#Focus and Determination

[whisperingwisdom]

Marcus Aurelius Teaches How To Build Self Discipline (Stoicism)

[theluckygirlblog]

How to Push Through Challenges and Achieve Your Goals

Life is full of challenges, and the journey to achieving your goals is never a straight path. Whether you’re pursuing financial independence, building a business, or developing new skills, obstacles will arise. The key to success lies in how you navigate these challenges and stay committed to your vision. Here’s a step-by-step guide to pushing through difficulties and achieving your dreams. 1.…

[angerieque]

You don’t have to force a whole new personality, but reintroduce patterns and ways of existence.

[vaguely-concerned]

This might be due to the fact that on my first playthrough I ended up creating a Rook more emotionally guarded than any of the companions except Minrathous-route Lucanis and perhaps Neve, so I was primed to look for it, but I never got the sense that the companions don’t care for Rook (the thought never even occurred to me until I saw other people post about it) — to me it seems much more like it’s Rook who keeps the last bit of distance, Rook who pulls away when the companions try to extend their care or worry too directly, who keeps themselves slightly apart. (Rook who is so full of grief they cannot know as grief and thus process that there’s no room inside them to let anything else all the way in, perhaps.) They deflect and flinch back when someone gets too close or approaches them too overtly about their feelings — especially when it brushes up against the theme of grief. They can offer care to all the companions who are grieving, come along to any number of funerals as emotional support, but the moment someone turns that towards them they shut that shit down Immediately, like when Taash almost gives the whole game away with ‘Like you’d know? You act like you haven’t lost anyone!’ and Rook just blandly responds ‘We’re talking about you’ and doesn’t engage. But they can also admit that they struggle with accepting compliments, or knowing what to say, or having confidence in themselves without Varric’s help.

Despite all their determination and even in their most stoic no-nonsense incarnation, Rook is awkward, with the struggles that entails. Someone who is eager and happy to be the helper wherever they can, and helplessly unequipped to know how to be the helpee, as it were. It’s not that the companions don’t return Rook’s attachment to them, there’s MUCH more of a ‘okay so what are the ways you will allow me to be good to you??’ desperation of care vibe behind all their invitations to conversations and hangouts together, to my mind. They bring Rook to their favourite places and share the things they love with them, they ask to spend time together (many times just to have their company, not because they have a problem they need help with! Sometimes the problem arises anyway b/c video game quest narrative of course), they bring them out for some direly needed grass touching, they introduce them to their families. Everyone is clearly getting the sense that Rook does Not want to talk about Varric especially (this is in fact what Harding says in banter, if she’s still alive after the reveal :’( ), but they are absolutely SCRAMBLING to find ways to show that they’re there for them even so. AND from the companions’ perspective, with the situation as they have the means to understand it, accepting that Rook isn’t ready to have that conversation and backing off is also a kind thing to do. (tl;dr: To Me Rook is that weirdly socialized friend who is a great hang once they’re actually there but you have to directly invite them or they don’t quite know how to initiate the contact themselves lol) 

Just as a crushing sense of responsibility for their family is a trait that is built into Hawke no matter how you play them or how you make them respond to that, I feel like Rook — however helpful and earnest, warm, charming, jocular, stoic or straightforward they seem at a surface glance — is always someone who struggles deeply with connecting to themselves and other people. (Emotional Intimacy, the Final Frontier.) As, indeed, is the case with all of the Veilguard companions too! It’s clearly a deliberate theme. These are all lonely people struggling with their sense of identity and belonging in some sort of way. AND having, working on and eventually starting to overcome these difficulties also makes Rook a direct foil for Solas, who doesn’t learn that lesson unless you corner him at the end of the world to force feed him his medicine lmao. They don’t manage to break out of the regret prison under their own steam, it’s because even struggling and grieving they have managed to create mutual bonds with other people who show up for them in turn now — and with all the protective walls of denial around what happened to Varric crumbling and making them less of a stranger to themselves, Rook is finally able to let them. An outcome Solas seemingly didn’t even consider to guard against, because he’s become that deeply entrenched in his loneliness, the utter isolation of the self — he can no longer truly imagine an alternative. (It’s not that he can’t form these bonds, obviously, it’s that he resolutely refuses to value them. Whether it’s because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it or out of a need for control or the martyr complex where he must sacrifice everything he loves on the sacrificial pyre of fixing his mistakes, all of the above and more, the result is the same. Mind!Varric, who I think is mostly Solas speaking, even calls this out directly. So yet again a situation where he has some self awareness about it and it doesn’t help At All haha. Solas falls to the temptation of making people into tools again and again and again, no matter how many times it comes back to bite him in the ass and the eternal solitude it traps him in.) 

And that deep deep loneliness… There but for the grace of… well the theological state of thedas being what it is right now, let’s just go with the grace of Something, Presumably go you as well, Rook. The same capacity/tendency to pull away from connection clearly lives in them as well in some form (again, for whatever reason and with whatever motivations and instincts behind it for any individual Rook). Solas and Rook coming together to create a blood magic paper doll of the mind Varric in response to acute loss and loneliness is one of the most deep , deeply fucked up and invasive acts of intimacy I’ve ever contemplated. I don’t think that’s accidental, there’s something There’s Something Wrong With You (there’s something wrong with you that’s also wrong with me (derogatory)) here that resonates no matter how both parties would hate to hear it. (A fitting legacy for Varric and his wild ‘I made my best friend into a story because it’s the only way I know how to love with this desperation of sincerity’ brain to leave in the narrative, methinks. I feel he’d appreciate it on a craft level, if nothing else.)

If you read through all of Rook’s potential backstories, one of the common threads through all of them, along with a certain maverick ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ streak, is a sense of profound alienation. They did something or have some sort of quality that made it hard for them to fit in with the group they’re from, causing a conflict that cuts them off from parts of their identity as it’s been up until now. All of which also adds to how important Varric is to them — he was clearly able to break/see through some of that and be closer with them, even in the relatively short time they spent together. No matter what else goes to shit, they can trust that a) Varric sees them, b) he genuinely likes them and believes in them not despite who they are, but for it, and c) he’s got their back, we’re in this together kid. And then he is gone, and it takes them the whole game to be able to bring themselves to accept that and know themselves again, be able to let new relationships in fully. The very understandable ‘the last time I let someone in, they got stabbed before my eyes and the world ended’ flinch away, even if they’re not consciously aware that’s what it is. Anyway I love Rook. So much space to play around in here as to WHY they might feel or react like this, even when the framework is more defined.

[short-wooloo]

"Your focus determines your reality"

This quote, used in ep 5 of Skeleton Crew, but originally said by Qui-Gon in Phantom Menace has been getting a lot of attention lately and it seems that now is a good time to get into what it means before wrong ideas about it get spread (specifically that it is something unique to Qui-Gon and that only he could have passed it to Jod, I'll get to that)

The first thing we need to address is that the quote makes use of fancy prose, as George Lucas is fond of for stuff regarding the Force, which has an unfortunate side effect of people misunderstanding the meaning (see the discourse around "do or do not there is no try")

What the quote means in the most literal terms is "what your life is like is affected by what's on your mind"

Is a lesson on mindfulness, what you think about influences how you perceive and go about life, for good or ill, if you keep your mind on something-a goal/task/etc-but temper that focus with mindfulness of the rest of the universe its fine, but when you single mindedly and doggedly focus on one thing (like say, visions of someone you love dying-ANAKIN!) and ignore all else, then it's a problem that a best brings you personal misery, and at worse brings suffering onto others

Pretty bog standard Jedi stuff, nothing particularly Qui-Gon about it (despite what fandom will have you believe Qui-Gon is not radically broken from the rest of the Jedi in philosophy, doctrine, or traditions, he just likes to do things his own way, and the Jedi do respect that)

Ironically, Jod does not practice what he preaches (more evidence that he's either long fallen from being a Jedi or never truly was one), as he is single mindedly focused on his pursuit of treasure to the point that he'll betray the kids and damage the rapport he's built with them when there really was no reason to

[koffee-joe]

That's the spirit!

Remember, every obstacle is an opportunity to learn and grow.

[twinklingwatermellon]

by then, I’ll know, you haven’t lost me. you never will.

“send for me” - the national | you will know it by its seriousness, @wordsofnoconsequence | “close to you” - gracie abrams | “call your mom” - noah kahan, lizzie mcalpine | “sparks fly” - taylor swift (edit by @vigilanteshit) | “dancing with our hands tied” - taylor swift | georges bataille | @heart-eyes-express | “tears in heaven” - eric clapton | “labyrinth” - taylor swift | @wordsofnoconsequence | all gifs by @ryoun

[angelmush]

taking off the wallpaper in our guest bedroom so i can turn it into the office of my gf’s dreams !!!!!! she’s in her last year of grad school this year and the wallpaper basically single-handedly discouraged her from using the office for the entirety of the last year bc it’s that impressively ugly

[cantobear]

[oc] 💘

[voidcat]

so... amphoreus, huh. i think as 3.2 is out, we all know and are aware it is, without a doubt, a simulation right?

(aka my mini rambling post regarding the world thus far, less of a theory and more of a "pointing out the obvious" in my terms because im still seeing posts in denial or not reading a single text in the main quest then making "theories" and im a salty person who's annoyed by this ahahaha)

with 3.2 being out and we have been shed more light with anaxagoras' help, i want to talk about the world a little, and appreciate mhy for the foreshadowings they've done. credit where its due, for all the bs they do, they always nail foreshadows right and do it well. not spoiler free !!! im lazy to add visuals (esp regarding anaxagoras quotes) so i'll quote to the best of my ability (idek where to begin lol) kind of a long thread, mostly to keep my thoughts somewhere,,, ty if you read to the end <3

So even for non hi3 or genshin players, amphoreus was a suspicious world on its own. the corrupted areas looking to be like erased data or a virus of sorts. how garmentmakers nymphs always resembled "bugs" and made emoticon faces to react. i said before that i thought the world was stuck in a cycle- a samsara cycle like tevyat (genshin) perhaps. with the broken moon, "the sea of flowers at the end of the journey" (the twins' ultimate destination in genshin) which was revealed to be the nether realm aka the afterlife and how the dead are never fully dead and we have these memory fragments often left behind at crucial locations.

cerces had called herself "calypso" before and said she came up with it on a whim. but this quest showed, calypso was one of the seven sages and her past form for a better lack of a word. like how gnaus was once nikador/strife. "titans of today are heirs of yesterday who claimed the coreflames and passed the trials" it's as simple as that, really.

(also here is what one of the nymphs in dawnbreak say when you catch it) (the nymphs seem to be more aware of the reality of amphoreus than the citizens and heirs)

amphoreus is a simulation- that resets its data. that's why while cerces has remained her appearance (despite her contradicting lines saying they decipted her as a tree in the demigod council, easiest and best way to illustrate her when they didn't know what she looked like) some of the previous heirs did not- or to our knowledge so far. how the new titans' data is "constructed" entirely depends on the "memories" collected in the previous era. and from there, their new forms are based on. kephale hinted to be not dead nor alive, in the state of dying and thus stuck in a dynamic, i think fits well with phainon's contradicting entity too. only surviver of his town, his "true form" on the other side wreaking havoc. he is the trickiest heir most likely last to obtain divinity for this reason. because it's flame reaver that is the lord ravager lygus told madam herta.

amphoreus is a simulation made to keep lord ravager in. the why isn't clear but there must be some history between his past and cyrene/elysia to have gone through these lenghts. with a simulated world that "resets" itself and starts over, FR is more or less aware of his entrapment at this point and that'ss why he has begun to go after the coreflames: the hard drivers of the world, if we take amphoreus not just as a simulation but as a simple computer of sorts.

that's where erudition and remembrance plays factor, intentionally or not in a collabration with each other, as brought to reality and guarded by lygus, an antikytheran.

and what is an antikytheran? a hand powered orrery (solar system model) that could be used to predict asronomical positions/athletic cycles of olympic games and such. it can be considered as the oldest known example of an analogue computer. (all these, simply from a basic wikipedia search). in the game we are told there used to be many "antikytherans" and lygus is one of the last of the species, but in a simulated world, how much of it holds true, who is to say this isnt fabricated history? anaxagoras also points out the history before the titans is unclear and implied/told to be in utter chaos. just because it wasn't recorded properly does not mean this was th fact.

same as the case of lygus. in his dialogue to madam herta, there is an emphasis on predictions, similar to the real thing. he says he ws gazed upon by nous too but herta has showed us already that nous is not exactly the gazing or responsive type. before he is an aeon, he is a computer. so who is to say lygus is not an extension of it, or maybe an earlier model, a prototype perhaps made by zandar one kuwabara himself- or based on one of his earlier inventions? just like that, it's most likely lygus/nous' influence that the first "seeds" of "nousporists" was planted (again, credit where its due, nous' name and the philosophy of nousporism in amphoreus tie wonderfully and show us clear influence/interventions of nous. just like how nihility is named ix not for the number but after the major arcana card ix). everything in amphoreus is a repetitive cycle that is rewritten by the previous data that has been saved/collected.

as a world that is overlooked by three paths, i think destruction came last, with the arrival of lord ravager. now im not certain if the world was already existing before that with the intention to keep him, or if he was inserted after, but the last scenes with herta imply he was the latest component and lastly added- one of the true outsiders. his fragment image being able to move as herta walks is another display of his self awareness of his predicament.

and now onto why i emphasized on mhy's foreshadowing (if you've read this far lmao) if you've done the seal event, you see TB has a "prophetic dream" that shows phainon. some things that stand out regarding him is that: he refers to his seal army as his "legion" which instantly reminds me of "anti matter legion" or simply known as the "legion", lead by nanook and his lord ravagers. in the event, phainon (or pie-non as he introduces himself in the dream), he does say "i was always the invader. there was never any side switching." for the remainder of the event after the dream, we don't see much of him. it gives us more information regarding cipher and aglaea in fact.

which further leads me to believe his purpose is for the following story. because one thing mhy loves is to hide their best drops and foreshadows in fun, silly looking events (ie: summer events that always foreshadow upcoming regions in genshin) people will skim over or will put to auto (or webevents, as the latest moon sisters loredrop in genshin proved once more.) please do note this is the same company who foreshadowed/gave us a lot of crucial intel on the harbingers and even the story of ru and the thunderbird as early as games earliest existing artifacts (the og electro set to be specific for ru/thunderbird.) the timing of the event being right after 3.2 and giving you a warning to play it if you havent finished the latest quest are all intentional.

offhandedly it is also said during the quest, hycilens is dead. (not surprising since she is most likely an expy of dr mei) but with anaxagoras' death as well, before we could learn more regarding him and the odd void within his chest, i think we are meant to see the upcoming cycle. all of the heirs being foreshadowed to die isn't very surprising, since we have examples such as tingyun, fugue, misha, gallagher and whatnot... but considering they are all part of a simulation, as long as their coreflames/souls remain protected, they will live on for a better lack of a word.

and we do have calypso suggesting alchemy in the previous cycle, and supposedly in the new era when supposedly "alchemy hadn't existed to align/sync with the story of dragon of styxia", castorice's existence alone is the first step perhaps that the repetitive cycle is being broken.-- castorice and pollixia breaking the natural order of the world by directly inserting her into the new cycle is the first step on the path of disturbance, or destruction.

and while i got into the whole foreshadow thing, i do want to add, black swan's existence in penacony from the start seemed iffy to me. so when we put what we know about misha/mikhail, black swan and all she told us so far, the memetic virus event that stuck out like a sorethumb when we all were expecting amphoreus, i am certain, these were all setting stones for amphoreus for us players. (the black tide being corrupted data/a virus, the nymphs being bugs/antivirus installment that record data and watch over until we collect them all back while coreflames are the drives where all data is restored for the world to be reset with a "new age of titans".

so much rambling for so little conclusion ahahah sorry, i didn't have much time to ponder regarding phainon being "cursed by mnestia" but considering the golden threads that always listen and the nymphs belonging to her, her role isnt just the "titan of love and romance" nor "created by cerces for company, only for the creation to fall in love with the creator". -> especially after with thanatos and the twins, reaching the conclusion that with the cycle of life and death and the passion to live and enjoy as long as you breathe, thus the humans learned to love; bringing this hand to hand with thanatos playing a role in mnestia's nymphs, their roles mightve been more mixed than what we have been shown so far.

after all, all we learn in amphoreus is just memories of people of the past- manipulated data if you will. oh and the vortex of genesis is most likely the heart of amphoreus and the whole world itself. as it is where the coreflames are "returned" (restored) and why when entering the world, herta finds herself there with fragmanted forms of the outsiders (lord ravager/fr, trailblazer and dan heng) while lygus is fully intact and in its form as it has shown us.

if anyone (especially hi3 players) have anything they want to add or have noticed themselves, pls feel free to add! i mainly wanted a post to gather my thoughts and will most likely edit this in the foreseeable future when i remember the rest of my thoughts ^^) but yeah, elysia/cyrene is most likely a emanator (remembrance) too but if she's not playing dumb as mem and that gaze of fuli black swan noticed in 3.2 wasn't the moment we were gazed upon by fuli, then it'll really be a paimon situation for sure... rip oh and whenever we "purify" the corrupted areas, the symbol we interact with seem to resemble kephale's symbol... edit 2: i'm thinking maybe as black swan has said regarding the garden of recollection and memokeepers, there is a third party playing too that we are unaware of yet who is causing this chaos/corruption- possibly even the black tide itself. similar to how march 7th's ice shoing up when she is unable to remember, the remnants of black tide is data removal- and in case of amphoreus, we know data = memories. perhaps the third party is like HoC was for elysian realm and Cyrene is now trying to guide us as Mem. and for all that concerns Phainon/FR/Kevin, the world to be built only to reset over and over is perhaps the true trial of not just Kephale but for Phainon/Kevin to reach a certain form or state of mind Cyrene/Elysia hopes for him to reach as humanity's survivor and protector. edit: i think this qrt thread by twitter user lenteels sums up all of amphoreus as a world down to its basics pretty much too (and gave me a good laugh so i'll link here)

(also idk how many of you follow leaks or not but just today we've got leaks that say flame reaver is the true protagonist of the story-- they didn't elaborate further as to not spoil anything else, and "because it's long". buuuuuut yeah let's see what we will be getting out of FR vs Elysia / Phainon vs Cyrene and was the driving force behind her actions^-^)

[gothamghostwhispers]

With the house cleaned up Artem has their prepped sigils out and the cloth they have tied into their warding is laid out.

They look to the kids that decided to join them and begin explaining the process

“My first step, is to lay the cloth out flat, and with a light layer of chalk I’m going to draw the sigils on so I’ll have a pattern to follow once the sewing starts”

Their hands are very steady, but they still use a protractor, compass, and a ruler to make sure that everything is drawn out exactly right. They’re extra careful to make sure the marks for updating the preexisting wards line up with the old wards perfectly.

“Next is setting things, I like to use embroidery for this, so I can channel my magic directly into my needle and thread, during this part it’s important to focus on the energy and intentions you’re putting into the spell.”

The needle and thread first glow and then begin float, stitching the cloth along the guidelines with speed that would be difficult to achieve without the magic.

Artem watches with complete focus as they mentally maneuver the needle.

With each sigil completed the ground below them briefly glows a larger reflection of the sigil before fading again, signaling that the spell has settled into their web of protections.

[thepersonalwords]

No matter what you say to someone else, you always hear it first.

Stephen Richards, Ask and the Universe Will Provide: A Straightforward Guide to Manifesting Your Dreams

[pepperoniparadise]

“Your focus determines your reality.”

[boycritter]

trying to formulate my thoughts on a topic. failing. i should be allowed to kill.

[fosermi]

Eclipse: Shadow... what the fresh hell am I looking at?

Shadow: Guifil has heart, and Silver shows promise and power... I need you to tutor them, Eclipse...

Eclipse: you want me to tutor THAT mess??

Shadow: yes.

Eclipse: shadow, they can't even walk around the city without catching on fire...

Shadow: *sigh* I know...

Eclipse: ... you just want to dump them on me don't you?

Shadow: maybe.

Eclipse: oh, fuck you!

Shadow: yes, fuck you too.

Sonic: that fall looks painful...

I just think that they <3

Anyway, this is how Eclipse first meets Silver, he gets called over by Shadow to teach the boys how to fight since they've been begging him. Shadow has no idea how to teach people how to fight plus he doesn't want to but figures it would be better for them to at least know self defense. Thus, that's how Silver and Guifil begin their tutelage under Eclipse, leader of the Red Arms rebellion.

[magnolia-sunrise]

on this Wolfgang Wednesday... i am so happy i can finally share a little wip preview of the piece im working on for losthavenguild's OC Classics Zine <3 getting to work on this is really like a dream come true and i am so excited to show you the finished piece when the time comes!