#but it did occur to me there might be a correlation with the fact that i like. post writingso rarely

[levmada]

PLEASE write about Levi’s mental state, i’m begging you

He’s faced death and precarious situations since he was born, yet he’s still standing strong and hopeful, WHAT THE HELL I LOVE MY SHORT KING

IT'S FINALLY HERE😭im sorry anon i hope you're around to see this and if u are i hope i dont disappoint

the tone in this analysis is so weird because i kept getting caught between 'this is an apa paper no contractions, academic language, double spacing -' and 'this is a tumblr post about a fictional blorbo wtf r u on'

i also use some scientific language i try my best to explain but if this turns anyone off i don't blame them because im unhealthily obsessed

*i'm a third-year undergraduate psychology student w/ a concentration in psychopathology

tw/cw: discussion of childhood exposure to sex (not assault)

Foreword

I’ve been putting this off for a while (I’m forgetful and this topic is intimidating what can I say), but being a year out from graduating with my bachelor’s to become a mental health professional, and being a Levi scholar(/hj), I wanted to give this a shot. 

I wanted to dissect and examine Levi Ackerman’s mental health “currently” (as in general canon), and explain as thoroughly but as simply as possible how and why he thinks and acts the way he does.

Seeing how AOT is pretty renowned for leaving out the ‘insignificant’ details, especially character details, a good majority of my assertions and even details of his life are built off of correlations and “signs and symptoms”; meaning some things could be an aspect of Levi’s personality, or a symptom of psychopathology. 

 I will examine his childhood (especially his childhood), adolescence, young adulthood, and “present” adulthood, with a short summary at the end of where he might be mentally after the war.

*Lastly, I don’t like it when things I say about a series or character are taken as fact or make it implied that someone else’s thoughts are “wrong”. This is partly built on headcanons anyway, which are influenced by my own experiences. Don’t take away from this that this is me telling you what to think.*

Childhood

The most important period of development occurs in infancy and childhood, especially from the ages of 3-6. This is when a child learns where to find security, love, and basic skills, gaining stability as they develop.

Well, Kuchel died when Levi was 4.

Maternal Love / Learning Empathy / Anxious Attachment Style

Levi was born into deep poverty within a violent unwelcoming environment. Basic physical needs must have been very hard to meet (i.e., consistently fed enough, a clean environment, no physical threats). And where Levi was born is like the dictionary definition of a bad environment for a small child, excluding only his mother’s care and love.

As it’s generally understood in canon (and suggested from Levi’s special backstory manga so far) she was a caring parental figure early in Levi’s life that loved him unconditionally. We can conclude that Kuchel did everything within her power to compensate for both parenting Levi alone and shielding him the best she could from his horrible surroundings, teaching the kindness, goodness, and love that Levi would internalize and go on to strive for for his entire life. 

As far as we know, no other children lived in the brothel. Socialization is just as important for a young child as receiving love. With this isolation, it’s extremely difficult to learn how to connect to other people, or pick up on social cues. Levi would’ve never learned how to interact properly with his peers—aside from use of aggression and violence which Kenny would go on to instill in him.

With the danger/anxiety imposed by strangers, mostly if not entirely men, he would turn to his mother for comfort all. The. Time. 

And she would give him that support and affection of course. This early motherly affection is integral to child development: a child who receives empathy and affection is subliminally taught how to feel and express empathy towards others. 

While Levi’s surroundings were dangerous, lonely, and chaotic—traumatizing enough for a toddler or young child—Kuchel provided a safety net from that, so I think that Levi developed an anxious attachment as a child: exhibiting clinginess, excessive fear of abandonment, and an excessive need for security and/or reassurance.

Paternal Trauma / Potential Androphobia

Born and living in a brothel, we can assume that Levi was probably seen as a burden and a mistake by others, especially by men (both the likely majority of her customers and her boss).

AOT ch69; Before the Fall, ch34

This is likely in contrast to the women (those living and working in the brothel like Kuchel). They should know Kuchel if not as friends, then acquaintances who could empathize for her and her son. 

There’s an obvious trend here. If Levi is going to feel fear/danger/anxiety because of men, he should have a general aversion to men and-or the behavior of men who he encountered as a child. This is impossible to know for sure or in meaningful detail, but it seemed to be resolved by the time he became an adult if so.

Although Kenny in his words was no more than Levi's teacher, Levi did see him as a father figure.

The subject of Kenny will be expanded on later, but it's clear Kenny in no way resembled a father, who also would go on to abandon Levi (at the age of 11 or so). Children without father figures tend to struggle more emotionally, psychologically, and socially. Specifically, (especially boys) tend to exhibit intimidating/aggressive personas to compensate for resentment, fear, and unhappiness. 

Sexual Trauma (Tangent, Probably)

This is unconfirmed but a likely trauma Levi went through: exposure to sex as a child. There’s no way to confirm what he experienced, so I’ll function on ‘probably’s’ and ‘most likely’s’. 

Because Levi and Kuchel only lived in one room, other rooms in the brothel should have belonged to other women, and he was at the oldest four, I wager that he was babysat by women who Kuchel knew and/or was made to hide somewhere while she worked, such as in a cabinet.

(for reference)

AOT ch69

The odds are high that he was exposed to the aftermath of sexual violence (i.e., marks seen on his mother), and the sound or smells that have to do with it. That young, he wouldn’t know what it was, but he should have realized later as an adolescent.

In general, children regardless of gender exposed to sexual content usually experience early puberty (which is just as likely for impoverished children, or children who experience chronic high-stress in general); issues with intimacy; become desensitized to high-risk behavior; negative/inaccurate expectations about sex and relationships in the future; influence inappropriate behavior with other children or adults; sex addiction.

This is especially relevant to Levi’s fear of closeness/intimacy in the future. Exposure to sexual situations—possibly not including CSA in his case—very early in life inflicts on a child emotions and stress they don’t have the intellect or reasoning to process or understand. An extreme aversion to interpersonal relationships, especially physical ones, results.

This stress Levi must have felt, being powerless to this happening to his mother, is a different beast. Children aren’t capable of handling high levels of stress, and so the brain will automatically create coping mechanisms: dissociation (a severe form of “zoning out”; observing the self “from the third person”; numbness; the feeling of living in a dream), excessive daydreaming/overactive imagination, symptoms of PTSD (nightmares and terrors; flashbacks; spontaneous activation of fight-flight-freeze associated with anxiety; excessive worrying/fear; loneliness/self isolation). PTSD will also be prevalent in Levi’s later life, which I’ll delve into later.

Inappropriate behavior and sex addiction are also highlights for me because they shouldn’t exist in him based on Levi's personality and behavior throughout the series. In my opinion, Levi ought to associate sex with pain, shame, and violence; he does see it as an ordinary job—a means to an end. He should be desensitized to sex as a concept, but associates it personally with shame, sadness, and pain, possibly feeling disgust towards it. So it is highly likely that Levi in every stage of life following this experienced sexual repulsion (usually associated with high anxiety towards sex), a low libido, or a lack of sexual desire entirely. 

From a trauma perspective, he could avoid sexual topics of conversation, sexual settings (i.e., brothels), or an array of things which are sexually suggestive or he as a child possibly associated with sex (i.e., cleavage, panties, specific touch). Similarly, he might avoid direct reminders or have a post-traumatic reaction to them, such as anxiety or flashbacks (i.e., the sound of a bed creaking, the sight of wet clothes).

Importantly, it can be concluded that sexual violence was often exhibited, and the idea would be ingrained in him that sex, like everything else besides his relationship with his mother, is “give-and-take”, “victim-and-attacker”, and learn to be repulsed by intimacy. This impacts his willingness for later friendships and relationships as we’ll see later. 

Early Abandonment & Early Exposure to Death

As Kuchel’s health deteriorated, Levi’s sense of security would break down. Availability of shelter, food, and emotional support would be even less secure than before. He might have been providing for Kuchel for some time, even, as it can be gathered that he received little to no help from those around him while she was sick. To whatever length he had to take responsibility and both fear for Kuchel, this would cement a sense of responsibility and guilt in him from the age of just four years old.

He will fail to save her—regardless of the fact that that’s not his responsibility in the first place; a child wouldn’t understand that—and then lose her with nothing he could do to even cushion the blow.

How powerless he must’ve felt. How hopeless. How likely is it that Levi found comfort in joining her? A child his age wouldn’t be able to comprehend death, basing our understanding on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. To summarize, at the age of six or seven, children aren’t capable of complex, abstract thought like death or the finality of it. But Levi had to learn early. 

AOT ch69

This will be center in his “clean-freak” tendencies later.

Adolescence

Most of this section is going to be rather vague again, but we already got the bulk of that over with in childhood!

Emotional Train Wreck / Lack of Identity 

It’s hard to notice if you’re not paying attention, but in every scene we’re shown with Levi after his mother dies but before Kenny leaves, he’s wearing some variation of his mother’s one dress styled into a shirt. He loves her endlessly, even or especially in death. And part of cherishing her memory, to him, should’ve been taking after her as much as he could.

That’s how to explain why he didn’t become a cruel person (Kenny for instance) as he grew into a teenager, even though much of Levi’s outlook and behaviors come from him (ch57).

The more pertinent question is how extreme violence, reinforcement of the idea that that violence is power, and Kenny’s total (or most likely total) lack of communicated emotional connection affected him.

Levi would still desperately want that connection deep down, especially with his mother gone. This is a major reason why Levi sought to get stronger to please Kenny. For chronically abandoned people, that continues into adulthood and even beyond. A hole inside which can't be filled.

AOT ch69

Chronic loneliness—like I explained before—basically explains his aloof nature and awkward disposition. It’s not that Levi feels as detached as he looks, but he doesn’t know how to express himself or open up. He wouldn’t learn how to process his emotions, let alone talk about them. He’s basically emotionally stunted and immature in impersonal relationships (between friends and especially in regards to intimacy).

The Underground’s environment also makes him socially awkward, rude, of course stoic/not very expressive, and blunt. Levi was forced to become extremely observant of people to suss out their intentions, remaining vigilant of his surroundings at all times.

Levi doesn’t even get affection in any sense anymore. He doesn’t get a hug or a pat on the back, and he certainly doesn’t get a shoulder to cry on.

If anything, Kenny would punish him for showing weakness. Vulnerability is weakness; weakness is death.

What results is a continuous and boundless sense of emptiness inside that can’t be filled. He’s plagued by a chronic sense of unbelonging and loneliness. There’s no time or opportunity to develop “normally” as an adolescent. Socialization is limited at best; thinking of his place in the world is irrelevant when his one and only most pressing goal is survival; he doesn’t get to explore hobbies or interests.

OCD Propensity

One “interest” Levi is passionate about is cleaning, at least. Disease is what caused his mother to die. The easiest cause to point to would be their disgusting surroundings (although, Kuchel was infected by a customer). It is canon that Levi’s love of cleaning comes from "his personal experiences". In that interview, Levi first specifically references the important of fighting disease.

In other words, his "clean freak" nature comes, primarily, from the death of his mother: Filth -> disease -> death, and abandonment by extension.

His mother would’ve encouraged him to keep their room clean. There were times he or she had to have come down with something and dirtiness was the cause. On top of Kenny’s enforcement to keep up “clean” appearances to garner respect from everyone else in the Underground. 

This in particular is extremely relevant to his mental health. When someone feels out of control of what is happening to them, especially in a recurring way, and especially as a child who doesn't yet know how to feel stable in an unstable environment, they look for something to control. It can be weight, bodily functions (blinking, breathing, etc), dominance over others, or cleaning, for instance.

Fear of disease, the urgent need to have control, and the basic need for stability makes it obvious that Levi would become obsessed with cleaning. And moreover, developing OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). I’ll go deeper into this diagnosis later.

Lack of Self Worth

Despite the acknowledgment throughout canon that he trusts in his own strength, it wasn’t always that way.

Canonically, Levi sought praise from Kenny by showing his strength because that was the only thing he received praise for. The conclusion Levi came to once Kenny left him was that he wasn’t strong enough (wasn’t good enough) to warrant staying with him.

In conjunction, Levi’s first conclusion was that he did something wrong, not that Kenny possibly had some obligation that forced him to leave the Underground, pointing again to his own lack of self-worth.

This scenario created a complex in him, the very root cause of Levi’s pain, the very foundation of what Levi would go on to prioritize in adulthood. If he isn’t useful to those he wants not to abandon him, he’s worthless. He’s only useful when he shows his strength. Every other aspect of him like his interests is either irrelevant or bland by default in his eyes.

He would go on to make it his mission to try his best to be good enough in order to save and protect the lives of others, but foremost those he cares about.

Young Adulthood

Our first exposure to Levi as an adult is in A Choice with No Regrets, his OVA/backstory.

(By the way, I’ll be basing this analysis off a mix of the manga and the OVA.)

Emotional Immaturity/Affective Dysregulation

Generally, Levi’s defining negative character trait as a young adult is his emotional immaturity/anti-social behavior. Yes he’s grumpy and rude which is always indicative of him, but he’s very quick to anger, too. He cursed at the Squad Leader who offended him (by assuming that because he, Isabel, and Farlan are from the Underground, they’d be dirty), and argued furiously with Farlan that he would kill Erwin—not because it was required for the job, but because he disrespected him—for a few examples. 

ACWNR ch2

He tended to be arrogant, too. Such as when he ultimately called a Scout who had experience with the Titans stupid for telling Levi to hold his swords in a certain way. He spoke to every officer the same as he would anyone on the street, having a remarkable lack of basic respect for authority. He was insistent on distancing himself from the entire setting and structure of the Scouts as much as possible, both to not get attached, and he found their mission childish/foolish. 

He’s rather selfish. There is nothing Levi cares about genuinely more than Isabel’s and Farlan’s lives and the job that will set them up with a good future. Farlan’s advice is the only one’s he takes and the only judgment outside himself that he considers, such as when Farlan asks him to not cause trouble with authority to keep a low profile, but even then he acts stubborn. Levi trusts nobody wholeheartedly except himself (until later in ACWNR).

There’s a cognitive dissonance in him. Growing up, and still as a young adult, Levi’s headspace is marked by fear and uncertainty, with his power as his source of confidence. The first time he kills a Titan (with Isabel and Farlan), he uses too much gas because he refuses to potentially risk his friends’ lives; when the expedition is upcoming, he abruptly tells Farlan and Isabel to find a reason to stay back, and that he’ll complete the dangerous part of the job on his own. 

Levi is full of repressed fear and uncertainty. He hides and/or buries all of it for the sake of self-preservation both emotionally and physically.

Antisocial Personality…?

It’s extremely interesting how a character as selfless, heroic, and empathetic as Levi exhibits antisocial symptoms. I’d even argue that if his childhood was spent entirely without his mother figure, then he might be a dictionary definition of ASPD (Antisocial Personality Disorder).

People with this disorder live day-to-day under the constant assumption that whoever is around them is “out to get them”/searching for a weakness to exploit. Humanity is made up of only prey and predators; morals are completely subjective, perpetuated by the society that surrounds them. This constant need to defend oneself, the effect of the exact trauma the potential sociopath experienced, combined with a muted emotional spectrum, results in a complete disregard of everything, including people outside of themself. They might believe they’re entitled to comfort or admiration, but overall, they’re intensely self-serving, often aggressive, and ruthless. 

Because Levi for instance learned to rely on violence both for “love” and survival, then he might fall on violence to manipulate a person or situation into serving himself. I see reason to believe that Levi could have grown into worse than Kenny’s image if it weren’t for his mother’s influence.

However, the greatest cause for deniability is Levi’s wide emotional spectrum (especially including empathy and shame), while a lack of shame is the most significant marker of ASPD . (It is arguably one of many testaments to his strength that a victim of so much suffering, violence, and cruelty could become a man as empathetic as him.) 

However, these tendencies may still be relevant: A sense of arrogance—both to the way Levi thinks of some who he perceives as weak and live without good morals—lacking issue with using deceit or violence to attain a goal, and living outside the rule of authority.

I go into more detail about this idea here.

Conclusion

As is true in general, there’s very little to say of mental development once someone has reached their early–mid-twenties. What we know of Levi’s young adulthood does reinforce his fear of abandonment, but he finds a cause where his strength and compassion can be “put to good use” and give to him a life that is worth living.

Conclusion: the ‘Present’/Diagnoses Overview

C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Levi’s emotional dysregulation (i.e., inability to sit with and process negative emotions), his difficulties in relationships, insomnia, negative worldview, absent sense of self, and finally, his persistent sense of unworthiness/worthlessness are all indicative of C-PTSD. It’s distinct from PTSD in that he didn’t endure one short-term traumatizing event, but he grew up surrounded by trauma and saw it as normal (e.g., gang violence, extreme poverty, death of a parent, (more presumably) physically and emotionally abusive parental figure). Levi as a child developed no understanding of a nurturing, secure environment. 

Negative/Absent Sense of Self

I’ve talked about this at length already, but it’s worth noting how Levi’s perception of himself must have changed when it was revealed that he is extremely strong physically not from his own efforts as much, but because he’s an Ackerman. 

His self-confidence and self-worth have always been built on the foundation of his strength. He’s useful if he’s strong, so he’s worthy if he’s strong. Along with the extreme high pressure his goal to kill Zeke put on him in season four, he might have gone to extreme measures to compensate for his strength he might have felt was “unearned” (such as excessive exercise for example). This is an aside, but it was a blow to him for sure.

Emotional Dysregulation

The causes of emotional dysregulation generally which he experienced are as follows: early childhood trauma, feelings ignored, judged, or invalidated at a young age, and physical and emotional child neglect. Beyond his first four years of life with his mother, Levi experienced all these things (early exposure to sex and likely exposure to domestic violence aside). 

It’s important to focus on emotional neglect specifically, when any and all perceived “weakness”, no matter how small, is unacceptable to Levi. He will never ask for help (being independent to a fault), he can’t define or process his emotions, and it doesn’t occur to him—and it could be a shock—when he learns that his friends care about him, not him insofar as how useful he is. 

As an adult, Levi appears to be emotionally mature, but I argue that this isn’t the case. It’s more accurate to say that he has better control over his emotions (in that he buries them or ignores them) with a mature outlook because of all his experiences with suffering.

Similarly, he’s not outwardly emotional not because he’s antisocial (as related to ASPD, not introversion), but because he’s so “emotionally constipated” that he’s numbed the vast majority of the time.

Relationship Issues + Fear of Abandonment

Because of his fear of abandonment and impaired emotional intelligence in close relational conflict, he’s extremely passive and/or passive aggressive. In order to avoid potential abandonment, he doesn’t go out of his way to win major arguments—such as threatening to break Erwin’s legs if he didn’t stay away from the expedition in season three, but ultimately giving in. He’s also more likely to sneak petty insults into arguments, give “silent treatment”, slam doors, etc. His kindness and exceptional empathy shouldn’t let him be physically or overly violent.

These are likely additions to why Levi doesn’t foster many close relationships.

Fittingly, as a child I thought that Levi might have had an anxious attachment style (clingy, excessive need for security), but as this possibility for security was removed entirely, and he was taught to not rely on others, he would develop more of an overt avoidant attachment in adulthood in combination (fearful-avoidant): making very few emotional demands—even though he has needs—withdrawing when there’s conflict, acting aloof yet fearing abandonment, having difficulty expressing emotions he feels intensely, and fear of depending on someone else.

Anxiety

His cool-headedness even in the heat of battle/war (other factors like experience aside) is exactly what you would expect from someone diagnosed with C-PTSD; he’s accustomed to chronic high-stress. But small stressors (i.e., a change of plans) are overwhelming and make him quick to anger/excessive annoyance.

OCD

Emotional dysregulation is also closely associated with OCD.

OCD is much much more than being concerned with keeping clean or organized. OCD is an anxiety disorder composed of anxiety-related obsessions and compulsions, such as frequent and disturbing thoughts or images (intrusive thoughts). These attempt to be managed through rituals (i.e., handwashing, counting in patterns). Although symptoms will fluctuate with anxiety, OCD at its baseline is a distressing disorder.

Since he was young, Levi should have had an incessant need to be in control at all times. A shining example of this is his mother’s death, an incident he couldn’t control but included dirtiness/disease as a cause he could pinpoint, so this anxiety with dirtiness becomes a major obsession, and the compulsion is cleaning. (Putting aside the fact that Levi enjoys cleaning by itself too.)

It’s a widely-held belief that if Levi has OCD, it’s contamination OCD, as it specifically has to do with an obsession with dirtiness and a compulsion in cleaning (i.e., damaging handwashing, ritualized bathing that may take hours). However, based on the multitude of times Levi was covered in blood and remained unbothered by it (Titan and human), and in fact the obsession’s lack of relevance entirely during urgent missions/situations, contamination OCD is simply not plausible. Instead, it’s general OCD.

There’s no way to know for sure, but I don’t see his OCD as mild or severe. Levi is an extremely orderly and balanced person, so it can be concluded he must have things done a certain way, routinely, organizational, or planned; when the dirtiness is “negative” (i.e., Titan blood, blood on a knife he used to kill Isabel’s attackers), he is never more rigid with cleanliness; it’s probable he suffers intrusive thoughts (likely of the violent nature), a fear of contamination, and/or counting ritualistically, but the most obvious compulsion is cleaning. He might have sensory issues, such as disgust if he happens to brush shoulders with a stranger; aversion to particularly bright lights, irrational rage towards “mouth sounds” (i.e., chewing, coughing, swallowing), etc.

EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified)

Levi should have a complicated relationship with food to say the least. 

In the realm of eating disorders, EDNOS is sort of a catch-all term when an individual doesn’t qualify for the diagnostic criteria of anorexia or bulimia, and it encompasses lesser-known eating disorders like Pica. It’s the most common diagnosis for clinical eating disorders.

I already covered how integral the early years of life are, and beginning at a young age, if children aren’t given a basic need like food, and they must seek out food on their own, it becomes an anxiety deeply rooted in the brain regardless of how well-fed they are when they’re older. There will always be an urge to have food available. Levi’s years in the Underground were spent either actively starving, or going about every single day having acquiring food as top priority. He was a young adult when he left, so it’s impossible to unlearn this (without extensive therapy, which Levi doesn’t seek). It’s similar to compulsions found in OCD: even though he logically knows that there will be a dinner after lunch, it’s impossible to put aside this worry. 

That may mean always having food stashed, eating too much—especially in his early years Aboveground when he’d eat as much food in a day than he’d eat in a week Underground— stealing food, or eating way too quickly (as someone who lived in a place where food was considered something of a luxury resource and threatened being stolen at any time).

The latter factor contributes to Levi’s suggested preference to only eat alone—joining the fact that Levi only eats with Erwin after expeditions. Eating in front of others should be considered a weakness to him.

As time passes with this easy access to food, combined with his extremely narrow sense of what makes him “good enough”, his relationship with eating may become toxic. Especially when the stakes of his worthiness are so high—literally life and death. He may think that he’s privileged to eat at all, and when he feels worthless, he restricts himself from that “privilege”. 

He may be so accustomed to the feeling of hunger, that it doesn’t immediately register with his mind when he is hungry.

Lastly, he may have a generally low appetite. This is often associated with depression, but depression is comorbid with C-PTSD.

Misc.

Some tangents/miscellaneous speculation about Levi’s psychology:

Queer?

Sexuality is formed and shifts due to a wide variety of factors, which most if not all are terribly understudied: genetics, hormones, and your environment/experiences. So again, my speculation.

With his fear of close relationships and negative experiences with sex, I think he should land somewhere on the queer spectrum, specifically under the asexual or aromantic umbrella (i.e., pansexuality/being panromantic (attraction to personality) and demisexuality/being demiromantic (attraction only to those he has an emotional connection to)).

MDD

The odds of Levi having MDD (major depressive disorder/clinical depression) are iffy. Most if not all of the symptoms are comorbid with childhood trauma and C-PTSD: Such as persistent apathy, guilt, and/or discontent; sleeping too much or too little; lack of energy; reduced or heightened appetite; irritability. 

Oftentimes, depression, C-/PTSD, and related mental illnesses cause unexplained physical pain, such as back pain and occasional tension headaches. “Stress hormones” like adrenaline are built-up in the body, and usually persist without physical therapy and-or medication (Disclaimer this mention is based on nothing more than Levi always standing with at least one hand on his hip).

Body Language

Similar can be said of his body language from a cognitive perspective. The vast majority of the time, Levi has himself closed-off in some way, usually by crossing his arms to protect his chest; a subconscious barrier between oneself and another person.

Also see this official art of Levi asleep.

Afterword

We’ve known it’s not just Levi’s physical strength and skill that makes him the strongest, right? It should take immense mental strength to make it day-by-day dealing with the trauma and issues that he does, but not only has he survived and continues to, but he lives heroically, selflessly, with the wellbeing of everyone around him as a top priority. He buries all of his pain by moving forward always and without exception regardless of how painful the present is. Living with “no regrets” should in mental respects be a guise for pushing his trauma down, too; there’s just no words that can properly do Levi’s resilience justice.

Part of me wants to go into detail about his later adulthood, but given how very little we know (right now), I think it’d be too speculative.

However, based on what we have seen at the ending of AOT, it’s comforting to know and plain to see that Levi wasn’t defeated when he “lost” the reason to be so strong, and even his strength itself; he didn’t lose his love for his friends nor of life. 

In middle age, based on Erikson’s psychosocial stages, the conflict that should enter Levi’s life is the idea of generativity versus stagnation. He seems satisfied with his life despite the negative effects of all he went through—grief, physical disability, inevitable mental scarring—and he’s still concerned with helping others, especially the younger generation in a world after the overwhelming devastation that was the Rumbling.

My speculated psychopathologies/diagnoses of Levi:

C-PTSD (insomnia prevalent)

OCD (contamination obsessions)

EDNOS

[fresh-bag-of-ham]

Guys this is driving me nuts. This is not true. I understand why you might think this is true, since a recent study seemed to conclude this and it was covered by every news outlet on the planet, but it is not.

This is the study: Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection. It was published in Nature Medicine, which is a very reputable journal. The study itself is fine. The headlines covering it were very misleading. Here’s the problem.

The study was observational only. You’re familiar with “correlation vs. causation”? This type of study can only find correlations. It cannot conclude that COVID reinfection causes an increased risk of hospitalization, severe disease, etc. It is equally possible (and much more plausible IMO!) that reinfection occurs more frequently in people who already have higher health risks. The study cannot differentiate between the two.

The study was also done using VA records. This means that any mild COVID infection or positive COVID test that did not result in an encounter with the VA health system would not have been captured in the study. They were already only looking at people who had severe enough COVID -- and severe enough reinfections -- that they sought medical treatment.

Furthermore -- any COVID exposure that did not result in infection due to acquired immunity would, naturally, not have been captured. Because COVID infection absolutely confers natural immunity.

Check out this other recent (Nov. 3, 2022) study: Immune Imprinting and Protection against Repeat Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2. It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, probably the most prestigious medical journal out there. They’re studying unvaccinated people in Qatar who have -- guess what -- natural immunity from prior COVID infection(s).

“Omicron infection induces strong protection against a subsequent omicron infection.2,4 In the present cohort study, an additional, earlier infection with non-omicron SARS-CoV-2 was found to strengthen this protection against a subsequent omicron infection. The earlier pre-omicron infection may have broadened the immune response against a future reinfection challenge.

“Confers immunity” and “induces strong protection against” does not mean you will never get COVID. This is the same fallacy that anti-vaxxers use to justify not getting the vaccines. It’s still possible to get COVID, but with some combination of vaccines and prior infections, you will have memory immune cells that will greatly reduce your chances of severe disease.

Other recent studies have been looking at a phenomenon called “immune imprinting”, which describes the fact that your body would much rather use existing memory immune cells to defend against a very closely related variant of something it has already encountered, rather than make a whole fresh batch of very similar immune cells perfectly specific to the new variant. This has implications for the efficacy of the new bivalent booster vaccines that include the Omicron variant -- it’s possible that the two variants are too similar and including Omicron in the booster isn’t particularly useful. This recent pre-print study -- Immunogenicity of the BA.5 Bivalent mRNA Vaccine Boosters -- compared the old monovalent boosters with the new bivalent boosters that include Omicron, and found that there wasn’t actually that much difference. Both increased antibody levels against both original COVID and Omicron (yes, even the booster that didn’t include Omicron did that, because basically everyone has been exposed to Omicron at this point and has antibodies against it, and the antibodies seem to be similar enough that they all trigger together). But both boosters increased antibodies against original COVID far more powerfully than they increased antibodies against Omicron, because everyone’s first exposure (in the study) was to original COVID, so those are the immune memory cells your body has the most of to begin with. They conclude:

Our findings suggest that immune imprinting by prior antigenic exposure5 may pose a greater challenge than currently appreciated for inducing robust immunity to SARS-CoV-2 variants.

This is tricky! This could help explain why Omicron infections are still so prevalent despite pretty good coverage with really good vaccines against original COVID (though bivalent booster coverage is pretty abysmal in the US at least, so hard to say). This does not mean that natural immunity "doesn't work" with COVID and it certainly doesn't mean that "reinfection just makes you get worse and worse".

COVID is not great. You should avoid getting it and if you get it you should definitely avoid spreading it. If you have risk factors for getting severe COVID, you should really avoid getting it, and if you have those risk factors then you already knew that. But it is not a case of “natural immunity does not exist, every subsequent reinfection only gets worse and worse forever until you die”. This is anti-science alarmism. I understand that something along these lines was in a hundred different newspapers recently but I hope this explains why that reporting was misleading and ultimately wrong.

[darkmagicmirror]

I've been thinking about @spicyviren 's post about Claudia preventing the sun from rising (and they made a more in-depth post today as well, which is also very good!), so last night I got curious and Googled mythology and eclipses because what if the eclipse actually happens and it's not just Viren's dream? And we know TDP likes mythological references. So...

This is so fascinating because of the "I swallowed her" comment Aaravos makes in Janai's dream.

A demon (or dragon, or-- (etc)) is eating the sun?

(*Personally, I don't think Janai's dream is necessarily accurate for telling us what happened -- but Aditi getting "eaten" by someone especially a dragon wouldn't surprise me.)

And speaking of "swallowing"...

And some of the other mythological explanations mentioned in the article I linked are also really interesting:

(The highlighting was done by Google, so it's not necessarily more important.)

And canon material, especially the Ripples short specifically, reflects a few themes here:

Abandonment - the humans are essentially abandoned by the stars (and the sun is a star): "It cannot be, wept others. The stars would not betray us!" - after the "star" falls from the sky and changes the land.

Crisis/existential threat - "With its impact came a long and terrible night: The earth bled! The seas churned! The sun and moon hid for weeks behind the sky’s screaming storm!" (Also bolded for emphasis because the sun hiding? The fact the moon does too is interesting, but the sun specifically is called out later: "And when the long, dark night had finally passed—for the sun must always rise, mustn’t it?" VERY interesting considering the sunrise mentions in S5.)

Eclipse as an act of creation - though much of the story talks about the calamity, there's also how "[the stars] had rejoiced to look down upon their newborn sea."

The Sun and Moon coupling and creating more stars - this is more of a stretch, but the Sun and Moon did get hidden together, and the Sea (of the Castout) serving as a mirror of the stars... like they're duplicating the stars, though only in image.

Mischievous acts - I personally think Aaravos is mischievous, so hmm.

One side note on the second-to-last point: if Viren learns the Star arcanum, which is very rarely understood, could that, too, be analogous to creating another star?

Anyway this all implies that perhaps a similar eclipse occurred before, when Aaravos had fallen and the Sea of the Castout was created? And we know how the Rise Again short story, which is about her pseudo-resurrection of her pet cat, correlated to S4 opening with Claudia having brought her father back to life, sort of in a repeating history sense. Aaravos's Patience story foreshadowed the fact that all he could do in S4 is wait and bide his time. Ripples could foreshadow S5 being that first "touch" that sets off greater change... and, like with the resurrection, perhaps history repeating itself, in a sense, with a potential upcoming eclipse?

And another interesting line: "The sky opened its maw and spat from its black jaws a tiny star."

It's not exactly black, but I know some people say the ridges here look like teeth...

Also, even though Sol is referring to his blindness, these lines about the Sun "never [rising] again" and an "eternal night" fit into similar themes to the eclipse and the Ripples short.

Also, just going back to the abandonment theme of the eclipse really quick--

The Midnight Star poem also talks about the stars abandoning humanity. "Elarion, unworthy whelp, / Wept as the stars turned black the sky, / They donned their masks / They turned their backs / And left Elarion to die."

(I have more to break down about that entire stanza in another post; I just want to point out the bolded parts for now.)

Now, most of these are references to the past... so what about now?

If I were to guess on how the same themes I compared to the Ripples story might apply to "current" series events...

Abandonment - Claudia feeling abandoned by Aaravos (as mentioned in the Lost Child short)? Or, alternately, Aaravos feeling abandoned (by either Claudia, after she had to flee from the battle, and/or Viren, after his rejection)?

Crisis/existential threat - IMO the biggest threat is Karim potentially joining up with Sol Regem right now. Though some would say Aaravos being close to being freed could be the threat/crisis here. But I'm an Aaravos apologist, so I am not part of that group LOL

Eclipse as an act of creation - Claudia regenerates her missing leg, perhaps?

The Sun and Moon coupling and creating more stars - Viren Star arcanum?

Mischievous acts - Aaravos again.

All of this to say-- I don't think the eclipse is just for show/because it looks cool, but if we consider the mythological beliefs surrounding eclipses, it ties in significantly to the story.

Also I leave you with a few last bits from the article that just remind me of TDP things:

"In many cultures, the darkening of the sun meant the gods were very, very angry with humanity, and about to inflict some punishment. Often, that meant that in order to appease them, you had to kill someone."

That reminds me of the stars seeming to punish humanity for daring to use magic... which is also when Aaravos gets cast down?

"The Greeks thought an eclipse meant that the gods were about to rain punishment down on a king, so in the days before an eclipse, they would choose prisoners or peasants to stand in as the king in the hopes that they’d get the eclipse punishment and the real king would be saved. Once the eclipse was over, the substitute king was executed."

This is so far off, but it reminds me of Harrow anyway? Mostly with the soulfang serpent idea of switching Harrow with someone else. Interesting.

"For the Inuits, the sun and moon weren’t a married couple but brother and sister. At the beginning of the world they quarreled, and the sun goddess Malina walked away from her brother, the moon god Anningan. Anningan continued to chase after her, and whenever he caught up to her, there was an eclipse."

Which reminds me of the line in Strangers, the short from Soren's perspective, where "Claudia had appeared and he’d done it again, a little boy chasing after his sister..."

A lot of it is probably coincidence, but it's still really interesting!

[ghost-of-a-system]

sorry if this is kind of crossing a line, but how do you guys deal with thinking you're faking? ive been having more issues with it recently and its affecting my system,, i dont mean to but its an unfortunately common intrusive thought

no worries, it's definitely a common thought a lot of systems seem to get from time to time (at least from what we've seen)! i know we have, though for us it was usually less of an "i'm faking", and more of an "i'm gaslighting myself into thinking i have this, by acknowledging symptoms". we mostly got these thoughts in the first year or so of for-sure knowing about our system. while we met the criteria and general experiences of someone who has OSDD1, we found ourselves obsessively comparing our system to others we'd see online, or others that we knew. we saw systems who had things like inner worlds or extreme differences in skills & knowledge per alter. things that aren't specifically required to be one, but seemed so awfully common that we just thought they were unspoken guidelines we were missing. so, we were afraid we were "faking".

i don't know how much this can apply to others, but we can remember a good deal of indicators about having OSDD1 when we were younger, especially from the ages of 11-15 or so. (mainly, dissociative episodes, the presence of potential alters.) we obviously didn't know what it was then, nor did we really think it too out of the ordinary. but they were things that we were able to start connecting the dots with the more we learned about systems and ourselves later on.

looking back, our concerns kind of fizzled out with the more dots we connected. kinda hard to be gaslighting yourself into symptoms you don't even know are symptoms, right? the fact that we experienced these things for a long time prior to even learning about OSDD1 was usually enough to help us. but i can understand if it might not be safe for others to try to delve into their pasts like that. isn't really for me to say or speak much on.

this may also not apply to many others, but here's another way. ever since creating this account, actually, we've started to stop holding ourselves to these ridiculous standards in order to be a "normal system". we're learning to respect ourselves for the way we are, and we have noticed that since then, our life has gotten, clearer, almost? whereas before, i think our anxiety and paranoia about the way we functioned clouded a lot of our symptoms. we were always over-analyzing and overthinking everything, so much so that nothing felt genuine. and, like i stated at the beginning... basically all of our concerns over faking stemmed from comparing ourselves to others, personally.

i don't know if that makes sense, but we just stopped caring so much and acknowledged our symptoms as more of a passing thought rather than one we need to grab and study as soon as it occurs. i'm not too sure of the correlation, but i think our experiences/symptoms just. stopped feeling like something we were 'secretly, actively inducing', if that makes it any clearer? and, these things were happening on their own, and to degrees that simply could not be explained by anything other than OSDD1 or something similar. it's really hard to put into words so i'm sorry if that makes zero sense hah, but that's just what we've done. we haven't really had such thoughts ever since.

-skye

[liskantope]

I had the experience recently of showing up outside the room of an interdepartmental seminar at my university and having one of the other attendees (a boomer-age woman professor) also waiting outside the room (we were picking up refreshments served there) look at me with her eyes going wide and say, "Ah, you're the only male!" I stood there with a deer-in-the-headlights expression (trying to see if I could glance into the actual room to see if it was indeed all women, which it turned out I could not). Another woman standing with us said something lightly teasing about the fact that I was just standing there awkwardly with no response.

There were two things flashing through my mind while I was freezing up. One was an actual fearful thought of wait, am I not supposed to be here? After all, there are seminars (I don't know about interdepartmental, but certainly in my arena of mathematics) just for women on the advancement of women in academia. I hadn't read the description of this week's meeting of this weekly seminar very carefully -- could it be just for women (or non-men)? I don't think it would occur to these women who were staring at me that this is the kind of kneejerk idea that might enter a man's head in reaction to a wide-eyed "You're the only male!" comment.

The second thing was how if the genders were reversed, I'm pretty sure this would immediately be branded a pretty significant microaggression of some sort.

As it happened, I don't know if this points to some relevant correlation, but this was a weekly meeting that was more for a discussion group on teaching practices, and this particular week's topic was on giving good writing prompts (a thing that I and most other math instructors don't do, but I suppose most instructors in the humanities do). The room was indeed full of all women apart from me at the start of the seminar, but eventually another guy did walk in late. At other meetings I went to, there were always some other men although I suppose (although I hadn't consciously noticed this) men are the minority.

[bestworstcase]

& since i’m on the subject of allusions tonight:

let’s talk about rwby’s actual oz allusions

so, generally speaking, the fandom—understandably perplexed by how tangential or even superficial rwby’s reference to the wizard of oz appears to be—takes the oz allusions in one of two ways: either, 1. the core ozian characters are deconstructions of the correlating oz character [the scarecrow drinks, the tin man throws his heart away, etc.] or 2. the oz allusions are a deliberate red herring intended to misdirect attention from the deeper or truer allusion to whatever, whence the g.u.n. theory or the bastardized norse myth madlibbing and so forth; or on occasion both at once.

the first camp has a lot of interesting things to say that i would probably find persuasive were it not for the fact that they also keep wrestling unsatisfyingly with the persistent questions of:

1. who is dorothy?

2. what about raven and summer and tai? (oh my)

3. how do the ozma/wizard/tip and ozma/ozpin/oscar trifectas fit together?

and the answers to all of these questions are in fact pretty straightforward...

...the trick is just that rwby isn’t alluding to the wizard of oz.

for the uninitiated there are a lot of oz books. there are-- there are so many oz books. fortunately for my sanity however rwby appears to be focusing primarily on one, the marvelous land of oz, which occurs not too very long after the wizard’s departure from oz at the end of the wonderful wizard of oz.

now, i will say up front that you are going to look at this list and immediately go “wait. what?” but just... trust me, ok? here we go.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? god of light → mombi* ozma → ozma/tippetarius ozpin → the wizard oscar → jack pumpkinhead glynda → good witch of the ✨north✨ [NOT GLINDA] theodore  → dorothy gale lionheart → the soldier with the green whiskers ironwood → nick chopper [the tin woodman] qrow  → the scarecrow raven  → the woggle-bug taiyang → the cowardly lion [provisionally**] maria → the sawhorse summer rose → general jinjur and, last but not least, salem → glinda the good [TRUST. ME.]

*the god of darkness is sir not appearing in this book, but if rwby does what i think it will re: theodore, i’d place my bets on the nome king.

**taiyang is an unknown quantity in that i don’t think his primary role in the narrative has revealed itself yet; he might alternatively turn out to be the gump or the queen of the field mice. my money is on the lion, though, because the lion is also sir not appearing in this book but, like dorothy, appears in the next as a member of ozma’s retinue.

MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ ANY% NO GLITCH—

long story short, in the before times the land of oz was ruled by a king named pastoria who took up with the fairy-queen lurline and had a baby, ozma, rightful heir to the ozian throne; shortly thereafter, oscar diggs crash landed in oz, deposed pastoria, disappeared the infant princess by giving her to mombi, sorceress of the north, and became ✨the wizard✨. ...some... amount of time later, dorothy crash lands in oz, yellow brick road, silver slippers, smashes one witch and melts another, yada yada, the wizard sails off back to omaha in his hot air balloon, CUE MARVELOUS LAND; the starting positions are thus:

the scarecrow sits on the throne of oz in the emerald city, having been appointed to rule in the wizard’s stead on account of being Very Wise.

winkie country, liberated from the tyranny of the wicked witch of the west, is now the domain of the tin woodman.

dorothy is back in kansas where everything is grey and sandy and horrible.

the lion is...somewhere, presumably doing king-of-the-forest things.

glinda the good is occupied with research [trying to find out what the wizard did with ozma] in her home in quadling country, to the south.

QUOTE, the winged monkeys are now the slaves of glinda the good, who owns the golden cap that commands their services, END QUOTE.

mombi transformed the infant ozma into a boy named tippetarius because, why not, and raised him as her ward on a farm in gillikin country, to the north.

tip is a teenager and he does teenager things like making a life-sized puppet with a jack-o-lantern head to scare mombi with, as one does, and mombi has about had enough of this so she brews up a potion to turn him into a marble statue, as one does, and tip who does not especially want to be turned into a marble statue instead steals a pepper-box full of magic powder that makes things come to life, and runs away with his newly animate bestie/son jack pumpkinhead, AS ONE DOES. subsequently uses the magic powder to make a wooden sawhorse come to life so they don’t have to hoof it all the way to the emerald city.

the sawhorse is born with a limp and the personality of an octogenarian with no fucks left to give and also he periodically goes deaf on account of his ears breaking off, so when i say maria calavera is the sawhorse—

ANYWAY, minor hijinks ensue. jack blithely accepts everything his dear father says without question because his head is a pumpkin and he has been sapient for approximately eight hours, the terrible trio splits up for a bit on account of tippetarius falling off the sawhorse who likes to go real fast, consequently while jack and the sawhorse make it to the emerald city and meet the scarecrow, tip falls behind and crosses paths with general jinjur and her army of revolt.

jinjur is sick of the way things are and the powers that be and is therefore en route, armed with a pair of very glittery very pointy knitting needles and a lot of other girls outfitted in the same, to conquer the emerald city. tip is not about this revolution thing but tags along because he wanted to appeal to the scarecrow for help with the marble statue nonsense anyway; upon arrival jinjur and her army conquer the emerald city in approximately 0.2 seconds on account of the entire royal army being composed of one (1) man, the soldier with the green whiskers who guards the gates but squeals and books it at the first hint of a brandished needle.

tip races to the palace well ahead of the girls, who are busily sacking the city, to warn the scarecrow of the situation and reconvene with the rest of terrible trio, whereafter they and the scarecrow leave the cowardly soldier to his fate and gallop like the dickens to escape the city, heading west to regroup with the tin woodman. jack is now wracked by existential dread on account of the scarecrow having told him that pumpkins rot, meaning he spends the rest of the book worrying about his imminent decay and rapidly dwindling lifespan, this is fine dot jpg.

one unfortunate incident with a river and some drying-out and a nap later, they reach winkie country and rendezvous with *ahem* the magnificent! nickel-plated tin woodman, celebrated! emperor [it wounds his pride to be called only a king] of the winkies, nick chopper. who sweeps the scarecrow up in a hug because of how delighted! he is to see him again, tells jack not to be such a downer about the my-head-is-slowly-inevitably-rotting thing, and whose immediate response upon learning that the emerald city has been conquered is to declare, quote, we do not need an army; we four, with the aid of my gleaming axe, are enough to strike terror into the hearts of the rebels, end quote, also everybody gets tidied up and repaired and the scarecrow’s strutting by the time they disembark again.

somewhat less minor hijinks ensue on account of mombi not being pleased about tip skipping town and attempting to waylay them by means of dazzling, blinding illusions and, when that fails, dramatically altering landscape in hopes of getting them lost. the sawhorse breaks his leg and the group encounters the woggle-bug, who is very large and very keen to impress upon them that he is, having snuck into a schoolroom long ago and listened in on classes for months, thoroughly educated; eventually he was caught by the professor, transformed via magnifying glass into his present size, and subsequently ran away to do woggle-bug things. on his suggestion they fix the sawhorse’s leg by amputating jack’s, because jack is riding anyway owing to his poorly-fitted knees, and using that as a prosthetic for the sawhorse [LAUGHS NERVOUSLY]. from there the woggle-bug swiftly proceeds to earn the whole group’s ire by making an offensive number of puns at their expense. they navigate through four more illusory obstacles [a raging river; a granite cliff; a writhing maze of dancing roads; a wall of fire] with the aid of the queen of the field mice.

on making it to the emerald city they are promptly captured by jinjur, who plans to dismantle everyone except tippetarius on the grounds of their not being human, but is interrupted by the timely arrival of some mice who frighten her out of the room long enough for the gang to escape by constructing a... thing, called the gump, out of a pair of sofas and a stuffed elk-like creature’s head and various other bits and bobs and animated with the final pinch of magic powder. it flies them out of the emerald city and overshoots quadling country by a wide enough margin to crash them into a nest of nasty jackdaws somewhere not in oz, a misadventure which mainly serves to facilitate the discovery of a secret compartment within the now-emptied pepper-box and, inside that, three silver pills that grant a wish when swallowed.

tip tries one to wish the gump repaired, which doesn’t work because it pains him so badly that he instead wishes he’d never taken it; the woggle-bug does the same and succeeds, they fly back home, the pills are lost, and they reach quadling country at last.

the squad attempts to fill glinda in. she already knows everything.

she fills them in on what she’s been up to, presents evidence mombi aided the wizard in his scheme to disappear ozma, and marches with them to reclaim the emerald city, intending to capture mombi and force her to reveal the truth. further illusion-based hijinks ensue of which the most potentially interesting as it pertains to rwby is that mombi transforms herself into a red rose in an effort to escape detection.

glinda sees through the ruse. mombi transforms herself into a griffin and flees, pursued relentlessly by glinda until she collapses from exhaustion in the desert waste beyond the border of oz—whereupon glinda lassos her with a golden thread that stifles her magic, drags her bodily back to the emerald city, and demands that she tell the truth or else die by glinda’s hand. mombi tries to lie, glinda is furious and having none of it, and mombi begrudgingly reveals tip’s true identity, whereupon glinda forces her to undo the curse and then strips her of her magical power forever; tip is restored to her true self, jinjur is swiftly deposed, and peace restored, hooray!, the end.

QUESTIONS!

WHY ARE YOU SO SURE SUMMER IS JINJUR? frankly a decent case could be made for interpreting cinder as the allusion to jinjur instead: jinjur is a wrathful but cunning scullery maid raging against the powers that be, and after all it is cinder who sacks beacon academy—i.e., the emerald city stand-in.

but here’s the thing: after routing the royal army, jinjur installs herself as the queen of oz and rules without interruption for most of the story. she is not ousted from this position until the final chapter. cinder is grievously injured before the battle is even properly ended, returns immediately to salem’s side, and has been a thorn in her side and also the sides of the heroes ever since—meanwhile, all this time, salem has had an unknown lieutenant stationed at beacon, searching for the crown. somebody has been holding that throne, as it were, and we have a certain silver-eyed warrior still unaccounted for.

further, jinjur’s army of revolt makes quite a conspicuous show of being united from every province, and she herself wears the colors of all four; in the event summer turns out to be working for salem of her own accord, which i think likely, her presumable reason is something along the lines of having burnt out and shattered under the pressure of being the ideal huntress, the lone guardian, the blessed warrior—precisely in the same way that we have seen ruby begin to crack under the same—and this, i think, dovetails tidily with the imagery of jinjur’s revolt. a turncoat summer rose who still holds to ozpin’s ideal of strength and peace through unity, who is perhaps reinforcing salem’s numbers at beacon by recruiting the people of vale, is what ozpin asked her to become, turned against him for how she suffered in becoming.

also, look at this flower. common name, malay rose:

it’s not a true rose; it’s etlingera venusta, and it belongs to the ginger family.

sidebar, i don’t think cinder has an ozian allusion except insofar as i suppose she performs the functional role of glinda’s army through her relation to salem. she’s, well, cinderella, and in being cinderella also a symbolic repetition of salem through her rapunzel aspect—cinder echoes the desperately furious girl in the tower, the fairytale heroine trapped by forces beyond her control, not the formidable sorceress who would lay waste to the gods.

BUT SALEM AS GLINDA, THOUGH? REALLY?

while it is clear that rwby’s primary reference is to marvelous land, there are a handful of overt nods to the film adaptation of wizard of oz specifically, in theodore’s ruby gloves and the black-and-white photo of the girl in gingham with the little black dog. naming the good witch of the north glynda as a nod to the film (and pop culture generally) conflating the two is hardly out of the question, and a tidy bit of narrative sleight-of-hand besides.

and, listen. it’s not just enslaving the flying monkeys and it isn’t just serenely running mombi into the ground and forcing her to reveal the truth and undo the harm she did to ozma; it’s also not just that glinda the good plays a critical narrative role following the wizard’s departure and the good witch of the north does not. it’s also that of the pair glinda is the more powerful and more formidable by an order of magnitude, and indeed glinda is said to be ageless, ancient, and perhaps the most powerful sorceress in the land of oz; it’s also that the ozian color-coding checks out in both directions (in glinda’s quadling country, everything is red; and gillikin country is purple); it’s also that glynda goodwitch was faultlessly loyal to a secretive cabal and believed in ozpin, as the good witch of the north believed in the wizard, whereas salem, like glinda the good, knows ozpin for a fraud, despises emerald for her deceptive semblance, and has a keen intuition and a short temper for being lied to.

the only respect in which salem and glinda do not, within the context of rwby’s ozian narrative, almost perfectly align is that salem is an antagonist and glinda is not—but here let me remind you that rwby’s mombi is the god of light, with her deceptive shape-changing and illusions reimagined as defter subterfuge and symbolically intertwined with the blinding of rapunzel’s prince. the god of light poisoned ozma’s ear against salem so well that he persuaded ozma to drink the potion and become the wizard of his own volition, cursed and blind to the true nature of the gods, his mandate, and his lost love.

but tippetarius learns the truth and finds ozma again; rapunzel’s tears heal the ruined eyes of her prince.

where do you think rwby is going with this?

AND LEO LIONHEART, THE LION FAUNUS, ISN’T THE COWARDLY LION?!

he’s the easily-cowed and fully-bearded guardian of the closest thing rwby’s scarecrow has to an emerald city to administer on the wizard’s behalf, and he is in this capacity an army of one because he’s sent every other warrior in the faculty away and sold half the huntsmen in mistral out to salem. salem sends her needling bastard of a henchperson to menace him and lionheart folds like wet cardboard, handing over the keys to the vault without a whisper of resistance. and once the battle for haven is ended, the former allies he stabbed in the back shrug and leave him to his fate at salem’s hands.

leonine faunus or not, the role lionheart plays is precisely that of the soldier with the green whiskers, the solitary and pathetically inept guardian who betrays the scarecrow and his allies out of panicked cowardice.

meanwhile the cowardly lion does not appear in marvelous land at all, but he does figure in ozma of oz—the third book—wherein he professes himself a coward still but acts no less bravely than he ever did, now a loyal member of ozma’s retinue and accompanied by his new friend, the hungry tiger. taiyang, who has either been doing big important secret cult things or else trying to psych himself up to leave his empty nest depression cabin ever since beacon fell and ozpin died, is a much likelier candidate for being the cowardly lion’s true analogue by far.

IS RAVEN JUST THE WOGGLE-BUG BECAUSE SHE’S KNOWLEDGE?

that’s part of it but not the entirety; note that the woggle-bug is not merely intelligent but gleaned all of his knowledge by spying, for no other reason than burning curiosity; note the professor who caught him and irrevocably changed him, for better or for worse, and his hasty escape for fear of being exploited thereafter; note that he is pompous and anxious and performs intelligence far more than he shows it, and note that his often-callous and sometimes-snide commentary is met with such sharp hostility by the others that at one point nick chopper implies a threat to murder him if he makes another pun at a companion’s expense.

and note, finally, that the woggle-bug does not properly enter the narrative until after the protagonists leave winkie country, the province for which atlas is very obviously an analogue. raven played a major role in volume five, of course, one which thoroughly alienated her from the rest of the ozian characters on both sides of the conflict... but then she vanished into the ether without a shred of resolution for anything but the question of whether the relic of knowledge would be retrieved and by whom, and if that isn’t a mere prelude in her character arc i’ll eat somebody’s hat.

and as for what her future role in the story might entail. well. three silver pills that grant you wishes—and one that poisons tip when he tries,  the same one the woggle-bug uses to mend their way home. three silver-eyed warriors ostensibly blessed by the god of light—and one a turncoat poisoned by the unbearable weight of ozpin’s ideals.

we still don’t know what raven knows, or who she learnt it from.

IF THE SILVER WISH PILLS ARE SILVER-EYED WARRIORS THEN, MARIA?

to activate the pills you need to swallow them and then count up to seventeen by two. the sawhorse is the one who solves the riddle, which is to start with half one, double it, and then count up by two from one to seventeen.

...WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID ABOUT FOUR ILLUSIONS AND A MOUSE?

the ever after may be bleeding wonderland out of every frame—and oh boy is it!—but, look, what is rwby if not a gleeful mishmash of inspirations and in the trailer and preview clip alone we’ve got a helpful mouse and three of the four [twisting, impossible paths? check. impassible cliff? check. walls of fire? check, twice over]. as obstacles go a torrential river crossing is not exactly out of left field in any setting—and then there’s the girl on the beach who’s wearing ozma’s original colors.

to say nothing of how well those four obstacles align so very nicely, symbolically, with ruby (paths), weiss (flood), blake (cliff), and yang (fire).

it’s a little eyebrow-raising if nothing else. something to watch.

[cyjammy]

Speculation Station: Lilith Recruited Alastor?

7 years seems to be a very common timespan between two characters: Lilith and Alastor.

As soon as I heard Vox note that Alastor was gone for 7 years and that Lilith was gone for the same amount of time, I realized that there had to be some correlation.

Alastor turns up after 7 years and suddenly an exterminator was killed. Lilith disappeared 7 years ago and now Charlie created the hotel. Something isn’t adding up.

These two may have been involved in some way or there was an event that occurred 7 years ago that led powerful sinners to have to go into hiding. But if I were to assume Lilith and Alastor made contact with each other in those years, I’d assume Lucifer would know about it.

These two may have been involved in some way or there was an event that occurred 7 years ago that led powerful sinners to have to go into hiding. But if I were to assume Lilith and Alastor made contact with each other in those years, I’d assume Lucifer would know about it.

Hell I slowed down that clip multiple times to makes sure he wasn’t just looking at Charlie and Vaggie, but his head was turned a bit far back. I’m 75 percent sure he was looking at Alastor with amusement.

And Alastor remains as robotic as distant as usual. That doesn’t give much away, but humor me. Let’s believe Lucifer was looking for the sake of my delusion.

Why would Lucifer care about some overlord? He’s the king of hell, he might not even care to look his way. Unless he had something do to with his wife, which puts a whole new perspective on things.

I don’t know what Lucifer’s personality is like outside of that leaked clip I saw (Since the episode is out, it was the base animation for Lucifer singing "Champagne fountains, caviar mountains") but you can only tell so much based on a voice.

But if he doesn’t even know what his daughter is up to or that she even has a girlfriend, there’s definitely some form of neglect. Or he’s just busy, Charlie is an adult after all. He was cognizant enough to get her a meeting with Adam, but that was after the news broadcast.

Why did it take the news for him to take action? Was it just the news or was it also the fact that Alastor was in the picture? Was he watching over her from his throne?

There’s so much I still don’t know, and it’ll probably be revealed in due time. But I’m going to make a prediction that might be wrong, but I’m going to put it out into the universe anyway. Lilith killed the exterminator in the commotion and this is a way to get Charlie to take action and realize that fighting back may be the only solution to save Hell. Lilith cares for her people, the extermination caused the growth of hell to cease and she went away. Possibly to strengthen herself and find a way to kill angels.

Or, going back to the beginning of this thread where I stated an event may have taken place to get them both to disappear for a while. Alastor wasn’t active in hell. I think that may have been out of pure boredom.

After killing all the old overlords and rising to power, he left, we know that much. And now for my delusional speculation. I think Lilith saw how powerful he was and asked for help. She wanted to protect her daughter and save demon kind.

This is why Alastor may have taken an interest in Charlie. Besides offhandedly seeing a broadcast about the hotel, he recognized her immediately and decided to show up to “help.” Now it could be argued that he just wants to make a deal with Charlie to further his power, but why would he suddenly appear to do that now?

Think about it, Charlie has been on her own for a while. Alastor was back around the time Charlie started the hotel, he was already in public when he saw the broadcast.

Even now he’s laying relatively low, not bringing attention to himself

by staying in the Hotel. By staying close to Charlie a majority of the time. If he cared to create an empire or become even more powerful, he has the ability to do so easily.

So why hasn’t he?

To keep tabs on her? To wait for her to give in?

It’s hard to say since he gives nothing away, frustratingly enough, but that’s why I love Alastor, he’s a puzzle and nothing will be revealed until he deigns it so with a witty comeback and a smile.

The only thing that will kill this theory on arrival is if Lucifer has no idea where his wife is. If Charlie asks if he has heard from her and he says no forget what I said about Lucifer, but Lilith contacting Alastor may have occurred.

7 years seems like something that may be a common theme for certain sinners. It’s already been mentioned twice, and I can’t wait to find out what happened to Alastor and Lilith during that time.

If Lilith did contact Alastor, I’m calling it now. (Watch me be horribly wrong 😭)

------

Now, after watching Season 1 and seeing all of this was fucking wrong and that Lucifer is a silly, depressed little man who loves his daughter, I see that I was simply overthinking. I hope you enjoyed this month old thread from Twitter guys.

[dazedpuppydairies]

Hiya, I'm Bandit and welcome to The Dazed Puppy Diaries. This isn't going to be a proper journal entry as those are kind of more recaps of what's going on in my day-to-day life. I just thought it would be interesting to share some "fun facts" about my name/names.

🦌🧚🦄🧛‍♀️🐺😈🦝🐶⚧️🦨

I had the idea for this blog post because if you happen to stumble across me on another social media after finding my Tumblr you may notice my name isn't Bandit or my name isn't just Bandit. I actually go by two first names which are Fawn and Bandit. I usually go by Fawn in my day to day life and Bandit within my polycule and on the internet. On top of that you may also see me going by the name Hagstone. I thought it could be kind of fun to share the story behind my names etc.

Fawn

So I've been going by Fawn since early last year, in the around 8 years I've been out as trans I've gone by a few names. I started contemplating going by Fawn though in December of 2021 I believe. I started thinking about my gender kind of differently around then and I guess I kind of wanted a "weird nonbinary name". Previously the name I was going by was pretty androgynous, but just not as fun. Also it's fair to mention I experience some gender fluidity and my gender was kind of cycling at that time. I've gone through many different points of my life thus far where I identify closer to the male binary and even though I don't now or at least in the same way I don't negate that I was a boy then, which is honestly kind of cool in my opinion. At that time I was kind of going from identifying more with being demiboy or trans masc and now I identify more with being polygender. I'll probably talk about that more at some point. I actually got the name Fawn from a meditation I did in late October or early November of that year when I was living in a motel. In my meditation I was in a garden and then I suddenly transformed into an anthropomorphic deer. I don't really know if it had any further spiritual or psychological significance, but ever since I've kind of had a thing for deer. I'm otherkin and therian so I kind of have a hunch it might be an alter human thing. I do think I may have a dear theriotype, but that's still something I'm questioning.

Bandit

This one is more straightforward. Bandit originated kind of as a pet name one of my partners came up with for me and it stuck. After a while Bandit just became a name I went by along with Fawn. People have guessed the name Bandit came from Bluey which is a good guess I like where your head is at, but in this case it was more just a stereotypical dog's name. My girlfriend actually didn't even know what Bluey was at the time.

Also yes if I do end up coming to the conclusion I'm a deer therian both my names will correlate with theriotypes.

Hagstone

This one is a bit more personal considering Hagstone is actually our system name. I know I just said in my last journal entry I'm not sure how comfortable I am talking about our plurality on this blog yet, but Hagstone is a name I go by so it's relevant to the conversation. I don't totally remember who came up with the name the Hagstone System if I'm being completely honest, I think Morgan came up with it in the notes app and I kind of just went along with it. A hagstone or adder stone is a rock with a naturally occurring hole in it that's believed in some folklore to allow a person to see into other realms. The Idea behind the name was that a lot of us on some level identify with a type of other realm being for whatever reason. For example I'm faekin, I guess Morgan identifies with vampires in some sense, one of our headmates likes the teen werewolf aesthetic, etc. I don't think it applies to all of our headmates, but I also don't know that for a fact because I don't have good communication with the rest of the system. At the moment I'm under the impression there's like six of us including myself, but I don't even know if that's true. Okay I'm getting a little bit more personal about this then I planned so moving on. Sometimes all right my name as Fawn/Bandit Hagstone online sort of as filler for a last name.

Others Names

There are some other names I'll go by like Skunk for example which is one of my Fursonas names. They're called Skunk because they're a border collie and border collies are often black with a white stripe down their face and belly reminiscent of the white stripe going down a skunks back.

[alphabetsoup-blogposts]

Concerns? Indeed.

FAO, people in those spaces were reading my private diary out loud as I was typing it.

There were in addition (as you can probably hear): express exhortations to all listeners to change phone sets, change routers, change software, spend money, not spend money, sign up to new email accounts, log in to Discord spaces, join WhatsApp calls, play video extracts, avoid replaying video extracts... much of which I did because I assumed that, of course, they had the GG permissions (an impression they were keen to confirm).

Later, I began to doubt that I was right about this. I became concerned first and foremost because some of the instructions seemed risky. My concerns mounted, first, when an international space appeared increasingly to be looking to British thought leaders and, second, when it became clear that the purpose of participation was to push code and to use the emotional content of the issue to trigger large-scale decryption work. At the time I was on a hiatus but the trigger worked because, as I say, my emotions were engaged by the issue. Later, I decided that I would continue with the decryption work but choose my own sources and set my own parameters. That is where we now find ourselves.

I agree that this is what activism often looks like (Discord, Protonmail, WhatsApp, crypto...) but I stress that activism is not normally powered by capture of the listener's private diary or keyboard. I hope you can see that a platform which is trying—under its self-avowed mission—to facilitate the accommodation of refugees via various official and unofficial channels, becomes a much more sinister thing once it is powered by an unsanctioned capture of a particular participant's devices.

Was I free to leave? Yes, of course. But not entirely without cost. I entered wanting to make a personal contribution and hoped that I might. On leaving I lost that hope and the added-value in my life—my ntieth go-round on a cycle of hope and disappointment that has to do with IRL agency and virtual control—but I also had to view a great wash of algorithmic emotional prods about making a difference and about how neutrality is, in reality, siding with the aggressor. (Those continue to this day—isn't that why we're here?) The prods may have been public and general, or they may have been a correlated series of targeted hooks. I felt a great deal of ambivalence and some self doubt. Was it, in fact, a sanctioned GG-inspired exercise? Or, was it, conversely, an exercise in justifying continued interference? Did I imagine it all? Am I mad? Or, conversely, am I stupid for not expecting this...erm, weird "knowingness" by now? Why does anyone want me to get an iPhone or take people into my house? Is this another threat to my life? Even if there were no other prods, the mystery of it all was a hook per se. The natural impulse is to stick around in hope of an answer and that, I think, broadly explains not just the activity of a few weeks earlier this year but a significant part of the compulsion over half a decade (the other part being deliberate gamification).

As I say, I was willing to help in my personal IRL capacity under normal retail safeguards. I am also willing to work in a wide variety of contexts to interpret code qua "Perks", but there was nothing consensual, transparent, respectful of autonomy or safe about what occurred in those spaces.

[deviantartdramahub]

As someone who recently graduated from college with economic theory classes, a thought occurs to me as I think about how not a week has gone by here since I enrolled without someone mentioning they want to overcrowd actual deviants, one I'm wondering if anyone here wants to know. Did anyone know that the number one cause of a bad economy that any and every individual can reverse right this moment is the urge to witch hunt? Think about it, your (referring to people who mob others) victims who are probably productive workers in society with many potential social connections are being alienated in a ripple effect that effects several individuals in the six degrees of separation, splitting off the line of work, sabotaging incentive and causing the proper exchange of goods and services to falter as the flow of people attempts to adjust to the displacement, also with the alienation creating economic drains to form in the form of people who have been isolated or create emotional turmoil as well as demise before their time. To those who live simpler lives than myself, this might sound like a drop in the bucket of reckless ways one can treat the economy, but I didn't take economics classes only to say I don't think of today's awful economy all the time, in fact there are plenty of historical examples of this, such as Japan, which economically boomed after WWII, something that would've never been possible if they continued to put all their salience on honor, shame, and seppuku rather than trade, since honor has the power to override the power of money and trade, which is also why this is the only era where Japan actually had any concrete concept of money. One can even look at who is affected by the mob's stigma in correlation with who is where on the economic scale. To this group, and to everyone reading this, I say this... for the sake of this world, within which this is one of the few certain things one can say about cause and effect in the economy, I would fully advocate, one way or another, the subtraction of witch hunters away from anywhere that wishes to be economically prosperous, for if such an instant fix exists in a world that would appreciate any improvement, no matter how small, why waste it?

I mean you're not wrong.

[ej-bio444assignments]

thoughts on rachel's presentation on bdsm and kink:

review article: the thing i found most interesting in the review article was the impact of bdsm activity on pain tolerance, and how it would temporarily rise following someone receiving pain. i also found the facts about education level interesting, especially the theory that it could relate to someone's interest in experiencing psychological dynamics with their partner.

research article: this research article focused on to what extent bdsm interests were related to trauma and attachment style. the study was done in 2017 in an online questionnaire, and asked about bdsm activities, experiences, and about trauma experiences. it divided people by the intensity level with which they practiced bdsm, and examined whether they had experienced violence or unwanted sexual contact. the thing i found most interesting there was that there was no significant correlation between unwanted sexual contact and bdsm behavior, indicating that it didn't necessarily lead to interest in bdsm or make it impossible. i also really thought that the comparison of attachment styles was interesting. the main significant thing that was relevant being that dominant-identifying people were less likely to have an anxious attachment style was pretty interesting to me (although it did seem to be exactly what you'd guess!)

something really notable about the research article was that there was less physical abuse during childhood for bdsm practitioners, which is important and notable because it's the exact opposite of the stereotypical perception of how people get involved in bdsm

i also wondered about the general higher incidence of violence in adulthood - i thought this might be connected behaviorally to higher risk-seeking behaviors, and being more likely to be in environments where physical violence was likely to occur.

[andrewtverylegitimateblog]

Rashomon and The Usual Suspects

Who is Keyser Soze? Who actually killed that samurai? Why does Kevin Spacey look like Pee Wee Herman in this? Toshiro Mifune sure looked like he had fun running around, don't you think? These are all things I thought while I watched both Rashomon and The Usual Suspects respectively. While I feel there is grounds for comparison between Rashomon and The Usual Suspects I feel that perhaps this may not be the most productive way to discuss these films.

Rashomon and The Usual Suspects might in their simplest forms be reduced to two films that are essentially about a deeper world of darkness and terror that exist beyond what we can or even might want to perceive. The Usual Suspects departs considerably from Rashomon in many ways however.

Rashomon follows a series of simple archetype characters throughout it's narrative: woodcutter, priest, samurai, bandit, lady, and vagrant. Each of them occupies a particular role and is presented in a way to the audience that correlates immediately to every aspect of what is presented to the audience visually. We are presented four respective stories and are asked to make judgements based on these conflicting accounts.

The Usual Suspects follows a gang of five self-interested criminal associates after they're drawn back together following an interrogation in which they're all held under suspicion on trumped up-charges. Afterwards they all fall back into their old habits and return to working together. While one might argue that some of the characters are archetypes, the hard ass New York police detective or the former criminal doing their best to go straight. None of them particularly embody the same folk-tale character role that any of the characters do in Rashomon. Perhaps the largest departure from Rashomon is that there are not multiple narrators but one.

Verbal is often presented as one of the weaker members of the criminal group. Physically disabled and burdened with a constant limp he's most times spoken at and not with. In many shots he's almost entirely to the side or almost just within frame.

Verbal presents the entire story of the film. Everything we are told about what occurred to his associates and their ultimate demise is entirely conveyed to the audience through his own words. Scenes outside of the room in which Verbal is being interrogated provide us with some insight into the reverberations on the incident that ended in the death of his comrades and the "deal that went wrong". As his story progresses an essential figure becomes the target of interest.

Keyser Soze is all things criminal, he is all things evil, and he is the very embodiment of brutality. His victims are numerous and are not only limited to smugglers and killers but innocent women and children. Verbal is eventually broken down and learns that he was betrayed by what he thought to be his only friend who was in fact the shadow Keyser Soze, and straggles out of the police station . It is at this point The Usual Suspects become an evolution upon Rashomon. We learn that the identity of the criminal matches precisely with that of Verbal based on a police sketch. Keyser Soze is Verbal.

Everything is suspected to be a fiction. Every plot point, every interaction, and all things contained within the world presented to us by Verbal are now all in doubt. Rashomon presents the audience with some leading throughline, it's four main narrators, and allows the audience to deduce from them what may or may not be true. In the closing scene of The Usual Suspects we learn that everything we were just told may in every way be a fabrication. The madness, deception, and confusion that make up Rashomon take on even grander form as EVERYTHING is brought into question.

Personally I feel that Rashomon is in every way conceivable the superior film. It's actors, camera work, and narrative appeal to me more than anything in The Usual Suspects did. I understand fully why The Usual Suspects holds the level of acclaim it does, but the late 90s crime drama and overall story fall flat compared to the absurd historical epic that is Rashomon.

[blue-opossum]

How and Why Dream Content Models Sleep Dynamics: Animals 1

        How and Why Dream Content Models Sleep Dynamics: Animals 1

        3 minutes and 45 seconds to read.

        Saturday morning, 12 August 2023.

        Being an intuitive dreamer and having memorable, vivid dreams throughout each sleep cycle (with various levels of lucidness) for over 60 years has enabled me to map and understand them to an exceptional degree. This valuable attribute has resulted in experiencing hardly any "bad" dreams or "nightmares" in my lifetime (other than on the threshold of an illness). Even conscious awareness of "sleep paralysis" (residual REM atonia that occurs throughout all dreams throughout every sleep cycle, a fact that many people, bizarrely, cannot seem to grasp) is usually a blissful state for me, with pleasant ASMR that I have habitually tried to sustain when I become more aware of the liminality between dreaming and waking (and hypnopompic or post-hypnopompic mentation). Understanding the "meaning" (causality, not "dream interpretation," which I consider an asinine belief) corresponds with my dream state awareness as I am dreaming.

        I intuitively cast animals for different reasons depending on my depth of sleep and mode of dreaming. Animals are a predominant form of protoconsciousness proxies that correspond the most with the status of my anticipated real-world physicality and mobility. It is rare for in-dream animals to exhibit protoconsciousness mentation regarding mental modeling (proto-cognizance) in contrast to physicality, but it does occur now and then.

        Because of how and why intuitive waking dynamics (and wakefulness-attaining catalysts) and liminal states occur (in the second half of my sleep cycle), I might dream of an animal becoming a human (and yes, I know humans are technically animals), but rarely ever the opposite (which might otherwise occur in the first stage of my sleep cycle). This type of narrative occurs because protoconsciousness naturally correlates with human mentation toward wakefulness, and my dreams model this transition.

        On this page, I will use a dream recurring a few times on 2 July 1972. I was eleven years old. I titled it "Along the Wayside (Cougar Frozen in Midleap)." I will use a different dreaming experience from the first half of that sleep cycle, "Frozen Tiger."

        Despite imaginary kinesthesia (illusion of movement caused by vestibular system ambiguity that also occurs with consciousness, such as dizziness) being a predominant feature as riding in a car with my parents, the cougar simultaneously models my intuitive acknowledgment of REM atonia. Despite my dream's simplicity, it made me focus on what was occurring while dreaming in contrast to pretending it had a real-world "interpretation" after waking (which makes no sense despite the popularity of "dream interpretation" - though more as a trivial game in contrast to the genuine understanding of causality).

        The cougar dreams had an atypical association with temporality, especially in how time seemed to pass more slowly throughout the second half of my sleep cycle. It differed from my "Frozen Tiger" dreams (in my earlier stages of sleep) in that I specifically focused on temporality when I saw the cougar hovering in the air in midleap. I considered that time was moving much slower beyond the other side of the wayside. In contrast, I did not associate the motionless tiger with "frozen time" but as literally frozen. I held no wariness regarding either narrative, only a deep curiosity.

        Dream content also reveals whether I am moving into my sleep cycle or out of it and other interesting traceable and mappable factors. For example, while the outcome of "Along the Wayside" eventually revealed the cougar was making progress in his "frozen" leap over time (when my father drove by the area a couple more times, with the unusual temporal illusion that at least a week had passed), the "Frozen Tiger" (in an unknown zoo setting) was the opposite (in that he would presumably become covered by more and more snow over time, with less mobility). In other words, it includes my self-evident recognition of losing real-world mobility while moving deeper into sleep and, regarding the cougar, gaining real-world mobility when leaving REM atonia and my sleep cycle. It also infers eventually gaining contact with the ground when no longer suspended in the air. Tens of thousands of my dreams model this simple process but with an astounding variety of imaginary and appreciated narratives.

        Mapping specific contrasts between both dreams (same sleep cycle):

        "Along the Wayside ": Cougars lived in the wild near where I lived in reality (two real-life locations). Although "frozen in time," it seems to gain progress toward the end of my sleep cycle. My dream modeled a real-world location near where I lived. I was with my parents and physically present in the car with a vivid and sustained sense of motion and depth (though no somatosensory response). Proprioception was realistic and defined.

        "Frozen Tiger": Tigers were only in zoos (not in the wild near where I lived as cougars were). Although I did not see a cage - a zoo is still associated with less mobility (for the animal), just as snow and being covered in snow is (REM atonia). My dream modeled an unknown setting. There was no vivid physical presence. Proprioception was undefined. I seemed to be "there," however (in contrast to seeing only imagery). This dream segment also came with more lucidness (though most "lucid dreaming" propaganda is false and sometimes mixed up with the pointless fallacy of "astral projection" by wannabe occultists).

        Dream content often reveals specific patterns of my sleep cycle and its dynamics (such as the extent or degree of REM atonia or cortical responses like vestibular, somatosensory, ocular, and auditory, even gustatory or olfactory). Narratives reflect my mode of dreaming, depth of sleep, and many other factors.

[thechasefiles]

2 points to ponder Let me start, madam editor, by first saying that the free education which Barbadians have benefited from generally, must now be brought to bear on much of what is going on in Barbados. Citizens are being treated in the fashion one would treat simpletons. Those of us who like to wear the hats designated for dunces, class clowns or simpletons are entitled to do so. It is most unfortunate that the identity of that young lady who was allegedly raped by a government official was made public. However, out of some bad might have come some good. I am of the view that this leaked information compelled the police to take action. I could be wrong, but I do not believe so. This incident reportedly occurred in September and the alleged “perpetrator” only appeared in court this week. As investigations go and taking into consideration that the matter is before the court and cannot be commented on directly with respect to the facts of the actual incident, one can however query the following even if no answers will be forthcoming: (1) Why it took so long for the matter to reach the court when the accused had been named? (2) Is there any correlation between the action being finally taken and the matter being leaked? (3) If the matter was known to the police since late September, were the political colleagues of the accused made aware of the allegation against him then? (4) What action did these servants of the people take if it was brought to their attention then? (5) Was the allegation brought to the attention of the accused in late September or only now at the time of his being charged? (6) If it was brought to his attention in September, why this gap? (7) If it was only brought to his attention last weekend, again, why the gap? (8) Was the matter leaked by someone concerned at the length of time it was taking the police to act and saw this as the only means to have action expedited? (9) Since this matter has been made public, has consideration been given to offering the alleged victim police protection or some form of security until the matter is heard? Read the rest below 👇🏾 https://www.instagram.com/p/CkN0087g8w0pX6r04isaINgy-73Y64Y9YSCbPU0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[figofswords]

“The Thing In The Woods”, illustration and story I did for the fall chapbook produced by my university’s student literary and art mag.

You were only eleven the first time you saw the thing in the woods.

You were out with your father in the wintertime, shivering in your hand-me-down coat and your soaked-through boots. You did not want to be there; you wanted to be at home by the fire, curled up at your mother’s side and lulled to sleep by the gentle sussarus of her voice. But fire needs wood to burn, and according to your father you were a man now, and you wanted to prove it. So, into the woods you went, into the snow and the looming shadows of fir trees. Your lungs ached from the cold of the air and the ax you carried was too heavy for you, but if you stopped moving forward you might lose sight of your father and the dark branches overhead looked almost like claws, so you kept trekking.

You were amusing yourself with composing songs under your breath—rambling ditties with little form or direction to them, but entertaining for your young mind—when your distraction caused you to miss the gnarled root that rose from the snow before you. Your boot caught on it and you tripped and fell face-first. Now all of you was wet and cold, even your hands in the new mittens your mother had knitted you. You started to cry, but when you looked up to call out to your father he was no longer there.

But it was.

Your cries stopped mid-breath at the sight of it, just inches away, watching you with horrible eyes like bottomless pools, ageless and deep and aching to swallow you up. Everything was frozen in that moment—even the snowflakes seemed to have stilled in the air—as you stared at it. As it stared at you. Mist formed around its muzzle from the wheezing huff of its breathing, and you knew just looking at it—at the gruesome crown of jagged bone-knives reaching from skull to sky, at the armored feet just the right size to crush your hand into nothing inside your new mittens—this monster could kill you. Easily. And looking into those ancient eyes you knew that it wouldn’t even care.

You willed yourself to reach for the ax where it had fallen, thinking desperately that perhaps you could at least scare it off, but you found you were paralyzed by sheer terror of the thing before you. You simply could not will yourself to move. You could barely breathe. You were certain, suddenly, that this is where you would die, eleven years old and soaked through and alone.

And then, miraculously, by grace of God or luck or some mercy of sheer indifference, it turned and walked away, leaving you shivering in the snowdrifts.

Later, your father did not believe you. Your mother smiled gently and patted your head, but you could tell she did not believe you either. She bundled you up in blankets and handed you warm cider and rubbed your frozen toes until the color returned to them. Your father put the new logs on the fire and sighed as he looked at you.

“I guess you’re not quite ready yet,” he said, rubbing his beard. “We’ll try again when you’re older.”

And you knew: you were not quite a man after all.

For years, you feared the woods. You refused to enter them alone, staying only on the outskirts and sneaking anxious glances into the mess of gnarled branches. The memory of it plagued you; every gust of wind was the horrible rasp of its breath, every dark branch moving on the outskirts of your vision was the tip of its bony crown. For years your sleep was restless, and you often woke up sobbing from fear of the dreadful beast you had seen. The specifics of the memory faded over time, leaving only the afterimage of terror, and you found yourself resenting your younger self for being so afraid of what you grew more and more certain was just an ordinary deer or an oddly-shaped tree. Eventually, you started to wonder if you hadn’t just made the whole thing up entirely; if you’d ever actually seen anything at all.

Until the second time.

You were seventeen then, older and more mature. Your voice had recently dropped several octaves and the acne on your chin had started to look more like stubble, and so you thought yourself a man. You went into the woods alone for the first time since the encounter to prove this manhood to yourself and to the world and to anyone who scoffed at you for your childish fears. You walked among the dark branches and looming firs, and the crunch of your boots in the snow and the pulse of your own breath seemed so loud to you, but you told yourself you were not afraid.

And then you saw it again, there in the glade. Again, time froze, and it looked at you. It loomed before you and it was just as your nightmares recalled it: its eyes were black as depthless pools, just as you remembered, and just as you remembered its crown of bone stretched up and up, branching into sharp points, perfect for goring. Its legs were as you remembered them as well; long and knobby, too spindly to hold such a massive creature, and yet there it was, standing atop the snow which somehow did not give under its weight.

Alone in the forest, you looked at it: the thing from your nightmares, the thing that you knew in the pit of your stomach could so easily be your death. It wasn’t a deer like you’d hoped—you’d seen deer, and felt chills down your spine at their almost-resemblance—and this wasn’t that. Deer are slender and graceful; the fur on this thing hung off it like moss from trees, and its chest was thick and muscular like the trunk of some great oak. Deer are also docile creatures, skittish and easily frightened, but this thing—whatever it was—stood still and strong and stared you down without a hint of fear in its horrible, horrible eyes. There were stains of rust flaking away on the sharp points of its bone-crown and you knew: this thing had killed. As that thought came to you, the creature lifted its head up towards the grey sky and cried a high, haunting bugle, and the sound of it rose every hair on your body and chilled you down to the bone.

It looked at you, with those horrible eyes, and it finished its battle cry. And it took a step forward.

You were not a man, after all. You were the same little boy you’d been before, alone in the woods with this ghastly, wretched thing.

So you did the only thing you could do: you turned, and you ran.

[gatheringbones]

[“Sometimes you have an experience that makes it all crystal clear. Cal was in his sixties and struggling with his sexuality and confidence. He had had only a few dates and was seriously intimidated by women. Over several sessions, we explored the offers gently and slowly. It became his turn to ask me, “How do you want to touch me?” He looked worried, and I could tell he was trying very hard to trust me. As one does before jumping into a cold river, he leaned forward, then backed off, then leaned forward again, gathering courage. Okay, ready? I think I can do that. Okay, ready, here we go! He took a giant leap of faith and blurted out, “Do whatever you want!”

Me: Oh dear! Is that what you thought the question was?

Cal: Uh, that’s not it?

Me: What’s actually true is that though there might be something I would like to do, you get to decide if that is okay with you.

Cal (after a pause): I do?

Me: Yes, you do.

Cal: Oh.

It was clear at that moment that it had never occurred to him that he had any choice in the matter. So deep was this belief that he could not hear the question. The instructions were “How do you want to touch me?” He heard that as “Do whatever you want.” Those are very different things. I thought, No wonder he is afraid of relationships! If you don’t know that you get any choice about what happens, how can you get close to anyone? You can’t risk being in the same room. One has only a few options then. You can go along with everything and become a doormat, you can try to control everything, you can stay on the doing side of every interaction, you can stay away from people altogether, or some combination. If you don’t know and trust, bone deep, that you have a choice, you’ll have to do one of those.

This and other experiences showed me that the one factor underlying whether we can enjoy being touched, in any way at all, is knowing that we have a choice in the matter. It turned out to be a direct correlation. If you know you can say no or stop, you relax. If you don’t know you can say no or stop, you can’t afford to make such an offer. You will be on guard, worried about what’s coming next, because you have to be. I came to see that knowing it in our minds is not enough. We have to know it with our bodies—that is, we have to have a body experience of exercising that choice.

That day brought a big insight for me about how deep this goes, how invisible it is to us when we’re in it, and how confusing and disempowering it is. Again, seeing it so clearly here let me see the same dynamic in myself. Where was I forgetting I had a choice? This role of offering themselves to be touched for the other person’s enjoyment was surprisingly rich. People noticed they had a choice and learned how to exercise that choice. They learned, perhaps for the first time, that someone could enjoy them. They learned that they were giving a gift even when it felt wonderful to them. Often the learning was that they did in fact have a limit to what they were willing to let someone do to them and that owning their limits leads to joy and freedom.”]

Betty Martin, The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent