Cosmia

  • Sister

    Do you believe sexy nuns are inherently problematic? If so, you’d find yourself right at home on ex-Twitter. An artist made the following provocative tweet, and the Discourse took it from there.

    @pykle_ writes: "dont care how much religious trauma u got, stop sexualizing nuns (im serious)" Below that is a digital illustration of a nun. Well, it's two nuns but it appears to be the same person in two different poses. She is wearing standard black and white nun attire, with long flowing robes that obscures her form. She is wearing a cross necklace with a golden hue. In the first pose she smiles with her hands together in prayer. In the second pose she holds her arms are down and she holds an arrow with her right hand. Except you can't see the hands under the robe. She has a look of disapproval.
    12 million views. 27 thousand likes. This is truly what the people needed to see.

    I honestly mostly like this artwork. The colors are nice, the poses and expression are drawn well, and it’s got an effective simple art style that conveys a lot without being overly elaborate. I’m not sure what that arrow she’s holding in the second pose is supposed to mean, but whatever. Her expression says enough. That being said, I take issue with the words attached to it. I don’t want to attack the artist here too much. I checked their page, I think they got pretty good art and some cognitive dissonance. I hope they grow into an amazing artist with better takes. In the meantime I want to focus less on the person saying it and more on the idea of sexualizing nuns.

    One song frequently came to my mind when I looked at tweets relating to this art: “Sister” by She Wants Revenge. An all time great song about a man’s sexually charged encounter with a religious woman. I love this song, it’s my favorite one off the album and there’s some tough competition. Yet if I were to fully subscribe to the above take loving it would be wrong. The title “Sister” is meant to allude to nuns in the Catholic tradition. If we want to get technical there is a difference between a sister and a nun, but it’s not an important distinction for our purposes. I am quite confident the OP wouldn’t want you to sexualize sisters either. In this song titled “Sister” the woman offers kinky sex to the man. It’s an entire song about sexualizing nuns, GASP! Does that mean loving this song makes me a bad person???? You can come to your own conclusions, but I don’t think so. I’ll explain what I love about this song and my position on the issue writ large.

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  • Those Who Light Themselves Ablaze

    Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire and then shouted, “Free Palestine!” until he no longer could. At the time of this blog post’s release it has been a month since it happened. He went ablaze and subsequently died on February 25th, 2024. Since then plenty of people have came to their own conclusions about what to make of it. Is he just a crazy dude whose actions should be ignored, lest some other unfortunate soul tries to replicate him? Is he a hero who put his life on the line to protest atrocities?  Is he a secret third thing?

    Regardless of the answer, it’s worth noting that he is far from the first person to die in this manner. He almost certainly won’t be the last. Self-immolation is one of if not the most painful ways to die possible, yet it keeps on happening. How do we make sense of that? This blog post is dedicated to pondering the significance of Aaron Bushnell’s final act and other similar incidents. In my view self-immolation is neither exclusively a political act nor merely a reflection of poor mental health. By the end of this post we’ll come closer to figuring out what concoction of factors that secret third thing contains.

    Click here to continue
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  • 24

    The year is 2024, and I am nearing the end of my time as a 24 year old. Following last year’s tradition that means I got to talk about a song with 24 as its title! I’m not sure if I’ll do this again next year, but since I happen to like a song called 24 we’ll roll with it. What song is that you might ask? 24 by Red House Painters naturally! Everyone’s favorite right? Probably not… I tried googling “24 song” and literally could not find this one in the results. Its popularity is eclipsed by Money Man’s 24 among others. Yet somehow Red House Painters’ version is the one I know best. It’s a great song for people who aren’t where they hoped they’d be in their mid-twenties. As such, it’s a great song for me. It’s also a great song in general, a true slowcore classic.

    In spite of its quality, I don’t have a hard time seeing why 24 isn’t popular these days. Not only is it from the early 90s, not only is it almost 7 minutes long, but it’s also slow and depressing. If you want music to energize you look elsewhere. Want music to make you feel good? Avoid this band’s whole discography. Personally, I don’t need music to make me happy. Sometimes it’s better for a song to make me feel seen. I like knowing there’s other people out there with similar feelings and concerns. Makes me realize I’m not as isolated in my emotions as I thought. I don’t always feel like 24, but I feel it often enough to resonate. Join me if you’d like to hear more about this dreary song and some reflections on the past year.

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  • A Hat in Time DLC: Seal the Deal and Nyakuza Metro Game Trade Review

    If I were to create a tier list of animals cats and harp seals would go straight to S tier. Incidentally I’d probably put walruses in the A or B tier, they’re cool too. Just my luck that this iteration of the Game Trade gives some of my favorite animals the spotlight. Welcome or welcome back to the Game Trade Reviews, where a certain Spartan and I each play a video game the other likes and then writes a whole ass blog post about it. This time around I’m doing something a bit different. Some time ago before we conducted these reviews in blog form I took on A Hat in Time, an indie platformer full of quirks. I am not here to rehash my thoughts on the full game. It’s a good game, would recommend. There. Instead, I am simply here to comment on the additional chapters provided by DLC: Seal the Deal and Nyakuza Metro.

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  • Thinking Too Much About ef: the first tale in 2023

    Do you ever experience something that lives rent free in your head weeks after it happened? Something that you feel will stick with you for life? Months later I can still say ef: a fairy tale of the two fits the bill for me. This visual novel, over a decade old, came into my life at the right time. It will have a special place in my heart as I move forward with my life. I can say all of this unequivocally, but I cannot recommend it to everyone. It is most certainly problematic. If it was remotely popular online this year there’d be some vicious things said about it on social media. In some respects it would deserve that pushback. I still love it, but I can’t say I love every part of it. In this blog I will parse through my thoughts on the first half of the story, the first tale. If that sounds like it would be of any interest to you then feel free to join me.

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  • Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: Game Trade Review

    Hello folks, Spartan here.

    As you’ll no doubt see before this one, Mr. Cosmia has reviewed Pikmin 2 at my request, which means I’ve got to make good on my word and review the game he sent me, I sure hope it isn’t a FromSoft game, because I REALLY hate those. and it is….

    Oh, a Spike Chunsoft game eh? well Mr. Cosmia had me play Danganronpa and A.I Somnium files in the past and those games weren’t that bad (compared to Dark Souls III and Bloodborne at least). Well, time to review this bad boy. Also, spoilers will be mentioned, so read at your own risk. This is your last warning

    Here’s the part where you read at your own risk
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  • Update

    Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you’re having a good day wherever you are, whenever you’re reading this. There are fun times to be had in the spooky season if you look in the right place. Unfortunately, for those living in the wrong place such happiness is harder to find. As I type this from the comfort of this room more children die in Gaza. Earlier today Israel hit a refugee camp with an airstrike because they thought some big shot commander was there. Is his death worth all the others killed in the blast? I don’t think so, and it’s not completely clear if they even got him. Similar atrocities happen elsewhere in places we pay less attention to. By sheer luck of birth I get to watch from the sidelines instead of being directly involved in the vast violence humanity is capable of. Is it even okay to be happy under these circumstances? I guess it kind of has to be. If it is not okay to be happy when so much in the world is not, then when can we?

    We shouldn’t look away from what’s happening. Doing so helps enable its continuation. But we don’t need to add even more suffering to the pool. We don’t need to make their unhappiness our own. The pain we experience watching will never match the pain of actually being there. So if you find something positive in your life, I don’t think it’s wrong to embrace it.

    Such are my idle ruminations. This is not the post I planned to end this month with. Far from it. But since that one needs more time in the oven this is what you’ll get for now. I’m not going to rush a post just to meet some deadline I made up. It’s my fault, but I’m not going to make you readers suffer a worse post because of it. I assure you I haven’t forgotten this blog in the slightest. There’s a lot of stuff stuck in the drafts at the moment. Some of it will stay there. But I like to think the ones that make it out will be of good quality. A lot of it will be niche, but to be fair that’s pretty much my whole blog any way. So I hope you look forward to it. For the record, there’s more than just posts on the horizon from me. But there’s also posts.

    Yuuko Amamiya, a woman with long dark blue hair, clad in a black winter garb. She has a slight smile and is side eyeing the POV character (Hiro in this case). She says, "Oh, so you have decided to sweep things under the carpet. If you do that at your age, you will regret that decision in the future."
    Yes ma’am

  • This is Going to Happen Again

    Last Saturday–October 7th, 2023–Hamas militants launched a surprise attack against Israel, bringing several years of relative calm in the ongoing …

    This is Going to Happen Again

    First time using the reblog feature, figured this one was well worth sharing. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

    By the way you can expect another post from me later this month on something completely unrelated to this conflict.

  • Pikmin 2 Game Trade Review

    Welcome back to the Game Trade Reviews, where I post my in-depth takes on whatever random ass game my friend wanted me to play. This time around I’m taking a look at a game that got a rerelease pretty recently, Pikmin 2. I played Pikmin 3 on the Wii U almost as soon as it got released, and I adored it. For whatever reason I never went back to try the older games until this opportunity arose. I still haven’t played the first Pikmin game, and it’ll be some time before I finish Pikmin 4. As such, I won’t focus too much on comparing this game’s quality in the context of the series. Not to say I won’t bring up any comparisons at all, but I will do my best to evaluate this game on its own terms. I must also mention that this review will contain spoilers, though this is not exactly the kind of game where spoilers matter that much. With all that out of the way, let’s get into it.

    By pressing here you can get into it.
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  • Pay-to-Win Games: Digital gambling

    Hello,

    Been a while since I’ve posted on Mr. Cosmia’s blog eh? guess it’s time to change that. It’s Spartan for those who don’t realize this yet. Gaming has been a large part of my identity and I can’t imagine my life without it. If I didn’t pick up that PS2 controller back in 2007 and stick with it as a hobby, who knows where I’d be? certainly not creating this post as gaming is what led me to meeting Mr. Cosmia in the first place. But even with the positive benefits of gaming, there are some certain, scummy aspects to it that have become more prevalent in recent years. And one of those is pay-to-win games.

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