#I’m about to bring the most true of human conditions to this world; wacking at things with sticks

[caterpillarinacave]

"Ugh...the city," you think, no need to debate this decision, you write out a message to toss through the door, it tells whomever reads it that you are from a place called Earth, you walked through a door and ended up in a new world that is strange to you, this door leads from the strange world to wherever this is, you're looking for more insight into this world and/or your situation, and if they could leave their response near the door that would be great, please and thank you.

You tie the note with a string and toss it through the door then close it. Figuring it will take some time to get a response you leave the door be for today and head back, in the evening you mess with your trinkets and find nothing new about them, you add relevant info to your notebooks, and enjoy life while waiting, after a few days you return and open the door, the note looks untouched and when you pull it in you see no sign of anyone having noticed it, you toss it back through and leave it another day, this time when you open the door you see a letter across the alley, your note and the string are gone. The letter is too far to reach, you'll probably need to step through to pick it up. Do you walk over to get it?

No

[shiningmystic]

Pick-a-card General Tarot Reading- What do you need to know? 🧐☀️❤️

~ By ShiningMysticTarot 🌞

Hello lovely spirits! My name is Elpitha and I will be giving you general information on what you need to know right now! Know that whenever you see this, it will apply to you. If not now then later 😉 This is a message from your spirit guides, angels and your galactic family! Mother Earth popped in as well to give you some guidance! Hope your days have been full of happiness!

Now for the cards:

Pick a card

Pile 1: Fluorite

Pile 2: Red Jasper

Pile 3: Tigers eye

You can pick more than one if more are calling to you! There is definetly a mix of energies so possibly pick another one of the other doesn’t apply! Don’t be afraid to pick another pile if more than one calling to you! When I pick a pile; I close my eyes and use my third eye visualizing the cards and seeing if a pile is “heavy” with energy like if it’s dark and heavier compared to the others or one that’s springing up with energy and “floating” compared to the others. From there I usually see one of the other or both if I need extra guidance. I’m sorry if you can’t use visualization as a key component in sensing out piles but that’s just a way for others who do visualize. If any of you non visualization people want to let me know what you do, I would love to listen and learn!

Pile 1:

Your Numbers: 5, 55, 2, 11, 3

There is a need to balance your masculine and feminine energy (yin and yang). You have been way to focused on “the doing” then anything else meaning you are rushing ahead and not listening to your inner self that might be trying to tell you something. There is some avoidant energy like you are so busy that the negativity can’t affect you but your missing the call to stand still and listen to your heart and soul. Make sure to take a second to stand still and let your mind quiet so you can understand why your emotions are out of wack or just not coming to you clearly. I can see you are not feeling to good and you don’t know why even though you are taking your responsibilities seriously and taking the steps you think will lead you to the right place or just need to be done. You are not recognizing the amazing things you have accomplished and how much work you have put into whatever you are doing. This rushing energy makes you miss the wonderful things that are happening infront of you. Don’t just let your mind take control. Your mind shouldn’t be the one in control aka being the pilot of your life. Allow your intuition to lead you. Your mind dismisses your accomplishments and tells you you can do better and try harder when you need to nurture and know you have accomplished a lot; slow down!! There are some answers you are seeking and the only way to acquire them is to listen to your inner self and your spirit guides who want you to hear them! Your answers are within not outside of yourself. You have all the time in the world even though this plane of existentce is measured by time, know that any age you are, you have enough time to do what you want and accomplish anything you desire. Using your mind as much as you do hurts your creative spirit and you are losing track of your truest self which is a creative infinite being! Ground yourself and always remind your brain that you do have enough time. Any age you can start over and any time you can redo your projects and get to your goals! Start something new that you have always wanted to try especially if it comes from the heart! Feed your yin energy! Things that are not meant for you will fail/fall away so don’t force it. Just know that when something falls away, that leaves room for something even BETTER to come into your life which could be anything from an idea, situation or person. Your past failures and experiences are not going to repeat if you have learned from them and know to not be afraid of them anymore. Your inner strength is massive and you are such a strong person for doing what you think is right; but now is the time to seek the answers within. Other opportunities will present themselves to you if you take a moment to listen. Watch for the synchronicities and know you already are the answer ❤️ beautiful human!

Pile 2:

Your Numbers: 8, 88, 5, 9

First off, you are doing amazing!! But there is guidance here to not take your work to seriously! It is dragging you down; possibly add some spice to your life with a creative project but don’t forget about your goals that you have been working on. There is a sense of growth and learning some type of lesson recently. That’s awesome!! Some of you have already taken the time to relax and and recuperate and I’m glad you recognize this as something important. This is a call to others to take a step back and relax! Simplicity is key to happiness! The time is now to have some fun! Let your inner child come out because they have some wisdom to share! You have everything you need to start over and do what your creative spark has been telling you. Some of you have been to scared to put your creative ideas out there and make them a reality like being called to create a Etsy shop for your art or something you’ve wanted to post or create into something more than what it is. You have all been growing at a steady rate from your inner guidance and now is time to take the next step into fully becoming your true self. There is a need to let go and be vulnerable which might make you scared. That’s ok! We are human and our egos only want to protect our delicate hearts. But is it really living if we aren’t even fully our true selves! If you don’t know who that is make sure you listen to your soul and inner child; they definetly know! Your are such a creative and beautiful soul never forget! There is a need to break from the conditioning of the world around you and open yourself up to the possibilities that only a child could imagine. Everything is possible never forget. Ground the best ideas you have and begin the process of creation. Remember to do things from the heart and keep your values/integrity in tacked when you become wrapped up in everything; your true self knows you will do your best work that way. Keep doing things for the right reasons especially if there is passion behind; it will be key to your success. For some of you, you are definetly in a place where you are feeling suppressed; like a person or situation. Know that there will be something coming your way that may change that situation and that believeing and trusting that the good is only around the corner will help ease the stress. Trusting in yourself and your guides will help whatever you are manifesting into fruition. Be aware of the possibilities, and know that you are an infinite person that does not need to stay the same everyday. With an unlimited soul we have the ability to change from day to day. Maybe today I want to where pink then the next I go all black! It doesn’t matter what others perceive you to be like how it doesn’t matter what the world thinks you should be. What matters is what you think of yourself, and from what I see you are such a gentle sensitive creative spontaneous fun loving energy! Let the flow encompass you and let the love of your loved ones, spirit family and yourself fill you with power! Gorgeous soul!☀️

Pile 3:

Your Numbers: 0, 1, 11, 4, 3

I can sense your in a uneasey energy! This is a time to let go of the past and past regrets! Don’t let it be the thing that holds you back! Those situations will not repeat again! This is a time to trust yourself and or teach yourself to trust so that your spirit family can bring opportunities to you. Take that leap that you are afraid of but want to do so badly! There is a need to change your perception of those past events. Possibly some healing work for some of you. They happened so that you can learn something; maybe to not do it that way again or even that it wasn’t something right for you. Things fall apart so better things can come in. Keep a positive attitude and know a positive shift is occurring! Believe! I’m getting an energy of you feeling alone and that isn’t true! Your friends, guides and loved ones from the other side are always beside you. Passed loved ones you have lost on earth are next to you sending there love and support ❤️ you are afraid to take the next step; know that is ok! Just know that path is right for you, sometimes the path we are afraid of is the right one. Dont give up and work towards your dreams. Know that if you take that first step and work towards it, you will succeed! Your happiness and freedom is worth fighting for even if your fighting yourself for this oppurtunity! Sometimes we are our biggest bullies and obstacles. Know that you are WORTHY of all the good things coming to you! Don’t be afraid to ask for help from a person on the physical plane as well; like a mentor a friend and I’m also getting coworker? I think that’s specific to someone out there. Possibly someone you have started working with. But anyways, I can say with full confidence many signs, synchronicities, gifts, money, and love are on there way right now in the most unexpected places! Your manifestations are coming to fruition, don’t let that fear be what stops them dead in there tracks! Even when there is a set back, that is just another stepping stone to success! Life is not a straight line but one that shifts constantly like water spilled on concrete. Your spirit team is always there to support you even in the hardest moments. Stay strong and know you got the chops to conquer that fear! Your powerful just remember that!

Alrighty! Thank you for your time and energy my glowing spirits! I hope this helped you one way or another and I highly recommend you go take a walk to shed some of this heavy energy you guys have! Take a breather! Anyways I love you all, stay warm and keep being beautiful 🥰

[sights-on-the-scifi]

Violence in MASS EFFECT.

Alright Tumblr i’m gonna try even harder to satisfy your content laws... God I hope this posts.

MASS EFFECT 2 Marked a change in the creative direction of the series in many ways not just limited to style and presentation. But also in how it tackled violence in its narrative and gameplay.

It developed a near uncritical affection for its violence. Removing any semblance of scepticism towards its application with exception to a few storied and mechanical instances all for which will be talked about as we progress.

VIOLENCE IN GAMES AND OTHER FORMS OF MEDIA AS A WHOLE.

Before we begin ill like to explain to you why violence in a video game is so fun to the player on a mechanical basis. You see video game violence is complete fantasy that much is obvious just from looking at it I hope, it has no real basis in reality. For example the simple fact being that you are interacting with simulated combat via mouse and keyboard on a flat 2D surface, not with your hands, feet, arms, firearms, grenades and depth perception... Some games like the first CALL OF DUTY title go out of their way to communicate this very important distinction to you with its death quotes system, which communicates a famous anti war saying every time you die on the digital battlefield, and you do die a lot in the game so the words always have time to sink in...

The chest high wall games of wack a mole and close range engagements you typically find yourself in are inherently ridiculous, but something that is true about these portrayals is the deep psychological stuff that occurs in the back of your mind through play.

Fight or flight. Those instinctual, primal/animal like areas of your mind that govern responses to threats and general dangers that were extremely useful during our species evolutionary development as hunter gatherers, if a game is designed well enough it can take advantage of those responses and insert them into game-play loops which encourage positive reinforcement when taking down digital combatants... These are the things games tap into and the things military companies etc also tap into as part of training or recruitment programs especially in modern digital age armies where focus groups have to find new ways of getting young people interested in soldiering without conscription and a national crisis to absorb individuals into service positions. Anyone has the capacity to be violent and become a killer you need only the right training and psychological conditioning and in the army that is one part of basic. Popular video games and films provide you with that psychological training in a very subdued, consumer friendly fashion and that is through desensitisation. “Image training”

It is turned into a power fantasy, for military recruiters it is also an effective strategy for recruitment purposes.

“War is delightful to those who have not experienced it” Erasmus.

Violence in real life is brutal, random and horrifying even in a domestic sense to any sane or normal person with the capacity for human empathy (Though sometimes there are forms of desensitisation that override this), not even most soldiers who undergo psychological conditioning to be able to kill are immune to this trauma. Violence is not fair, violence is not graceful and more often than not it is also used irresponsibly in any situation where in it is absolutely necessary to be used, even then those situations are themselves questionable. Especially in present day conflicts waged overseas out of sight and mind of the general public for wealth, oil and resources.

I have experienced forms of domestic violence throughout my childhood such as being beaten by my parents and having animals ordered to attack me, I understand how awful it can be to live in absolute fear and experience excruciating pain and misery as a result of this so making a post like this I hope makes you think about this a bit more from that personal lens too.

Games and movies on their own dont cause violence that much is certain from studies no matter how vivid their depictions get, but they do desensitise you to its realities in strange and weird ways both mechanically, visually and also sometimes in the narrative. (Until we can someday reach the point where in we can perfectly simulate reality and violence there is no way in hell military companies are going to rely on it exclusively to train soldiers). But they can rely on the positive mental associations they bring to warfare.

HOW MASS EFFECT 2 PORTRAYS VIOLENCE.

MASS EFFECT is by no means a game that is used as a vessel to drive up real world military recruitment, there is no indication of official army endorsement since it is just a trilogy of science fiction video games after all. But it does include violence that tries its very best to make you the player think its wicked cool in addition to finding it fun if the game-play loop is effective enough. Which in ME2 it is especially effective and the marketing wanted to push that.

So how does MASS EFFECT 2 and to an extent MASS EFFECT 3 make its violence so fun and “Cool”... Ill break this down into a variety of factors starting with your enemies.

DEHUMANISATION OF COMBATANTS AND KNOWING YOUR ENEMY.

MASS EFFECT 2 takes players to the Terminus systems and other parts of the galaxy that do not fall under official council law, so naturally this means there is an seemingly over abundance of private military and mercenary organisations. But ME2 is not interested in what these things represent completely, more so it is interested in using their presence as a convenient means to provide the player with thousands of disposable henchman to shoot, stab, pull and blow up in a variety of fun and exciting ways!... (Those gamified ways) All the while giving you the excuse to not feel bad while doing so no matter how cruel you are in the application of your response to incoming fire.

In fact throughout the whole ME2 experience you probably kill more mercenaries comprised of Turians, Humans, Asari, Krogans, Vorcha and salarians, more so then you do the Reapers or Collectors who are supposed to be the primary antagonists of the series... Which it seems is pretty antithetical to the overall themes of uniting the galaxy to fight a common threat which threatens all life, perhaps you have already done the job for em in this regard. What you are seeing here is a form of precision engineered dehumanisation of combatants for purposes of providing a player with something to shoot and kill without much thought and sympathy... and the military also employs this tactic in real life to dehumanise other humans for soldiers to shoot and actually kill.

Make your enemies faceless, inhuman or “irredeemable” cannon fodder and the feelings you get for uncritically slaughtering them all are palpable, especially with such entertaining gameplay systems that make the whole endeavour that much more exciting. The same was true for Cerberus in ME3 effectively turning the whole organisation into faceless storm-troopers with filtered voices and intimidating armour again another form of enemy dehumanisation in addition they are all conveniently indoctrinated so thats another justification hooray!. More bad guys to shoot right?

You dont have to feel bad if there is nothing to feel bad about right? You are Commander Shepard! Or a soldier in the military you are right in all actions and decisions you make by virtue of the fact you fight for a cause like stopping the Reapers.

VIOLENCE AS AN ONLY MEANS TO A DESIRED END.

Despite MASS EFFECT’S status as an RPG experience, the games rarely if ever provide you with substantial opportunities to employ diplomatic solutions to various problems where in it would seem feasible that it can be at least attempted.

Most of the time you will be exhausting dialogue options on a screen and shooting faceless thugs behind chest high cover throughout the entire experience.

In the narratives themselves this refusal to resolve conflicts peacefully are actively supported by characters or hand waved as being frivolous by the plot and sometimes even Shepard himself. Kill or be killed rains supreme in again, But in real life that mindset is far from being realistic or preferable.

THE BADASS CHARACTER CLICHE.

Something that will severely age the MASS EFFECT 2 experience is its over reliance on making every single character a BADASS stereotype. Even beloved Mordin Solus falls victim to this strange fixation with violent attributes and histories being considered wicked cool bro! In combat Mordin will utter lines that hint to the fact that he very much enjoys the killing he is participating in.

“Killed that one!”

“Thought I was harmless did you?”

“Oooh headshot!”

“Here... Enjoy” (Plays during times he sets people on fire with his tech attacks)

He also lists at one disturbing point in the story, all the ways in which he has killed people. Which includes using lethal drugs and... farming equipment, thats funny right? Actually MASS EFFECT 2 seems to include a lot of moments like that in where people list off hilarious methods they have used to kill people.

Every character in one way or another has the capacity to kill and does kill, they kill quite a lot of people actually and in some cases this is celebrated with gleeful enthusiasm by the plot.

Even Shepard can participate in a little bit of casual BADASSERY no matter if you are renegade or paragon. Be that shooting through hostages, threatening Batarian thugs, shooting Konrad in the foot or generally acting like a ruthless prick all for the fun of it like when you trick a injured mercenary into thinking he is going to die from minor wounds. This is a stark contrast to ME1 which at least tried its best to codify violent or aggressive acts as morally questionable. You are the first Human spectre in that game after all a shining beacon to all humanity in the new frontiers of space, what you do in that story is emblematic of the attitudes the whole of humanity express going forward.

Jack is probably the most blatant example of this new approach to violence the series took for reasons I have already described in previous posts.

To be clear, I’m not saying MASS EFFECT 2'S inclusion of glorified fantasy violence is entirely a bad thing. I just think that if you are gonna include violence you best be a little more intelligent when it comes to its usage in mechanics and narrative. Because it can be a powerful thematic tool if used right, in some cases there are moments in ME2 wherein it does get used extremely well but those moments are also still few and far between.

We can do so much better.