#and there are those far more qualified than I to speak to the matter

[bithand]

Idk where I'm going with this, I'm still sipping my coffee. But there's something about Thedas being a continent of certainties in so many ways. They KNOW magic exists. They KNOW spirits / demons exist. They have tangible, demonstrable proof of things that in the real world and many fictional settings are a matter of debate and faith. The majority of groups even know for a fact that their gods exist and work in the world. They don't need to take it on faith. They can reach out and touch them.

Andrastians, meanwhile, are the only ones left in the end who have no proof and never will. Faith is their only option. Which plays a role, I think, in them being more focused on Andraste than the Maker. Because they are living in a world of certainties, and She is the only proof of the divine they've ever had.

[bwat5-blog]

Continuing The Cycle

**Spoilers For Arcane**

Let me say to begin with, that nothing in this post is to downplay or brush off Piltover's oppression of Zaun. There will be some who read that and still scream at me, that's okay. I just want to be clear.

Many people on here more insightful and intelligent than I have spoken on this already, but it has been sticking with me lately so I wanted to get my thoughts out.

I have been quite free with dismantling some of the inane attempts at criticism of Arcane in this space. But, I promise I do actually understand everyone is entitled to their opinion. After all, how we connect with and understand art on an individual level is one of the things that make it so special. I have never, and will never come for someone who is simply stating their honest opinion based on the actual content in a respectful manner.

Where my issues come in, have to do with these wide-spread critiques/takes/stances that so directly undermine the meaning of the narrative they are best ignorant and at worst malicious. And more often than not rely on omission of details that negates their stance, or fabrication of details to support them. To that end, what I am discussing today is the black and white thinking that has permeated the fandom, poisoning understanding and appreciation of all corners of that narrative.

LET'S JUST GET IT OUT OF THE WAY:

*Before we get into the Arcane content, we need to discuss where a lot of this is coming from. I am just gonna get this out here right now, and there are some people who are gonna keel over reading it but if you are one of those folks I might as well not waste your time*

Arcane is not the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

It could not be more clear that this is where a lot of this is coming from. Let me be explicitly clear, this is NOT a deep-dive or analysis of this conflict. This thing is immensely complicated . If you comment here with a "IT IS NOT COMPLICATED ITS" sort of comment I'm sorry to tell you but you are wrong. The modern phase of this has origins as far back as the late nineteenth century and there is more going back even further. I don't care if its a straight fucking line. Something going back that far has more to it than the average nerd like me is qualified to speak on. Now, that being said, I do understand to a degree why this is happening. Not like this conflict has ever really been settled but in the last few years especially things have really been active and generating a degree of media content I don't remember seeing this level of in my short 32 years. So in a world where everyone (myself included) is so plugged in and enveloped by social media, a lot of us are getting a more direct look at this than we really ever have. And we analyze and connect with art through the lens of the world around us to a point. But we CANNOT do so exclusively. Trying to force a narrative into a one-to-one comparison robs it of a tremendous amount of meaning. Because no matter how complex and intricate this story actually can be. IT IS NOT REALITY. I'm not getting into it here, that would be pages and pages of writing and I'm here to talk about Arcane. But I'm going to say this because it applies to real life and the show both and will take us into my actual point today.

The idea that anyone on one side must always be good and justified simply because they are the oppressed, while the other must always be evil, is juvenile, naïve, and fails to grasp even a fraction of the complexity of human nature

Some of you are going to have an absolute seizure reading me say that that statement applies to real life as well. I don't care. It takes time, maturity, and meeting people from all walks of life to understand things are not so simple.

BACK TO ARCANE:

But, that being said time to get back to business. How does this all apply to Arcane?

"The show should have ended with a civil war between Zaun and Piltover!"

"When Zaun arrived during the last battle Jinx should have unloaded on the Enforcers and the Noxians both!"

"They ruined Jinx's character! WTF do you mean she apologized for killing Caitlyn's mother? Her mom was part of the oppressive system that ruined Jinx's life and brought it on herself!"

"Silco did bad things but it was all to gain power to protect Zaun!"

"Poor little rich girl lost her mom and acts like it's a reason to punish an entire city with warcrimes. The people of Zaun have been suffering worse for their entire history"

"Rebel Vi I miss you! How dare they make you care about people in Piltover!"

"The coward show runners made Zaunites into boot-lickers fighting for Piltover wearing Enforcer armor at the end!"

You get the idea. I have seen variations of these and many more time and time again. Zaun should have let Piltover fall or even attacked themselves. Caitlyn deserved everything done to her because she's of the Piltovan elite. Every terrible thing Jinx or Silco did was totally and completely justified because of Piltovan oppression.

Now there are many angles I could come at this from. My usual one is simply addressing the astounding lack of logic in most of these sorts of arguments. For example, I can rope all of the people saying Zaun should have let Piltover fall into one category. People who forgot about this guy:

Like he was just gonna "evolve" Piltover than call it a day and zoot off into space with his new buddies. Obviously not and the idea that he wouldn't immediately take Zaun as well then keep moving is completely laughable. But this sort of thing isn't my issue today. My issue is that those so zealously insisting the the show should have continued on a path of hate, death and destruction are completely missing the point.

I titled this continuing the cycle for a reason. So much of this show, revolves around this concept of the cycle of violence. Those who keep it going, those who suffer from it, and those who break it. And the issue I'm finding is that a tremendous amount of people have seemingly decided that anything people from Zaun do is justified, and anything people from Piltover do is not. When in fact, where they are born is irrelevant in this context. Because each and everyone of them has the choice to further the cycle, or to walk away.

Silco & Vander:

Vander continued the cycle when instead of forgiving Silco for his part (whatever it may have been, we never really get the whole story) in Felicia's death he tried to kill him. And Silco did the same when he took his revenge instead of walking away ending not only the life of the man who wronged him, but causing the deaths of two teenage boys, trying to have Vi killed and causing her imprisonment altering her life forever, and taking Powder as his own after obliterating her second family altering her life and the lives of all those she would hurt through her actions as well.

Caitlyn:

In Caitlyn we see all three. She was an admittedly naïve but well-meaning young woman who was victimized terribly by cycle of violence around all for thinking she could help. We then watch her heart-breaking transformation into being a part of it allowing her hate and pain to warp her into someone dark and vengeful. Then finally we see her laying down the hate for her mothers killer in favor of her love for the woman who means everything to her. Stepping outside of it and turning her back on that violence.

There are of course other examples. Jinx walking away, Ambessa choosing to continue the bloodshed even with her last child begging her to stop. the list goes on. My point in discussing this is that it doesn't matter where they come from. Characters from all over this story play a part both good and bad in the events that occur. And to properly appreciate and understand this tale and what it is saying we MUST recognize that.

Yes Silco was a Zaunite. No Silco was not justified in unleashing Shimmer on his own people. He was a revolutionary once, but he lost his way. In the end he died a violent drug lord who exploited his people for his own gain. He was not a hero.

Yes Jinx is a Zaunite. No, Jinx attacking the council was not a noble strike for her people against oppression. She was a terrified, mentally ill, grieving and angry young woman who lashed out in a moment of awful pain. And in doing guaranteed Piltovan oppression against her people. .

Yes, Heimerdinger was the father of Piltover and his neglect caused terrible problems for everyone. He also gave his life for a Zaunite rebel commander to help get him home. (I understand in the lore he's probably alive but we haven't seen that yet and they have for sure diverged so it isn't a guarantee)

Yes, Caitlyn Kiramman is the daughter of one of the high houses of Piltover, and played a part of the people of Zaun suffering under Ambessa's manipulations and cruelty. She also gave the leader of the Firelights the gemstone she was so determined to return, stood side-by-side with Vi and told the council to their faces they failed Zaun, and put her own body on the line to make things right against Ambessa.

And that isn't to say that any of those characters were all good or all bad. It's to say that they all are capable of both. Just like every character. To slap a Zaun sticker on Silco and a Piltover (or cop as so many of you are fond of) sticker on Caitlyn and give them a pass or not for everything they do based on that is simplistic and ignorant. These characters have so much to them that to reduce them to these easily digestible bite-sized pieces is to deprive yourself of that true weight of this story.

All that said, lets take another look at a few items from that list from earlier:

"The show should have ended with a civil war between Zaun and Piltover!"// At the moment where all of humanity was at stake, people came together and fought side by side to quite literally save the world

"They ruined Jinx's character! WTF do you mean she apologized for killing Caitlyn's mother? Her mom was part of the oppressive system that ruined Jinx's life and brought it on herself!"// In a moment of pain and clarity Jinx found herself speaking to someone she realized she horribly wronged. Someone who had been twisted into something dark and violent by pain and grief, a feeling Jinx knew all too well. So she said the most she could, it isn't a direct apology. But her remorse is clear. "

"When Zaun arrived during the last battle Jinx should have unloaded on the Enforcers and the Noxians both!"// Jinx went from someone hated and feared, who felt like she had nothing to offer anyone, who felt like she had failed or killed everyone who loved her, to riding into battle leading her people and bearing symbols of her loved ones into the war for all mankind. And although I and most agree she's alive, the last act we know she for sure that she took was to save the life of the older sister who loved her so much in her most dire moment. If she did die, Jinx died a hero.

CLOSING WORDS:

Arcane is many things. But it's humanity is its heart. I've said it many times and many ways, but good stories... in this case great stories matter. They stick with us. Because long after the giant battles, the wolf monsters, and shiny blue magic rocks have faded, its the humanity you remember. The sisters fighting desperately to hold on to each-other in a world determined to rip them apart. The lovers from different worlds finding hope in each-others arms. Brothers betraying one another, a daughter having to take her mothers life, the list goes on. But when we rob these characters and this story of all of that, when the flash is gone, what's left?

I haven't done a long one in a bit and I feel like this is a bit rambling so I apologize. To those who take time out of their day to read anything I have to say I appreciate you more than you know. Feel free to share your thoughts! I love discussing this show. And in closing will leave you with one of my favorite quotes.

“It's like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad has happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for"

- JRR Tolkien

[yuurivoice]

Not answering is A-okay with me fyi, but I just wanted to say as someone who struggles, THANK YOU for the sh "content" take. Do some people have good intentions? Sure, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Do good intentions even begin to scratch the surface of qualifying someone to handle it in a respectful and proper way regardless of personal experience? Nah. Thanks for keeping your space cool and safe, you're a real one.

- appreciative long time follower

I appreciate the message because sometimes I second guess myself like omg is my stance on this too firm? So hearing that I'm making sense to someone is comforting.

If that sort of stuff has helped people, etc, and it never got weird, I'm glad it helped. I wouldn't want to diminish that experience.

At the same time, my exposure to this that radicalized me was when I stopped in on someone's stream to get some insight into a situation (untold years ago) and got some key info that I think set my opinion in stone.

People boasting that they were making content like that for vulnerable people, and that those people "need us", framing the dynamic in the most codependent, unhealthy way you could fathom.

People who had been making this content since they were MINORS, and into young adulthood, who were also at risk themselves at the time.

Financially incentivizing their help with donations and wishlists, leveraging their own struggles and lack to create what I feel is a radically unhealthy relationship between comfort/aid and risky spending.

So yeah. I don't take too kindly to idiots with microphones specifically targeting vulnerable individuals who need a hotline far more than a parasocial hyperfixation.

I don't speak on a whole lot on shit in the ASMR Roleplay slash hobbyist VA space, but that in particular is a rancid corner I stumbled across that I think invites some of the most at risk, vulnerable members of the community to put their wellness in the hands of people who I frankly wouldn't trust to put my fries in the goddamn bag let alone talk to me about the value of my life and why I should stick around.

If I seem harsh, it's because somebody damn well should be. Shit isn't a game.

Anywho......yep. The topic came up recently in private when I was dealing with an unrelated situation, and I remembered this exact thing and how much it bothered me.

I can respect anyone who would like to hear very specific comfort from one of my boys. I don't fault you for that. You know they'd want the best for you. I just don't think I can personally deliver it to you, and they wouldn't want me to, because I can't do nearly enough for you. You deserve better than care being pantomimed and imagined, and no matter how alone you feel, there are people who will fight for you, you gotta go grab them and tell them you need that. And if they fail, you try again, and again.

Me and my content can be a lot of things, and helping soothe aches is a big part of the job, but there are limits. I think there has to be for the safety and peace for everyone involved.

I can't risk putting myself in a spot where someone has to rely on me like that, and I wouldn't want to put them at risk either. Because I can fail. Maybe the words wouldn't be right. Or the tone didn't match their needs. Or it was just too little too late.

For everyone, that's a path we shouldn't go down. But we can still support one another. I think my characters and their stories are filled with messages and purpose for people who are in need, because I've been there. Quite literally, I'm familiar with the territory. So what I've created reflects that journey. It may not be specifically comfort for the thing. But the underlying meaning and purpose is one that speaks to some of those dark places.

Or not. Because it's art. You'll take what you want from it. But you'd probably find it there if you need to.

Anywho. Thanks for the message, Anon. Take care of yourselves, everyone. 💖

[myreia]

Sketches of Times Lost

Day 04: Reticent

minfilia cannot voice the ache that is in her heart. minfilia x female warrior of light. a realm reborn patches. written for ffxivwrites2024. rating: general. 964 words ao3 link

Evening has long since fallen when Minfilia leaves the solar.

Body aching from a day spent at her desk, she nudges the heavy door open and slips through, careful to close it soundlessly behind her. Though most of the Scions—faces new and old—will have retired to their homes for the night, there is often someone lingering in the main hall playing a game of Triple Triad or relaxing with a drink. She would hate to disturb them.

She pads down the hall, the hem of her skirt whispering against the flagstones, her footsteps echoing hollowing in her ears. It has been months and still she has not adjusted to it. Compared to their former headquarters, the Rising Stones is a veritable fortress, cold and dark and deep. Windows are few and far between, and the ones that are there give in so little light the base may as well be subterranean. She misses the bright Thanalan vistas and the fresh breeze rolling off the bay. For all its safety and security, the Rising Stones feels, at times, like a self-imposed cage.

“You’re working late.”

Her pace slows to a stop, her heart fluttering. A chair scrapes against the stone and a moment later the Warrior of Light rounds an empty table and steps out of the shadows. Aureia Malathar is much as she always is—solid and stern, her body moving with the grace of one accustomed to combat, her gaze curious and sharp. She rarely misses a thing, though gods know she is keen to keep her observations to herself.

“‘Tis not unduly late,” Minfilia says. “The final bell has not yet struck.”

Aureia’s lips quirk. “That’s late, Minfilia.”

“Then I suppose what qualifies as late is not unusual for me.”

“I… can’t argue with that.” She trails off and raises her head, her dark red eyes meeting hers. Despite her controlled expression, even she cannot hide her exhaustion. This is the not first time Minfilia has come across her late at night, often with a drink in hand. She doubts she has been sleeping well—her face is tired, the dark circles beneath her eyes more prominent than ever, the red in her black hair faded and dull. Haunted, is the word. Haunted by the ghosts of the past, by the visions of the future.

It has been this way since the Praetorium.

“Is everything all right?” Aureia asks. “You should get some rest. We all need our sleep. Our leaders most of all.”

Minfilia glances away, a flush on her cheeks. Perhaps it would be unfair of her to point out that she is scolding her for the very thing Aureia needs herself. Fools, the pair of them. Their strengths and talents may lie in very different places, but they are more similar than either of them would admit. Pushing too hard, stubborn to a fault. Incapable of regular sleep.

“I will sleep when I can,” she says evenly, already cringing within at the awkward choice of words. Why is it that she so often fails to hold a proper conversation with her? It seems she has always had this effect on her. No matter the topic of their conversation, Aureia’s presence leaves her comforted and calmed—and uncertain of every word she speaks. “I admit, I often focus better at night. I feel a clarity of mind once the sun has set, as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”

“Me, too.” Aureia shifts her weight and places a hand against the back of a nearby chair, running her palm across the polished wood. “I used to tell my brother once the world sleeps, I can finally think because everyone spouting nonsense has stopped talking.”

“You… have a brother?”

“Had.” Her voice drops, quiet and strained. “He’s dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“…thank you.” The steel in her voice speaks to something else, a secret buried deep. She exhales a breath, and it is not sadness or anger or fear or any of the deep emotional weight carried by those who lost loved ones to the Calamity. It is something else. “Look,” she continues, taking a step back. “It’s late. I should—”

Minfilia catches her hand. “Would you walk with me?” she asks in earnest. “If you cannot sleep and I cannot sleep, perhaps the fresh air of night would do both of us some good.”

Aureia eyes widen. She pauses, her hand soft and warm, her pulse beating frantically beneath the pad of Minfilia’s thumb where it rests against her wrist. For a moment, chance—hopeful, bright, and keen—opens its wondrous doors with a promise of something new. Something sweet. Something good.

She lets go.

The doors shut.

“I really need to get some sleep,” Aureia says. “I’m supposed to meet the Sons of Saint Coinach tomorrow morning.”

Minfilia nods. “Of course.”

“Goodnight, Minfilia.”

“Goodnight.”

Aureia slips away, the last of the Scions to leave for the night, and Minfilia is now alone in a dark and silent hall. She takes a step, pacing across the cobblestones, cold air prickling the back of her neck as she watches the shadows dance across the walls. The ceilings stretch high above her, wide and cold and lonely, even as the walls press in on her with their cavernous weight.

Her heart aches. There will be plenty of further opportunities to spend in Aureia’s company, and yet she cannot help but feel like something has slipped through her fingers. If she had but given voice to the secret that lies in the centre of her heart, the secret she has barely come to acknowledge herself, would she perhaps have…?

It is a question that does not have an answer. Cannot have an answer.

It is better this way.

[baeddel]

finking about smoking, addiction, anarchy, and (for some reason) the Spirit of Christ

[1k~ words]

Christian discourse about smoking. GotQuestions' page on it (click) cites a remarkable passage "'All things are lawful for me,' but I will not be dominated by anything" (1 Corinthians 6:12; NRSV). oh my god! did you hear that too? the rest of the passage is about how you shouldn't visit sex workers. not as cool (although their suggestion that "whoever is united to a [sex worker] becomes one body with her" is tantalizing, it has sadly not been my experience). but this one passage is interesting and leads to interesting discourse among Christians. the first part i omitted earlier: "'All things are lawful for me', but not all things are beneficial." Paul & Sosthenes are chastening us in this passage; we speak the first part, they qualify with the second. but they do not reject it. all things really are lawful for me; at the same time, some things are harmful to me, and some things, in doing them, become my master, and i am not to let anything harm me or become my master.

we are really not that far from egoism here! but of course their reasoning ends up being much different. this sermon ends by chastening us: "[D]o you not know your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God with your body." bought with a price! what kind of price is paid of a resource that is Infinite and Eternal, by a being Himself Infinite and Eternal, through whom every Event has Eventure and Being has Being, containing every Power and Perfection, of which He possesses unlimited capacity to dispose? what a strange sort of debt i owe! i suppose he means the price paid at Calgary. well, it's all a confusing matter that i am sure Christian theologians believe they have sorted out.

in any case, most of us don't think that we are vessels for the Holy Spirit, and feel no obligation to make our bodies a sanctuary for it. but i like this little mantra: All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. after all, while our slogan includes the words "No Gods", it also includes the words "No Masters." the chiding can therefore easily apply to us as well. All things are lawful for me (because i am not willing to be beholden to any authority, natural, legal or supernatural), but I will not be dominated by anything (therefore, i must carefully consider whether what i am doing will allow me to be brought to domination...)

why am i thinking about that? well, i got some cigarettes, and i had one or two, and then all of a sudden i was smoking three cigarettes a day even when i didn't really want to. i have never encountered another substance like that. good grief! and i think the power in cigarettes is that they don't do very much. you may (as i did) feel very strong effects for precisely the first two or three cigarettes, and after that you feel next to nothing. further, whatever they do to you lasts precisely as long as the cigarette does, and vanishes the moment you've put it out. so it is a drug, but a drug like tea or coffee, not like crack or heroin. but it must be ten times more addictive than either of those, and a thousand times worse for you as well.

here is what is good about stronger drugs: when you take them, you can't do much of anything else. not unless you've already developed a habit. so if you're going to use benzos or opiates or even alcohol, you have to basically set aside a day to do them, or at least several hours of a day. you can't do them at the same time you're going to fill out forms, paint, make phonecalls, operate a forklift, much of anything else you might do in a day. so it's a lot easier to let it become a habit. in fact you'll probably start to say, 'i'll just have a cigarette before i fill out these forms.' and you'll really do that; it won't prevent you at all. so any person can become addicted to nicotine, whereas your life already has to be in some degree of wrack and ruin to become a daily user of serious drugs.

i admit that many uppers are an exception to this; people who take speed go on to clean their house, walk their dog, phone their insurance, and so forth, even if they didn't intend to beforehand. i'm not in a good position to analyze these drugs. although i will say any drug that fills you with a desire to clean your room is at least a little bit ahead of cigarettes, which don't do anything.

in any case, addiction must be somewhat in tension with anarchy. i think there are some exceptions, but let's say intentional daily use of something, even something harmful, exercised with agency, is not addiction as we normally think about it, even though it would be classified that way by the medical paternity. i am not saying taking meth every day is incompatible with anarchism. but i think an addiction, allowed to develop to the point that you take substances even when you don't want to, is something you should try, with caution, and hopefully the help of trustworthy friends, to free yourself of. and freeing yourself of an addiction will teach you to encounter your agency and to use it, even against internal obstacles, which is valuable. but don't smoke cigarettes! cigarettes teach surrender! that's my anti-smoking PSA! now, if you'll excuse me, i'm just going for a smoke before i proofread this post...

[corvuscorona]

tbh the problem with the Eva rebuilds is that they make Kaworu a tragic heroic type instead of how he is in the anime and eoe, which is the character that hurts shinji the most and the probable main reason or at the very least a load bearing reason shinji un imminent izes the eschaton

( + pasting ur second ask here for easy reference: )

Sorry my internet died. I also don’t know why I’m sending these as an ask. I know my take on kaworu is controversial because the rebuilds are essential in establishing kaworu as the cornerstone he is. And not the two episodes and a few cameos he is pre rebuild, which had a lot of people overlooking or completely forgetting what he did. But also he kinda just fuckt everything up for arguably selfish reasons. Dandelion boy.

( also I want to preface this by saying: I'm SO stoked that you have sent me asks on this topic. fuck Yes. I would almost certainly NOT have typed any more sentences about it but now I have a reason to which is so exciting. early birthday present for ME!!! THANK you )

ok so. yyyyyes in that rebuild, to the extent that it does anything intentional with kaworu at all (which is a big BIG qualifier, imo), does seem to frame him sympathetically; ikwym; but. BUT... HOWEVER.

first and foremost, no matter WHAT the intent was with rebuild 3 or how people tend to collectively interpret the Plot Events Therein, literally every moment of that movie was like. "what are we doing here" to a degree that I have not seen since wonder egg priority came out. and the other 3 rebuilds are NOT far behind it on that front, so imo if we really want to boil things down to A The Problem, I would zoom WAY out.

I don't actually think he comes off as any less Ultimately Harmful in rebuild than he did in the anime? it is genuinely GENUINELY difficult to evaluate this just because again, I don't think rebuild Had A Point, which means I can't take things like "cause and effect" into account mostly, but even if I zoom all the way IN to Just the interpersonal drama, he very much caused shinji to re-un-pause the apocalypse & then exploded into gore two (2) feet away from his face.

...& then shinji spent the only kinda-okay part of the following movie exhibiting ptsd symptoms about it.

I could be missing something (eg, see next point on list), but I also thought his intentions were pretty thoroughly ambiguous in the anime. ME PERSONALLY, I am inclined to think of him as having genuinely decided "you know what. humans are cool," & as having had a limited amount of agency or background knowledge he could use to do much with that sentiment besides get shinji to squish him (he is an alien.), & while I acknowledge that this is one of probably one million different reads (& some of those are for sure better-informed than mine), the fact that it's There For The Reading makes me want to say that "how he was in the anime" was "inclined to cause problems either on purpose OR by accident, for reasons we can't know with any real certainty"

(I genuinely cannot comment on end of evangelion because I did Not rewatch it this time around. one time was enough. I do not care for that film & anyway anno was NOT speaking to me when he made it; it's none of my business.)

WERE the rebuilds The thing that established him as important in the hearts & minds of the people? I'm not gonna pretend like I have any real historical understanding of the nge fandom even a little bit, but the anime seemed PRETTY open-and-shut about it. and also EoE happened, and also there was the manga. and presumably fujos as well

finally: let me know if I'm misreading, but by "un-immanentize the eschaton," you mean "reject instrumentality," right? does that mean you're thinking about this from the perspective that EoE ends in tragedy (because now anyone who climbs outta the soup has to live in Apocalypse World)? I ask mostly bcuz I am very much An Optimist about evangelion; I'm that guy who finishes the anime & is like "aw good for him :')" & then treats all the other stuff like a funny curiosity I can read about on wikis sometimes recreationally. sorry. it's in my nature. so it's extremely possible that we're starting from Completely different reads in the first place (which is awesome DON'T get me wrong. fun puzzle).

I do think that no matter how you spin it kaworu is a load-bearing Something; we're in agreement on that. & he sure did hurt the fuck out of that kid (I love that episode I love kaworu he's so fucking funny. as like. a narrative device. "hello character who has spent this entire show getting pushed around & yelled at & has lived in Hell World his whole life. I'm here to transparently ask you what YOU think about (gestures) Whatever You Want. ah whoops you DO have to squish me to death now though sorry" like YEAH ALRIGHT MAN)... I think the "arguably selfish reasons" assertion is also very interesting; you could write so much fanfiction about that. again I'm sure I'm missing Lore Details & theory stuff & whatever but it really does feel like you could fill in his motivations with Anything You Wanted To Basically. are you talking about a specific Known Theory of some kind? I'm so curious now. What Does Kaworu Nagisa Want...

[sapphire-weapon]

So. I gotta say some shit.

I think we all have a tendency to be more gracious to Ada's character than she rightfully deserves. I'm guilty of this, too. We all want to give her the benefit of the doubt and insist that her character serves a purpose and is worth talking about because she's A. such a huge part of Leon's character and B. the only non-white member of the cast, but like.

There's nothing there.

I noticed this when I rewatched Separate Ways recently (because fuck ever playing that shit again holy fuck Separate Ways sucks to play).

After RE2, Ada isn't a character anymore. She has absolutely no arc; her character never develops or goes anywhere. She's not tied to anyone or anything in the plot in a way that matters -- even her relationship with Wesker doesn't fucking matter, because there's no fallout or consequence as a result of anything she does to/with/for him, whether it's beneficial to him or against him. She has only one facet to her personality: snarky and mysterious. We never see her emote or speak in a context removed from either of those two qualifiers. Ever.

She has some softer moments here and there, but they last for like a single line of dialogue or two and then the scene just completely moves on without them -- so, those softer moments never actually matter anyway.

She doesn't enhance or enrich Leon's character in any way; the only thing her character serves to do is isolate him from the main cast, which gives his character nowhere else to go other than horrible, spiraling depression because every action he takes in his life turns out to be completely meaningless -- because it's not allowed to mean anything, because he's become so far divorced from the central plot of the series.

The only functional purpose that Ada Wong actually has is as a plot contrivance to explain how a bad guy did a thing. Other than that, she exists solely as a pair of legs and tits for Leon to chase after.

We all hold out hope that Remake is going to change this and turn her into a real person with autonomous motivations and goals, and there might be some merit to that, but like

She's not there yet. She's just not. There is no there there, when we talk about Ada's character.

And this tiptoeing around that we all do to try to make it seem like we're supportive of her character just

strikes me as silly a lot of the time, man.

I understand wanting to give credit where it's due, but it's not due for Ada's character. And I understand the desire to not be seen as misogynistically bashing her, but I feel like supporting her character as it currently exists is what's actually misogynistic. Because her portrayal in canon is misogynistic.

And I also understand the desire to not be seen as being a ship war fuckhead, but like. It's not about the ships, man. It's about Ada. Specifically Ada. She just sucks, dude.

And this is coming from the person who has probably written more meta about Ada Wong in an attempt to justify her character than basically anyone else in the fucking fandom.

idk I've just been thinking about this lately while perusing EagleOne fics. It feels like everyone in this ship feels obligated to address The Ada Problem before they can start to justify a relationship between Leon and Ashley, and it's like

No, you don't. Especially in Remake canon, you absolutely do not have to bring up Ada at all. Because Remake seems very self-aware of the fact that the problem with Leon's character has always been Ada, which is why they seem to be actively writing her out of his overall arc.

Like. Let's just call it for what it is. Ada is the worst part of Leon's character. The relationship is poorly written and poorly executed and doesn't make any fucking sense for who both characters are actually meant to be. They actively hold each other back -- not as people, but as characters who are meant to meaningfully contribute to the storyline.

And idk I'm just tired. I'm just tired of always having to do the hand-wringy "oh no no, Ada's really cool and great and I'm not trying to diss on her, and her relationship with Leon actually matters" shit, man.

Because she's not cool or great and her relationship with Leon doesn't actually matter -- and if it does matter at all, it's due to the negative impact that her presence brings -- not just to him, but to the entire fucking plot of the series.

She's the worst recurring element in the entire series, and there's not even a close second.

[summermimosas]

Tainted Sorrow, but Physics.

Chuuya has some of the most interesting mechanics in the entire show, because his powers are based on an actual physical phenomenon. That he's warping. I mean sure, we knew it was overpowered, but a deep dive into it shows how stupidly overpowered he actually is.

(Credit to @veni-vedi-perivi for their post here and @scaramint for their physics here! I will be offering an alternative hypothesis which is a little more fictional than the latter.)

Formulae I'll be cross referring to:

1. F = mg where F is the force, m stands for mass and g stands for gravitational acceleration which is -9.8m/s² for anything close to the Earth's surface.

2. F = GMm/r² . Where M is the attracting object's weight, m is the secondary object, r is the distance between them, and G is the universal gravitational constant.

To further look into this, we'll have to take it step by step. There are a few factors he could be modifying for tainted sorrow to take effect.

First, the typically used explanation in theoretical physics, acceleration. If he's changing the value of "g", it makes sense. Every planet has its own value of gravity, right, and so he's probably just increasing the value of Earths'. Well, in that case, it would work on everything on Earth, and not just whatever is coated with that trademark red glow. Off the table!

According to the second formula, it may be possible that he's changing two other things then. Either the distance between himself (r) and whatever he's applying his powers on (m) or he's changing his own mass (M). And we've seen that the distance between himself and whatever Tainted Sorrow works on doesn't affect the power itself, so that's off the table. It's just a definitive range that his ability has, which I'll assume is a set radius independent of physics.

There's only two explanations left, and both of them refer to changing mass. Something that's inherently supposed to be constant, according to classical physics. So the rest of this post will be fictional physics, hopefully with some credit to it.

-> Changing the Mass

In classical physics, mass is an inherent property of the body that isn't subject to change whatsoever. In fact, most other mechanics are based on the mass being constant no matter what. What does change, is weight, which is technically a force. (F = mg).

But this is BSD, so let's say he's changing the mass. In this scenario I'll assume the value of "g" is constant for the sake of hypothesis. They're constantly on Earth anyway, so it makes sense. Whether his ability changes on the moon is a whole another post worth of hypothesis.

This means he's changing the inherent property of a body to have a constant mass. This will also explain how he manifests literal gravitons during corruption, because that does require creating virtual mass and/or imaginary mass (I'm not qualified to speak on those topics in depth, but in a section below I'll overview it.)

This change in mass is also an apt explanation for how his ability manifests, because of the way he leaves craters in the ground out of weight. Yes, weight, which is what (F = mg) gives us. It fits, even if it's the wackiest thing imaginable in physics. It also explains how he can change the speed and acceleration of things, since Kinetic energy (½ mv²), gravitational potential energy (mgh) and most mechanics formulae depend on mass.

And so it's the most plausible explanation.

But if he is actually changing the mass, then that opens a whole new box of crazy. But this changing of mass also explains corruption!

Speaking of,

Corruption.

Putting the Arahabaki shenanigans away for a minute, let's get into the nitty gritty of what exactly Corruption allows Chuuya to do.

Let's say he is actually manipulating mass, and let's say until thus far, this has not impacted his own mass. Well, what if Corruption lets him venture into the world of imaginary mass?

And we now enter quantum physics! Damn it. Didn't think I'd have to dip my toes into this too.

The concept of imaginary mass violates a lot of physics fundamentals. It is of course, only a hypothetical concept, but it makes a lot of modern physics.

If you've ever watched Jujutsu Kaisen, or heard of it, you'd know Gojo Satoru, and by extension about Purple. While that works on mathematical concepts, Chuuya's gravitons are not unlike that. He's essentially creating miniature spheres of imaginary mass that function as little black holes. The only other explanation I can think of is pure fiction.

That's wild.

And if this theory holds water, which it may or may not, that means Chuuya has a hold over all of the mechanics that let physics function on Earth. He has a hold over friction, weight, energy, and basically any sort of motion.

I wonder how wacky Verlaine is in comparison.

Please correct me if I've gone wrong somewhere, and feel free to add on with your own ideas! Once again I'd like to thank the people credited above for inspiring this in the first place. I hope this makes sense lmao-

[wheelin-after-midnight]

46.

Is a kiss considered cheating?

That would depend on the type/context of the kiss and the parameters of the individual relationship. If babe kisses her boyfriend, then no it's not cheating, because our relationship is open and she has one other partner and I'm aware. If I kiss a friend on the cheek when I greet them, no that's not cheating. There's no sexual intent or deceit behind the action. If I go and make out with a girl I met and babe and I hadn't had a discussion about it prior to that happening, yeah that's cheating. As far as I'm concerned, cheating is doing anything you'd be ashamed to show/speak of or participate in in front of your partner. If that's the case, don't do it behind their back.

Have you ever faked orgasm?

No. I've never been in a situation where I felt the need to. If I can't finish, I can't. It happens, but not often.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

Either go back to the year my mum had children and make it so that she didn't, or instantly make myself completely able bodied for the rest of my life.

Do you think you are going to be rich in 7-8-9 years?

Pffft. In this economy? I don't think I'm ever gonna be rich.

Tell us some funny drunk story.

I don't really have one. I mean, I'm sure I do, just nothing noteworthy or interesting enough to talk about is coming to mind at the moment.

Why are you no longer together with your ex?

My last ex is my current partner, we worked through things and got back together almost four years ago.

If you had to choose one way to die, what would it be?

I've been saying for years that I want medically assisted death once my quality of life is impacted too much more and I meet the criteria enough to qualify. So that. Or in my sleep naturally.

What are your current goals?

Right now I'd like to just get through one day without crying and worrying. I'm literally physically sick over how my life is gonna be/turn out once I have to leave here.

Do you like someone?

I'm in love with one person. I like lots of people.

Who was the last person to disappoint you?

My mother, as per usual. Was much deeper than just disappointment, though.

Do you like your body?

I don't hate it quite as much as I used to as I've put a lot of work into changing and maintaining health in the ways that I can control, but I don't think I'll ever be completely confident in it, no. I'm not one of those "my disability is a strength and a superpower or taught me lessons" people. I used to be when I was young and more resilient. Not anymore. I don't think anyone needs disability and trauma to be taught lessons or become a good person, especially not little babies who have no say in the matter. What could they possibly have done to warrant things like that? There is not reason behind everything. I will always wonder what kind of person I would/could have been without all of it. Especially having a twin who is completely healthy and so entirely different from me. Babe does reassure me often that she loves all of me and I'm beautiful and appreciates my body. Accepts all of the things that are hard or impossible for me to do or the embarrassing things about living with a disability that I can't talk about with anyone or have been shamed for. She just kind of takes it in stride like "okay." "not your fault" "part of you, so we'll figure it out." "just because your body is different doesn't mean you're not a person worthy of being loved and understood." So that's helpful. Means a lot to me. Never thought I would experience it.

Can you keep a diet?

I'd say so. I was a vegetarian for years. I also lost about 65 lbs and have generally maintained it.

If the whole world listened to you right now, what would you say?

Your continued "thoughts and prayers" are useless in the face of constant gun violence!

Do you work?

No.

If you could choose only one food to eat to the rest of your life, what would it be?

I would hate to have to do this. No matter how much I love a food, the rest of my life is a long time to have to eat one thing. For the sake of the question, I guess either potatoes or pizza, because you can do them so many ways or change toppings and sauces.

Would you get a tattoo?

I have two and a third ready to be booked asap.

Something you don’t mind spending all your money on?

Food. We were pretty poor/food insecure growing up. I'll never feel bad splurging on things I enjoy eating and keeping enough in the house to eat. I also have put a lot of money into Nippy's well being and vet care. I don't care if people want to judge me for that. I've always wanted to be a mum and it breaks my heart all the time that I never will. This is it on the motherhood front for me. She's my baby. She gets the love and care and attention and affection my human babies would have gotten.

Can you drive?

Nope.

When was the last time someone told you you were beautiful?

When I sent new nudes to babe recently. The way she respects and appreciates my body genuinely makes me cry omg. 🥹🥹

What was the last thing you cried for?

My mum being extremely toxic and cold.

Do you keep a journal?

I used to as a kid. Used to write continually all my life, lots of fiction, poetry, all kinds of things, but everything changed when my Nan died. I want to get back to it. I hope to sooner than later.

Is life fun?

Far from it, but I've made a point to do my best finding/making fun moments in spite of the hardships.

Is farting in front of people irrelevant?

It's immature to do on purpose. Sometimes it just happens.

What’s your dream car?

I can't drive it, but a white mustang.

Are grades in school important?

Pffft no. I worked so hard and did so well and for what? None of it made any difference.

Describe your crush.

She's the love of my whole life. Not a crush. I feel like I gush about her in surveys to the point that anyone who reads my responses is like, omg. Not again. Gross. Lmfao.

What was the last book/movie that really impressed you?

I finished Tina Turner's second memoir and really enjoyed it. Bawled my eyes out at the end when she talked about her youngest son's suicide. She outlived both of her children. Fucking heartbreaking.

What was your last lie?

That I was fine when I wasn't, trying to show optimism/confidence about having to move.

Dumbest lie you ever told?

Idk. I don't have much use for lying.

Is crying in front of people embarrassing?

Yes. I fucking hate it and will do everything I can to avoid doing it around most people.

Something you did and you are proud of?

Learn to be the complete opposite of my parents.

What’s your favourite cocktail?

Ones made with vodka.

Something you are good at?

Writing.

Do you like small kids?

Yes.

How are you feeling right now?

Defeated.

What would you name your daughter/son?

I can't have children, but I picked names when I was young before I knew I'd never be a mother. My son's name would have been Mateo and my daughter would have been Abrielle.

What do you need to be happy?

Connection/understanding/support. Things to look forward to. All of which I don't usually have or experience often. Obviously in this economy money also helps, but it's in no way the only thing I'm focused on or motivated by.

Is there some you want to punch in the face right now?

The urge is there, but I don't act on it.

What was the last gift you received?

Money.

What was the last gift you gave?

Also money.

What was the last concert you went to?

Since Whitney's dead and I never saw her live in person I'm counting it. The remastered show from Durban, South Africa 1994 they showed in cinemas back in October. Last in person concert was Jann Arden the beginning of 2023.

Favourite place to shop at?

I don't have one.

Who inspires you?

It's really inspiring to see Brittany as a mum, breaking cycles of trauma that she experienced. I'm so proud of her. That boy is so lucky he has her. I've literally told her repeatedly I wish she was my mother, even though she's a year younger than me.

How old were you when you first got drunk?

16.

How old were you when you first got high?

I've smoked weed a handful of times, but it's not really something I do now. Nothing against it, I just don't.

When was your first kiss?

15.

Is there something in the past you wish you hadn’t done?

Eh.

Post a selfie.

Posted before, but my favorite picture I've taken of myself maybe ever.

Who are you most comfortable around?

Babe and Brittany.

Name one thing that terrifies you.

The aftermath of this move and how things will turn out. Or something bad happening to Nippy and not being able to help her.

What kind of books do you read?

Whatever piques my interest. Lately memoirs.

What would you tell your 12 year old self?

It gets worse. But it's not your fault. Hold on tight.

What is your favourite flower?

White roses, peonies, and lilacs.

Any bad habits you have?

Swearing, worrying.

What kind of people are you attracted to?

People who listen to understand and not simply to judge and respond, gentle, empathetic, understanding people. Those who understand compromise and give and take. People who laugh a lot and are down for little adventures and fun anywhere they/we can find it. People who are good to animals and kids. People who will defend me in rooms I'm not in just as much as when I'm sitting right next to them.

What was the last thing you cried for?

This was asked?

Is there something you don’t eat? Some food that truly disgust you?

I used to not eat meat. For now I do. Hopefully not forever.

Are you in love?

Yes.

Something you find romantic?

Lots of little things and small gestures. My biggest love languages are physical touch and quality time. I deeply appreciate you telling me what I mean to you and I'm very expressive that way too once I open up fully, but your actions are what will prove it and see me trust and believe in you and what you've said.

How long was your longest relationship?

We've known each other a loooong time, broke up before, but we've been back together and going strong almost four years.

What are 3 things that irritate you about the same sex?

Someone's gender isn't usually the be all, end all that determines irritation with them or not. I do get saddened and confused when girls are catty and tear each other down and just all around aren't a real girl's girl. I've said it before, I'll say it again: we straighten crowns over here, not rip them off.

What are you saving money for?

Lmfao at the fact anyone thinks I have money to save for anything other than the basic necessities in order to survive. Sometimes even that's a stretch.

How would you describe your bad side?

I don't cut people off or distance myself from them very quickly or easily, but once I'm done, I'm done. Once you hurt me or damage things to the point that I feel like I can't forgive or get over it, I get very shut down and cold. Also, do not play when it comes to my girlfriend or my ride or die friends. I can be very reserved. But I won't be then. Nobody will disrespect them in front of me and not hear something about it.

Are you actually a good person? Why?

I certainly try to be.

What are you living for?

My cat, my girl.

Have you ever done anything illegal?

Technically. Nothing serious.

Do you like your body?

This was asked too.

Have you ever made someone feel bad about themselves intentionally?

Not intentionally.

Ever sent nudes?

Plenty. I don't send them to just anybody I date though.

Have you ever cheated on someone?

No.

Favourite candy?

Winter apple chocolates in the merci winter collection box or anything Reese's.

Is there a blog you visit every day, or almost every day? Tag it!

No.

Do you play any computer games? What is your favourite game?

No.

Favourite TV series?

Army Wives, Empire, You, Me, Her, Wynonna Earp.

Are you religious? Does God exist?

I grew up as such. I'm agnostic/atheist leaning now.

What was the last book you read? Did it impress you and why?

Am I going crazy? So many repeat questions...

What do you think about vegetarianism/veganism?

I used to be a vegetarian. I'd like to get back to it eventually. I don't have anything against vegans. I don't have anything against how someone chooses to eat or their reasons for it. Everyone can choose which path to follow and what's important to or works for them.

How long have you been on Tumblr?

My previous two blogs I had for a long time. Took a break and came back recently.

Do you like Chineese food?

It's fine. Not my absolute favourite.

McDonalds or Subway?

Depends on my mood.

Vodka or whiskey?

Either/both.

Alcohol or drugs?

Alcohol. Not in excess.

Ever been out of your province/state/country?

Yes.

Meaning behind your blog name?

Walkin After Midnight is one of my favourite Patsy Cline songs, and I'm disabled.

What are you scared of?

The aftermath of this move coming up.

Last time you were insulted?

Recently.

Most traumatic experience?

Can we not go there today?

Perfect date idea?

Depends on the people on the date. Doesn't have to be extravagant.

Favourite app on your phone?

Reddit and Spotify.

What colour are the walls in your room?

My whole apartment is white.

Do you watch Youtube? Who is your favourite youtuber?

Yes. Two Hot Takes and We're All Insane are two of my favourite channels.

Share your favourite quote.

I have several. I can't pick one.

What is the meaning of life?

Creating that meaning for yourself individually. No one can tell another person what fulfilment/happiness/meaning looks like. It's a personal thing you curate in your own ways.

Do you like horror movies?

Not especially, but sometimes.

Have you ever made your mum cry? What happened?

Yeah. I could write a book, but I'd rather not.

Do you feel lucky or special in a way?

No.

[cretaceos]

surprised pikachu... in response to my alien post... lmaooo i kid i am very excited for any fic that you put out so i am also very much looking forward to your cowboy farmers au!!! but in the meantime... do you think you can share a little about the alien au!? like.. are landoscar crewmates on a ship and shit hits the fan? anything you're willing to share to sedate me in the time being!!!

sharing some paragraphs that i rlly liked writing <3 and yep, they are crewmates but oscar is a scientist and lando is basically a mechanic but you gotta see the whole thing to understand :crying:

—

Oscar fears Lando might’ve developed some kind of fondness towards him ever since they got each other off. It’s not supposed to mean for them, if anything it’s an act of sorrow. Locked together into a dark nothing, surrounded by an endless void, a place where even the slightest whisper becomes a deafening sound. He didn’t have the courage to face Lando again, and his rational thoughts would only take him further away.

Lando is—and always will be—more human-like than Oscar. His green eyes, washed by disturbing sadness, the way he speaks to androids, so polite towards machinery that can’t have feelings, his jokes that never reached Oscar’s ears. He’s the closest portrait of humanity in miles of dark matter. Oscar watched a dream of his, back when he was the only one awake and monitored Lando’s sleeping schedule. He had more nightmares than dreams, shaking inside his sleeping capsule, almost waking himself up. Oscar never saw those. He already felt like crossing a line when he clicked on the watching mode, projecting whatever Lando’s dreaming about on the main panel.

It was similar to watching a movie, but without a proper ending. Lando dreamed of home, and for him that would be earth. His dreams included a dog, some fictional farm with a wheat field, and a shadow waiting for him. Oscar wonders if he’s got someone on earth, even if it sounds impossible. They’ve been in space for far too long for anybody on earth to still be functioning.

Lando was already in the colony when Oscar came.

He was known as one of the youngest men to ever break the atmosphere and cut through the black veil of infinity. Oscar knew him by whispers, long before actually meeting Lando, before being casted as his companion in a mission, but not before the parasite.

Back on earth, Australia had a special program to send a crew to Ceres, which consisted in teaching a group of children up till the minimum age to depart. When time came, every student should choose an area to develop their knowledge, a vast number of options, Oscar could be whatever he wanted. And then, that gut wrecking feelings took over him as soon as he entered the science department. Boiling blood, ripping out his veins, hyperventilating even, that tingle right on his tongue. Fascination. In its pure form, shaking through Oscar’s ribs.

Could be the start of what would become his obsession towards greatness, a spark that soon starts a fire, the beginning. But Oscar only had the opportunity to prove himself of being qualified when the mission came up, when the world itself could be forever changed. It didn’t seem much of a problem to him, young and talented, three years being part of the colony, had Mark throwing his name into important conversations. Oscar was easily one of the first choices to be the lead of the exobiology information.

He already knew about the parasite and all the scrutinizing work surrounding it. A new life form. The greatness he’s searching desperately for, the peak of his interests, the purpose. It was a rather simple task, catch the parasite, and bring it back to the colony. Of course none of them expected it to die in high temperatures, or the fact that it’s unable to survive without a host.

Lando appeared out of the core of the colony, face dirty with grease used in the subterranean of the ship, that disturbed look in his eyes, gathering some incomprehensible passion for robots and apathy towards humans. He appeared. As if the universe made him from particles of oxygen in less than seconds. He volunteered to be the host.

[poethebeloved]

anyway, here are my qsmp election thoughts:

-I think q!Cellbit/Forever are the most qualified in terms of adequate game knowledge, desire to drive forward the lore, community support, and passion for the position. HOWEVER as a viewer it is the most boring choice. I enjoy qsmp for the serious lore AND the goofy funny stuff, and I think that insaneduo are a little too serious for it to be an interesting outcome. I also think that while being president might motivate their charcters in an interesting way, the aftermath of losing the presidency might be even more interesting and could start a q!Forever villain arc which I personally would enjoy a lot

-q!Baghera would be a good choice for her heart and passion, and it would be a good move for her character, but I think she fundamentally lacks the presence needed to convince people to vote for her. If she was able to take more control over the debates and presented her points with more confidence she would be a more formidable opponent

-q!Etoiles would be an extremely good pick due to his knowledge of the land itself and the mods. He is also extremely charismatic and everyone seems to love him, despite him not being overly interactive with the others on the island. But, like q!Baghera, he lacks a presence necessary to be president, and because he is generally more comfortable on the sidelines I don't see him pulling the necessary votes

-q!Mike, q!Felps, and q!BBH would be good choices if not for the other candidates who are such powerhouses. These three simply fall into the background. I think they work more as counsel members/those in the presidential cabinet because they work well as sources of knowledge/power/etc., just not as leaders themselves

-ElQuackity would be the choice that I think presents the most narrative opportunity, but I think it is something that has been seen before (the bad intentioned candidate wins, usually by unfair means, leaving the rest of the characters in a state of despair but motivating them to fight back against a common enemy). Further, he hasn't presented much in the debates other than defending himself (though I feel this is mostly because the federation is using him as a pawn and they have programmed him with as little information as necessary, leaving his presidential promises vague). If the story is going as people expect, he will win no matter what, but I would also love to see q!Quackity somehow come back/regain control and stop things before it all goes to hell (because it will 100% go to hell if ElQuackity is elected)

-Gegg is by far (and I do not say this lightly) the best choice for president. I know it sounds wild, but Gegg is the candidate that presented the most level-headed and dogmatically coherent arguments in the debate, all of which actually would help the island from a lore prespective. His based views with his slimy goopy exterior makes him the best choice that is a perfect balance of serious lore potential and silliness. Of course he won't win because he is fucking Gegg (unless we get a full Geggolution and he can speak bc there is no way they are electing a president who has to write on signs), but I think he genuinely has the votes and the overall love by those on the island

-Now we come to q!Foolish. I know he seems like the purely silly candidate, and most of how he has approached the election has been from a strictly comedic relief standpoint, BUT I think he is the best candidate to win with a real chance of doing so. I think narratively it presents a perfect opportunity for q!Foolish to go full villain if he wanted, or to generally develop as a character as he takes on responsibility. He is on the server a ton, everyone loves him, and he has one of the strongest members as his partner. Not only that, he is generally knowledgeable about the game and the land, he knows about and is involved in the lore, and he is first and foremost creatively wired. He will offer the silliness that the qsmp needs while having those closest to him (like q!BBH and q!Cellbit) who are very lore-focused and can push him in certain directions to make lore decisions. The only fault I find is that q!Foolish is an english speaker, and I would love if another culture/language was represented in such a position, but it isn't a deal breaker for me. Truly I think electing q!Foolish would be the most narratively interesting choice while also allowing for the qsmp to stay silly, which is one of the largest appeals and what many creators who are more lore-focused come to the server for

[dancingacrossthemilkyway]

i have no idea what kind of drabble prompts you prefer tbh but here: jmart but in space. like sci-fi, maybe star trek-y

“Ow!” Jon flinches as a thick gel is applied to his reddened arm, freshly scraped free of the spores that had attempted to embed themselves in his skin. The gel itself feels relatively good against his skin, a soothing cool against uncomfortable heat, but the gloved hand rubbing it on is anything but gentle. “Are you trying to cause me more pain, Dr. Blackwood?”

The doctor in question grunts from behind the full-body suit he’s wearing as he treats Jon, but Jon doesn’t need to see his face to picture the severe expression residing there. Pinched brows, wrinkled nose, pursed lips: the trademark disapproving scowl Martin likes to fix Jon with whenever he comes back from an explorative mission that has gone somewhat sideways. 

It’s probably far more displeased than normal, considering the personal protectice equipment he’s donned and the fact that every member of the on-world team has been quarantined in their own separate rooms until Martin’s convinced they’re safe to be around.

“Will it keep you from doing something like this again?” Yeah, Martin’s definitely grumpy. His voice is pitched slightly higher than usual and filled with a mixture of sassy irritation that he only gets when particularly peeved with whatever stupid decision Jon’s made. “Christ, I thought having Sasha as your second-in-command would make you less likely to get into trouble, but she’s as bloody impulsive as you!” 

Sasha was promoted recently from Communications Officer when Manuela had finally had enough of Jon’s brand of spontaneous decision making and requested a transfer to a different ship. It wasn’t necessarily much of a surprise that they didn’t get on, even without Jon being the way he is; disciples of the Dark rarely worked well in close quarters with those of the Eye. It was one of the risks of having a crew contain an officer from each of the Fears: there were always going to be inherent disagreements that weren’t easily resolved due to a difference in beliefs. 

Jon hasn’t had much contact with Manuela’s replacement, Basira Hussein, but this mission proved that she can definitely hold her own. It shouldn’t be a surprise, given her high recommendation from Daisy.

Slowly they’re settling into a team Jon thinks he likes. Even if he doesn’t get along with all of them on a personal level, they’re good members of the crew and they work well with each other. That’s what matters - that’s what he remembers being emphasized at the academy. 

“Yes, well,” Jon replies, giving Martin a blank look as he speaks in his typical deadpan. “If I were less impulsive, we wouldn’t have as many successful missions under our belt already.”

Martin scoffs. “I’d take less successful missions if it meant you stayed safe. Or do you think I enjoy having to dig worms from your skin, or, or, make sure you don’t end up sprouting fungus, or stitching you up when you decide to piss off something with knife hands-”

Jon waves a hand between them, relieved when Martin finally stops aggressively rubbing the gel across his arm and steps back to survey him. “Yes, yes. That’s why I was chosen to be Captain, not you.”

Another scoff. “No, I chose to go to medical school, not the academy. Honestly, I don’t know why Space Marshall Bouchard chose you over all of the other far more qualified options-”

“Love you too, Martin,” Jon interjects with a soft laugh, having heard this spiel a million times before. And perhaps, if not for knowing it comes from a place of affection and concern, he’d take offense to it. But Martin worries; that’s part of who he is. He worries, and even if Jon were the most qualified individual for the job, he’d worry. 

“-I swear the man is just out to give me a heart attack when you go charging off into the dens of literal space lions. What did I ever do to deserve this?” Throwing his arms up in the air in an exaggerated gesture - which loses most of its effectiveness given the way the suit squeaks against itself as he moves - Martin moves to put away the supplies he used. “Christ. You know, it’s a good thing I love you, or I’d be done.”

“Done… with me, or on the ship?” Jon prompts, despite the fact that they’ve had this discussion before. Sometimes it’s fun to egg Martin on a little - god knows the favor is returned. 

“Both!” Martin groans, dropping the disposable tools into the hole that leads to the medical waste fires. “You’d better not grow anything and miss our date tonight.”

“I’ll do my best to not grow anything on this arm.”

“Anywhere, Jon! You’d better not grow anything anywhere!”

[last-transe]

 Disclaimer I'm not sure how this qualifies as a review I think its more commentary than anything else.

 This review, dissertation,thesis? For me, has been a long time coming. what it means to me is more than music. It made me double back and reevaluate the path I was walking. Speaking in such plain words truths I wished to bury. Forcing me to acknowledge who I was, and what I wanted.

 I was an egg with a reenforced shell, occasionally leaking at the rivets demanding proof I couldn't make it work. Insistent that Rock bottom existed. In constant denial of how much pain I put myself through. Living double speak in real time.

 I want to share the new found love I have for myself with this art, and extend my sincerest thanks to Madds, her team, and the community. Without these I may not have been here today.

1. Love after you

     The first song on the album. The active consequence of denying who you are for what you "need" to be, and all the questions that come with that. More of a private disclosure that can never be shared with the one it was meant for. Neither short, nor sweet, yet certainly to the point. A song can leave people wondering where the album is going upon first listen. Yet paints a piece of a much larger picture, upon a second. Not the strongest opener it could have had, but I'll save that particular critique for the end of the review. I have noticed in those I share this album with that there response to this song is different from mine as a fan who followed the release of the album. Which is understandable as its impact changes in the context of the narrative woven throughout the album.

2. Paper and ink

    "I know what I am and I don't want to hurt you" condensed into a song.

    "I know what this is and how it'll end. So please stay away" Internalized.

    "Loving your beauty does not give me the right to hurt you" in a poem just as beautiful.

     As someone who was raised to fear what love does to people. Who never had a positive example, or a proper role model I ran from love where I found it. I slept in the comfort of solitude. Stewed in the rage of betrayal. Surrounded myself with sheep to scared to see the light of day. When I wanted to fly the hands I held turned to hooks to hold me in place, and as I bled what hurt the most was my inability to cry.

    For me this song speaks to the self fulfilling prophecy we create in our anxiety, and the lingering hope of "what if"?

3. You stabbed me in my sleep

     I have opinions on this song. Dispute the actual name and content of the next song... This is the only toxic song on the album. Its way to sexy. But not in a hot way.

It's the feeling I get before I give in to my addiction. It's the despair and anxiety creeping in as life goes on you feel frozen. The pleasure you find running away from it. The loneliness and alienation you force into your relationships as a by-product. The feeling that it won't be the same, even if it's just imagined. The isolation of not being able to go back to normal, if it ever existed. But its so big and life is long, it helps sometimes.

    There are things you can't confront right now. I remember them vividly and at times wonder if I've moved on? How much time do I really need to grow? What more can I do to move past when each link leads back to the last? As I try find the courage to move forward how do I cope with things I literally can't control.

     Patience and Learning.? At least buy me dinner first.

     

4. My love is sick

     I think there are lots of situations in this world that are not ideal but you can't leave. Not always because you don't want to. Not always because you shouldn't. But because what you stand to lose when you leave is far too great for you to let go of. It means too much to you. And you might not exactly understand why you'd be better off. How you could ever be better off?

    In the great discomfort of transition it's not going to feel like you're better off all the time. No matter what anyone tells you dying is always better than being dead. You still have the chance to heal. And metamorphosis is yours to choose because you can't learn to fly until you sprout your wings. Real rot is sickly sweet and too much sugar is bad for you.

    The reason I wouldn't consider this song toxic is because it artfully displays a level of understanding of one situation, that betrays not the inability to move but the desire to stay. It shows that you know where you are and that you have tools that you're disposal. And when the time comes like I did I'd hope you grab them.

5. St. Valentines

    This was one of my favs on the album. If you're capable of being reasonable, this is Rock bottom. You don't want to keep digging. There's nothing more down there. You don't need to go to that deep dark place to see what's wrong with you. This is the point where you stop and start asking yourself why? Start looking at your habits, the surrounding factors. You need to start making decisions about the kind of life you really want to live unless you want to keep being exactly where you are, just further down the line and feeling less capable.

    The break in the song is one of my favorites because it allows for that moment to just think how they could have gotten there and what you really need to do to not get there again.

    If you're afraid of change this is a great place to crack that lid and dive in. Fall down those rabbit holes learn while you heal. This song sounds like waking up.

6. Everything changes in time

    This song gives me Simon and Marceline vibes from adventure Time. It's optimism and nostalgia. It's looking through window rather than walking through a door. It's the comfort that can come from remembering the good while acknowledging the bad and continuing on. This is as close to acceptance as it feels like you can come without getting closure. All the while desperate for it.

   It's like a normal Tuesday and all of a sudden you're like, "man we used to have crazy Tuesdays." But the cosmos is calling, and it's to late to turn back. Maybe in another life you'll have the opportunity for amends, and if that Tuesday ever comes. Take it on the chin.

7. Wine and wheat

    A song perfectly representing internalized (insert subject here). About how religious trauma forces you into a hole that you can't climb out of due to societal pressure so you end up digging around the edges. Like an elite tunneler during the Great war you spend so much time in the darkness the the sun may seem foreign by the time you see it again. Existing in a state of heightened anxiety always on guard, determined to remain hidden. Fighting with all your might not to make a single noise until the moment where it's okay to scream. Chasing that screen to the edge of insanity. Desperate for anything that I'll make it easier to continue pretending this is fine.

    when you replace love with sex you start to wonder what love is and if it was ever real. And become trapped in a loop of ever-increasing disassociation in an effort to become closer to what you need.

    Probably says more about me than anything else but I get a similar vibe from "sex at night" by Motive. Fair warning it's a very different song.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0n74DOTYUalt0XO32J3XZu?si=GuNSg_tKTLqB-A10-YTQdA&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A2LenDArUA1GZyaU7Uwb23T

8. I lose to you

    I occasionally have the urge to listen to this track along side staring at the sun. A fun mashup between romantic and desperate. I'm sure lots of us have grown up hearing love's about sacrifice and compromise, but it's really not until you properly develop boundaries in  life that you really understand what that means. And I've known many an earth angel to simply give away far too much because they couldn't fathom the distance between the beauty they give to the world and the karma that returns to them.

    An empath must be capable of showing claws and adhering to some of the harsher realities of the world less they find themselves drowned by The blood sweat and tears they gave for the sake of, in part, their own satisfaction.

9. Anything, Anything, Anything

    I don't even know if I have anything to say about this song. I mean honestly it's the happiest song on the album. I don't see negatives here. It's all up, all day, all night. We got to work for this? Let's do the work, i'm here, I'm ready. I just want you to know. Believe me.

    Sapphics and the like, eat your heart out. A love poem till eternity passes.

10. Dogbird

    I hear so many messages in this song.

These are the screams that were being chased in Wine and wheat.

This is the confusion that comes with the pain and lack thereof from Love after you.

This is the apology meant for someone who deserved it far too late form St. Valentines

I hear the inability to cope with the fear of something so new in You stabbed me in my sleep.

The raw emotional vulnerability that evolves into a desire for more from I wanna be in love again.

I hear myself in the apology at the end of the song, begging for another chance from myself. Because it was more than not knowing how to treat myself well. I didn't want to. And so how could I ever take care of anything else? You were my fire meant to burn away the rot, but I was taught to fear the flame, and your light was blinding.

11. Staring at the sun

    First things first I think this song would have flowed better if at least a single playing of the chorus was removed from the end. One of the few criticisms I have for this album. Upon repeat listens there's sometimes a moment where I'm just like, oh wow it's still going. I think it's a combination of it's short length and being a little high when I was listening.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    There's a bit of artistic flair to this album in terms of storytelling, and it's hard for me to come up with words to describe how I feel about this song. I feel like I've already said those words about previous songs. In the story that's being told I believe this song is a perspective shift from the partner that is giving to the partner that is receiving. I will elaborate more on this at the end of the review.

12. I wanna be in love again 

    Not everyone experiences terrible hardship but I believe everyone understands what it's like to be unable to have closure whether it be due to your own action or circumstance and when it comes to acknowledging where exactly you stand in all things. what your part to play in the situation was. what responsibility you have. Moving forward you must find the words to speak to yourself that will allow you to be strong you need to find something to believe in because sometimes you can't believe in yourself and the urge to just forget it all and go back to the way it was is so potent I don't think it'll ever truly go away but the true sign of growth is to be content with what you have without ceasing to strive for more. I believe that this song fairly accurately represents that what it means to move on.

    All right now on to the albums story. I feel like if I was more mentally capable I would have written something more akin to a lore video. This album reads easiest as a look at the relationship between two people and the ways it change them as time passed. I'll just refer to them as dog and bird because, I mean if you're here you probably get that one.

   The perspective seems to switch from dog to bird in a 7-5 ratio, I think I look like this.

1.dog 2.dog 3.dog 4.bird 5.dog 6.bird 7.dog 8.bird 9.bird 10.dog 11.dog 12.dog

At its heart it's a story of fear and anxiety combated by love and determination we're ultimately love does not prevail. But it leaves room for hope.

Presented non-chronologically, it bounces between the most intense and relevant moments of their relationship, slowly painting a picture of how they came together and ultimately what drove them apart.

    We start with dog settled into a new relationship disgruntled and questioning if the path she chose was really worth it. The album quickly transitions to what feels like the real beginning of the story and the trepidation that came from it. We see next the very real manifestation of that fear begin to overtake the potential positivity that was expressed in the prior song. The fourth song is a bit of a coin toss for me but if I had to give it to either of them I'd be giving it to bird. Dog at this point in time lacked the emotional maturity to really have that dialogue with themselves. Or at least the capacity to follow that line of thought through and make the right decision for either themselves or bird. Meanwhile I could kind of easily see birds staying in a situation like this. 

    Jumping forward again we see a point in time not quite where we were at the beginning of the album but just after the couples separation. Dog incapable of being the partner bird needed chased them away and almost immediately begin drowning in the regret of those actions. Switching perspectives again we see bird reminiscing on what was, contemplating what could have been but ultimately moving on. Outside of flashbacks this is where I believe she leaves the story.

    As if to emphasize the difference between dog and bird we take another look back to a Time when they were still together but from a darker perspective on exactly what dog was going through. I lose to you is an odd one, serving as a silent omission from bird to the growing feelings that once blossomed in their chest towards dog. Followed by anything anything anything unarguably the most joyous track on the album, bird's public expression of love likely shared between the two in their time together.

    Smash cut to the hardest track on the album. The culmination of all that Joy slamming into all that angst like a seven car collision. Communication has completely broken down and there's no going back from this moment, as dog, torn between expectation and desire uses the only tools she understands to literally combat her problems. This track adds context to Saint Valentines and shows the moment where it finally became too much for bird.

    An excellent companion piece to I lose to you, staring at the sun is dog reflecting on their emotional state before the relationship truly began recognizing those feelings and trying to avoid them. Last but certainly not least I want to be in love again strikes me as dog past the point we started at. Having come to terms with who she is and trying to move on in a way that is healthy for her.

 

    A beautiful story that touched my heart, and shook me to my core. However I did promise a criticism of the album.

Track two: Paper and ink should have been the first song. Its the one that catches the ear of everyone I play for. It's just "stonger.?"

    Secondly Haruhi Suzumiya ass album be jumping all over the place. I had the desire to listen to the story in more of a chronological order I think I've put something together that works. Though I will admit the way the album is structured does match with the theming. Moving Staring at the sun from its original position felt wrong. Here's what I came up with.

8-1, 11-2, 2-3, 9-4, 7-5, 3-6, 4-7, 10-8, 6-9, 5-10, 1-11 12-12.     I made a playlist so it's less complicated.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7efAkjCqfhajPOjlK0OZCh?si=WOHF9q3ATtmczAu2F4h7Vw&pi=NZ1aIx9BS5aPb

[blindrapture]

composition no. 8 (so far)

REFRAIN

It's a voice calling to me in the night, a voice I recognize from deep within, a voice I only somewhat actually hear.

"Come back."

SONG OF ECHO

Come back. Haven't you seen thematic solitude for as long as you could?

Come back. There's merit in comfortable vanity where comfortable vanity is mimetic music.

Come back. Tell me all the abstractions you've found. Let's rebuild with them.

Come back home. You've been roaming long enough.

ETERNAL CONSTRUCTION SITE ONLY MUCH BIGGER

First I must say where I have been.

Imagine a mansion in eternity. Would it have a make immaculate or ruinous? The merit to perfect bricks is aesthetic, its mode ideal: a perfect brick is what we aspire for bricks to be, with edges sanded smooth and corners exactly pointed; a mansion constructed as such will be a perfect mansion, but would it describe an eternal one? Immaculate polish, maintained according to immaculate conception, does not stand alone without manual upkeep. And a mansion, as a construction, must stand alone (or else we are describing not a mansion but an eternal construction site).

So then, the bricks must be ruinous. Crumbled, imperfect, whittling away towards nothing. Right? Does that hold up for eternity? In a matter of time, the mansion would be a heap of heaps, and later still not even that, the grains of dust blown by wind(?) into the grand temporal circulation patterns, more a part of eternity itself than of the intended construct. Does that describe a mansion?

Obviously this exercise is linguistic, then, and there is no clean answer. Surely? But, if there is no answer, where have I been? An abyssal plain? The unanswerable strand? The perpetually temporary Street of Roads, on the outskirts of the center of fabled underscore? I exclaim, I have been in eternity's mansions.

In truth, I still do not know which of the two makes these mansions were (ideal, or dilapidated), and I present the above to you as condensations of suppositions that had entertained my mind in moments of lucid contemplation. I know only that these were mansions-- at least while I was in them. I was not only in the mansions. My pilgrimage has been winding, and you can find my footprints on many an eternal sand. I am here now speaking of the mansions.

Did they have purposes, or owners? What purpose does any mansion have but to present its inhabitant? A house is designed to be inhabited, and so if a mansion only needed to be inhabited, it would have been a house and have no need for the extravagant size. Adding extravagance to a house, even simply making it much bigger, is like installing a frame onto a canvas: it brings explicit presentation, it emphasizes the presence of presentation. The eternal mansion eternally presents whoever inhabits it.

I inhabited, for a while, an eternal present. That's a slightly different sentence where "present" now qualifies "eternal" rather than "I." The future could be seen from the back windows, the past from the books I'd read. For me, the inhabitant, it was hard doing to focus on either of those at all. The mansion, trappings and all, took up my time. I suspected, and even now think back and wonder, that I was not the only inhabitant. Maybe there were others, maybe there were to be others, and I was alone during my allotted stay. Maybe I was not alone and the mansion was simply that big. One is allowed to question-- anything, in fact, including-- whether I was "the inhabitant" and not a guest.

Where did the mansion come from? Where its materials, its constituent parts? Suppose an eternal mansion has eternal parts. Well, which kind of "eternal mansion," the immaculate or the ruinous? Whichever one the bricks, that one the parts: either way, they came from Earth, from Time as we have known it. I did not stay long enough to be absolutely sure of the specifics, though I have made observations. They are all of this sort: 

- I slept on a bed. - It remained the same bed for a number of days, months, more. - It would eventually change to a different bed, and never back to a previous bed. - I never saw it change, though I was not in the same room as the bed all of the time and did not make a concerted effort to see it change. - It was not always a particularly comfortable bed. Sometimes it was.

It is reasonable to assume the nature of the eternal mansion's bricks is the same, with imperfections being replaced when necessary. I did not observe those changes happening either, which on one hand may be more surprising, as there are a lot of bricks in a mansion and I ought to have seen the change happen at least once, but on the other hand may be just as you'd expect, as I do not make a habit of regularly and rigorously watching specific bricks in a wall all day every day. And, for that matter, this is rooted in an assumption. Perhaps the bricks operated differently than the materials of the interior.

I was not the perfect witness to the mechanisms of this mansion, as I spent the greater portion of my stay invested in my own thoughts and activities, those activities usually being further thoughts. I do not have a list of the things I thought about. I was there for a very long time. Many of the things I thought about, I will bring up in natural course in coming posts, blogs, websites, compositions.

It was, they were, mansions. Yet it was not peace.

NESTED

It was not peace, because I spent my days thinking without words. I was interested in this development at first, as it was a relief to change away from the constant words and noises of the brain to which I had grown so accustomed. This persisted, though, and after even a year of this I was now accustomed to mental silence, and words became rare. In that environment, the fluidity of the eternal, I wanted to maintain a pace of words in my head; I saw it as like a vitality without which I became at risk of transforming into a statue, or worse, a feral creature unrecognizing of humanity.

Consider the impossibility of being a writer of words, including the words on this very blog, when there simply are none. This wasn't your everyday lack of words, either. This was a mind that, from birth, was always buzzing, and growing, had many words, through life's chaos, plunging forward, often failing but always trying to articulate happenings and emotions in 26 characters and 9+ punctuation marks (the plus sign not even included in that 9), now sick of fire, weary of change, bruised by strife, aching, so aching, could keep going but instead decides to... stop, temporarily. "Temporarily" turns into "for a while." "For a while" turns into "from now on." Stories, what stories? Those stories? Those were written by a different man, and so they appear as such to my brain now. How can I proceed? How can I describe what went on in my head?

It's not that there were no words. Words in the head are more like.. abstractions of stimulus that calls for decision, they function in that role. Whenever something would happen that called for my decision, the words were there, eventually. Therefore, when I found myself in the eternal mansion, when I settled down to rest my aching legs awhile, I had nested within an environment of negligible stimulus, and my own psychology trapped itself. I was in trouble. All inertia had ceased; there was no more drive. But, do you see? There was nothing doing. Willing myself back into having words, in that place, would not happen.

Not without the dolls.

IN A SILENT WAY

The dolls helped me find words. I did not find the dolls at first, not for a long time that may have been a year. They were tucked away in a room of the mansion I did not venture around. The mansion was huge, and its interior felt like many different houses and structures strung together next to each other in one architectural design, so that after a little bit of preliminary wandering, I had settled on a set of rooms that could serve as a comfortable "house" for me to live in, and there was no reason to explore the rest (beyond curiosity, which the desire for rest at this point overshadowed). Any exploration would quickly run into the issue of exhaustion, as the true scope of that mansion had to have been on the scale of square miles.

The mansion's interior plan, as I eventually got a sense, had modularity to it. A bunch of rooms make up a "house." A bunch of houses are neighbors around a "courtyard," which in some cases is a literal open-roof courtyard (more like a whole park) and in other cases is an assortment of unique rooms. I had no reason to call them "houses" or "courtyards" other than my own need to name them, so don't get caught up in the names. Fundamentally it was all rooms, rooms, rooms.

In any case, my house bordered one given courtyard, and the dolls were in a room several courtyards away, so it was inevitable that I wouldn't find them for a long time. I spent that long time perhaps a little aware of the dolls, paradoxically. I was aware of the mental trap into which I had stumbled, an unequal venting of inertia until starting myself back up again proved more effort than all sense suggested, and furthermore I was also aware of an irrational Hope emerging from the wordless patterns of Tired... a hope that this lack of inertia which had itself come out of inertia would, itself, one day resolve. A hope that I would one day again move, spurred on by some hypothetical curiosity. I reasoned that a mansion like this must contain many curiosities-- many things that I would find curious. Surely. And it did, of course. But even in the profound period of laziness, I still had a hope that I would find some of them, and that I would react appropriately, find them.. curious.

I'm perhaps getting away from myself here. But this style of ramble is appropriate for the contents being narrated. These words fit the wordless, as it's not really about the words, but about the rhythms and structures, the inexhaustible exhaustion, the round-and-round roundabout riddles, every promise of a new subject seeing interruption as the discursive voice sinks into an old whirlpool. Really, it is no wonder that I spent much time resting, but now imagine these whirlpool sentences carrying on even when the words have ceased, imagine a ramble of empty sentences, a roundabout of punctuation-- then you will have considered the chamber music of my everyday life in that mansion.

That, for (I want to say "several") unbroken years, was my mental landscape. Some words, memories of words, washed up from the waves of blank, flotsam from a skillset I once had. It is vital to me now that I have or am retraining my articulation that I try many times to retroactively describe what it was like. Autobiography is a priority, and I am too spiteful to have gone through that and let it remain unspoken.

But the dolls.

I'm still not ready to talk about the dolls yet. There's a bit more I have to say.

THE FORMAL CAUSE OF METAPHYSICS

In a mind without words but shaped by the memory of words, time's passing is experienced elsehow. I felt it like emotions. In an environment without stimulus but shaped by the form of where stimulus might be, emotions are experienced without obscurity. I saw them like clouds. In an emotion without subject but remembered like any emotion with subject would be, time passes long-long. The proof is in the putting.

In talking of this now, having to pull my memories from back then and put words to the wordless, I fall back on the mannerisms of smart people whose works I have read far more recently. All this time, I've been speaking in the style of Samuel Beckett, and in the last paragraph I recalled some Michael Stevens. There simply are no words to adequately convey this, only references and signs, and signs signifying signs. What was that one. Umberto Eco. Of course.

There was a time, at the very dawn of protohistory (i.e. long before this blog or even the whole series of blogs, long before I even had the "protohistory" reference I just made), when I spoke like this too, pulling from contemporary sources, signs signifying nothing but their own technicalities, and fired away my sentences like and as the teenager I was, tasked with describing a past far bigger than any of the words I heard. And the word of the day then was "abuse," unsatisfactory but at least a container of those fires that escaped my brain (far better described through signs like "the eldritch" and "cosmic horror," signifiers of the impossible). The word of the day now is not quite as simple as that, though it's one I recognized even then:

"Isolation."

It's the theme, you see, of all this. Here I sing, you see, the refrain. It's isolation. All the books I've read talk about it, and none of them capture it. How, then, can I capture the unspeakable? How do I speak of where I've been, for eight long adult years, without merely repeating the readily-dismissable forms of the past? It's the refrain, I sing. How do I write about years spent unwriting my own brain?

Well, as you can see, I elected to begin with a conceit: a conversation with a personal god that frames a longer expansion. That expansion treats the allegory, an invention, that is the eternal mansion. Within this expansion, there is a maze, barely mentioned. This composition is set within a maze, in contrast to other works of mine that have been mazes. There's still more to be said, and my pace in setting it all down has been slow, so I can't tell you how long it will be before I'm done. But that's alright. I want this composition to have a slow tempo anyway. Every word must be taken into the mind, considered as an effort. What you're reading, my EAT, my sweet, my last mirror, my lost reader, is the product of the resolution of its own conflict. I am writing now because I am no longer in those mansions. The writing treats a foregone conclusion because it's not really about those mansions. It is about finishing a long thought far bigger, too bigger, than the shadow of a name.

Now I have to kill the You again and try, but only try, to speak of I again. End the refrain, but we will return.

The secret is in the emotions. Isn't it always? The emotions felt in those mansions, devoid of any stimulus that those emotions would otherwise treat as subject and color, in the absence of any natural form, gradually and with conscious practice over the course of courses of times and time, must take on-- must reveal-- the form of emotions themselves. Cut out all distractions, and the form even of the formless may be discerned.

I saw them like clouds, and necessarily like rain and the rivers too. Therefore, I saw emotions, in their purest form, as water. "They come and go like weather..." said one memory of a creation of my head. "Picture yourself by the rushing river of human history as the flotsam of memories drift by..." said another memory of a creation of someone else's. "The Cloud of Look-Like," said one more memory of a creation of my head, "does not exist, yet those who behave as if it does manage to get something right. Therefore, existence is not the only form that our reality accepts..."

Emotions, being of a similar chemistry as that of memories (in fact, what are emotions if not memories stripped, with time, of their content, left only with their form?), move. They enter our focus, color whatever thoughts and sensations are in front of us, then carry on, leaving us to reckon with the consequences of our actions taken under colored impressions. "We are left holding the bag..." says a nameless memory, but I must disagree with that premise, as it supposes that emotions do this on purpose, out of some design of our greater suffering. We are the ones with the designs, we are the ones who create those designs over the course of years, and we leave emotions to hold the bag. Emotions do not have intent. Emotions are like clouds. They come, they paint a sky that we then interpret forms out of which we call "weather," they go none the wiser, neither the more foolish, only the dumber. (remembering what "dumb" actually means)

It is not inherently pleasant to stand within a rainstorm. It is neither inherently depressing to stand under an overcast sky. A sky devoid of clouds, beautiful to look at, leaves my body exposed to the ultraviolent rays of the Light of Knowledge, the Sun we must in our time put down. The rubrics of nature were set before us and did not presume our needs; to change them for one is to change them for all. We must be certain that we know what we are doing. We must understand, and to stand under that Ideal Sun is to exert more effort than life had before prepared me for.

To stay in the eternal mansions, without words, meant watching the slow flow of emotions go, never to know, only to low, never to yes, only to no. Observation yes, composition no. Forget all I know in hopes of one day remembering when I have a better emotional foundation. And that.. may never happen. It may never happen even with the fount of all human knowledge to drink from, it may never happen even with the solidarity of friend and foe engaging me on the daily, it cannot happen when devoid of all drive and alone in rooms I will not describe. I figured that much not long into my stay. And yet, without drive, there is no movement. This situation would resolve itself only painfully slowly, all the while watching my emotions... watching them go.

It was scary in the way that horror stories never know.

[unluckyxse7en]

Tell me about that book you read as a kid that made a strange and specific impression on your psyche?

(Sorry I didn't answer this sooner!! I was Stuck on it and then forgot 😭 )

(Edit: FUCKER GOT HIDDEN IN MY DRAFTS BASED ON WHEN I GOT THE ASK, NOT WHEN I SAVED IT SO I THOUGHT I LOST IT, SORRY IT'S EVEN LATER...)

I came up with a few books that might've qualified for this - "Freedom" by Angela Dorsey (one of many horse girl books, of the ghost horse variety) or "The Fire Within" by Chris D'Lacey (one of many dragon books - and I think my selection alone speaks volumes about me lmao)...

I think I've decided to talk about "House of Stairs" instead, by William Sleator. It might be an easy answer because it WAS strange and specific as books go, but it's one that's always consciously stuck with me whereas the other two books I think informed me on a creative subconscious level more than anything.

Full disclaimer - everything written from here on is based on dim recollection. I read it just once in middle school, a time I barely recall at all, and some elements are probably distorted/wrong based on how I envisioned things. But I'm writing it as is because it is SUCH a strong memory even if it's off in places, and I think that more precisely answers the heart of this question than if I pulled up a summary online and described it from that.

I'm also hoping to find a physical copy to own at some point, so part of this is because I'll be interested to come back to this and see how much I described poorly or entirely wrongly.

So that said. House of Stairs.

"House of Stairs" is, in essence, a story about sociological experimentation - the focus of the book is on several teens who get trapped in a labyrinthine space that lives up to the book's title, a reference to the M.C. Escher painting of the same name:

You can already see how this is the "easy" answer for a strange, specific impression.

The building they're trapped in is all white, stairs going up and down no matter how far you look - or go. They're trapped with no discernable exits and no resources, for unknown reasons and an indeterminable amount of time.

So then comes the actual experiments.

Aside from stairs, stairs, and more stairs, there ARE landings, here and there - and some of those landings have little stations with buttons on them. As the kids discover, if you push the button, you get food.

...Until suddenly, you don't.

Then the kids have to sort out, is it broken? Can they wait until it gets fixed? Should they try to fix it themselves or go elsewhere in search of the exit?

This leads to many things - heightened emotions, thoughts and theories, tension, arguments - until suddenly they're rewarded with food again.

Well. No one pushed the button, what happened this time?

And so it goes on, until it becomes clear - the stations are conditioning them, training them with rewards to silent tasks fulfilled. And as the book goes, the kids divide into camps - those who want to listen implicitly to the station, and those who don't. The station starts rewarding harmful behaviors to boot, to see just how far they're willing to go, so the focus of the book narrows to the protagonists who search for a way out.

The book is a YA novel so it ends with them finding the way out of course, being recognized for staying strong and finding a way out, and of course the innate reward of getting out despite the adversity. But the premise of this book itself stuck the strongest with me.

It raises questions like, what if that were to happen to me? What would it take? It's easy to claim you'd be strong-willed and find a way out, only because by knowing the book you know a way out exists. But in practice it's much harder, especially without that knowledge. How long would I last, would I immediately fall into the camp that follows the prompts? Would I resist but fall to its sway? Or, would I fall to the enemy camp, once it became clear they wouldn't get rewarded otherwise?

Sad thing is, as fantastical as the space itself sounds with its descriptions - almost akin to a white void with stairs stretching forever - the overall concept of a space being created for such a purpose doesn't even strike me as all that out there, and I think that suggests it's definitely left an impact on how I view the world.

It's just outlandish enough, and yet there's people all the time who would do such a horrendous thing, in the name of research... or perhaps even just their own amusement.

Honestly I barely remember the ending - how they got out, life after. In a manner of speaking, I think I too got trapped in the house of stairs - only unlike the characters I'm still stuck there, poking around the place and contemplating just how much - or little - it'd take for someone to create such a thing in reality.

Hopefully that answers the question in a satisfying way ^^; I was stuck on this for a bit since, as mentioned before, a lot of my childhood has been lost to memory issues - it was hard determining what books impacted me how, when I barely recall what I was like before reading it, you know?

[ahelluvahater]

Your rant about Alastor seems so misguided. In fact, it's bordering on white savior complex. So let me give you some input as someone who's actually Black.

(Let me be clear, Viziepop can be criticized for a lot. I'm not defending her at all. But this is about Alastor specifically)

Africans owned slaves (as did the Romans, Greeks, and a bunch of other civilizations). In fact, owning souls in HH is way closer to that slavery as opposed to US slavery. But even disregarding that, the other Overlords own souls too, not just Alastor. It has nothing to do with him being Black. I saw nothing wrong with Alastor. And if he's Creole, it's very likely that his family came to New Orleans after the Haitian Revolution. Many Black people in New Orleans at the time were rich, influential, owned businesses, etc. because of this. So Alastor more than likely wasn't oppressed like other Black people in the US were at the time.

Also, your comparisons to Dr. Facillier are odd. I mean, yes he was probably heavily inspired by him, but voodooism is a real religion that Africans practice and was brought to New Orleans. There are so many rituals and facets that ensure power after death, so him practicing voodoo is actually a great plot point as to how he got strong enough to take out so many other Overlords so fast.

As for him being Ace, you do know that there are Ace people who are actually "heartless," right? They don't care about other people, have admitted it, and have repeatedly said that it isn't a problem. You're talking over an entire community (two if you count the Black community) because of what you've deemed is bad representation.

But even if that wasn't true, it doesn't matter because Alastor DOES care about people. He cares about his mom, Rosie, and Mimzy. I would even go as far as to say he's actually starting to care about Charlie. He was also friends with Vox at some point. So your accusation really holds no water on either end.

Please, do research before you get up in arms

So I do want to say I do not wish to speak over black people I wanted to emphasize what they have said and I am sorry if I was incorrect, I do not wish to be a white savior and I meant to communicate that poc who were mentioning this were being ignored. My mistake I’ll attempt to make that more clear. A lot of my discussion on him ‘owning’ Husk was more related to an earlier misinformations I had gotten and changed in my post thinking he had been changed back into a white man, apologies. I connected him to facillier due to him generally feeling oddly similar, and since he has been in-depth compared to him in terms of bad repersentation of voodou and the community. I have heard Alastor being criticized in his antagonistic stereotype of voodoo and those who practice it and wanted to show what I have been seeing Black, Creole, and Haitian people saying about him, to hopefully use whatever platform I have to uplift and support people speaking on vivziepops use of voodoo in the show.

What I can speak on is his asexuality in which I find your statement that ace/Aro people being ‘heartless’ is a aphobic stereotype due to their lack or lesser amount of romantic or sexual attraction. Please don’t refer to us as heartless there are so many other forms of attraction a lot of us feel such as platonic, sensual, emotional, familial, and yes the aspec is a spectrum so sexual and romantic as well. Alastor in his character is portrayed to be a villain and is shown to be evil and heartless, now it’s ok to have a character whose ace and like that but he is the only repersentation in the show, vivziepop chose not to add more to show the range of how the aspec people act and present, causing him to be a stereotype. And for him caring about other characters that’s not what people really see about his character I’ve never seen any allo talk about his platonic bonds on the forefront. I cannot talk on the race aspect so I will leave that to people more qualified and will ask you to not spread aphobic stereotypes as that is very harmful to a underrepresented community even in queer media.