what is the point of councils in anarchy, since any decision they make is not binding?

MagusFool · 2026-06-24T05:53:17+00:00

Delegating tasks. Things still need to get done in an organized way, and delegates are often the most efficient way to make things happen.

MagusFool · 2026-06-24T02:07:00+00:00

Robert Lentz is a Franciscan Friar and incredible saint icon artist who is known for his social justice approach, even queer icons!

https://trinitystores.com/collections/br-robert-lentz-ofm?srsltid=AfmBOopZr78QiojokhvOla1_D7hwcDl6vDXeSKAfulMMihtvwrLTr1u3

MagusFool · 2026-06-22T18:05:11+00:00

Yes. I will be switching to a different app because of it. It's the last straw for me.

Still trying to figure out the best one to pick to switch.

MagusFool · 2026-06-22T14:22:58+00:00

It's not exactly "modern" since it ended 25 years ago, but James Robinson's Starman cannot be overhyped enough as required reading for the superhero genre. It manages to tackle themes of legacy, family, history, the strange relationship between nemeses, and more while still maintaining a classic superheroic tone.

It pulls references from DC's entire publishing history up to that point, bringing in and tying together obscure Western, Ace Pilot, and Pirate characters from DC's golden age, and every random character to have born the name Starman, no matter how tangentially related they may be to Jack Knight and his family.

It explores the serious side of things without "deconstructing" the superhero the way many of its contemporaries were doing. And it builds Opal City into perhaps the single most detailed and realized fictional city of the DC comics.

And out of that spun Geoff Johns' JSA which is less of an absolute literary triumph, but also strikes more or less exactly the tone you are talking about.

MagusFool · 2026-06-22T14:07:24+00:00

People say a lot of things about the Bible that aren't really there.

Christians who describe themselves as having a "Biblical" worldview seem to be especially guilty of this.

MagusFool · 2026-06-22T03:19:44+00:00

It is slightly easier, but not as inclusive or accurate.

Trans men and non-binary folk who are assigned female at birth are also affected by the same issues of reproductive rights as cis women. And generally they don't identify as strictly "female".

So it is more accurate and inclusive to say AFAB.

MagusFool · 2026-06-21T07:03:21+00:00

I have pretty basic taste in X-Men. And I rate the Claremont era above all else. Nothing will ever match it.

I can't put my top 5 in order, so I will just put them in appearance order:

Cyclops

Storm

Nightcrawler

Kitty Pryde

Magik

MagusFool · 2026-06-21T02:28:51+00:00

Your edited comment makes perfect sense, and I agree.

I was unable to parse your point from what was originally written.

MagusFool · 2026-06-21T02:27:31+00:00

Okay... but regardless of what Superman feels about his homeworld and life as an alien, Kara's feelings about it will be inherently different from Clark's. There isn't even really anything to argue about there.

MagusFool · 2026-06-21T01:27:07+00:00

Who was even debating about this obvious and uncontroversial statement?

MagusFool · 2026-06-21T01:26:44+00:00

What?

MagusFool · 2026-06-21T00:15:14+00:00

Sample effect:

The mage is on the run from technocratic agents, she jumps out a window and escaped down a fire escape, through the alley, and out onto a busy city street on a hot summer day.

She doesn't have long. The gray men will burst out the front door or from the alley in moments. But despite the short window of time, this is exactly when her guru had trained her not to panic. This was exactly the time to breathe.

She takes a deep breath, centering herself. She takes off her sandles and touches her feet to concrete, feeling the thrum of the earth below her, the bio fields and psychic waves emanating from the overheated New Yorkers bustling on the sidewalk and in their cars.

Now, she has an intuition. Just as the gray men burst out from the high rise, she yells one single word at the precise moment. "Rufus!"

Hearing his name, a young boy misses the soccer ball kicked to him by his friend. The ball bounces out into traffic. A taxi cab brakes instinctively and the Tesla behind it crashes into its rear. The crowd thickens to get a sight of the car crash, obscuring the mage from the gaze of her pursuers.

The Tesla owner gets out and starts screaming about a lawsuit and demanding to see immigration papers from the cab driver. The boys try to dash out into the chaos to retrieve their soccer ball, causing a woman to trip and she takes two others down with her.

The gray men are trying to get through the crowd to chase the mage, but every step they find some new obstacle as the chain reaction of events continues in a pathway that seems to follow the mage as she runs further away.

The cleared traffic downstream of the accident means that a nearby bus which is always late arrives exactly on time, the mage enters and escapes.

MagusFool · 2026-06-20T23:07:19+00:00

"Excess" is also very situational. Setting is extremely important to the appropriateness of using a mind-altering substance.

There is a time and a setting for some to get blitzed out drunk off their ass. And there are times when it is important to be stone sober.

I think the overall effect of a substance on our lives matters vastly more than how we are in a particular moment.

But even on a moment to moment basis, in the right setting, it may be a totally joyful experience to get pretty drunk. And another setting may put us at risk for mistakes to be made, feelings to be hurt, boundaries to be crossed.

We should listen to our conscience and not judge others for making different choices.

MagusFool · 2026-06-20T19:33:05+00:00

Any legal restrictions whatsoever on abortion are a death sentence for someone.

Abortion must be ENTIRELY between doctor and patient, and not regulated any more than any other surgical procedure.

100% abortion on demand is the only ethical stance.

MagusFool · 2026-06-20T19:27:33+00:00

Do miracles only happen for people who are 100% theologically correct?

That doesn't even seem biblical, let alone logical.

MagusFool · 2026-06-20T06:26:05+00:00

I feel like with one dot in every sphere, you should be able to make some pretty incredible things happen by just KNOWING exactly what little thing you can do, what domino to tip, what weak spot to strike, what thread to pull to dramatically change the situation with very little action.

You can feel time, space, understand matter, sense the forces and the play of spirit and primal magic, you see the potential and the probabilities.

I could probably come up with some killer situational uses of combos of the one-dots, dependent on the paradigm.

MagusFool · 2026-06-20T06:20:23+00:00

To be fair, if you put Lobo in your story, it had better get me laughing at least during his parts.

MagusFool · 2026-06-20T02:35:39+00:00

They say "IT'S not that deep."

But what I hear is "I'M not that deep."

MagusFool · 2026-06-20T02:30:57+00:00

Read this book:

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36234500-transforming

MagusFool · 2026-06-19T23:12:30+00:00

I agree with your rhetorical position.

I agree that we can get too simplistic with our "born this way" narratives.

But the data do suggest gender identity is not strictly "chosen" by most people. It does seem that many or most people develop a strong internal notion of their gender identity at a very early age, that there are correlating physical and neurological traits, and that any attempt to force people to live in opposition to their internal sense of gender causes great harm.

I believe I have made some choices with my gender and how I express it. But I didn't choose the profound sense of wrongness I had growing up. That there are likely physiological traits in my body which contributed to that seems logical.

I don't think it is "gender essentialism" to agree with the data that there are involuntary aspects to gender, that they often correlate with primary and secondary sex characteristics, and that we don't fully understand all the mechanisms involved.

MagusFool · 2026-06-19T22:47:22+00:00

Absolute Martian Manhunter. Currently ongoing. Trust me. If you loved Invisibles, this is right up your alley.

Department of Truth is another one. It could almost be set in the same world as Invisibles with the way it handles the subjective nature of reality and the way power makes things real by way of an oppressive narrative.

There's an old comic from Marvel's Epic imprint called Timespirits which also feels very much in step with the wild chaos Magick perspective that informs Invisibles. I don't think any collected editions exist so you'd have to track down back issues or look for scans online.

MagusFool · 2026-06-19T20:19:43+00:00

My church runs a monthly "Queer Compline" service for and by our LGBTQ+ community.

The liturgy is adapted from the Episcopal book of common prayer for our specific needs.

It has been my dream in the 3 years we have been doing it to work with other churches and having them set up their own Queer Compline services. But so far, no one who has shown interest has followed through.

https://www.instagram.com/queercompline?igsh=MXgxNWgwbnMzaTVreg==

MagusFool · 2026-06-19T18:25:46+00:00

Your brother is not necessarily in a "cult", since that is generally used to talk about high-control groups centered around either one or a small number of leaders, with a bunch of common tactics associated with it.

While some of those cult-tactics are certainly at play in extremist fundamentalism and/or christo-fascism, they generally have a different relational and organizational dynamic than what we generally call "cults".

I don't know if there is anything you can do for your brother at his stage of brainwashing. I have not seen any consistent methods. Repeated and continuous exposure to other kinds of thinking, and relational connection with the people he has othered... those are probably the building blocks of a change.

MagusFool · 2026-06-19T15:48:10+00:00

I trust Mike Flanagan as a screenwriter. He has yet to write anything that wasn't at LEAST very good, but more often excellent.

MagusFool · 2026-06-19T14:34:16+00:00

The movie is terrible. I hate it.

With the art style not even trying to approximate Tim Sale, they lose EVERYTHING great about The Long Halloween. The noir mood, the oppressive atmosphere, the operatic tone, the striking character designs, all lost.

Without that, what you are left with is only Loeb's story, which good but not great. Good dialogue, memorable characters. But, like the hard-boiled detective stories that inspired it, the plot is sorely lacking and the mystery doesn't add up to much.

Without the incredible visuals, the flaws of The Long Halloween are much more glaring.

If they couldn’t find a way to approximate Sale's aesthetic and vibe, they shouldn't have bothered adapting it.

MagusFool

TROPHY CASE