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slashire · 1 month ago

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Tuesday

Summary: you accidentally grab at the same book as another, turns out it's the reason why you look forward to every tuesday. You and Spencer, after meeting, enjoy each other's space in the little bookstore, it escalates to him asking you out to dinner.

Spencer Reid x gn!reader

Genre: fluff, slow burn, a tiny trauma dump from spencer

WC: 2219

an: I'm working on part 3 of the black butler one, but I'm currently in between moving so Idk when I can post it! :(

The first time it happens, it's raining, light, misty rain, the kind that's more whisper than weather. The air smells faintly of damp pavement, crushed leaves, and the orange peel you tucked into your coat pocket on the walk over. You duck into the little bookstore nestled between a florist and a vintage clothing shop, your usual Tuesday sanctuary, and shake the rain from your sleeves as the door swings closed behind you with a soft, familiar chime. The sound feels like punctuation, a gentle full stop at the end of whatever outside noise you've left behind.

Inside, the bookstore hums in its quiet way, old jazz murmurs from a corner speaker, blending into the rustle of pages and the soft scuff of someone moving between stacks. The place is warm with the scent of old paper and wood polish, with something slightly citrusy you've never quite been able to identify. You follow the creaky wooden floorboards instinctively, stepping around a table stacked with faded Penguin Classics, past the fiction aisle, and into the back corner, where Psychology lives, tucked between political theory and poetry like some strange venn diagram of the human condition.

You reach for the book without thinking, Cognitive Development and Psychopathology. It's dense, unflinchingly clinical in parts, but you’ve been circling it for weeks. There's something in the way it weaves together early development, trauma theory, and behavior patterns that fascinates you, how it reads more like the anatomy of memory than an academic text.

And then, as your fingers touch the spine, another hand reaches for it at the exact same moment.

The contact is brief- cool fingertips brushing yours- but it's enough to make you glance up.

He's taller than you, but somehow he manages to take up less space than he should, like he's trying to shrink himself to fit the bookstores hush. His hair curls slightly from the humidity, soft and unbrushed in a way that suggests he might have run here through the rain without an umbrella. He wears a navy cardigan over a mismatched shirt and tie, the pattern of the tie slightly crooked. He looks surprised, blinking at you with warm, honey-colored eyes behind wire-framed glasses.

He pulls his hand back immediately.

“I-sorry. You go ahead,” he says, his voice low but clipped, as though he's used to recalibrating mid sentence. “I've read it before. Several times, actually. Though I find I never quite retain the same interpretation twice.”

You pause, glancing down at the book again and then back at him. “Sounds like memory reconsolidation.”

That makes his eyebrows lift, sharply, delightedly, as if you've just said the exact right thing on accident.

“Exactly. Yes. that's actually-well, it's the core of the problem, isn't it? That every time we retrieve a memory, we alter it. It's not like a file you open and close. It's more like…like clay. Always being reshaped. Dr. Vass even argues that therapy, at its best, is just carefully controlled memory destabilization. But of course, her sample sizes were too small and skewed toward outpatient populations, so..”

He trails off, blinking again. Then he lets out a breath and offers a shy, crooked smile. “Sorry. I ramble.”

“No,” you say, a little too quickly. “It's refreshing.”

He glances at you as if he's trying to determine whether you mean it. Then his smile deepens, just slightly.

“You have good taste,” he says.

“Likewise,” you reply, this time, he actually lets out a quiet laugh, something barely audible but genuine.

He offers you his hand, like the thought just occurred to him. “Spencer Reid.”

You shake it, noticing the precision in his grip, the careful way he measures touch like he's learned to be cautious with his presence in the world. You give him your name in return, and he repeats it softly, almost to himself, committing it to memory.

Something shifts then, something subtle. Like two books leaning gently into each other on a shelf, no longer strangers.

You think that will be it. But the next Tuesday, he's there.

You spot him first, seated in the philosophy aisle, one leg curled under the other on the faded armchair near the back. He's reading again, The Denial of Death by Becker, but looks up the moment you enter, as if he's been listening for the sound of your step.

“Hi.” he says, the word a little breathless, like he didn't realize he'd been holding any until just now.

That day, you talk about Carl Jung. The week after, it's Virginia Woolf. Once, your conversation spirals from Plato to neurolinguistics to the way children invent private languages and how that might intersect with trauma encoding. He speaks in long sentences, hands moving in rhythm with his thoughts, building out entire structures of ideas in the air like he's mapping galaxies. You never feel lost, though. He pulls you into the orbit of his mind with ease, always pausing to check if youre still with him, always listening as intently as he speaks.

He starts bringing you books, ones he thinks you'll like, secondhand copies with his thoughts scribbled in the margins. You bring pastries from the cafe down the block. On rainy weeks, he brings tea. It becomes a ritual. You become ritual.

Sometimes you sit in silence, reading side by side. Other times, the words don't stop until the shop closes and the clerk politely flicked the lights. The world outside shrinks into irrelevance when he's across from you, head tilted, brow furrowed in thought.

You learn how he cracks his knuckles when he's nervous. How he won't interrupt, but his eyes light up when he's holding back a thought. How he listens, really listens, with the kind of reverence that makes you feel like what you say matters, like it's being gently stored away somewhere sacred.

He tells you things you know he doesn't tell most people. That he's been called a genius, but he doesn't always feel like one. That he used to hate silence, but lately, he's been learning how to sit with it. That he never had a favorite place in D.C, not really, too transient, too loud, but this bookstore, he says one day, without looking up from his book, “feels like breathing again.”

You don't answer. You just smile and turn the page.

Five months after that first accidental brush of fingertips, he gives you a book.

He doesn't say anything. Just place’s it on the table between you. A worn copy of Letters to a Young Poet, soft-edged and underlined. You open it without thinking, and a folded piece of paper falls out.

Your name is written on the front in careful, narrow handwriting.

Inside the note reads:

I've found a rhythm in these Tuesdays.

A stillness I didn't know I needed.

I used to believe connection was accidental.

Or infrequent.

But then I met you. And it didn't feel

Accidental at all.

I was wondering,

Would you like to have dinner with me?

No pressure.

Just one more conversation.

-Spencer

You sit back slowly, heart thudding in your chest, the soft sound of pages turning somewhere in the store now impossibly loud. When you look up, he's not pretending to read. He's watching you, quietly, hands folded in his lap, eyes full of uncertainty that doesn't match the brilliance of his mind.

You smile, small, certain, and hold up the note.

He straightens, blinking once.

“I'd love to,” you say.

The smile that breaks across his face isn't perfect. It's not suave or practiced or cinematic.

It's real.

And just like that, the story turns another page.

The dinner is set for the following friday. He chooses a quiet, tucked away place, of course he does, a little family-owned bistro with books stacked on its windowsills and flickering tea lights on each table. He texts you the address precisely, three days in advance, and follows up on Thursday to confirm with a slightly self conscious, “Still okay for tomorrow?”

You reply yes, and he sends a single reply back: looking forward to it. Very much.

The phrase plays on a loop in your head as you dress.

You arrive first. The table is already reserved, near the back, half-shielded by a tall shelf of antique hardcovers. You glance around at the soft lighting, the quiet music playing in the background. It doesn't surprise you that Spencer found this place. It feels like him: thoughtful, hidden in plain sight, full of depth and charm you only see when you slow down.

When he walks in, you spot him immediately.

There's something about the way he carries himself tonight, more upright than usual, but still with that signature nervous energy he never quite masks. He's wearing a dark sweater and blazer, and his hair is a little more carefully styled than usual, though it still curls loosely around his ears. His eyes land on you, and the second they do, his shoulders drop just a little, like he's been holding something in and finally remembers how to breathe.

“Hi,” he says, pulling out your chair for you, and then his own. “Im...Im really glad you came.”

“So am i,” you answer, and his lips tug into a smile that takes its time spreading, like it's blooming rather than appearing.

The conversation is easy. Of course it is. You talk about books at first, he asks if you've started The Body Keeps the Score, and when you say yes, he leans in, visibly excited, launching into a soft but passionate explanation of how somatic trauma therapy has reshaped the way we understand memory storage. He stops himself three times mid-ramble, apologizing with flushed cheeks and glancing down at his hands. You touch his wrist gently once, just to steady him. “I like listening to you,” you say, and he glances up at you like that's something he doesn't hear very often but wishes he did.

Over pasta and shared wine, the conversation deepens.

He tells you about his mom. He doesn't launch into it the way he does with literature or statistics, it's slower, careful, like unwrapping something delicate. He talks about her schizophrenia, about the sharpness of her mind before the illness settled in, about how he used to read her poetry and scientific papers out loud just to keep her anchored. You don't interrupt. You just let the quiet stretch when it needs to, holding space for the weight he's always carried.

“I used to think I had to fix everything,” he says, voice low. “That if I just knew enough- read enough, understand enough- i could make it all go away. But some things aren't puzzles. They Are…ongoing.” he pauses, then looks at you. “You make it feel okay to have some of those pieces still unresolved.”

You say his name then, softly, and his gaze flickers to yours with something unguarded, something that's not just gratitude but recognition. Like he sees something in you he didn't expect to find, but can't quite let go of now that he has.

You talk for hours, until your plates are cleared, until the wineglass between you is empty, until the candle burns low and the lights dim just a little more.

Outside, the air is cool and still. The rain has passed, leaving behind the shimmer of wet pavement and reflections in puddles. He walks you to your car without speaking at first, hands tucked into the pockets of his coat. You match his pace naturally.

“I…don't really do this,” he says suddenly, stopping just before you reach your door. “Not just the dating thing. But the part where i…care this quickly.”

You feel something shift again, like the pause before a page turn.

“I haven't either,” you say. “But I do.”

His expression softens, and for a moment, the world shrinks to the narrow space between you. He doesn't lean in. He doesn't rush. He just looks at you, and it feels like a long-held breath finally being released.

“I'd like to see you again,” he says. “Outside the bookstore. Not that I don't love the bookstore- I do. But I'd like to know what your laugh sounds like in other places. What you look like in the morning light. What you think about on a Sunday when no one’s asking you questions.”

The words are so Spencer- half poetic, half exact, more honest than most people are allowed to be.

“I'd like that too.” you say.

And then he smiles, and it's the real one, the one that starts in his eyes and unfolds all the way through him, like he's not sure what's happening, only that it feels like something he doesn't want to stop.

He brushes your hand with his before he leaves. Just barely. But it's enough.

Enough to know this is only the beginning.

Enough to know the next chapter is already writing itself in quiet, deliberate ink.

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #mgg #matthew gray gubler #fanfic #fluff #vampiilure

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mariacallous · 20 days ago

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Late on a Sunday night in June of 2023, a woman named Carlishia Hood and her fourteen-year-old son, an honor student, pulled into Maxwell Street Express, a fast-food joint in West Pullman, on the far South Side of Chicago. Her son stayed in the car. Hood went inside. Maxwell is a no-frills place—takeout-style, no indoor seating. It’s open twenty-four hours a day. Hood asked for a special order—without realizing that at Maxwell, a busy place, special orders are frowned upon. The man behind her in line got upset; she was slowing things down. His name was Jeremy Brown. On the street, they called him the Knock-Out King. Brown began to gesticulate, his arms rising and falling in exasperation. He argued with Hood, growing more agitated. Then he cocked his fist, leaned back to bring the full weight of his body into the motion, and punched her in the head.

When the argument had started, Hood texted her son, asking him to come inside. Now he was at the door, slight and tentative in a white hoodie. He saw Brown punch his mother a second time. The boy pulled out a revolver and shot Brown in the back. Brown ran from the restaurant. The boy pursued him, still firing. Brown died on the street—one of a dozen men killed by gunfire in Chicago that weekend.

In the remarkable new book “Unforgiving Places” (Chicago), Jens Ludwig breaks down the Brown killing, moment by moment. Ludwig is the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and he uses as a heuristic the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s version of the distinction between System 1 and System 2 thinking. According to Kahneman, these are the two cognitive modes that all human beings toggle between. The first is fast, automatic, and intuitive. The second is slow, effortful, and analytical. Ludwig’s innovation is to apply the dichotomy to criminal acts. A System 2 crime might be a carefully planned robbery, in which the assailant stalks and assesses his victims before attacking them. This is what criminologists call instrumental violence: acts, Ludwig writes, “committed in order to achieve some tangible or ‘instrumental’ goal (getting someone’s cash or phone or watch or drug turf), where violence is a means to some other, larger end.” A System 1 crime, by contrast, is an act of what Ludwig calls “expressive violence”—aimed not at gaining something tangible but at hurting someone, often in a sudden burst of frustration or anger.

The central argument of “Unforgiving Places” is that Americans, in their attempts to curb crime, have made a fundamental conceptual error. We’ve assumed that the problem is instrumental violence—and have fashioned our criminal-justice system around that assumption. But the real problem is expressive violence. The ongoing bloodshed in America’s streets is just Maxwell Street Express, over and over again.

For the better part of a generation, the study of American crime has been in a state of confusion. The first destabilizing event came in the nineteen-nineties, with a sudden and sustained drop in urban crime across the United States, most notably in New York City. At the time, the prevailing view was that gun violence was deeply rooted—a product of entrenched racism, poverty, and despair. But, if that were true, how did New York’s homicide rate fall by more than half in the span of a single decade? Deeply rooted problems aren’t supposed to resolve themselves so swiftly.

The conventional wisdom adapted. Attention turned to shifts in policing—specifically, the rise of proactive tactics in the nineties. The N.Y.P.D.’s stop-and-frisk strategy, aimed at getting guns off the street, was credited with driving the crime decline. But then, in 2013, a federal judge ruled that the police’s stop-and-frisk practices violated constitutional rights. And what happened? Crime continued to fall. New York got safer even though the police stopped doing the things that we thought were making the city safer. It made no sense.

Then there were those who argued that violent crime was a matter of individual pathology: stunted development, childhood trauma, antisocial tendencies. Look closely at the criminal, we were told. But research—from criminologists like David Weisburd and Lawrence W. Sherman—showed that, in city after city, crime was hyperconcentrated. A handful of blocks accounted for a disproportionate share of violence, and those blocks stayed violent, year after year. In other words, the problem wasn’t people. It was place.

Last summer, I was given a tour of a low-income neighborhood in Philadelphia by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Its program Transforming Vacant Lots has led a concerted effort to clean up thousands of vacant lots scattered across the city. The approach is simple: clear the weeds, pick up the trash, plant a lawn, put up a post-and-rail fence. The initiative works on over twelve thousand lots, and the results are striking. What once looked like a struggling neighborhood now resembles, at a glance, a middle-class one.

What’s remarkable, though, isn’t just the aesthetics. It’s that the neighborhoods where these lots have been turned into green spaces have seen a twenty-nine-per-cent drop in gun violence. Twenty-nine per cent! The people haven’t changed. The pathologies haven’t changed. The same police force still patrols the neighborhood. The only new variable is that someone comes by to mow the lawn once or twice a month. As economists like to say: How do you model that?

This is the puzzle that Ludwig sets out to solve in “Unforgiving Places.” His answer is that these episodes confound us only because we haven’t appreciated how utterly different System 1 criminality is from that of System 2. System 1 thinking is egocentric: it involves, Ludwig writes, interpreting “everything through the lens of ‘What does this have to do with me?’ ” It depends on stark binaries—reducing a range of possibilities to a simple yes or no—and, as he notes, it “focuses more on negative over positive information.” In short, it’s wired for threats. System 1 catastrophizes. It imagines the worst.

Brown’s encounter with Carlishia Hood pushed him into System 1 mode. He made an immediate egocentric assumption: if he knew that special orders were a norm violation, then Hood must know, too. “Given that System 1 assumption,” Ludwig explains, “from there it is natural that Brown believed the person in front of him was deliberately holding things up.”

Hood, meanwhile, didn’t know about the special-order taboo, so she was operating under her own egocentric assumptions. She “knew she wasn’t being disrespectful and deliberately trying to hold up everyone else in line, so the curse of knowledge led her System 1 to assume that Brown surely also knew that,” Ludwig writes. “So why was he getting so bent out of shape? She didn’t mean to be inconsiderate to the people behind her in line; she just wanted the Maxwell Street Express people to change whatever it was that she wanted changed on the burger.” Neither had the cognitive space to consider that they were caught in a misunderstanding. They were in binary mode: I’m right, so you must be wrong. From there, things escalated:

Hood says to her son, who’s standing behind Brown, “Get in the car.”

Brown seems to think that comment is directed at him—another misreading of the situation.“WHO?!?” he says. “Get in the CAR?!?”

Hood says something that’s hard to make out from the video.

Brown says, “Hey lady, lady, lady, lady. GET YOUR FOOD. GET YOUR FOOD. If you say one more thing, I’m going to KNOCK YOU OUT.” You can see his right fist, clenching and unclenching, over and over.

She says something that is again hard to make out on the video.

He says, “Oh my God I SAID if you say one more thing, I’m going to knock you out.”

At which point he punches her—hard.

Hood’s son is standing in the doorway, watching the assault of his mother. Had he been in System 2 mode, he might have paused. He might have asked for help. He might have called 911. He could have weighed the trade-offs and thought, Yes, it’s unbearable to watch my mother being beaten. But, if I kill this man, I could spend years in prison. But he’s filled with adrenaline. He shifts into catastrophizing mode: There is nothing worse than seeing my mother get pummelled by a stranger. Brown punches her again—and again. The boy shoots him in the back. Brown runs. Hood tells her son to follow him. There is nothing worse than letting him get away. Still in System 1, the boy fires again. Brown collapses in the street.

Ludwig argues that this is what most homicide looks like. Much of what gets labelled gang violence, he says, is really just conflict between individuals who happen to be in gangs. We misread these events because we insist on naming the affiliations of the combatants. Imagine, he suggests, if we did this for everyone: “ ‘This morning by Buckingham Fountain, a financial analyst at Morningstar killed a mechanic for United Airlines.’ Naturally you’d think the place of employment must be relevant to understanding the shooting, otherwise why mention it at all?”

The “super-predator”—the remorseless psychopath of television dramas—turns out to be rare. The mass shooter, meticulously assembling his arsenal, is a statistical anomaly. The professional hit man is mostly a literary invention. “A careful look at twenty years of U.S. murder data collected by the F.B.I.,” Ludwig writes, “concluded that only 23 percent of all murders were instrumental; 77 percent of murders—nearly four of every five—were some form of expressive violence.”

The Chicago Police Department estimates that arguments lie behind seventy to eighty per cent of homicides. The numbers for Philadelphia and Milwaukee are similar. And that proportion has held remarkably steady over time. Drawing on data from Houston in 1969, the sociologist Donald Black concluded that barely more than a tenth of homicides occurred during predatory crimes like burglary or robbery. The rest, he found, arose from emotionally charged disputes—over infidelity, household finances, drinking, child custody. Not calculated acts of gain, in other words, but eruptions rooted in contested ideas of right and wrong.

Ludwig’s point is that the criminal-justice system, as we’ve built it, fails to reckon with this reality. We’ve focussed on the signalling function of punishment—on getting the deterrents right, offering the proper mixture of carrots and sticks to influence rational actors. Mass incarceration, which swept the country in the late twentieth century, rested on the assumption that a person spoiling for a fight with another person was weighing costs: that the difference between ten years and twenty-five would matter. But was Jeremy Brown calculating odds when he punched Carlishia Hood? Was her son performing a Bayesian analysis as he ran from the restaurant, gun in hand?

This misapprehension, he argues, is why the American experience of crime so often seems baffling. Murders are volatile—a city really can go from dangerous to safe overnight—because the behavior driving most homicides is volatile.

Why did crime in New York continue to fall after the N.Y.P.D. ended stop-and-frisk? Because what makes police officers effective isn’t how many people they stop or arrest—it’s how many arguments they interrupt or defuse, ideally without resorting to handcuffs or charges.

Why does crime seem more related to places than to people? Because some places are simply better at de-escalation than others. Imagine Maxwell Street Express in a more stable neighborhood, with a core of regulars—people connected to one another, who know something about Jeremy Brown and his temper. Another customer might have stepped in and said, “Hey, wait a minute, Jeremy. Cool it. I don’t think the lady knows how this restaurant works.”

And why did Philadelphia’s vacant-lot program work so well? Because, when an empty lot becomes a well-kept lawn, people come outside. They have barbecues and picnics. Kids play. And suddenly, as Jane Jacobs famously put it, the block has “eyes on the street.”

“Jane Jacobs claimed that informal social control contributed vitally to public safety by interrupting criminal and violent acts in the moment,” Ludwig writes. It’s an idea that doesn’t make much sense if you assume that violence is instrumental. The rational criminal, after all, will just move a block over—set up shop where the odds tilt in his favor. But that’s not how most offenders operate. They’ve lost their temper. For a few volatile minutes, they’re not thinking straight. And, in that state, violence interrupted is violence prevented.

One subject that Ludwig all but ignores in “Unforgiving Places” is guns. It’s a notable omission, since what turns the confrontation at Maxwell Street Express from a fight into a homicide is the peculiarly American fact that Carlishia Hood had a handgun in her car. In any other developed country, a fistfight between Jeremy Brown and Carlishia Hood would in all likelihood have remained a fistfight.

But Ludwig is weary of gun-control arguments. He simply doesn’t believe that the United States is ever going to enact serious restrictions. “Over the last 243 years of U.S. history, the number of major, restrictive federal gun laws has been (depending on how you count) something like five or six.” That’s what economists call the base rate—and Ludwig’s position is that the energy devoted to that lost cause might be better directed elsewhere.

He wants us, instead, to take System 1 behavior seriously. First, stop talking about criminals as if they occupy some distinct moral category. Neither Jeremy Brown nor Hood’s son was evil. They were caught in an unforgiving moment. Second, stop locking up so many people for long prison terms. The best way to keep arguments among teen-agers from turning violent is for adults to step in and tell them to cool down—and mass incarceration drains adults from troubled neighborhoods.

Third, spend more time thinking about what makes one neighborhood safe and another unsafe. Ludwig cites a randomized trial in New York City’s public-housing projects, which found that developments given upgraded outdoor lighting experienced a thirty-five-per-cent reduction in serious crimes compared with those left as is. A well-lit space makes it easier for bystanders to see a confrontation unfold—and makes those involved a little more self-conscious.

But the biggest opportunity, Ludwig argues, lies in behavioral modification. He writes about a program in Chicago called BAM—Becoming a Man—which teaches teen-agers how to navigate potentially volatile encounters. In a large randomized trial, Ludwig compared students on Chicago’s West Side and South Side who had participated in BAM with those who hadn’t, and found that participation reduced arrests for violent crime by fifty per cent.

He describes one of the program’s exercises, in which students are paired off. One is given a ball; the other is told he has thirty seconds to take it.

Almost all of them rely on force to try to complete the assignment; they try to pry the other person’s hand open, or wrestle or even pummel the other person. During the debrief that follows, a BAM counselor asks why no one asked for the ball. Most youths respond by saying their partner would have thought they were a punk (or something worse—you can imagine). The counselor then asks the partner what he would have done if asked. The usual answer: “I would have given it, it’s just a stupid ball.”

Exactly. It’s almost always a stupid ball. Or someone asking to hold the pickle. No one walked into Maxwell Street Express that night expecting to die, or to kill. But that’s the nature of expressive violence: no plan, no purpose—just a match struck in passing. As Ludwig reminds us, we have been trying to stop violent offenders without understanding what goes on in the mind of the violent offender.

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yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy · 8 months ago

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It’s been discussed before yes yes yes but the fact that in Trespasser Solas declines your Lavellan from joining him because he doesn’t her want to see what he will become.

a) All Lavellan knows is the moral, ethical, and principled Solas, the Solas who acts defensively and practically. Solas has and will act/order others to act in such a way that would break many Geneva conventions if it means succeeding, and he doesn’t want to test Lavellan’s love for him by making her bear witness to that, to choose him when she has no idea the true cost of what she is demanding, not only of herself, but of the world that will be ravaged by all of the terrorism and political maneuverings meant to destabilize and destroy the only world she has ever known. There is nothing more heart-breaking than someone you love forsaking you, to reach that limit one has for another. But equally so, Solas does not want to be in the position where he may be left with the choice between choosing Lavellan or his mission. What he will become may just be a man that would sacrifice her for his plans. He will not let her potentially put her heart on the line like that.

b) He doesn’t want to make her a monster that participates or allows such things, because part of the reason he fell in love with her was because of her goodness. It wouldn’t be difficult to groom her into evil if love was added to the mix. Love can compel you to do terrible things for the sake of a loved one, and Solas does not want to take advantage of her in that way, does not even want to have that temptation or that possibility involved. He is distancing himself to avoid accidentally corrupting the nature of what he believes to be a good, pure spirit. Evil inevitably poisons goodness. The Evil he wields is utilitarian and remorseful and necessary but evil all the same because it will do harm to thousands via the removal of the Veil. The man is planning what is potential omnicide. You cannot participate in that and not have something about you change irrevocably to allow it to happen. Solas, again, thinks of Lavellan as a good spirit. He wants to keep as many “good-spirited people” (kind, good people) intact as possible before he executes his plan. Why, I do not know, but I suppose because he believes that possessing a good spirit means your life will be happier. To be good is to exist well, and as Solas explains, to be good of heart means you will attract good spirits in the Fade and thus your experience in the Fade will be more pleasant, so by this logic he believes that, ideally (strictly ideally, he knows how much reality does not reflect ideals), goodness begets goodness begets peace.

Solas needs to be a monster because truly effective warfare is conducted when principles and ethics are thrown out the window. He does not want Lavellan to witness that and be confirmed in how much of a monster he was, is, and is willing to be. He wants her to remember him as a civilian, as Solas the humble apostate, not Fen’Harel the shadowed and conniving guerrilla war general. Selfishly, he wants her to only love a part of him, the best parts of him, because he is afraid of the whole of him being rejected, because who he is in totality is so storied and convoluted and repugnant that it would require the most extreme cognitive dissonance to be able to love him, and if there is anything Solas hates, it’s people who ignore reality in favor of their own self-serving fantasies. Lavellan would be right to disavow him, and by the same token it would be so terribly selfish of them both if she forgave him of his crimes and he accepted that forgiveness, because his sins cannot be absolved with a single individual’s love. That is the tragedy of their love, because love cannot overcome all that has happened. It cannot redeem or wipe away what he has done, not unless he kills a significant part of who he is, the Ancient Elf, the Rebel, the Failure, the Veil Maker, the Doomer of the World.

#solas #solavellan

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fatehbaz · 2 years ago

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Didn't wanna clog up your post, and these sources are more about relationships of time with space/place, but here's some stuff that I've encountered:

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“Temporal sovereignty”. Contemporary US/Australian claims over time-keeping. Aboriginal/Indigenous time-keeping. The importance of the “time revolution” in the Victorian era to Euro-American understandings of geology and deep past, precipitating nineteenth-century conquest of time (British longitude; Victorian fascination with death, antiquity, paleontology). Mid-twentieth century understanding of “deep time” and its co-option by the Australian state. "Deep time dreaming".

Laura Rademaker. “60,000 Years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts.” Postcolonial Studies. September 2021.

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How "time is a form of enclosure". Checkpoints, "baroque processes to apply for permits to travel", fences, incapacity to change residences, and other "debilitating infrastructures" work to "turn able bodies into a range of disabled bodies" by "stretching time". This is a "slow death" and a simultaneous "slowing down of life" because "it takes so long to get anywhere" and "movement is suffocated". Thus "time itself is held hostage". This "suspended state" of anxiety and endless wait-times "wreaks multigenerational psychological and physical havoc". "Checkpoints ensure one is never sure of reaching work on time. Fear of not getting to work then adds to the labor of getting to work [...]. Bodies in line at checkpoints [...] [experience] the fractalizing of the emotive, cognitive, physiological capacities" through a "constant state of uncertainty". "The cordoning of time through space contributes to an overall 'lack of jurisdiction over the functions of one's own senses' [...] endemic to the operation of colonial rule". This "extraction of time" produces a "depleted" and tired person "beholden to the logistics" of administrative apparatuses, community suffers and "communing is thrawted".

Jabir K. Puar. "Spatial debilities: Slow Life and Carceral Capitalism [...]." South Atlantic Quarterly 120. April 2021.

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The "apocalyptic temporality" that presumes extinction. Indigenous Polynesian/Pacific perceptions and ways of being "destabilize the colonial present" and also "transfigure the past" by "contesting linear and teleological Western time". How United States and Europe colonized Oceania for weapons testing and conquest of tropical Edens while rendering local Indigenous people "ungrievable" and "without future". "Pacific time is a layering of oral and somatic memory". Instead of accepting an apocalyptic future or doomsday or nightmare, assert the possibility of a livable future, in spite of "Western temporal closures".

Rebecca Oh. “Making Time: Pacific Futures in Kiribati’s Migration with Dignity, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s Iep Jaltok, and Keri Hume’s Stonefish.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Winter 2020.

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Colonial "space-time homogenization". The experience of "homogenous, empty time". Orientalist "time lag" and the naturalization of a supposed East-West hemispheric divide. Late Victorian imperial conceptions of temporality. The British establishment of the Greenwich meridian and International Date Line. The influence of British imperial seafaring and cartography on the establishment of time and on European/US feelings towards the Pacific Ocean. How the origin of English science fiction literature, space travel aspirations, and time travel narratives coincided with the Yellow Peril and xenophobia targeting East Asia.

Timothy J. Yamamura. "Fictions of Science, American Orientalism, and the Alien/Asian of Percival Lowell". Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representation of Asia in Science Fiction. 2017.

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Imprisonment as time-control. Here “the question of the past the present and the future indeed time itself looms” especially around the prisoner. “The law renders punishment in units of time”, taking away a the right to a future. There are alternative worlds, many of them, which have been practiced and brought into being, which colonization tried to obscure. There is “a whole anthropology of people without future embedded in the assumptions that justify mass imprisonment as poverty management”. "The prison’s logic exterminates time as we know it”. In prison, bodies have been alienated from time and history ... the punishment seems endless ... to “achieve a measure of agency and possibility it is necessary to redeem time”, to refuse the doom, fated to a life of abandonment.

Avery Gordon. “Some Thoughts on Haunting and Futurity.” borderlands. 2011.

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Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Martin J.S. Rudwick, 2010) explores how the advent of European sciences like geology, preceding the "time revolution" when Europeans experienced revelations about the scale of "deep time", happened alongside and after the Haitian Revolution and other abolitionist movements. French, German, and British naturalists translated the explosion of "new" scientific knowledge from the colonies, so that the metropolitan European audience became a market for historical and scientific "narratives" about how "nature" and time functioned.

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Prartik Chakrabarti's writing on time, temporality, and "the deep past" as British imperial concepts built in conversation with colonial encounters with South Asia. (British Empire reaching such heights in the middle of the nineteenth century at the same time that the newly professionalized sciences of geology were providing revelations about the previously unknown vast scale of "deep time". New colonial anthropology/ethnology also presumed to connect this "primitive" past with "primitive" people.)

See Chakrabarti's "Gondwana and the Politics of Deep Past". Past & Present. 2019.

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We must witness and consider "multiple space-times" to understand how "unfree labour" of plantations was "foundational" to contemporary work, movement, subjugation, health, etc. We must "trace the geneaology of contemporary sovereign institutions of terror, discipline and segregation" [workplaces, imperial/colonial nations, factories, mines, etc.] back in time to plantations. How "the [plantation] estate hierarchy survives in post-plantation" times and places, with the plantation "being a major blueprint of socialization into [contemporary] work". The plantation was "a laboratory for [...] migration regulation in subsequent epochs" that practiced methods of racializing and criminalizing.

Irene Peano, Marta Macedo, and Colette Le Petitcorps. "Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times". Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives. 2023.

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“Slow life” and the relationship between “settler colonialism, carceral capitalism, and the modulation of ... registers of time,” including “historical time, the stealing of time through the expansion of labor time, ... and the cordoning off of space through time”. For example, as in occupied zones or at border checkpoints, “the cordoning off of space through time” includes physical architecture like fences and customs, obstacles that impede movement and rhythm, so that “nothing ever happens on time” and there is “a stretching of time”. All the wasted time spent in line, showing papers, waiting for confirmation, etc. “is not a by-product of surveillance, it is the point of surveillance”. Such that “uncertainty becomes a primary affective orientation ... flesh as felt” with a racializing effect“. "This is a biopolitics conditioned through pure capacitation and its metrics”:

Jasbir Puar. In: “Mass Debilitation and Algorithmic Governance” by Ezekiel Dixon-Roman and Jasbir Puar. e-flux Journal Issue #123. December 2021.

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"Starfish time". Indigenous Australian/Aboriginal perceptions of time and "attending to more-than-human agencies of time". Acknowledging the timescales of entire ecosystems, as part of multispecies relationships, a "transcorporeal collaboration". Cyclical time vs linear time. Contrasting timescales experienced by insects that only live a few days and creatures that live for decades. "Starfish may seem to be still" but they slowly move; "larval time" and "the time it takes for eggs to develop and hatch"'. The "immensity of the alterity is literally incomprehensible"; "we can't know what these beings know" but we "should seek respect and be aware of how our lives are entangled".

Bawaka Country including, S. Wright, S. Suchet-Pearson, K. Lloyd, L. Burarrwanga, R. Ganambarr, M. Ganambarr-Stubbs, B. Ganambarr, D. Maymuru. “Gathering of the Clouds: Attending to Indigenous understandings of time and climate through songspirals.” Geoforum. January 2020.

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The use of calendars, dates, clocks, and industrial/corporate temporality as fundamental to the rise of plantations and financialization in United States/Europe, with a case study of the modern Colombian/Latin American state. Observance of certain dates and strict adherence to specific calendars support "mythologized deeds and heroic retellings" of colonization and industrialization. “The evolution and internalization of disciplined concepts of time” were intimately tied to the rise of wage labor in industrializing England and later during the global ascendancy of work and industrialized plantation monoculture, but the persistence of alternative time should “serve as a reminder that futures and the demarcation of epochs are never as simple as a neatly organized calendar”.

Timothy Lorek. “Keeping Time with Colombian Plantation Calendars.” Edge Effects. April 2020.

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Indigenous people of Alaska and the US control over time management. For the past 50 years, Yupiak people have been subject to US government’s “investment in a certain way of being in time” which “standardized the clock” and disrupted human relationships with salmon. This US management model “anonymized care” and made “a way of attending to the life and death of others that strips life of the social and ecological bonds that imbue it” with resilience and meaning, which “ignores not only the temporality of Yupiaq peoples relations with fish, but also the human relations that human-fish relations make possible”. This disregards “the continuity of salmon lives but also the duration of Yupiat lifeworlds ... life is doubly negated” ... “futures depend on an orientation to salmon in the present”.

William Voinot-Baron. “Inescapable Temporalities: Chinook Salmon and the Non-Sovereignty of Co-Management in Southwest Alaska.” July 2019.

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"Idling" and "being idle" as a form of reclaiming agency and life. Case studies of fugitive Blackness in Caribbean plantation societies. “Disruptive waiting”. “The maroon’s relationship to time challenges [both] the totalizing time of the modern state, but also the [...] narratives to negotiate struggle in the [...] present" in "antagonistic relationship with colonial power". Defying the “European narrative of modernity”. Refusing to be productive.

Amanda Lagji. “Marooned time: disruptive waiting and idleness in Carpentier and Coetzee.” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. March 2018.

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Indigenous futures. "It is important to remember that some futures never went anywhere" and "yet they survive. These are futures suppressed and cancelled by colonial power." These are "parallel futures". "Colonial power must control the past so as to deny the emergence of" an alternative future; "colonial power creates a future in advance so that no others will take its place". Poor, racialized, Black, Indigenous people manifest alternative futures.

Pedro Neves Marques. "Parallel Futures: One or Many Dystopias?" e-flux. April 2019.

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The "legacy of slavery and the labor of the unfree shape and are part of the environment we inhabit". The "idea of the plantation is migratory" and it lives on "as the persistent blueprint of our contemporary spatial troubles", so we must seek out "secretive histories" that no longer "rehearse lifelessness".

Katherine McKittrick. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe. 2013.

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“The temporal dispossession” of Congolese people. There is an “impossibility” of “predictable time” because temporal dispossession “disrupts the possibility of building a future”. Livelihoods/income is driven by market and price fluctuations in United States and Europe tech industries, so “there is an inescapable day-to-day sense of uncertainty”. As Mbembe says, “in Africa, the spread of terror ... blows apart temporal frames”.

James H. Smith. ‘Tantalus in the Digital Age: Coltan ore, temporal dispossession, and “movement” in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.’ American Ethnologist Volume 38 Issue 1. February 2011.

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“Slow death”. Chronic illness not just as a byproduct of colonialism/dispossession, but also as part of its aim, a weapon that debilitates people, who become exhausted. Dooming poor and racialized people to lives “without future” through debility, “a condition of being worn out”. Relationship of illness, lack of healthcare, and debt as functionally incapacitating, a form of death sentence. A “zone of temporality” unfolding unlike abrupt/sudden traumatic events and becoming an inescapable condition.

Jasbir K. Puar. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. 2017.

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The extension of poverty, landlessness, homeless, and imprisonment. "To be unable to transcend the horror of such a world order is what hell means", and "without a glimpse of an elsewhere or otherwise, we are living in hell". The utopian is not only or merely a “fantasy of” and for “the future collectivity” but can be claimed and built and lived here, now. There is "no guarantee" of “coming millenniums or historically inevitable socialisms”, no guarantee that “the time is right” one day if we wait just long enough. Instead: "can a past that the present has not yet caught up with be summoned to haunt the present as an alternative?" The "utopian margins", an alternate world crossing time and place, an "imaginative space and temporality to trace the remains of what "was almost or not quite, of the future yet to come", living as if it were the present. Colonialism tried to crush the many headed hydra of the revolutionary Atlantic, those who challenged the making of the modern world system.

Avery F. Gordon. As interviewed by Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah. “Revolutionary Feminisms: Avery F. Gordon.” As transcribed and published online in the Blog section of Verso Books. 2 September 2020. And: Avery Gordon. “Some thoughts on the Utopian.” 2016.

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The US/European "city is the site of regulatory regimes" that try to impose a definitive narrative about history, progress, and possible futures. But it cannot achieve "a wholly Apollonian, seamlessly regulated realm" because the land "continues to be haunted by the neglected, the disposed of, the repressed". The "commodification" of landscapes "circulates an imaginary geography" mediated through advertisements, labels, soap operas, television, etc. which celebrate "sanctioned narratives and institutionalized rhetoric". A "wild zone" of informal spaces, debris. "Ruins are places where the things, people, and "other memories can be articulated". There is "a spectral residue" that "haunts dominant ways of seeing and being". "Alternative stories might be assembled", so that we can respect the people banished to abandonment, the periphery, and reclaim agency.

Tim Edensor. “The ghosts of industrial ruins: ordering and disordering memory in excessive space.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space volume 23. 2005.

Also, how "master narratives of history as progress decompose" when faced with "a continuously remembered past" when "the ghosts of this past rear up in the ruin" to expose "the debris of unprecedented material destruction" of colonialism/empire-building. These "hauntings rupture linear temporality" and recall those people beaten down as "the trash of history". It is "essential to see the things and the people [...] banished to the periphery [...]."

Tim Edensor. "Haunting in the ruins: matter and immateriality". Space and Culture Issue 11. 2002.

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"Many kinds of time" of bacteria, fungi, algae, humans, and "Western colonialism meet on the gravestones". Some creatures, like lichen, are very long-lived and "these temporal feats alert us that modernity is not the only kind of time, and that our metronomic synchrony is not the only time that matters". The "long duree evolutionary rapprochements to the quick boom and bust of investment capital" where "minor forms of space and time merge with great ones". Extinction is "a breakdown of coordinations with reverberating effects". Ghosts remind us that we live in an impossible present, a time of rupture. "Deep histories tumble in unruly graves that are bulldozed into gardens of Progress". "Endings come with the death of a leaf, the death of a city, the death of a friendship".

Elaine Gan, Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, and Nils Burbandt. “Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene.” Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. 2017.

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Everywhen: Australia and the Language of Deep History. (Edited by Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker, and Jakelin Troy. 2023.)

Chapters include: "Bugarrigarra Nyurdany, Because of the Dreaming: A Discussion of Time and Place in Yawuru Cosmology" (Sarah Yu et al.); "Songs and the Deep Present" (Linda Barwick); "Yirriyengburnama-langwa mamawura-langwa: Talking about Time in Anindilyakwa (James Bednall); "Across 'Koori Time' and Space (John Maynard)

#im sorry i guess i accidentally deleted this post so here it is again #colonial #imperial #temporality #abolition #indigenous #multispecies #ecology #temporal #futures #haunted #halloween i guess idk #ecologies #tidalectics #archipelagic thinking #caribbean #victorian and edwardian popular culture #extinction #criticize time

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the-cosmic-cauldron · 20 days ago

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The Astrology of Edmund Kemper: The Co-Ed Killer

Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women and one girl between May 1972 and April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer", as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, dismemberment and possibly cannibalism. ( source Wikipedia)

Edmund Kemper was Earth dominant. The thing about Earth signs—especially in heavy concentration—is that they tend to think in black and white. This polarity works well when they possess clear knowledge of what they’re focusing on. But what they don’t understand haunts them.

When Earth signs experience rejection and can’t comprehend why, they may spiral. Their stability is rooted in facts, logic, and tangible understanding. Anything beyond that realm becomes maddening. This destabilization is amplified when fire is also strong in the chart. What they know keeps them intact. What they don’t understand unravels them—and when that unraveling strikes the fire element, it ignites rage. Not a rage born of reason, but one born from a lack of it—pure, motive-less RAGE.

This is especially true when Capricorn runs through the veins of the chart, as it did in his. Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, is a karmic loop. Its pain repeats and repeats. So does its rage. Kemper once spoke of his murderous urges and the words in his mind repeating, unrelenting. That is Saturn. Cold, and at times, cruel. His rage didn’t come with hesitation; it arrived as an overwhelming, persistent urge to act.

He said he wanted to “understand” what it felt like to kill. Again—the urge to understand. I believe he stopped, not out of remorse, but because, as he put it, he finally reached a place of both understanding and exhaustion. He had uncovered the source of his inner torment and simultaneously burned out from the sheer weight of it.

He was a precise killer, and I associate that with Virgo. It’s likely part of what helped him get away with his crimes for as long as he did. Virgo studies, observes, refines. He studied people—intensely. He knew how to build trust, but his trust was a social mask, not a genuine bond.

The fire in his chart was Sagittarius (ruled by Jupiter), and this, I believe, is where the obsessiveness took root. Jupiter expands. He didn’t just want to kill—he became obsessed with it. His intelligence was sharp, and Sagittarius, being the seeker of truth and meaning, gave him a deep desire to understand, to learn.

Virgo kept him emotionally detached. He didn’t connect with people—he analyzed them. He built personas (mutable Virgo) to adapt and blend in. But his Capricorn placements made him lonely, burdened, and mentally rigid. His thinking was either-or. He lacked emotional nuance.

Ascendant and First House

His first house was in Virgo. Virgo ascendants carry a serious look—not mean, but focused, observant, often caught in thought. Their expressions can be unreadable, almost like a poker face.

Kemper had Saturn Conjunct his Ascendant in Virgo. This amplified his cold, distant aura. Saturn here isolates. It creates a presence that feels heavy or emotionally unavailable from birth. It also overlapped with Mercury, stifling his ability to express himself. He was not just observant; he was critical—of others and of himself. Socially, he came across as cold, blunt, or emotionally barren.

His chart ruler, Mercury, layered his detachment from a young age. Not just in behavior, but in cognition. Mercury in Capricorn is deeply serious, logical, and prematurely aged. He was likely emotionally out of sync with peers. Where other children were still discovering joy, he was already burdened with the weight of thought. Saturn made sure of that.

Mercury in Capricorn in the 4th house speaks to an early environment consumed by family—and not in a nurturing way. It suggests a need to control family dynamics, especially the mother. Saturn’s presence here implies a dominant maternal figure—rigid, perfectionistic, perhaps humiliating him when he failed to meet her standards. There may have been cruel verbal exchanges. His Sun conjunct Mercury in the 4th house suggests his identity was also wrapped in this conflict. His every assertion may have been met with criticism or dismissal.

The Sun in Sagittarius often represents a father who is instinct-driven—quick, volatile, and potentially absent. Sagittarius flees when overwhelmed. His father may have brought either excitement or abandonment into his early life. The 4th house holds the psychic soil we grow from. In his case, it was filled with dominance and emotional suppression.

2nd House in Libra – Possession and Projection

His second house, in Libra, reveals romanticism laced with possessiveness. He likely admired beautiful women—faces, bodies, allure. But he wanted to possess them. Neptune’s presence here blurred reality. He idealized women, projected fantasies onto them, and mistook longing for love.

Mars in Capricorn squared Neptune, intensifying his obsession. He could become fanatical about women—fantasizing, longing, idealizing. Yet Capricorn Mars needs control. His reality clashed with his fantasy: he didn’t love women—he wanted to dominate them.

3rd House in Libra – Charm, Conflict, and Communication Wounds

With Libra ruling his third house, he was capable of charm and social finesse. He picked up cues well, knew how to speak with grace when he chose to. But his Mercury in Capricorn (in the 4th) brings us back to his mother. Communication with her may have been sharp, cold, even abusive. He wanted harmony, but instead received harshness. This built a quiet, seething resentment.

4th House in Sagittarius – The Inquisitive Child Wounded by Control

He was likely an energetic, inquisitive child—asking questions, trying to make sense of his family. His Sun and Chiron in the 4th house show deep focus on identity through home life, and equally deep wounding.

Chiron square Saturn signifies pain that doesn’t soften with time. His mother likely shut him down for his curiosity, viewed his independence as a threat, and trampled his self-worth. With Saturn in the 1st, she may have even criticized his appearance. Her judgments left him feeling alienated, unloved, and worthless. His desires were punished. And since Saturn was retrograde, he internalized everything—leading to a self-concept soaked in guilt, shame, and powerlessness.

5th House in Capricorn – The Twisting of Desire

Pleasure was never simple for him. The 5th house in Capricorn often means childhood was consumed by responsibility. His mother may have overridden his natural joy with control. Mars, Jupiter, and Vertex in Capricorn here suggest his desires were fixated on domination. He didn’t just want—it was fated that he pursue what he wanted ruthlessly.

Mars conjunct Vertex in the 5th is chilling. Once his desire was corrupted, it moved with fated force. He could’ve been successful—but his ambition, starved of love and twisted by pain, turned destructive.

6th House in Aquarius – A Detached Routine

With Aquarius ruling the 6th and no major placements or aspects, daily structure, responsibility, or order was not his focus. He lived on his own terms. Unstructured. Unbound.

7th House in Pisces – Shadowed Sensitivity

Pisces in the 7th reveals how deeply he longed for connection. He appeared hard, but was sensitive—especially to rejection or lack of connection. His Lilith in Pisces adds shadow. Women were both his longing and his torment.

Lilith sextile Mars shows a strong sexual drive, potentially volatile. Instead of integrating his wildness, he projected it. Women became the mirror to his wounds, the outlet for rage and repression.

8th and 9th Houses in Aries – Unactivated Fire

Neither house was activated by major placements, suggesting these deeper spiritual and psychological realms remained unintegrated. He couldn’t access transformation (8th) or meaning (9th). This may explain why he stayed psychologically tied to his mother and never evolved beyond her. The fire of Aries burned without direction or awareness.

10th House in Gemini – The Double Life

Gemini ruled his public image. Uranus retrograde here brought sudden shifts. One moment he was the polite, helpful man. The next, a celebrity serial killer. Sun opposite Uranus only heightened the duality—who he was at home vs. who the world saw.

His confession by phone—Gemini rules communication—was the climax of this opposition. Uranus’s shock, Gemini’s speech.

11th House in Cancer – Longing for Belonging

Cancer here suggests tenderness and longing for friendships, but the house wasn’t activated. Likely, he had few true bonds. He may have felt isolated, despite craving connection.

12th House in Leo – The Hidden Need for Recognition

His unconscious (12th) was driven by Leo’s hunger for recognition. Pluto here, in Leo, buried his darkness deep in the unconscious. He didn’t understand it—and that made it more dangerous. With few aspects to Pluto, he had no conscious access to his own destructiveness.

Neptune sextile Pluto means he saw his darkness through fantasy, distortion, or delusion. Even in confession, he mythologized himself. Interviews, FBI consultations—it was all a twisted grasp for recognition. Popularity, even.

Why Did Edmund Kemper Kill? An Astrological Perspective

From an astrologer’s point of view, Edmund Kemper’s actions were driven by unconscious forces. He wasn’t connected to himself on a deeper, soul level. Instead, he was caught in his mind and consumed by fantasy. There was an unconscious desire to be recognized and known—yet, because his inner destructiveness ruled over him, that recognition was sought through violence, not through earned effort or meaningful contribution.

With no planets activating his 8th or 9th houses, the energies of transformation and deeper philosophical meaning were weakened in his chart. This made it incredibly difficult for him to evolve or integrate his experiences into any higher framework of understanding. His soul had no obvious outlet for rebirth. For this reason, it’s highly likely that if released from prison, he would kill again. His desires for dominance and control, rooted in his volatile childhood, would quickly overpower him. Killing became a reactive obsession—one that fused power, fantasy, and unmet emotional needs, especially his idealized and twisted views of women.

His Lilith in the 7th house reveals a compulsive, shadowy longing to connect, but without boundaries. He didn’t know how to love—he only knew how to claim, control, and possess. Relationships became a battlefield for unmet needs and repressed urges.

With Saturn in the 1st house, it’s no surprise he’s lived a long life—now over 70 years old in prison. Saturn grants longevity, but it also carries the burden of karmic repetition. He is still reliving the same internal pain over and over. Saturn, after all, is a loop: it doesn’t free you until you learn the lesson. And I don’t believe he has.

Despite his monstrous acts, Kemper possessed notable social skills and intelligence—enough to work with the FBI and help profile other killers. Yet, his unconscious darkness still holds power over him. That darkness is not integrated; it is managed through intellect, not healed through the soul.

His mother—who played a central role in his psychological torment—is gone, after he murdered her. But her presence lingers. The wounds she left behind, shown in his Chiron in the 4th house, will never truly disappear. His Chiron placement speaks of deep, unhealed pain in the roots of his being—pain from which he never escaped.

He also never had children of his own, a symbolic manifestation of Capricorn in his 5th house. That house speaks of joy, creativity, and offspring—yet Capricorn restricts and burdens. His potential for warmth and generativity was frozen by control, shame, and a need to dominate rather than nurture.

Edmund Kemper is a tragic example of what happens when raw intelligence is overtaken by inner darkness. He had ambition. He had the capacity for refinement. But he was overcome by the shadows he never learned to face. In many ways, he was destined for destruction—if not through murder, then through internal decay.

Being Earth-dominant, he needed logic and structure to feel safe. He tried to make sense of his killings—sought to understand them, even. But with Neptune in aspect to Pluto, he likely never truly saw the full truth of his own nature. Neptune fogs. It mystifies. And when it dances with Pluto, the darkness becomes mythologized—romanticized, distorted, or veiled in delusion.

Some serial killers do not fully comprehend their own violent urges. Their actions are not always premeditated in a rational sense. They are driven by overwhelming compulsions that erupt without warning. And when the urge arrives, they cannot resist it.

This is not just a story about Kemper. It is a chilling reminder that the framework for darkness exists within many souls. But the foundation—the early home, the emotional soil (4th house)—can be what activates it. Without love, without healing, without connection, intelligence can twist itself into something monstrous.

Notable Discoveries in Edmund Kemper’s Natal Chart

• Kemper was overwhelmingly a Saturnian and Capricorn-dominant man. With Saturn in the 1st house and a Capricorn stellium, he was stoic and serious—someone who carried the weight of the world. Though capable of socializing when necessary, he was fundamentally a loner. With hardly any water placements, his emotions ran deep but were largely inaccessible. He was rational, cold, and logical. Saturn in the 1st house suggests he encountered cruelty early in life. He bore the weight of karma and the existential pain of simply being. Capricorn energy gives tremendous drive and ambition, but with Saturn’s heaviness, his ambition may have been redirected toward control and dominance rather than accomplishment.

• His formative years had a profound impact on him, evidenced by a 4th house stellium. His home life was a major focus, but with so little water in his chart, he didn’t experience the tenderness often associated with the 4th house—only its burdens. With the Sun in the 4th house, his identity was shaped by his mother and the women in his life. Mercury in the same house suggests his mind was deeply affected by his early upbringing. This wasn’t a minor influence; those wounds shaped his cognition. Jupiter in Capricorn expanded his hunger for dominance and control, creating an obsessive appetite for violence and possessiveness. The Vertex in Capricorn turned these energies into fate. Once his urges became violent, his fate followed suit.

• Uranus in Gemini in the 10th house represents his public image. To this day, many remember him as an intelligent, articulate man rather than a killer. He had the capacity to speak convincingly—enough to make you doubt his crimes. Uranus gave him the shock factor and the ability to surprise. He was the local “nice guy,” not the archetypal necrophilic killer.

• His Pluto in the 12th house is chillingly revealing. His unconscious was steeped in darkness, trauma, and shadow material he never fully understood. He acted from the depths, living in psychological isolation and ultimately sabotaging any chance at transformation.

• Notably, Kemper recorded audiobooks and collaborated with the FBI while in prison. With his Midheaven in Gemini, his insatiable curiosity and need for intellectual stimulation may have contributed to his good behavior in prison.

• His South Node in Scorpio suggests a past life drenched in darkness. Saturn in the 1st house supports the idea that he was a karmic child—his life was never going to be easy.

• The Sun opposite Uranus in his chart represents a shocking abandonment by his father, who left to pursue his own life. This sudden severing likely left deep psychological scars.

• His Ascendant square Chiron and Saturn in the 1st indicates profound self-esteem issues. He felt ugly, unwanted, ostracized, unintelligent, and worthless. These wounds only deepened with age. It’s likely he never felt truly deserving of a woman, only feeling safe when he had total control—driven by a deep, paralyzing fear of rejection.

• Chiron conjunct Venus, Saturn in the 1st, and the Ascendant square Chiron all point to a man living in the depths of his insecurities. His pain was woven into his very identity.

• In his declinations, Mars opposite Pluto suggests an internal war between desire, lust, power, and darkness. He wrestled with these forces but never integrated them in a healthy way.

• Venus in Scorpio, combined with his South Node also in Scorpio, implies past-life struggles with women and intimacy. He may have been meant to make peace with love in this lifetime—but ultimately, he failed.

#astro notes #astro observations #astroblr #astrology #dark astrology #astro placements #astro community #astro posts #astro reading #astro thoughts

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hauntedbubbles · 7 months ago

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Since I wouldn't accept that OG Modern Warfare gave us Captain MacTavish, only for reboot Soap to never survive past Sargeant (!?😩) I've been sitting on a theory that Black Ops 6 might have actually confirmed and I can't keep this to myself any longer!

This could be spoilery for BO6's campaign, so if you haven't played it yet, come back later, maybe? 👀

In the "Emergence" mission in BO6 you are introduced to the effects of the "Cradle" a virus created by a disbanded division of the CIA, known as "Pantheon". A virus that is later weaponised and you experience first hand what this yellow gas can do... 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️🧟

Some folks voiced their displeasure about how un-cod it was... personally this mission was all the confirmation I needed that maybe my working theory wasn't as far fetched as I thought it could be 👀

I was going to ramble and infodump all the little things I'd been making note off, but instead I decided to make it a thing... With a Blender piece I did, because why not? 🙌🏻

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

Konni Research Division

Date: October 17, 2024

Project Lead: Dr. Aleksandr Gustev, Head of Advanced Pathological Research

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PANTHEON NEUROGAS “CRADLE VARIANT K" CASE STUDY: SERGEANT JOHN “SOAP” MACTAVISH

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Current Project Objectives

Konni Research Division’s objectives are to further refine the Cradle compound—specifically, the “Cradle Variant K” strain—to allow for long-term memory suppression, reality manipulation, and controllable cognitive reprogramming.

————————————————————————

Following the success in London, Cradle Variant K far surpassed our initial expectations. Not only were we successful in deceiving the Task Force into believing Sergeant MacTavish was KIA at the hands of the Commander, we have laid the groundwork for further applications of the Pantheon's weaponised neurogas on a larger scale.

Additionally, the changes made to the Cradle strain appears to have maintained the diminished uncontrollable rage as observed in our earlier controlled trials.

Curiously, the illusion may have directly fueled the sense of vengeance that drove Captain Price to retaliate in an unexpected manner.

By executing General Shepherd in a rogue act, he ultimately severed Task Force 141 from official military backing and initiated a sequence of destabilizing events.

Further testing will be required to ascertain if Price’s reckless actions were a direct result of being exposed to the Cradle’s illusion or an emotional response to failing to protect one of his men.

Regardless, the Commander's suggestion to target MacTavish for the next phase of the experiment has certainly proven fruitful.

————————————————————————

Test Subject Conditioning Protocol

Subject Identification

Name: Sergeant John “Soap” MacTavish

Classification: Task Force 141 Operative

Current Status: High-priority test subject under secure containment

MacTavish was expected to perform complex missions while fully immersed in an artificial narrative, where he believes he is combating a zombie outbreak as part of “Operation Deadbolt.” This ongoing experiment aims to suppress higher cognitive recall.

————————————————————————

Manipulated Perceptions and Key Figures in the Simulation

Kate Laswell’s Role and Conditioning: Laswell, similarly detained and conditioned, was initially positioned as MacTavish’s operational coordinator.

Her familiar voice served as a mission directive channel, further reinforcing his immersion in the Deadbolt narrative. However, Laswell’s stability deteriorated during preliminary conditioning cycles, necessitating her withdrawal from active mission guidance and her relegation to containment status.

With further extensive conditioning sessions being required, (due to her apparent excessive resistance training under the CIA) in preparation to reinstate a reconditioned Laswell within a disavowed TF141.

Confident they will attempt to rescue one of their own, a chance to witness the prolonged effects of the Cradle and MacTavish’s absence on our targets should present itself.

We hypothesise that a growing lack of external support will surely weaken morale further in preparation for the Commanders final stand against Farah Karim’s forces and her devalued allies.

Viktor Zakhaev as Adversary: Viktor Zakhaev, eliminated by Captain John Price circa 2020, has been reinstated as a familiar antagonist within MacTavish’s induced perception.

Konni scientists strategically inserted Zakhaev’s persona into the subject’s narrative, where he functions as a persistent threat linked to a global threat.

This resurrected adversary fuels MacTavish’s sense of purpose and suppresses any awareness of the Commander’s true objectives. By sustaining a continuous “enemy” figure, we maintain an environment that supports heightened vigilance, while suppressing any remnants of personal connections.

Sergei Ravenov as Mentor: Historical data on Sergei Ravenov, a former Soviet operative and Cradle test subject during the Cold War, has been utilized as a psychological anchor within MacTavish’s mental construct.

Footage of Ravenov’s conditioning sessions has been repurposed to present him as a veteran mentor in the fight against the "Undead," a fabricated threat tied to an earlier experimental initiative known as Aetherium (an internal code once used for the Cradle virus).

Ravenov serves as an authority, the “Dark Aether Expert,” providing MacTavish with insights on how to “combat the outbreak,” further reinforcing the constructed narrative and validating the subject’s current mission reality.

Despite the risks of introducing an unknown persona, the results will establish how important familiar anchors are to the Cradle test subjects.

————————————————————————

Subject Response and Reality Simulation: Operation Deadbolt

MacTavish has demonstrated exceptional receptivity to Cradle-Variant K, which induces controlled delusional experiences, allowing him to perceive a fictitious outbreak setting.

Under the codename “Operation Deadbolt,” MacTavish believes he is conducting a tactical offensive against “infected” entities across Urzikstan.

Farah Karim’s militia, in reality, are recast as hostiles in this outbreak scenario, instilling a sense of urgency and commitment in MacTavish as he pursues mission directives designed to ultimately bring Urzikstan under Konni control.

In this altered reality, MacTavish perceives himself as an essential operative within Operation Deadbolt, believing he is containing and eradicating “dimensional breaches” and combating the spread of Aetherium. Laswell’s pre-recorded directives have been integrated into mission audio logs, lending an air of authenticity to the simulation.

————————————————————————

Findings and Psychological Anchoring

To ensure compliance, MacTavish’s memories have been regressed to 2021—a period prior to the formation of his stronger bonds with Task Force members, but where his potential truly began to establish.

This strategic temporal regression isolates MacTavish from critical relationships that might disrupt his immersion in the fabricated narrative and allow his growth to better align with Konni standards.

Under these conditions, he perceives himself as a newly recruited operative, acting as “Head of Strike Team” under Operation Deadbolt, with diminished awareness of his personal history.

Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley as an Unintended Psychological Anchor: During testing, sporadic cognitive resistance has continued to manifest, specifically when MacTavish encounters stimuli reminiscent of Lieutenant Riley. Notably, Riley’s masked “Ghost” persona.

Although he cannot consciously access these memories, MacTavish displays signs of awareness regression, often reverting to behaviors and beliefs beyond 2021.

Such interactions appear to intermittently destabilize Cradle’s hold over MacTavish. The bond with his former ally has proven resilient, risking periodic disruptions in mission adherence

Countermeasures and Long-Term Stability Adjustments: To mitigate the effects of these “Ghost-associated triggers.”

Konni researchers are employing additional neuro-blocking compounds aimed at obscuring memory pathways tied to Riley. Continuous reconditioning sessions, using Ravenov’s image as an alternate anchor, have thus far yielded moderate success, although sustained behavioral control will likely necessitate further neurological suppressants or targeted memory erasure.

————————————————————————

Conclusion and Tactical Recommendations

Summary of Findings

High Receptivity: MacTavish’s response to Cradle-Variant K exceeds projections, with 95% adherence to mission parameters and minimal cognitive resistance when Ghost-associated stimuli are absent.

Effective Delusional Construct: The subject accepts the Operation Deadbolt scenario as reality, performing his role without critical assessment.

Resistance Countermeasures: The occasional reversion to past memory states requires enhanced countermeasures. Ravenov’s role as mentor and Zakhaev’s reintroduced presence are proving effective in reinforcing the subject’s altered perception.

Recommended Next Steps

1. Strengthen Aetherium Construct: Enhance the Dark Aether narrative by introducing mission-specific “dimensional breaches” to maintain environmental consistency.

2. Memory Reinforcement Sessions: Increase frequency of Ravenov-anchored memory sessions to deepen the mentor-student dynamic and prevent memory destabilization tied to Ghost.

Laswell’s voice should remain a final fallback command anchor in all simulations; if required, brief audio segments can be played during moments of cognitive resistance to redirect the subject’s focus back to mission directives, until a deep fake can be established.

Project Status: ACTIVE – Phase IV trials awaiting authorisation for continuation of field deployment.

Suggested Operation Target: Popov Power Plant.

————————————————————————

End of Report

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jungkoode · 4 months ago

Text

THE 25TH HOUR | O3

“𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐎𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐒”

"The most dangerous temporal anomaly isn't the one you can measure. It's the way your body remembers what your mind forgot."

next | index

— chapter details

word count: 2,5k

content: underground medical facility shenanigans, memory tests with Jin and Yoongi, Jimin being a chaotic enabler, involuntary physical responses defying temporal physics, and the team placing bets on how long Yoongi can maintain “professional distance" with leather gloves involved.

— author’s note

Y'ALL. The medical examination scene has been living in my head rent free for WEEKS. You know those moments when you're trying to write something serious and professional but your characters are like "no❤️ watch this"??? Because same.

We've got Jin being the only responsible adult, Yoongi attempting to maintain professional distance (and failing spectacularly), Jimin choosing violence as a lifestyle, and Y/N's body remembering things her mind doesn't. Also featuring: temporal physics being completely ignored in favor of sexual tension, inappropriate uses of leather gloves, and the team collectively deciding to Look Away™️ when things get spicy.

Speaking of the team - can we talk about how Jimin has evolved into this chaotic force of nature who just EXISTS to make Yoongi's life harder??? The way he just *gestures vaguely* KNOWS THINGS and chooses to use that knowledge for evil?? An icon. A legend. The reason Yoongi's blood pressure is through the roof.

Also, fun fact: This entire scene came from me thinking "what if we made temporal physics sexy?" and then it spiraled into... whatever this is. Shoutout to my physics professor who would probably have an aneurysm reading this. Sorry not sorry, but time manipulation is hot now, I don't make the rules.

Anyway, get ready for some quality UST featuring: precise measurements of inappropriate physical contact, clinical descriptions of sexual tension, and Yoongi pretending he's maintaining professional distance while everyone else pretends not to notice him failing miserably at it.

— read on

AO3

"Stabilized!"

Namjoon’s voice blooms across the room.

Agent Min releases your wrist like it's burning him, despite the fabric barrier. The sudden loss of contact sends your temporal readings fluctuating—a 0.7% variance you automatically note.

"Gloves?" Jin asks, already reaching for a drawer.

"Please."

The leather gloves hit his palm with practiced accuracy. He pulls them on with movements too precise, too controlled. Black leather, reinforced temporal shielding based on the metallic thread pattern, custom-fitted.

The man before you—Jin—carries himself like a medical professional, if medical professionals used quantum resonance meters and discussed memory patterns like cellular structures. Your analytical mind categorizes the differences: standard medical equipment replaced with temporal monitoring devices, traditional vital signs supplemented with chronological variance readings.

"Sit down, please." His instruction carries the same clinical tone you'd expect from a regular doctor.

You comply, settling onto what appears to be a medical bed. The surface feels wrong—vibrating at a frequency just slightly out of sync with normal time.

Agent Min shuffles through data streams with the doctor, their voices low but intense:

"...temporal resistance patterns..."

"...cognitive overlay rejection..."

"...signature destabilization risks..."

"Can I at least know what you're planning to do to me?" You interrupt their technical exchange, keeping your voice steady.

"Memories." Agent Min turns immediately when you ask. "We're attempting to reintegrate your memory backup."

"What memory backup?" Frustration edges into your voice. "That's not technologically possible with current—"

Agent Min exchanges a look with the doctor.

"Have they explained?" The doctor asks. "About forced memory integration?"

"Yes," Agent Min runs a hand through his hair. "Hoseok and Jimin made that abundantly clear."

"So my hands are tied regarding information transfer," the doctor says, settling into a chair facing you. His temporal signature reads oddly stable compared to the others you've encountered here.

"But you're planning to inject memories?" Your mind automatically starts calculating the energy requirements for quantum information transfer. "The technological limitations alone make that scientifically impossible—”

"Memory injection is actually quite different from..." He stops, glancing at Agent Min before sighing with something like fond exasperation. "Alright, let's start here—tell me what you know about this world."

You frown, analyzing the request. "What could I possibly know that you don't? You clearly have access to technology and information beyond standard clearance levels."

"Trust me," Agent Min murmurs, "we don't."

The doctor rolls his eyes at him. "We need to gauge the level of bleed-through this time."

"Bleed-through?" You ask, the term spiraling with curiosity inside your head.

"Min, timeline shifts since her last reset?"

"None."

"Well, at least there's that."

"Timeline shifts? Resets?" Your mind tries to parse terms that shouldn't exist in any approved temporal physics database.

"Please," the doctor says, "tell me what you know about this world."

You analyze the request, breaking it down into quantifiable components. "That's an incredibly broad query. Could you specify the parameters?"

"Start with temporal mechanics," he suggests. "How does time work?"

The question seems absurd—like asking how gravity works. It's a fundamental constant, documented through centuries of quantum research and temporal physics studies.

"Time is regulated by the Chrono-Sync Network through quantum resonance frequencies calibrated to maintain perfect temporal alignment," you explain, falling into the familiar rhythm of technical exposition. "The Master Clock, located in Sector 1, generates the base frequency that all Chrono-Sync Watches must match within 0.001% variance. Any deviation beyond that threshold triggers automatic correction protocols."

"And this system has always existed?" Agent Min's question carries an odd weight.

"Of course. The Network was established in 2157 following the Quantum Wars. It's basic history." Your voice holds the slight edge of someone stating the obvious. "The temporal monitoring system prevents chronological warfare by maintaining universal time synchronization. Before the Network, temporal terrorists could manipulate local time fields, creating devastating paradoxes."

"What about before 2157?" The doctor—Jin—asks carefully.

"Temporal chaos. Unregulated time flow. Multiple competing chronological frequencies." You recite the facts with precision. "That's why CHRONOS was developed—to prevent temporal warfare through standardization. The historical records clearly document the devastation caused by chrono-terrorism."

"And the 24-hour cycle?" Agent Min's question seems to carry extra significance.

"The natural human circadian rhythm." Your response is automatic. "CHRONOS simply enforced what was already biologically standard. Studies have proven that deviating from the 24-hour cycle causes severe physiological and psychological damage."

"Really?" Jin's pen scratches against his paper. "No other possible time structures?"

"The 24-hour cycle is scientifically proven to be optimal for human function," you explain with the precision of someone who has spent years studying these principles. "Any variation would create cascading temporal instabilities. The human brain is specifically calibrated to function on this cycle. It's elementary temporal biology."

"Friends? Relationships?" Jin's pen moves steadily, changing topics with suspicious abruptness.

The shift in questioning triggers a slight increase in your temporal readings—0.02% variance. Within acceptable parameters, but noteworthy.

"Limited social interaction to maintain optimal temporal efficiency," you recite. "Two approved recreational contacts: Lisa Martinez from the Academy, Thomas Park from my housing block."

Agent Min's jaw tightens fractionally at the second name. The reaction is precisely 0.23 seconds too fast to be casual. You begin calculating potential causation factors.

"And that seems normal to you?" Jin asks. "Limited social interaction for efficiency?"

"Of course. Personal relationships introduce temporal variance through emotional instability." The words feel rehearsed somehow, like a textbook you've memorized but never quite internalized. "The Network functions best when all participants maintain strict chronological compliance. Emotional attachments create unpredictable temporal ripples."

"What about deviation?" Agent Min's voice carries an edge. "Have you ever wanted to break schedule? Act outside approved parameters?"

"That would be highly inefficient.Temporal compliance is crucial for societal stability. The system exists to protect us from chronological warfare."

"You've never questioned it?" Jin presses. "Never wondered why everything is so perfectly structured?"

"Structure creates efficiency. Efficiency creates stability." The response is automatic, but your Chrono-Sync Watch registers a minor desynchronization. Curious. "Why would I question proven temporal mechanics? The data is irrefutable."

"Because your body already is," Agent Min says quietly.

You start to protest, but then you notice: your hand is reaching for your watch again. Seven minutes exactly since the last check. You've been doing it the entire conversation without conscious thought. You immediately begin calculating the statistical probability of such precise timing occurring naturally.

"That's..." You search for a logical explanation. "That's just good temporal maintenance. Regular monitoring ensures optimal synchronization with the Network."

"Is it?" Jin asks. "Or is it programmed behavior?"

You calculate probability matrices for their increasingly concerning implications. Their questions display either dangerous ignorance of basic temporal physics or... something else. Something that makes your precisely ordered world feel slightly off-axis.

"I'm not programmed." The words come out sharper than intended. "I have free will. I make my own choices. I'm certified in temporal monitoring, scheduled to start at the Center tomorrow morning. My employee ID is A-735, my clearance level is—"

"Perfect temporal compliance," the doctor interrupts, making notes. "Standard citizen programming. What else?"

You frown at his word choice. "Programming?"

"Just continue," Agent Min says. His eyes haven't left the temporal readings displaying your vital signs. You notice his attention seems to focus on specific frequencies—ones that shouldn't matter according to standard temporal theory.

"I..." You retreat into facts—the only stable ground in this increasingly unstable situation. "I grew up in Sector 4. Parents are both temporal compliance officers. Sarah and James Chen. I attended the Academy of Temporal Sciences, graduated top of my class in quantum mechanics and chronological theory. I live alone in approved housing block 7B. My daily schedule is optimized for maximum temporal efficiency as required by—"

"Parents' names?" The doctor interrupts again, looking up sharply.

"Sarah and James Chen," you repeat. The names feel solid in your mouth. You remember Sunday dinners, temporal compliance lessons, your mother's smile, your father's strict adherence to schedule.

Memory integrity: 100% clear.

"At least they didn't give her a husband this time," the doctor mutters.

Agent Min clears his throat loudly. The temperature in the room drops 0.3 degrees.

"A husband?" You ask, latching onto the inconsistency. Your mind automatically starts calculating the statistical probability of memory tampering based on their behavior. The results are concerning.

"Different reset," the doctor waves dismissively. "Continue. What do you know about CHRONOS?"

You catalog his dismissal for later analysis, noting the 0.47-second delay before his response. "The artificial intelligence system that maintains temporal order. Created in 2157 to prevent temporal warfare and ensure humanity's survival through perfect chronological control."

"What about anomalies?" Agent Min asks. "Temporal variance? Chronological inconsistencies?"

"Contained and corrected." You watch their reactions carefully, measuring micro-expressions against standard behavioral baselines. "Any significant temporal deviation is identified and eliminated before it can destabilize the Network."

"And what happens to those who deviate?" Jin's voice is carefully neutral.

"They're..." You pause, discovering an unexpected gap in your knowledge. Curious. Your temporal compliance training should cover all aspects of the system. "They're corrected. Brought back into alignment with standard temporal flow."

"How?" Agent Min presses.

"That information isn't included in standard temporal physics education," you admit, analyzing their reactions. Their behavior suggests they know something you don't—a statistical impossibility given your education level and clearance. Your hand automatically moves to check your watch again.

"What about emotional responses?" Jin asks suddenly. "Do you experience feelings that seem inconsistent with your memories or experiences?"

Your body chooses that moment to lean slightly toward Agent Min without conscious input. You straighten immediately, analyzing the movement with growing frustration. The proximity increases your heart rate by 3.7 BPM despite no logical reason for the response. Your temporal signature shifts by 0.06%—still within compliance range, but the pattern is... concerning.

"I..." You stop, recalibrating. "My responses are within normal parameters."

"Really?" Jin asks. "So your heart rate always spikes around strangers?"

You glance at the monitoring equipment—your pulse is indeed elevated. "That's likely due to the unusual circumstances." Your voice maintains professional detachment even as your body betrays you by shifting 0.2 centimeters closer to Agent Min.

"And the temporal resonance patterns?" Jin gestures to another reading. "The way your signature stabilizes with proximity to Agent Min?"

"Coincidence," you say firmly, even as your body shifts another 0.3 centimeters closer to him without your permission. "Temporal signatures naturally seek stability. It's basic quantum mechanics."

"With specific people?"

“Jin.”

"I..." You check your watch. Six minutes exactly until your next scheduled check. The wrongness of potentially missing it makes your skin crawl. "This isn't... I don't..."

"What we are trying to say," Jin interrupts, "is that perhaps your understanding of this world isn't as complete as CHRONOS wants you to believe."

You start to argue, but then you notice: Agent Min has shifted exactly 2.7 centimeters closer. The movement carries too much precision—like he's performed it countless times before. Like he’s anticipating something.

Your hand reaches for your watch again—five minutes and forty-three seconds until your next scheduled check. The compulsion feels simultaneously natural and foreign, like a subroutine you never consciously installed.

"Then choose to skip your next time check," Agent Min challenges.

Your hand is already moving toward your watch. You force it down, but your skin crawls with the wrongness of it. Five minutes and thirty-eight seconds until your next scheduled check. The knowledge sits like lead in your stomach.

"This proves nothing," you argue, even as anxiety builds at the thought of missing your seven-minute mark. "Regular temporal monitoring is simply good practice. The Network requires consistent synchronization to maintain stability."

But your mind is already cataloging the inconsistencies:

- Why does your body respond to Agent Min with mathematical precision?

- Why do you check the time every seven minutes with mechanical accuracy?

- Why does breaking that pattern feel physically wrong?

- Why can you remember every detail of your life with perfect clarity, yet find gaps in your knowledge of the system itself?

"I..." You swallow hard. "I need to check my watch in five minutes and thirty-three seconds."

"We know," Agent Min says softly.

His gloved hand twitches.

Voices interrupt your pondering.

"The quantum resonance patterns are fascinating but I think I'll pass on another lecture from Namjoon about temporal mechanics," The pink-haired man suddenly announces, sauntering into the room.

He immediately starts fiddling with Jin's equipment, who doesn't even flinch—just continues monitoring your readings.

"You'd think after hundreds of timelines he'd have a more interesting way to explain it," Hoseok adds, dropping into a nearby chair.

“Doesn’t matter how many times he explains, I don’t get shit.” Jimin responds. Then, glances between you and Agent Min. "So what's the story this time? Three kids? White picket fence? Nuclear family in temporal compliance heaven?"

Agent Min's foot connects with his shin. Hard.

"Ow! What? I'm just asking what narrative they programmed this time. At least it's not—”

"Jimin." Agent Min's voice carries warning.

"Not that you'd remember," Hoseok says, grinning despite the tension, "but last reset they gave you this whole elaborate backstory. Husband named Richard. Real piece of work."

Your mind tries to process this. "Richard?"

"Oh yeah. Super by-the-book temporal compliance officer. Yoongi spent months trying to trigger his outlier potential just so he could—”

"Hoseok." Agent Min's temperature spikes 0.4 degrees.

"What? I'm just saying, you did try to convert him. Multiple times." Hoseok's grin widens. "Though we all know it wasn't because you wanted him on the team."

Your analytical mind catalogs Agent Min's reactions: jaw tension increasing 15%, pulse elevated to 67 BPM, careful distance from your position maintained at exactly 1.2 meters in case temporal stabilization requires contact.

"The temporal variance patterns are unstable enough without adding cognitive stress," Agent Min says, voice clipped. "Focus on the present reset."

"Present reset," Jimin mimics, still rubbing his shin. "Like you weren't calculating exactly how many anomalies it would take before CHRONOS had to—”

"12 minutes," Agent Min cuts him off. "Either help with the readings or get out."

You find yourself analyzing his response with unusual intensity. "You can influence CHRONOS' resets?"

"No," he says too quickly.

"Yes," Jimin corrects.

"Sometimes," Hoseok clarifies.

"It's complicated," Jin adds, not looking up from his equipment.

Your head starts throbbing again. Agent Min takes exactly one step closer—close enough to stabilize your temporal signature if needed.

"You rewrote time to... eliminate my husband?" The words feel strange in your mouth. You have no memory of a Richard, no context for their claims, yet something about Agent Min's reaction feels significant.

"Technically, CHRONOS rewrote time," Jimin says helpfully. "Yoongi just... creates enough temporal instability that CHRONOS has to adjust things. Usually in ways that coincidentally benefit him."

"After trying to trigger Richard's outlier potential," Hoseok adds.

"Which didn't work," Jimin continues.

"Multiple times," they finish together.

Agent Min's hands clench at his sides. The room temperature drops another 0.5 degrees.

"Your temporal signature is spiking again," he says instead of addressing their comments. "Focus on the cognitive process before—"

"Before what?" You press. "Before you rewrite time again? Before CHRONOS erases more memories I apparently don't know I have?"

His eyes meet yours, and for a moment something flickers in them—frustration, resignation, something else you can't quantify.

"Before we run out of time," he says finally. "Again."

"Always running out of time with you two," Jimin mutters. "Some things never change, no matter how many resets."

You want to ask what he means, but your nose starts bleeding again.

It starts as a single drop—precisely 0.03 milliliters. Your analytical mind starts calculating the iron content before Agent Min moves.

His response time is 0.33 seconds—faster than standard human reflexes. The motion carries too much familiarity as he steps forward, black-gloved hand already reaching for your face. The leather is cool against your skin as he catches the blood with clinical efficiency, his hand remaining steady under your nose.

But there's nothing clinical about the way your pulse jumps 7 BPM at the sustained contact.

You look up, trying to analyze his expression, but his focus remains fixed on the task. His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly—you notice his masseter muscle contracting at 23% more tension than baseline. He makes a soft sound of disapproval as another drop falls onto the black leather.

The contact feels... correct. Like your body recognizes something your mind can't compute. His gloved hand doesn't waver, maintaining its position.

Temperature at point of contact: 2.3 degrees above normal, even through the leather.

Proximity: 34.2 centimeters closer than his usual maintained distance.

Your cognitive functions: Surprisingly compromised.

Jimin clears his throat with exaggerated purpose. Agent Min's head snaps toward him while his hand remains steady under your nose.

"Jin." His voice carries an edge of urgency. "Ready?"

Jin's fingers move over his equipment. The device in his hands emits a soft hum at exactly 432 Hz, releasing a cloud of temporally charged particles that coalesce into a perfect sphere.

"Yeah." Jin lifts the sphere with careful movements. The air around it distorts slightly—light bending at impossible angles.

"What is that?" Your voice remains steady despite the way your skin prickles with increasing temporal static. Agent Min adjusts his gloved hand slightly, catching another drop of blood without breaking contact.

"Memory backup." Jin adjusts something on the sphere's surface. "This shouldn't hurt, but temporal cognitive recalibration can cause some discomfort."

"Discomfort," Jimin mutters. "That's one way to put it."

Agent Min shifts slightly—angling his body 3 degrees more toward you, his hand never leaving its position. A protective stance your mind recognizes from standard security training. But this feels... different. Personal.

"Your neural activity is spiking" he says, voice carrying that strange mix of professional distance and something else. Something that makes your chest tight. "We need to—”

"How many times have you done this?" The question slips out before your analytical mind can stop it.

His free hand twitches—an aborted movement toward you that he catches at exactly 2.7 centimeters of motion.

"Too many," he says softly. Then, catching himself: "A-735, focus on maintaining cognitive stability. Your vitals are—"

"Going crazy because you're too close," Jimin interjects helpfully. "Maybe step back a few meters? You know, for medical purposes? Her heart's about to beat out of her chest."

Agent Min doesn't move. If anything, he shifts 0.3 centimeters closer, his gloved hand remaining steady under your nose.

"The proximity helps with signature dampening," he says, voice clipped. But you notice his heart rate has increased to 68 BPM.

"She's already stabilized in here," Jimin sighs. "You heard the man.”

"You are wearing the gloves, right?" Hoseok asks suddenly, eyeing Agent Min's position. "Because the way you're hovering—"

"Of course I'm wearing the gloves," Agent Min snaps, though his hand remains perfectly steady under your nose.

"Just checking," Hoseok raises his hands in mock surrender. "Given your track record with protocol 47.3..."

An adjustment of your position creates an unexpected point of contact—your knee brushing against what your analytical mind immediately identifies as anatomically significant. You immediately begin calculating the exact angle and pressure of the contact before you register its implications. Your body's response is both immediate and puzzling—heart rate increasing by 12 BPM, skin temperature rising 0.24 degrees.

Position correction should be simple. Yet your body seems to know exactly how to shift to maximize the contact pressure—a knowledge that triggers several questions about muscle memory and timeline retention that you file away for later analysis.

His gloved hand remains perfectly steady under your nose through sheer force of will.

"Wow, that ceiling tile is fascinating," Jimin announces suddenly, tilting his head back with exaggerated interest.

"Absolutely riveting," Hoseok agrees, studying his shoes with intense concentration.

Jin becomes very focused on adjusting his equipment settings.

Agent Min's voice comes out exactly 0.7 octaves lower than usual: "A-735. Position adjustment required."

You move with deliberate precision, establishing appropriate professional distance. Your body protests the movement with an intensity that warrants further investigation—when you're not calculating the exact newtons of force his masseter muscle is exerting.

"7 minutes," he grits out, the words tight with restraint. His tongue presses visibly against his cheek as he inhales deeply. "Jin, if that sphere isn't ready in the next 30 seconds—"

"Working on it, boss," Jin responds, still very interested in his calibration dials.

"Maybe if you stepped back..." Jimin suggests helpfully, still studying the ceiling.

"Can't," Agent Min responds through what sounds like clenched teeth. "Nosebleed."

His gloved thumb twitches minutely against your skin. The movement suggests significant muscular tension—likely from maintaining precise control over multiple physiological responses.

"You could just let someone else—" Hoseok starts.

"No."

"You sure there hasn't been any... accidental contact?" Jimin drawls. "Because this is giving me déjà vu from timeline 466 when you claimed you were 'just stabilizing her' but really—"

"6 minutes," Agent Min cuts him off. His temperature rises another 0.2 degrees. "Seokjin.”

Jin holds up the sphere, which now pulses with a soft golden light that matches the traces you've seen Agent Min leave. "Ready. But Yoongi..."

"I know." Something in his voice makes you look up again. His eyes meet yours for exactly 1.2 seconds before he looks away, though his hand doesn't waver from its position. "It has to be different this time."

"It's always different," Jimin says quietly. "Doesn't change how it ends."

Your nose threatens to start bleeding again. You feel Agent Min's gloved thumb shift slightly against your skin, ready to catch any new drops.

Time: 01:59:00 AM.

Temporal stability: Rapidly decreasing.

Questions: Infinite.

The way your body leans toward him without conscious input: Concerning.

The way he maintains careful fabric barriers between every point of contact: Even more so.

taglist: @cannotalwaysbenight @livingformintyoongi @itstoastsworld @somehowukook @stuti2904 @chloepiccoliniii @kimnamjoonmiddletoe @ktownshizzle @yoongiiuu93 @billy-jeans23 @annyeongbitch7

no reposts, translations, or adaptations

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silviakundera · 1 year ago

Text

The Double ep 32

What are the twists & turns of love, its depth and its aims?

Feels like they set up poison princess and her country leader bro as a contrast to our emperor & Wanning. Real sibling love vs deadly rivalry. Real love (which won't take by force) vs possessive control. Princess Jinyue helped save the father of her love rival while Princess Wanning had the same love rival's father convicted & tortured. We get a bookend of direct "confrontation" between Jinyue & FL at the start of the episode and then Wanning & FL at the end. Both are arrogant, unconventional, wild & free wheeling ladies. But that's where the similarities end.

Xue Fangfei returns to Shen Mansion to truly confront the past. The shipper in me appreciates how the drama has repeatedly shown her calling on Su guogong's memory to steady herself.

Great masks-off showdown between Shen Yurong and Xue Fangfei. It's actually pitch perfect to me that she really hoped that he, who she established last episode did love her, might be consumed with regret enough to turn himself in. One might say that's too naive for her but she married that man because she had loved & admired him, thought he was a different kind of person than he is. Xue Fangfei would move mountains, fearlessly, for those she loves. She overestimates what love means for him and the strength of his character. I'd postulate that his biggest regret, what is destroying him, isn't as much about her personally. But the cognitive dissonance about his Confucian morals and the conduct of a scholar. Attempted murder, obscuring the facts, deceiving the emperor, partnering with those who would destabilize the country, betraying Xue Huaiyuan his teacher (gasp!) : none of this fits with his righteous image of himself. Shen Yurong still loves himself best of all and it's for himself that he wrestles. Bedraggled in prision, he laments his greatest shame - for power, I tainted the reputation I obtained from studying hard.

In contrast, we get flashbacks to our emperor's sensitivity and care for all living things and Su guogong reminding him to stay the course in being the type of ruler their young selves envisioned. (and perhaps the ghost of a cautioning... that if this emperor is no longer one whose love covers the sky & earth, he could lose the Xiao family's backing)

But most importantly, the Ye Shijie knows who she is!!!!! Besties, that SHOCKED me. Idk why but I was fucking shook. I assumed he might be wondering, doubting, but setting it aside and not wanting to examine (because that means his real cousin is dead). Him just SAYING IT after beating dastardly husband over the head... And declaring that he has seen her for who she is and what they experienced together isn't fake; he's willing to stand by her side. This is our example of a selfless love. Boy in an alternate universe with no Su guogong you definitely got the girl. Sorry to you in this life but also congrats.

#cdrama #the double #the double spoilers

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compneuropapers · 7 days ago

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Interesting Papers for Week 25, 2025

Opponent control of reinforcement by striatal dopamine and serotonin. Cardozo Pinto, D. F., Pomrenze, M. B., Guo, M. Y., Touponse, G. C., Chen, A. P. F., Bentzley, B. S., Eshel, N., & Malenka, R. C. (2025). Nature, 639(8053), 143–152.

Emergence of a Dynamical State of Coherent Bursting with Power-Law Distributed Avalanches from Collective Stochastic Dynamics of Adaptive Neurons. Chan, L.-C., Kok, T.-F., & Ching, E. S. C. (2025). PRX Life, 3(1), 013013.

Fear conditioning modulates the intrinsic excitability of ventral hippocampal CA1 neurons in male rats. Ehlers, V. L., Yousuf, H., Smies, C. W., Natwora, B. R., & Moyer, J. R. (2025). Journal of Neurophysiology, 133(3), 853–867.

Separating cognitive and motor processes in the behaving mouse. Hasnain, M. A., Birnbaum, J. E., Ugarte Nunez, J. L., Hartman, E. K., Chandrasekaran, C., & Economo, M. N. (2025). Nature Neuroscience, 28(3), 640–653.

Neural mechanisms of learned suppression uncovered by probing the hidden attentional priority map. Huang, C., van Moorselaar, D., Foster, J., Donk, M., & Theeuwes, J. (2025). eLife, 13, e98304.3.

Robust encoding of stimulus–response mapping by neurons in visual cortex. Jonikaitis, D., Xia, R., & Moore, T. (2025). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(9), e2408079122.

Long-term memory facilitates spontaneous memory usage through multiple pathways. Kumle, L., Kovoor, J., Watt, R. L., Boettcher, S. E. P., Nobre, A. C., & Draschkow, D. (2025). Current Biology, 35(5), 1171-1179.e5.

Error prediction determines the coordinate system used for the representation of novel dynamics. Leib, R., & Franklin, D. (2025). eLife, 14, e84349.

Statistical learning re-shapes the center-surround inhibition of the visuo-spatial attentional focus. Massironi, A., Lega, C., Ronconi, L., & Bricolo, E. (2025). Scientific Reports, 15, 7656.

Hair Cells in the Cochlea Must Tune Resonant Modes to the Edge of Instability without Destabilizing Collective Modes. Momi, A. S., Abbott, M. C., Rubinfien, J., Machta, B. B., & Graf, I. R. (2025). PRX Life, 3(1), 013001.

Decision cost hypersensitivity underlies Huntington’s disease apathy. Morris, L.-A., Horne, K.-L., Manohar, S., Paermentier, L., Buchanan, C. M., MacAskill, M. R., Myall, D. J., Apps, M., Roxburgh, R., Anderson, T. J., Husain, M., & Le Heron, C. J. (2025). Brain, 148(3), 861–874.

Integration of Euclidean and path distances in hippocampal maps. Ottink, L., de Haas, N., & Doeller, C. F. (2025). Scientific Reports, 15, 7104.

Aversive generalization in human amygdala neurons. Reitich-Stolero, T., Halperin, D., Morris, G., Goldstein, L., Bergman, L., Fahoum, F., Strauss, I., & Paz, R. (2025). Current Biology, 35(5), 1137-1144.e3.

Compartmentalized dendritic plasticity in the mouse retrosplenial cortex links contextual memories formed close in time. Sehgal, M., Filho, D. A., Kastellakis, G., Kim, S., Lee, J., Shen, Y., Huang, S., Lavi, A., Fernandes, G., Davila Mejia, I., Martin, S. S., Pekcan, A., Wu, M. S., Heo, W. Do, Poirazi, P., Trachtenberg, J. T., & Silva, A. J. (2025). Nature Neuroscience, 28(3), 602–615.

Adaptive chunking improves effective working memory capacity in a prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia circuit. Soni, A., & Frank, M. J. (2025). eLife, 13, e97894.3.

Attention to memory content enhances single-unit spike sequence fidelity in the human anterior temporal lobe. Sundby, K. K., Vaz, A. P., Wittig, J. H., Jackson, S. N., Inati, S. K., & Zaghloul, K. A. (2025). Current Biology, 35(5), 1085-1094.e5.

Acetylcholine modulates prefrontal outcome coding during threat learning under uncertainty. Tu, G., Wen, P., Halawa, A., & Takehara-Nishiuchi, K. (2025). eLife, 13, e102986.2.

The effect of fasting on human memory consolidation. Yang, X., Miao, X., Schweiggart, F., Großmann, S., Rauss, K., Hallschmid, M., Born, J., & Lutz, N. D. (2025). Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 218, 108034.

Neural Correlates of Perceptual Plasticity in the Auditory Midbrain and Thalamus. Ying, R., Stolzberg, D. J., & Caras, M. L. (2025). Journal of Neuroscience, 45(10), e0691242024.

Hippocampal neuronal activity is aligned with action plans. Zutshi, I., Apostolelli, A., Yang, W., Zheng, Z. S., Dohi, T., Balzani, E., Williams, A. H., Savin, C., & Buzsáki, G. (2025). Nature, 639(8053), 153–161.

#neuroscience #science #research #brain science #scientific publications #cognitive science #neurobiology #cognition #psychophysics #neurons #neural computation #neural networks #computational neuroscience

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frudoo · 3 months ago

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i saw too that post of non con and it ruined my morning lmao. But on a serious note, it is baffling to me the cognitive dissonance of the people like op and those in the comments pointing aggressive fingers in the same direction.

They will scream on rooftops that non con fics are romanticizing rape, romanticizing a crime. They will antagonize people who write/read it and label them as degenerate perverts.

This was posted in COD characters tags. They're telling me that they're ok with fictional war crimes, fictional torture, fictional murder, fictional destabilization of entire countries, fictional severe geneva convention violations, uwu-babygirlifying war criminals, and the glorification of fictional characters perpetrating all of that?

The fact that they cannot discern fiction from reality is already concerning, but does it mean that they are actually ok with all of the mentionned above? if for them writing/reading about rape = romanticizing real rape, i would only assume that for them writing/reading about war criminals = glorifying war criminals. Which is even more frightening if it's the case!

(But it's not the case, is it? Because they understand that fiction isn't reality. They understand that nobody is actually hurt by the actions of fictional characters. They just refuse to understand that their limit to what is comfortable to them is not universal, and that they are not a moral authority on anything. They pick and chose what fictional crime is ok. They only rise outrage to what THEY personally think is reprehensible. Have they ever thought that writing fluff about characters that heavily carry western imperialism propaganda would make uncomfortable people from the Middle East who saw first hand the brutility of American/British forces? Of course not. If you told them that they'd probably say "it's fiction sweetie :)" and go on with their day)

Anyway. Sorry for the rant. It's been bugging me all day.

tl;dr: fiction is fiction. imaginary guys cannot hurt/be hurt because they're not real. before you cry outrage on something you think is morally wrong, double check your own biais and try to apply the same logic. You're allowed to like stuff in fiction but not in real life. that's why fiction exists, so you can have a safe space to explore stuff without hurting anyone. You're fine. You're ok. It's alright.

Word for word anon!!!

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oxygenbefore1775 · 7 months ago

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aot characters as types of poisons pt2

pt1 here!

➼ featuring: armin, eren, hange, historia, jean, levi, mikasa,

➼ cw: poisons and all the ways they could (and would) kill

➼ a/n: as a pharmacy student i also have to study toxicology for some reason so what better way to apply my knowedge than to use it for some hcs - also pls don't get any ideas from this, it's all morbid yet harmless fun

also this is gonna be a bit different from the original hcs cuz this time i will actually try to explain why a certain poison fits a certain character

꒰‧₊˚⌬☆༉‧₊˚ . ˚₊‧༉☆⌬˚₊‧꒰

armin

coniine of hemlock

like husband like wife since coniine kills the same way Annie's poison (strychnine) does - through paralysis of respiratory muscles (ie you suffocate with airways being completely free and being perfectly aware of you dying)

albeit coniine is more insidious in its approach to killing

first of all because hemlock, the main depository of coniine, is easily confused with other non-toxic edible and thus frequently (and unknowingly) consumed

secondly, coniine poisoning is easily to induce since it's used in medicine as a sedative and it takes very little for a healing dose to turn into a deadly one

thirdly, even with poisoning in full swing, it's hardly ever painful - in a narcotic-like state one simply falls asleep as paralysis gradually creeps up from the feet upwards, eventually reaching lungs and stopping breathing all-together

that being said, coniine is a quiet yet potent strength (like Armin with his oftentimes underestimated influence)

eren

cyanide

symbolically enough, the majority of cyanide vapors (which is the most common exposure method) occurs in the fires - destruction born from destruction

as lethal as it is notorious (like Eren) with death occuring in mere minutes after exposure

yet quick death doesn't bear any promise of painlessness - cyanide makes the last minutes of life an unbearable agony

this is mostly because cyanide fucks the body and its systems up in the most fundamental way possibly, binding all the incoming oxygen to itself and thus leaving the organism with inability to breathe on a chemical level (which reminds me a lot of Eren willing to take anyone's freedom should they choose to take his)

also there's a popular misconception that glucose is one of the antidotes against cyanide which would be very cute if true - the deadliest of poisons rendered harmless with a mere sweetness of sugar but alas

to me, cyanide perfectly captures Eren's ability to single-handedly destabilize whole systems, be they political, social or moral. just as cyanide cuts off oxygen, so does Eren with disrupting established orders, often suffocating any chance at peace and stability in pursuit of his ideals

historia

atropine of belladonna

never beating its deadly woman under the facade of prettiness allegations

humanity went through a whole arc with atropine from treating it as a beauty-enhancing product at first to later acknowledging its potency and medicinal as well deathly properties (like with Historia role in the plot)

also the sight of belladonna (where atropine is mostly found) lulls into a falls sense of security with the deceiving luster and sweetness of its berries, as if tempting you to taste it

funnily enough, one of the most prominent symptoms of atropine intoxication is quick heart rate, blown-out pupils as well as inhibition of sweating and salivating - which is no doubt a similar effect that the mere presence of Krista used to have on her fellow students in Cadet Corps (with her monicker being goddess and all)

although slow and improbable in its lethality, the effects of an acute atropine poisoning are certainly the least boring — take for example a 3-day-long delirium and all the hallucinations that come with it. And at the end it just might leave you with memory loss and other cognitive problems (not to forget all the memory losses Historia had at Frieda's behest)

atropine is a rare case of poison being used to combat other poisons (much like Historia and whatever she had going on with Eren and Ymir despite being quite morally challenged herself)

jean

helenalin of arnica

first thing first, this poison is a lover not a fighter (just like Jean)

it barely constitutes a deadly poison as it takes a lot of helenalin for a dangerous dose, let alone a lethal one - it won't kill you even if it tries

still, it is considered toxic through its irritating effect - when administered either internally or externally, it deals a minor damage to the tissue (idk it just reminds me of the way Jean was always causing tensions with his antics in cadet corps, harmless but still annoying in its own way)

frankly, it's more renown for its healing than harming properties

its most popular use is in relieving pain, swelling and bruises - alleviating nearly every kind of damage one might suffer, helenalin soothes it all

Jean is helenalin in every way - yes, it will help to recover from any damage but it's gonna sting like a bitch all throughout the healing process

hange

ergot

this one's unusual (like Hange) since it's a fungal poison and was a common scourge upon all the medieval populus

is a mother of LSD, all the things hallucinogenic

yet before its recreational properties could be harnessed, ergot was notorious for its profound and unpredictable effects on an organism

ergot fungus affects grain products like rye so if an outbreak of it occurs, large quantities of population are in for a lethal drug-trip

yet before death from violent convulsions, an unfortunate's mind is severely affected with a state of mania and madness (which is very evocative of Hange's intense approach to titan study)

ergot poisoning is also monickered as holy fire which is due to the gangrenous state it induces, with limbs inflamed and turning black as if they've been burned and charred in flames (which reminds me... of nothing in particular)

levi

arsenic

the most common way of exposure is through the contaminated ground waters, especially in places unfortunate enough to lack any precautions that can detect presence of arsenic

arsenic has neither taste nor smell so it's stealthy and precise in taking out lives - gradual and subtle

this poison's committed - once it starts to take effect, arsenic poisoning is hard to reverse

funnily enough, arsenic used to be added to cosmetic products as it prevented skin aging and made the user look younger that their years

although the most potent entry way is through inhaling arsenic vapors, the other ways are still as deadly as they can get - this is why arsenic is used in almost all of industrial "killing" -cides (pesticides, herbicides, insecticides etc)

despite its very much lethal properties, arsenic still finds its use in cancer treatment - per numerous studies, arsenic particles harm less healthy cells than other anti-cancer drugs

in essence, arsenic suits Levi as it's predominantly cloaked in its reputation of deadly precision, meanwhile its benefits are lesser known

mikasa

aconitine of wolf's bane

a warrior's type of poison, commonly applied on arrows and tips of javelins

the plant takes its name from its use against wolves or other predators that could pose threat to livestock and humans

in case of acute exposure which is relatively easy to get, death occurs in a matter of hours and is incredibly painful in the process as it causes extreme burning and numbing pain - the poison kills through either stopping heartbeat or breathing

it's usually quite difficult to get poisoning through skin contact but not in case with aconitine - it's so toxic that even touching wolf's bane flowers causes numbing sensation in finger tips

also like arsenic, aconitine has its uses in medicine through its pain-relieving effect even though the dosage is to be kept extremely low since even a single mg of the stuff can result in death

the main reason for me choosing aconitine as Mikasa's poison is mainly due to its application - it was almost always used as a means of protection against dangerous predators

#aot #aot headcanons #armin #armin arlert #eren #eren yeager #historia #historia reiss #jean #jean kirstein #hange #hange zoe #levi #levi ackerman #mikasa #mikasa ackerman

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