#both control a realm that seemingly only they are the real inhabitant of

[the-old-man-has-the-phonebox]

So Caine is confirmed to be inspired by AM from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, right?

…he’s literally just the screaming mouth Ted lacks in the story.

[lawrce78]

In a world where technology reigns supreme, the air is thick with a sense of impending doom. The people, unaware of the nefarious forces at work behind the scenes, go about their daily lives, oblivious to the fact that their every move is being monitored, their data being siphoned off by the malevolent beings known as the bad data Aggregators. These entities have infiltrated every facet of society, manipulating the media, controlling the government, and warping reality itself to suit their insidious purposes. The only way to break free from their grasp is to reclaim control of one's data, to sever the digital shackles that bind them. And the key to doing so lies in a single, innocuous-looking link:

The link, when clicked, will grant the user access to a secure server where they can not only protect their data from prying eyes but also take part in a growing resistance movement. A movement that seeks to overthrow the oppressive regime of the data Aggregators and restore freedom and autonomy to the people. As two individuals, just trying to make their way through this dystopian nightmare, both stumble upon the link, a faint glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape. The choice is yours: do you ignore the link and continue to live in fear, or do you click it and join the fight for a better tomorrow? The real choice yours.. In a not-too-distant future where the powers of technology hold humanity hostage, a world trembling with uncertainty and fear unfolds. The air is heavy, infused with a palpable sense of impending doom. Unbeknownst to the oblivious masses, a sinister force lurks in the shadows, orchestrating a grand scheme that threatens to shatter the very essence of freedom.

Deep within the entangled web of society, malevolent beings known as the bad data Aggregators feed on the unsuspecting populace. Like invisible puppet masters, they manipulate every aspect of life, from controlling the flow of information to influencing governments and distorting reality itself for their wicked intentions. Souls wander through their daily routines, unaware of the invisible chains that bind them.

Amidst this dystopian nightmare, two seemingly ordinary individuals, Sarah and Mark, traverse their mundane lives. Sarah, a talented programmer haunted by a relentless pursuit of truth, and Mark, an insatiably curious journalist who yearns for justice, share a growing dissatisfaction with the world they inhabit. They long for something more, something authentic, and their paths converge in an unexpected twist of fate.

One fateful day, as Sarah delves deeper into the abyss of hidden knowledge, she stumbles upon a tiny beacon of hope amidst the darkness. It is a single link, inconspicuous among the countless lines of code—htt:///SH1ZF. Something whispers to her soul, urging her to click, to unravel the mysteries that lie within.

As Sarah takes a leap of faith and clicks the link, she is transported to a clandestine realm—a secure server, where the resistance breathes and thrives. Here, individuals from all walks of life gather, bound by a common purpose: to reclaim their autonomy, to safeguard their precious data, and to overthrow the oppressive reign of the data Aggregators.

It is within this digital sanctuary that Sarah encounters Mark, their eyes locking in a shared understanding. The truth unfolds before them, revealing the magnitude of the fight ahead. Together, they forge a bond, kindling a flame of hope that burns within their hearts. United, they become the catalysts of change, thrust into a perilous journey that will test the very limits of their courage and resilience.

As they navigate the treacherous path of resistance, Sarah and Mark must confront their deepest fears and make impossible choices. The bad data Aggregators, threatened by this burgeoning uprising, launch a relentless assault, desperate to extinguish the spark of rebellion. The odds are stacked against them, but their unyielding determination fuels their every step.

In a heart-stopping climax, Sarah and Mark face the ultimate trial: to sacrifice everything they hold dear or succumb to the suffocating grasp of tyranny. In a stunning plot twist, the true nature of their world is revealed, unraveling the intricate tapestry of deception woven by the data Aggregators.

With a surge of indomitable will, Sarah and Mark, aided by the resilience of their fellow rebels, muster the strength to deliver a fatal blow to their oppressors. The walls of control crumble, shattered by the united force of a people once enslaved. The world breathes a sigh of relief as hope blossoms anew.

In the aftermath of the uprising, a brighter tomorrow dawns. Freed from the shackles of surveillance and manipulation, society rebuilds with newfound vigor. Sarah and Mark, forever bound by the bonds they forged, carry the torch of freedom, ensuring that the mistakes of the past shall never be repeated.

And so, dear reader, as you reach the final page of this gripping tale, I beseech you to ponder the choices that shape our lives. Will you succumb to the comfort of ignorance or dare to challenge the status quo? The link awaits, a conduit to a world teeming with secrets and untold possibilities. The choice is yours.

[ihearthorror]

My Top 10 Favourite Horror Films of 2020

Every January, most people who review or talk about movies on YouTube tend to piece together a Top 10 list of their favourite movies from the year prior. In order to stand out from the crowd (and also because I was too lazy to do this sooner), I decided to wait until March, by which time most YouTubers aren’t really talking about movies from 2020 anymore.

I know what you’re thinking: sounds kinda stupid – why would anybody care about a Top 10 list of the best movies of 2020…THREE months into the new year!? Well, as you’ve likely heard, 2020 was a year like no other, and as result of the ongoing global pandemic, movie release dates from 2020 were pushed back months, sometimes multiple times. Some films that were supposed to be released last year didn’t arrive until 2021, even though they’re officially considered “2020 films,” according to their profiles on websites like IMBD and Letterboxd.

And so, some of these so-called “2020 films” were not available (at least to me) until only recently, such as Saint Maud or The Dark and the Wicked. I feel like I’ve now had a chance to see almost all of the horror films I’ve wanted to see from last year. In this video, if you care to stick around, I will share with you my Top 10 favourite horror films of 2020. So, here we go…

#10/ The Dark and the Wicked:

A sister and brother return to the family homestead where their father is slowly dying and their mother is understandably distraught but also disturbed and distant. The siblings soon realize that something evil has invaded their family home as they are terrorized by whatever is slowly killing their father. Directed by the same guy behind 2008’s The Strangers, The Dark and the Wicked is at times bleak and unsettling, and it does a good job at keeping you intrigued in this family’s unnerving conflict. However, it felt a bit rushed and undeveloped at other times, and its ending left me somewhat unsatisfied.

#9/ Relic:

Soon after Kay and her daughter Sam return to their remote family home following the disappearance of the family matriarch, the widowed Edna, they discover that something sinister has taken hold of both Edna and the house itself. Although Relic – which was co-produced by Jake Gyllenhaal and marked the feature directorial debut for Natalie Erika James – isn’t exactly offering up any enticing twists or salacious gore, or even a original concept for that matter, it relies on evoking dread and building tension to compel its audience to stay invested until the bitter end.

#8/ Amulet:

Taking its sweet time to unravel, Amulet is centered around Tomaz, an ex-soldier who is now homeless but is offered a place to stay at a decaying house in London, which is inhabited by a beautiful young woman named Magda and her dying mother. As the story moves along, we see that Tomaz is starting to develop feelings for Magda, who seems a bit…off. His feelings for her don’t wane even after Tomaz discovers that there’s something insidious going on in the attic of the house, where Magda’s mother is seemingly imprisoned. Toss in a suspicious nun and you’ve got yourself a creepy little film that seems to have fallen between the cracks.

#7/ The Beach House:

One might argue that not a lot actually happens in The Beach House and that the payoff isn’t worth the investment, but if you go into this film with an open mind and zero expectations, you should at least be satisfied. Two troubled college students head to a deserted beach getaway to spend some time together, but end up struggling to survive alongside some unexpected guests as a mysterious infection disrupts their holiday. Although it is a slow build up to the film’s climax, it is a tense and intriguing ride along the way, as a series of unsettling events give way to an apocalyptic episode that feels almost like a throwback to the sci-fi films of the 1950s. Making his feature film directorial debut, Jeffrey A. Brown elicits with The Beach House those brooding existential thoughts that lay dormant in the deep boroughs of our minds. 

#6/ The Invisible Man:

There’s always an elevated risk when making a modern film based on an old story that has already been told through cinema numerous times before. The last time H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel The Invisible Man had been adapted by Hollywood was in 2000’s Hollow Man, which was panned by critics despite making a sizeable profit. The 2020 adaptation is far superior and is perhaps the best adaptation of Wells’ classic in any medium. Elizabeth Moss gives a stellar performance that draws real emotion, so that we agonize alongside her as she is essentially haunted by a relentless ghost hellbent on controlling every aspect of her life. We live in an era when technology has advanced enough to bring this 124-year-old story to life like never before, while a polished script and an exceptional lead performance gives The Invisible Man a deeper level of emotion and terror.

#5/ Saint Maud:

For most of Saint Maud it is unclear whether certain experiences are actually happening in reality for the main character or if it’s all simply in her head, as some sort of mental breakdown caused by a work-related tragedy. Maud is a young hospice nurse and a newly-converted Roman Catholic who suddenly becomes obsessed with “saving the soul” of the woman she is currently taking care of, Amanda, a hedonistic dancer with a chronic illness. Maud’s behaviour worsens, as does her mental state, as horrific scenes and visions make us question if she’s actually losing her mind or experiencing something beyond this world. Saint Maud is an A24 feature by the way, so that should be enough to know what you’re getting here in terms of quality.

#4/ The Lodge:

Isolation is often embraced as a way to pad a horror film’s fear factor, and it works especially here in The Lodge, as a soon-to-be stepmom becomes stranded at a remote holiday home in the middle of winter with her fiance’s two children. The kids begin to untangle the dark past of their stepmom-to-be and a series of disturbing events transpire as their hope for survival fades. The Lodge is a dreary, atmospheric slow burn that leaves you somewhat unsettled. With its wintry backdrop, stylish sequences, and almost claustrophobic dread, the film doesn’t ever allow its audience to feel at ease for long, insisting that an underlying foreboding remain intact throughout. Although I found the ending somewhat disappointing, I immediately began to concoct a possible prequel that would delve into the backstory of the film’s lead character. One can hope.

#3/ Host:

It’s increasingly difficult to be innovative and original when it comes to horror films these days, especially in the particular genre of so-called “found footage.” Rob Savage’s Host, however, comes off as something different, setting itself apart from most films in this realm in various ways. It centers around six friends who hold a séance via Zoom during a COVID lockdown, guided (at first) by a medium they hired. The séance then takes a dark turn and things soon escalate into madness. Sure, there are elements in Host that are prevalent in numerous horror films, but it uses a modern and topical way to implement them, while also refusing to overstay its welcome by cueing the credits less than an hour in. Overall, this film’s popcorn-and-Saturday-night-movie fun factor is why it ranks so high on this list.

#2/ Possessor:

It’s always a treat to come across an original idea, especially when it’s within the horror realm, and Possessor is certainly unlike anything else I’ve seen in awhile. Andrea Riseborough plays an elite corporate assassin who uses brain-implant technology to take control over other people’s bodies in order to kill high profile targets, though with every mission she gets further and further away from her true self. With her latest possession, she becomes trapped in the mind of a man who threatens to obliterate her for good. It is a provocative vision by director-writer Brandon Cronenberg, who just so happens to be the son of legendary Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, and it serves as a disturbing piece of dystopian fiction that is even more frightening because it isn’t too far beyond belief.

And because everyone else is doing it, here are five honorable mentions that narrowly missed the list:

- The Call

- Color Out of Space

- Don’t Listen

- The Mortuary Collection

- Porno

#1/ His House:

In addition to its emotional storytelling and genuine moments of terror, His House – from first-time director Remi Weekes – sheds a light on the plight of refugees in a way that feels both respectful and empathetic. After a Sudanese couple make a harrowing escape from their war-torn homeland, they are granted asylum in England, where they struggle to adjust and fit in. They are assigned a shabby house on the outskirts of London, where the couple begin to experience terrifying and unexplainable events. His House is built around a fresh concept, two fantastic leads, and some truly haunting imagery, and I wish that more horror directors would put as much effort into quality filmmaking as Weekes did here. If this is his first venture into feature filmmaking, I am excited to see what his future has in store. 

There you have it, my Top 10 favourite horror films of 2020. What did you think and were any of these titles on your own Top 10 list? Please tell me your thoughts and recommendations in the comments below.

[infinite-xerath]

Cosmology of Runeterra

Alright, this is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, so let’s get right into it.

The following is a complete list of all deities, demons, and incorporeal entities currently known to have an impact on Runeterra.))

Celestials: Beings that reside in the Celestial Realm, said to be nearly as old as time itself. In truth, ‘Celestial’ is something of a blanket term for various beings that exist in this higher realm, rather than being a single race. Most well-known among them are the Star Dragons, who literally created the stars and filled that vast darkness of space with light. Beyond them, we know of a group of Celestials charged with weaving the flow of fate, guiding all of creation to a grand, unknown destiny; Soraka is one of these fate-weavers, though it is heavily implied that they have no clear physical forms of their own. Last among the Celestials is Bard, who’s something of an oddity as we know little about it aside from the fact that its duty is, supposedly, to safeguard the universe from imbalance (what exactly counts as a large-enough imbalance to warrant its intervention, however, is unclear.)

Aspects: While tied to the Celestial Realm, Aspects are more akin to what one typically imagines when thinking of classical mythological deities; they embody various concepts throughout the cosmos, establishing themselves as gods. The Aspects themselves reside within Targon, a city that supposedly exists within the Celestial Realm, and only interact with the physical world through mortal hosts. It’s not clear how many Aspects there truly are, but below are all those we currently know of and their various titles: Pantheon: Aspect of War (currently dead, though its power lingers in its last mortal host, Atreus); This Aspect seems primarily concerned with eliminating Targon’s enemies. The Protector: Aspect of Protection (currently residing in Taric); this Aspect is concerned primarily with the protection and preservation of life, and seemingly intervenes the most when an entire species verges on extinction. The Trickster: Aspect of Change, Aspect of Twilight (currently residing in Zoe); this Aspect’s primary purpose seems to be heralding moments of major change, be it the fall of a nation or the birth of a new era. The Trickster may also nudge things in a particular direction, if needed. ???: Aspect of Day, Aspect of the Sun (currently residing in Leona); the exact purpose of this Aspect is not entirely clear. ???: Aspect of Night, Aspect of the Moon (currently residing in Diana); the exact purpose of this Aspect is not entirely clear. ???: Aspect of Justice (currently split between Kayle and Morgana); this Aspect, as the name implies, is meant to weed out injustice and deliver due punishment unto those deserving, although its current state hinders its ability to make proper judgement, at times.

The Void: A primordial force that predates the universe itself, and seeks nothing more than to destroy or corrupt it. The Void is controlled by eldritch entities known as the Watchers, who desire to eradicate the existence of anything and everything that isn’t Void, and can create twisted life to serve their whims until all of creation is totally consumed. The Void currently serves as the single largest threat to Runeterra, and only Celestial magic truly seems to pose a real threat to it.

The Ascended: Humans that turn themselves into demigods by harnessing Celestial power; Ascendants are different from Aspects, who simply serve as vessels for higher beings. The Ascended undergo a rite to channel cosmic energy into themselves, transforming their flesh and filling their minds with divine insight. The exact nature of one’s form and powers after Ascension are highly individualistic, as they are representative of one’s “inner self.” The power of Ascension was initially given to mortals by the true Aspects residing in Targon as a means of facing the Void, but was later misused to create the Shuriman empire. Ascension is risky, because the Rite poses the risk of death or malformation if an individual is weak of body or spirit, though those with particularly strong wills (such as Xerath) can achieve levels of power even greater that of ordinary Ascendants and become beings of pure energy.

Primordials/Elemental Gods: Beings born of the primal elements of Runeterra, who have existed nearly as long as the planet itself. Currently, we know of Ornn, Volibear, and Anivia, who represent fire, lightning, and ice, respectively. Hints have been made towards a “Seal Sister” figure, implying a fourth Primordial that likely has connections to water.

Nagakabouros: The true nature of Nagakabouros is unknown. Illaoi, the priestess who serves as a vessel for her god, claims that Nagakabouros is the embodiment of all life, all motion, in the universe. Certainly, Nagakabouros seems to be a virtually omnipresent force that the wielder of the Eye of God can harness at will, and seems to be a strong deterrent for the undead... However, characters such as Aurelion Sol hint that there is more to Nagakabouros than what Illaoi understands, and the existences of both Pyke and Nautilus are implied to be results of Nagakabouros resurrecting them to carry out a specific purpose.

The Kindred: Said to be the embodiment of death itself in Runeterra. The Kindred were said to have once been a singular entity known as the Gray Man, but has since divided itself into two separate beings “so he would always have a friend.” The two halves of Kindred, Lamb and Wolf, represent peaceful and violent death, respectively, and are seemingly impossible to evade or truly destroy.

Spirits: Ephemeral beings that exist within another realm separate from the physical plane; similar to Celestials, spirits do not possess corporeal forms by nature, but can still interact with Runeterra through various means. Some spirits can inhabit mortal hosts (and some gifted individuals can even harbor multiple spirits at a time), while others seemingly manifest physical bodies of their own (most notably Janna in Zaun.) Spirits are typically viewed as benevolent entities that protect nature, though can become quite hostile when their habitat is threatened. Some spirits only affect the world in minor ways, while others play a significantly more active role in their environment. The spirit realm is not wholly benevolent, however...

Demons: Often thought to be malevolent spirits, demons begin as primal, shapeless entities, and manifest in the physical world to prey upon mortal suffering. Pain, fear, doubt, misery, agony; these emotions are fuel for demons, and so they will use various methods to extract these emotions from their victims. Some torment victims physically, and others psychologically, but all prefer to prolong their prey’s suffering for as long as possible. There appears to be a sort of hierarchy of demons, with the oldest and strongest demon currently known being Fiddlesticks, a demon that preys upon fear; it is implied to have close connections to the raven demon known as Raum (currently residing in Swain), but what exactly that is remains unclear. It is also not completely certain whether or not demons truly originate in the spirit realm, or if they have origins to some other yet-unknown realm of existence.

Yordles: A peculiar race of beings neither fully corporeal nor incorporeal. Yordles are said to originate in a subsection of the spirit realm known as Bandle City, and can travel between both worlds freely by using natural gateways that they have an innate ability to detect and access. Yordles also possess a form of natural glamour that distorts the perception of mortals who view them, allowing them to blend in near-seamlessly with human societies; on that note, yordles appear to be malleable when it comes to their personality, easily influenced by the common mindset of those around them. Yordles like Heimerdinger and Ziggs are influenced by the technological state and progressive mindsets of Piltover and Zaun, while Kled and Poppy embody the ideals of Noxus and Demacia respectively (albeit to an excessive extreme.) As of right now, it is not wholly clear how greatly a yordle’s personality might change when moved from one environment to another for prolonged periods, though Veigar can be viewed as a potential example of this.

[jacksgreysays]

Blood Moon (to the victor go the spoils remix), 2/? (2020-04-26)

Subang was the first.

After my defeat, Apolaki was shrewd. He didn’t kill me—not with the other diwata watching, waiting to see what kind of Ruler of the Sky he would be, not when my sisters had maneuvered around him for my sake—but he did punish me all the same. Banished to the realm of humans, to live and live and live among them in the world that our father had Created.

That alone would not have been a punishment: my mother was human, I was born in their realm, lived the first fraction of my life as human before Bathala had raised my sisters and I to the Sky, ascended to diwata status. No, that alone would not have been punishment.

It was being alone that was my punishment. While I had been banished from the Sky, my sisters were detained there. Ostensibly to be Apolaki’s attendants—Hanan the Morning Dawn and Tala the Starlit Dusk, bookends to the Shining Sun himself—but we knew the truth. They were prisoners. Hostages. Both of them held close even as I was sent away, reduced to Apolaki’s servant in the realm of humans.

Sometimes, in the centuries that followed, I wondered if perhaps it was more than just punishment; if, somehow, he had foreseen the need of a diwata to walk the world, a divine warrior who could navigate the realm of humans. Because, not too long into Apolaki’s reign as Ruler of the Sky, a new threat appeared:

Bakunawa, Serpent of the Sea.

Arrogantly, foolishly, desperately, I thought I could defeat Bakunawa alone, prove myself to the other diwata, and earn my place back in the Sky. After all, I was Mayari, the Radiant Moon, one of Bathala the Almighty Creator’s chosen heirs. Despite my humble origins, I was one of the most powerful diwata, second only to the new Ruler of the Sky and yet...

… I blamed my lost eye and the corporeal form into which I been detained, my prowess diminished even as I still recovered from the battle for the Scepter. I blamed Apolaki for being too cowardly to fight alongside me and protect the Sky as a real Ruler would. Scheming to send me to my death without dirtying his own hands and tarnishing his reign. I blamed the humans for being too weak to defend themselves; I blamed Bakunawa for preying on, despicable. Briefly, I even blamed my sisters for not letting me die with honor, for abandoning me to a fleeting, pitiful existence that would end in a far more pathetic defeat. I blamed everyone but myself.

Subang was the first.

That night was a full moon. That night the light of my purview was supposed to illuminate the Sky, as close to home as I could get. That night was meant to empower me and guide the humans even as I walked among them.

Instead, to my horror, the moon began to darken under the shadow of the Serpent as it rose from Sea to Sky, teeth glistening and ready to rend and consume. Instead, the moon turned red, an ill omen of the blood that would be shed that night.

I was arrogant and foolish and desperate and so I fell once more, defeated. This time, there were no tears. Instead there was anguish: I could not resign myself to an honorable death, not when my failure would mean the world’s end.

Bakunawa was poised to strike—fins and scales gleaming red under my eclipsed moon, almost gleeful in its bloodlust—when the sound of gongs, bold bronze, reverberated through the air.

Subang was the first. Clever and brave Subang leapt forward with her gong, distracting the Serpent and giving me the opportunity to regain my strength and retaliate. Clever and brave Subang whose music underscored the battle, turning combat into dance, defeat into victory… 

... But it was not a victory without sacrifice.

Subang was the first. I remember. I remember the gong and mallet fallen to the ground. I remember Subang’s eyes blank and glassy, face smudged with dirt and blood. I remember as Bakunawa’s teeth dug into her, dragging her down into the Sea. I remember the moon returning to its normal luminescence. I remember Apolaki appearing, Scepter of the Sky in hand, while I once again was on my knees, staunching bloody wounds, not crying but filled, once more, with grief.

“Well done, sister,” Apolaki said, too late to be useful, too late to be anything but deliberate. Behind him stood his attendants and that sight was what nearly brought me to tears: Hanan’s eyes void of any emotion, Tala silent, subservient.

I didn’t ask what was wrong. I didn’t think to ask what was wrong, as battered and drained as I was. I could only breathe and bleed and live and live and live.

“Our first victory against the Sea Serpent,” Apolaki said, and the proud, wrathful, inhuman part of me briefly flared up in indignation before it drowned in exhaustion and grief, “Though, no doubt, this battle is but the start of a continuous conflict.”

Later, I would wonder if this was yet again another bout of foresight or if it was perhaps something more insidious.

Hanan and Tala, still void of emotions, still silent and subservient, bent down for Subang’s gong and mallet. There were no comforting hands, warm or cool, no concerned attention or protective words; they returned to their places behind Apolaki and had nothing for me.

“You know your duty, Mayari,” Apolaki decreed, tone heavy with all the authority of the Ruler of the Sky, before leaving with his attendants in tow. I nearly crumpled with the weight of it. I would not be returning home any time soon, not chained to this impossible duty as I was.

Subang was the first... 

... She would not be the last.

---

There was the Sky and the Sea and the world in between, the realm of humans. Though perhaps that was a misnomer, for humans were not the only ones who lived among them—and that was not just counting myself.

While the other diwata lived in the Sky, their domains and purviews encompassed the three realms: such as Anitun Tabu, the Rain Bringer, who controlled the weather in the Sky and her brother Dumakulem, the Mountain Guardian, who protected humans on the land. Even the Sea, treacherous though it was, had Amanikable, the Hunter Lord, who watched over the fishermen as they toiled upon the unpredictable Sea.

There were others, of course, and I knew them by name, by face, by domain and purview—for I had been an heir to Bathala, and might have been their new Ruler of the Sky—but there was more than just diwata and humans in the world.

Anito were as numerous as they were varied, and mysterious in addition to that, for their origins couldn’t be attributed to Bathala, even though they inhabited the world he Created. They appeared seemingly randomly and in practically anything—animals, plants, places, objects, natural phenomena, and intangible concepts—even humans. The human anito, uncommon as they were, generally only appeared after death as ninunò, ancestor spirits who guided their descendants through times of hardship.

However, sometimes, there could be an even more exceptional form of human anito, so rare that they had no name; humans who, in life, could even measure up to the power of diwata…

… Like warding off the Serpent of the Sea with nothing more than the sound of gongs.

~

A/N: I’m going to do this! I believe in myself! Also I have finally stated Mayari’s name! And I am still as bad at dialogue as ever! I’m a little meeeeh about her title as “Radiant Moon” I wasn’t sure if I should use a different adjective but it’s the one that best fits for now, I guess?

I am mixing the different regional myths. Because sometimes Mayari is but one of many moon goddesses (and also, sometimes a guy) and technically Mayari isn’t the moon god(dess) who is related to the Bakunawa myth, but that’s the premise from the original Blood Moon, so I’m filling in the blanks with other moon-related Filipino myths. ~RESEARCH~

[leahgrcy]

Her mother was going to kill her. 

A fact that Leah became all the more aware of the longer she looked at the tear in the dress that she hadn’t wanted in the first place. It would never seemingly matter all that much how many times she told her parents she didn’t need another, that she’d just ruin it like she did the last --- which, of course, never sat well with a woman who wanted nothing more than for Leah to just *look* as much a proper young woman as they could manage, yet that was merely one more thing that Leah and Annaliese Grey would never see eye to eye on. The main reason for her stripping down to her undergarments and leaving the tattered dress a puddle on the floor of her mother’s sitting room, was done almost purely to prove a point, already twisting her arm with some effort to pick apart the ribbon that held her corset together as she pressed on through her home.. Yet another thing she’d been forced into hours before dinner. One could barely comprehend that her mother wanted Leah, of all people, to sit still long enough to learn some other god-awful skill , she already knew how to play the piano, painting was a lost cause and she honestly had absolutely *no* interest in joining her to entertain whatever guests Leah might deem unwanted in the first place. She could read, and really, that was about the full extent of what she intended to meet her mother on for compromise. The way she saw it? If Lukas could do as he wished, Leah would do the same.

And her mother really was going to kill her. If not for the former, then most certainly because she’d slipped through the side entrance of their home well past the gleam of lights through the window, looking as though she’d crawled through a thicket -- and she might very well have at one point, but who was to tell. With any luck, her mother would be far too distracted by some stuffy guest to notice that after never showing up for dinner in the first place, she’d finally returned; a mess.

It was near impossible to grow up in a house deemed haunted, merely by it’s current inhabitants, to piece together some semblance of a normal life, no matter how hard her werewolf mother and witch father might have thought to try. For anyone looking in, Leah painted a picture of a rebellious --- difficult daughter who’d likely never grow to be anything but, when in reality, she was only trying to break the cage that her mother's heavy shadowing cast over her shoulders. That, was exactly how she’d managed to pinpoint the floorboards across the hall that would creak beneath her weight long before she’d ever snuck out the first time some years before her twelfth birthday. What she’d never known, was that her father, once figuring out what his daughter was doing, had left it near impossible for anyone outside of his study to hear her, his wife so often hounding Leah for undivided attention he knew his daughter simply didn’t have in her, to further entice his little girl into believing that nobody ever knew what she was up to. That, and he’d never wanted to suffocate her with their own pressing disagreement, that neither could find it in them to come to  level ground on how they wanted their spitfire daughter, to grow up. It might very well have been his knowing that caught the rather loud conversation echoing off the walls of his study to something more akin to heated whispers. The unmistakable voice of her father's best friend far more erratic than she’d ever heard before. The slight shift of the wooden door on its hinges clawed it’s way across her spine as it shifted and drew Leah back into the shadow of the opposite doorway; partly because she didn’t really want to be caught by either man. Standing outside her father's study wearing little more than her mother's timely heart attack stitched to the seams of her underwear if she was seen, *mostly* because she was far more curious than her caged heart could settle with. “---- how is this enough for you?” It’s sharp and even she can pick at the disbelief in Nathan’s voice with two fingers. Her father's silence, she could read far too easily, the passing few seconds that slipped between the other room enough for her to paint a brilliant picture of her father's face. “More than enough. You’re playing with dangerous things that neither of us truly understand and I’m not willing to pay the price of that.” A heavy sigh that didn’t belong to Aeron clipped her father’s pause, “You knew that well before we got here.” Something slammed down against wood, her father's desk , she isn’t sure what. “How can this be enough? We made this possible, didn’t we? Think of what else we could do.” Leah had no doubt that there were a great many things within these walls that she didn’t know about, but something about the conversation she was overhearing seemed… far deeper than that. Daunting, even, that she was eavesdropping in the first place. “You're not talking about more power. More power, we already have. You're talking about taking control of an entire species,” Unbeknownst to Leah, *her* own kind beneath the burning microscope of possibility. “Surely I don't need to tell you how insane that is.” It’s a sharpened hiss that tacks itself to the edge of his tongue, and Leah can almost surely imagine him standing taller than any man she’d ever seen now. “I don’t need anything more than this, which part of that do you not understand? We did what we wanted to do, we have it, enough is enough. The further you go with this, the more we risk..” There’d only ever been twice in her life she’d ever heard that tone in her father's voice, and she’d stood on the receiving end of it *once*, “Trying this on your own will get you kil---.” She'd never quite seen rage before, unkempt and unchecked, but something about what followed struck her spine with shock. “Which is exactly why I need you in on this.”  such demand felt almost guttural, and the silence alone that followed cast an eerie chill across the hall. 

If there was one thing she understood very clearly, it was that her father wasn’t a man easily persuaded, lenient --- *sure*, but convinced of anything beyond a decision he’d already made? Like prying teeth. Voices died beyond what she could make out and out of frustration, or vying curiosity she stepped forward, the floorboards beneath her feet creaking and stilling the air in her lungs until she heard the shift of footsteps beyond the opposite door. “I thought you said we were alone." The door shifted further closed in the breath of air that Leah held onto. “You need to leave, we’re done here and I don't need to hear about this again. I’m trying to help you, Nathan. For once, just listen to me.” Perhaps, if she’d been paying closer attention to everything she heard, added to the lengthy list of conversations she overheard within the walls of her own home, she might have stood a chance at steeling her own resolve the second the door to the study flung open and Nathan Rhys stepped out into the hall with her. Despite the shift of her features that surely pitched an image similar to her own father's indifference, she’s not able to bring anything close to words up through the sudden tightening in her throat. “A little late to be playing out in the woods, don’t you think, Leah?” Truly, she’d only ever met the man a handful of times, and never  had he cast such an unwelcoming feeling in the pit of her stomach as right now, with his hand lifting to pull a small broken twig from the tresses of her hair, the sharp tweak of hair pulled from her skull barely noticeable as it came free, and the bare bones of a smile that somehow, didn’t hold any warmth.  “Leah, go find your brother, your mother is about to come looking for you both.” The short jolt between her shoulders that came with Aeron’s hand against her shoulder, a necessity in drawing her attention, doe like hues previously fixated on Nathan. “He’s not--.” “Lukas is picking your dress up off of the floor, as we speak.” It’s little more than the tightening of his fingertips that draw Leah back a little way, and really, the fact that Aeron seemed to *know,* everything was more than enough to break any sense of focus she might have fixated on her father’s closest friend. “Another one, Leah? Mother’s going to kill you.” The sound of her brothers heavy footsteps might have cast something far lighter in the depth of russet hues as he came upon the three of them in the hall, “I’m sure your father would have no trouble at all fixing that up, we all get a little..-- wild sometimes.” And maybe there’s something more spoken between adults, but Lukas’ has his hand curled around the crook of her elbow and is all but dragging her further down the hall until it’s impossible for eyes to linger on a man that makes her skin crawl for reasons she can’t quite put her finger on. And maybe, if she’d been even a little more perceptive than she’d ever been, she might have picked apart the undertone that held nothing but warning and sickly promise. 

Impossible to know what woke her beyond the realms of a world she didn’t particularly want to be in, an echo of amber glow that flickered across flesh that felt far too real to be burning up like it had without the pain that should have flourished, or the sweat that pooled in the small of her back and pressed discomfort across her spine. Or --- the raspy, dark voice that cast her name across the back of her neck with the press of a breath that might have belonged to another had they stood at her back. It caught in her lungs as hues adjusted to the lowly light of the rising full moon and she noted that it was not yet late, just as surely as she sought to confirm that nobody had spoken aloud. Such impossibility proven by the fact that she was undoubtedly, alone. 

Even knowing as much, Leah drew herself from beneath the covers and tore open the door of her closet, only to come face with .. fabric, with the dresses her mother continued to plague her with. And maybe, it’s enough to draw some sense of relief back into the edge of her spine, or it was until amber glow that surely didn’t follow her from her dreams bloomed in the very corner of her vision. Cast eerily across the glass of her window as pieces from a burning dream sear into the back of her eyelids as if perhaps she wasn’t really awake yet. Eyes closed tightly and she wondered how much it would take to wake herself up out of a dream. Though, she supposed in some sense, had she been dreaming, she likely wouldn’t be able to piece together a thought about herself being stuck in a dream in the first place and really, it was all a little confusing considering she was yet barely awake. Yet, even as she sought to open her eyes, a world forgotten beyond it in the mess of her own thoughts, there was no possible way that the heart in her chest could have stilled any more abruptly in the realization that, not an ounce of her dreams had seeped out into this reality, rather, her dreams might have painted reality instead. For as long as she could willingly piece together in memory, Alice Miller had lived exactly three houses down, on the opposite side of the street and when she was eight she’d begged and pleaded with her parents to move her to the upstairs room at the end of the hall. So, even when they were separated, they could still see the window to each others bedrooms. A window that now, shattered under the heated pressure of flames that seemed to tear like claws at the structure of her best friends home. Fear didn’t exist within the wild bones of a girl that sought to challenge it at every turn, however, the bristle that pricked the back of her neck and pitched her stomach into the floor below caught her so forcefully within her ribcage that Leah was convinced she’d never breathe again. Yet lacking air in her lungs was a fleeting thought, and not nearly enough  to stop bare feet from catching every creaking floorboard of the hallway, and the staircase two steps at a time, knocking over a vase on the landing below ---- never hearing it smash across the floor; before she pierced the world beyond her family home and came face to face with the sound and smell that had been void in her dreams. “Leah!” This time, it didn’t stretch across the back of her neck like ice, her brothers voice booming as he threw open the front door too many paces behind her for it to matter. “Leah, stop!” Small as she may have been, Leah had made a point of being fast from the moment that Tommy Kennedy had claimed that no girl could beat him in a foot race, but perhaps now, she wasn’t quite fast enough. Those that had already spilled out across the street before the Miller’s home crowded by the front garden, several of them clawing to hold both of Alice’s parents back from the blaze despite their harrowing screams that filled the air for their daughter. The very same that turned her stomach and tore open the seams of every vital organ that Leah needed just to stand on her own. “Where is she? Where’s Alice?” Impossible to miss the pitched crack in her voice as she rocks against the heels of bare feet, “Where..-- Where is she?” It breaks and topples from her lips in something akin to a scream of her own above the raging sound of wood cracking inside the flames. And one could very well argue that perhaps, Leah Grey simply didn’t possess the sentiment of a flight response, but truly, she was just far too proud to ever admit that she just as surely felt the tightening in her chest and the defying tremble in her fingertips as she hooked the small picket fence, tripping in any attempt to land on her feet as loose fingertips that sought to grab a hold of her, slipped. “Someone grab her! Lea--” There was no way to explain it. The deafening sound of roaring flames that surround her the second she slips beneath a fallen beam and into her friends crumbling home. She can feel the air burning up, feel it crackling and screaming beneath the pressure of the flame itself, but it’s quieter than she expected it to be. The kind of quiet that finds a home inside a hurricane, only, the eye of this storm is flickering across her ankles and scorching the skin across her arm, and it breaks the breath of air she holds and twists it until she screams into the harrowing oblivion of this particular nightmare. “Al..-Alice?” Smoke doesn’t feel weightless in her lungs and she imagines, for a brief second, that this must be what drowning is like as her arm lifts to cover her mouth, just as another window explodes and showers the outside terrace with glass. 

And, maybe there’s no fire. A thought that only transcends her own panic as the same, cold, prickle slips across the back of her neck and has her stumbling in the opposite direction, deeper into the house, as her name drifts between the dancing emblems of hell itself and ripples a chill in her spine that might just be enough to challenge the burning, bloodied bottoms of her feet. And maybe, she’s still dreaming, because there’s no telling whether the darkened silhouette that stands feet from her, towards the kitchen, is even real. It holds no real sense of tangibility, but the flames seem to slip right through it as it calls her name --- she swears she heard it.. Her eyes are burning, and that has to be the reason for it. That and the heave of lungs that can’t pinpoint anything of worth being drawn in through haphazard breaths, she’s not sure that anything before her is real, at least, until she sees blonde locks splayed across the floor. It takes a whole two seconds --- one, of her head spinning near uncontrollably, and two, for Leah to lose focus as a chunk of the ceiling falls through and rips down across her side, tearing open skin and burning it all the same as it knocks her from her feet. There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing, in this world, or the next, that Leah could ever think to compare the actual taste of flame against her skin to. The wrought smell of burnt flesh growing all the more pungent as her hands blister while she stifles the flame that seeks to engulf her clothes and sear itself as a permanent reminder. “L..--Leah.” It’s perhaps akin to a shot of adrenaline that digs itself into her chest at the faint sound of Alice’s voice fills her head, even if it’s the sole counterpart of an even smaller final breath that Leah doesn’t hear as she crawls across the floor towards her. Never knowing that the voice she hears has been gone for minutes now.

Her body protests, every second of the way and the smell turns her stomach like nothing she’s ever known. But as fingers entwine with those lifeless it pitches a knife of defiance into the small of her back and though she’s certainly not strong enough to carry the other out, there’s no single piece of her that’s so willing to claw her own way out of here without her. Tears mottle with the ash building on her cheeks, leaving streaks behind as she coughs so violently she’s almost sure she blacks out for half a second before the inferno that screams to tear life from their very bones returns with vengeance that Leah doesn’t pick apart until the back door to the Miller’s home is being kicked in and the oxygen that bleeds through enrages flame all the more. “--- Leah? ” Her hand curls around Alice’s wrist. There’s no pulse, but her own beats for too rapidly to fit that piece into this puzzle just yet. Time doesn’t exist, oblivion has snuck up, sought to dig it’s claws into her shoulders and pick apart whatever else remained of her own ticking clock as smoke that filled her lungs charred the inside of her throat and maybe..--- maybe she’s not so invincible as hands far stronger than hers curl around her waist to haul her to her feet. “No..-- No, Alice! She’s here! I can’t..-- we can’t leave her.” It’s raspy, and filled with the ache of her lungs as bloodied feet kick at her father’s form, and then her brothers there. Hands not marred by flame or ash seeking out her face, “We have to go, go with…---” Lightbulbs shattered, Lukas’ arm thrown up to cover their faces, as the whine of peeling paint and wood grew louder, “Go with dad, I’ll get Alice, okay? I promise.” She can’t breathe. That’s all she knows. There’s no air, even when there is air and through blurred vision she’s watching the door as her father places her down on the grass that feels something like glass beneath her knees, only, it’s digging in against her spine and she’s not sure when that happened --- how that happened. Fire, she knows --- now she’s felt it melt her skin, char her lungs and rip every sense of what might have once been comfort from her, but this.. She doesn’t know this, as fire that feels.. Black, tears across her knuckles and scatters every sense of relief she could possibly feel in seeing her brother emerge the flames with Alice cradled against his chest to the wind. “Leah.. Leah, listen to me.” Her hands sting as she lets go of chunks of grass and dirt, pitching herself forward to steady against Aeron’s lowered shoulder, “You gotta breathe.” But it’s otherworldly, and as Lukas places Alice’s lifeless body barely a foot away from her, the crack she feels inside her chest doesn’t… feel right as her body succumbs to everything that should have killed her. “Why isn’t she breathing..-- Help her. Dad..-- Do something!” Pain, begged to be felt. That much she knew, but this…-- this wasn’t begging, this was ripping her ribcage open and forcing blood down her throat until she could taste the guilt and anguish that painted the inside of her body like a tragedy. Something shifts, and suddenly, everything feels more vibrant, and heavy, and painful all at once as russet hues flicker to black. “Lukas, you need to take her, now.” There’s some sense of certainty that blooms within every blister that rises against porcelain skin, the same kind that tells her she’s wrong, but there’s no mistaking the lacking rise and fall of her best friends chest, even for a heaved breath. It’s the kind of certainty that lies within the skeleton of an echoed cry that Leah isn’t sure she’s ever going to stop hearing as reality peaked; Leah Grey wasn’t fast enough, and Alice Miller was dead.

“Lukas.” Their father’s voice sharper this time, demanding almost as he reaches out and grabs his son by the collar of his shirt. She doesn’t see it, she sees nothing but the lifeless blonde in front of her, shaky hands curling into the charred fabric of her clothing as her own body pitches forward until Leah’s tears can fall but an inch to Alice’s body beneath. “No..-- no, there’s.. She can’t..--.” Her brother’s hands tremble just as surely as her own, though, not for the senseless life lost --- but for the one about to crack in ways none of them ever wanted to see. “You take her and get out of here.” And maybe, death would be sweeter than the way her spine seems to split open and every hallowed breath she might have barely wanted to take if Alice couldn’t have just one more, contorts, until a scream that shatters the very stars in the sky into a thousand more scintillated lights tears through the petite brunette so violently, it doesn’t even feel human anymore. “Shit.. -- Shit, we’re out of time.” Aeron shifts forward, slipping his arms beneath Alice’s body and hauling himself to his feet. “You get her as far away from here as you can before it happens. You hear me? Anna will find you both.” Even beneath the haunting sound of the fire, there’s no mistaking the snap of bone and unearthly cry that morphs into a ghost all it’s own. Maybe, it’s poetic. That the moon had risen to hang in the abyss above, bright and beautiful --- and daunting to those controlled by it, in just the same moment that Leah’s heart stopped for the first time as every bone around it shattered. The last thing she knew before the world went black, was her brother, with his arm clinging to her waist, dragging her back towards the woods, “You’re okay.. You’re okay, Leah.” Yet, whatever bottomless ache she feels within her chest far outweighs the panic in his voice, even when every neuron within her feels like it’s still back there, being burnt alive, every mottled cry that sinks itself deeper like claws a harrowing promise that Leah suddenly knew what might be worse than death. “Whatever happens, we’ll find you. Stay where you are, and mom and I will find you, okay? I promise, you’re gonna’ be okay.”

The first thing she remembers when she wakes up, confused, naked, covered in blood and with the echoes of unbearable pain still ricocheting against her chest is that her heart broke well before her body did.

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/re-claiming-the-fish-saturn-and-capricorn-in-the-age-of-aquarius/

RE-CLAIMING THE FISH: SATURN AND CAPRICORN IN THE AGE OF AQUARIUS

  RE-CLAIMING THE FISH: SATURN AND CAPRICORN IN THE AGE OF AQUARIUS

By Louise Edington

In Astrology, the sign of Capricorn is said to be a feminine sign, and both the sign and it’s ruler are represented by the sea-goat which is a creature of impossibility with the front half of a goat and the tail of a fish. 

Over millennia of Patriarchal rule and conditioning the planet and sign has lost it’s yin qualities with the sea-goat becoming a goat alone much of the time and Saturn and Capricorn being said to represent the Father amongst other things. Saturn and Capricorn have been spoken of in Astrology as harsh, cold and unloving and this article challenges that as being a reflection of the patriarchy itself.

Saturn, the planet is named after a male deity, traditional ancient astrological technique of sect described Saturn as diurnal, which is usually seen as more masculine. And yet, Saturn and Capricorn are earth energies which is traditionally feminine. 

However, the universe is essentially neutral or genderless. It’s the language of Astrology and humankind that has assigned polarity in our search for certainty. In my new book, to be published early in 2020, I invite readers and students of Astrology to, and I quote Astrologer Jason Holley here in the Mountain Astrologer who informed some of this thinking, “embrace multiplicity, non-linearity, and uncertainty” in Astrological language as we move into the Age of Aquarius and as science itself moves further into Quantum wave and entanglement theory. 

I can’t go into more detail yet because of contractual obligations with the publisher but I want to talk about the sea-goat myth in terms of reclaiming that sense of multiplicity and genderless Astrology. After all, we cannot see the gender in the Astrological chart itself. 

As I write this Saturn has just stationed direct at 13 ̊ 54′ Capricorn, and will retrace his Retrograde steps to 20 ̊ 31’ where he stationed Retrograde on April 29th, and is approaching another conjunction with the South Node before moving towards the transformational conjunction with Pluto on Jan 12th 2020 at 22 ̊ Capricorn and, days later, squaring dwarf planet Eris in Aries. 

Additionally, both Saturn and Pluto are being occulted by the Moon, ruler of the Cancer North Node every month this year other than January and December for Saturn as November gets two occultations and January for Pluto. This means their energy is literally being eclipsed by the Moon and Eclipses are re-sets. Saturn’s own South Node is also at 18 ̊ and Pluto’s South Node at 19 ̊ Capricorn so Saturn will also be transiting over these points before meeting Pluto and squaring Eris. 

Then we also receive the news that twenty more Moons of Saturn have been discovered meaning Saturn is now known to have a total of 82 Moons, flying past Jupiter’s 79. New discoveries like this always shift the energy of a planet in our collective psyche. I would suggest that this, alongside the occultations, is softening Saturn’s image in our consciousness. 

The convergence of all these factors is hugely transformative and a big shift away from old rules and ideas. 

It’s my belief that all these Astrological events are inviting us to re-visit and eclipse the patriarchal ways of looking at and speaking about Saturn and Capricorn. This also means that we are being invited to re-visit and eclipse the patriarchal world our perceptions and words have created. In turn, this will ripple out just as wave theory does to change our language about all of Astrology.

This wave is being reflected in the world, the universe as a whole, and is reflected in the wave glyph for the Age of Aquarius.

What of the sea-goat myth? How can we learn from that in this re-visiting? 

The primary sea-goat in Greek mythology is Pricus, an immortal ruler of time created by Cronos, the God of time, son of Uranus and a Titan from the Greek mythological pantheon. 

We must, of course, remember that myths are also created by man to order and explain the universe and aspects of humanity and the Greek civilization was in itself patriarchal in nature. 

Pricus had children who were in his image and who were able to talk and these children were drawn to the land. However, being on the land caused them to turn into goats and lose their powers and intelligence. Pricus attempted to stop this and turned back time to bring them back but they kept returning to land. Not wanting to be a lone sea-goat, Pricus begged Cronos to let him die but Pricus was immortal so unable to die. Instead, Cronos cast Pricus into the stars as the Capricorn constellation so that the lone sea-goat could watch over all his children. 

Like all myths, this is based on more ancient myths from the sands of time when myth was carried down in the oral tradition and Capricorn mythology in ancient Sumeria as associated the the God Enki, the God of water, knowledge, and creation. In Babylonian times Capricorn was described as fishtailed Ea who was the “Antelope of the Sea” and who watched over the land but lived in the ocean at night so never lost the energy of the ocean, as the more modern patriarchal sea goats did. In these ancient mythologies, Capricorn was seen as the gate of death with the opposite sign, Cancer, being the gate of birth. 

It could be said that the Greek Pricus myth itself reflects the loss of, or deliberate erasure of, the night energy under the patriarchy. I use the term night for what has been spoken of as feminine, energy in our society. The patriarchy has demonized and sidelined all that is not day, outgoing, and what has been seen as masculine. The loss of powers experienced by the sea-goats as they rejected the water reflects the loss of essential powers within each of us under the patriarchal structures and language we have lived under for millennia. Though interestingly, in other myths, the goat actually suckled Zeus as a baby, and Zeus or Jupiter is the King of patriarchal pantheons moving forward as he took down the ancient God of time. 

The occultations of Saturn and other aspects of Saturn in the sign of rulership are asking us to reclaim the seemingly impossible nature of the sea-goat in my opinion. We are each both goat and fish, both day and night, both land and sea. We all inhabit both realms. We each are born and die. There are no opposites and polarities even though our human need to make sense creates this separation because everything is connected in entanglement and cycles and waves. 

Like the cycles of life and death, Capricorn and Cancer work in tandem, together. Like the Sea Goat, the Crab that is the symbol of Cancer, inhabits both the land and the sea though taking the Hermit crab as an example, the Crab can only survive on land if it stays moist. Both the Seat Goat and Crab lose their powers if on land for too long and if they don’t return to the water regularly. 

In patriarchal times, the qualities of the night have been devalued. These are the qualities of acknowledging and validating emotional responses and feelings, the value of nurturing and supporting others, true humility and empathy. Left brain characteristics of rational, logical, factual and verbal reasoning have become over valued in relationship to the right brain qualities of creativity, emotion, intuition and imagination. 

Think of the language used in our lifetime to devalue the night energies of the right brain. 

‘It’s just your imagination’

‘You are irrational’ 

‘Control yourself’

I’m sure you get the picture. 

Yet Saturn and Capricorn are night or feminine energies, though I believe Saturn as traditional ruler of Aquarius has both day and night qualities as do all the traditional planets, and the language used in Astrology for both planet and sign is that of the left brain. 

Saturn is described as the Father, external authority, rules, limitations, control.

Capricorn is described as discipline, practicality, determination, leadership, controlling, responsibility. 

They are all of those but our human minds have interpreted this all as very male and taken those qualities to mean dominion over others, to mean hierarchies, and to mean controlling others rather than the self. 

This is a simplistic explanation to say that the night qualities of Saturn and Capricorn, or the fish tail of the sea goat, have been lost. 

A higher understanding of Saturn and Capricorn is that of the wisdom of the elder or crone, near to the ancient Gate of Death and in tandem with the Cancer Gate of Birth. Both working in cyclical and circular harmony. 

In the Cosmic Intelligence article written by Linea Horne on the Lunar occultations she speaks of the Circle of Grandmothers for becoming more enlightened Capricorn energy and I agree. I would take it even further as we move into the Age of Aquarius and merely call it the Circle of Wisdom.

Ancient cultures had pantheons of Gods that represented both day and night energies and that had equal value so we must move away from the binary and oppositional world of the patriarchy and return to a more inclusive and integrated language in Astrology and life. 

The re-claiming of the fish tail of the impossible (I’m possible) sea-goat will aid us in that path. 

When speaking of Saturn and Capricorn as a night energy Astrologers can, and many are, speak of external authority as how we allow others power of us and how the only real authority is within, rather than speaking of it as a controlling and dominating energy. After all, we can only be controlled if we allow outside forces to dominate us. 

As we move into the wave energy of the Age of Aquarius, we are being asked to take a more diffuse view of both Saturn and Capricorn and to change our language as Astrologers to reflect the receptive, more malleable, and softer, elder wisdom energy they both contain. Discipline is a loving parental act if done with wisdom, for example. 

If Astrological language itself re-claims the seemingly impossibility of being both night and day as we approach our work, we can help to shape the New Paradigm itself. 

******

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[tomasorban]

THE ZODIAC: CANCER THE CRAB

Date of Rulership: 22nd June-23rd July; Polarity: Negative, female; Quality: Cardinal; Ruling planet: Moon; Element: Water; Body part: Heart, Lungs, and stomach; Colour: Silvery Grey; Gemstone: Pearl; Metal: Silver.

In the signs thus far examined, we have seen the formative energies of life achieve expression through different mediums: initially through the spontaneity and impulsive carnal drives of Aries; then through the aesthetic kaleidoscope of meandering Taurus; and finally the subdivision of vital force under the command of Gemini which enabled an innovative, evolutionary leap of consciousness. The latter’s propensity to concurrently exist in material and ethereal worlds also made sentient an intermediary realm in which the physical and spiritual mingled. Many would understand this intermediary plane to be the unrestrained world of imagination, intuition, thinking, memory, and emotion. It binds spirit to the body, and the emancipating dialogue that ensues between the two as a result engenders far-reaching repercussions for both. It invariably shapes the bundle of psychological habits and impulses that each of us calls self. It is the god Proteus and the nymph Thetis; a primordial ocean of acute shape-shifting awareness. Sometimes one might find themselves trapped in a kaleidoscopic labyrinth of geometrical contours or in shapeless clouds. At other times, one might see a sequence of rhythms or sounds, hear colourful objects, and taste backward or previously unseen locomotion. At other times still, one can be overwhelmed or possessed by anxiety, fear, titillation, love, or relaxation one minute, and riddled by a complete absence of emotion the next. At some point it might be apparent that everything in existence comprises the skin of a gargantuan cosmic animal and at other points all created matter might appear to be discarnate and autonomous entities that simply inhabit the same cosmic space. Polarities can coalesce under a singular experience and thinking processes are transposed to concentrated levels that elude comprehension on the physical plane. Nothing is ever controlled or mediated; there is just a perpetual waxing and waning of thoughts and ideas that explode onto the sands of consciousness one minute and dry up the next. Time becomes a helium balloon, expanding as to spur the perception that a plethora of daylong activities have been squeezed into the space of a few minutes and then shrinking as to flush out the space of a day in two seconds. In this realm, the personal can become impersonal very quickly and barriers deemed impenetrable in the physical world are breached at will.

Gemini’s severe allergies to the emotional faucet rendered it somewhat superficial, insensitive, and impotent to the depth of experience, an anomaly which is corrected with the inauguration of the Cancerian archetype. Because the formative energies of Cancer originate from this intermediary realm of being which connects the physical and spiritual, it acquaints humans with their individual souls but also with the anima mundi, the cosmic soul of Mother Nature which unites all creatures irrespective of size or complexity. A newborn inclination to look inward for nirvana underpins the fundamental Gnostic adage of this archetype, namely that the external environment, the mechanical world into which we are born, appears to be an exotic synthesis of indifferent and insensitive elements that cannot offer inner harmony or fulfilment to spiritually-orientated humanity. The only hope for the human condition, according to Cancer, is to turn on the emotional faucets of the psychic plane and let the cold and hot water form a sensitive current that incite a sense of meaning and purpose and drive the impersonal spirit or life force through the tumultuous waters of life until it is again time to reunite with the paradisal state of perfection in maternal unconsciousness.

“Folks, life’s all about being feelings,” says Cancer. “Feelings and sandcastles, my friends! I like to build mine with all sorts of implements, usually down by the seashore. If I don’t use sand and water its paint and pastels, and sometimes I even use pen and writing paper. I create them with my vivid imagination and decide who or what is going to be living inside. I decide upon fates and lifespans and transcribe the romantic events that will unravel within its high walls. Sadly, there comes a time when the incoming tide levels and sucks them back into the pit of the ocean’s stomach. I understand the tides, the coming and going of primordial energies, and the cycles of the cosmos like no other which is why I build my houses strong. Strength equals domestic stability and tranquillity, something everyone wants! I use the sturdiest things available–sticks, stones, metals, bits of detritus from the seabed–to insulate my soft and squishy parts from Mother Nature’s wrath and Man’s acidic and unbecoming temperament. As a humanitarian, I’m always willing to share my space with an appropriate other, especially if that other is a poor, helpless soul in need of smothering or mothering.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m tactile and love affection. I’ll also admit that I do have too much of the moon and the sea in me; my moods can go from black, to low, to white, to high, and to crescent shape in the space of about a microsecond. I can be volatile that way, but I more than make up for it with my talent for story-telling, my attention to detail, and my emotional rapport. I can also be timid and shy, but once you’ve gained my trust and extricated me from my crabby shell you’ll feel like you’ve known me for years! Once I’m out you’ll have to be rather gentle with me; I’m not particularly fond of prying eyes or confrontation, verbal or otherwise, so I will often sidestep around these. If this is not possible or plausible I’ll just thrust my big old pincers out and threaten to dice the adversary up into little pieces. You should also know that I’m a fiercely faithful friend, and my concern for the welfare of others can often be mistaken for clinginess and co-dependence. My soul is dark like rocks of obsidian, and deeper than the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean. Just like these qualities strike night terrors in those individuals not quite attuned to their inner selves, so too does it nurture my own worst nightmare–the fear that I might be deserted to my own devices and have to face life alone.”

Cancer is undoubtedly the first sign to actively work through the mimetic bank of the collective unconscious, drawing upon cosmic archetypes like the tribal brother or sister, love, the heroic journey, utopian societies like the legendary Atlantis, and the struggle between seemingly disembodied forces of good and evil to create its own narratives, real or imagined. Souls incarnating through the stars of this zodiacal constellation more often than not exhibit melancholia, sentimentalist romanticism, and a longing to recapture the locus classicus of Golden Ages bygone. The latter is most likely due to the fact that Cancerians retain prenatal memories of the paradisal perfection within the womb, and hence looking backward into the past is also examining a longwinded path that meanders further and further from union with the divine.  Their deep connection to the supranormal and creative powers of the greater subconscious mind and its intuitive faction, as well as a heartfelt obsession with the subtler and intimate details of our psychological makeup makes them the true hub of the arts. It is no coincidence that souls born under the aegis of Cancer tend to be artists, writers, musicians, and poets. The unconscious willpower or drive of a Cancerian soul is second to none.

Lamentably, Cancer’s derivation from an imaginative plane experienced through the electrical power of primordial ebbs and flows without the aid of a transistor isn’t all milk and honey. Cancerians are notorious for letting the intellectual throne of their personal kingdoms be usurped by emotion, and we all know what happens when unchecked emotions are given prominence over wisdom and intellect: problems and worries multiply and quickly distort our perceptions of the outside world so that everyone appears dishonest, deceptive, potentially threatening, and narcissistic. Emotionally disturbed Cancerians usually repress their feelings for prolonged periods, letting grievances and resentments simmer and become pressurised deep in the confines of their unconscious until these can no longer be contained. When the tempestuous eruption finally comes to pass, the rock-melting intensity of the sonic blast can be so potent as to incinerate, alter, or disfigure relationships permanently. This is one of just many reasons why Cancerians are introverts, choosing to traffic in relationships that are highly unlikely to balloon into melodramatic love affairs or force them into encounters with their own shadows.  

Like Aries, Taurus and Gemini, there are also two symbols associated with Cancer the Crab. The first of these, the animal totem, evokes the primary psychic composition of all beings born under this zodiacal sign; deriving from and dwelling in the element of water, crabs are tranquil, expressive and passive in their habits. The existence of a shell denotes a self-absorbed proclivity towards domestication, introversion, emotional vulnerability, and cultivation of the soul’s imaginative realm. In embarking in a cross-cultural and historical examination, we find that the ubiquitous expression of this archetype has altered in time. For some of the prehistoric cultures, Cancer was represented as a crayfish. Moving into historic times, the ancient Egyptians imagined the constellation as an embodiment of the morning sun–Khephera –whose totemic animal was the scarab beetle. The modern image associated with this archetype was inherited from Babylonian or Chaldean astrology, the latter also influencing the iconography used by the Persian and Hellenistic peoples. The fixed stars associated with this constellation were deemed of utmost importance given that they delineated the seat of an ethereal Great Mother Goddess from which all life in the cosmos had sprung forth. Two ancient calendars, the Egyptian and the Mayan, further illuminate Cancer’s importance as an archetypal indicator of cosmic beginnings and endings: the ancient Egyptians, ascribed prominence to it as the home in which almighty Sirius, the mediating star of the wheel of heaven, rose heliacally to herald the New Year; and the Mayans prophesized that an alignment of the planets within Cancer would spur an act of un-creation and spell the end of the universe. In Roman myth, the goddess Juno fashioned Cancer and placed her in the starry heavens to serve as a cosmic chronometer and reverse the forward-moving cycle of creation when she finally felt that the process of becoming would be of no further benefit to mortals and immortals alike.

The second symbol, an astrological shorthand for the zodiacal sign, shows two identical figures whose arrangement discloses polar opposition. In Gemini this image of duality symbolizes a conunctionis or marriage of opposites, but in Cancer it draws attention to the insuperable psychic tides that are inherent in the nature of this archetype and demonstrated by the gravitational forces and see-saw interfaces imposed upon the earth by its mediating planet, the moon. The two spirals pertaining to each figure may be interpreted in a variety of ways; either as a pair of breasts, symbols of fecundity and divine providence, or as two spermatozoa whose conjunction generates the miracle of life. Both are connected to creation and both recall the feminine element of water as the great cosmic womb through which evolutionary life processes take root. Naturally this sign is intimately connected to physical conception and birth, as well as the psychological dependence of the developing ego on the uroboric Self. Hence, the symbol also serves as a memory cue for those primordial moments of happiness, fundamental unity, oneness, and paradisal perfection experienced in the womb before birth, along with the sadness and loss that comes from being separated from the maternal realm of unconsciousness.

[kashikoikawaiisaschachen]

Hello Charlotte explained

I want to torture myself by trying to understand the complicated universe of Hello Charlotte and what actually happened in all the episodes, so here I go lol.

PSA: This post isn’t a complete guide to Hello Charlotte. It will be updated from time to time as I figure out more about the story.

Warning: Long text ahead to explain the whole plot.

---

First, we have the True Realm. This is where Charles Eyler writes his fanfic to cope, regularly plagued by the illusion of his unborn younger sister Scarlett Eyler and pressured to become a doctor. His mother is mentally ill and bedridden after her husband had forced her to abort Scarlett. To make matters worse, she sees her son as Scarlett due to the trauma. Anri also exists here as his fake girlfriend and Charles wrote her into the story as Charlotte's best friend. Charles inserts himself as C/Vincent borrowing his internet friend Vincent's appearance.

Later, he gave up and committed suicide after his mother died, unable to pass the Trial. He failed to overcome his hardships, thus his own life became a story about giving up. Every event after that happened after his death in the True Realm.

The False Realm is where most of the story takes place, especially before EP3. The House is what the False Realm is called with many floors, each inhabited by different people. It's essentially a fiction within a fiction. Some floors have a Charlotte inhabiting them. The 1st floor is Charlotte the protagonist's house. 2nd floor is where the school is. The 4th floor is where another Charlotte caused the Great Cluster by absorbing its inhabitants to herself. The 6th floor is where Charlotte 091 is, although merely a bunch of organs and merged with the Charlotte from EP1, she’s kept alive for a little longer to please the audience. The 9th floor has a Charlotte who consumed everything to keep its inhabitants alive (probably a reference to EP2's Grey End). The 11th floor is where Mother takes resident.

The Father and the Mother of the House are based on Charles own parents. Mother (possibly Lilith), unlike Charles/C is the true God of the House and she produces Charlotte vessels assigned with different roles for their own stories. She also manages a network from which a Charlotte can draw power from and use it to grant her wish at the cost of ending her story, thus dying permanently. Charlotte/Scarlett made a wish to save the Oracle from dying in EP1, which in return should have ended her story. But the Oracle/091 intervened by creating a channel made of Scarlett’s soul data (more info a few paragraphs below).

Father aka the Umbrella Man oversees the False Realm and provides guidance to Charlotte. Seth the Puppeteer aka us the player is named after Seth the Umbrella Man. When Umbrella Man called himself Charles in EP2′s Grey End, he wasn't Charles himself, but rather his impostor as C told Q84 at one point. Though sometimes Father may refer to Charles himself, due to the False Realm being the universe of Charles’ mind. In fact, Charles has always used a Vincent vessel in the False Realm, way back since EP1 when he helped Charlotte/Scarlett in the TV world.

After Scarlett died by Q84's hands in EP3, so did Q84. Umbrella Man granted Charles' wish to resurrect her so that her story could continue. And so Q84's soul data was uploaded into another Charlotte vessel.

Shortly after that, we were shown a flashback of V19 killing all 2nd floor inhabitants except Scarlett and taunt her to find her. She's the Charlotte unit Umbrella Man was talking about who became self-aware without Charles' interference. After Scarlett found her on the 11th floor, V19 revealed the truth of the world they live in. In disbelief, she used the Oracle’s power to transfer her consciousness into one of the Charlotte vessels to atone herself and try to understand Charlotte better. She and Charlotte from EP1 and 2 were the same person with martyr complex.

As we already know, many concepts in Hello Charlotte are based on Charles' real life experiences, including his friend Vincent's theory on how the world works. According to Vincent, every time someone dies, their soul expands like a Big Bang, forming a new universe made of entirely their own mind. Each Charlotte's soul cube is a world in itself in a form of TV box with soul data aka channels. In EP2, she didn’t think the tenants were real, so imaginary they became. She was also obsessed with the Trial, which in return manifested in her world.

With that said, those TVs we saw in EP1 were most likely Charlotte's soul cubes with their own stories. Since the Oracle in EP1 was Charlotte 091, the Pythias were actually the many Charlottes that Mother has produced in the House. Each time the channel is switched, the TV shows a different outcome - eg. one where Felix didn't die. In EP3′s bad ending, the Phythias were apparently multiple vessels for a single Charlotte.

(Btw, in EP1 many Phythias were apparently killed by the Executioners. Perhaps this is a metaphor of Charles killing off the Charlottes once their stories end?)

As we can see in EP3′s bad ending, Charlotte/Scarlett's soul cube had many channels that can be switched around yet it won't change the outcome of the story, ie. the alternate realities she was trapped in all for the sake of entertainment - proving V19's statement. The only way to put her out of misery is by destroying her soul cube, essentially killing her. On top of not being able to die until her story ends, it’s understandable why Q84 went rogue and wanted to die so badly.

Charles and Q84 left the room, leaving Charlotte/Scarlett to her fate for a while. Q84 decided to use White Society members as new vessels for Charlotte/Scarlett as an attempt to save her. We can see the old Charlotte together with Oracle, their sprites and surrounding distorted. Charlotte/Scarlett was still alive as her soul cube wasn’t destroyed. Oracle invited her to stargazing, as in leaving the story together. Seemingly depressed, she claimed everything Umbrella Man said was a lie. In EP1, Charles/C whispered something that triggered her memories, which in turn made her suicidal in EP2 (it explains the horrifying environment her channel has turned into), although that recollection somehow disappeared at one point. This could mean she didn’t stay clueless forever and at one point realized what is actually going on and that she failed to create a good ending.

In the true ending, Q84 destroyed Charlotte/Scarlett’s soul cube to free her from her fate. Charles entered the False Realm to come in terms with himself, throwing away his Vincent vessel and killing off Mother, ending the stories for good. Q84 hugged and assured him among the ruins of the House, even when Charles’ world has crumbled, a new day will still come.

(I find it really sweet how Q84 developed some empathy in both endings. It shows that she can be a semi-decent person if she wants to, however it’s hard to sympathize with people when you know the world around you is fake, you exist to please complete strangers and everything you’ve been taught is a lie.)

---

tldr;

Hello Charlotte is an unnecessarily complicated story about a depressed young man who writes a self-insert fanfic about his dream girl named Charlotte Wiltshire. She has a different personality and role to fulfil in each scenario he had written. She is predisposed to be fascinated by Vincent, his own self-insert and a false God. At the same time, this also represents his own fascination with Vincent in real life.

EP3 explores the self-fulfilling nature of this as a fictional girl is made just to be abused without fighting back to create an emotional connection with the audience. Some of the defective Charlottes who lack parasites in their brains (as in what grant the Puppeteer control over a character, it’s the reason why Q84 never addressed Seth when making decisions nor can you the player influence her actions, because she lacks your guidance) became self-aware. Q84 in particular fought back against her script by being outright sociopathic, and thus much less relatable to the audience contrary to Charlotte from the previous episodes. Charles or rather Umbrella Man in disguise later asked for Scarlett’s help to stop Q84 from murdering the NPCs. She got killed in the end, so Umbrella Man suggested we should switch to a different story where Scarlett avenged her classmates instead. This is what kicks the plot of Hello Charlotte 1 & 2, separate from the events of EP3.

Some questions remained unanswered though. Judging from what was said, is White/Black End the canon ending of EP2? Charlotte/Scarlett didn't survive the Trial after all. How did Q84 materialize in the True Realm when she’s a fictional character within the House? This is perhaps a metaphor to Q84 being Charles’ favorite Charlotte. After all, Charles is the only ‘real’ person here. Even Umbrella Man’s True Realm’s appearance was only a metaphor. We all know Charles loves his imaginary friends ever since Scarlett appeared as a tulpa and Charlotte existed to fulfil his fantasies  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Since this happened after Charles committed suicide, he can bring pretty much anyone in False Realm with him. And this was probably the False Realm in fact, since Charles’ world has crumbled.

If you made it through this wall of text, I’d gladly like to hear your input :) Thanks for reading!

[the-story-of-six]

Meditation

“Meditation provides a way of learning how to let go. As we sit, the self we’ve been trying to construct and make into a nice, neat package continues to unravel.”

- John Welwood

Iris would sit on the roof for hours, never moving even for the slightest passing breeze, with one leg resting upon the other and both paws clasped together firmly. The sun had just begun to disappear over the tops of the trees, and the Spring air had started to cool as the distant Westward horizon glowed with waves of soft red and purple light. In the distance, the swooshing sounds of passing cars on the nearby freeway could be periodically heard over the serenity of an otherwise quiet and peaceful late afternoon.

The Lucario’s eyes were gently shut, and a small stream of transparent, blue aura vapor seeped from the crack between her right eyelids, indicating that she had been concentrating hard enough to draw energy from the outside air, and then let it flow throughout the conduits in her brain to increase her focus. It was not as violent as it usually was during a battle, rather it was more gentle and wispy as it floated upwards from her eye socket and then dissipated.

She was, on the outside, completely at peace with the world, her entire body appearing as relaxed as a hammock on a warm beach. She was still, and she stood with as much poise as a buddhist monk. On the inside, however, her train of thought had begun to drift off of the tracks, letting old memories and internal struggles plague the mindscape she had worked all day to create. The small thoughts happened so suddenly, like rolling a snowball down a mountain only for it to reach the bottom and become a devastating boulder. She couldn’t help it, not after what she now knew, not with the truth that plagued her like an Egyptian curse. Another wave of anxiety hit her body like a speeding truck, and it shook her so badly that it nearly threw her off balance as she wobbled slightly in the wind passing over the roof of the house, jolting her back to consciousness.

Iris gasped and stared into space for a moment, the real world returning to her, and the haze of aura stopped flowing and then evaporated into the atmosphere. She stood dazed, her pupils dilating, and her surroundings came back into focus. This never happened to her, she had never felt like this for years, not ever since she matured. She needed to calm down, to think things through rationally. She regained control of herself and sighed, taking in a fresh breath of afternoon air to clear her head, and then she righted herself as she was before. It took but a few seconds for her to return to her previous state of thinking, but she eventually recalled the thoughts that had been violently shaken from her mind and then continued where she had left off, pondering the events for the past week of her life.

The pendant she wore around her neck, artfully smithed from gold and embroidered with a black cross passing in front of a smaller sapphire-blue disc, had been with her ever since she was still inside an egg. It was engraved with symbols that roughly translated to a dead language used by an ancient tribe of Lucarios, a tribe that had lived in the Northern mountains of the Sinnoh region thousands of years before the first man had ever set foot in the area.

It was her tribe, it was her ancestors who had all but disappeared as the sands of time etched away at them and their history, their entire population thought to be completely extinct and yet here she was. They were always heavily shrouded in mystery, as ancient ruins with unsolvable hieroglyphs were the only lead to go on. However, more recent investigations had been conducted since the early 50’s, when technology and research had advanced to the point where they were finally able to learn from this apparently once-great civilization. Books were written about their findings, and Iris read them, as many as she could get her hands on. As she read, she began to notice a pattern, a series of intersecting threads that never seemed to quite connect. Of the dozens of books she has ever flipped through, each one of them had always pointed to one, terrifying paradox.

She. Should. Not. Exist.

Her eye, tinted blue and constantly glowing with an intense light, was one of the few connections between her and this tribe of Pokemon she called her ancestors, her family, the ones who left her alone up in the mountains as an egg and never heard from again. It was all there, the language they used that was inscribed in the jewelry she owned, the location she that was found in as a newborn, and most importantly, the source of her abilities.

Her abilities were not simply gained through sheer willpower and physical exercises, no, her power could never be achieved through any normal means of training. This was something else, something that materialized in her when she had evolved into her final form, it made her see and feel things she had never felt before, like she had been injected with knowledge that which existed beyond the boundaries of the dimensional plane she resided in. She could never understand it, nor could anyone else that came across her. Even her trainer was baffled and slightly afraid at the sudden, seemingly unexplainable changes that sprouted, but it never affected the bond they shared as Pokemon and master.

What she read in those old books made her out to be some sort of savior, like a demigod of sorts, blessed by the god named Arceus who watches over all life from above in his Holy kingdom. Her eye was the determining factor, anyone could see that it was something special, but it carried a weight that Iris would have to bear for the rest of her days. The eye represented power, it represented wisdom, and most importantly it represented that Iris’ connection to the spiritual realm of aura and thought was so strong, that she essentially transcended from being a mere Pokemon to being nearly omnipotent.

Arceus was supposed to bless one chosen member in each generation of her clan’s life, as per the deal they made with their holy idol. As long as they continued their worship and sacrifice, as they always had, they would always be protected from harm. Arceus was far, far too busy (apparently) to attend to the needs of each individual on the planet, so instead he bestowed upon them a blessing. In her clan’s own language, Iris memorized the prophecy upon which her life was created to fulfill;

“May the plagues infest us, for our savior will arise from within our numbers to burn the pestilence with aura like fire, and those who oppose our way of life and threaten our loved ones will be forced to face their sins until they repent, and only then can our hero find divine rest until they are once again needed.”

There was a book in the back of the Public Library, which was located in her hometown of Jubilife City, a place she went to quite often. Pokemon were allowed to use public services such as the library, or the local shops, or public transportation, because they could be trusted to understand how such things operated. She got herself a Library card, and she used it periodically to indulge herself in as many intellectual and philosophical works as she could possibly find, occasionally delving into other genres like fantasy and things that entertained and engaged her. She also used the library for her own, personal research, as she scoured the depths of the History and Geography section for anything related to her ancestors. Of course, there were the documentaries, the investigations that gave her the knowledge that she had memorized end to end. There were even works in the Religious category that talked about cases of Arceus appearing on Earth and granting wishes and blessings to those who prayed to him. In those she could sometimes find her clan hidden within the pages, amongst other tribes that were similar to hers, but not quite as important to her for the moment. Her tribe had always been written off as another ruined civilization, a fallen kingdom where all of their beliefs and practices had meant nothing because they had ultimately destroyed themselves and completely disappeared off the face of the planet, never to be seen again. Iris was so emotionally attached to the history of her people, who they were, what they believed in and strived for, but to everyone else they were another example of the way that time can just completely wipe away an entire tribe of once-magnificent creatures and move on to the next one, and then the next one, over and over to infinity and even beyond that. Time is unending, time is limitless, and time feels no remorse.

No matter how deep she dug, Iris always felt in her heart that something wasn’t there, like a piece of the puzzle had escaped and run off. For months she lost her lead, up until she found that book. She had never seen it before, not until it randomly fell off of it’s shelf as she passed by. To any common man the situation could have well been written off as simply being coincidental, albeit incredibly so, like perhaps it wasn’t shelved right, or the wind blowing off of Iris’ body as she passed by was strong enough to knock it off of its fragile perch. But she knew that wasn’t possible, the aura in the air was faint but it happened to appear right where the book has been, then vanished. It was like a passing ghost, something otherworldly that still had a physical interaction with the plane of existence all life on Earth inhabited, but whatever the case may be it still got Iris’ attention as she picked up the book and studied it. The writing on the front of it had faded away so it could no longer be legible, but some red, shiny lettering on the spine of the book barely read, “Gōruden'ōra.”

“Golden Aura…”

She had heard her clan’s name many times before in several different languages, so she knew how to pick it out, but she had never come across this book before until now. On the spot she began to rapidly flip through the pages, reading as fast as her eyes were allowed to move, at first finding only information she had already figured out up to this point, but then suddenly the pages stopped turning and she froze.

It was there, depicted in detail with fine, black ink, next to a wall of text, the pendant she was wearing around her neck. She took one hand off the book and used it to quickly remove the necklace from herself, then placed it on the page. The two of them were side-by-side, identical copies of one another, it couldn’t be mistaken for a different one even if the most skilled craftsman alive attempted to replicate it. Her mind raced with questions as she took the necklace and sat down with her back against the bookshelf behind her, starting to read the text beside the picture.

Since the clan was founded, sightings of this pendant around the tribe leader’s neck had been sourced through studying the surrounding areas of the Eastern Sinnoh region, where other, less-prosperous tribes of other Pokemon had written their history on their own walls. They would write about the blue warriors whose leader would always sport a shiny, blue medallion they would wear wherever they went. In this specific instance, it was a group of Sneasels and Weaviles that had never before been thoroughly documented, as many investigations never seemed to look further than the collapsed snow banks that used to be their homes. This was different, way different. As Iris continued, she discovered that a small group of humans, a party of around 4 or 5, came from their homes to another country in 1942 to further investigate what other researchers had called a dead end. They dug into the snow for months, setting up a remote base camp near the site. Nobody passed through the area normally, so nobody even knew they were out there. They eventually hit a cavern some 10 feet underground, and what they found inside now lie within the pages of the book Iris was holding, and it had never been investigated since.

But her ancestor’s trail ended centuries ago, where no further evidence could prove they still existed past that point in time. There were no writings, no relics, and no way to pull back the thick blanket of snow that had covered the sacred ground upon which they used to roam. According to all accounts she had ever read, the tribe had been wiped off the face of the planet.

And yet here she was

The people who discovered her took both her egg and the necklace back with them, and it had been in her possession ever since. It carried quite a bit of emotional weight for Iris, even if she never made it outright obvious. She never knew what it was for, but she knew it came from her family and that it was important to finding out who she was. Now here, in this book that she had been gifted by some entity whose origins remain a mystery, it was said that the trinket that she had been left with has been worn by every single documented tribe leader that had ever ruled over her tribe. No other history book, encyclopedia, cultural website or Pokemon professor had ever even mentioned any of this before, as far as she knew the necklace was given to her as a parting gift from the family that had left her behind. But now she knew, that it had a much, much greater importance than she could have ever imagined.

The pendant was a symbol of strength, of utmost authority over all others and respect from even the wisest of elders. She could barely come up with a reason as to how, or why, but there it was hung around her as it had always been, a silent symbol of the past that she had so longingly wanted to uncover bit-by-bit. She stood motionless, but visibly there were signs that her concentration was waning, every fiber of her being felt like it was falling face-down into an endless pit as realization washed over her in a tidal wave.

At that moment, she heard voices whisper to her.

They were incoherent, and very, very quiet, but the cacophony of whispers contained key phrases that Iris could just faintly pick out as they swirled around her head like ghosts;

“… forgotten…”

“… -will never understand…”

“… -need you…”

“… prophecy…”

“… half-god…”

“… protect us…”

She could sense the presence of other entities with her now, they were all around her, suffocating her and spinning around her like the clouds of a hurricane. Books began to fall over and off the shelves around her, and lights started to flicker on and off in the section of the library she was in. And her necklace, her necklace seemed to almost hover upwards as the thread attached to it hung around Iris’ neck still. The sapphire disk was glowing brightly then, and it shook violently with the concentrated power of hundreds of generations of Lucarios, who all gave their lives to protect their families, their loved ones, all of the innocent people in the world that needed to be saved because that’s what leaders do. That is what leaders do… and this one singular phrase repeated itself inside of Iris’ head over and over again, with different voices sounding off in an orchestra of enlightenment. These voices, this necklace, it was a connection to the other side, to her ancestors, to her tribe, it was a link to everything she had ever wanted to know, and now it was decided that it was the right time for her to understand.

Now she did understand, she hadn’t just been chosen to protect her clan, she had been chosen as the clan’s leader, and ever since she was born it was always her destiny to take her place beside her ancestors. And now her family was calling her back, lending her their energy, their knowledge, their willpower, to have her lead her clan as their chief, to guide her into her true calling as a hero amongst her people.

But the question still remained, why did they leave her in the first place?

And more than that, where did everyone go?

As she stood there on the roof, all of these realizations rattled around in her head so hauntingly, so absolutely brutally and unrelentingly, that she just had to stop. Her eyes thrust open as an audible gasp escaped her lips and she planted her second foot on the roof to prevent herself from losing her balance again. She took a second to breathe, to calm herself down as the deep dark thoughts of paranoia phased away into stardust inside her head. She was calm now, she felt the gentle breeze blow through her fur, heard the droning sounds of cars on the highway once again, and she sighed as she stretched her arms out into the air. She put them back down and just stared at the sunset, watching the last shred of color vanish behind the horizon, appreciating the world and the small pleasures that came with living there. She smiled slightly, but it dropped again as she turned her attention towards the pendant, using her right paw to lift it up so she could see it around her neck.

She studied it closer now, picking out every detail she could find, all the tiny engravings with thin, swooping lines and miniature stars, and as it sparkled in the moonlight the sapphire disc seemed to almost glow. It was a beautiful work of art, crafted by the finest artisans in the village thousands of years ago, and it was entrusted to her for reasons she used to wonder about constantly.

She used to think perhaps it was a reminder that she had a purpose, set forth by the gods and left for her to figure out the rest. Perhaps her parents knew, or had always known, and they wanted to give her hope, to show her that they would always be with her in one form or another, maybe it was a sign of love.

A single tear rolled down her cheek, she hadn’t cried for years and yet this was enough to bring forth her emotions from the steel-locked gate that she kept them behind. She needed to know why she was abandoned, only to be called back like this. She needed to know how, and she needed to know as soon as possible. There had been a feeling clawing at her back, which had gotten more severe in the past month or so. Something was coming and she didn’t know exactly when, or even what she needed to look out for, but she could tell it was going to be devastating to her and everyone she’d ever loved and that she needed to do something about it before the point of no return.

Iris let the pendant drop to hang where it would always sit, and then turned to stare at the moon coming up and over the trees. On this night it was full, casting the entire region in a soft, bluish light. She looked at it with an expression of determination, with a tinge of melancholy. No matter what may threaten her home she would protect it with her life. No matter how menacing or how powerful these monsters could possibly be she would find a way to save the ones she cared about, she would save them all. Then she would go on to lead her people and rebuild their civilization, if there was anything left at all. She hoped to the gods that it would be so. Iris would never be afraid, not with the strength she had knowing her ancestors were watching over her. She only hoped she had enough time to prepare for what lay ahead, for failure would destroy everything she’d ever had, and the threads of prophecy would be cut. But first, she would have to find her home, if there was anything left of it at all. She hoped to Arceus that she wasn't too late...

As she stood, she swore she could almost feel a warm, reassuring paw on her shoulder.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior October 30, 2020 – COME PLAY, THE CRAFT: LEGACY, HIS HOUSE, SPELL, HOLIDATE and More!

Boy, it was really nice having a week off last week, and honestly, I’m thinking of legitimately cutting back the number of movies I review for this column every week, since trying to review ten to twelve movies in any week is just too much, especially if I’m ever gonna get back to the box office stuff. I don’t expect that to be any time soon since movie theaters are still shut in NYC and any major release is either getting shuffled to next year or onto streaming.

Because Halloween is this Saturday, we can expect a lot of horror movies but a few other things as well. Thankfully, this is also a relatively quieter week as is next week before things absolutely EXLODE once again. Who knows? Maybe movie theaters will be reopened in New York City by then, too.

The highest profile movie of the week (and the one getting the widest theatrical release) might be Jacob Chase’s COME PLAY (Focus), a horror movie that he expanded from his earlier short film “Larry.” The feature stars young Azhy Robertson as Oliver, an autistic boy who discovers a book called “The Misunderstood Monster” on his phone, which awakens a monster called “Larry.” As Oliver’s parents (John Gallagher, Jr and Gillian Jacobs) try to understand what is going on with the boy, Larry continues to wreak havoc on everyone around the boy.

I was generally mixed on this highly high-concept horror movie, maybe because it seemed like a fairly cheesy concept that completely over-utilizes the concept of a monster that inhabits technology to the point where you immediately think of Lights Out. That was also based on a short film expanded into feature, but that was also directed by David F. Sandberg. Chase is a perfectly capable filmmaker, and he has two great actors in Gallagher and Jacobs, the latter playing a far more dramatic role than we’ve seen from her in quite some time.

The problem is that the first hour or so isn’t particularly scary, it actually feels kind of dull and derivative. It’s not really until the last half hour when we get to see Larry in a far scarier physical form than just inhabiting and controlling technology, where things pick up and that last act of the movie does sort of make up for the earlier part of the film.  Come Play isn’t terrible, and I’ve definitely seen far worse, but it’s also no Babadook in terms of doing something original or innovative within the horror realm.

As if we didn’t have enough remakes going on right now, Sony and Blumhouse decided to dump their THE CRAFT: LEGACY, declared as a “continuation” of the beloved 1997 movie, to PVOD this week. I never was a huge fan of the original Craft, but it’s as much a beloved cult movie as any other out there. I truly believe that for any Millennial woman who was in her teens in 1997, this is probably her favorite movie, or maybe it’s just the women I tend to meet.  Anyway, this one is written and directed by Zoe Lister-Jones, who made that wonderful Sundance movie Band-Aid, and it stars Cailee Spaeny as teenager Lilly, who arrives in town with her mother (the wonderful Michelle Monaghan) to live with her mother’s new boyfriend (David Duchovny) and his three sons. Lilly is immediately picked on at school until she falls in with a trio of fellow girls (Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, Zoey Luna) who notices Lilly’s ability and wants her to become the fourth in their mini-coven they’ve created to explore their witchy powers.

Even though I know plenty of women who absolutely love the original 1997 movie, and there’s nothing wrong with that, The Craft never really connected with me, so I went into this without any real emotion about the movie being remade… I mean… continued. Oh, let’s cut the crap. There’s almost nothing that connects this movie to the earlier movie other than it’s another group of teenage girls getting into witchcraft. Maybe there’s some easter eggs in there that didn’t jump out at me, but any actual connection with the first movie seems so tacked-on to a movie that just isn’t very good otherwise. (Lister-Jones leans so heavily on her movie’s soundtrack to keep any sort of momentum going.)

As much as I love the cast Lister-Jones put together, particularly Spaeny and Monaghan, her movie is so disjointed starting with all the silly giggly girly stuff at the beginning, to all the Y.A. lovey-dovey Twilight crap (mostly dealing with Lilly’s hunky love interest of sorts played by Nichoas Galitzine) to about an hour into the movie when things finally get darker but then immediately starts falling apart.

I won’t go into further details to avoid spoilers, but it takes almost an hour to get to anything even remotely resembling an actual plot.  If you’ve seen the original movie, you’ll already know the basic arc except that like last year’s Black Christmas remake -- also by Blumhouse – the movie transforms into a big female empowerment fight against the evil man, who you can figure out quite easily who that might be. I generally felt that Spaeny was really misused and the visual effects to show the girls’ powers are so lame I’m wondering how they got past the Blumhouse quality control standards.

This is a silly and mostly obnoxious girls’ movie that made me feel old AF as it chose to deal more with feelings than anything even remotely resembling scares. After watching it, I was far less surprised The Craft: Legacy was being dumped to VOD rather than getting a theatrical release.

Streaming on Netflix this week is Remi Weeke’s feature debut HIS HOUSE about a refugee couple (played by Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku) who escape from war-torn South Sudan to try to create a new life for themselves in a small English town when they start experiencing all sorts of weird and nefarious occurrences in their new home.

His House is a bonafide horror movie, but one that’s so entirely unique to the genre by adding the fish-out-of-water experience of two immigrants into the mix. It also seemingly uses authentic African mythology and lore to make the supernatural aspect of the story feel much more relevant to the couple at the movie’s core, while at the same time showing the xenophobia experienced by immigrants in the UK.  That last part is something we doesn’t have many opportunities to experience so much in the U.S., but between this and Steve McQueen’s upcoming “Small Axe Anthology” we get to see how racism in the UK shows its ugly face in a different way than it does here.

Weekes’ clearly has a solid handle on the material for his feature debut, which even includes a small role for former Doctor Who Matt Smith, but I was more impressed with the strong performances by the two leads combined with how Weekes worked with his team to create actual scares in new and intriguing ways.

More importantly, Weekes’ film shows how important it is to establish strong core characters before throwing them into any sort of supernatural horrors, which is why this ultimately works better than some of the other horror films of the week including Spell (see below).

Significantly creepy but tying that into a strong narrative about the immigration situation in the UK, His House delivers on both aspects to create a strong and impressive debut from Weekes. This is a genuinely scary movie that thrives on offering original ideas vs. retread.

Premiering on Premium VOD and Digital (and maybe in a drive-in or two? Who knows?) is Mark Tonderai’s supernatural thriller SPELL (Paramount Home Entertainment), starring Omari Hardwick and Loretta Devine. Hardwick plays Marquis T. Woods, a successful lawyer on his way to his father’s funeral in Appalachia with his family when the plane he’s flying gets hit by a storm. Marquis wakes up trapped in an attic by a Ms. Eloise (Devine) who claims she has complete control over him using a Hoodoo talisman known as a “Boogity.”  Marquis urgently has to escape her dark magic and save his family.

I tried hard to avoid going into this semi-cynically since “horror noir” is now a huge thing thanks to the success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us. Every single horror film with a black lead has tried to combine the same amount of Peele’s socially-aware relevance with typical horror scares. Spell definitely has that despite being written and produced by Kurt Wimmer, best known for the 2002 sci-fi film Equilibrium.

Spell doesn’t take too long getting Hardwick’s family man Marquis out of his comfort zone and back to his Appalachian home where, as a kid, he was abused by his religiously-devout father who believed in the area’s Hoodoo customs. Like classic horror movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and even Hills Have Eyes, Spell is fashioned as people from a different background coming upon strange and deadly Southerners, here represented mainly by Devine’s character but also by almost everyone Marquis and his family meet once they get down to the Appalachia area.

The movie only really gets going once Marquis is trapped by Devine’s Ms. Eloise, and that’s where it turns into a supernatural-tinged version of Misery as he repeatedly tries to escape. I generally love Devine and glad she was able to get more of a lead role that may have normally gone to Octavia Spencer, but Devine has an even harder time getting past her likeable nature, and honestly? By the third or fourth time she has used the term “Boogity” – it’s used a lot – it become even harder to take the movie very seriously.  In general, the movie feels like the filmmakers were trying to throw in too many ideas and only some of them work.

What Tonderai has going for this movie is that he has made a sharp and stylish movie that ably builds the tension as it goes along. It even throws in some deeply disturbing gory movies as it builds to a bit of a revenge action-thriller by its crazy last act. Because of that, Spell finds a way to get past its derivate roots to deliver a thriller that’s likely to keep the audience’s rapt attention despite its issues.

Just in time for Halloween, Netflix releases HOLIDATE, starring Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey as Sloane and Jackson, two people who hate being single on holidays and facing judgment from their families. When they meet, they pledge to be each other’s “holidate” for any festival occasion for the next year.

High-concept R-rated Rom-Com warning!  Not that I’m NOT a fan of this genre when done right, and actually, director John Whitesell (of the “Big Momma” sequels) does a pretty good job getting a lot of laughs out of his amazing cast that includes Kristin Chenoweth (two weeks in a row!), Jessica Capshaw and more.

It’s a little weird seeing Emma Roberts, who I’ve met and interviewed since she was a teenager, in such a racy R-rated role that includes a lot of humor that would not seem out of place in Bridesmaids or an Amy Schumer movie. I’m sure she hates being compared to her famous rom-com star aunt, but Roberts really has mastered the comedy aspect of the genre that’s just as any meet-cute romance. It reminds me a little of two of my favorite rom-coms of 2019, Last Christmas and Plus One, and even if it doesn’t try to be particularly deep or thought provoking, it sure as hell is entertaining.

Despite there being quite a bit of silliness and even some low-brow humor in Holidate, it’s definitely going to be a lot of people’s guilty pleasure, because Roberts and Bracey are so absolutely adorable together. (This movie was so obviously made before COVID because there’s so much partying and Christmas merriment unlike anything we’re likely to see this year.)

Martin Krejci’s THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF WOLF BOY (Vertical) stars Jaden Martell from the “IT” movies as hairy-faced soon-to-be-13-year-old Paul Harker, who lives an isolated life with his garbageman father (Chris Messina). Frustrated by his secluded life, Paul runs away in an effort to find the mother he never met, making a few similarly odd friends along the way.

This is another movie that could have gone either way depending very much on the tone, but its tone is so all over the place that I never quite figured out if this was supposed to be a kids’ movie, something for young adults or just some sort of tax write-off that managed to convince a number of serious players like John Turturro (who has an exec. producer credit) and Chloë Sevigny to get involved.

Martell is generally no slouch himself, having had a number of starring roles, but it seems like this might have been filmed years ago because he looks and sounds like a 10-year-old. You don’t have to get too far into the movie before you see Martell with his hairy make-up, clearly inspired by The Wolfman, as he’s picked on by other kids and eventually decides to run away from home. First, he returns to the carnival where Turturro’s Mr. Silk puts Paul to work as a sideshow freak. That doesn’t work out so Paul runs off and encounters two wild outcast girls, played by Sophie Giannamore and Eve Hewson. That whole time, Paul is being pursued by a detective who wants to bring him home to his worried father.

Sadly, Chris Messina, who has been taking on so many more interesting roles recently, just doesn’t have a ton to do here, and others like Turturro, are so badly overacting it takes you completely out of the movie. The movie does get a little better once Giannamore and Hewson’s characters are introduced into the mix, but Paul’s story never does much to win over the viewer’s interest, so the movie never finds its footing. Even the sentimental final act that introduces characters played by Sevigny and the always great Stephen McKinley Henderson barely makes up for all the earlier silliness. It will be available On Demand and Digitally this Friday.

The movie above has absolutely nothing to do with Andre Gower’s doc Wolfman’s Got Nards (Gravitas Ventures), which is available via VOD right now. It’s a look at the 1987 movie The Monster Squad, which I never really was that into but there’s no denying that it’s the definition of a cult film, because I know so many people who are obsessed with this movie. (Some of are actually in this doc! Germain Lussier and Jen Yamato, I miss you guys!) Gower’s doc covers how the movie got made with Shane Black co-writing it with director Fred Dekker, who basically went on to make…um… Robocop 3. This isn’t quite as fun as the recent You Don’t Nomi in terms of a doc about one specific movie, although there’s a lot of great behind-the-scenes footage, and horror fans will love all the nerdy talk about making the creatures and physical effects for the movie. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen Monster Squad in so long that I just couldn’t get quite as excited about this doc as others might. I think if you love The Monster Squad, this movie will make you plotz!

Another, possibly higher-profile doc is Frederick Wiseman’s CITY HALL , which will debut exclusively at venerable New York arthouse Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema today. It’s a four and a half-hour documentary that follows the day-to-day of Boston’s City Hall and Mayor Marty Walsh as they deal with situations both mundane and extraordinary (like the Red Sox’s 2018 World Series win) over the course of a few months. At 90 years young, Wiseman is a veritable documentary legend who has been working in that medium since the mid-60s with something like 45 or 50 films under his belt. (Some of those films have been and will continue to be streaming as part of Film Forum’s “Wednesdays with Wiseman,” many of them including Q&As with Wiseman and other Oscar-winning documentaries.) Surprisingly, I only first heard of Wiseman when he won two awards from the New York Film Critics Circle a few years back for In Jackson Heights (just over three hours long), and there’s no question he’s a master of what he does, which is cinema verité documentary that does exactly that… documents. I honestly couldn’t get past two hours of watching this stuff, but maybe that’s just me.

Also streaming at Film Forum beginning Friday is King (A Touch of Zen) Hu’s 1979 martial arts drama Raining in the Mountain, starring Hsu Feng, which should be worth a view.

Another interesting doc out this week is Julie Sokolow’s Barefoot: The Mark Baumer Story (1091) about a writer and activist from Providence, Rhode Island named… well, you can figure that out… who decided to walk across the country barefoot over 100 days in order to protest people (including a certain POTUS) ignoring climate change.  It’s a pretty amusing and quirky movie, and if you didn’t know better, you might think it’s a spoof ala the amazing IFC series Documentary Now, but no, it’s real, and Sokolow does a great job keeping this quirky average joe interesting through the film’s 85-minute runtime, although he does get a little annoying, because he’s one of those friends who will just not shut up while complaining about Trump… and this is during a walk that took place before Trump’s inauguration! It’s definitely a very unique and different political doc from others we’ve seen this year maybe because Baumer does seem so down-to-earth despite his kookiness. I liked this doc almost but not quite as much as My Name is Pedro from earlier in the year because it does show that weirdos CAN make a difference! It’s available pretty extensively right now on VOD and digital on most platforms including iTunes, Amazon, and more. You can watch the trailer below and find out viewing options HERE:

After a few months of offering Digital Live Screenings, Metrograph is adding “Ticketed Screenings” for those who don’t want to commit the insanely reasonable $5 a month for a membership. First up this Friday is Olivier Laxe’s doc Fire Will Come (KimStim) which follows Amador Coro, a man accused of starting a fire who returns home from prison to live with his mother in Galicia (the director’s ancestral home), an area for having a high number of wildfires. The film, which won the Un Certain regard Jury Prize at Cannes last year, will have a weeklong run, and it includes a conversation between Laxe and cinematographer Ed Lachman, and a collection of Laxe’s short films will also be available.

A few of the movies still available this week (at least through Wednesday) as part of Metrograph’s Live Screenings include Red Squad, The Werewolf of Washington: Director’s Cut, The Edge (as part of the Robert Kramer retrospective), and Roni Moore and James Blagden’s Midnight in Paris. You can learn more about all of these and joining the Metrograph with a digital membership at the Official Site.

Other movies out this week that I wasn’t able to get to:

US KIDS As an Act of Protest (Speller Street Films) Attack of the Demons (Dark Star Pictures) Madre (Strand Releasing)

Probably the most exciting news for those planning to keep Disney+ past the first free year they got through Verizon, is that The Mandalorian Season 2 debuts on Friday! Also, Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder is now available On Demand, so if you haven’t seen it yet… do it now! (Also, The Hostis on Hulu, so no excuse not to watch some of Director Bong’s pre-Parasite films.)

[jfastereft]

"PLEASE DON'T READ THIS!!"*  a poem, a.k.a.: "Life is A Lecture!"  for Sunday, August 4, 2019

 There's a BARDO!** and - a Brando!***

A panda - and - a Landau!****

With my "X" (wife) asking "[wh]Y,

[did] Bob up-and-die?"    I just sigh!

 When St. Paul said: "Death's a GAIN,"*****

I interrupt: "Yeah!! But-life," I explain,

"Is-both profound AND profane!"

And, when with you've I've lain,

I-think: "NO ONE REALLY KNOWS,

MUCH 'BOUT-NOTHING," as we doze,

And suppose  (pause) that death "sends,"

"Dead ones"       to-special-"ends!"

 WE'RE SO DEFINITE AND CERTAIN.

About-there-being-a- "final curtain!"

I'm not too sure,   That-we'll-ever-con-cur,

And BEST LAID PLANS,   "Humanity" - fans!

We FAN the embers of sweet folk-lore,

Because NO ONE - wants-to open "a door,"

LEADING TO NOTHING, for-it pains "them" so,

To say: "WE'RE NOTHING!"  and "We DON'T know,

NOTHING!"    So, we keep "yapping" with conjecture,

in this DREAM'S CONTINUING LECTURE!

fin  <3       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMkAc2LW5k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd3To_TgHq8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V7Gzr86E1Q

* - UNLESS you WANT to!!!

** - where "good" AND "bad" Buddhists go?

*** - Marlon, a movie actor

**** - Martin, another "dead?" movie actor

***** - Phillipians 1:21

 100 Ways I Figured That You Can Kill Yourself

{dedicated to my hero, Alan Watts} 

Hi, I am J Samuel Davis. Why my father Samuel gave me that name, I guess I will never know; he said that he was inspired to do it because he knew some lawyers that just had an initial as their first name.  Of course, the lawyers he knew probably had a "regular" name like John or Richard or Simon, and, thus, they ended up with corresponding names like: J. Lawrence Tyler, R. Clarence McKenna and S. Porter Stanley, respectively.  My given name, on the other hand, has no real name that the "J" represents! Why?  I have no idea, and, as has been suggested to me, the question "Why" is ridiculous because, in this realm of existence, no one really knows the answer of why anything happens of why it exists.  All we APPEAR able to do is to speculate . . . endlessly, from the beginning of our apparent existence until, apparently, that existence is terminate.  There is just what happens, apparently, and it is all apparently beyond or control. Of course, we appear to be able to believe our speculations about aspects of our existence, even to the point that those speculations provide us with a "peace of mind" that seems to be able to justify our existences and what we do to prolong them. I live in far West Texas . . . a place called Alpine, Texas, in an unusual, barbarous, cocky country called the United State of America.  This country, and the people inhabiting it, is known for the persecution of a culture called the American Indian, until guilt overcame the populous and the Indians were allowed to reassert their cultural values, imported people from Africa to work as slaves, until guilt overcame the slave holders, or their neighbors, and those slaves were "freed" and provided with the means to "take over" the country, via political control, physical superiority and other means, "scientific" and medical "innovations," designed to "improve" the condition of the humans and their environment, ultimately leading to probable destruction of everything, and a host of other anomalies, including something called "fast food," which is a man-made substance, incorporating chemical substances that render these materials largely toxic and ultimately destructive and mutative of everything they encounter and has, ultimately, tainted all that used to be "natural" food. 

  Imagine being all alone, for over 3 years, with suicidal ideations hundreds of times each day.  No medication.  Just sitting with it!  Well, that is what this delightful story is about.  If you ever need ideas on how to "off" yourself, this book is for you!  I should have, perhaps, named the book "LOL."  Plus, I still get to fall into that state on fairly numerous occasions at this time. Maybe not as much, but, still, possibly more than you, Gentle Reader, will ever know!  Or, I could have entitled this book, "Shalom." Perhaps you will understand, if you ever decide to read the "blessed/accursed" thing! 

  Please realize that this writing is simply a therapeutic attempt to "bring the inside to the outside," as some have said.  I hesitate to allow any of you that are "faint of heart" to indulge in these fantastic horrors.  However, all I can do is suggest that you use your own, best judgment; And I wish you the best . . . all of you, really.  I hope no one ever has to be in "the place" that promotes this sort of mental imagery UNLESS you have the mechanisms to deal with it without apparently self-destructing.  I view myself, by the way, as, possessing "faintness of heart," and not just a little . . . but one Helluva lot.   No one knows what the future holds!  (. . . or do they?)  Shalom, which means "peace!"

 THE PREFACE 

I can only write this down and describe what IS happening RIGHT NOW.  I am at the low point.  I do not believe I am at a low or "the" low point; I know.  It is the lowest point I BELIEVE I have ever been at . . . yet, I feel certain that I will be invited to even lower points, as I have been in the past . . . lower and lower points, and I somehow imagine that, at some point, doesn't a really destitute person have to reach the breaking point . . . and then that is where they kill themselves.  Isn't that the "way of the psychotic world?" It is not sadness; that would seem to be acceptable because, perhaps then, I could cry.  But there are no tears.  There IS only hopelessness, helplessness and fear greater than anything I could have ever imagined when I was young.  I know there is no future, no stability and I am completely manipulated and controlled by something that feels completely beyond me.  I do not believe any of this; I know it.  What I believe is that, within 24 hours, I will achieve a state of consciousness where I KNOW that everything will be all right. It will then be no believing, but a knowing of that; however, what I have just described, is what I believe RIGHT NOW.  In this state, not even, really, believing in God, I still cry out to some God for help.  I imagine I am experiencing exactly the description of how Jesus felt on the cross, declaring, "My father, my father, why have you forsaken me?"  It is absolute; I am lost and alone and I have no hope.  Period.  I will continue to try to eat, think and complete the day, hoping for the most rapid ending, BELIEVING that tomorrow will bring a reversal.  I believe, as has been the case, that, within 24 hours, I will be so certain that everything will be fine, that I will KNOW that, without doubt, and I will even act confident and cocky, believing that I really can be stable and hopeful and that life truly has meaning.  Yet I will also reflect, in that moment, that the hopelessness that I feel now has returned over and over, with certainty and power, as it impacts me right now.  Somehow, in that confident state, I will just know that it can not happen again.  

  My life NOW has no meaning, I wish to be dead only and I am sorry that I was ever born, ever brought into this existence.  I will try to eat something and come back to this writing, approximately 24 hours from now; now is 3:55 P.M., with ABSOLUTE HOPELESSNESS, ABSOLUTE ABANDONMENT, Saturday, June 6, 2015. 

  It is 7:56 A.M., Sunday, June 7, 2015, and I am compelled to write this.  It makes no difference.  I can not answer the "Why" of why I am writing this.  Two things occur to me: a song lyric from the rock group Queen: "Nothing really matters . . . at all," and the quote from the Christian Bible: "All is vanity."   

  Let's see.  I was able to sleep, at least to close my eyes and descend into what was seemingly unconsciousness.  I now feel enough energy to get up and move around in somewhat of an easy fashion. I really do not want to write this exactly, yet I do.  I really do not know what to do with the time that is given me.  I really do not WANT to eat or get on Facebook or do artwork or write or be in existence.  I would prefer to be dead because I have no hope for any the value of any future.  I do not know why the world is the way it is. I do not know why people are "out there," doing what they are doing, thinking what they are thinking, except they are all conditioned to be doing what they are doing, as I am.  They perceive relative value in their lives, based on their conditioning and they derive satisfaction from continuing on and they are not prepared or willing to "die, either because they fear what that state represents or they fear the pain of it or they are conditioned to avoid it . . . I do not know.  I am not sure I care, or that I even want to ask these questions of "Why," because I feel certain there are no real answers . . . just speculations, as I have written. 

  In this state, I guess, I feel the need to just keep doing something, to continue to go along with what I consider "the whims" of the people around me because, I guess, they are so certain of the certainty and value of their existences that they would impose them on me.  I THINK my preference, which I feel certain I do not have, is that I might ask them to offer me what they call here "euthanasia," but that option does not appear available right now.  Perhaps I would not opt for it in this state I am in right now; perhaps that is because of my conditioning, being taught about the "sanctity" of life or the value of life, which I have so often vainly clung to.  However, in the state I was in yesterday afternoon, given the severity of the mental anguish, death then, as I recall, was a compelling desire, to end the suffering, which I am told is my own doing, and, therefore, I should be able to overcome that condition. This, of course, I think, and I am REALLY not sure, is the speculation of those who are conditioned to BELIEVE what they do about suffering and, I think, have found what they BELIEVE is real value and enough "peace of mind," or contentment, in their lives, which justifies continuation, not just for them, but for everyone and everything in their lives that they believe holds the fabric of their existence together. Well, the fabric of my existence, to me, seems to be irreparably torn (perhaps it always was torn, but I was conditioned to look away by burying the obvious vileness of my existence in some unconscious pockets in my "psyche," wherever or whatever that is). 

  I anticipate that the day will progress, and I will continue to live "under protest."  I BELIEVE that I will begin to "feel better," yet I BELIEVE that is just feeling different, a different mood, more accepting of what is happening around me, etc.  At some point, I imagine I will begin to BELIEVE that I have a future in art or writing or beginning legal work again, but I think I can say here that I KNOW that whatever thoughts or speculations occur to me, however my mood might change to support those speculations, that it will all come crashing down like the proverbial "house of cards," because I think I KNOW or REALLY BELIEVE that is all this existence represents.  It is all, as Buddhists are said to say, impermanent . . . illusory . . . it is, as in the Pinocchio story, a carnival, where all "innocents" are ushered into a ride infested environment, replete with candied apples and cotton candy, and the apparently once untainted organisms are converted into what the carnival barker is . . . jackasses, ready then to be introduced into the world as "functional" automatons, prepared to do the bidding of whatever cultural their significant others are already immersed in.  And, if the immersion does not take place with sufficient completeness to assure relative "peace of mind," the hapless victim(s) must then be further conditioned, either by, in this Brave New World, mind-altering drugs, more powerful methods of indoctrination, called cults or psychological counseling or any kind of intense, indoctrinating counseling or imprisonment, especially in the United State of America, because any deviation from very narrow parameters must be swiftly dealt with.  These consequences, I BELIEVE, are what I have been trying to hide from these last several years, because I seem to KNOW that I have no place in this existence, in this arrangement, especially given the mood swings I encounter, which, to others, certainly appears to just be a mental aberration or a game that I am playing.  And, perhaps, I have no idea . . . really . . . perhaps it is just a game I am playing.  Perhaps it is such a good game, that the game is now playing me.  I certainly look back on my life and believe that, as in my youth, where I thought "things were OK," it was just because I had been so conditioned or had so conditioned myself or both that things were OK, that I absolutely believed it and was perfectly willing to just go along with everything and everybody BELIEVING that things were kind of sort of all right in the world and there was a benevolent God in "the heavens," and the government was on the up-and-up, or, at least, the party of my choice or, at the very least, the justice system, that would prevent "bad" elements from invading the sanctity of my existence and that of my family, who all loved me very much and wanted only "the best" for me . . . which, of course, amounted to something called "family values," the things that gave me such comfort when I was growing up, having Sunday dinners with my grandparents and playing in the backyard with family and friends.  

[wahbegan]

A brief life history/biology of It

NERD ALERT posting this shit again since the trailer just dropped

The actual nature of IT: So It is an extradimensional entity, similar to H.P. Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones. It originated in something King refers to as “The Macroverse”, a sort of universe outside our universe. It is one of two opposing entities, It and “The Turtle”, a cosmic creator entity. Unlike The Turtle, Its only real biological imperative seems to be destruction. It’s implied that both entities were created by some sort of force/God more powerful than either, simply referred to as “The Other”, but that’s not elaborated on much. The most common theory is that The Dark Tower entity Gan and “The Other” are one and the same.

It is referred to as Pennywise and Bob Gray while in human form, and The Spider, Consumption (vs. The Turtle’s Creation), or The Deadlights in Its true form. The Deadlights seems to be an ambiguous term, and at various points is used to reference to Its true form, Its eyes, and the space outside the universe that It inhabits, it’s all kept kinda vague and intentionally hard to grasp.

Anyway, Its true form exists outside the universe and physically cannot be processed by human minds. Those who see Its true, undisguised form are immediately driven irrevocably insane or killed. The closest approximation Ben Hanscom can come to describing Its true form, which he briefly sort of catches a peripheral sense of, is “an endless, crawling hairy thing” made of “dead” orange light

Its motivation: As mentioned above, it seems to have been created as a force of consumption first and foremost. The “writhing,” lights that comprise the creature seem to be destructive in and of themselves, consuming whatever they come into contact with. It is deeply intelligent, however, and doesn’t run purely on instinct. It is shown to have a sadistic streak, although it probably isn’t sadism in the same sense we think of it. It sees humans strictly as prey animals and sources of amusement, believing them so vastly inferior to Itself as to be negligible. It claims to eat worlds and reality, a statement seemingly corroborated by the effect of The Deadlights on Its surroundings, but the only things It seems to go out of Its way to consume are human children , apparently Its main source of sustenance. It can eat any human, but It prefers Its food terrified. Once again, it’s unclear whether It really understands the full moral ramifications of this, It simply thinks of it as “salting the meat”. Therefore, It usually goes after children because they’re the easiest to scare. Based on what little we know about how It interacts with human beings, and The Dark Tower character Dandelo, whom Stephen King has confirmed is of the same species as It, we can assume that the entity is feeding on the emotion of fear itself as much as, if not more than, the actual flesh of Its prey.

Powers/abilities and weaknesses: In Its own realm and form, the Deadlights, it can be assumed to be nigh-omnipotent. However, in this universe, It is both empowered and limited by whatever physical form It takes. Its main power, of course, is shape-shifting, which It refers to at one point as “putting on airs” and is likened to wearing various masks. Its most common tactic is to appear to children as a clown (Pennywise) to lure them close enough to strike, before transforming into something said child is terrified of. Additionally, It (or at least the part of It that can manifest in our world) came to the land that later became Derry, Maine millions of years ago and seems to exert a certain amount of God-like control over the immediate area. Violent deaths and mysterious disappearances are quietly hushed up or swept under the rug, and the citizens are all apathetic to them for reasons they don’t fully understand themselves. Additionally, It can cause nasty hallucinations in Its targets and exert a level of psychological control over people. Now, as i said before, Its greatest strength (shape-shifting), is also Its ultimate weakness. Once It’s locked into a form, It has to abide by the “rules” of that form as dictated by the imagination the form was drawn from. When in werewolf form, for example, silver can severely injure It, enough to make It retreat. The only way to truly defeat It that we see is the Ritual of Chüd, a mystical battle of wills where the child’s imagination is essentially pitted against the creature. Just as childhood fears and trauma make It stronger, imaginative childhood beliefs and the bond between friends can weaken It. Yes, it’s all very Care Bear(TM) after-school special, but it fits in very well with the themes and message of the novel. 

Forms It takes: -Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Implied to be Its favorite form) -Corpses of Its victims’ loved ones in various states of mutilation and decay (also a reliable standby for It) -Two young drowned boys with orange pom pom fingertips -The Teenage Werewolf -The Mummy -Dracula (with razorblades for teeth and eyes resembling blood clots) -A giant bird (twice, once with a silver tongue with orange growths resembling pom poms on it, and once with several balloons tied to Its wings) -A swarm of flying, flesh-colored leeches -A school of orange piranhas -Jaws -The Creature From the Black Lagoon -The Crawling Eye -Syphilitic homeless man (the disease advanced past the point that he should be dead) -Bev’s abusive father -Frankenstein’s Monster -An 8-foot tall were-doberman -The Witch from Hansel and Gretel -A massive uncanny valley statue of Paul Bunyan (based on this real statue in Bangor, Maine)  -The moon with Pennywise’s clown-face, with ragged holes where the eyes should be -A gigantic, unnatural black spider. (Its “final form” the Losers face, this form is unique in that it isn’t drawn directly from the viewer’s imagination. It only appears this way in Its own lair, stating that It “does not dress at home.” It is not, however, an accurate depiction of Its appearance, but is instead the human mind trying to make sense of what it’s seeing without going insane. The Losers repeatedly state they can almost make out Its true form moving behind the image of the spider their brains have created, but don’t want to as they know what will happen. The second time they face the spider, it appears to be pregnant, indicative of Its state as about to reproduce. It’s not stated how exactly It does this beyond that It appears to lays eggs, but due to Its nature, i assume It reproduces asexually.

NOTE: No matter what form It takes, It usually retains some elements of Pennywise, usually the orange pom pom buttons on his clown suit in one form or another. This is probably because the orange pom poms themselves are reflections of the "baleful orange glow” of The Deadlights. There are often other cracks in Its masks, so to speak, clues pointing to Its true nature as not a natural part of this universe, such as Its defiance of conventional laws of physics (leaning so far out of a window that It should have been overtaken by gravity and fallen, holding balloons that float against the wind, etc.) and the fact that It never casts a shadow. 

Its life-cycle: It hibernates for about 27 years and then awakes, almost always coinciding with a horrific, brutal act of violence. It then preys on the town’s children for anywhere from 14 months to a few years before another tragedy or act of violence, which must be greater than or equal to the event that woke It up in terms of brutality, sates It and It goes back into hibernation. This is only interrupted once, during the First Ritual of Chüd. The second one is implied to kill It for good, or at least Its earthly manifestation, but it’s left ambiguous.

Its history (as known to the protagonists):  -Millions of years ago: It came to Earth in an event similar to an asteroid crash and began to exert control over Derry, influencing it and helping it grow as Its personal killing and feeding pen (At one point, the entity states that It created Derry “In Its image”). -1740: It awoke for unknown reasons and preyed upon the town’s children for 3 years, only going back into hibernation when the entire town of over 300 settlers disappeared without a trace. Local histories chalk the disappearance up to an Indian massacre, but only one building was burned, and no bodies were ever found. -1851: It awoke when a man poisoned his entire family and then committed suicide by ingesting a copious amount of Amanita phalloides, and went back into hibernation for unknown reasons -1879: A group of lumberjacks found the remains of another lumberjack camp that had been snowed in for the winter. All 9 of their bodies were in pieces. It’s unclear how directly It was involved with this atrocity, but judging by the timeline, one can assume the event awakened It. -1904: It awoke when a lumberjack massacred 4 men in a bar, in full view of all the patrons, who seemed strangely unaffected by the violence happening in front of them. The lumberjack was later lynched by crazed townsfolk, many of whom were present during the massacre and did nothing to stop it. It was present on the periphery of these events but took no direct part in them. -1906: It went back into hibernation after an ironworks exploded, killing 108 people, 88 of whom were children on an Easter Egg hunt. One of the victim’s heads was found several days later and several blocks away in a woman’s apple tree. -1929: It awoke when the infamous (in-universe) Bradley Gang were gunned down by a vigilante mob. It appeared and participated during the massacre as some sort of clown, though details of Its appearance varied depending on who was looking at It. Most notably, It always appeared to be wielding the same kind of gun that whoever was looking at It was holding.  -1930: It went back into hibernation after popular club The Black Spot was burned down by a white supremacist group with several people trapped inside. It appeared at the end of the event as a giant bird with balloons tied to Its wings, carrying away one of the white supremacists in Its talons. -1957-58: It awoke when Dorsey Corcoran was beaten to death by his abusive stepfather. There is no mention of It being present at the murder, and It has no confirmed kills for this cycle until several months afterwards. For these reasons, it’s not even 100% clear that this is what woke It up, but given the absence of any other inciting event and the stepfather’s behavior being consistent with other people who committed atrocities under Its influence, it’s generally assumed to be by fans. This cycle is the most fleshed out in the novel, during which It murdered several children including George Denbrough, Betty Ripsom, Dorsey’s older brother Eddie Corcoran, both Victor Criss and Reginald yes I said Reginald “Belch” Huggins, and Patrick Hockstetter. It was eventually forced back into early hibernation by the First Ritual of Chüd.  -1967: Interesting side event, It’s unknown to what degree or where It can manifest while in hibernation mode, but Richard Macklin, Dorsey’s stepfather and murderer, committed suicide in Falmouth, MA, leaving a note which simply read “I saw Eddie last night. He was dead.” Given Its proclivity towards taunting victims with dead loved ones, one could reasonably guess It appeared to Macklin and drove him to suicide. However, this behavior would be “out-of-cycle” and is never confirmed or elaborated on. -1984: It awakened after a young man, Adrian Mellon, was beaten nearly to death and thrown off a bridge in a homophobic hate crime. It was present as Pennywise at Mellon’s assault and began feeding on him in front of both his boyfriend and his attackers. It then went on one final killing spree before being defeated and seemingly killed by The Losers.

HOPE THIS HELPS any additional questions just ask

Oh yeah and uh here’s what i think personally is the best artistic depiction of what Its true form might be like

[itkmoonknight]

Episode 108 - Realm of the Brotherhood

EPISODE 108:

Rey is joined by special guest, Josh 'Geronimo' Johnson as the pair of Loonies take a look at an arc that harks back to the 80's!

Moon Knight finds himself wanting to join the West Coast Avengers and so it's in a provisional capacity that our Fist of Khonshu fights alongside the West Coast Avengers against the Zodiac, Scorpio, LMDs...and even the alien race, the Sligs!

Josh brings his acumen for classic 80's run and both he and Rey get into the nitty gritty of how this arc pans out for Moon Knight.

Finally - WE HAVE A PERIMETER BREACH! WE HAVE A PERIMETER BREACH! One of the Collective hijacks the show! Who is it? What does he do? Tune in to find out!

PHASE OF THE MOON: WAXING GIBBOUS

OVER THE MOON REVIEW - TRADE / ARC

WEST COAST AVENGERS VOL. 2, ISSUES #25-30

Writer - Steve Englehart

Penciler - Al Milgrom

Inker - Mike Machlan

Colourists - Christie Scheele, Julianna Ferriter, Paul Becton, Phil DeWalt, Bob Sharen, Gregory Wright

Letterers - Tom Orzechowski, Ken Lopez, Bill Oakley

Editor - Mark Gruenwald

  SYNOPSIS (by Rey)

Simon Williams (Wonder Man) discovers through a tussle with a possessed Abomination, that although he loves the adoration that comes with being a movie star, his heart belongs to the West Coast Avengers and fighting crime.

Meanwhile, Taurus becomes the sole survivor of the Zodiac cartel when Jake Fury (masquerading as Scorpio within the group) reveals himself and sets his own team of LMD Zodiacs upon them. Jake reveals that he too is an LMD, and his band of Zodiacs kill all but Taurus, who manages to flee.

Taurus approaches the West Coast Avengers, asking for their help to put a stop to Jake Fury and his LMD Zodiac squad. Elsewhere, Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird, laments not having told Hawkeye the entire truth about her final confrontation with the Phantom Rider and his seemingly innocent fate.

The Avengers tussle with the Zodiac at a cattle breeding auction of all places, but are ultimately unsuccessful in capturing them. A short while after, Hawkeye is ambushed by the 12 members and he’s abducted and replaced by an LMD version, unbeknownst to his teammates.

Reconvening with the West Coast Avengers, Taurus predicts the Zodiac are to strike a mint much to suspicion of Moon Knight. The White Knight does not entirely trust Taurus but entertains Taurus’ insistence that his assistance with the West Coast Avengers is entirely altruistic.

Moon Knight shares a kiss with Tigra, whilst Mockingbird finally confronts (the LMD) Hawkeye about the truth with Phantom Rider. She soon discovers that he isn’t really Hawkeye and with the help of Tigra, they dispose of the android mole. A reveal shows that Tigra, too, is also an LMD - being a SECOND mole planted by the Zodiac to infiltrate the Avengers compound.

The Avengers catch up with the Zodiac at the Denver Mint and another battle ensues. The Zodiac are able to escape to Death Valley via the Zodiac Key and Iron Man reveals his knowledge of the Zodiac Key. It essentially thrives on conflict, so when the realm from which it originated no longer satiated it’s needs, it was transported to Earth in search of conflict and sustenance.

Moon Knight’s knowledge of astrology is used to confirm that Taurus’ next prediction of where the Zodiac will be, is correct, and with his suspicions eased somewhat the West Coast Avengers head to Death Valley and find what they are looking for - the Zodiac!

Tigra reveals herself as an LMD, but the Zodiac and Jae Fury are defeated, only for them all to be resurrected by the Zodiac Key itself.

They are all teleported away to the Realm of the Brotherhood, whilst Taurus uses the opportunity to escape.

The Zodiac are all incapacitated as there is no Zodiacal energy in the Realm of the Brotherhood, but the Avengers find the real Hawkeye and Tigra and are reunited. They encounter the Brotherhood who wish not to fight them, lest they lose an opportunity to feed off conflict which may occur on Earth. So they return the West Coast Avengers back home, with the warning that they will send the key over to Earth again when they least expect it, to feed off the conflict which the Avengers or others may generate in the years to come. They are brought back, and having discovered Taurus’ escape, Moon Knight vows to track him down!

The chase is on, and after a brief encounter with the Shroud, Taurus flees an ever encroaching Moon Knight. Their fight sees them high in the sky as Taurus tries to fly away on a hijacked plane, but he meets his death as the aircraft plummets out of control whilst a falling Moon Knight is saved by Iron man. Hawkeye is livid at the Fist of Khonshu for having not worked as a team, and for the apparent cold blooded murder of Taurus.

Finally, after a bit of respite, Simon Williams is abducted by a race of aliens, the SLIGS, who want to analyse Earthly specimens before proposing the invade the planet.

The West Coast Avengers come to Simon’s rescue but all are transported to another realm where they are each in turn tested by The Examiner.

The Avengers manage to ultimately defeat the aliens and return home. The Sligs manage to send their data to their Supreme One and a Composite Avenger (or artist’s impression) is collated - giving enough reason for the SLigs to call off their plans to invade a planet with clearly formidable inhabitants.

MOON RATING (out of phases of the Moon):

Josh: High-end Waning Gibbous 🌖 - 7/10

Rey:  High-end Waning Gibbous 🌖 - 7/10

SHOW NOTES:

West Coast Avengers, Vol. 2

Absolute Carnage

The Massive, Dark Horse Comics

War Stories, by Garth Ennis

War Story - Johann's Tiger

War Stories - D-Day Dodgers

War Stories - Castle in the Sky

Thor in the 90's

Rumor: Andrew Garfield Is Marvel's Top Choice For 'Moon Knight' Role

Punisher Vol. 12, issue #14

Signal of Doom

20th Century Geek Podcast

20th Century Geek Podcast - Predator Retrospective, Part 1

Capes & Lunatics Podcast

Inner Demons - A Ghost Rider Podcast Episode 43

Marvel Epic Podcast

In Country - Marvel Comics' the 'Nam Podcast

WHERE TO HEAR US:

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CREDITS:

Music Written, Performed and generously provided by Deleter:

https://deleter.bandcamp.com/

ITK Logo Graphic Design by The High Priests of Khonshu

ITK Graphic Design produced and assisted by Randolph Benoit:

https://twitter.com/randolphbenoit

https://www.youtube.com/randolphbenoit 

Proud Member of The Collective

The music for this episode contains excerpts from various songs and is copyrighted by Deleter. The music agreed for use on Into the Knight - A Moon Knight Podcast is licensed under an Attribution License;

Check out this episode!

[wedontbitewecut]

Monster #2 ~ The Countess

Jumping forward about 90 years from Nosferatu, I present another vampire (and the last one that’ll be in this list, although I could make whole gallery just of vampires), The Countess from American Horror Story Season 5, Hotel. In this gallery I wanted to cover the quintessential classic vampire, Nosferatu, and a very modern evolved vampire who represents classic vampire tropes as well as new ones and more current directions that vampire stories often go in, and Lady Gaga’s The Countess certainly makes for a very interesting conversation. Right off the bat, it is clear that The Countess of The Hotel Cortez is an inspired homage to Delphine Seyrig’s The Countess Bathory from Daughters of Darkness, what with her extremely elegant couture (often deep reds, black, and silver colors), platinum “epitome-of-beauty” blonde hair, refined and posh manor and behavior, bisexuality and sexual promiscuity, her cunning control, cunning, and deceit, but also her surprisingly human qualities that make her worthy of sympathy and oftentimes even admiration, not to mention that she lives in a hotel which she almost acts like she owns. Furthermore, Bonnie Zimmerman’s analysis of the lesbian vampire in “Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampires” is strongly echoed in Hotel with The Countess, although in more modern and often ambiguous ways. 

Similar to The Countess Bathory, Lady Gaga’s Countess is somehow continually stunningly beautiful, always appearing in the finest couture with looks that are incredibly varied but share a common thread (as with Nosferatu, The Countess is of the highest class, as vampires most often are), she displays some sort of kind nature that evokes sympathy and admiration, all while she is simultaneously doing evil things with no consideration for anyone but herself and her own very specific motives, acts which she often revels in. Honestly, The Countess reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe’s words about a dead woman being the most beautiful image on earth: The Countess is in a way dead, as all vampires are, and she is so often seen in the show as being absolutely covered with blood (she is a messy eater), but she is undeniably beautiful, and arguably downright sexy, and she constantly marries beauty with death and blood throughout. Like The Countess Bathory, she too is very sexually active and shows a certain bisexuality, although I tend to think vampires consider sexuality in a way different from humans, so putting labels like bisexuality or lesbian on them seems insufficient. The Countess seems to lean more towards men but certainly plays all fields, and she has a very sexual relationship with feeding, as we frequently see her and either Tristan or Donovan seduce and eventually devour a couple. The Countess’ sexuality is one of her strongest powers, and it is so interesting how she uses it as a means to get the blood she needs, but also because she is very sexual and enjoys such acts, which then relates to Zimmerman’s theories on lesbian vampires. While The Countess is not technically lesbian, she is certainly not straight or hetero-normative, and her sexuality is something far outside the realm of how the male gaze has traditionally treated and portrayed female sexuality. The Countess has a long string of lovers, both male and female, who she has drawn in and made fall in love with her, and then literally completed rejected and cast out to the curb once she’s done with them. In Hotel, she is seemingly in control of everything, and even has a small group of abducted children that she has made her vampire children (The Countess Bathory’s young lesbian lover/vampire assistant in Daughters of Darkness is in ways embodied both in The Countess’ lovers and her children), until of course we find out later in the season that she is actually not truly in control of anything, and in fact living a life of grief, victim to the true monster of Hotel, the hotel founder and insane mass murderer who built the hotel for the purpose of using it as a means to carry out his murderous desires, James Patrick Marsh. 

Part of what makes Hotel so captivating and unique is how it melds together so many different horror tropes, as The Hotel Cortez is somehow a place where people who die there live on only in the hotel. We actually get a mixture of real-world horrors with culturally classic monsters, where the vampires are only part of the hotel’s monstrous inhabitants, and on Devil’s Night (Halloween) we see actual serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy come to the hotel to visit March, something which The Countess has nothing to do with. When we finally do learn about The Countess’ background, how she was an actress who fell in love with an extremely famous actor and his wife, and was their “Little Mouse”, the third in a three-way relationship, how she was turned vampire by them and how they then disappeared without a trace, and how she then has to live a life of grief, cloaked in luxury and beautiful excess, forever longing for her true love, forever taking in lovers and spitting them out in failed attempts to recreate what she originally had. It is this backstory, possibly more than anything, that humanizes The Countess and makes her worthy of sympathy, and despite all her atrocious acts, I find it hard to believe if the majority of viewers weren’t in some way rooting for The Countess, if only perhaps some of the time. 

Another thing I want to mention regarding The Countess, is the significance of her relationship with Liz Taylor, who is a trans woman portrayed by Daniel O’Hare who is a longtime employee of The Hotel Cortez. She is one of the very few beings there who is simply a human, but because of her trans-ness and femininity, she is seen is monstrous by normative society and thus is right at home among the monstrous things in the hotel. We find out eventually that Liz had first come to the hotel before she had come out as the woman she is, and was still living in her assigned-at-birth societal male role, visiting the hotel with male coworkers on business. Alone in her room, she dressed in women’s clothing which she had brought with her, and as she was enjoying expressing herself properly in solitude, The Countess suddenly appears in her room. Long story short, this scene is perhaps the most moving, most heartfelt scene in the season, and perhaps all of American Horror Story. The Countess sees Liz for the woman she is, and though makeup and feminine attention allows her to see herself as such more clearly, and eventually encourages Liz to live authentically and to stay and work for her at the hotel, but not before showing Liz her own power and truth by killing Liz’s 2 male coworkers after they saw Liz dressed up. As a trans woman myself and as someone with a rather undefined/queer sexuality, Liz Taylor and The Countess are monumental figures to appear in horror and interact the way they did. It is also the first time I haven’t been slightly upset that a cis-man is cast as a trans woman, because Daniel O’Hare and the writers did such a fantastic job at making her extremely authentic and relatable in very important ways, not to mention how her relationship with Tristan in the show brings up critical conversations about trans people, sexual labels, and the ambiguous grey areas of love and relationships. It is very common for LGBTQ+ people to relate to monsters and especially vampires because the way vampires typically are thought to exist in society (hiding in plain sight, restricted to the night, unable to safely be visible during the day, sexually different and non-normative, etc...), and the relationship between Liz and The Countess is a perfect example of how complicated and not limited to a single genre horror is becoming, and how monsters not only share an affinity with women, but also with all LGBTQ+ people and especially trans people.

[akashamichelleblog]

Will Designers Be Replaced by Robots?

Adrian Shaughnessy, writer at the Creative Bloq, discusses how automated processes could threaten the role of the designer.

"During my time as a graphic designer, I've experienced nearly everything – short of physical violence – that working life can throw at you: recessions, legal disputes, defaulting clients, and of course, the thrill that comes with completing a successful project.

But two events – both of which turned the practice of graphic design on its head – stand out as life changing. The first was the arrival of the Macintosh computer. For all practising designers at the time, computerisation necessitated an extensive rethink of the craft: no more mechanical artwork, no more paste-up, no more typesetters, no more expensive retouchers. Many of the tasks previously done by repro houses were taken over by designers sitting in front of computer screens. It was the beginning of a new age of digital self-reliance and a period of massive reorientation. 

The second event was the arrival of the internet. Here was a new way of thinking about, and making design. Suddenly, designers no longer had complete control over how their work was received. The inability to control browser use, screen ratios and fonts had a decisive impact and old rules such as the number of characters per line length rule became redundant. Even the users themselves could mess with the appearance in ways unthinkable to designers trained in print design, where layouts were fixed once they left the designer's hand. 

Is VR the future of design?

These two events threatened to shrink the role of the designer, but the opposite happened. There are now more graphic designers and students than ever before. Design is a global industry embedded in, and inseparable from, business and culture. For many, graphic design is as much a lifestyle choice as a career choice. We do it because we love it.

The rise of automation

If design and designers can be said to have benefited from these two shocks in the long run, there are concerns that the craft and the profession might not survive quite so well. Is design about to meet its Uber moment? Is AI about to take on the role of the designer? Is the surge towards a fully automated world about to engulf design? 

It might seem that automating the design process is impossible. You might assume that the creative imagination is the least likely arena to be taken over by machines, that bots are for routine production, not conceptual thinking. In reality, the process is already underway.

"It might seem that automating the design process is impossible... In reality, the process is already underway"

Social media has usurped many of the roles previously done by designers. You can start a business with a Facebook page (or as one expert calls them "Facebook pages … the new small-business homepage"). For many, access to a Twitter or Instagram account is all the design they need.

The automation of countless realms of everyday life is already at an advanced level: entire factories are operated by robots; legal contracts and stock market trading are routinely done by bots; automated warehouses, ATMs, and user operated supermarket tills mean fewer jobs in industries once regarded as high volume employers; driverless vehicles signal the end for the millions of people who drive for a living. Why should design be any different? 

In the book, Inventing the Future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams state that: "anything from 47 to 80 per cent of jobs are likely to be automatable in the next two decades." They also note that the "roboticisation of services is now gathering steam, with over 150,000 professional service robots sold in the past 15 years. Under particular threat have been routine jobs – jobs that can be codified into a series of steps." 

The demise of web design

Surely this lets design off the hook? We can't expect machines to make the irrational, gravity-defying leaps of imagination that designers make, can we? What about the designer's ability to capitalise on accidents and unforeseen coincidences? Surely this sort of cognition is beyond the bot? 

Not so. We live under the dictum that anything that can be automated will be automated. And nowhere in the design world is this idea more advanced than in web design. In a post titled Why Web Design is Dead, on the website UX Magazine, designer Sergio Nouvel notes: "Most of the content you see on the web today is run by some framework or service – WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, you name it. Frameworks provide you a foundation and shortcuts so you spend less time struggling with the creation of a website, and more time creating content. As a consequence of the ubiquity of these frameworks, a world of free and paid templates lets you start with a professional-looking design in minutes. Why hire a web designer if you can achieve a fairly acceptable design for a fraction of the cost using a template?"

The Grid, a San Francisco and Berlin-based startup, was the first to announce that it has created a website builder that uses artificial intelligence. It enables users to upload images and text or make use of its library of colour combinations and images, and then, using AI, it performs all the key design functions: positioning of images, placement of text, selecting colours and sculpting a unique, customised website. The Grid says it doesn't use templates, but 'layout systems', which it claims offers greater flexibility.

With The Grid, if you don't like what you see, you hit the Redesign button and in seconds a different layout appears. The Grid's promotional video gives the impression of effortless, nearly instant success. It's a seductive pitch. But not everyone is impressed. 

Various webinars offer a less convincing glimpse into The Grid's AI approach to web design. Watching these critical takedowns, I was reminded of the early days of DTP design – gap-toothed typography and bitmapped images. But the painful DTP birthing phase didn't last long. Designers mastered the software, the software improved, and so did computing power. You wouldn't lose money betting on AI websites becoming much better in the future. 

A grit-free process

It's easy to see why clients would be attracted to this grit-free process. There's no more time spent listening to pesky designers defending their design decisions, no more waiting around for new designs to arrive. And here's the clincher: no more redesign fees. Instead, clients inhabit a fragrant world of endless iteration and seemingly limitless choice.

The Grid is not alone in its quest. In September 2016, the website Tech Crunch reported that Canva, a design platform for web and mobile, had announced a new infusion of $15 million in funding and a doubling of its valuation in 12 months. This added capital was reported to have brought Canva's valuation up to a whopping $345 million.

What makes Canva so attractive to the guys with the money is the fact that it can be used by non-designers. Canva claims it only takes 23 seconds to become a proficient user of its software. 10 million people are allegedly using it to design business cards, posters, presentations, and graphics for social media. 

Looking at the formulaic design featured on the site, it's hard to take seriously claims that 'anyone can become a designer' with Canva. It's easy to laugh at some of the work these sites post as examples – most of it looks as if it has been designed by someone on autopilot. But will we be mocking in five years' time? When we look at what is happening in AI, it seems foolish to dismiss attempts to automate design. 

AI-driven design

When I talk to designers about the likelihood of AI taking over the tasks of designers, I'm met with scepticism. But this strikes me as short-sighted. In a detailed account of Google's work in AI, published in the New York Times Magazine, the journalist Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes about the company's use of artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate. Anyone who has used the translation service will know that its results are hit and miss, always require correction, and are rarely idiomatically correct.

All that is changing. In its new AI-driven version, Google Translate is producing astonishing results. Developed by the Google Brain team, 'artificial neural networks' (much like those in our skulls) are offering an alternative to traditional computer programming and represent a move towards self-learning machines. Using these networks, robots can then acquaint themselves with the world via trial and error in the same way that children do, giving machines "something like human flexibility." 

Lewis-Kraus reminds us of Alan Turing's famous test for an artificial general intelligence: "A computer that could, over the course of five minutes of text exchange, successfully deceive a real human interlocutor. Once a machine can translate fluently between two natural languages, the foundation has been laid for a machine that might one day 'understand' human language well enough to engage in plausible conversation." 

If Google's new translation service is close to fulfilling Turing's criterion, then it's not much of a stretch to imagine AI tackling more sophisticated design problems than shifting elements around on a webpage. Most of the everyday design we encounter can be broken down into a simple set of principles that can be codified, and it seems highly probable that a machine can learn the rules of typography, the golden ratio and the rule of three. And it's no gamble to assume that cost-culling businesses will latch onto the money saving benefits of AI design. 

Adapt to survive

What should designers do? AI-driven design already has the potential to remove some, or most of the production based tasks that designers do. Need 100 web banners for a global ad campaign, all with different information and numerous different languages? No problem. Robots capable of handling such routine tasks will result in fewer design production people.

But will the sharp end of design be affected? Eventually, yes, and just as human beings have learned to do since the introduction of industrialisation, we must adapt. It's my belief that designers are well equipped to do this. Teaching flexibility and a willingness to learn may be the biggest challenge facing the world's design schools. 

In the information age, we may be looking at a world without paid work

Of course, this doesn't only apply to design. In the information age, we may be looking at a world without paid work. This takes us into the political realm, and subjects that governments are avoiding. It poses questions such as adopting a basic income, and the relearning that will be needed when the post-industrial world is replaced by one of unlimited leisure. These topics are discussed in academia and future-gazing think tanks, but we all need to be thinking about them sooner rather than later.   

Halfway through writing this, I had a sudden, sobering glimpse into a machine-driven world. My five-year-old iMac died. The screen went black, none of the usual remedies helped and it was Christmas, so there was no chance of emergency repairs. It was a personal mini-disaster. But this is what happens to machines: they break. Perhaps their fallibility is the only thing between us and an AI future.

This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 263; buy it here!

Source URL: Creative Bloq