confident you can shoplift without getting caught, do you steal a couple things from the store for the man to eat and do you present fake information to the clinic to get them to accept the guy and treat his wound me: yeah totally. i don't want him to die or anything. i'd gladly do just about anything to save someone's life the satan: so in other words, doing bad things like lying, stealing, and cheating in order to accomplish a good thing such as saving a life is good, right? me: sure, i'd say so the satan: AAAAAHH-HAA! i have TRAPPED you! for your response to the first situation implies that good inheres in the act itself, regardless of consequences, and your response to the second implies that good inheres in the consequences of an act, regardless of the means!

me: i mean...not necessarily? like— the satan: wh-what do you mean, mortal me: well, perhaps i think the negative consequences of torture for the child far outweigh the positive consequences for everyone else the satan: what the fuck is that you're doing me: oh i mean you're doing red text, i figure i do blue text, i figure this is like an Umineko thing or whatever the satan: fine. sure. you can do that. whatever. none of this matters to me. why did i pick this fucking job in the first place me: the satan: ...ok, the townspeople get far more happiness than the kid gets suffering me: but what if suffering itself is worth more in moral accounting than happiness, for instance the satan: then how about this? in the second example, you could have caused the shop to shut down due to lost trust with the distributor! you could have caused the clinic to lose their licence over insurance fraud! those could have easily caused far more suffering than if the man simply passed out and died after an hour! me: that's...that sounds far-fetched, but you said it in red, so. ok what if good actually inheres in the character of the person doing the act, so a virtuous person would refuse to sanction torturing a child for the greater good and gladly steal and cheat to save a man's life the satan: virtue ethics is unable to provide actionable guidance! me: oh? the satan: all you can do is imagine what a virtuous person would do, and different people have wildly different imaginations! me: well hmm. that's fair. i'm not sure i could personally live with that, especially in an age where we're getting ever closer to potentially misaligned AI. what if there's rules that say you must never do some things but then other rules can be broken if there's something more important the satan: if those rules exist, then list them off and justify them to me >: ) me: uh, don't torture, don't rape...don't kill is up there, but what if you're killing someone to defend someone else...wait fuck no, what about bombing civilians to end a war, that doesn't sound justifiable at all...god damn it... God: OH HELLO YES I'M BACK the satan: NO FUCK NO WAIT NO God: HELLO DEAR SWEET MORTAL CHILD. IS MY EMPLOYEE BEING TOO HARD ON YOU? OH DEAR I CAN GIVE YOU AN ANSWER IF THIS IS GOING TOO POORLY the satan: oh come on please just let me do my job like normal God: MY DEAR LITTLE CREATURE I HOPE YOU KNOW YOU CAN SIMPLY RELY ON MY EDICT AND ALL THESE DILEMMAS BECOME AS DUST IN THE BROOM OF AN OLD FAT LADY me: why thank you, my Lord, but no matter how perfect You are, it remains that divine command theory is a fundamentally subjectivist theory that cannot provide a truly objective and impersonal basis for ethics, and subjective morality is not a risk i'm really willing to take God: BUT AREN'T I PERFECT FOR YOU AND ALL THINGS MY PRECIOUS LITTLE CREATION me: why, yes, but there's a small but persistent chance You're a figment of my imagination, just like the satan over here, and— the satan: hhHHEYYY NOW me: —and i know that You love righteousness, so really i'd rather continue pleasing You even if You weren't around to tell me what righteousness is God: WHY THAT IS VERY SWEET OF YOU. YOU KNOW WHAT I'M JUST GOING TO STRAIGHT UP LIFT YOU TO HEAVEN LIKE THAT MERRY OLD FELLOW FAUST me: wait huh the satan: w-wait Lord don't you think you're being a bit hasty in judgement a chorus of angels: [grabbing me and lifting me into the aether] ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*HE WHO STRIVES ON AND LIVES TO STRIVE CAN EARN REDEMPTION STILL*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ me: [rapidly disappearing into the sky, utterly bewildered] wait. hold on. hold up. wait,

#this is so awesome
mayleavestars
malglories
“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”

— Tove Jansson, “Moominvalley in November”  (via existential-celestial)

mayleavestars

INTRODUCTION: JESUS THIS IS CRINGE

Here’s an introductory thought: capitalization has ruined everything forever. 

When it comes to capitalizing or not-capitalizing online, especially in the case of ‘formal’ writing, and ESPECIALLY if zero professors are reading and grading it, there is no ‘good’ answer. Maybe this is as a result of everything I do feeling  fundamentally affected. I’ve spent the entirety of my life putting ‘thought’ into self-presentation and how it affects people. This is probably my fault more than anybody else’s. 

the fact of the matter is, if i write like this, then i’m trying to be “poetic” and “e.e. cummings”, and if I write like this, then the Rose Lalonde kinnie in me is only held back by the fact that a true Rose Lalonde kinnie would never admit to kinning Rose Lalonde. Also, I'm not about to claim I know what ‘kinning’ is and whether I’ve ever experienced. I am open to being kin-assigned by all who care to provide input, but that’s the same thing as willingly participating in my own ‘kinning’. 

(Also, if i had a kin list, it would have harriet vane on it.) 

is the answer to capitalization, then, to be wildly inconsistent? to eschew punctuation along with capitalization to demonstrate that im not and will never be claiming to be e.e. cummings because at least presumably he used apostrophes? (dont correct me if he did.) 

Or is it perchance to type like jake english thus heroically reaping the benefits of just one tantalizing capital letter per sentence? Really makes you think does it not.

probably not the last one but HOW FUNNY would it be if i typed like that for the rest of my life. 

the fact of the matter is that blogging is a fucking pain in the ass because reading the blog of anyone i know in real life is a fucking pain in the ass. performance is embarrassing when people know you’re doing it! sending gene my fanfiction is always fun because he can determine with razor-sharp precision the bits of my own psyche that dribble tantalizingly into dirk strider or terezi pyrope or whoever you want. i think that kind of thing is extremely fun! and microblogging is nice because if you drop little bits of your thoughts into the world, nobody knows exactly how authentic they are because they don’t have the space to analyze it.

the issue of blogging is that it is public, longform, and consumable. it’s half public journal entry, half nonfiction essay. it is both reflective and personal and, somehow, entertaining, though there are very few thinkers i find compelling enough to willingly subscribe to Everything Their Voice Says, and very few people i can imagine doing this for me, even people who i know love me! so maybe this is exposure therapy or maybe this is an experiment that will fall apart within moments. 

online has always been like this, and also my real life has always been like this. there’s a snippet from a journal entry i wrote in 2016 that really got it. 

“i think hamlet has got me thinking about self-image and performativity, because obviously the whole play is obsessed with like, the acts that people put on and how we're seen and who watches us and whom we watch and what's an act and what isn't. and like, i'm really not at all like hamlet, because i'm not proto-nihilistic, or a raging misogynist, and i also highly doubt that i've got depression. which hamlet obviously does. but i think that something in me obviously connects to him - not directly, not like i connected to antigone, but . i don't know, i'm a distinctly emotional person who is also highly fixated on the way the world sees her, and also on how she sees herself. i say "i'm talking to myself", but i'm not - i never talk to myself, but i do address an audience that i can't see but that can see me. that makes it sound like i'm convinced that people are watching me 100% of the time or something and - i do say these things for myself, so to speak, but not to myself. i don't write this journal to myself... i keep on imagining my past self, or someone in the future, or someone i know, reading it and reacting to it, because like i said above - i can't do anything if it's not for an audience of some sort. which implies some kind of implicit belief that what i'm saying is not only worth hearing, but also worth the rapt observation of people i know won't exist.”

first of all, “i don’t have depression but the people i relate to most [my kinlist] are hamlet and antigone. im normal. im regular”

secondly, this doesn’t hit as hard but it still hits. i am posting this publicly, after all, aren’t i? 

#entry#technically we're all larping because the self is a construct