#Freedom and Constraint

[omegaphilosophia]

The Philosophy of the Blues

The philosophy of the blues encompasses the emotional, cultural, and existential dimensions of this deeply influential musical genre. The blues, originating from the African American experience, particularly in the American South, is not just a musical form but also a profound expression of the human condition. It reflects themes of suffering, resilience, identity, and the search for meaning, often addressing the complexities of life in a way that is both raw and cathartic.

Key Themes in the Philosophy of the Blues:

Suffering and Resilience:

Expression of Pain: The blues is often associated with the expression of deep emotional pain, loss, and hardship. This includes personal experiences of love lost, economic struggle, and social injustice. The music becomes a vehicle for articulating suffering in a way that is both personal and universal.

Resilience Through Expression: Despite its focus on suffering, the blues also embodies resilience. By expressing pain, blues musicians transform it, finding strength and endurance. The act of singing the blues is itself a form of resistance, a way to cope with and rise above adversity.

Authenticity and Truth:

Realness and Honesty: The blues is often celebrated for its authenticity, with musicians valuing raw, unfiltered expression over polished perfection. This commitment to truth-telling, even when it reveals uncomfortable realities, is central to the blues philosophy.

Life as It Is: The blues doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of life. Instead, it confronts them head-on, acknowledging that pain, loss, and struggle are intrinsic to the human experience. This acknowledgment of life's harsh realities is a key aspect of the blues' philosophical outlook.

Identity and Culture:

African American Experience: The blues is deeply rooted in the African American experience, particularly in the context of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism. It reflects a unique cultural identity that is marked by both suffering and a profound sense of community and spiritual resilience.

Cultural Expression: The blues serves as a cultural expression that communicates the history, struggles, and hopes of African Americans. It is a way of preserving and transmitting cultural memory, offering a sense of continuity and connection to the past.

Existential Themes:

Confronting Absurdity: The blues often grapples with existential themes, such as the search for meaning in an often indifferent or hostile world. The music reflects a recognition of life's absurdities and the complexities of human existence, where joy and sorrow, hope and despair, coexist.

Living with Uncertainty: The blues acknowledges the unpredictability of life and the inevitability of suffering, yet it also embraces the resilience needed to face these challenges. This acceptance of uncertainty and the transient nature of life is a core aspect of the blues' existential philosophy.

Emotion and Catharsis:

Emotional Depth: The blues is known for its emotional intensity, often evoking feelings of melancholy, longing, and heartache. Through the music, these emotions are not only expressed but also shared with others, creating a sense of empathy and collective experience.

Cathartic Release: Playing or listening to the blues can provide a cathartic release, allowing individuals to process and make sense of their emotions. The blues offers a way to confront and release inner turmoil, leading to a sense of emotional healing or relief.

The Blues as a Form of Communication:

Storytelling: The blues often tells stories of personal and communal experiences, conveying messages about life, love, loss, and social conditions. These stories are a way of communicating lived realities and shared experiences, often with a moral or lesson embedded in them.

Call and Response: The blues frequently employs a call-and-response structure, reflecting its roots in African musical traditions. This form of communication emphasizes interaction and dialogue, both between the musician and the audience and among the musicians themselves.

Freedom and Constraint:

Musical Structure: The blues often follows a specific musical structure, such as the 12-bar blues, which provides a framework within which musicians can express themselves. This balance between freedom and constraint reflects a broader philosophical tension between structure and improvisation in life.

Freedom of Expression: Within the constraints of the blues form, there is immense freedom for individual expression. Musicians are encouraged to infuse their performances with personal emotion, style, and creativity, highlighting the importance of finding one’s voice within established boundaries.

The Blues and Spirituality:

Secular and Sacred: While often seen as secular music, the blues has deep spiritual undercurrents. It shares themes with African American spirituals, such as the longing for deliverance and the expression of faith in the face of suffering. The blues can be seen as a secular form of seeking solace and meaning.

Soulful Expression: The term "soul" is often associated with the blues, referring to the music's ability to express deep, soulful emotions. The blues connects the physical and the spiritual, offering a form of expression that speaks to both the body and the soul.

Cultural Influence and Legacy:

Foundation of Modern Music: The blues is a foundational genre that has influenced a wide range of musical styles, including jazz, rock, and hip-hop. Its philosophical themes and musical elements have permeated popular culture, shaping the way emotions and stories are expressed in music.

Continuing Relevance: The philosophy of the blues remains relevant today, as it continues to resonate with people facing modern struggles and injustices. The blues’ emphasis on authenticity, resilience, and emotional expression continues to inspire artists and audiences alike.

The Blues as a Philosophy of Life:

Embracing Complexity: The blues teaches that life is complex, filled with both sorrow and joy. It encourages an acceptance of this complexity and the ability to find meaning and beauty even in difficult circumstances.

Living with Grace: The blues embodies a philosophy of living with grace under pressure, maintaining dignity and humanity in the face of life's challenges. It reflects a worldview that values perseverance, expression, and the transformative power of music.

The philosophy of the blues is a deep reflection on the human condition, rooted in the experiences of suffering, resilience, and cultural identity. It offers a unique lens through which to understand life's challenges, emphasizing authenticity, emotional expression, and the power of music to heal and connect. The blues is not just a genre of music; it is a way of seeing and experiencing the world, one that values truth, resilience, and the ability to find beauty in the midst of adversity.

[fellhellion]

the caponposting is everlasting etc but man. I’m fascinated w the way hans understands so much of life through the lens of art? and the roles outlined within fiction? guy that’s been bucking against the constraints of his social role finds himself fascinated by roles in fiction as an avenue to understand himself?

he follows the ritual of courtly romance without understanding ritual as an expression of love (let’s put aside for a moment too ritual as a socially consecrated mode of expression), he parrots other men’s meditations on love and yet lacks understanding of what he recites and thus bastardises it, he hunts boar in the manner sketched in art, he positions himself in the role of prince to enneleyn and thus offers her a role in return (and she in the same way enjoys fulfilling whatever role is necessary to her work), he initially thought the sacking of skalitz a tantalising tale, he and henry playact their class difference and strain against its restrictions but when he saw how fragile the social order was, how very fragile his own sense of self was when tied to it, rotting wood beneath his feet and a noose around his neck, he tries to clutch that role even tighter. wear it with pride.

[peliginspeaks]

Listen, I'm sorry to the people who draw Veils in torn/bloody robes because of the whole Vake thing but you're simply wrong. Do you think Veils would Ever go out like that. Do you think it doesn't have fifteen changes of clothes ready immediately, with options depending on the day and occasion, to climb into when it comes back from killing things. Of course it does. Veils is getting home, taking a shower in the Bazaar, putting on a new perfectly clean robe with accent panels and silk trim, and then dabbing 1 (one) tasteful bloodstain on the hem of it with a claw because it's arrogant and it thinks it can get away with it. What is a Veils if it's not serving cunt. Of course it is.

[sparky-is-spiders]

So do you ever think about Jon embracing being non human and becoming a worse but much much happier version of himself or are you normal

I am thinking about Jonathan Sims having a fraying connection with humanity All Of The Time. Jon who is drawn to the Eye not just because he needs to know but because being an Avatar just feels Right. Jon who has always struggled to connect with the people around him. Jon who feels he was never human in some fundamental way to begin with, always reaching for all the things humans are supposed to be that he has never been. Jon eternally caught between the knowledge that if he ever stops trying he can only hurt the people around him but if he never stops trying he will always be crushed under the weight of his own stifling humanity. Jon shedding his false skin and feeling nothing but relief even though he knows he is going to hurt people now, and more than ever before, and he is not ever going to stop because the chains are gone and they can’t be put back. This is because I am extremely normal and have no problems at all.

(I think there’d probably be some good Jon/Jonah parallels here if we had ever gotten to see Jonah as he was just starting out. Like genuinely do you see the Vision?)

(I do believe this post is like. Maybe the most articulate I have ever been on the subject. Do you fucking know how much “a tragic loss of life, etc. etc.” fucking Haunts me? I don’t have the words to explain it now and I don’t think I did before either but it changed my brain chemistry please I don’t know what to say but I desperately need to say it.)

(I think this was maybe more. Adjacent to what you meant maybe? Unfortunately I got caught on This Concept and I’m trapped in it now. I hope this is alright)

[hantii]

Fuckk dude

I love trans guys who become large, muscular, bearded men

I love trans guys who wear knitted cardigans and have stubble on their chins and callous on their fingers

I love trans guys who wear short shorts and accentuate their tiny waists

I love trans guys who look more manly than most cis men

I love trans guys who look more feminine than most women

I love trans guys who conform and don’t conform to masculinity, who are their own men, who define their manhood by who they are, not what people tell them that they are. I love trans guys who embrace masculinity and thrive with dramatic physical transformations. I love trans guys who love the femininity of their bodies.

Trans guys don’t conform to neat little categories and a gender framework made up by western culture. Trans guys are diverse and beautiful and wonderful and all of them should be celebrated as the men that they are.

[bellshazes]

i think part of what made writing strange currencies so fun was that in general i think what is compelling about etho-and-bdubs as a shifting in-game dynamic is partially the way that the setting of Making Entertainment and In Gameness make the (perceived) need to fill specific roles/archetypes compulsory. this is a factual statement about the conditions of working as a mcyter for your job but also an interesting pressure to translate inside of fiction into diegetic pressures. there are in fact platonic explanations for this outside of it and it's called having an emotional support coworker (as any lesbian restaurant worker with a pet grillman, for example, might well know). the irl people playing these roles have expansive lives outside of them but when you take the performance on its own terms - the text of the video and the gameplay (two diff things!) - as being full stories and worlds, what you have is a clear patterns shared by many experiences of queer repression. the need to be what people expect you to be, jealousy or admiration of others who fill roles you think you can't, the play on history and secret coded messaging to express sincerity while being scrutinized which produces a specific joy at being understood in ways large swathes of the population cannot because you share this secret thing... what better way to explore that than by keeping the pressure of cisnormative expectations against homosexual desire on? or by taking those longings for something outside the cisnormative expectation of the roles they play and . and i'm not saying there shouldn't be transmasc interpretations of them i just think that they should have a totally different set of neuroses and behaviors to be similarly compelling. full on rpf is similarly boring bc it removes the key tension i give a fuck about; i think they should be compacted into a singular hyperdense cube for my enjoyment, which is the only metric that matters.

[hinekoakahi]

OH THAT ABSOLUTE PRICK

[miralines]

One thing I think is interesting/useful to note about the Rose Red book is that it is a book that was published in the OUATIS galaxy a little under ten years after the war, and that it has an in-story author— and, crucially, that author is not necessarily an entirely reliable narrator.

More rambling about this under the cut

The author, Althea, is a normcivilian with an unusual amount of sympathy for the now-decommissioned Rose Reds. This is not a popular position, and between:

A) her rhetorical goal of changing the minds of people actively against the Rose Reds being allowed to survive

B) the constraints of mainstream publishers, who are under social/political pressure to not threaten the new government, requiring her to be both neutral and not too challenging,

C) her own corresponding bias in believing that neutrality is both possible and desirable,

and D) her limited viewpoint as a normcivilian (not a Rose Red) from a privileged background,

There are quite a lot of places where events, people, and viewpoints are presented in ways that are somewhat misleading. Althea has a degree in journalism, but she does not live in an entirely free society, and both external forces and her own biases do color the narrative she presents throughout the book.

In short, she’s the equivalent of a left-leaning ally to a marginalized group who’s a bit more centrist than one might hope and is presenting herself as even more centrist in order to be published at all through mainstream channels and taken seriously by people who are biased against her cause.

[andrewplimmer]

The True Essence of Freedom

We all crave freedom and believe it's our right, but true freedom requires effort, ownership, and accountability. Freedom spans across various aspects of life—your body, beliefs, thoughts, values, relationships, and finances.

Unfortunately, it’s easy to feel trapped in any of these areas—like you’ve lost control or external forces are against you. To truly value freedom, you need to stay in the driver’s seat of your life.

Freedom is not free.

To feel free in your body, you must make daily sacrifices. Master the art of delayed gratification—invest in your health now to reap the rewards later. It might sound militant, but it’s the truth. Those who feel free in their health have earned it through consistency and confidence. On the other hand, those who neglect their health pay a greater price later, both physically and mentally.

Living in a free country doesn’t mean you are truly free.

You aren’t free unless you practice freedom. If you don’t pursue it physically, mentally, financially, and spiritually, you’ll end up constrained or imprisoned in some area of your life.

This is the freedom paradigm. When we take freedom for granted, it eventually constrains us.

For example, many people feel financially trapped due to inflation—not because of their actions but because they were passive. They didn’t protect their purchasing power or educate themselves about the changing environment. Now they’re financially trapped, losing hope for the future as their savings dwindle.

Financial freedom is an illusion unless you actively create it.

The same applies to physical health and wellbeing. It’s your birthright, but it’s not free. To feel free in your body, you must continually invest in your health and wellness—it comes at a cost. If you don’t pay that cost, you’ll eventually feel confined in your own body.

Emotional freedom isn’t free either. You need to create an atmosphere that fosters emotional happiness. Society and mainstream media often create an environment that breeds fear and anxiety.

Emotional freedom requires surrounding yourself with positive influences, uplifting messages, and tools that build self-confidence and inspire greatness. This is the opposite of emotional confinement, which leaves you feeling depleted and helpless.

Spiritual freedom is equally important. Cultivating faith and connecting to a higher power opens the door to grace and divine intervention, enhancing our sense of freedom.

Spiritual and emotional well-being significantly impact our ability to cultivate freedom in our lives.

But again, freedom is not free. To be truly free, take control of your life. Build a stronger version of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially.

It takes courage, belief, and pursuit—but it’s worth it.

I want you to BE free and FEEL free.

Whatever constraints are holding you back, take action today to tear down those walls. Do it for yourself, your loved ones, and for the good of humanity. Live, love, and value FREEDOM.

helping people build a freedom based business. Retire Thrive Explore, live free. http://freedom.andrewplimmer.com

[gyubby99]

And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “I think I want her back HEAR ME OUT—“

[mhaccunoval]

re: going to coffee shop together—i would ALWAYS do this with you <3333 we could go to that park we went to last time and then go explore the antique shops and get treats from the candy shop :)

OH EM GEE PLEASEEEE that would be so fun and cute :') <333

[neonhairspray]

Just a random post telling how I like free movement within EU borders.

We live ~50-60km from Polish border (which is now just a place with old buildings that used to belong to border patrols and etc) & we can can literally hop to the car & drive to the nearest Polish town, go grocery shopping, have some coffee & then drive back home. When we go to Latvia the only thing that reminds us that it's another country is that road signs are a bit different. And that's it.

Like you can experience other culture, buy delicious stuff at foreign bakeries and all it takes is fuell and money (I mean ID card is also good, just in case). Sometimes you don't even have to change currency.

That's awesome and f*ck all the conservatives and those who whine about "good old times" (which in our case was soviet occupation)

[sosanniv]

Today's suggested pairing @ steeped

[mortisghost]

About the OFF Prologue

Thank you very much to everyone who played the Off demo! We're delighted that the response was so numerous and enthusiastic. Your comments and feedback will be invaluable to the team for the final phase of development.

Regarding the feedback that focuses on differences from the original version, which often necessarily involves the new soundtrack, but also a few other small changes : I can easily understand the difficulty some of you have in appreciating elements that replace those you've known and are attached to. But I want to remind you first and foremost that this version doesn’t intend to replace the previous one, which remains and will always remain available for free to everyone. At no point there's any intention of "removing" - one way or the other - the Alias ​​Conrad Coldwood soundtrack, which is a very important part of the atmosphere of the original experience. Constraints forced us to choose to offer you this new soundtrack, which should be seen as another musical dressing for the world of Off, and not as a "final edition," canceling the previous one.

Moreover, the creative process for this new soundtrack was not solely driven by an attempt to recreate the exact same atmospheres as the original. I personally asked the artists to maintain a certain degree of freedom, and thus avoid falling into the somewhat impossible exercise of identically recreating existing atmospheres. As an artist myself, I thought it was more interesting to give the musicians a certain amount of room for expression and interpretation, not only so that the pieces they compose are interesting in themselves, and not just as reproductions, but also because I believe this is one of the aspects that makes the experience of this new version surprising and interesting.

I also know that for several of the excellent artists tasked with creating new music for this version, it was a source of rather intense pressure! Everyone on the team loves the original game, and knows how important its soundtrack is.

All that being said, the Dedan battle theme, which seems to have been a specifically controversial point, will most likely receive some changes between now and the final release.

Finally, I've read a few times about Toby Fox's supposedly dominant role on the team. Please believe that, as involved as he is in the game's development process, not only does he have no final decision-making power (which is more in line with my position), but he also works with us with enormous respect (and fear) for the source material. Of the entire team, I think he's the one who felt the most pressure from the fans, and still does. I ask you, please, to be assured of his sincere involvement and humble devotion to the project and to the batter's messianic quest.

The idea of ​​replacing the dopefish with the dog from Undertale was mine, as the green fish is copyrighted; we were afraid Apogee would annoy us.

Well, that's all for now. I hope you're all well, thank you again for your support and your thousands of encouraging comments. I hope you'll like the final version!!

Have a great day everyone, go play Deltarune; my boss forced me to tell you.

Bye

[jay-catsby]

man i miss playing minecraft with my brother. we'd play on his Vita all the way back when the world size was capped at the scale of one map and take like 30-minute turns each. just handing the vita back and forth in the backseat of the van on road trips microdosing our separate projects... obv we played on PC a lot too but all the worlds i remember most fondly were on the Vita

[blightbright]

speaking as a "solas was trying to resist his own binding/corruption the whole time" truther (step #981,057: release the gods for rook to kill, step #981,058: help build up rook's power, step #981,059: manipulate rook into stopping him by any means necessary): UGH varric was so close but not quite

IMO varric's intuition knew solas didn't really believe in tearing down the veil at this point gaaahHHHH

he just didn't have all the pieces to put together the full story

in hindsight only, i'm gnashing my teeth about how carefully vague "what I do now must be done, despite it being past your comprehension" is

and also "The question is what lives, and how"

in hindsight only, i'm desperately curious to ask those questions!!!!!!!

ok solas... then what lives?

and how?

Varric and Solas argue. The sound echoes.

Varric: Me, take down the Dread Wolf? I'm flattered. Varric: No, I just came to ask you a question. So, you rebelled against the other gods, and it was a disaster. Varric: Then you imprisoned them and created the Veil, and that was a disaster. Varric: So how is this time gonna work out any better? Can you tell me that? Solas: I understand your hesitance, but what I do now must be done, despite it being past your comprehension. Varric: I'm not saying you're evil. But if you really believed in what you were doing, you'd be able to give me a straight answer. Solas: You would rather cast aspersions than admit that this is mine to solve. Varric: No mistake is worth killing innocent people over. Solas: The question is what lives, and how. My ritual will heal the world, and restore what was driven out of balance. Varric: C'mon, Chuckles. Who are you trying to convince here? Me, or yourself? Solas: Varric… Varric: You're not the first good man I've seen talk himself into a bad decision. The question is whether you can admit it.