#as an act of destruction.... don't get me started on the “YOU MUST SUFFER IN REVISION” attitude that my least favourite teachers had loool

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

lonan clark google searches: jesus stained glass

[beannoss]

Do you ever think about how Endo said something like, "Fans think Twilight is kind, but I think he's actually matter of fact" and like... the profound philosophy of that?

Let's take it as writ: Twilight isn't kind, he is matter of fact.

And yet, that matter-of-factness manifests in ways that are, almost unerringly, kind. He values consent, he values empowerment for those around him (with some limits, if they impinge on his mission), he privately espouses and practices other values that align with progressive ideologies, like feminism and the rights of the child. Obviously he's 100% antifa and anti-war. One could argue (and perhaps this is what Endo means) that Twilight makes those decisions because they often result in the path of least resistance, making his job easier. And okay, maybe. Except that we're given to understand that the usual company Twilight keeps whilst on missions are the worst of the worst of people; and we've also seen that decisions along the lines of his values, when done publicly, can actually harm his missions (thinking, for instance, of the Eden interview; Henderson intervened on the Forger's behalf, of course, but that was essentially dumb luck). I think it's also true that we're meant to infer that before Strix, he'd started to become cynical or hardened (I often think of his initial reaction to seeing the old woman robbed, that his knee-jerk response is "She should have been more careful" and only when Yor directs her outrage in the right direction does his perspective shift/his compass correct). Even taking that as it is, his values quickly flow to the surface, so they can't have been that deeply buried, only needing someone to tap the ice to let the water flow. (have i lost the metaphor? nvm, you get me)

He lost everything and for a time he poured that devastating loss into destruction and wrath; watched how that did nothing but create more loss and more destruction and more wrath, and instead turned the devastating loss into what is, arguably, a profound act of love. It's complicated, of course, his turn to spying and the sacrifices he made and makes, and the motivations he has and the motivations he tells himself. But also, foundationally, to dedicate oneself to the betterment of society, in this case the eradication of war, because one wants to stop the suffering, is an act of love.

So circling back to Endo. We take as writ that Twilight is not kind; he is matter-of-fact. Taking who he is on the whole, the values he practices and those he prizes, the actions he takes and how they can be perceived, and one must conclude that to be matter-of-fact by Endo's metric is to act in ways which are perceivable as kind, compassionate, progressive and loving.

And I don't want to get too far down the track of how men are often written, particularly men of the archetype from which Twilight (superficially) comes, and certainly the archetype on which Endo is riffing (maybe more accurately, subverting?). But it is true that such a leading man is rare; to conceptualise their interiority in such a way is vanishingly rare. And I think it goes a long way, actually, to explain the tone of SpyxFamily overall.

No idea if this makes any sense but it's been eating my brain for weeks and I just had to get it out!

[itsclydebitches]

I'm hearing secondhand (so someone correct me if I'm wrong) that the "Don't Come Back" is directed at Ironwood and I'm really just trying to wrap my head around this? First of all, there appears to only be one large gravestone, so I assume this is a list of all the names of those known to have died in Atlas—Ironwood included. That would explain why Winter's internal dialogue is talking to Team RWBY right before she uses her powers (I think?) to write the message and the animation note that Qrow is (lovingly) wiping dust off of the names. It looks like there's a list and, after most everyone else has left the ceremony, Winter is just desecrating Ironwood's name.

Which is... really something. I don't use the term "desecrating" lightly. Putting aside the fact that Ironwood was an ally, friend, and mentor for years vs. being a villain for a matter of hours—I always think back to how Ozpin still wanted to protect Lionheart's name despite his betrayal. That love doesn't just up and disappear—that's a HELL of a disrespectful act. Contextually, I'd feel different if this message had been left by some random Mantle citizen who has neither the full story nor any personal connection to Ironwood, but as said, it looks like Winter is leaving it. I'd also potentially feel differently if this clip didn't a) re-frame Clover as worthy of a fond remembrance despite his own (supposed) fall and b) if Willow and Whitley weren't traipsing around the city their family has historically screwed over, with Whitley talking about how he refuses to hide. The recent implosion of the Titan sub has sparked a lot of conversation about whether billionaires deserve to be mourned post-death and, more generally, when suffering hardships. I'm not going to try and hash out my own complicated feelings on that in a RWBY post, but suffice to say I'd better understand it if the show had taken a clear stance on whether powerful, obscenely wealthy, military-aligned characters as a whole deserve compassion. Winter the emotional center of the epilogue, Willow is meant to inspire sympathy when her charity leads to accusations, Whitley should presumably be praised for his courage in embracing who he is, Clover is mourned by Qrow and implied to be the source of his miraculous self-improvement, Marrow is now a friend, all these characters who embody all that RWBY despises are granted that forgiveness... but the man who no longer can try to improve himself isn't? This feels like the most egregious example of RWBY's moral double standards since Ruby herself started repeating Ozpin's lies.

So there's this level of disrespect towards Ironwood as a character that, really, is no surprise given how he's been treated since Volume 8, but even beyond that it's a weird moment. How did Ironwood's name end up on the tombstone if Winter—who as the Maiden leading these refugees into Vacuo and continuing to take point in these "meetings" must surely have had a say in these memorials—was just going to desecrate it? It feels like the writing included Ironwood there not because any of the characters actually fought to properly mourn him, but because they wanted the setup for the message itself; the actual implications of him being on the tombstone at all go unacknowledged and, as a result, are unimportant. The only takeaway is that circumstances provide the perfect opportunity to insult his memory. On top of all this, what does that message even mean? As said, it's a weird-ass moment because who blasts their enemy with their magic powers, watches him get crushed and drowned under the destruction of an entire kingdom... and then tells him not to "come back"? It's such a specific, seemingly illogical insult—within the context of what Winter knows—especially when other, more generic insults would have gotten the point across. If I were to visit someone's grave to desecrate it (which, you know, I don't lol) I wouldn't write "Don't come back" because they're dead. Of course they're not coming back! Why would that even enter my mind as something to warn them against?

All of which is to say I worry that, like Penny, RT is planning a resurrection for Ironwood. The writers have a well-established habit of writing scenes based on what they know, not what the characters know or what's been established in canon, so there's a part of me that wonders if that message was chosen because they're planning a miraculous survival with, unfortunately, Villain!Ironwood 2.0. They already know they plan for him to return if Volume 10 is greenlit and thus that influences Winter's actions.

Regardless of Ironwood coming back or not, it's just a disappointing scene on every front for me. I understand that a lot of fans despise Ironwood and, much like with Adam, are inclined to accuse others of not getting the story they want (a version that is framed as objectively bad + morally wrong), but can we just acknowledge that regardless of how you feel about him, the writers haven't treated Ironwood well? You can make Ironwood a villain. You can kill him off. You can even have the other characters despise him so much that they desecrate his part of a communal grave. But when you consider that many fans really like his character and then compare him to how others are treated in the series, how RT talks about him, how the community responds to anyone who enjoys his long run in the show... it's staggeringly clear that, no, his character has not been treated well and that's what people remain upset over. Not that any of these plot points occurred, but that they've occurred with none of the setup and nuance and respect needed to make them compelling for anyone who doesn't just want to rail against Ironwood as a matter of course. That should be understood for any character, but Ironwood's unique status as a triple amputee with PTSD and a semi-canonical mental illness-based semblance makes that lack of respect all the more galling. RT doesn't have to do anything specific with their story, but if they're going to go this route at least do it with purpose and do it well.

It doesn't help that Ruby, the one who actually destroyed the Kingdom and whose message was logically supposed to bring deadly waves of grimm and who started this whole divide by perpetuating the secrets she despised Ozpin for, is given martyr-like murals. Like, it's a strong visual contrast. I'm not saying Ruby doesn't deserve to be mourned and celebrated—I want Qrow to actually act like he lost two family members!—I'm saying the show continues to treat the protagonists as ethically separate from the rest of the world and the rules that everyone else must adhere to.

[ikamigami]

I think the most frustrating thing for me about both Moon and Nexus, or Moons in general if we are speaking multiverse-wide, is that the whole "Moons will always hurt people" isn't inevitable like he and most others think, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that Moon, Nexus, and presumably other Moons in the multiverse keep letting themselves feed and fall into, when it could be changed, because if you track their behavior, much of it has roots in the same core flaws that if Moon(and Nexus) made some real effort to fix, and maintain, to genuinely improve themselves, they'd destroy that "Moons will always hurt people" prophecy for good

There is a concept from God of War Ragnarök that I think applies here(SPOILERS AHEAD)

The game asserts that Fate and Destiny are not the result of some divine plan or curse, but rather it is the inevitable outcome of where one's character and behavior will take them, how the react to each scenario is predictable as they always react that way based on their experiences and flaws, that fate is where you will go if you keep acting as you are, that if you do not change, your fate is immutable and inevitable, because you CHOSE to act and react that way, and to break the fate that your current self will lead you to, you must change who you are and how you act

Both versions of Moon seem to be fated to always hurt Sun even when trying to help, but what both fail to realize is that that is not because they are doomed to be this way, that they can't help it, but because they keep repeating the same patterns of behavior that get Sun hurt in the first place, and after hurting Sun they do not change, they don't learn from their mistakes, they do the same thing again as if it will produce a different result, they might try to be nicer, but without changing the core of the problem, the fundamental, selfish and destructive flaws in their character that lead to them hurt people, small changes are only going to stall the "inevitable" conclusion because you cannot apply duct tape over a crack in a dam, it doesn't matter if they have good intentions if they let those flaws manifest in the execution and the result is more pain for everyone

And we are already starting to see what changing those core flaws could look like, look at how much good Nexus had done Sun initially by just being a decent person, by not constantly threatening or insulting Sun(after Earth told him to stop making the bipolar/schizophrenic jokes while Sun was grieving because that was already insensitive if you weren't adding the soul-crushing grief and guilt Sun was suffering through on top of it) and being a safe person, how he listened to Sun when Sun admitted to having hallucinations and didn't insult or diminish him(like Moon used to) and then tried to talk him through it, and outside Sun, look at how close Nexus and Earth were, how vulnerable and supportive they were of one another, how Nexus made Solar feel welcome and gave Solar a home after his own became dangerous to him and offered no judgement despite Solar being an Eclipse(this is ignoring the fact that he destroyed most of the good he had done when he chose to betray and disown them all), and look at how now Moon is trying to not keep secrets, keeping Sun in the loop and asking for his opinions, actually respecting Sun's choices, and most of all, when he comforted Sun about July 16th, there was no selfishness, making it about himself for ONCE, no trying to deny that July 16th was partially his fault, there was simply comfort, validation, concern, and consideration, and look at the good it did for Sun! Sun is actually starting to HEAL from July 16th after that wound kept getting torn open and was left to fester for two years

I am still angry it took Moon(not Nexus, original Moon) this long to actually comfort Sun like this, properly, I think this is the first time there was nothing backhanded from him whatsoever, and also why did it take this long for Sun to be comforted and allowed to process July 16th in a safe environment? Why hadn't that happened immediately after that horrifying day, when Sun was receiving widespread public blame for something that wasn't his fault(and Moon knew that) along with the unimaginable grief and horror of seeing who were basically like his own surrogate children brutally murdered on the Daycare floor in the blink of an eye? Why did Moon have to make it exponentially worse by gaslighting Sun into thinking it was his fault(along with Eclipse doing the same thing)? But better late than never I suppose

My ultimate conclusion is this, and this is a famous saying and I know it is cheesy, but: If nothing changes, nothing changes, if you always do what you always did you'll always get what you always got, if Moon wants to not "be the monster", he must stop pitying himself and break the cycle, only he can, and as we've seen, he CAN actually do it, Nexus did before he decided to destroy it all, and Moon is trying now, he can do better, neither are doomed, it's just a matter of doing good and STAYING that way(of course that doesn't mean they can't have negative moments, but Nexus went far beyond what was right)

Moon and Nexus don't have to be a super-genius, they don't have to be the hero, the savior, they don't have to be this great thing, they never had to be, they just have to communicate, be decent to their brother, that's all Sun ever needed, all he ever wanted from them, just to have a brother who won't hurt him, how hard is that really? Now let's see if Nexus will choose to be better, or follow this dark path he decided to walk to its inevitable, terrible conclusion

Thank you dear anon cause this is exactly what I was thinking but I'm not good at wording things in simple and understandable way..

But you did it and I need to thank you for this again cause now I can share it with my followers and other people in this fandom ^^

I don't have anything to add to this because you said everything 👏

[crimneo]

Honest feelings

(Crimneo Skit)

Ragna and his Master Jubei were catching up with each other before they were ambushed by an unusual group of enemies.

Ragna (exhausted):  *huff* *huff*  Damn it!

Jubei:  Stay up Ragna.  These guys aren't gonna show mercy.

Ragna:  Yeah I know. (Catches breath) I know..

Ragna gets back into a fighting stance as he stares down at his opponents.

Jin:  Brother… It's time we end this.

Nu:  Nu will make sure you enjoy our time together.

Susanoo:  We will be sure to make you regret your transgressions against us.

Ragna:  (wipes blood off his mouth)  Since when did you three start working together?  Always figured you all were too self-centered to team up with anyone.

Susanoo:  We've found unity within our hatred and with that we've created a compromise.

Jubei:  And that compromise got something to do with killing Ragna?

Jin:  Not quite.  As much as killing brother would bring me joy, we are focused on an entirely different matter.

Ragna:  If killing me is not what you're after, then why are you trying so hard to beat me down?

Susanoo:  Crushing your spirit is part of our objective.  Once you are broken, you will be more than willing to carry our demands.

Ragna:  Like I'd listen to anything you have to say.  And what could be so important to get you guys to team up?

Jin:  You want to know what we're after, brother?  It's simple really.

Nu:  We want you to break up with Neo.

Ragna:  What?

Jubei:  Ohhhh, that makes sense.

Ragna:  What?!  What does she have to-!  Wait… this is because we kept screwing with you guys isn't it.

Jin: You've done nothing but taunt us with your… “lovey-dovey” act every chance you get.

Susanoo:  I can't even focus on destruction whenever you get like that.  It’s so disgusting.  An abomination like her shouldn't feel happiness, especially if it’s through my enemy.

Nu:  Nu was created with the sole purpose to be with Ragna, but if someone else is with Ragna, then Nu won't have anyone.  That Neo… is a target.

Jubei:  So you plan to beat Ragna down and get him to break up with her so you can… What? Go back to your normal lives.

Jin:  Once everything is back to normal we can go back and live the way we used to.  I get to finally chase you down like the old days.

Nu:  Ragna will belong to Nu.  Just as the way it should have been.

Susanoo:  and I can finally focus my efforts on laying waste to this land.

Ragna:  Why would I ever want to go back to those times!  You guys are a pain!

Susanoo:  Though we could be even worse.  As long as you stay with that “garbage”, we will continue to make your life true hell!  If you cut off ties with her, then we, even I, will show some mercy towards you.

Jubei (curious):  (Turns to Ragna)  Ragna, your choice?

Ragna:  Isn't it obvious, Hell No!  If you're still gonna give me problems anyway then what's even the point.

Susanoo:  You could lessen the pain we'll bring as long as you keep away from her.  I see many leverages from that.

Jin:  She's not worth the extra suffering brother.

Ragna:  Whatever your plotting literally could not be any worse.  My life's already hell, what more can you add?

Jubei:  Ragna you're talking about fighting your biggest enemies all at once for what could be for the rest of your life.

Ragna:  I know what I said, and I know what it means.  But like hell I'm backing down just cause they say so.  You wanna break my spirit, well you can damn well try!

Nu:  …Why?  Why Ragna?  Why are you so determined to stay with this girl?

Jin:  It must be some kind of brainwashing.  I still can't believe my brother would fall for someone like her.

Ragna:  (blushing)  Honestly, I still don't know why I love her!  (Looks down)  All I know is that she makes me feel things that I haven't felt before.  She's a damn criminal, she's a troublemaker, she can be devious and also pretty darn sadistic; and yet... she can also be cute, cheery, sweet, and playful. She's also very skilled, very competent, and very clever; my heart won't stop beating whenever I'm around her and no matter what I do I can't seem to get it under control.  Maybe I'm not in love, maybe I'm just going through some phase, maybe this is all just some long term manipulative tactic that someone's trying to pull on me, but whatever it is (Looks up) she's the only one that gets me like this, and a part of me wants it to stay that way.  Until then… until I get it all figured out… (Raises sword) I plan on staying with her!

Jubei:  Damn kid, you fell hard.

Jin:  You've lost your way brother.  (Readies weapon)  You've forsaken what we had!

Nu (Sad):  Ragna… how could you?  (Readies swords)  You've made Nu... very upset!

Susano’o:  It appears you have made your choice.  I suppose we'll have to do this the hard way.  (Gets into fighting stance)

Ragna:  (Shit-eating grin)  Fine by me!

Jubei:  I'll be right beside you Ragna.  Though I gotta say, I respect all that talk you gave, didn't think you had it in you to say things like that.

Ragna (Embarrassed):  Uh- What do you care?

Jubei:  Think you got what it takes to say that to her up front?

Ragna:  Just forget about it okay.  We got things to do.  (Charges in)

Jubei:  Yeah just uh… (Ragna isn't listening)  Something tells me she already heard it.

As Ragna fights the others, Jubei looks at the inside of Ragna's jacket as he sees what appears to be a “bug” device for listening in on conversations.

Jubei:  If this girl really is like anything Ragna said she was; then I'm guessing that came from her.

~~~

Torchwick:  So how's that “bug” coming along?  You've learned of any deep secrets yet?

Neo didn't respond as she tried to hold back her blushing face.  She thought to herself:

‘I knew he was in love, but I didn't think he was this passionate.’

[thevagueambition]

Les Mis 1.1.4 thoughts

a lot of this post is about things that annoy me about christianity just fyi lol

Re Geborand, I'm reminded of something biblical scholar Dan McClellan has talked about (e.g. in this 2 min video) called the "prophetic critique" where various performances of piety are criticised in the old testament/tanakh. The context of that being that when the rich and powerful perform piety through these offerings and festivals while at the same time violating religious principles of mercy and charity, their offerings become sinful.

"There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for a sou." is not quite the same thing, but it hits on this same idea of the public performance of piety with an ulterior motive in mind (whether social propriety or a ticket to paradise) not being paired with moral behavior

(I guess the text doesn't mention if Geborand starts behaving more morally alongside his charity, but how paltry said charity is certainly suggests not)

The bishop's use of local dialects contrasts with the FRev's dogmatic desire to define a french citizen as a speaker of standard french

Myriel's religious views frankly seem fairly similar to the sort of Christianity I was raised with (there are shitty conservative priests in my area as well, but not in my immediate community).

His virtue lies in correctly identifying the miserable as the inheritors of the earth and in acting according to his principles

The description of Myriel's beliefs does hit on a part of Christianity that deeply annoys me, though: the body as something bad which must be subordinated to the mind/soul ("Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity.")

Why should the body be bad? It can cause you pain, of course. You can fall ill, you can get injured. But you can also embrace others, you can smell the smells of your home, you can eat your favourite dish. The body that hurts loves and feels pleasure, too. But then of course "pleasure" is exactly what's "dangerous" about the body – as if all pleasure was selfish and destructive 🙄

(I don't agree with the Descartean body/mind split in the first place. Imo you are your body. Your mind is part of your body.)

It relates somewhat to this other thing that irks me about Christianity -- and which I think might also actually be relevant to Myriel's development in this chapter, lol -- which is Christianity as a cope religion. It identifies the problems of the world -- illness, oppression, war -- and says "but if you're kind, if you dont break our rules, the afterlife will be wonderful." Like we don't have to fix the problems we have in the world because in the afterlife you will be free from suffering. Enduring the world piously is the goal, not making it better

(I'm aware that there are many Christians who don't think that way. My dad believes firmly in God and (his own personal interpretation of) the Bible and that's certainly not how his morals shake out. But that is an element in many permutations of Christianity)

Anyway where I think this might actually be relevant to Myriel is re "It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law." One interpretation of that is that if you focus exclusively on piety and the solace of divine judgement, it precludes you from perceiving injustice and brutality in the world and acting against it. An injust ruler may be condemned in the afterlife, but you should do something about him in this life, too

I think Hugo is probably right in saying that the death penalty is the sort of thing one can't be neutral on once one has seen it in action

Becaise it's one of the few pieces of leftist theory I actually have read and (mostly) understood, Walter Benjamin's Critique of Violence (Zur Kritik der Gewalt) it probably occupies an outsized prominence in my thinking on several things, buit in it Benjamin argues that the death penalty is the ultimate form of law establishing -- that the threat of violence(/force) behind law is what makes that law into a reality rather than a piece of writing and that in control over life and death being the ultimate form of violent power to hold over someone, capital punishemtn is useful for a legal system less because of its literal function and more because it so concretely manifests the law

"The opponents of these critics [of capital punishment] felt, perhaps without knowing why and probably involuntarily, that an attack on capital punishment assails not legal measure, not laws, but law itself in its origin. For if violence [...] is the origin of law, then it may be readily supposed that where the highest violence, that over life and death, occurs in the legal system, the origins of law jut manifestly and fearsomely into existence. In agreement with this is the fact that the death penalty in primitive legal systems is imposed even for such crimes as offenses against property, to which it seems quite out of "proportion." Its purpose is not to punish the infringement of law but to establish new law. For in the exercise of violence over life and death, more than in any other legal act, the law reaffirms itself." (online PDF version of source)

[deerydear]

Taking a trip down from the mellow 'feel' of this blog that I like to maintain, to point out something which is entirely unnecessary, but which has bothered me the entire time I've been on fucking tumblr.

This is incredibly disturbing, and not in a fun way.

The fucked up thing about some people is that they'll say shit like this:

THAT'S NOT "PROBABLY"! THAT IS! STOP ACTING LIKE IT'S FUCKING NORMAL!

I KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE FUCKED UP, BUT IT'S FUCKING CONTAGIOUS! STOP IT YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKER! STOP HURTING YOURSELF! STOP DOWNPLAYING IT! STOP!

basically I see the internet like some carnival freakshow where its normal for peopel to be maimed and raped, and to myself I think "what fucking world do you live in that you need to gently plead and prod people to believe you? stop metaphorically sucking these people's dicks! Grow a fucking spine. Grow a goddamn spine."

That's what I hate about tumblr, because then these people get mad if you aren't down in the dirt with them.

They call it 'privilege' instead of realizing maybe they shouldn't have to live like that either? maybe no one should? Maybe suffering should not be idolized! Look, I'm talking like them, now.

That's what a decade of soaking up this horseshit does. Avoid anything that makes your hair prick up like this.

There is a magnetic polarity. You can either allow the more positive people to pull you up with them, or you can try to drag them down into the negative up-side down world you were forced into. I spent years dragging people down, and looking like some kind of wild-eyed hellion.

I literally used to wish over and over, feeling the power coursing through my veins like magma, I'd chant "I WISH EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WOULD DIE!"

ignore the.... temporality.

Then, a few months later, covid started.

The one thing I hate so much about low self-esteem is that it can be contagious. I've taught other people how to hate themselves. I've seen it. I regret.

The worst thing is that when someone is within that mind-space, they don't see it as self-hatred.... they start seeing it instead as 'just the way the world should work (or does work, or whatever..... but it's all wishful thinking built on top of a Lie.) When someone like this encounters something which doesn't reinforce this negative self-image that they have, then they get angry at it... for not denigrating them! Because they want to believe this is the way the world works, and every time reality breaks through, they wanna smear the camera lense with shit so the light won't come in anymore.

I think the really destructive thing that enables this cycle to keep going is that the afflicted person keeps telling themself, "oh, but I do wanna get better…. but I'll only accept the apology if it happens in this one specific way that I've (for-some-reason) decided that I need it to happen like."

As soon as you say you won't get over something, you give up your own control. Everyone else still has their own control, but you don't. Grow a fucking pair!

I'm so mean because I'm talking to the teenage-me who fell into this black-fucking-abyss once it appeared on my computer screen in the form of tumblr.com, because "oh the computer people must be cool! I bet they're not losers like all the podunks around me!" BUT THEY ARE. YOU ARE! FUCK YOU!

and yes, I knew this. that's the sad thing. I was just fucking power-hungry.

THE ONE EYED MAN IS KING AMONGST THE BLIND!

oh really?

WHAT IF THEY ALL THINK HE'S JUST FUCKING INSANE?

then again, this is all confirmation bias, because I gravitated more often towards these kinds of negative nelly loser sad shitheads who hate everything…. I don't even know, man.

Like I'd just stroll right past anyone who was saccharine like, "yeah fucking right."

and walk right up to the people who are bleeding on the inside. and sit down…. even though, honestly, to tell the truth and break my 'hard' exterior, I had a gut feeling that it was a bad idea. BUT I'M HARD!

lol

[crystalsenergy]

positions to touch the Shadow: the journey to your Self - # 1 (contacting our fragilities, fears, pain and so on)

pics not mine

Shadow: what is it? - The Shadow is an archetype by Carl Jung about what would be potential traumas / problems / characteristics of ourselves that we decided to hide from others and/or us. these Shadows, although they seem useless to people - because they are completely important for true self-knowledge. people hide this in an attempt to live without them, thinking they will succeed.

advice: it's important that you respect your pace, so as not to suffer the consequences of such abrupt contact with your "internal enemies". i have some experience with people who were completely unaware of their problems that, for me, were clearly appearing in their behavior in an unnoticed and irrational way, and when these people touched their Shadows, they went through moments of shock and a slight crisis for ask themselves about different points in their life. it's like opening the chest of that room hidden from your mind and finding significant points that influence your personality and, consequently, ending up also in contact with the memories of what may have originated all of this in the life experience of these people. it's delicate, so we need to respect our own time. on the other hand, i have also dealt with people who, when in contact with their Shadows, didn't feel so much sudden suffering and confusion, but an even greater hunger for knowing themselves. if you already know yourself and know that you don’t have to go so calmly, go for it. otherwise: respect your time, but don't miss the opportunity, don't waste time. the sooner we start looking for the completeness of our personality, the better it gets.

▪ PLANETS ▪

- Saturn: Saturn is present in our daily lives, in the sense that it appears within us (since the positions and aspects with Saturn influence our personality) in different situations, showing us where we lack maturity, where we need to evolve. Saturn is that internal voice (which can be increased or decreased depending on our life experiences) that tells us where we aren't good, that makes us be more rigid with ourselves. the positions of Saturn refer to the most practical thing and that turn out to be much more conscious than the other planets and asteroids. however, even so, i have seen cases of people who evidently have low self-esteem, which is explained by a position and an aspect with Saturn (Sun square Saturn + Saturn in Aries) but who admit none of this to themselves, however, a person who is outside and observes them, notes several irrational and defensive behaviors when they listen to phrases, for example, that touch their internal wounds, activating the feeling of 'not being good enough at anything'. this prevents us from evolving in the sense that the less we give light to it, the less we know each other and the more we make decisions and attitudes based on irrationality and lack of awareness of our fears and weakness.

- Pluto: our unconscious pains, the problems that we are not able to touch so easily, but that deeply affect our personality. once we touch on our Pluto issues that we try so hard to hide, we may be able to find a healthier way of dealing with almost unconscious patterns. here we have the most rotten, bad and negative feelings and sensations, the experiences that we want to forget, but that influence our personality so much. Plutonian matters (sign and house, but especially the house) speak a lot about how we project ourselves around the world. if we have the ability to analyze ourselves in a more psychological and internal way, trying to establish contact with our personal unconscious, we can transform such problems and negative feelings that we carry within us. but the first step involves letting go of the habit of hiding these problems even from yourself. Pluto wants you to let your power emerge to be reborn in the face of pain and hard phases. we all have a subject for which we will undergo transformations - be it in the way we accept that subject in our life, how we see that area in life and the way we treat others or how we treat ourselves. it's necessary to know how to overcome all the fear you have of such a subject present in the house in its positioning (example: Pluto in 7th house - excessive fear of being betrayed or left out of a relationship, going through troubled and unbalanced relationships. you need to learn through all these bad experiences).

▪ OBSERVATIONS ▪

- if you have intercepted houses, signs and planets: this means an empty area in your life, something that was not given to you or that you didn't know how to develop.

- aspects between shadow planets, asteroids cited, either among themselves (example: Saturn square Chiron, Lilith conj Pluto), or with personal planets (example: Nessus conj Venus) must also be taken into account when studying your Shadow side.

▪ ADVICE ▪

- make a mini summary of everything you have from each shadow placement and organize it all in a list, studying a point one by one.

examples:

"saturn in my natal chart 🌌✨

- saturn in aries [low self-esteem, power issues] - saturn in 8th house [rejection of my sexuality] - saturn square sun [another possibility of low self-esteem, feeling thati should not have fun, relax, have an internal father who in the end is me. me = my internal strict father.] - saturn opposite neptune [difficulty with my psychological, with living my restrictive issues and obstacles in my life in a more creative way, embracing myself. difficulty with being complacent with myself] - saturn square chiron [a feeling that I deserve to go through what I am going through, a desire to further hide my weaknesses and show myself to the world in a more controlled and inhibited way with regard to my internal problems and pains"

"black moon lilith (true lilith, the most known) in my natal chart 🐍✨

- lilith in libra [obsession or denial of being in relationships, extreme experiences in relationships, power to transmute the way i see and deal with world and others] - lilith in 3rd house [feeling unable to know things and feeling smart, running away from conversations and socializing, having an immense power to persuade people through words, having to deal with the feeling of not being heard] - lilith square north node [feeling of having to go against my purpose in life, the possibility of self-sabotage in order to fail to fulfill what i was given as a task for this life, i may have difficulty embracing my most intense and dense sides of my personality . and at the same time i can have an immense power and energy to evolve using this intense energy in a positive way]"

▪ FICTIONAL POINT ▪

- Black Moon Lilith (h13 'True Lilith'): deep power to transmute the energies of pain of Dark Lilith and humiliation of asteroid Lilith. Black Moon Lilith represents the obsession, the escape, what we really do with all our unconscious energy and potentials. where you can experience the ambivalence of extreme desire and extreme denial / rejection. where you can pass through a deep transformation / meatamorphose.

▪ ASTEROIDS ▪

- Lilith (1181): where you are confrontational, impulsive, where you seek exile and rebellion because of feeling suppressed, humiliated or incapable. where there is refusal, emotional and psychic frustrations. where you feel untrustworthy, shameful. how is the core of your wound and how it was experienced by yourself. the projections in collective expectations and where you refuse to agree to them. where you experience pain, passion, redemption. the core of these issues.

- Dark Lilith (h58 'Waldemath Black Moon'): the most hurt and intense side of Lilith. psyche instincts. it's when you feel pain because of the suppression that you experienced and where you have an extremely pain to deal, what can lead you to seek revenge or simply act in defensive / aggressive ways. represents your reaction to your original pains (1181 Lilith). it is an intense energy and if it isn'tr used correctly, it can lead you to self-destruction or it can even lead you to insert this energy from your frustrations and negations into your human experiences. if we get lost in the middle of our pain, we can become selfish and project our negative experiences and emotions on the community or on other people.

- Chiron: where there is more pain within you, the situations in which you are most vulnerable and that you seem to be unable to cope with at all. represents cycles of pain in your life. it can also represent things that you feel you were "born" to have to deal with. it also represents subjects in which you sin when it comes to healing but you are / can be extremely good at healing others.

- Nessus: where you can experience some type of abuse, toxicity or abusive experience. acts of violence and situations of this kind.

- Proserpina (26): where you can have to work to leave the fantasy aside, where you may not have maturity. it represents a cycle of killing and grieving the child's fragile ego, and then becoming more mature. is the loss of innocence, revival and reconstruction.

- Achilles (588): your deep weakness, deep wounding, ‘achilles heel’.

- Echo (60): where you don't believe in yourself, where you may lack self-esteem and may be little original, where you may have to deal with narcissistic people. where you are prone to being manipulated and losing your individuality to others.

- Atropos (273): where you can experience endings or transformations, loss or death that can impact you deeply.

- Narcissus (37117): where you can be indifferent, selfish, what needs to be improved; or where you may have to experience situations of manipulation, being with people in general or with someone really narcissistic, or it can mean in which subject you will have to deal with extreme disinterest, lack of empathy, or abuse on the part of people, which can cause you deep pain.

- Karma (3811): karmic issues, which seems like you have to deal with this life in a repetitive and tiring way. which can bring you a feeling of helplessness, circumstances of pain and difficulties.

- Dionysus (3671): where you can have a double nature. where you can have addictions, and a tendency to get easily intoxicated.

- Grieve (4451): one more tip about possibilities for grief, sorrow.

[absurdiskas-brutalus-avangardas]

You seem conservative. Were you ever liberal?

I don't like labels, I prefer using simply common sense and critical thinking, so I always find something more to add to what I thought before, but yes, I am, you could say, conservative. I am not afraid to admit I was liberal as a teenager-young adult, mainly, because we are naive then, they do teach it in schools, I must say, it's more ''fashionable'' among peers, in our pop culture and not all of us have direction from our parents. Which I didn't. My brother and mother are very pro-abortion, pro LGBT activism, pro-listening to authorities, pro-refugees and multicultural societies, kinda anti-patriotism and appreciation of history (which they mistake for almost being a full blown fascist), brother even went as far to say that we should demolish Churches because they're useless and similar. I would go as far to say that I was depressed, confused, lost, tormented and maybe even possessed at the time I had liberal values. I smoked two packs a day of the strongest cigarettes, couldn't sleep for 3 nights in a row often, drank, cursed a lot, struggled with enslaving lust and thoughts from it (though I did not sleep around and had not done it until I was an adult), had horrible fights with my parents, hated and had distrust of humanity, hanged around atheists, mentally ill, promiscuous, satanists, at times I would shut myself in silence and would not speak to anyone even if they spoke to me, which scared my relatives. I was destructive and godless. I practiced occult, new age religions that feed ones pride. I was, for some reason, healed by Christian faith little by little, first, for some reason I told my friend I'd like to patiently read The Bible for once and I received a beloved Bible as a gift from him, and with skepticism, but gave it a chance, then, for some reason, I thought about how many times my mother defeated Death or getting even more ill when I prayed, how many times my prayers came true, even though I didn't believe in God and didn't respect Him, I remembered how my grandmother, co-worker has had very concerned discussions with me, saying that I'm just running from the Truth, because deeply I know that I'm just angry with God, that something bad will happen to me, for example, a physical illness will take me because I deny God, which spoke to me in a way, then, even if I thought it's useless, I started attending Mass, going to Church, and by all of this, one day, the darkness left me, there was no burden in my chest anymore, no pain or unbearable sadness, I could finally breathe with ease and find beauty in humanity, I saw the Creation with a different perception, I saw everything shouting about God and His greatness. I've had random children smile and wave at me on the street and noticed the goodness in it, I've met soft spoken strangers, elders, people who suffer who just decided to speak and open up to me, I had wonderful, light dreams, it's like finally, I was open to love and mercy. I've completely forgiven everyone that broke me in some sort of way, I help my parents now. It hasn't been long, a few years maybe, but it's like I'm a different person, I'm ashamed of who i was, of how much sin I was bearing. Maybe as they say, the Holy Spirit was leading me to healing and I've listened. I have what they call now, a testimony. And don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with liberals or ''different'' people, if you are a nice person, I like discussion and respect while we defend each of our values, though I must say I've met more liberals that quickly get aggressive and act like bullies, but I've also met friendly liberals. What I was before, taught me to judge only rightfully and actually pray for those who are kinda in the same spot I was, I cry for them and for those who couldn't understand my choices and new way of life. I believe some individuals are screaming for help and love, maybe were abused, felt like outcasts, and really, search for acceptance in wrong places, where their destructive behavior gets even more support.

[witnessourescape]

On Omega's origins

I'm trying to make some posts on Omega so I don't lose track of what I think about the funny robot. :) What we know about Omega's planet:

It was in a war against the Dragonstar;

It considered Midgardsormr a threat;

It completely destroyed the Dragonstar;

It's presumably gone, having seen a Calamity.

I'll talk about each point. I believe there are already clues to what Omega's original planet is in the game.

1. It was in a war against the Dragonstar

Contrary to common belief, what happened in the Dragonstar was not that Omega alone randomly attacked it for no reason (or to get stronger) -- Omega and its planet were locked in an interplanetary war. We don't know why -- yet.

Midgardsormr: Foolish machine. What hast thou to show for all the years that have passed since the culmination of our war? Naught save thy continued existence. Hast thou no thought for what befalleth thy home star…?

2. It considered Midgardsormr a threat

Omega's objective was to kill Midgardsormr. Not to enslave, not to colonize the planet: to kill the Father of Dragons, paragon of wyrms, because it was a threat.

Omega: Prepare to face Midgardsormr--red-maned wyrm of the Dragonstar, and nemesis of my world.

3. It completely destroyed the Dragonstar.

"By thee and thine was my home laid waste". The Dragonstar as we see in Alphascape 2.0 seems devoid of life, aetherically unbalanced. If those are aether geysers, then something must have gone really wrong. Omega's planet didn't enslave the dragons or something like that -- they killed the Dragonstar itself.

4. It's presumably gone, having seen a Calamity.

Let's get back to this piece of dialogue.

Midgardsormr: Foolish machine. What hast thou to show for all the years that have passed since the culmination of our war? Naught save thy continued existence. Hast thou no thought for what befalleth thy home star…?

What did befell Omega's home star, after all? Why does Midgardsormr knows of it and why does he uses it to try to provoke Omega? Could it be related to their war? Could Midgardsormr have been responsible for Omega's planet's destruction?

The answer probably lies in From the Heavens, Final Omega's theme.

Our shadows lost in light, this life A fleeting kiss Hark! Temptation rings! Virtue slips through hands a-clenching wicked fruit Passion festers, black’ning sinless souls to root Sink’neath dark waters Drink deep, we suffer Drowning, drowning, drowning, drowning Irons sundered Paradise plundered Come welcome this Come welcome this Destiny Virtue slips through hands a-clenching wicked fruit Passion festers, black’ning sinless souls to root Sickles grate on heaven’s gate their fields ignored Seeking sinners deathlessly they reap discord As two become one Here ends this, our journey Never-ending, onward march! Witness our escape This our escape, this our escape This our escape, this our escape This our escape, this our ascension

From the Heavens tells the story of a society falling to hubris, temptation and sin, their paradise destroyed. Isn't that familiar?

Still on From the Heavens, it's strange that the first sentence is "our shadows lost in light": ascian means literally shadowless -- this is why the Heroes' Gauntlet set is called the Shadowless set. Then, "[sink] 'neath dark waters" is literally Amaurot's theme.

So, is there any other evidence Omega could be an Ancient machine?

Lots of them.

1. Omega and the Ascians got similar designs: both heavily use black and silver, and gold and purple as accents (Omega has a purple undertone and Final Omega has gold accents).

2. Omega and the Ascians share abilities: creation magicks and interdimensional travelling. It's not because they're both unsundered beings: I can't remember dragons having creation magicks or travelling interdimensionally. Midgardsormr enters Omega's rift in his Big form at the cost of his life energy. It isn't something that he does naturally and with ease.

3. Omega and the Ascians share a neighborhood at the Aetherial Rift, which is where ascians hide when they need to.

4. The Passionate Amaurotine NPC has weird dialogue about death-defying autonomous figures.

Passionate Amaurotine: Oh, did you want to ask me about my latest concept again? The autonomous figures I told you about before? They are utterly without feeling or fear, and will without hesitation or objection carry out their master's orders regardless of any injury or death they may suffer as a result. Truly magnificent, wouldn't you agree?

5. Both Amaurot the Dungeon and Omega quote the biblical Book of Revelation. This one may be the most important yet: the Final Days are akin to the christian Apocalypse as seen in the Book of Revelation. In the end of the Book of Revelation, Christ makes His Second Coming, saying:

12 Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. 13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

Meanwhile, Final Omega's dialogue in O12SP2 is:

Final Omega: Experiment concluded. I am the Alpha. I am the Omega. Final Omega: <blip> <bleeeeeep> Witness...my coming... I bring...reward...and retribution...for all!

The dialogue in Japanese makes it even clearer that Omega is quoting Revelation 22:12 and Revelation 22:13. I'll make a post on it later. Why would the Ancients develop a war machine like Omega? Weren't them pacifists? Everybody is a pacifist until eldtrich abominations start banging at your door!

Research Report on the Akadaemia Anyder: High-ranking phantomologists have since been dispatched to afflicted areas, where they conducted the capture and transport of a single entity. This specimen, characterized by a disproportionately large maw, was dubbed “Archaeotania,” and investigations into its aetheric composition are ongoing. A theory posited by the esteemed Lahabrea suggests that the shape these fiendish beings assume is not random, but rather an amalgamation of the fears which lurk beneath our rational minds. As of this writing, researchers have begun pursuing methods by which potent guardians of deliberate design might be engendered to stand against this mounting threat.

Emet-Selch says Zodiark was summoned to rewrite the laws of the star because they went haywire with the creation magicks going wild, not to halt the monsters themselves. The Ancients also took time to develop the concept of Zodiark. Something must have been keeping the monsters at bay while the Convocation worked, and as we see in the Passionate Amaurotine NPC, there is some precedent that the Amaurotines could develop a death-defying autonomous figure ready to sacrifice itself for its masters if needed. How does the Dragonstar War enters the scenario, then? First, let's go back to Archaeotania. Archaeotania is a dragon.

It looks like a dragon-dinosaur mix, it attacks with Megaflare and Gigaflare, it has lots of Shinryu's -- who is a Midgardsormr-based primal -- attacks like Tidal Wave and Ice Boulder. Archaeotania, being one of the original fears that were birthed by creation magicks going haywire, must have been influenced by a dragon. Meanwhile, Omega ignores other primals on Hydaelyn but only bleeps and bloops when Primal Bahamut appears:

Magitek Terminal: Even with its stasis systems activated, Omega retained a measure of autonomy. Deprived of mobility, the weapon continued to scan the world around it, searching for a threat to engage. It was at the time of Bahamut's resurrection when Omega emitted a unique signal -- a signal which appeared to indicate the acquisition of a target -- and we first discovered that the machine had retained some degree of awareness.

So, for some reason, when Sophia, Zurvan and Sephirot appear, Omega ignores them: it only bleeps and bloops when Primal Bahamut is born. It could be that its aetherical signature is so similar to Midgardsormr's Omega thinks it got its original target. But it could be that Omega was built to hunt beings similar to Archaeotania: artificial, dragonlike and presumably drawing aether from the ambient like even Midgardsormr does. Now let's take a look at this dialogue in the lvl 50 The Rising Chorus quest:

Lucia: Last night, the dragon star burned with an intensity not seen in fifteen summers. Not since the Dravanians engaged the Empire in the Battle of Silvertear Skies. Urianger: "The northern sky doth burn full bright upon the wyrm lord's call. The red behemoth beckoneth, and flame consumeth all." Lucia: The old Coerthan rhyme, aye. The brighthening of the dragon star is said to accompany the roar of a great wyrm. The astrologians believe that it was Midgardsormr himself who cried out in this occasion.

So we know that the telepathic roar of a great wyrm can, from Hydaelyn, activate and make the Dragonstar shine bright in the sky. As the Dragonstar is a dead rock floating in space now, we can only imagine the roar messed with its aether enough to physically make it shine. Could the Sound be an echo of Midgardsormr's roar? Why would Midgardsormr roar? We still don't know. But Midgardsormr is in some kind a harbinger of doom. I'll make a post on it later. What could be the timeline? The [?]s are because I don't know when or the exact order it must have happened.

Midgardsormr, for some reason, roars.

The Ancient's planet gets destabilized, the Sound starts.

The Ancients get scared, leading to their creation magicks going haywire.

The Amaurotines capture Archaeotania and develop Omega to halt the monsters and to give the Convocation time to act.

Zodiark is summoned, rewriting the laws of the star.

Omega leaves for the Dragonstar.

Hydaelyn is summoned.

Midgardsormr flees from the Dragonstar.

[?] Hydaelyn sunders the planet.

[?] Hydaelyn calls upon Midgardsormr.

Omega, while hunting for Midgardsormr, loses both its homing coordinates and contact with its home star.

Omega crashes onto Hydaelyn and doesn't realize it's back home because it is lost and the planet is way different than it was when it left.

I don't like that even Omega and the Dragonstar would be "Ancients/Ascians again". That's okay. I get it. But it would explain a lot of things, such as: 1. Why would Hydaelyn accept Midgardsormr but ignore Omega? Because Hydaelyn saw an opportunity to neutralize the greatest threat to Herself, Midgardsormr, but recognizes Omega as native from the pre-sundering Planet so doesn't see anything wrong with letting a wayward child come back. Omega was wrong in trying to go back home: it was always home, but it doesn't realize it. 2. How would the Allagans have found Omega? It's very interesting, even Deus ex machina (hehe) like that the Allagans coincidentally found a super-advanced, ready-to-be-reverse-engineered, easily-turned-off machine that was the basis for their technological revolution that led to at least two calamities. But we know Emet-Selch was responsible for influencing the Allagan Empire. What if Emet-Selch, or even Lahabrea, or both, were working together on this? They would know Omega was back, how to activate it, how to work with its technology and, most important, how to turn it off so that Allag would never be threathened by it. Why wouldn't Emet-Selch talk about Omega, then? Because Omega is a symbol that his people weren't as perfect and pacifist as he wants to believe. The fact that his people could only be saved by a violent war machine, and not by their peaceful, elegant creation magicks and debate, must be abhorrent to Emet-Selch. This is why he must have chosen, like Mitron, to leave Omega to suffer at Allag's. In the end, Allag triumphed both against the Dragons -- the Ancient's planets nemeses in this scenario -- and against Omega -- the stain in the Ancient's peaceful history. Anyway, isn't Final Omega non-canon? Not exactly, not as I see it. For some reason, Alphascape Savage is the only Savage tier that isn't the Menestrel making things up: it's Omega itself that gives you the data it messed with. Final Omega is a form of Omega made by Omega. Is there anything else about this crazy theory? Both Omega's and the Ancient's planet's name have been mysteriously omitted. Omega physically cannot speak the name of its planet in any of Hydaelyn's languages, and Emet-Selch never gives us the original name of the planet. I think this is it. I'll keep updating this post and doing more posts as I think about more things about the robot. Thanks for reading.

[alwida10]

The tragedy of Loki of Asgard

Or why I think the Infinity War Loki should stay dead.

TW: suicide, depression, narcissistic behavior

To understand this essay you need some basic understanding of the family dynamic in Odins family. The dynamic is one of a narcistic parent who has a golden child he projects his own awesomeness onto and a scapegoat child . The parent ensures himself the support of the golden child and makes himself the very center of attention, which is what a narcisst tribes for. The golden child longs to remain golden child and refrains from criticism of the parent. The scapegoat child strives to finally get out of the scapegoat position by pleasing the parent. To bad the child can’t do so because it gets not the blame because it did something wrong but because there must always be someone to blame. Therefore possible explanations and things the parent presented as desirable aren’t really that. Now, a golden child sooner or later gets used to blame everything on the scapegoat. It might even learn to control the scapegoat by blaming him the same way the parent did (aka the scapegoat longs for positive attention/affirmation and therefore does everything the golden child wants him to).

Now, in Thor Ragnarok Odin says ‘I love you my sons’ before he dies, placing the two of them more or less on equal positions for the first time ever. (I know there can be good arguments made, but just let’s assume it’s possition zero they start at.)

Pretty soon both end up on Sakarr, Thor in prison, Loki in the Grandmasters favors. Loki visits Thor in prison, suggesting teaming up, even though it endangers his position (the Grandmaster could hear about it, Thor would probably claim the higher position etc.) At that moment Thor doesn’t have anything to offer. Yet, he stonewalls, blaming Loki for all bad that happened. (For a much more detailed spot -on analysis please read this post where @i-dreamed-i-had-a-son even correctly predicted Loki’s death).

The whole dynamic in the prison is Thor falling back into the old family dynamic. Only that Odin is dead now, and the position of the prime narcisst is open. Now, narcissm is often correlated with abusive behavior, as written in ‘why does he do that? - inside they mind of angry and controlling men’ by Lundy Bancroft. In another post I found many of the things she describes can be observed in Thor’s actions in Thor Ragnarok.

But let’s get finally come to the elevator scene which is the heart piece of my explanation. Remember – Loki is at this point starved for any affirmation or positive reaction by his family. After Thor rejected Loki’s plan, he accepted Loki joining his plan. Thor lures Loki by claiming they should talk right before they enter the elevator. For a starving person this is huge temptation. But Loki did live with his family for eons and is certainly aware of it being a trap.

Right from his first appearance in Thor 1 (before the coronation) we learn that Loki never lowers his guard when it comes to admitting feelings. In that scene he said he loved Thor but directly glossed it over with a joke. After all what happened in Thor 1, Avengers and TDW Loki would never let himself appear weak by outright asking if Thor does still hold any positive feelings mg a for him. So he uses reverse psychology (claiming something against your own wishes, hoping the other disagrees and thereby affirms you.)

LOKI: Here's the thing. I'm probably better off staying here on Sakaar.

The problem with reverse psychology is when the other person agrees with it, it hits you right where it hurts the most.

THOR: That's exactly what I was thinking.

LOKI: ...Did you just agree with me?

THOR: This place is perfect for you. It's savage, chaotic, lawless. Brother,you're going to do GREAT here.

Thor follows up by insulting Loki and pushing him away hard. Why? Because he knows Loki has nobody else to turn to. Even after TDW Loki returned to Asgard. For one part because he’s still loyal but certainly also for the lack of alternatives. And Asgard will always include Thor. Thor knows Loki won’t be able to leave him.

LOKI: Do you truly think so little of me?

Loki is hurt, obviously and it’s very much visible on his face. To make sure no blame can be laid open him, Thor uses gaslighting.

THOR: Loki, I thought the world of you. I thought we were gonna fight side by side forever. But, at the end of the day, you're you, I'm me… I don't know, maybe there's still good in you, but let's be honest, our paths diverged a long time ago.

Loki is wounded by Thor's willingness to discard him. But he masks his feelings.

LOKI: It's probably for the best that we never see one another again.

Thor pats Loki on the shoulder, placing the obidience disk. And this action proves that the manipulation on Thor’s part was intentional. Why else would he have done it? (Everyone claiming ‘Loki betrayed Thor endless times, please read this meta). Thor knew that by pushing Loki away hard enough he would trigger a desperate act of reactive aggression. He did so to push Loki back into his place (which is beneath him, as far Thor is concerned). As soon that has happened Thor gives his little self righteous speech.

THOR: Oh brother, you're becoming predictable. I trust you, you betray me. Round and round in circles we go. See, Loki, life is about, it's about growth. It's about change.But you seem to just wanna stay the same. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you'll always be the God of Mischief, but you could be more.

Briefly summarized:

you suck, and I don’t think you’ll ever be worth my affection. If you want to try tho, here is your option.

Of course, to prove Thor wrong Loki is forced to resume his subservant position he had at the beginning of Thor 1. He can only ‘prove his worth’ by doing Thor’s bidding and supporting his plans. And that he does. He convinces kork and his crew to join him and brings them to Asgard where he receives his reward by Thor acknowledging him in a not-aggressive way. He even fulfills Thor’s plan, knowing that henceforth he will be blamed whenever someone remembers Asgard’s destruction. In Thor’s ‘coronation scene’ Loki stands at the side, behind the Valkyrie (yet, still at the right side. That surprised me, tbh. The ‘right hand of the King’ is a prestigious title and I didn’t believe TW would have allowed Loki that. But he’s still only second on Thor’s right.)

Anyway, Loki is back in the position he had in Thor 1 with a lot of added baggage and no Frigga to rant to when everything gets to bad. And then Thanos appears. Under Thanos Loki would suffer even more than under Thor (remember the Other’s ‘no barren moon..’ speach.) So basically he’s caught between two horrible fates.

Loki’s death scene itself has been criticized a lot and everyone knows the butterknive-discourse. It can only interpreted in two ways: either him being stupid or him being suicidal. Based on all written above and the fact that he already tried to commit suicide at the end of Thor 1, I can only believe the second to be true.

It has another point: Tom said Loki’s arc was finished. I was confused and unhappy about this statement, but now I am coming to piece with it. Tom loves Shakespeare, including Hamlet and Coriolanus. Those are tragedies. Tragedies are characterized by the protagonist being ruined because of a dramatic conflict that leaves him only two choices, one being death and one being worse. So perhaps this is his very own version of the tragedy of Loki of Asgard.

[maozijun]

Mao Zijun Xing Fan Interview

Removing the “adonis of period-costume dramas” label, and returning to a Republican era drama

Before Killer and Healer (or KillHeal hence), Mao Zijun had not filmed a republican drama in a long time. For almost the past five years, the audience’s impression of him has been his costume dramas, such as Qin Wuyan from The Legend of Chusen, An Qinxu from The Glory of Tang Dynasty, Yin Yiren from The Legend of Haolan, and so on and so forth. Because most of his dramas are costume dramas, as it happens, offers that come to him are the costume dramas.

Thus, when an offer for KillHeal, a TV drama about “drug crackdown” set in Republican China, appeared before Mao Zijun, he accepted it without a second thought. “At the time, I felt that I didn’t want to keep shooting costume dramas.”

If “costume drama” is a tag the audience associates with Mao Zijun’s role and acting, we can also claim that “zen,” “placid,” and “easy-going” are impressions he leaves on most people. Other than for the purpose of promoting the broadcasts of his new dramas, he seldom appears in public. If he “wasn’t at home, [he’d] be hanging out, or watching movies.” To the public, it’s as if he’s been “spirited away.” As a regular whose name ranks on the “skilled actor without due fame” chart, regardless how many times he’s been asked about the matter, his response has always been “I really haven’t paid it much attention.” His response may seem like a pleasantry, but he means it from the bottom of his heart.

Mao Zijun knows that ever since he became an actor, his career has been successful for the most part without any major setbacks, and he’s met many great people along the way. From his first TV drama Beauty's Rival in Palace when he cooperated with Lin Xinru, he stumbled into the entertainment industry and was swept along despite his inexperience and unworldliness. Including Director Yu Zheng who was willing to give him the male lead roles for The Legend of Haolan and The Matriarch. “So I thought I’ve had good luck. I’ve met people who appreciated me and were willing to give me opportunities. I’m very grateful.”

Mao Zijun’s “zen” attitude, however, doesn’t extend to everything he does. When there’s a role he really wants, his “wolf-like ambition” is brought out. When it comes choosing projects, he doesn’t compromise either. “I think everyone has the desire to strive for things they don't have; regardless of where you are in life, you wish to become better, you wish that you can climb higher. It’s a never-ending climb.”

Regardless of whether he’s gained fame and popularity, or remains a fine wine waiting to be discovered, “becoming better” is a creed he lives by and acts upon.

- 01 - Shooting KillHeal was an effortless process

What made Mao Zijun “return” to KillHeal after a long separation from republican dramas was its story and Jiang Yuelou’s personality. Jiang Yuelou is a morally grey character: a police officer and Chief of the Inspection Department. He's made law enforcement and drug crackdown his lifelong war, and it’s an undertaking he’s willing to sacrifice his life for. Although a patient with manic depression (known as bipolar disorder in modern clinical terms)--which results in his irritable, violent, and stubborn personality and tendency to be a lone wolf--he’s upright at his core, and there’s a gentle side to him deep down.

When Mao Zijun saw the script, he knew that this character had a lot of potential and creative room to work with. Precisely because of the great amount of creative room, on top of Jiang Yuelou’s vivid and distinct personality, filming for KillHeal was a relatively easy-going process for Mao Zijun despite the character’s lifelong angst and suffering. The character was rich and human per se, “so there was no need to brood over some things,” and it could be rather realistically portrayed. By the same token, the more one could ease himself into character, the better the final results.

Many actors determine the difficulty of portraying a character by criterion of the character’s degree of complexity, or their own compatibility with the character. In this respect, Mao Zijun is somewhat different: his criterion is whether the character can spontaneously come to life in the mind’s eye. “When you’ve read the entire script and discover that the character is very vivid and lifelike--his motives, intentions, behaviour and course of actions, all of which constitutes his rich psychological wiring--you will be able to portray him with relative ease, and not based on whether he’s similar to you. “Compatibility is only one aspect.”

Even if you were to act a character completely different from yourself, “you can imagine yourself in his shoes--what he would say or do” because he’s such a vivid character. “You can effectively get into character.”

In crafting Jiang Yuelou, Mao Zijun largely relies on following the script, his character changing with the progression of the plot; as a result, Jiang Yuelou���s uncontrollable violence, uncompromising ways, and other destructive habits doesn’t extend beyond the character and affect the actor himself. Unlike other actors whose characters took a mental and physical toll on them, Mao Zijun isn’t a purely immersive actor.

“Filming for a movie may require more personal feelings and emotions, but for a TV series, I think it’s half-and-half. Except for particular emotional scenes, that is.” In KillHeal, for example, the emotion expressed through Jiang Yuelou’s eyes when he’s solving cases, or reaction to receiving news, are all achieved through acting techniques. But for scenes where he’s facing the death of his subordinates, his mother, his adoptive father, his brother, and other loved ones, his reactions and expressions of pain must be nuanced and highly faceted. Even for crying scenes, he must cry in widely differing ways. For these scenes, Mao Zijun must lend his own emotional faculties to the character.

However, he does not believe tears are the only way to express his character’s emotions. When his younger and less inexperienced co-star, Ian Yi, consults him about his worries of being unable to shed tears, Mao Zijun tells him, “Why must you shed tears? Tears do not mean everything. The more dramatic and emotionally heavy a scene is, the more you must relax yourself.”

Filming to Mao Zijun is in fact a creative process where he imagines the character, then completes him. Hence, for every character he has acted, Mao Zijun would forget about the character. In his next drama, he would similarly imagine the character, understand his character, and the cycle continues.

So far, he believes there has yet to be a character that requires a lot from him mentally and psychologically, or even one that took him a long time getting out of. But, he hopes he will encounter such a character; a character that can let him experience more, feel more, and empathize with more.

KillHeal was a project Mao Zijun worked on two years ago. Two years ago, he did everything he could to bring Jiang Yuelou into fruition. Looking back now, there are details that could be further refined or supplemented, but the current KillHeal is still to his satisfaction, from his performance and methods of expression, to the overall product that is his character. “As to whether it has met my expectations… Because the broadcast of KillHeal had been held off for so long, I was worried about if the drama would go out of date when it finally came out. But there haven't been such problems so there’s nothing else I’m unsatisfied with.”

- 02 - I’ve become increasingly sentimental

While Mao Zijun may not be a purely immersive actor, he is not a wholly rationalistic one either. It’s in his analysis of his characters and response after completing a character that is rational. This rationality is present in his logic, or his healing process after getting out of character, but not acting itself.

Rationality is perhaps a result of Mao Zijun’s own experiences and personality. He had no formal training in acting. He had good grades in high school, perhaps due to parental pressure and his own belief that good grades made life somewhat easier. After graduating from high school, Mao Zijun successfully got into Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics and majored in Auditing.

“Why had I chosen auditing? At that time, I thought auditing had good prospects. It wasn’t a complicated job either--I took math and the sciences in high school, so auditing isn’t hard.” After getting into university, his parents weren’t as strict as they were in high school, so he had the opportunity to “set himself free” and explore new options. Just like that, he started taking jobs for advertisements, and then acting.

“Beauty's Rival in Palace was especially looking for people to fill in roles at the time. Liu Che was an important character despite not having a lot of scenes, and they thought my appearance fit the role.” Mao Zijun laughed lightly, “Also because of my looks that I started acting.”

The profession of acting provided him with many new experiences, because every character was new and unlike the mechanical motions he had to go through everyday. “This is also the reason why I will persist on this path.”

As someone who changed career paths from the sciences to acting, Mao Zijun has never second-guessed his decisions. He thought of himself as lucky, and his path a smooth one. Many of his friends around him have changed their career paths because of setbacks or other reasons, but he hasn’t. His parents have given him understanding and support. “My parents would express their worries, but they would not try and make a decision for me. Every big decision I've made is my own choice.”

Mao Zijun is a Capricorn: steadiness and rationality are a big part of it. But because he’s been an actor for so long, he’s in fact becoming more and more sentimental. When he first started out in the industry, he would care about others’ views and opinions about him. But with time, they gradually ceased to bother him. This is one of the very few things that have changed about him since his debut.

As an actor with no formal training, but has still received praise and acknowledgement for his acting skills, he does not attribute it to natural talent. Instead, he attributes it to his own capacity for self-excavation. “I think as an actor, you are mining yourself (your talents and skills). For example, if you meet other good actors, good characters, you will be driven to tap into your natural talents. For many actors, rather saying they don’t have talent, they simply haven’t been given the chance to discover their potential.”

In Mao Zijun’s opinion, every actor has talent, it is only a matter of chance and whether they can encounter a great character.

- 03 - Try and lose the “let it be” attitude

Mao Zijun has been in the industry for more than ten years. Ten years’ time is enough to change the state of the entertainment industry and the actors in it. As a post-85 liner interacting with post-90s and -95s actors, he’s picked up a hobby of collecting tarot cards, and has been playing video games like Super Mario and Contra that came with the gaming console gifted to him by his fans.

Newcomers in the industry would abide to the instructions of senior artists and the director. If they met difficulties or discomfort in the process of the shoot, they could only learn to deal with it themselves. But the market has changed, with new genres, subject matters, and the actors, too, are young. These young actors can willfully express themselves and vent, unlike the older generation of actors who learned to put up with things.

These changes cannot be predicted. Just like how it happened in a few years’ time, when an actor may no longer have a large audience base like before--an audience who sits in front of the TV just to catch the airtime of a TV series. Mao Zijun, too, is no longer the unworldly and inexperienced newcomer he was.

If he had to draw a demarcation, he says it’s the year 2016. “Before 2016, although I was an actor by profession and had thought I took my job seriously, looking back now, I’d just been in a status quo of “passing time.” Life had been smooth for Mao Zijun: high school, university, getting a job. He hasn’t met any real obstacles. The efforts and hard work he thought he had been putting into his work were tantamount to what he could easily accomplish in his best and most favourable circumstances.

He strongly agrees with the view that actors need to experience pain and setbacks. But he thinks that’s only a part of it. An actor can experience some things, but he is not able to experience everything. To him, some experiences can be gained through reading novels. “The stories, including the thoughts and behaviours of characters, are enriching and detailed. If you’re not able to personally experience some things, you can experience them via other methods.”

Mao Zijun is a very carefree person. He takes on drama offers when he feels like it, and rejects it when he doesn’t. He’s content with hiding himself away from the public eye to take time off for himself. But now, even he doubts whether the “let himself be” attitude is appropriate. “I noticed that there was a gap, like the period of time after The Legend of Haolan finished airing to the airing of KillHeal now. During these two years, you had no other dramas on-air. Your fans want to see your new projects and content, but you couldn’t give them anything, yet they would still give you a lot of support. It would make you question, shouldn’t I be filming more projects for them?”

After questioning himself, Mao Zijun started taking on more projects. Even during the pandemic, he filmed a movie (no news yet), acted as a cameo in The Journey of Flower as the character Sha Qianmo, and filmed for The Matriarch. “Since my fans want to see me so badly, I’ll just have to act in more projects, I thought.”

In The Matriarch, he plays the role of Wei Liang’gong, a very kind, “moonlight” (unattainable) character--a character with all the wonderful traits and virtues of a person--much like the male version of Empress Fuca Rongyin from Story of Yanxi Palace (2018). “This costume drama depicts a very realistic portrayal of life during the period. Acting in this drama was more of a process of experiencing and feeling, using an everyday-life way of performing was quite nice.”

Mao Zijun doesn’t really care whether he’s famous or popular. Even to this day, other actors from the casts he’s worked with would offer him new projects. Speaking from this point, he thinks he’s lucky enough as it is. To him, a TV drama actor, a bit of fame and a lot of fame doesn’t hold much of a difference. In the long term, “fame” is only a matter of degree. “Unless you win an award--a prestigious film award, whether it be movies or TV films--how much fame is but a matter of quality.” What he must do now, and spare no effort, is to give himself more opportunities.

In retrospect, Mao Zijun has gotten the roles he wanted, and there’s really no regrets. What he desires perhaps lies in the future. Fortunately, there’s just enough time.

Writer: 77

WeChat ID: LJLX2013

Original Post

[touchmycoat]

LOL when you said Hero my brain said noooooooooooooo cuz they all died dammit but then you said jmbnh and I perked up considerably :P. That sounds really really cool!!!

YEAH YOU GOT IT LMFAO. i'm gonna try to actually execute this (I hope), so i'm gonna slap the rough first outline under a cut for those who don't want spoilers ;) ;) but you already know where i'm going with this lolololol

Act I: Did you know the Xiu Ya Sword and the Broken Sword were lovers?

The Warrior is brought before the Emperor. Upon presenting the broken Cheng Luan sword, he is allowed to approach within 20 paces. "Did you kill him?" "No. Your Venerable Majesty's decree may have been dead or alive, but all warriors on the jianghu know it's the Emperor's wish to kill the Cheng Luan Sword personally." "Very good. Bring him before me." "Your Venerable Majesty, the Cheng Luan Sword Liu Qingge has escaped his bounds and is on the run." "No matter, Your Majesty, he will come here." "Oh? Why is that?" "Because the only two men to have bested him are here, and his sword lies broken between us."

The Emperor laughs, joyous.

"Very good! But Cheng Luan is not all you brought."

Xiu Ya and the broken Xuan Su swords. The Warrior is allowed to approach within 10 paces.

"How did you do it?"

"Did Your Venerable Majesty know the Xiu Ya Sword and the Broken Sword are lovers?"

-Red-

We get the heavily saturated story of the Warrior going to the Qiong Ding School of Calligraphy. He begs a character: 心, heart. He does so to figure out the Broken Sword's strength, because swordsmanship is embodied in calligraphy. He also fights side-by-side with Xiu Ya Sword, fending off the Emperor's attempt to be rid of the assassins. He gains enough cred from Shen Qingqiu to beg an audience with both Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan.

There the Warrior tells them that Liu Qingge is dead, and that LQG had been confident that YQY, with whom he'd had a one night stand, will avenge him. It's the Warrior's honor to come challenge YQY now. In a fit of jealous rage, SQQ stabs and kills YQY, then goes to battle the Warrior himself. Distraught by emotions, SQQ falls, and the Warrior walks away the victor.

Back in the Palace, the Emperor listens. He says he did know, yes, that the Xiu Ya Sword and the Broken Sword are lovers, but doesn't the Warrior think he's underestimated somebody in this equation? "Whom?" "Me. I've met Yue Qingyuan once, three years ago when he and Shen Qingqiu tried to assassinate me. Even then I could see his complete devotion to SQQ. He would never sleep with anybody else, not if SQQ is still at his side. So everything you said is a lie, except for one thing." "What?" "I think the Cheng Luan sword did know one of you, but I think the one he knew was you."

Act II: I think the Cheng Luan Sword trusted you.

"I think you, Liu Qingge, Shen Qingqiu, and Yue Qingyuan all colluded in order to get you within ten steps of me."

-Blue-

Despite imperial witnesses, Liu Qingge successfully faked his own defeat at the Warrior's blade. The Warrior carried and bound LQG himself. Then the Warrior brings his proposal to SQQ and YQY—he has a killing move as long as he gets within ten steps of the Emperor, so he only needs one of their blood on his hands. SQQ wounds YQY to keep YQY at home and makes himself the sacrifice. YQY does not make it in time to save SQQ but gives the broken Xuan Su to the Warrior anyways, because Xiu Ya and Xuan Su, just like their masters, should always stay together.

"You also gave LQG a way out. All of this is to get within ten steps of me. And now you're here. Tell me, am I wrong?"

"...Only about one thing. Your Majesty has also underestimated somebody."

"Who?"

"The Broken Sword."

Act III: The Broken Sword says you must not be killed.

-White-

Nobody was ever in actual danger. The Warrior did not kill LQG. He also will not kill SQQ or YQY. They only need to fake it for the imperial witnesses.

Only, the Broken Sword says the Emperor must not be killed. Xiu Ya Sword is furious—"You know what he's done to me and my country, yet you let him go three years ago and you'd let him go now. Why?!" But YQY will not say. SQQ vows to help the Warrior and stabs YQY to keep him out of their way.

But as the Warrior heads to the Capital, YQY also gives him Xuan Su. "Do you know why my blade is broken?" "No." "Neither do I. I've never wondered, either, but three years ago, when my blade nicked the Emperor's neck, Xuan Su suddenly sent me a warning."

"A warning about what?"

"A warning that I'll find out. I'll find out what broke my blade if I kill the Emperor, and that's something I want to remain ignorant of no matter the cost. Can you understand that feeling?"

"...Yes, I can."

"Who would have thought, of all the people in the world, it's the Broken Sword who understands me best? You understand it too? Tell me the feeling," the Emperor demands. "What is the thing you don't know, but the thought of knowing it terrifies you?"

"I know I must kill the Emperor," the Warrior states. "I know that he is a tyrant, and he runs a bloody world. I know I must kill him to save us all. What I don't know is why my heart breaks at the thought."

"You know you sound just like a man I used to know," the Emperor sneers. "He too criticized my methods. He too despised me. He too hurt at the thought of hurting me. Do you know why Liu Qingge must die by my hands?"

LQG steps out of the shadows, wounded but ready to kill.

"Because the Cheng Luan Sword took that man from me," the Emperor snarls, pulling his blade.

LQG approaches.

"Pass me Cheng Luan," he tells the Warrior. The Warrior grabs Cheng Luan, but hesitates in the throw. "Shen—!"

The Emperor runs him through. LQG falls dead at their feet. There are less than ten steps between them and the Emperor can kill the Warrior in just as easy a stroke. The Emperor does not.

"Who," the Warrior asks slowly, eyes on the fallen LQG, "is the man you used to know?"

"I don't know."

"I think I do. I think by coming here, I've learned the reason for my heartache."

"I think I have too. I wish you hadn't come. Will you still kill me, Shizun?"

"I don't know."

"Yes you do. This is something you've always known."

"...Yes, Your Majesty, I will."

The Emperor takes a deep, shaky breath.

"You didn't let Liu Qingge kill me."

"That's because he couldn't have," the Warrior says sadly. "Only I know how to kill you."

"Well I won't let you!" the Emperor snarls, furious. "I'll cut off your arms so you can never wield a sword again and your legs so you can never run again! You've left me once, I won't let you do it again!"

"Binghe."

The Emperor's eyes go wide, then red. He turns on his heel and takes less than ten steps away. His sword is still in the Warrior's hand.

"This character," he says of the scroll hung behind his seat, the one on which YQY has written heart, "holds the secret to his sword. Is that what you said, Shizun?"

"Yes."

"So many people want to kill me, Shizun. I know why. This too is something I've always known," Luo Binghe says quietly. "What's curious is why there is a man who doesn't want me dead, when my own Shizun will suffer heartbreak itself to kill me. Have you figured it out?"

"Not quite."

"May this disciple examine it?"

"...Of course."

He examines the character for a very long time.

"I see it now!" the Emperor exclaims. "As the Broken Sword understands me, I understand him. In my tyranny, I am strong. I am the only person strong enough to keep this country together. As long as I am alive, his world will keep going. His sword, his brush, his heart—it's all one in the same. It's all right here. Destroy one, you destroy the others."

"When you die, he will die too."

"No, Shizun." Luo Binghe's voice is so, so sad. "When I die, his heart will die too. It's the same for this disciple too. Killing me may bring Shizun heartbreak, but it will destroy my heart completely. Shizun, please. Please don't kill me."

"Turn around, Binghe."

When Luo Binghe turns, Shen Yuan has set LQG's corpse on its back and placed Cheng Luan in LQG's hands. His smile for LBH is sad.

"If you hadn't killed Liu Qingge, I really might have spared you," Shen Yuan says, wielding LBH's sword. "But now that he's gone...Binghe, this Master is sorry to have failed you. But I promise, it'll all be fine. The pain will go away quickly."

"Shizun..."

The sword is at LBH's chest. He thinks that even though it's his sword, he doesn't recognize it at all.

Shen Yuan wipes a tear from LBH's face.

"Binghe," he says, lifting the blade, "silly child. I wouldn't have stabbed you from the back."

He sinks the blade into Luo Binghe's heart. Everything shatters.

//

"Senior Disciple Shen!"

"It's self-destruct!"

"He's killed him! Luo Binghe's killed Senior Disciple Shen!"

Shen Qingqiu's head snaps up to where, in the sky, Shen Yuan's limp body had started to fall. He moves on instinct to go catch Shen Yuan, but he coughs up a violent fit of blood instead, falling back into Yue Qingyuan's arms.

"Xiao Jiu!" There's blood on Yue Qingyuan's lips as well and his face is ashen, but he's clearly been awake for longer than SQQ. "Don't—"

"Save him!" SQQ tries to yell. All of a sudden, a shadow speeds over their heads, catching Shen Yuan's limp body before it could hit the ground.

It's Liu Qingge. He's both furious and panicked. He has the dying Shen Yuan in one arm while in his other arm, he held another body.

"Up," Shen Yuan whispers, fading quickly, "Binghe. Quick, he's waking."

"Take care of yourself first!" Liu Qingge snaps. "I brought the body like you said—"

"Shixiong, please. I promised not to hurt him."

Teeth gritted, LQG launches them all the way up to the center of a miasmic black, where LBH hovers, surrounded by demonic energy. There's an immense blanket of demonic energy lifting from the earth, and people are screaming and running about.

"What's going on?! Where did all this demonic energy come from?!"

"Is he cursing us?!"

"No, no it's going away! Look! Senior Disciple Shen must have done something!"

"Has he saved us?"

LBH's eyes snap open and the first thing he does is attack. LQG just barely blocks the blow with both his arms occupied. There are tears on LBH's face and he's putting out an insane amount of demonic energy. He's screaming as he launches himself at Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan grabs LBH back with the last of his strength, gives LBH a firm but loving shake.

"Binghe!" he demands. "Watch."

LBH freezes and does as he's told. He watches as the last bit of life drains from Shen Yuan's body. He watches as LQG releases Shen Yuan's corpse into his arms. He watches as something goes white at his side, and it's LQG activating an array on the other body.

LBH watches as the pieces of SY's soul find a home again in the second body, which suddenly pulses bright with spiritual power. The body opens its eyes and takes a huge, gasping breath.

"Shen Yuan?" LQG demands to know.

"Shizun...?"

The person in the body lets out a little sigh of relief. He grabs LQG with one hand and LBH with the other.

"See, Binghe?" he chuckles weakly. "I told you it'll all be fine."

He faints.

//

The full story comes at the end. Shen Jiu still gets taken in and abused by Qiu Jianluo, Yue Qi still binds his life to his sword at Cang Qiong. Only, SJ's first strike against QJL mostly misses, and as QJL approaches SJ in fury, another little houseboy—the one who dusts and sweeps and mops but none of the hard work because he was born with a sickly body—holds out his broom and trips QJL. He means for SJ to get away, but SJ kills QJL instead. SJ still sets the house on fire, but he has no idea if the other houseboy got away.

After reuniting with YQY and entering Cang Qiong as a disciple, SJ is working in the field one day when he stumbles on a Master Shang's Medical Emporium. There's an incredible amount of rare flora and fauna in there, all great for cultivators. Intrigued, SQQ investigates and finds the source of all these goods to be a young man named SY—whom he recognizes. He swears SY to secrecy about his past and takes SY to Qing Jing, first to prevent SY from exposing him, but then they grow close. SY is very clever and knows how to make himself useful to SQQ. His level-headedness earns him a spot by seventeen at SQQ's side as senior disciple.

Flash forward to LBH's arrival on Qing Jing. SQQ is still cold and spiteful and petty, but with SY there, LBH is cared for. SY's older than LBH by what, five years? Takes baby!bing under his wing and mitigates the sour relationship between LBH and SQQ. As a joke (but not really), LBH calls SY "Shizun" in private, and SY gets a real kick out of it.

The thing is, SY is still totally a transmigrator. But just like Shang Qinghua, he transmigrated into a baby's body and basically had a whole other life in this world. Seventeen, eighteen years is a very long time to remember a novel you read a lifetime ago. While SQH's life changed, SQH's only a minor character—plus that's the author! Maybe he gets special privileges, while nobody else is allowed to influence the plot in a major way. Scared of potential repercussions, SY trains LBH and gives LBH as many resources on Qing Jing as he can, but does not tell LBH about the upcoming Abyss.

So SQQ still ends up kicking LBH into the Abyss. SY is filled with incredible regret. The relationship between him and SQQ go kind of awry too, but it's still mostly okay because SY knows LBH is not actually dead.

Just to level the playing field though, SY also doesn't tell SQQ that LBH is going to come back for revenge.

All this while, SY and LQG get to meet and become really good friends. Out of friendship comes love—they both crush on each other in a way that's super obvious to everybody else. SY isn't actually a very strong cultivator, but he is a voracious scholar (cough nerd cough) and hunts/forages a lot of wild stuff. LQG accompanies him every time.

Thanks to SY's training, LBH comes back from the Abyss a lot earlier than SY and SQH expected. LBH seeks out SY, but bad timing has him overhearing SY talk about how LBH dying at the Abyss was for the best—LBH assumes it's bc of his demon bloodline, but SY is really just placating other characters. On top of that, LBH finds SY and LQG all couply and lovey-dovey. LBH runs off.

Because why??? Why does everyone he cares about leave him, why does the entire world want him dead??? Even Shen-shixiong, somebody who cared for him, betrays him in the end. SQQ also gets word of LBH's return at around the same time and comes to hunt him down. In classic SQQ fashion, he only makes shit worse for Binghe, and LBH starts using Xin Mo like crazy.

When they get the word, YQY, SY, and LQG go running. SY learns about LBH being taken over by Xin Mo and asks LQG for a favor—go to my hidden lil mushroom grove and grab my spare body for me please? See, SY's physical ailments had him researching ways to clone himself and put himself in a better body. It's untested, but probably successful!! SY sends LQG to go get the body while himself and YQY and SQQ confront LBH.

During the battle, SQQ gets himself seriously wounded to protect Qi-ge. In a fit of fury, YQY unsheathes half of Xuan Su. LBH goes crazier as a response, and SY throws himself on the sword to save LBH from being eaten up by Xin Mo's power.

Believing he's killed the love of his life, LBH blue-screens. Unconsciously, he activates one of the most powerful skills the Dream Demon's taught him—Waking Dream. He plunges the entire mountain into a dream world of his own making. The world freezes, and everybody gets trapped inside LBH's world. They have no memory of this being a dream, but the few of the most powerful cultivators—LQG, SQQ, and YQY—plus the heart of the dream, SY, all manage to retain one critical piece of information.

As long as the owner of the dream dies, they can all be freed.

So in the dream, LBH becomes the Emperor, wielding all his forces to retain his power over his dream country. LQG, SQQ, YQY, and SY become assassins, all scheming to kill him.

YQY came the closest. He only has half of Xuan Su because Xuan Su is fundamentally bound to his life—half of the sword stayed outside in the real world with his body. Inside the dream, YQY and SQQ got to be lovers for years, and SQQ did not hate him. Upon sensing the boundaries of the dream, YQY could not bring himself to kill LBH and shatter the beautiful mirage.

If you die inside the dream, you die in real life—with one exception. If it's the owner of the dream who kills you, you get to go free.

That's what happened with LQG. LQG was still en route with the body, and SY didn't know if he'd make it. So SY was honest in the dream—had LQG remained in the dream with them, SY might really have allowed his baby bing to keep the dream going. He didn't want to hurt LBH with his own death. However, with LQG out of the dream, he knows LQG will probably make it on time with the body to save him. So he kills LBH and gets them all out.

The last scene is qijiu. SQQ is bed-bound. Nobody else has retained memories of the dream, only faint impressions. Only he and YQY know what happened.

SQQ demands to know why YQY refused to kill LBH. YQY explains, and the truth about Xuan Su also comes out. Happy ending happy ending.

SY of course survives. He gets a cool new body and apologizes sincerely for letting LBH get pushed into the Abyss. The plot has obviously changed in a major way already, and whatever happens from now on will just happen, it's fine. And LBH and LQG, his two favorite people in the world, will just have to get along. They'll all be best buds together hahahahahaha.

[crystallos-sol]

Hey I'm here to rant about Natsu Dragneel & the fact that he acts like a fucking dragon (warning you because this may get long so if you don't wanna read then scroll).

Getting started remember back @ the beginning when Natsu & Lucy took that job about the book Daybreak. And it turned out the guy who hired them to destory the book was the son of the author who wrote the damn book & all of it was a very long letter to his son that was encrypted? Yeah so Natsu didn't understand why they couldn't destory the book. Lucy didn't want to & Natsu didn't understand it.

Now keep with me here bc I have a point. So Natsu didn't understand the emotional attachment to the book because to Natsu it's a book. But even then I wanna link this to something further so Igneel, big dragon king, same guy who struggled to teach Natsu how to read & write. Now I'd imagine it's pretty hard for Igneel to read a human sized book, or a scroll. Considering his size & how thinks must look from his perspective which would explain why he struggled to teach Natsu.

Which would also lead into how Natsu hasn't really read books because 1) he didn't know how to read until after he got to fairy tail 2) He didn't read anything but the job papers because again why is there a need to? Now back to why he didn't understand the emotional attachment to a book. Ya see so Natsu who can logically deduce that yes it's pointless to him to read a book can also logically deduce that yes this book can be destoryed so why not?

This is why it ties back to Igneel again. Igneel the same dude who obliterated a mountain top & laughed when Natsu said: You shouldn't destory a mountain dad.

He already knew how to use his magic when he came to fairy tail. Natsu was already destructive because again he was literally raised by Igneel.

Now this, Natsu's motion sickness. It's clear it comes from his magic which is given to him by a dragon so it's logical to deduce that it is either 1) The side affect of holding a dragon equivalent power or 2) Dragons would suffer from the same thing if you could get one on a public transportation. (Note: Natsu doesn't get sick when flying & Not even when flying with Igneel did he get sick.)

However this point is as to why Natsu hates public transportation. Now everyone hates being sick yes, it sucks, no one ever likes it. However Natsu who is literally always fighting, Natsu who loves to move & be on his feet facing things head fist cannot do that if he is on public transportation. He gets sick and yes dizzy. But what I am looking at here is that Natsu feels actual dread when looking at a vehicle.

Natsu, in all the times we have seen him being expressive hardly ever shows actual fucking dread. So why would he show that emotion when faced with getting on a vehicle? Because Natsu is defenseless. We've seen him literally be unable to block being kicked in the face. Natsu who's so fucking good at fighting unable to stop a kick. Yeah that entire sentence seems so wrong I know. However that brings me to my point that Natsu who is defenseless on any form of transportation, would instinctively hate being on a form of transportation because he is unable to stop a threat. Ya wanna know who also hates that? Animals. You wanna know what dragons are based off of? Animals.

So that's my small meta on Natsu & some of his behaviors. Thanks for listening I hope it was understandable.

[sheblah]

OK I'm apparently not done talking about this. Here I'm going to expand on my meta that DT's motivation = survival and all else is just a byproduct.

Lots of people have commented that Double Trouble does what they do purely for drama, or chaos, or because they just love destroying lives. It's as valid an interpretation as any, I guess, but I don't agree with it. They are certainly manipulative, but I don't think this trait is incidental to their personality; it's very much intentional on DT's part. If put together with other clues, I think it reveals something very different about them.

What I propose is that ultimately, DT's goal in life isn't to cause drama or have fun at other people's expense (bear with me). Their goal is to survive - or more accurately, to maximize survival chances - and they have a very meticulous way of going about it.

First I want to take a broad look at the elements that shape DT's personality and motives. This might involve some speculation, since we don't know anything about their early life and very little about their internal thoughts, but I'll stick to onscreen evidence as much as I can. What we do know is that they first appear in the Crimson Waste. I choose to assume they live there and have done so for an indeterminate time before their first appearance. And in the Crimson Waste, the strong make the rules. Not everyone can be the "strongest in the Crimson Waste." Most people just have to be strong enough to survive on their own, or else join up with the strongest like Huntara's goons or Tung Lashor's lizard gang. Since DT isn't ostensibly allied to any group in the CW, they're probably the former. And their strength isn't muscle; it lies in deception, observation, and manipulation. As a shapeshifter, they're naturally predisposed to that sort of skillset. They probably started their career of deception by shifting to blend in and escape danger, and then expanded the applications of that ability into eavesdropping, information gathering, and eventually espionage. Their best strength is knowing more than everybody else, and knowing how to use that information.

Let's go back to S4E2 for a moment. This is the first time we see DT:

They're looking down at Adora, Bow, Huntara, and Perfuma. In retrospect I thought this was odd, since they then proceed to approach Catra, not the heroes. They don't interact with the heroes until Catra has them do their "audition." Why show DT watching them? I think, in this moment, DT is choosing which side to join. For at least a moment, they consider offering their services to the Rebellion instead. We also know this because they mention the possibility to Catra.

Now my opinion is biased towards a morally gray interpretation of the character, but to me this is a pretty big hole in the popular rhetoric that DT is evil for the lulz. Why even think about joining the "good guys" if all you want is chaos and destruction? The Rebellion is about stopping all that noise. And why consider them first? We don't see DT watching Catra and sizing her up.

But before we get to that, we have to ask: why get involved in the war at all? What would drive them to leave the Crimson Waste and seek employment in the wider wartorn world of Etheria? I posit that it's because the Waste is no longer survivable.

In that episode, we see that the Valley of the Lost is crawling with Horde soldiers.

They're terrorizing the denizens of the desert. Now these are mostly hardened criminals who aren't easily terrorized, but the Horde has armor and weapons and numbers on their side. As Huntara puts it, "It wasn't always like this. It used to be a great place, where an honest criminal could carve out a life." When she says this, it's news to her; from what we can tell, she's been living in Bright Moon for awhile. But everyone else there has just been living with this new state of affairs however long the Horde has been in their valley - and it's probably been awhile since they have a whole warehouse set up. It's reasonable to assume DT has been suffering from the Horde's presence as much as anyone else who lives there. How can you make a living gathering intel when there are soldiers around every corner interrogating everyone?

It's simple, actually: if you can't beat them, join them. Or maybe join their enemies.

I think they don't have great choices at this point - either keep working and hope that business picks up while ALSO avoiding the aggressive soldiers, or get involved in a war that you and your home have avoided thus far. The choice that gives them the best chance to keep making money - and, you know, living - is to get involved with the war one way or another.

So then, why pick the Horde way? Also simple.

From where DT is standing, the Horde is winning. They have sophisticated technology, abundant resources, and enough soldiers that they can afford to station a few dozen in a remote desert town. Who does the Rebellion send to steal the ship back? Three kids and a former gang leader. And oh sure, one of them is She-Ra, but what's one superpowered princess against an army? Any way you look at it, the Horde's forces are more impressive.

So they offer their services to the Horde first, with the rebels as a backup in case the Horde says no.

So, let's summarize up to this point. Pretend you're DT. You make your living as a spy, but suddenly a powerful presence takes your town by storm and completely disrupts everyone's daily lives. Finding clients becomes difficult, and actually doing the work is next to impossible when the streets are clogged with armed aggressors. Your income starts drying up. You can't avoid the war anymore - the war has come to you. So you decide to join it. You spot a handful of outsiders trying to avoid attention and figure this must be the Rebellion's forces. It's four people versus dozens of armored soldiers with enormous resources. You pick the stronger side. But now you've gone from working with petty thugs to working with literal warlords, and that's a hell of a dangerous position to be in. If you piss off your employer, you just might die. So. How do you cover your ass?

By getting the dirt.

Because that's your strength. That's how you survive. By manipulating the people who could hurt you. By gathering information that could hurt them so bad they couldn't even retaliate. And, hey, you don't necessarily gather this information with the intent to use it - but if the crap hits the fan and you do something that'll get you on a tyrannical world leader's naughty list, well, you need something to defend yourself with. For you, information is the best weapon.

That explains why they're so determined to get in Catra's skin. They want to know what makes her tick, her strengths, her weaknesses, her obsessions. It's not just for the love of acting. These are all bullets that they can use to bring her down if need be. And when they decide to switch to the other side? Need be.

Giving Catra that devastating speech has multiple effects. I think a part of them really does care about Catra and wants to be honest with her. But my theory is that they're mainly trying to get one important message across:

Don't try to retaliate for this betrayal. I know enough to destroy you without throwing a single punch.

As an ending note, I want to examine that line above. "The best way to survive is always choose the winning side." As amusing as the "would sell you to satan for one corn chip" memes are, that's not actually the sort of attitude they have about betraying Catra. They're not talking about getting a reward here. No mention of superior pay is made. They're not saying they destroyed everything she's worked for on a lark (although they may have had a lark in the process). They're talking about literal survival. The basic gift of continuing to stay alive. That's what they betrayed Catra for. They do the math in that cell in Bright Moon, figure they're on the losing side of the war, and decide what they're getting from the Horde isn't worth getting killed over. Anything else they get out of it is incidental.

Mind you, none of this is meant to imply that they don't enjoy messing with people's heads. There's abundant evidence that they do. Rather, my point is that they probably learned how to manipulate people not as a hobby, but as a vital survival skill... and probably long before they learned to enjoy it.

[donnerpartyofone]

Can't remember who, but some writer pointed out that narcissism is commonly mistaken as thinking you're great, when its more accurately described as seeing everyone else as extensions of yourself. The reason they're so hard to be around is that they don't and won't ever accept allow people to develop their own identity because other people are essentially puppets to them. Also, if someone calls them self an "empath" it's a dead giveaway that they're a narcissist

[uh this turned into kind of a rant and i can only hope it’s coherent, i’m extremely sick with allergies today and completely overmedicated, but i’m too compulsive to wait until later to answer this so...sorry!]

ha, that’s very interesting, like on the one hand psychopathy is often colloquially defined by narcissism and a lack of empathy, but then if someone claims to be strongly empathic then they might be a narcissist! i’ve never heard that before, but i can follow the logic. the puppet theory reminds me of something i heard about the psychology of babies, that they can’t conceive of separate subjectivities. it’s not like, I’M hungry and YOU have to feed me, it’s more like the whole universe is hungry, there just IS hunger, and its unjust persistence is a cause for outrage. (and maybe it’s worth mentioning that every obvious narcissist i’ve ever armchair-identified is usually kind of infantile)

this is also interesting to me because of something i was just thinking about what causes long term relationships (platonic and romantic) to break down. i suspect that when you’re close with someone for long enough, you start to feel like you and the other person exist on some kind of continuum. then there can arise (at least) two problems: 1) that the qualities that are unique to the other person, and not on the continuum, start to seem confusing and disruptive (where they may once have seemed exciting and new), and 2) you become so acclimated to the illusion of the continuum that you start to feel like it’s all just YOU, which gives some people the urge to seek out more external stimuli. (i know this sounds a lot like “familiarity breeds contempt”, but i think the problem is deeper than pure boredom, i think it involves what you feel makes up your own consciousness/identity/boundaries of self at a given time, what you believe is appropriate for you to control, and what remains excitingly alien)

...none of that is pathological, of course, it just seems adjacent to the problem of narcissism as you’re framing it. i definitely agree that describing narcissism as just egomania doesn’t cut it; if you were happily leading a functionally selfish life, then you might not have what we could describe as a problem for a doctor. and actually, there are probably a lot of sufferers who will never have the helpful realization that narcissism is what’s hurting them, because they don’t really experience it as the popular cliché of exaggerated self-love; they feel that they are the victims of a tragic, ongoing insult, committed by the world at large. (and we all know the world is unfair, so why should they question themselves?) the most clearly identifiable (and destructive) symptoms of narcissism result from the pain this condition causes the owner, not ego satisfaction but its opposite. your puppet theory is pretty analogous to the way i tend to think of it, as a mismatch between self-concept and the feedback that you get from the world. like, what you’re saying suggests that the narcissist thinks of other people as just appendages of himself, so therefore it’s upsetting when all these limbs of his act on their own volition, rather than dutifully responding to his commands the way an arm or a leg should. (excuse the “his”, otherwise i have too much “they” going on) the way i think of it is only slightly different, which is that the narcissist thinks of himself as objectively special and important, so it’s confusing and painful when other people do not prioritize him as such; anything short of deference and admiration fails the standard that he has assigned to himself. these failures are often perceived as abuses (rather than just the absence of desired response), and abuses are just as important as compliments, as they provide the narcissist with an opportunity to try to assert his importance. instead of accepting that he simply isn’t AS important to others as he is to himself (a relatively normal, expected condition of life), the sufferer sees himself as conspired against, obsessively hated, or if he can’t prove he is celebrated in this way, then he must be the “most” neglected and ignored person in the world. he always has to be famous or infamous, a hyperbolic being one way or the other; he can’t possibly be somewhere in the middle like the rest of us, since we only exist to respond to him.

take the classic (though admittedly extreme) example of ted bundy: it’s easy to say that he killed people because he considered his own pleasure more important than others’ pain--which he manifestly did--but the greater reality seems to be that he killed people in a rage caused by the cognitive dissonance he experienced, between self-image and feedback. he couldn’t get the girl of his dreams, or his dream job, or have the academic career he thought he would enjoy, or the fortune he thought he would amass, because he was above average at best in most areas in which young men are judged. the B- report card that life handed him so flew in the face of his concept of what he deserved, that he had to soothe himself, and prove that he was as powerful as he believed he should be, through revenge. not to say that this is like the ONLY problem with bundy or that it’s all this simple in such a case, but it’s pretty easy to say, very broadly, that a lot of his behavior came from this conflict between how he thought others should value him, and how they valued him in reality. (or at least, how he PERCEIVED this social value; certainly he had a very obedient long term girlfriend who worshipped him, but no form of acknowledgement could ever satisfy the narcissist’s fantasies) i think that’s not really THAT different from saying that someone like bundy thinks all the world is just an extension of himself, therefore he experiences pain and rage as the world relentlessly proves that it is not dependent its connection on him. to be completely fair, it can painful and enraging for anyone, when people contradict your beliefs about basic consensus reality: a fairly sharp, fashionable, with-it friend of mine once insisted that he had never heard of a crunchberry, and for a brief moment i felt sure that i might have to kill him, to restore order to the world, and prevent everything from descending into the chaos and darkness of a demimonde where ordinary american children of the 1980s are allowed to pretend they don’t know what crunchberries are.