The Twelve Days of Christmas - A Correspondence

By John Julius Norwich

(THREAD)

25th December

26th December

27th December

28th December

29th December

I didn't have a picture handy to post today for my sleep-picture, so here's an old picture of when we brought in our recliner and Babby SCSI thought it was a fun new toy to climb on

she also liked to get in the way of keyboard repair process

her favorite youtuber was @TheCaptainSauce

and sometimes she'd just hang out near the keyboard and be like "why are you reading wikipedia and not PETTING ME?"

sometimes she was unaware that an evil wizard was sneaking up on her

20 insights into mimetic desire, some of which might save your life:

The fox in Aesop's fable of the sour grapes in a Romantic Liar. The only reason he was able to convince himself that the grapes were sour is that he was alone. Had there been a rival fox who wanted them, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away.

The domestication of dogs probably happened because humans used them for ritual sacrifice.

Mimetic desire leads to entropy unless directed to something transcendent. The scapegoat mechanism brings order, but it is short-lived. The only way to break the cycle is some form of renunciation—in biblical terms, death to self—the false self. 📚Thomas Merton.

The worship of cats is related to the human perception that cats don’t want the way that we do—they seem unaffected by mimetic desire. In Western philosophy, the only creature who is free, who doesn’t want for anything, is God. You see the connection.

The remix culture of the early 2000s left an indelible impression on me, an enduring delight in the power of whimsy, juxtaposition, virtuosity and ingenuity - and the ability of strangers all over the world to collaborate without any explicit coordination.

1/

The recent Bernie-mittens meme was a sterling example of this, tickling me right to my core, and I just happened on an especially delightful apex example of the form: @ToastedShoes's video of Sanders incorporated into eight AAA

Toasted Shoes got @JoeMashups to create a 3D model of Sanders, then tapped a bunch of different mashup artists to turn the Sanders sprite into playable characters in the games, showing them off in a narrated video.

3/

I'm not much of a fan of video-game streamers' narration, and I confess that I found the video more entertaining without the narration, but to each their own - Shoes was clearly enjoying himself, as were the commenters on the video.

4/

They had a lot to be pleased by.

Sanders as a Sith Lord in Star Wars Battlefront 2:

5/

Ok! Here we go! @WWXsPeach won my 100 follower contest and requested a WangXian canon-era A/B/O threadfic. This is going to be fun!

I basically never write canon because I am a white American and I'm terrified of getting it wrong and accidentally offending people. PLEASE please let me know if that happens! If I can't fix the offending tweet, I will correct it going forward and change it when it goes on AO3.

Also I have not written this out beforehand! I am much more of a plotter than a pantser, also I am super ADHD and don't take my meds on the weekend. So I have a general outline for this, but it might go off the rails.

Ok! So...Omega WWX invents birth control and saves the Wens!

Wei Wuxian, alone in the Demon-Slaughtering cave, was at the angry part of his heat. His legs hurt, his back hurt, he was horny as hell, he was craving tanghulu and yet all Wen Qing offered were the ever-present radishes.

*to the tune of girls just wanna have fun* boys just wanna get doxxed

Thread practice 1

2

7

8

9

Inaugural outfits as gemstones: a thread

MVP Kamala Harris as Tanzanite

FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden as Aquamarine (a variety of Beryl)

FLOTUS44 Michelle Obama as Rhodolite (a variety of pyrope garnet)

Amy Klobuchar as yellow Topaz

Bernie Sanders as gray jasper