#everything feels pointless which means it's time to go back to basics

[mrabubu]

Leo just came back from his "trip" across the universe, all beaten up and tired, only to find out that Splinter already passed away.

But, honestly, this comic spoke to me a little more personally. I'm going to leave some of my thoughts under the cut.

Uh, I guess trigger warning on mentions of death? And some personal experience.

So, I basically went through the same as Leo, and less than a year ago found out that my father passed away. My situation is more complicated, but I still know the feelings your going through in this situation, when the realization strikes you, when you feel grief, regret, when you blame yourself for not being with your parent, when you're denied from being able to say goodbye and have to live with this feeling. And, in my case, I even blamed my father at some point.

I won't go into much details, just will say that I haven't been in touch with my father in years. He wasn't a bad person, he wasn't a drunk, he never did anything bad to anyone, he was... Complicated. And this all lead to one episode after which he stopped communicating with me.

In short, his pride was more important to him than me (at least, this is how it felt), he wanted to teach me a lesson. And years after, after he probably realized the mistake he made, he wasn't able to make himself to finally talk to me again because it was too late.

And I was... Angry? Hurt? Because I felt like I was left to deal with my mother and other things alone. I felt like I didn't matter to him, despite the good moments. I still live with these feelings and thoughts of guilt, and will live with them till the end of my life, knowing he passed away with no one around him.

I'm not angry at him, I mean, it's pointless? It won't change anything. Time's already lost. I only feel this grief over us both not being able to make the first move and try to fix everything between us.

Despite how things turned out I still remember those good episodes with him when I was a kid, when he would come from work late and despite my mother's complaining, we would spend at least an hour together watching a TV in my room.

Why am I writing all this? Not sure, maybe to leave a little message about not loosing the moment? Because human life is short, and you have only one chance.

You don't have Mystic Mikey to send you back in time and fix everything.

And I just think about how Rise makes me relate to a character more and more...

[sflow-er]

So many thoughts on the fabulous Barbie film, but especially on how anyone who thinks it’s “hateful towards men” clearly isn’t getting the message.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

[Credit for both gifs goes to their makers!!]

I mean... Ken’s arc is secondary to Barbie’s, and rightly so. This is her film, and her message deserves to be the main takeaway.

That being said, I just find it really sad that the people who could’ve definitely used the point of Ken’s arc just let it go right over their heads. Maybe it’s because they aren’t great at reading subtext, or because they just balk at anything presented as feminist, I don’t know.

Because to me, Ken’s arc is about as far from “hateful towards men” as you can get. It’s a multi-layered depiction of how restrictive, outdated views of masculinity can hold men back and make them susceptible to harmful ideologies that promise easy solutions for all their problems but only make those problems worse and hurt others around them.

The first layer is an allegory for real men don’t show their feelings. In the movie, this is represented by Ken’s need to look tough and cool all the time, and to keep his insecurities and sadness bottled up. Barbieland is a utopia where being happy is a social norm, and the main Barbie also starts to struggle with that. The difference is that she eventually tells her friends, and they all support her. Ken just puts pressure on himself not to look weak - in front of Barbie, or in front of the other Kens.

Which brings us to the second level: a competitive and inherently hostile view of the other Kens, aka. toxic male relationships. Some of them are friends, and all of them work together for a while to build the Patriarchy, but they don’t actually bond for real. Even their boys’ nights are mainly about getting back at the Barbies for all their girls’ nights (which really were about bonding). When push comes to shove, the Kens still see each other as competition, which is one of the reasons why the Barbies are able to play them against each other.

Another reason is the third layer: the idea that Ken only has value if Barbie loves and admires him. It starts out as unrequited love that makes you feel sorry for him...until he turns bitter. He basically starts on the path that could lead him down the incel/mra rabbit hole and into a mindset where Barbie owes him love and admiration and the relationship he wants in exchange for his devotion to her. He decides that everything would be better if Barbies were subservient to Kens, but of course that’s not true. None of the Barbies’ newfound admiration for their Kens is real, and his own Barbie still rejects him.

All this is of course underpinned by the final layer, which is Ken’s lack of self-respect and sense of purpose. He’s got a pointless job, he’s not particularly qualified for anything, and he just feels kind of lost in Barbieland - a society run by successful Barbies who are living up to their full potential. That’s why he gets so caught up in the idea of the Patriarchy, which is supposed to make him successful, get others to respect him, and give him a sense of purpose. (This can be generalised to all kinds of harmful ideologies in the real world, e.g. the alt-right movement.)

However, the success he achieves is superficial and not based on any real passion; he even admits that he wasn’t happy in his new position and already lost interest in the ideology. The (forced) respect of others does feel good for a while, but it only goes so far. At heart, the whole thing is still mostly about his feelings of inferiority and unrequited love for Barbie, and instituting this harmful new system did not resolve those for him.

So what does? In essence, breaking out of all these harmful patterns and internalising the idea that he is enough.

He ends up reflecting on his feelings, finally puts them to words (or rather, song and dance), and manages to connect with the other Kens through those feelings. He even cries in relief and acknowledges that it doesn’t make him weak. He and Barbie finally have a proper talk, he lets go of their (non-)relationship, and he listens when she says he needs to figure out his real self. He starts to see himself not through his job, his girlfriend, or even his competition with the other Kens, but as just Ken, who is enough.

I honestly can’t think of a less hateful message to send men and boys.

[soupthatistohot]

BSD 109 Spoilers!!!

I will always always ALWAYS come back to this panel when talking about Asagiri’s storytelling.

At its very core, BSD is an absurdist text, Kafka Asagiri having been inspired by many absurdist authors. Franz Kafka, who he took his pseudonym from is one of them. Albert Camus, basically the most well-known absurdist is referenced with the Mersault prison, the name of which comes from a character in his most famous absurdist work, The Stranger. 

Absurdism is the belief that the world around us is irrational and inherently absurd and that explicitly seeking meaning is pointless. In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus explains, that there is value in the act of rebellion, though. Sisyphus, who has been doomed to roll a boulder up a mountain only for the boulder to tumble back down each time he reaches the peak, finds meaning in the act of continuing to push the boulder. Even though he will continue this cycle for all of eternity, he doesn’t just lay down and give up, he rebels against the absurdity of his situation by continuing to push the boulder, despite the seemingly futile nature of the act. 

As I said earlier, BSD is an absurdist text. All of the animanga’s main characters are on a journey of discovering their meaning in life, and their place in the world, and they do this by rebelling against its absurdity — especially Dazai. 

Dazai sees the absurd world for what it is, and when he was in the PM, he hated it. Thus, he sought suicide as a solution. I will note here that absurdists generally view suicide as a failure to rebel against the absurd, just giving up and giving into hopelessness. But ever since Dazai left the PM and took Oda’s advice, he’s been rebelling against this, doing good despite his inherent beliefs about morality and the world, and he’s absolutely gotten better for it. 

Other characters embody this idea of rebelling against the absurd, hell, that’s kinda what this whole arc is about. The world is literally ending, and things seem to be at their absolute worst, but someone like Atsushi still has hope that he can change the minds of the hunting dogs and save reality as we know it. He even has hope that he can get through to a vampiric Akutagawa when the guy is literally brainwashed and attacking him. Aya as the “last hope” right now embodies this, too, deciding that she can’t just sit around and do nothing and then trying to remove the sword from Bram even though the effort appears futile. 

But everything is going wrong right now. Fukuzawa is bleeding out, Dazai has just been shot through the forehead and appears to have died, Atsushi’s had his limbs ripped off and is at Akutagawa’s mercy, and Fukuchi is literally going to end the world! How can we have hope?!

Think about BSD. Think about the story that’s been told so far. Surely Asagiri isn’t killing everyone right now, surely the world isn’t gonna actually end. I’m not entirely convinced Aya’s plan is gonna work— but please consider that the point of absurdist storytelling is that even when everything seems to be at its worst, even when life seems completely meaningless, there is inherent meaning in still continuing to fight against this. 

BSD has never been a story where the villains win, and I don’t think it’s gonna start being one. I think, as usual, Asagiri wants to scare us, to make us feel hopeless about the situation, only for someone to pull through and completely turn the tides.

Dazai laying down and accepting his death at Chuuya’s hands is not going to be the end of his story, because it goes against everything Asagiri seems to stand for. Dazai wouldn’t just give up in his fight against Fyodor, because he needs to prove he’s right about what he says in this panel:

"The ones who actually make the world turn are those who scream within the storm of uncertainty and run with flowing blood."

I think this reflects Asagiri's own beliefs and is also the reason why he is not going to let Dazai die like this, because in a way, that would be proving that Fyodor is right. From a storytelling perspective, it’d be saying “everything I’ve communicated up to this point actually means nothing and life is truly hopeless!” 

Dazai has cheated death before, as has basically everyone else in danger right now. I promise you, something is going to happen and they’re all going to survive, because BSD is not trauma porn, for lack of a better term. It’s a story about how a group of people fight against the absurdity of their reality, even when everything seems completely and utterly hopeless. 

There’s a lot of theories circulating about how things could work out, especially Dazai’s “death,” and I’m not here to repeat all of them, but I will say that a lot of them have credence, especially because Asagiri isn’t the type of author to make mistakes, every single detail has a distinct reason. 

So even though I don't know how things are going to work out, I have full faith that they will, including Dazai's current situation. None of these characters are done just yet, they've got too much fight left in them to just give up.

[original twt thread]

[qqueenofhades]

I also think leftists view liberals and centrists as worse than right wingers because liberals and centrists maintain the status quo, thus prolonging capitalism. In the case of accelerationists, they think a revolution is only possible if people are desperate enough to want one and so they often align themselves with right wingers who they know will make things worse (see MAGA communism as one example). To them it doesn't matter if the fascists will take power because they believe fascism always fails and communism will naturally follow. All the deaths will be worth it in the end.

I hit ask before I finished. I meant to add in parentheses that all of that is of course an oversimplification, but those are pretty much the arguments I saw in multiple leftists subreddit, on tumblr and twitter in the past few months. I know leftists irl are more normal.

See, this is what I mean when I point out that Online Leftists have become just as much of a zero-sum radicalized death cult as the MAGA Trumpists. They're willing to embrace any atrocity, global disaster, terrible people, and massive death toll as long as they think it'll bring their Shining Ideology (TM) to fruition, and then of course this will last a thousand years and never be changed and humans will bow down as a group to this Shining Ideology and destroying everything will be Worth It In The End. Apparently. This is complete ahistorical genocidal nihilistic gibberish, where any progress to fix the world and make a better future for the billions of people alive right now is actually Bad because What About the Glorious Revolution?!?! It is Totally Real! It Will Work! O Bow To Us Great Keyboard Warrior Dipshits! If You Don't Want to Violently Die With Everyone You Love, You Are Part of the Problem!!!!!

Now, I don't know about you, but I sure as fuck don't feel like sacrificing everyone and everything is a great tradeoff for whatever Communist Utopia these cosplaying pissbabies think would be the ultimate fruition of their labors. It's lazy, it's dangerous, it's stupid, it excuses them from ever having to do any effort to make the world better right now, and it feeds into the worst impulses and movements of humanity and the same mistakes that have been repeated in history over and over. This is basically what the late 19th-century and early 20th-century Communists thought: people would rise up in a Great Socialist Revolution, overthrow capitalism and fascism and every other bad thing in the world (which would somehow never ever come back, I guess) and then the future would be bright and shining forever. In practice, it resulted in tons of bloody and pointless deaths, a lot of failure, and some communist regimes that were absolutely zero improvement whatsoever on the oppressive systems they had replaced (and often were in fact MORE oppressive, but online leftists don't listen to people who actually grew up in these regimes and are not eager to see them come back). And guess what? Capitalism and fascism were not actually defeated Once and For All Time! Because yet again, you cannot just Violently Revolute your way to Ultimate Morally Pure Power once and for all, kill the Right People (aka everyone) and then everything is fixed forever. If it was ever going to work, it would have already done so. It has not. This fallacy is the cause of pretty much all the evil in human history. So. Yeah.

[a-dauntless-daffodil]

it hurts me. the parallel of Charlie at the start of ep 1, so excited about showing her plans for the hotel to heaven she doesn't see how VERY NOT excited about it Vaggie is (cough angel kicked out by heaven for not doing enough murder cough cough), even while getting literally up in Vaggie's face.....

and then Vaggie, when Charlie comes drooping home after that all crashed and burned spectacularly- now it's VAGGIE so excited to show CHARLIE the new and improved hotel commercial she got everyone to make while Charlie was away... now it's Vaggie, up close and basically physically pressing her excitement into her girlfriend, not seeing how utterly crushed Charlie is right then

like, clearly Vaggie expected the heaven meeting to not live up to Charlie's hopes for it. Clearly she REALLY wanted to have something GOOD AND HOPEFUL for Charlie to come home to afterwards

-which would have worked too, if the Extermination schedule update hadn't interrupted the commercial airing

look at how habby Charlie was finding out about the commercial

awww

"heaven isn't homophobic" well then what do you call them interrupting this lesbian's hard won cheer-up-the-girlfriend effort huh? what was that then. not only cruel but also an insult to us queers everywhere. one of the only real sins we ever see in the show, tbh

but gods, they give each other so much CONFIDENCE, chaggie and the mutual "I can do this for her" / "She thinks I can do this and I will" synergy...

and it keeps fucking their relationship up. GODS

how they mirror and act like they're trying to literally meld into each other, while both being So Bad at actually SAYING when and why they're upset about something Serious-

when they're also clearly wanting to share SO MUCH of what they feel specifically with the woman they love!!!!

and how that sometimes blinds them both, over and over again, to the moments when (ironically) their other half needed them to be a little less sure, for a second, that things are or would be okay. Share less of their own conviction, that they got from the other one in the first place

When instead of needing answers to the obvious problem, they both needed to be asked hey IS something wrong? is there ANOTHER problem here actually??

they both put so much of themselves into each other, they both rely on the other one for their sense of self-worth and the strength they need to be The One Who Get Things Done and The One Who Always Has A Plan

that's so DELICIOUSLY fucked up. the flip side to love,

(Vaggie freaking out feeling her existence is pointless while thinking she's failed Charlie, and Charlie losing so much hope just at the thought Vaggie might not really love or believe in her)

when someone else is walking around with your heart beating in their chest because you yourself put it there

heck, their resolution in s1 ISN'T even them hashing things out or communicating better! they don't NEED that- (yet) they JUST need each other! (soooooo fucked up I LOVE it) the thing that brings them back together is Vaggie fully letting go of her angel past to focus on her life with Charlie and tapping back into her whole self for first time since meeting Charlie, it's Charlie the singer and giver of heartfelt motivational speeches having her mind blown by words meaning less than actions as her partner who lied to her is also off right that moment doing everything she can to protect what they've built

the big moment is NOT them actually TALKING about what happened or why it happened. it doesn't matter!!! (to them) Their hurt came from being scared of losing each other, they meet up at the hotel gates and just seeing the other one there is Enough!

they happily return to status quo minus some secrets and plus some more confidence in what they have.... which means the rest of this stuff, the root cause of it all, the unaddressed subtext that they NEED to be fucked up together in an active, intentional, KNOWING way but are so good at inspiring and supporting each other that it just, doesn’t, happen..... that's all still there.

(i see you, Charlie sitting alone with your story of hell book and being shocked at your long time girlfriend coming up to your shared room, being around to see you sad, you putting on a smile and trying to wave it off bc yeah she's right you AREN'T alone anymore. technically)

(i see you, Vaggie asking to be left alone on a rooftop so you can deal with a devastating blow to your whole sense of self as 100% unintentionally dealt by your loving girlfriend who WANTS to be there for you through this but who YOU can't face until you're ready to shoulder the blame and apologize to her)

(i see you both trying so hard to help each other and not letting yourselves be helped)

(because no clearly you don't need it, clearly this is all already so much better that what you used to have and you're doing so much better, and what if you're still not good enough for it actually-)

chaggie is so happily, catastrophically entertwined and i hope they spend the next thousand years suffering through it together

[universitypenguin]

The Lobster Trap

Word Count: 1,178

Summary: Princess finds out about Lloyd's views on marriage and his past when she over hears a conversation between him and Zach.

Author's Note: Thank you for the ask @yenzys-lucky-charm

Warnings: Fluff, minor (semi-intentional) eaves dropping, anti-marriage views.

Masterlist

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Thank you so much for your question! I’m thrilled that you’re still enjoying the story (and that you actually took the time to reread it!)

Lloyd has always been a closed book when it comes to his relationship and personal history. He avoids discussing the past, particularly his time in Europe and the Fitzroy kidnapping, which led to his arrest and catalyzed some very painful changes in his life. Despite doing a lot of inner work, Lloyd is still very uncomfortable with deep introspection and would rather avoid conversations about his past, especially the darker aspects of his time in the intelligence community. 

His experiences there, along with a traumatic childhood, have left him with a lot of memories he'd rather forget. He’s not the type to readily share them, especially not with Princess, who would be horrified if she knew the full extent of what he’s been through, and what he’s done. However, that reluctance doesn’t mean that Princess isn’t desperately curious about his past… she just respects him enough that she doesn’t pry. 

Your ask inspired me to write a scene where Princess overhears a conversation between Lloyd and Zach and learns a little about Lloyd’s past. Without further ado: 

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The quiet rumble of the Chevy Tahoe’s engine was a soothing hum in the background as you made the most of the drive home by catching up on sleep. Or at least you were trying to sleep. It was more like a very relaxed half-doze that you’d fallen into, the state between waking and sleeping where everything felt hazy but your mind was still above the surface of sleep, aware and semi-alert. 

It was a long drive back from Charlotte and the trip hadn’t fazed Lloyd or Zach, but you were exhausted. You were determined to hit at least one REM cycle, so you kept your eyes closed, trying to lull yourself to sleep. You felt the car shake as Zach passed through a railroad intersection that you remember from the trip down. It’s right before a small picturesque town, which you have to drive across to get to the highway leading north, towards D.C. you almost want to open your eyes and peek at the scenery but if you do, all hope of sleep will be gone. You keep your eyes closed. 

There’s a rustle of cotton against leather as Zach turns to check on you. 

“Is she still asleep?” he asks in a low voice. 

“Has been since we passed through Greensboro. I’ve been keeping an eye on her in the mirror,” Lloyd replies. 

“Mmmhh.” 

They lapse into silence and you hear the tick of the turn signal as Zach comes to a stop at the light. The only way through town is the main road that goes past the businesses and the city park. Opening your eyes is even more tempting. 

The car swings left and you realize that from your seat, the park is on the opposite side of the road. Opening your eyes would basically be pointless. You snuggle deeper into the seat, sighing. Sleep is right around the corner, you can feel it creeping up. 

“Would you look at that?” Zach asks. 

You don’t open your eyes but they swing towards Zach under closed lids, in an automatic movement. 

“That’s a lot of dress,” Zach says, chuckling. 

“Especially considering she’ll only wear it once.”

You realize there must be a wedding going on in the park. 

“You think the dress is expensive?” Zach asks. “You’ve never seen a bill from a divorce lawyer. And mind you, mine was amicable. I don’t even want to think about what a contentious divorce costs.” 

Lloyd grunts. “Especially when there are kids involved.” 

You thought you heard something in his tone, a subtle shift that hints of something painful. Zach doesn’t seem to notice. 

“True. But marriage isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Look at Bishop—married fifty years and still crazy about his wife. Landon’s happy enough with Ellie. It works for some people.” 

“It’s like a lobster trap–easy to get into, hard to get out of.” 

“With the wrong person, yes. If you have the right one…” 

“You can keep pouring, but I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid,” Lloyd says.

“You make it sound like a death sentence.” 

“For some, it might as well be.”

Zach laughs. Lloyd doesn’t. 

“There are only a few reasons to get married and none of them apply to me,” Lloyd says.

“Yeah? What are those reasons?” 

“Religion, stability for children, and the legal benefits. I’m agnostic, I don’t plan on having kids, and as far as the legal stuff, no one needs those things from me.” 

“The legal stuff would be more of a downside in your tax bracket, though,” Zach points out. 

“I’m thinking more of retirement benefits, inheritance rights, automatic next of kin, that stuff.”

“Come on, Lloyd,” Zach says. “You’ve dabbled in relationships over the years. Not a lot, I admit. None of them ever made you think, even for a second, that she was the one?” 

Lloyd scoffs. “No. Not even for a second.”

The hardness in his voice took you by surprise. 

“What about… what was her name? Miranda? You two were serious for a while.”

"Michela," Lloyd says the name as if he’s testing it out. "We both knew the score until she wanted to change things and I wasn’t onboard with that. She told me what she thought of that, and me, before she split.” 

Zach considers this for a moment. “You never talk about the women you date. It always made me wonder if there was more going on than you were letting on.”

“Or less,” Lloyd replies. 

“Well, that’s harsh.”

“There’s no point in dragging up the past.”

“Mmmhh. Your past is full of regrets, I suppose,” Zach says.

“And yours isn’t?”

“Touché.” 

The icy way he spoke of his past relationships shed a tiny ray of light on Lloyd’s highly compartmentalized private life. Your heart aches and you wonder how deep the mental scars from his past truly run. It was impossible not to notice the bitterness underlying his attitude towards marriage. You wished he could see that not all relationships are doomed, but you knew better than to challenge such a deep-set belief. Zach apparently didn’t share your reservations on that subject.

“It’s not all about the past, you know? It’s about what you want for the future. You should think about finding someone who understands you, someone who could share your life–all of it, not just the parts you let them into.” 

“That sounds like a recipe for disappointment. I’ll stick with keeping my expectations low, but thanks.”

Tension hangs thick in the air, before Zach relents. 

“Alright. Maybe you’ll change your mind someday. Marriage isn’t all bad. When it’s to the right person, it’s actually pretty great.” 

There’s a sneer in Lloyd’s tone when he speaks again.

“I didn’t realize you believed in fairy tales, Zach. Marriage brings out the worst in most people. Unless you have a good reason to need one, it’s pointless.”

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Masterlist

[snaillock]

your relationship with bllk men as mitski songs

(kaiser, sae, oliver)

my posting has been very slow recently so to celebrate mitskis new album (and to feed into my eternal obsession for her music and lyricism by combining it with another thing im way too obsessed with), i dug up this old ass draft and finished it instead of giving y’all an actual fic

tags: gn!reader, angst(it’s mitski duh), yeah basically no fluff/comfort in here, suggestive-ish in the oliver one, me being a dork and combining two big interests of mine

michael kaiser - i don’t smoke

So if you need to be mean Be mean to me I can take it and put it inside of me If your hands need to break More than trinkets in your room You can lean on my arm As you break my heart

his career can be a lot on his shoulders at times even with the cocky and arrogant facade he puts on for the performance of each match he plays. he has a tendency to keep it all in to bask in the glory of his luxurious life.

you understand. you know he’s currently too prideful to deal with his true feelings, especially all on his own. you just want to be there to know he isn’t alone and that he can be open with you. so you sit there, giving him a listening ear as he lashes out and releases every awful word in the book towards you when everything finally becomes too much for him to bear. you wouldn’t want him to have a very public meltdown when it happens so it’s better this way. you have remind yourself to take none of it to heart because he doesn’t mean those all harsh words. he just needed an outlet for those frustrations.

you also don’t want the weight and significance of his career to separate you two. you’re already so damn lucky to be with someone like him. you want to prove that you can handle it. you know you can. you’re sure you can help him figure this all out somehow. love just takes compassion and patience, that’s all it is. just taking it one step at a time.

it’s just compassion and patience. right?

Just don't leave me alone Wondering where you are I am stronger than you give me credit for

sae itoshi - i want you

You're coming back And it's the end of the world We're starting over and I love you darlin' And I am done, dear

he swears he will make time for you someday. sure those words have been promised over and over again like a broken record but he truly does love you. however you’re starting to wonder if mutual love is truly enough to keep you two going.

the truth is his life is currently too big and important for him to take any focus away from it. the last thing he needs is a distraction. all of which he has very clear multiple times, even along with his contrastingly hopeful promises. though his tone is quite neutral, never letting his emotions seep through as if he’s programmed to do so. meanwhile you have to desperately hold yours back to not seem like an idiot.

it’s never been easy to express how you feel in front of him. you desperately wish you could but the inconsistency of your relationship that’s barely holding up renders it pointless. this over and over/back and forth thing that’s going on between you two is exhausting. it only leaves you lost and confused. you begin to wonder if staying is even worth it at all. even with the speck of hope that it could eventually work out. even if you love him.

You're in the house And I am here in the car I just need a quiet place Where I can scream how I love you

oliver aiku - eric

You like control, well, I do too Take off my clothes and watch me move You can come closer, I'll let you hurt me how you choose

you deeply crave a loving and fulfilling connection with another but unfortunately the other you desire is him. a guy who’s born to be a player and only wants to fool around with multiple people.

you know getting attached would only cause you so much unnecessary pain but your naive heart couldn’t resist him. you know that he doesn’t see you for more than what you give him at night but you were still a fool to fall for him.

enough of a fool to fall for him knowing he’s not ready to settle for one person. you could see it from how you would lovingly gaze at him while he leers at someone else behind you. you would still give yourself up to him if you could, offering anything he wanted out of you.

despite better judgment, you stay with a pained and aching heart. constantly yearning for more.

But how long, how long can we play this way? I'm tired, I'm tired of not loving you My heart, my heart wants to hold you But I know, I know, I know the rules

taglist(lemme know if you wanna be added): @userwithlotsoftime @lucas2060

[realbeijinger]

Another semi-coherent rant on climate change, the value of idealism, and TGCF (I finally finished!)

Well, I finished Tian Guan Ci Fu. And, oh man, if you read my last post, you’ll know that I was terrified that the entire novel would be a criticism of blind idealism. But I am SO glad I was wrong!!! Looking back on what I wrote before… it’s kind of hilarious how worried I was. I was so sure that I knew where it was going, was so busy preparing myself to be offended/emotionally crushed, that I wouldn’t even entertain the idea that maybe MXTX had a similar worldview to me all along.

In my defense, aside from the line, “Something like saving the common people… although foolish, it is brave,” everything seemed to point toward the idea that trying to do good is pointless. I mean, up until the moment when Xie Lian was lying with a sword in his chest on the streets of Yong’an, all of his efforts to do good had essentially been in vain. He hadn’t been able to help anyone.

And then, when the one guy stopped and gave Xie Lian his hat, I dunno, I just cried. It was so perfect! Like, ugh, damn you, MXTX! So sneaky… destroying us, just to bring us back later!! It was such a small, insignificant win, but it was exactly what Xie Lian (and I) needed. I love the line, “Just one person was enough!” Just one person doing something selfless. It’s enough to give us hope.   

It really resonates with me because I think a lot about how to maintain hope. In terms of the climate crisis, I feel like Xie Lian—completely powerless. I want to stop eating meat, use less plastic, spend more time on environmental activism, but honestly, what do any of these things matter? The meat industry is not going to change because I choose to stop consuming. Even my activism has a completely negligible effect—whether or not I join a protest or write a letter to my congressman will almost certainly not be the deciding factor for any climate legislation, no matter how much effort I put in.  

And yet, I still want to. I love the moment when Xie Lian chooses to get stabbed over and over rather than create a second plague of Human Face Disease, and White No-Face asks him in shock, “Why??”—as in, why would you ever do that? And Xie Lian responds: “I don’t have a reason—just because I want to! Even if I explained it to you… Useless trash like you wouldn’t understand.” This line is so great. Xie Lian can’t explain it to White No-Face, because, in truth, it isn’t entirely logical. It can’t be explained by reason. I want to do my measly, unimportant part to help the world… because I want to. Because it feels right. Because it’s my way of keeping my heart, of maintaining faith that there is some good in this world worth upholding. (As an aside, I love how the English title of the live action drama—which we may never get to see, God damn censorship!!!!—is called “Eternal Faith.” Of course it refers to Hua Cheng and Xie Lian’s faith in each other, but I think it also means having eternal faith in the value of doing good, despite centuries of experience that seem to show its pointlessness.)

As I talked about in my last post, if you zoom out far enough, nothing really seems to matter. Everything we love and care about will one day be gone. And yet, I believe we still have to act like it matters. This is the basic tenant of existentialism, and I think MXTX portrays this philosophical paradox really beautifully.

It’s funny, because I think MXTX has a lot of profound things to say, but in an interview I read, she warned against viewing her work too deeply, saying, “I am not a guru.” I get that she may not want the responsibility of giving people spiritual advice, but I do think she presents some really fascinating, really novel, philosophical ideas. So, sorry MXTX, but I’m about to analyze TGCF like it’s a piece of freakin scripture. Soo here we go…

The main theme she comes back to again and again is that fortune is limited, so the only way you can do good for others is by taking fortune from somebody else. Which leads the characters to a bunch of ethically impossible choices: the people of Yong’an and the people of Xianle can’t all be saved (Xie Lian must choose who to help), neither can the people of Wuyong and the surrounding kingdoms (Prince of Wuyong must choose), and Shi Wudu can’t save his brother from a tragic fate without taking fortune from an innocent person. When the characters try to avoid choosing, and try to “play God” by creating a “third path,” it just invites disaster.

But is this really true? Is fortune actually limited? It’s an idea that reminds me of Buddhism and Daoism, but also seems kind of revolutionary… (I like to think I know something about Chinese philosophy but it could certainly be a thing and I don’t know). I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in limited resources, and the idea that nature tends toward balance. I think conceiving of it this way, as a pool of fortune, is really interesting.   

It reminds me of this Meme:

In other words, who is the protagonist and who is the villain is entirely based on perspective. And, according to the laws of nature, we all must survive by eating others, or causing others to starve (i.e. avoiding being eaten).

I tried to think if this is really true in all areas of life. I’m a teacher, and one of the ways I convince myself that I am doing good in the world is by helping my students—preparing them well for college so that they can get into good schools and follow their dreams. But then, is this just taking fortune from others? If I do prepare my students well, and as a result they all get into top universities, does that mean they are taking spots away from other students? Am I simply just helping “my own,” at the expense of others?

One place where I see this concept play out very clearly is with our modern, industrialized society. As I mentioned in my last post, we live in a world of abundance. Most of us have enough food to eat, live in houses with electricity and running water, and don’t worry about a whole host of diseases endured by our ancestors. It seems we have done what Xie Lian couldn’t—we have expanded the well of fortune for most of humanity.

But this fortune wasn’t spontaneously created. It was taken from other species. It was borrowed against our own future, when climate change will likely destroy this world of abundance we have created, causing untold suffering. In truth, when it comes to prosperity, there is no such thing as a free lunch.   

Even now, when we ought to be enjoying our fortune, most of us are not happy. We want other things. We take food, clothing, and shelter for granted, creating even bigger, more lofty demands—a bigger car, a better house, a machine that’s sole purpose is to make bread. In fact, it seems like whenever we make things “better,” the goalposts just move. I recently read a book called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which mentioned that with the advent of washing machines and vacuum cleaners, everyone assumed there would be more free time. Yet, the real outcome was that standards of cleanliness just changed. Suddenly, people expected you to wear fresh clothes every day and have a perfectly dust-free home, which meant spending just as much time cleaning as in the past.     

And according to psychologists, getting what we want doesn’t really make us happier. Instead, something like getting a promotion causes our happiness to spike, before it quickly returns to baseline. The psychologist Dan Gilbert writes that the purpose of our emotions is to act like a compass—to tell us which direction to go in. If you feel good, you can continue the way you are going. If you feel bad, you should probably turn—make a change. But if you get what you want and become permanently happy, your compass is now broken. It’s stuck in one direction and becomes useless.

All of this is very Buddhist, of course. Suffering is not caused by our external circumstances, but our desire to change them.

Like I said, I don’t necessarily believe in “fate” or “fortune.” But I believe this all points to something deeper that MXTX is getting at: which is that we cannot fundamentally make a better world, for the common people, or for anyone. This idea of “better” doesn’t really exist. The world is as it is. Trying to alter that is like playing God. And like Xie Lian says, “In this world, there are no true gods…”  

So, what do we do? How can we survive this absurdist tragedy of life? I don’t think we can just throw up our hands and not give a shit—that way lies depression and Jun Wu-style cruelty. We cannot lose our heart. But we also can’t try to fix everything.

One thing I find a bit difficult about MXTX is she is very clear about the impossible situations our characters find themselves in, but not really clear about the solution. She seems critical of the characters’ actions (I’m thinking also of Wei Wuxian here), but what exactly does she think they should have done? In other words, what is the point?

I spent a long time thinking about this. And I realized that Xie Lian was able to get back on his feet, find happiness and make peace with himself. How did he do this? Ultimately, I see Xie Lian’s solution as having three parts: self-sacrifice, gratitude, and purpose. Which all sounds very academic and maybe not that profound on an emotional level. But hear me out. Because, in the end, I think these choices are incredibly beautiful. They are the kind of thing that make me feel like reading TGCF was actually a spiritual experience, no matter what MXTX says. That makes me admire Xie Lian and want to follow him (like the God he is).

Okay so first: self-sacrifice. If fortune is limited, and the only way to make others’ lives better is to take fortune from someplace else, then there is really only one place you can take it from without hurting others—yourself.

So, part of Xie Lian’s solution is to take fortune from himself and give it to others. It’s why he asks for a cursed shackle that disperses his fortune, so that his fortune will naturally flow to those around him. It’s, of course, a very small thing. He is no longer playing God, or trying to “fix” the world on a grand scale. He is simply, in his own, quiet way, serving the common people.

My desire to give up meat and to spend more time on activism—these things feel like big sacrifices for me. And yet, they will have a very small impact on the greater situation in the world. They’re a drop in the ocean. I still want to do it, but it’s hard. It’s hard to care, or think that these things matter. Yet, this is the trade-off Xie Lian was willing to make. I really admire him for it.   

I believe self-sacrifice is actually a really important, beautiful thing, that our society has forgotten the value of. We are individualistic—obsessed with our own wants. As I mentioned previously, our expectations have risen, so we buy and buy and buy. We are unwilling to rein in our consumption. I know a lot of people baulk at lifestyle changes as a solution to the climate crisis, and I agree that putting pressure on individuals instead of governments or corporations is misguided. But, first of all, there simply aren’t enough resources on earth to sustain our current levels of consumption. And, second… I don’t think we can completely let individuals off the hook. What is society anyway, but a collection of individuals? If we are going to address this thing, it’s going to take a massive movement—bigger than the civil rights movement or the works’ rights movement or the women’s movement. It’s going to take millions of people worldwide getting out of their own heads, their own lives, and concerning themselves with the greater good. That requires immense sacrifice.

Which takes me to gratitude. In order to be willing to sacrifice, you have to appreciate what you already have.

People often talk about gratitude these days as a path to mental health. Instinctively, it sounds like an uplifting, positive thing. And it is… but it also entails having a relatively negative worldview. It means remembering all the horrible things that exist in this world which we are lucky enough to avoid on a daily basis. You stepped in some dog shit? Well, that sucks, but you could have stepped into an open manhole and broken your neck! So! That’s something to be grateful for.  

We are all so lucky. I’m sure everyone reading this has pains and traumas and challenges. This isn’t to diminish those, but, I hope, at least we all have at least one person to love. That’s all Hua Cheng had, and it’s what kept him going. Just one person was enough. And most of us, I hope, get to eat food every day, get to sleep in a bed, get to play video games or read novels or write poetry when we are sad. Not everyone gets those things.  

Xie Lian, of course, was the king of low expectations, because he knew his future was going to be bad. He had intentionally accepted bad luck for a lifetime. So, there was no point in hoping for things to get better.

I think this attitude is best shown by his interaction with the Venerable of Empty words. The Venerable of Empty Words feeds off people’s fears. But Xie Lian didn’t really have any. When the Venerable of Empty Words warned him that his hut will collapse in two months, his response is, “Two months? If it’s still standing in seven days, then it’ll be a real miracle.” Because his expectations are so low, he’s essentially immune to fear. I can’t help but think that if you could really think this way, it would be a kind of superpower. It reminds me of the famous quote by spiritual teacher Krishnamurti, “Do you know what my secret is? You see, I don’t mind what happens.”

And so Xie Lian is okay with everything. He can sleep anywhere, crash boulders on his chest for money, not eat for three days, regularly suffer corpse poisoning, and still be okay.

Which leads to my third point: purpose. Xie Lian is able to endure such hardship because his expectations are low, but also he knows all his suffering has a purpose. “If I am to become a God of misfortune, then so be it,” he says. “As long as I know deep down that I am not.” He is okay with being laughed at or avoided for his bad luck, because deep down he knows he is doing the right thing. People can withstand a great deal if they feel their suffering has meaning. In Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychiatrist Victor Frankl’s writes about the horrors of living through a concentration camp, and how over and over, it was creating purpose that allowed him, and others, to find motivation to survive. Which I think has an important lesson for self-sacrifice. People are willing to sacrifice a lot, if they feel their sacrifice has purpose.

I get it when MXTX says that she is not a guru, and maybe it’s a lot to ask of a danmei novel to take spiritual advice from it. The book wasn’t necessarily perfect, and I do have some critiques (which I was gonna add here, but this thing is already wayyy too long). But… I do think I found something really meaningful in this story—some inspiration. I want to follow Xie Lian’s example, and live with gratitude and acceptance, while keeping my faith in doing the right thing. In other words, WWXLD! (What Would Xie Lian Do?)

[good-to-drive]

would you say paul was a good husband to linda?

This is a super interesting question that I was actually just thinking about! The short answer is yes. The long answer is a little more complicated, but it's also yes.

In a way, all you really need to say about Paul and Linda is that they were happy. And I know a lot of people feel that trying to understand a happy couple is pointless (or possibly even offensive) because all that matters is that they were happy.

But I do tend to think that even a happy relationship can still be complex and interesting -- or, rather, that a real, human relationship can still be very happy. That's why I'm personally comfortable with thinking more deeply about their relationship, and those thoughts are under the cut.

Paul and Linda's relationship made them both happy and that is absolutely something to be celebrated. I also think that, like literally every other relationship in the world, the specific way in which they related to and loved one another was a product of their own personalities and experiences. It’s not necessarily fairy tale magic that made them right for each other. Or it is fairy tale magic, and fairy tales are just a lot more real and human than you might expect. 

I actually think to understand Paul and Linda it helps to look back at Paul's relationship with Jane, and how his relationship with Linda was essentially the logical follow-up.

This has been on my mind lately because I was just reading about a phenomenon where men, particularly of older generations, were shamed in childhood for wanting emotional intimacy or showing any vulnerability with their emotions (“man up,” “too old to cry”, etc.), which culminates a fear of intimacy/affection as an adult.

Because it’s generally acceptable for men to have high sexual appetites, sometimes these men will start to substitute sexual/physical intimacy for the emotional intimacy they’re deprived of, thus appearing to have a high sex drive.

(Obviously this can happen to women and young people, too, but everything I read specified that it’s most often seen in older men.) 

All this together reminded me a lot of Paul and how we often perceive him pre-Linda as having a high sex drive (i.e. cheating on Jane like a goddamn dog), and also how he seemed to fear emotional intimacy and platonic affection throughout his entire life (like when he thought George of all people was going to hit him for taking his hand on his freaking deathbed). 

It kind of makes sense given how massive and insane his life was (and how much grief and trauma he was still carrying from his childhood) that he would basically be a black hole of emotional need just like all the other Beatles were, and I genuinely wonder if he used sexuality as a band-aid for an enormous, unmet need for affection/intimacy/validation/etc. 

Which brings us to Linda, and the fact that he was able to be completely loyal to her. Which is an amazing achievement for someone who struggles with infidelity, and I definitely don't want to take that away from him, but I also think we can look a little deeper at why he was suddenly able to be loyal.

If I'm right that his high sex drive was band-aid for unmet emotional needs, then it would tend to follow that being able to be 100% loyal would mean that black hole of emotional need was being satiated, or at least soothed, by someone willing and able to do a lot of emotional caretaking to keep him happy.

Essentially, I think his newfound loyalty was a product of Linda's willingness to be a therapist/girlfriend/appeaser/etc. pretty much 24/7. (That’s barely an exaggeration btw – they spent a lot of time together). Looking at their relationship just in a practical sense, Linda really went out of her way to be with Paul all the time, to be involved in the things he cared about (even at the detriment of things that she cared about), and to make the relationship “about” him.

(Kind of a weird side note here is that John was loyal to Yoko under similar circumstances, at least until the level of emotional dependence between them got to be too much for her and she encouraged him to develop an outside relationship with May Pang, so it's arguably yet another unexpected parallel in John and Paul's lives after they “broke up” with each other.)

I've also wondered a bit why Linda was willing/able to devote herself to Paul's needs to an unusually self-sacrificing extent, but unfortunately Linda's childhood is something I know a lot less about. Some people (especially women of older generations) are deeply reliant on the need they sense in other people to give them a feeling of value. Only by being of service, by satiating the need, can they feel like a worthwhile person themselves. So in that way they're equally dependent on their partner. 

(Okay, maybe not equally, but they're still dependent).

Obviously love was the main reason Linda focused so much of her time and energy on being what Paul needed, arguably at the detriment of her own needs, but looking at it more in the context of her personality and experiences it does make me wonder about her upbringing and to what extent she was raised to believe she achieved value or lovability by being of service to others.

I think Paul's reliance on Linda to caretake his emotions for him (and Linda's potential reliance on Paul to require caretaking) could be part of why we see such extreme devotion between them, why they literally never (voluntarily) spent a single night apart in all of their marriage. It's an expression of love, yes, and also of how deeply they both relied on one another.

(It also probably indicates anxious attachment and potentially some deep rooted concerns about being cheated on, but that's speculation for another day.)

Now, all this being said, none of this changes the fact that Paul was loyal and he did adore Linda and they did spend every single moment possible with one another. I'm not bringing any of this complicated shit up to try to devalue their relationship or any of the things we love about it -- rather, I think the fact that it does come from a place of humanity and vulnerability is part of what makes it beautiful.

It's a good chance to remember that no relationship is 100% easy and simple 100% of the time, and we're all a product of our own messy internal stuff that we try to deal with and try to find other people who are also willing to deal with. And while it’s true that every relationship has a deeper story, it’s equally true that a relationship between two people with complex personalities and needs can still be extremely happy, loving, and positive for the both of them.

[weirdfreakshow]

Can I just say I love your bully Joel AU? HOLY SHIT the thought of Etho raping him and basically isolating him from everyone because "he's an irredeemable asshole, nobody would want to be close to him ever, right? Etho is the only person willing to talk to him at all" and manipulating Joel to make him dependent on Etho because Etho himself has become addicted.

Joel lashes out and rebells, just for Etho to put him in his place again and again. At first Etho just did it to shut him the fuck up, but goddamn if that brat wasn't the cutest ass he's ever had. At some point he just started manipulating him and making him have sex with Etho whenever (whether he wanted to or not) as a form of "retribution" and it's this fucked up toxic relationship but Etho doesn't care at all. All his friends praise him for always protecting them from Joel's bullying but little do they know Etho is doing something wayyy worse himself behind the scenes.

I also like to think about how Joel would cope. Like at first he'd cry a lot because it hurt like shit, but then why tf is his body reacting like this?? Why is it responding to Etho? Is there really something wrong with him? I imagine it makes him angry and defensive which causes him to get into even more trouble than before, which leads to Etho abusing him more, which leads to even more lashing out, and the loop just spirals until he's either miserable but still entirely dependent on Etho, or he starts liking it and actively seeks punishment (he never stops crying tho, Ethos likes it when he cries anyway).

Anyway can you tell I'm going insane??? Good food.

Oh my goddddd this. this is everything. I still very much cherish the Bully Joel au, it's SO good

And yeah! You got the looping spiral perfectly, that's kind of the drive for the the whole au to keep going and getting worser. Joel gets a bit shaken at first by it, obviously thrown off by being pushed out of his weird power play he had with everyone, being reminded of his place in the world as "prey", but once he recovers from it a bit he goes right back at lashing out. He's violent, mean, annoying. That's what he does! Lash out at everyone!

Add Etho into the mix and it all becomes a mess, because Etho makes him feel small and scared again, and that makes him want to appear scary, makes him be crueler with the pranks and his words, makes him want to occupy more space and let everyone know he's NOT prey, he's just not, he's not the little red riding hood, he's the wolf. Totally! It makes him hate bdubs, he knows he can't hurt Etho but he can hurt his precious "Bubs" instead. But oh well, that just gets him raped again! Joel is so fucking stupid sometimes!

And oh, when he actually is raped, speared on Etho's hard cock. It's just like he's a kid again, scared and shaking but cumming sooo hard all the same. He hates himself so much, what the fuck is wrong with him? He'll catch himself getting hard from having Etho's gross rapist dick down his throat. Slobbering all over it, taking it all in like a little fleshlight even if it bulges his throat a bit. He doesn't know what's worse, keeping his eyes open and having to look at Etho's lustful eyes or closing them and remembering other things that happened in the past. It's like there's no escape. He doesn't get to dissociate because he's just so horny his whole body burns, and a normal person would wish they were home instead of having to face this horrible situation, but Joel knows being there wouldn't be any better, so he braces for it. Tries to fight back sometimes, yes, but it's pointless. He's small and stupid and I guess his body WAS actually just made for being raped.

All their friends praising Etho is just so good. So . fucking . good . Joel knows not to mess with Gem, avoids Bdubs most of the time, doesn't even bother Tango even though he fucking hates that guy too. It's just fun, Etho says it's truly nuthin', its fine. Oh, always so humble, the guy. What a guy.

Joel already doesn't have THAT many friends, or if he did he doesn't seem to hang out so much with them anymore, especially Grian. Ever since he got a boyfriend they kinda broke apart, so getting Joel alone isn't a hard task. Joel usually ends up sitting alone somewhere hidden, like under the bleachers where he goes to smoke his older brother's stolen cigarettes. Hurting him and getting to his little head isn't hard either, after all he's all bark, secretly a sensitive kid inside

[lilyginnyblackv2]

Misaki Unasaka - Old Habits Dying Hard - BD - E10 - SPOILERS

I like Misaki as a character. I like the complexity of her character, and I’m glad to see that the reason they had her come back for Miri was because of a truly life altering situation like cancer. 

I don’t wish ill on her (I saw a tweet over on Twitter that was basically saying they hoped the cancer killed her). She hit rock bottom, or hit the end of the sea, as the name Unasaka can mean. The kanji for sea also has the kanji of “regret” making up a part of it:

And I do think that we are seeing Misaki expressing regret here. Addicts, people stuck in abusive relationships, and other such situations, often don’t realize how bad things have gotten until they are at their absolute worst. That’s what’s happened to Misaki here. She’s trying for a fresh start:

A hair cut, new set of clothes, and wanting Miri back in her life.

I do think that she’s coming from a good intentioned place, and for wanting what’s best for Miri. But, some things are still feeling off, but not in a “she’s evil and wants to ruin them” kinda way, more in a “I don’t know if Misaki will be able to break out of bad habits that will end up harming her, her relationship with Miri, and Miri.”

When Kazuki met Misaki, she was at the end of her rope and most definitely burned out. Now, Misaki has had a year without Miri, so seeing Miri again and interacting with her can be viewed as easier, especially since she seems to want to try and due right by Miri this time. But she still seems to be floating, she mentions living with her parents, but then Rei brings up the Christmas show coming up at the daycare, so she states she’ll rent an apartment.

She lost her job and “her man,” but hasn’t stated what her new source of income is yet. And while she seemed comfortable enough in the kitchen, and Miri is nothing but smiles at seeing her Mama again, the way she interacts with Miri feels more like a visitor than a mother:

There is a distance there, which could be explained by the one year absence, but not quite. I lived in Japan for six years. I was an adult at the time, but my family experienced a lot of changes at that time. But when I came home for good, it felt like no time had passed at all. 

With Misaki, it feels more like a friend of the parents dropping by with the way Miri introduced everything to her. I do like how Misaki’s mother asked Miri her thoughts on who she wanted to live with:

It’s important. She may be young, but her thoughts and feelings on the matter aren’t pointless or useless. That being said, the way Misaki asked it seemed a bit competitive in a way. Or, a better way to say this, is that she might feel a bit inferior here. They were likely able to provide for Miri in a way that she couldn’t. Both her and Kazuki are butting heads here, since they are both trying to fulfill a similar “mother” based role, and both feel a bit threatened in a way. Rei just doesn’t fit into that role, which is why he is able to mediate between the two of them.

As the end of the episode stands, it seems like Miri is going to go off and live with Misaki. That’s what Kazuki and Rei think, that that Ferris wheel ride was the last time they would be with her. And while that could end up being the case, the series is an anime original, so none of us know what will happen yet...A part of me just don’t think that will end up being the case.

Both Kazuki and Rei have shown that they can grow and change, especially if its for Miri’s sake. They talk a lot about that in the Ferris wheel, and we (the audience) have seen this. But with Misaki, we don’t know yet. We hear her talking about change, we see her physically changing her appearance, but the moment that stands out to me is this one:

She was reaching for a cig even though she has throat cancer! She likely got that cancer because of smoking, and yet, here she is - smoking still. Rei used to smoke too, but once Miri came into the picture, and after he really started to bond with her and care about her, we haven’t seen him smoking, even at Kyu’s cafe. I think the last time he smoked was back in Episode 4 or something. It’s been ages.

He broke a habit and changed for Miri.

Will Misaki be able to do the same? Or do old habits die hard for her? 

I don’t know how, exactly, they are going to chose to wrap this situation up fully. Will they have Misaki pass away due to the cancer, and then have Miri going back to Kazuki and Rei in the end (or would she end up with her grandparents then, since they still seem to be in the picture)? Will Misaki realize that maybe motherhood really is just something that isn’t for her in the end and allow Miri to return to Kazuki and Rei? Or will they go for a “blended family” type of situation?

I don’t know. They could go in a totally different direction as well. We’ll just have to wait and see, which is a scary prospect, I know, but I’m extremely intrigued by the direction they might take things.

[somuchbetterthanthat]

A little Gwen&Alice with heaavy alice/sam, because I needed to write something after that last ep and tumblr ficlets are less intimidating than full fics.

In hindsight, hiding in the loo is dumb. Sam's making her dumb, which is aggravating and bothersome and does not horribly ache like it used to, before, in those last few weeks they'd stayed together in the same flat while Sam prepared his trip abroad. Alice's a Cool Girl. Cool girls don't hide in bathrooms because their best friend who just so happen to be their ex arrived to the office at the arm of another woman with the sparkly bubbly smile that screams I had such a good time this weekend Celia is awesome at sex.

Then again, Alice's pretty sure her Cool Girl's crown's been stolen the moment Celia walked in with those stupid donuts for the first time (and it is painful, in a way, that Celia is cool to hang around with; pretty and fun and chill and blessed with the same ability Sam has to be friendly with everyone she meets immediately).

Whatever; Alice's excellent at building new narratives and looking away to survive. She'll withstand having Sam back in her life and then feeling like she's loosing him all over again like a fucking champ -- but she has to admit, hiding in the loo was just not a good move, 'cause now she's got to not only deny her sad moody depressing feelings, but also the fact that Gwendolyn Bouchard is clearly weeping on the stall next to hers.

"Hey," she whispers, after three long minutes of wondering whether she wants to deal with this, then deciding it's the sort of night where she'd definitely rather think of someone else's problems than her own.

There's mouvement on her left, then a sharp exhale. "What?" hisses Gwen.

"Want to tell me what this is all about?" Alice asks, staring at the door.

"No," Gwen snaps. Then: "We're in a bathroom, Alice, for god's sake, do you have any sort of decorum--"

"Exactly!" Alice cuts her off. "We're in a bathroom. That's basically being in a confessional for us ladies, innit? Sure we're not drunk out of our heads at the club or whatever, but I think this qualifies all the same. Everything you'll say is sacred in here my dear. Any sin is between you, me, and those awful scratchy paper roll that we're always out of. Hope you've got an handkerchief ready, by the way."

It must strike a nerve, because Gwen stays silent for a good thirty seconds before she mutters: "Anyone could come in."

"Oh, please," Alice snorts. "We both know Lena's not human enough to have to use the loo and Celia's too busy getting lost into Sam's eyes, we're fine."

"Why do you say that?" Gwen asks, her tone suddenly more alert.

"...'Cause Celia is getting lost in Sam's eyes? I mean, I know you have your whole thing going on and you're wayy better than us now that you got that shiny promotion you wanted so much, but they've literally been building this whole sickening little office romance just in front of our noses for like, two months, surely you haven't missed that. Kinda surprised you haven't actually told them this was against regulations or whatever."

"No not Celia, I don't care about her, or whatever's going on with Sam (Lucky you, Alice thinks meanly, and has to bite her tongue very hard). I mean about Lena. Do you think she's --" Gwen stops, exhales shakily. "Now, that'd be ridiculous. Obviously. She's nothing like --"

Oh, Alice thinks. Oh, Gwendolyn. She wishes people would listen to her, when she says to look away. Sam and Gwen are similar that way, she notes. All too ready to dig themselves into messes that are much too big for them to take on.

"I was making a joke," she tells Gwen. "I do that, sometimes. Oh, not very often of course, you know me, all too serious for this sort of nonsense, but I have heard before that it can lighten the mood here and there--"

"God, you are unsufferable."

"Is that how you talk to your priest, Gwendolyn? Shame on you."

"I'm leaving now. This is all pointless, and we've got work to do anyway."

"Do we ever," Alice sighs.

"You've been here for like, twenty five minutes, by the way," Gwen adds. "If you want to keep pretending you're not the one mooning over Sam, you might want to come out soon."

[nyxshadowhawk]

The Red Book, Liber Primus Part Three

Previous section: https://nyxshadowhawk.tumblr.com/post/740006966416588801/the-red-book-liber-primus-part-two

Picking right up where I left off...

The Splitting of the Spirit

So, now it’s time for Jung’s own Shadow work.

To journey into Hell is to become Hell itself.

Damn. You know, I’d never considered that before, but seeing it written out like this really helps it to sink in. Journey into Hell, and you take on its essence — you become monstrous.

[The desert] seems inhabited by magical beings who murderously attach themselves to me and daimonically change my form. I have evidently taken on a completely monstrous form in which I can no longer recognize myself. It seems to me that I have become a monstrous animal form for which I have exchanged my humanity.

I’m reminded of the concept of Beasthood in Bloodborne, in which drinking the blood of gods turns one into a beast that constantly craves more blood. It’s outright stated at multiple points in the game that the beast is part of man’s inherent nature, a “horrific and unwelcome instinct deep within the hearts of men.” I know exactly what it feels like to transform into this beast-possessed self in meditation, to temporarily suspend one’s humanity and become a savage thing. So, I understand what Jung is going through here.

What follows is a dialogue between Jung and his soul, in which he is indignant at the darkness and animality and stupidity of it all. It seems very backwards to Jung that he should be getting this instead of knowledge, truth, and light. The soul answers obtusely, frustrating him further. It insists that its way is still that of knowledge and light (because Shadow work is necessary for enlightenment), but Jung doesn’t understand this yet. Jung cries out that he has worshipped the soul like a god, but now it wears the face of a devil, of “eternal mediocrity” (showing that Jung associations devilishness/shadow with banality and mundaneness). Everything feels insane and pointless, and he doesn’t like it. It’s counterintuitive that this should be the path towards knowledge and enlightenment. He engages in civil war with himself.

It’s so wild to witness someone else’s Shadow work, and straight from the horse’s mouth. I’m watching him go through almost the exact same thing that I went through, but the things that trigger Jung are not the same things that trigger me. I have much less of an issue with the idea of banality or meaninglessness, and Jung doesn’t seem to have any of my issues around power or sex. Everyone’s Shadow looks different, but the process is always the same.

It’s also interesting to me that Jung’s soul basically becomes his Shadow in this scene — it “wears the mask of a devil, a frightful one” — but he still calls it the soul and not the Shadow. So, does that mean that the Shadow is an aspect of the soul? My own Shadow appears to me as a man, so does that mean that he’s actually my soul, but wearing a Shadowy face? He only wears that face some of the time, not all the time. He’s both my beast and my prince. That’s partly because my Shadow aspects all have to do with power, but it also hearkens back to the duality of sacrificer and sacrificed.

I felt myself transformed into a rapacious beast. My heart glowered in rage against the high and beloved, against my prince and hero, just as the nameless one of the people, driven by greed for murder, lunged at his dear prince. Because I carried the murder in me, I foresaw it. Because I carried the war in me, I foresaw it. I felt betrayed and lied to by my king. Why did I feel this way? He was not as I had wished him to be. He was other than I expected. He should be the king in my sense, not in his sense. He should be what I called ideal. My soul appeared to me hollow, tasteless and meaningless. But in reality what I thought of her was valid for my ideal.

People project onto their leaders. It can be hard for you to accept that your leaders are still people, that they are still flawed, and that they have Shadows of their own. Instead, you want the leader to fulfill your agendas and make the world in your image; to be king according to your idea of what a king is and what a king should do, instead of the king’s own. When the king inevitably demonstrates that he is, in fact, a unique person who has his own personality and agenda, the people feel betrayed and turn on him. Think of all the complaints about politicians not being who you thought they were when they get into office! During campaigns, they pander to the projections, and then their real self inevitably shows because they’re people and not ideas.

Because of all these projections, leaders tend to reflect the unconscious of the people they rule to some extent, especially if the leader is elected by those people. However, sometimes the leader ends up being the pure, concentrated Shadow of the society they rule. Whenever the Shadow goes unaddressed, it takes over, often in spectacular fashion. There’s an obvious example of one such leader in Jung’s time and place. There’s also an example of one such leader in my time and place. If a writer of dystopian fiction created a character that mixed together every bad stereotype of Americans into one person, then named that character after McDonalds and a word that means both “to overcome” and “fart,” I would tell them that they were being way too ham-fisted and writing a strawman instead of a person. Who the hell writes this shit?!

The Murder of the Hero

In a dream, Jung (helped by a colonial “savage” stereotype of a dark-skinned indigenous person) slays the hero Siegfried, who rides on a chariot of bone. Siegfried is blond and blue-eyed, representing all that is good and noble in Jung’s mind. (The footnotes say that Jung didn’t actually feel attached to Siegfried, but this was the image his mind latched on to.) Jung is so disturbed by this dream that he feels like he must take his own life if he does not figure out what it means. He feels better after the spirit of the depths says, “The highest truth is one and the same with the absurd.” I completely agree with that — often the most profound truths delivered by the divine are weird and nonsensical when understood using human logic. This is one of those things.

There is an illustration of this dream:

Jung sort of goes back and forth on what this dream means throughout The Red Book, but his eventual interpretation seems to be that the heroic ideal needs to die in order for one to confront the reality of the Shadow. Here’s his interpretation from Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

…suddenly the meaning of the dream dawned on me. "Why, that is the problem that is being played out in the world." Siegfried, I thought, represents what the Germans want to achieve, heroically to impose their will, have their own way. "Where there is a will there is a way!" I had wanted to do the same. But now that was no longer possible. The dream showed that the attitude embodied by Siegfried, the hero, no longer suited me. Therefore it had to be killed. After the deed I felt an overpowering compassion, as though I myself had been shot: a sign of my secret identity with Siegfried, as well as of the grief a man feels when he is forced to sacrifice his ideal and his conscious attitudes. This identity and my heroic idealism had to be abandoned, for there are higher things than the ego's will, and to these one must bow.

This isn’t what my interpretation of the hero’s death would be. My immediate thought was that heroes or kings always have to die as part of the alchemical process, because that represents ego death, and resurrection always follows. But it is significant that Jung himself is not the one who dies, he’s the one who shoots, accompanied by his Shadow. The idea of indigenous people as “savages” is full-on colonial racism, but it’s also a textbook example of Shadow-projection: Europeans assume that indigenous people are animalistic, barbaric, and violent, and then proceed to commit centuries’ worth of heinous atrocities against them. The Europeans attack the very thing they fear in themselves, and thus become it. So in a way, it’s… uh… progressive?… that Jung recognizes the “savage” symbol as an aspect of himself, identifying with it instead of projecting onto it.

Meanwhile, Siegfried represents everything that Jung perceives is good about himself:

Oh that Siegfried, blond and blue-eyed, the German hero, had to fall by my hand, the most loyal and courageous! He had everything in himself that I treasured as the greater and more beautiful; he was my power, my boldness, my pride. […] If I wanted to go on living, it could only be through trickery and cunning.

You can’t identify with the Shadow until you abandon the notion that you are purely good, beautiful, and noble. Now that Jung has destroyed the noble aspects of himself, he has to live ignobly, through trickery and cunning, i.e. as his Shadow.

The reason why it’s Siegfried in particular is because he represents idealized German-ness. Siegfried or Sigurd is a mythological hero from Germanic and Norse mythology, who slays the dragon Fafnir (and he is actually murdered in mythology, though not like this). Therefore, he’s someone to be admired and emulated. Plus, he’s blond. But, as Jung says in the next chapter, imitating the hero is not a good thing. In fact, it’s explicitly a bad thing, because imitating someone else prevents you from being yourself: “The hero must fall for the sake of our redemption, since he is the model and demands imitation. But the measure of imitation is fulfilled.” Beyond that, I think we can see something prophetic in the murder of Siegfried, the German ideal. If Jung interprets Siegfried as the Germans’ desire to “impose their will,” that is definitely not a heroic thing, and should be shot dead before it gets too far. Alternatively, one could say that the positive and flattering reputation of Germany is killed — I might have to brush up on my history, but if I remember correctly, Germany was on top of its game at the beginning of the twentieth century. Then Siegfried, the blond and blue-eyed German hero, is murdered. The ideal is dead. The world will see Germany’s Shadow. Boy will it ever.

Most of that interpretation is presented in the next chapter, though. In this chapter, Jung’s interpretation of Siegfried is as a projection of the divine:

…I had to kill my lord and God, not in single combat, since who among mortals could kill a God in a duel? You can reach your God only as an assassin, if you want to overcome him. But this is the bitterest for mortal men: our Gods want to be overcome, since they require renewal. If men kill their princes, they do so because they cannot kill their Gods, and because they do not know that they should kill their Gods in themselves.

I like this interpretation better, because it fits in with my general idea that spiritual death is required for rebirth and renewal. The idea that “our Gods want to be overcome” reminds me of Aly Seleem’s Bloodborne theory that the Great Ones want the player to kill them so they can ascend to a higher plane of existence. I’m still not sure if I completely agree with that theory, but this idea of killing God in oneself does make “Hunt the Great Ones. Hunt the Great Ones.” make more sense. Also interesting that God must be assassinated (boy, if only Bloodborne were that easy…) because there’s no other way to win against it — that reminds me of the Titans setting upon baby Zagreus while he’s distracted with toys.

The next section addresses alchemical inversion:

If the God grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, the brightest day becomes darkest night. As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity and absurdity requires meaning. Day does not exist through itself, night does not exist through itself. The reality that exists through itself is day and night. So the reality is meaning and absurdity. Noon is a moment, midnight is a moment, morning comes from night, evening turns into night, but everything comes from the day and morning turns into day.

Night and day are not separate things that exist by themselves. The reality is that both day and night exist and regularly turn into each other, so, they are one thing and not two things. The same is true of all other pairs of opposites. Each pair of opposites represents one thing, not two things.

Interestingly, Jung then makes a connection with Norse pagans:

Judge not! Think of the blond savage of the German forests, who had to betray the hammer-brandishing thunder to the pale Near-Eastern God who was nailed to the wood like a chicken marten. […] But their life force bade them to go on living, and they betrayed their beautiful and wild Gods, their holy trees and their awe of the German forests.

You know, I’ve always wondered, why did pagans abandon their gods for the sake of Christianity? I can understand the appeal of Christianity itself, especially early Christianity, but the mandate that only one god be worshipped seems intolerable to me now. I couldn’t imagine abandoning my gods for its sake. So why did they? It wasn’t all under duress. Sometimes the old gods were kept on as saints, and sometimes churches were built on the same holy sites, but it is not the same. As Jung said before, it lacks its madness. I appreciate that Jung can see that the old gods are beautiful and wild. They are. They still are.

After death on the cross, Christ went into the underworld and became Hell, so he took on the form of the Antichrist, the dragon.

Now this is interesting. This goes back to what Jung was saying before, “To journey into Hell is to become Hell itself.” If Christ journeyed into Hell, then he had to have become his hellish counterpart, the Antichrist. The idea of Christ and the Antichrist being one and the same being is utterly blasphemous by Christian standards, but it also seems really obvious. Of course Jesus would have a Shadow, and of course the thing literally called “Antichrist” would be it. I wonder why I’ve never considered that before.

Gods are unavoidable. The more you flee from the God, the more surely you fall into his hand.

Lol, this is certainly true in my experience.

I can understand Jung’s feelings of confusion and terror after having this murder dream. I actually had a dream like this, once. It’s the only dream I’ve ever had that possessed me with so much terror that it made me literally sit up in bed like in the movies, and like Jung, I had to process it before falling to sleep again (though thankfully it didn’t make me feel suicidal). In the dream, I was apprenticed to a wizard. There was another wizard whom my mother idolized as a spiritual teacher. My wizard told me to kill that other wizard, and while I usually trust my mother’s judgement, I obeyed my wizard and killed him (I don’t remember actually doing it, the dream cut to it having been done). My mother mourned his death. My wizard told me that we were not done, because the wizard’s hat and book still had evil magical power, and that I needed to destroy them. I felt a mounting sense of terror as I tried to acquire the hat and book, and it didn’t subside when I succeeded. My wizard told me to burn the hat and book, and to make the dead wizard’s familiars watch. That last bit was so sadistic that I bolted up in bed. Even after I woke, the terror still didn’t subside. Then I realized the truth: I had killed the wrong guy. My wizard was evil, the magic of the hat and book wasn’t dangerous, and my mother was right all along. Suddenly I felt completely at peace, and promptly went back to sleep. This remains the only truly Jungian dream I’ve ever had, and I still have no idea how to interpret it.

The Conception of the God

The ideas of this chapter are elaborated upon in Jung’s book Aion, in which he argues that the Age of Aquarius will bring the end of Christianity’s two-thousand-year-long spiritual supremacy in the Western world. That period of two millennia happens to coincide with the astrological age of Pisces, the sign of the fish, which is one of the earliest symbols of Christianity. In the coming astrological age, Jung argues, Christianity will begin (and arguably, has already begun) to lose its hold over the cultural consciousness, and the Shadows that it has repressed for so long will start to be addressed.

This chapter of The Red Book is about the conception of the new God of the coming astrological age. Jung says that this new God will be characterized by its synthesis of all dualities:

The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity, the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly. I understood that the God whom we seek in the absolute was not to be found in absolute beauty, goodness, seriousness, elevation, humanity or even in godliness. Once the God was there. I understood that the new god would be in the relative. If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, how should he encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil, laughable and serious, human and inhuman? How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead himself attends only to one-half of him?

This checks. It checks with everything I know about alchemy, in which the opposite principles of sulfur and mercury unite in the Chemical Wedding to produce a secret third thing, the Philosopher’s Stone, which is a perfect mix of both polarities. Jesus, as he is, is only one half of the equation. The new God is going to encompass both the light and the Shadow, the totality of existence and of the human soul. Haven’t I said this? I’m almost certain that I have said something to this effect in my answers before: Life is nuanced, so God is nuanced. The reason why I like my gods’ dark and terrifying sides is because they encompass the whole of life, with all of its aspects, and that this is more spiritually useful than focusing only on the good or light aspects of things. Dionysus in particular is a god that expresses and reconciles multiple dualities, like good/evil, above/below, male/female, life/death, divine/human. The Absolute must be all things, or it’s not the Absolute. To fixate only on the things that are light, good, and comfortable is insufficient.

Therefore after his death Christ had to journey to Hell, otherwise the ascent to Heaven would have become impossible for him. Christ first had to become his Antichrist, his underworldly brother. No one knows what happened during the three days Christ was in Hell. I have experienced it. The men of yore said that he had preached there to the deceased. What they say is true, but do you know how this happened? It was folly and monkey business, an atrocious Hell’s masquerade of the holiest mysteries.

I have to say, it’s pretty ballsy of Jung to say straight-up that he had the same harrowing experience as Jesus Christ and came out of it unscathed, but that’s also exactly what happened. He underwent the first part of the Great Work and descended into the Underworld, confronting and becoming his own Shadow, and finally rising to the surface again. This is a great and old Mystery, and one of the ones that I feel I’m familiar with. I’ve experienced it too.

Jung provides the reader with instructions for katabasis, which I’m once again going to transcribe in full:

If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves: say it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear oneself. Only the heroes say that they are fearless. But you know what happens to heroes. With fear and trembling, looking around yourselves with mistrust, go thus into the depths, but do not do this alone: two or more is greater security since the depths are full of murder. Also secure yourselves the way of retreat. Go cautiously as if you were cowards, so that you preempt the soul murderers. The depths would like to devour you whole and choke you in mud. He who journeys to Hell also becomes Hell; therefore do not forget from whence you come. The depths are stronger than us; so do not be heroes, be clever and drop the heroics, since nothing is more dangerous than to play the hero. The depths want to keep you; they have not returned very many up to now, and therefore men fled from the depths and attacked them. What if the depths, due to the assault, now change themselves into death? But the depths indeed have changed themselves into death; therefore when they awoke they inflicted a thousandfold death. We cannot slay death, as we have already taken all life from it. If we still want to overcome death, then we must enliven it. Therefore on your journey be sure to take golden cups full of the sweet drink of life, red wine, and give it to dead matter, so that it can win life back. The dead matter will change into black serpents. Do not be frightened, the serpents will immediately put out the sun of your days, and a night with wonderful will-o-the-wisps will come over you. Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell. What do you think of the essence of Hell? Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of. Hell is when you can no longer attain what you could attain. Hell is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful. But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell.

The Hero’s Journey is probably one of the most instantly-recognizable things to come out of Jungian psychology, but Jung kind of eviscerates the idea of the hero in The Red Book. If you try to be a hero — that is, if you try to match a particular ideal… well, you’ve seen what happens, haven’t you? The only way forward is to admit that you are not ideal, that you are dark and scary. You have no choice but to descend into your own Underworld and confront your own monsters. Bring a guide with you, and ensure you know the way out again, because the depths are hungry and they want to keep you — it’s not natural for souls to return from the Land of the Dead, so the Underworld will do everything it can to prevent you from leaving. The best thing is to be cautious and humble. Death itself cannot die (because it’s already dead, by definition), so the only way to overcome Death is to confront it with its opposite, which is life. When you get to the Underworld, the first thing you must do is reawaken dead matter with red wine (liquid life-force). The dead matter will turn into serpents that will blot out the sun. Sacrifice to the chthonic powers. Meditate upon evil.

That last bit in particular is counterintuitive, but it is the only way back up. That means allowing yourself to think, feel, do, and be everything that you normally want to disassociate from yourself. If you don’t want to be seen as evil, then you’ll be evil. If you don’t want to be seen as weak, then you’ll be weak. If you don’t want to be seen as foolish, then you’ll be foolish. And so on. You have to admit that you are responsible for every dark desire and evil impulse that you have had, that at least part of you actually does want to do evil things. Even if you feel compelled, even if you feel inclined to say “I did what I had to do” or some other half-assed justification, part of you does want to be evil. And that’s not some external force like demons or the Devil working on you, that is all you.

“Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.” This line once again addresses the general theme of inversion. In the Underworld, everything becomes its opposite, including everything about you — but all opposites are also the same thing. As above, so below. This line reminds me a lot of a similar, thematically-significant line from Macbeth: “Fair is foul and foul is fair.” The last inversion is that of Hell and Heaven itself, which brings to mind another very famous Early Modern English line, this time from Paradise Lost: “The mind is its own place, and in itself / can make a heav’n of Hell, a hell of Heav’n.”

The one arose from the melting together of the two. He was born as a child from my own human soul, which had conceived him with resistance like a virgin. Thus it corresponds to the image that the ancients have given to us.

Once again, a very alchemical image. Reminds me of this line from The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine (I started doing an analysis of that ages ago, and I promise that I will get back to it): “But our Stone, as it has been bequeathed to me by the Ancients, is derived from two things, and one thing, in which is concealed a third thing.” The secred third thing is the Philosopher’s Stone, the Divine Child that unites all opposites and therefore becomes its own separate thing — neither red, nor blue, but purple.

Jung says how he worshipped his soul, believing her to be God, but he was actually worshipping the unborn God within the womb of the soul.

This section addresses the interpretation of the hero’s death as the death of an ideal:

The hero as we understand him has become an enemy of God, since the hero is perfection. The Gods envy the perfection of man, because perfection has no need of the Gods. But since no one is perfect, we need the Gods. The Gods love perfection because it is the total way of life. But the Gods are not with him who wishes to be perfect, because he is an imitation of perfection.

Again, really interesting that perfection is defined as a sort of opposite to divinity, instead of as divinity itself. Often, gods are defined as perfect beings, but here Jung places a sharp distinction between perfection and divinity. Here, perfection is defined as lacking any darkness, flaws, “incapacity,” or other Shadow traits. Gods are therefore not perfect, because gods are an even mix of conscious and Shadow traits. Perfection involves ignoring half of God. (This is probably why the Neoplatonic idea of gods as perfect beatific beings never really resonated for me.) Perfection is not only unattainable, it’s actually dangerous to try to achieve perfection. (A certain Dwarf in the Flask comes to mind.) The only thing one can really do is imitate it, and imitation amounts to nothing, because it makes you into a hollow facsimile of whatever you’re imitating, instead of self-actualized.

The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitations and no pupils. He forces men through himself.

This God is no guru. He doesn’t instruct or preach. His worship is more experiential than theoretical. Worshipping him means being forced through oneself, forced to confront the internal world and the unconscious. You aren’t supposed to follow him, you’re supposed to follow yourself, and that’s a whole lot harder. About damn time.

The God must be within, not projected outside the self:

If we set a God outside of ourselves, he tears us loose from the self, since the God is more powerful than we are. Our self falls into privation. But if the God moves into the self, he snatches us from what it is outside us. We arrive at singleness in ourselves. So the God becomes communal in reference to what is outside us, but single in relation to us. No one has my God, but my God has everyone, including myself. The Gods of all individual men always have all other men, including myself. So it is always only the one God despite his multiplicity. You arrive at him yourself and only through your self seizing you. The hero must fall for the sake of our redemption, since he is the model and demands imitation. But the measure of imitation is fulfilled. We should become reconciled to solitude in ourselves and to the God outside of us. If we enter into this solitude then the life of the God begins. If we are in ourselves, then the space around us is free, but filled by the God.

I’m not sure I fully understand this, but here’s my take: If your fixation is on the external world, God will tear you away from yourself and you’ll fail at self-actualization. If God is within you, then you’ll be pulled inward, and you’ll have to do all the difficult work that Jung has been doing. As said before, God fills the empty space, so God is essentially a powerful vacuum that sucks you towards itself. The external God is communal, but the internal God is personal: Each individual person has their own conception of God within themselves, so God appears different to all of the different people. Your idea of God is completely unique to you. But from God’s perspective, all of these different unique Gods are still versions of itself. Therefore God is both one and many. (I would argue that God can be subdivided into many individual divinities within a person, but the point is that all people’s interpretations are different while also all amounting to the same thing.)

Your desire is the father of the God, your self is the mother of the God, but the son is the new God, your master. If you embrace your self, then it will appear to you as if the world has become cold and empty. The coming God moves into this emptiness. If you are in your solitude, and all the space around you has become cold and unending, then you have moved far from men, and at the same time you have come near to them as never before. Selfish desire only apparently led you to men, but in reality it led you away from them and in the end to yourself, which to you and to others was the most remote. But now you are in solitude, your God leads you to the God of others, and through hat to the true neighbor, to the neighbor of yourself in others. If you are in yourself, you become aware of your incapacity. You will see how little capable you are of imitating the heroes and of being a hero yourself. So you will also no longer force others to become heroes.

Spiritual work of this type is inherently isolating, which is why so many who attempt it are monks or suchlike that already isolate themselves for spiritual purposes. Speaking from experience, it is very difficult to engage with the external world when so much of me is floating around up in the astral realm. (The Internet is such a blessing in that sense, because it is a midway between the physical and non-physical worlds — it is wholly in the airy intellectual realm, but almost everyone on it is a real person who exists somewhere, so I’m still engaged with actual human beings.) The external world could also seem “cold” in comparison because the external goals you may have been chasing may seem like they no longer matter, like you’re living in the Matrix. Being drawn into yourself involves becoming acutely self-aware, but the advantage of self-awareness is that it will prevent you from projecting (either heroes or Shadows) onto other people, which will help you to see them as they really are. And that promotes empathy, which brings you closer to other people, and so on.

I’m really interested in what Jung would have thought of the Hero’s Journey concept…

Mysterium Encounter

So, Jung has successfully completed his journey to the Underworld. Now what? The next three sections concern a series of visions in which Jung meets an old man, Elijah, and a young woman, Salome, in a dark house with pillars and a bright garden. There’s also a black snake. Jung recounts his dialogues with these spirits in the form of a mystery play.

Elijah says that Salome is his daughter, and the source of his wisdom, and that is why she is blind. Jung is utterly disturbed by this. He cannot reconcile that Salome, the woman who requested that John the Baptist’s head be delivered to her on a platter, could be the daughter of a holy prophet. She asks him if he loves her, and Jung says, “I dread you, you beast.” In response, she asks him, “And what wouldn’t you give for a single look into the infinite unfolding of what is to come? Are these not worth a sin for you?” This is interesting to me, because it seems to suggest that sin is preferable, or even necessary, as part of the experience of acquiring divine knowledge. Honestly, that makes sense — mysticism and occultism tend to be transgressive in many ways, especially when they push against established religious doctrine. Jung’s reaction to Salome sort of reminds me of my reaction to the nightmare woman, except that Salome is not at all threatening to Jung. At least, not from my perspective. He seems to think she’s a wicked temptress. The Spirit of the Depths insists that Salome is divine, and Salome insists that Jung must love her.

Elijah and Salome’s partnership force Jung to question just about everything he knows about spirituality. The idea of the “bloodthirsty horror” being the daughter of the prophet, that they are in fact one being, is too much for Jung to bear. And yet, that falls right in line with the recurring theme of the union of opposites. Here are two extreme opposites, that Jung is being told are the same being. How’s he going to accept that? Hearing all this, he assumes he’s still in the Underworld. But he’s not.

After the dialogue is an interjection that insists to the reader that this is Jung’s own mystery, and that it does not apply to anyone else: “This play that I witnessed is my play, not your play. It is my secret, not yours. You cannot imitate me. My secret remains virginal and my mysteries are inviolable, they belong to me and cannot belong to you. You have your own.” Again, I feel validated and almost relieved to see this here, because it means that Jung isn’t trying to apply his personal experience on a universal scale. He recognizes that it applies only to himself. Go get your own mysteries!

He who enters into his own must grope through what lies at hand, he must sense his way from stone to stone. He must embrace the worthless and the worthy with the same love. A mountain is nothing, and a grain of sand holds kingdoms, or also nothing. Judgement must fall from you, even taste, but above all pride, even when it is based on merit. Utterly poor, miserable, unknowingly humiliated, go on through the gate. Turn your anger against yourself, since only you stop yourself from looking and from living. The mystery play is soft like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy. But let your hope, which is your highest good and highest ability, lead the way and serve you as a guide in the world of darkness, since it is of like substance with the forms of that world.

This stream-of-consciousness mystical advice reads like instructions to initiates who dare to go through a similar experience to find their own mystery plays. I experience a lot of mystery dialogues in my free time, while I’m meditating by pacing back and forth, in this astral space where everything is volatile (in the alchemical sense) and I all but lose track of my heavy matter. Once again, one must accept what comes without judgement, especially if it involves seemingly-irreconcilable opposites. The line about hope reminds me of The Sandman, in which Hope is the form that Dream uses to win The Oldest Game. It wins because even Hope has power in Hell, and can’t be snuffed out.

There’s an illustration of Elijah and Salome, in front of their pillared house. Elijah wears blue and Salome wears red. The black snake is at their feet. The figure representing Jung is once again a dark-skinned man in white, with shoulder-length black hair. Decorating the border is blue light on the left side, and red tendrils on the right side that coil around the beams of light. I think it’s safe to assume that the light represents Elijah and the tentacles represent Salome.

The scene of the mystery play is a deep place like the crater of a volcano. My deep interior is a volcano, that pushes out the fiery-molten mass of the unformed and the undifferentiated. Thus my interior gives birth to the children of chaos, of the primordial mother. He who enters the crater also becomes chaotic matter, he melts. The formed in him dissolves and binds itself anew with the children of chaos, the powers of darkness, the ruling and the seducing, the compelling and the alluring, the divine and the devilish. These powers stretch beyond my certainties and limits on all sides, and connect me with all forms and with all distant beings and things, through which inner tidings of their being and their character develop in me. Because I have fallen into the source of chaos, into the primordial beginning, I myself become smelted anew in the connection with the primordial beginning, which at the same time is what has been and what is becoming. At first I come to the primordial beginning in myself. But because I am a part of the matter and formation of the world, I also come into the primordial beginning of the world in the first place. I have certainly participated in life as someone formed and determined, but only through my formed and determined consciousness and through this in a formed and determined piece of the whole world, but not in the unformed and undetermined aspects of the world that likewise are given to me. Yet it is given only to my depths, not to my surface, which is formed and determined consciousness.

This is a powerful image. Because mystical visions are predicated on madness to some extent, they are a raw outpouring of pure chthonic material, primordial Khaos at its finest. Engaging with it requires alchemical dissolution or ego death. Everything that is “formed” (i.e. fixed) in you dissolves or “melts” into the prima materia, and is reformed, having been infused with underworldly divine power. This is more or less participation in the primordial process of creation itself. Consciousness interacts only with the “formed and determined,” i.e. fixed, aspects of existence. So, you need your depths to engage with the unformed and undetermined, i.e. volatile, aspects of existence.

Most of the rest of this chapter is an analysis of what Elijah and Salome represent, even though Elijah explicitly stated that they do not represent anything. Jung interprets them as representing the dual faculties of “precognition and pleasure,” or thinking and feeling. Yup, this is where the thinking/feeling axis on the MBTI test comes from! It comes from Jung trying to make sense of this particular vision. Jung says that “Both are equally old and in nature intimately one,” and interprets the serpent as representing a mediator between the two. Some people are more inclined towards thinking, and others towards feeling, but you need some degree of both to avoid falling out of balance. Jung assumes that because he’s a thinking person, he fears Salome. My bet is, that’s not why. I think he fears Salome because he struggles to see divinity in a stereotypically “evil” figure. He’s struggling against his conditioning that pleasure is evil.

I’m not going to go through Jung’s analysis of the specific symbols in his vision, because to be honest, very little of it resonates for me. Jung does not interpret these visions the way I would, and I think that much of his interpretation misses the obvious because he’s trying so hard to force a disturbing truth into a comfortable framework. But, it’s not my vision or my mystery, so I’m not going to tell him he’s wrong.

Instruction

Jung goes back to Elijah’s house the next night. He says to Elijah,

I have toyed with myself enough. I played hypocritical games with myself and they all would have disgusted me, were it not clever to perform what others expect of me. It seems to me as if I were more real here [in the dream world]. And yet I do not like being here.

I completely relate to the sensation of feeling more real in my dream world than I do in the physical world. I definitely feel like that. But I don’t feel as unsettled in my dream world as Jung does at Elijah and Salome’s house. Jung recognizes that most of his life in the external world involves “hypocritical games,” doing things that don’t really resonate and aren’t really meaningful for the sake of propriety and fitting within the societal expectations that have been set for him. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t seem comfortable in either world.

I forgot to mention that there is a scrying crystal inside the house. Previously, Jung saw the Garden of Eden and Odysseus with the sirens in the crystal. This time, he sees Mary with baby Jesus, St. Peter, the Pope, then Buddha, then Kali.

Elijah provides Jung with some good advice about thoughts that I could use. Jung says that thoughts are dangerous because men confuse them with themselves, and Elijah says:

Will you therefore confuse yourself with a tree or animal because you look at them and because you exist with them in the same world? Must you be your thoughts, because you are in the world of your thoughts? But your thoughts are just as much outside your self as trees and animals are outside your body.

Because I live in my thoughts, my thoughts cause me a lot of trouble. Thoughts that cause me shame are particularly awful, because I feel like just having the thought reflects badly on me, when really only an action would reflect badly on me. The idea of thought as something separate from myself, something that exists around me as nature physically exists around me, is genuinely good therapeutic advice. (Therapeutic advice from the work of a psychotherapist? You don’t say!) I shouldn’t take my thoughts seriously, or interpret them as expressions of my identity.

Salome calls herself Jung’s sister. He asks who their mother is, and she says that it is Mary. It’s getting worse! Jung is absolutely sent reeling by this revelation:

Is it a hellish dream? Mary, our mother? What madness lurks in your words? The mother of our Savior, our mother? When I crossed your threshold today, I foresaw calamity. Alas! It has come. Are you out of your senses, Salome?

I sort of relate, in that it can be extremely difficult to think that you actually are that special. It seems the height of hubris to claim to be the child of a powerful goddess (yes, I’m calling Mary a goddess, because she functions like one), even when your spirits explicitly tell you that this is the case.

Jung tries to rationally make sense of it by continuing to insist that Elijah and Salome and Mary are symbols that he hasn’t interpreted yet. This is Elijah’s response:

You may call us symbols for the same reason that you can also call your fellow men symbols. But we are just as real as your fellow men. You invalidate nothing and solve nothing calling us symbols. […] We are certainly what you would call real. Here we are, and you have to accept us. The choice is yours.

Daaamn. Of course, Jung insists on interpreting Elijah and Salome as symbols of the “thinking” and “feeling” principles anyway. The idea of the actual entities Elijah and Salome being the same being freaks him out too much. This is one of the big reasons why I think that his interpretations throughout these three chapters are wrong. He can only process all of this by interpreting it as symbolic language as opposed to taking it at face value, because he can’t make sense of it any other way.

If you do not acknowledge your yearning, then you do not follow yourself, but you go on foreign ways that others have indicated to you. So you do not live your life but an alien one. But who should live your life if you do not live it? It is not only stupid to exchange your own life for an alien one, but also a hypocritical game, because you can never really live the life of others, you can only pretend to do it, deceiving the other and yourself, since you can only live your own life. […] To live oneself means: To be one’s own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself. It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself, then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt and shatters the sanctified.

Good advice in general. Pay attention to what you really want out of life, not what society says you should want. If you only do what everyone around you says you should and acquire what they say you should want, then you’re living someone else’s life instead of your own. No one else is going to live your life for you, and you can’t live anyone else’s life either. So embrace your own desires, and live your own life. That’s not an easy thing, because you have to do the work to reinvent yourself in your own image instead of following someone else’s self-help guidebook (literal or figurative). And you have to begin by doing Shadow work, which is extremely difficult. Everything that you hold sacred will likely ring hollow throughout that process, because you won’t see it in the same way until you can find divinity for yourself.

As the God developed in me, I thought he was a part of my self. I thought that my “I” included him and therefore I took him for my thought. But I also considered that my thoughts were parts of my “I.” Thus I entered into my thoughts, and into the thinking about the God, in that I took him for a part of my self. […] Therefore you love reasonable and orderly thoughts, since you could not endure it if your self was in disordered, that is, unsuitable thoughts. Through your selfish wish, you pushed out of your thoughts everything that you do not consider ordered, that is, unfitting. You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist.

Jung confused the developing God for an aspect of himself, just as he worshipped the soul believing it was God. Because he hates thoughts that he considers disorganized or unreasonable, he roots out all the thoughts that don’t fit his projection of what God should be. Where does all the “disordered” thought end up? The Shadow.

My thoughts are not my self, but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts.

This is good advice for me personally. My thoughts can be scary and chaotic, but they do not damage me. I love the image of thoughts being like a forest. I should just enjoy my time amongst the wild things, and the absolute freedom that my thoughts give me, without any shame.

Resolution

Jung dreams that he is standing on a ridge in a wasteland, with day on one side and night on the other. A black snake is on the night side, and a white snake is on the day side. They fight each other, with Elijah watching from above. The black snake’s head turned white, and they both curled around themselves.

Jugn and Elijah climb to a stone circle that is the Temple of the Sun. Elijah turns into Mime (a dwarf from Wagner’s The Ring). Mime brings Jung to springs in a cave, that confer wisdom on those who drink from them. Jung doesn’t trust Mime, and leaves the cave without drinking, feeling discombobulated, and follows a snake to Elijah’s house. He sees a series of visions in the crystal, ending with Christ on the cross with the black serpent coiled about the base. The serpent coils around Jung’s own feet, and up his body — he turns into Aion/Arimanius, the Mithraic lion-headed god. Salome says, “You are Christ.”

This is an amazingly profound experience. Jung experiences the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection directly, and experiences it in the form of a pagan deity, the primordial creator god Aion or Phanes. In a way, it is the ultimate Mystery. It goes back to what Jung said before about how Christians should not deny that Jesus is a part of them, that you yourself are Christ. That is why Mary is named as Jung’s mother, because he is not separate from Christ.

If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother. As a man, you are part of mankind, and therefore you have a share in the whole of mankind, as if you were the whole of mankind. If you overpower and kill your fellow man who is contrary to you, then you also kill that person in yourself and have murdered a part of your life. The spirit of this dead man follows you and does not let your life become joyful. You need your wholeness to live onward.

This is just a lesson on projection again, but I like the phrasing. We’re all one being, all incarnations of the Divine, so any harm we do against each other is harm against the corresponding parts of ourselves. You can’t experience any authentic joy, or really live at all, with that sort of burden. That’s what makes Shadow work worth it.

If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thinking/feeling dichotomy, but I like this phrase.

I saw a new God, a child, who subdued daimons in his hand. The God holds the separate principles in his power, he unites them. The God develops through the union of the principles in me. He is their union.

Not much to say about this that I haven’t already said, except that I’m once again reminded of Dionysus, who unites all opposites and commands all daimons. I feel like I can get myself there. Maybe I already am. It feels good to unite opposites in oneself; it’s hard to do, but once you’ve done it, it feels comfortable and fulfilling.

Jung interprets WWI as people learning self-sacrifice, Christ’s mystery, which will teach them to look inward. “The spirit of the depths has seized mankind and forces self-sacrifice upon it.”

That's the end of Liber Primus! I'll start posting the sections of my commentary on Liber Secundus soon. There's more very cool art to come!

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

I made a mistake last time, I said that I read chapters 22-30 when I only read 22-29, but now I have read chapter 30 and also chapters 31-34 so lets talk about those

Its so frustrating how Im more than halfway through this 700 page book thats ostensibly supposed to be about Feyre and Rhysand's complicated relationship developing and theres been no development because the things that should make their relationship complicated have just been completely handwaved. Like, if this book HAS to focus so much on Rhys to the detriment of Feyre, and he also just HAS to be morally good, atleast give him some kind of character arc of bettering himself, right now Im basically just looking at this stagnant statue of a guy through someone elses eyes which doesnt make for a rewarding reading experience

Ive also been noticing more and more weird retcons and idk what to call it, justifications for why Rhys is better even when hes doing the same shit as Tamlin I guess? The two big ones being, when Tamlin blew up that room after Feyre told him that he was suffocating her he did it out of anger, and, Feyre is fine with wearing dresses for the night court because she knows she can go back to wearing Illyrian leathers anytime, which is not how it was at the spring court.

First of all, I keep saying this, I am not a Tamlin girlie, I dont like him that much and hes doing a bad job dealing with Feyre, but you dont need to make shit up to make Feyre's choice to leave feel justified. Like, he was not punching the walls in anger, he felt so bad and guilty about hurting Feyre when all he wants is to keep her safe that his magic went haywire over it. And thats bad enough! I mean Feyre, who has a lot of trouble communicating her feelings, finally managed to tell him everything thats wrong and makes her feel bad and makes healing from her trauma difficult, and he reacts by basically having a panic attack which makes his magic react in a dangerous way. Idk about you, but I would not feel comfortable or even safe expressing my feelings to him, even if he didnt react like that out of anger

Like, Feylin could have just not worked out, it couldve just been disfunctional without being portrayed as abuse but it cant be, I guess because it needs to be abuse in order to justify Feyre leaving him. And thats so strange to me because the idea that women need any kind of ("serious") justification for leaving a relationship is completely anti-thetical to the themes of feminism and choice that this book is trying to go for. Like, why cant a woman just break up with a guy because she stopped feeling it, theres no reason not to break up with a guy who makes you feel bad even if hes not being outright abusive. Although, in this particular story there actually is a reason, which is that if Feyre left Tamlin without a "good" justification then Amarantha would win, she would be proven right about the fickle nature of humans and the pointlessness of their un-eternal love from beyond the grave and that would be a bummer because the first book is about how Love Conquers All, as is the case with pretty much all great romances. So Tamlin's unambigiously abusive now so that that beautiful idea of Love Conquering All doesnt end up being dragged through the dirt. ACOMAF essentially posits that the Love that was supposed to Conquer All isn't real because neither Feyre nor Tamlin were willing or able to truly love each other through their trauma, ergo it didnt actually Conquer All. Thats also why Rhysand isnt meaningfully affected by what should be traumatic events; because while Feyre can love someone through her own trauma, she cant seem love someone whos traumatized themself

I feel like the way I phrased that was pretty harsh, but I do think its kinda true, in a way. Idk man, the thing that makes talking about Feyre's new UTM trauma so difficult is that everyone, including the narrative itself, is expecting her to have worked through it within less than half a year when its like, shes immortal and also living in a world with no therapists, she can take a bit longer than that. I mean hell, everyone in the inner circle is like 500 years and all of their major traumata happened when they were very young and most of them have still not learned how to actually cope with them aside from killing/avoiding the people who caused it (atleast from what Ive seen, especially of Cassian), Feyre might honestly be doing better than all of them but she keeps dogging on herself which, remember, her perspective is objectively correct as of this book, so that sucks

Alright, three paragraphs to talk about that first point, lets move on to talking about the dress thing. I have already observed that it seems like Feyre might stop wearing pants entirely at some point despite how much this particular book keeps going on and on about Tamlin forcing her to wear dresses in conjunction with going on about Tamlin forcing her into a subserviant mother-role, implying that dresses are inherently depowering, and well. I hate that for Feyre but I do love being proved right

And like, okay, I think Feyre hating dresses is another ACOMAF retcon, but its a retcon in a weirdly circular way. Let me explain; in ACOTAR I didnt get the impression that she hated dresses, I thought she just preferred pants because its what she was used to and because for a pretty large chunk of the book she was thinking about fleeing or was in situations where she needed to run away from something and pants were just more practical for that. But when she trusted the fae a bit more and a special occasion came up or she wanted to make Tamlin feel flustered (? that one doesnt make that much sense to me tbh), she did ask for dresses to wear and only felt a little embarrassed about it because she didnt usually wear them. I didnt even get the impression that she hated the impractical rich noblewoman dress they put her in when she was sent back to the human world, just that she found it really silly and unfitting for her. And I do think her being willing to wear dresses was supposed to be a signifier of her healing journey and her learning how to be gentle and let herself be loved in that book

Then ACOMAF comes around and she suddenly hates wearing dresses, which also ties into her suddenly becoming some kind of adrenaline junkie when she previously wanted to live a peaceful and comfortable life. Now, granted, the difference is that in ACOTAR she wore dresses that she explicitly asked to wear, whereas in ACOMAF Tamlin just assumes that she will always wear dresses by virtue of her being a woman without asking Feyre about it at any point (I know Ianthe was actually more involved in the dress-stuff, but the narrative is making Tamlin responsible for it so Im just gonna go along with it for simplicity's sake). Thats reasonable enough

But then a little further into ACOMAF we have Rhysand doing the exact same thing, hes assuming that she will wear dresses for the sake of keeping up appearances and helping him with his politics (and also, he's assuming that she will let herself be sexualized via the apple-breast comment in front of Tarquin (and later the CoN-UTM reeanactment scene)) and hes right, because of course he is. But the reason its fine when Rhysand does it, I guess, is because he keeps reassuring her that she has a choice in these matters when she really doesnt. Like, did he pack some illyrian leathers just in case Feyre didnt want to wear the dresses he got her? If he did, theres been no mention of it. Theres also been no mention of him asking her if she preferred to wear pants or a dress for the Summer Court mission, even though it seems to me that harem pants are considered to be unisex in the Night Court while they seem to be considered distinctly masculine in places like the Spring Court

And then we get to the thing about this dress-stuff that makes me call it a 'weirdly circular retcon'; while Nuala is dressing Feyre up for her date with Tarquin, for lack of a better term, she looks at herself in the mirror and thinks about how maybe, after everything shes been through that forced her to become hard, shes starting to heal and can finally let herself be feminine and soft and pretty. If you'll recall from a few paragraphs ago, that already happened to Feyre in ACOTAR except it was more subtle, I dont remember her just straight-up thinking about it like she does in this scene in ACOMAF. So its the same thing, but instead of her wearing dresses that she excplicitly asked to wear, shes wearing dresses that her new bf picked out for her and all but made her wear

And honestly, thats a really good way of summarizing the differences between Feylin and Feysand and the way Feyre gets treated in these book, which is why I wrote so fucking much about this pretty insignificant detail

Surprisingly enough, Im not done with this monster of a post yet, because I have some stuff to say about the Summer Court

The way Cresseida was introduced and treated made me have what Im just gonna call an angry epiphany. Like, before she came along I just thought the feminism of this series was very shallow and very white, but after her introduction I was just angrily thinking to myself "How the FUCK is this series considered feminist in any way?! The three types of women that exist in this story are literally Protagonist's Sisters (characterized as Haughty Bitch and Infantilized Clueless Cinnamon Roll Who Can Do No Wrong respectively), Protagonist's Slaves Servants Who Are Inexplicably Always Darkskinned Women and Promiscuous Bitches"

Varian seemed fine, but I dont like that he seems to have something going on with Amren. I know I said I didnt particularly like her, but I did still kinda latch onto her as my aroace rep so I find that very disappointing. But I guess thats on me for having expectations like that of the most amatonormative book series Ive ever read

So, from observing this part of the fandom prior to reading the books, it seemed that if sjm critical people dont like Feylin, theyll usually like Feyquin as an alternative to the horrible but canon Feysand. Despite that, I didnt have the highest expectations because honestly, it not much harder for a character to be a better love interest than ACOTAR!Tamlin and Rhysand. Like, the thing about Tamlin is that he was a really boring guy but hes a very good love interest, and the thing about Rhysand is that hes also really boring and hes a very bad love interest, so I thought "okay, I know Tarquin is the youngest and he has that whole thing about actively wanting equality for faeries but no one taking him seriously because everyone thinks hes inexperienced, OBVIOUSLY hes more interesting than the guys who can access their power with no issue, and then he'll just be kinda flirty towards Feyre, as SJM MaLeS usually are and that makes him a decent enough potential love interest I guess" and thats all true but idk, actually reading about him made me like him sooooo much. Like, him and Feyre telling each other theyre easy to love? Mwah, gorgeous. I bet Rhys is really glad he has that mating bond because without it his sorry ass would NOT be able to compete with Tarquin

So now my list of m/f Feyre ships goes Feyquin > Feycien > Feylin and Feyre/Azriel are on about the same level to me I think > Feysand (not including feyssian bc I think its a crime to ship cassian with a woman sry)

I specify m/f Feyre ships because if I included all of the Feyre ships, Feyanthe would be at the very top followed by Feyre/Amren. Idk, I know its obscure, but when she was describing how Amren was wearing a crop top she said something like "a sliver of skin was left exposed, as tempting as a calm lake" and I was like oh? 👀 Those guys have potentialllllllll I mean who needs Mates when youre both Made amiright fellas. Also, Feyre/Mor would go above Feysand

Anyway, thats it from me again, I hope you enjoyed this

[autisticwriterblog]

Fandom 50 Post 12

A Neurodivergent Reading of False Kings by Poets of the Fall

Introduction:

After watching this music video about twenty times on repeat, I started to interpret the lyrics and video in a specific way, hence the title of this post. Basically, I began to interpret the lyrics as a story about a neurodivergent person who is sick of trying to fit in with others.

A little background on me and my experiences: I have autism and ADHD and I’ve had very bad experiences in the past of trying to interact with other people. People only accepted me if I masked, but when I went through a massive burnout as a teenager, I lost my ability to mask. And my friends started drifting away. It seems they only ever liked the façade I put up because I wanted to fit in. And everything fell apart when I started acting ‘weird’.

Anyway, after reading that, you can probably see why I’m projecting so hard onto Marko’s character in the music video. This whole thing is incredibly self-indulgent and basically just an excuse for me to ramble about a song I love.

Some specific lyrics I keep thinking about:

Getting lost singing their song – When you try to hard to change to fit in with others you begin to lose a part of yourself.

It's all I know, but not what I need – All he knows are people who only like the palatable version of himself he puts forward, but masking forever will lead to burnout.

Run from this meaningless pantomime – He wants to get out of here because he’s sick of trying to fit in with people, which feels pointless to him.

Bought their smiles, liquid and smooth / Took their words for the truth – He is gullible and takes people seriously even when they’re mocking him, struggling to tell their true intentions until its too late.

End my wars and erase / And I'm yours – If you help him get away from what overwhelms him/people who don’t respect him, he’ll be so grateful that he’ll do anything for you.

My thoughts about the music video:

Throughout the scenes at the party, Marko’s character looks stressed and tired. The others at the party are laughing together but he doesn’t join in. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have fun throughout the video. Several shots of all the activity in the room then cut back to his face and he looks overwhelmed by everything going on. When he sits down at the chess board, he looks exhausted. After the chess game, he storms out, possibly having reached his limit.

When he’s alone and shaded in red light, he looks visibly different or even ‘monstrous’. Is this because he feels like people see him as a freak and the changes to his face are a visible representation of how he’s othered? Or perhaps it’s a symbolism of him masking – looking like a ‘normal’ person in the black and white scenes versus his inability to look ‘normal’ at other times, hench his appearance in the red scenes.

He seems comfortable with the woman in the bedroom with him. Is she someone who understands/respects the real him? Is that why he sings about being ‘yours’, because he longs for a relationship with someone who really knows him?

In conclusion:

This song means a lot to me as a neurodivergent person, and I just wanted to ramble about why that is.

[auncyen]

I think part of why I like Oboro is because I think of some of the stuff in OT2 as like "depiction of mental illness on fantasy steroids".

In real life, most people who are depressed aren't going to hurt anyone else (the unfortunate possibility of themselves on the table). They might hurt their relationships with others, though, because part of depression is your brain being stuck on only the negative. Oboro gets to raise his adoptive sister and be friends with a kind prince? That's because he's working for the prince's father who, going by Ori's journal fragments, went a LONG time ignoring any strategies Oboro proposed to avoid bloodshed in war and went the bloody way regardless. This same man is ultimately responsible for both Oboro and Ori being orphans, and Oboro didn't exactly enter his service freely. This man acts like this because his bloodline is cursed, which Oboro knows very well the prince has a second, crueler personality because of the curse too, and seems convinced that means eventually the prince will turn out the same way as his father.

He doesn't, but you know, even master strategists can ignore possibilities because of cognitive distortions.

Like this is the same setting where a book convinces a guy who seemed to be decent if extremely hard on himself "you can't save everyone from illness" means "you have to kill everyone so they don't suffer". Same book convinces another person that living is pointless too. Oboro doesn't find anything particularly noteworthy about the book...because he's already realized "the truths it laid bare on my own"... but I think it's noteworthy that even he, by his own account, "played my role" of "dutiful subject" until the day the man (I assume Claude) approached him with the book. Basically: Oboro was depressed and traumatized enough that if the book did change his thinking in any way, it did not register. But while his letter is somewhat ambiguous about when exactly the plan started, the implication seems to be the planning started then, either because he now had an accomplice in the man and/or because the book did nudge his thinking, even if it didn't register to him. (Which again, depression: sometimes you don't realize you're getting worse until it's suddenly like "whoa. wait, at one point in my life I did have more hope, but it feels like I might as well have been a different person then".) We don't have an account of a "normal" person reading the book and staying normal afterward (Castti might have read the book, because the opportunity was there, but there isn't anything saying she did) so it's...hm. That book definitely isn't doing anyone's mental state favors, huh.

Basically take the humans of the OCTOPATH villains: Oboro, Tanzy, Ori, Petrichor, Trousseau, Harvey. Petrichor is essentially a noncharacter, we never interact with her directly and she has very little description even in the infodumping journal fragments. Harvey, well, kind of seems to just be envy to the point of extreme evil. But I'd argue Oboro, Tanzy, Ori, and Trousseau all had depression even before reading the Book of Night (and iirc it's not even certain if Ori actually read the book or not; she's in close enough proximity it seems likely she did at some point, but it's not described). There are definitely other human issues at play behind the troubles in OT2, such as, whatever the hell Harvey's deal is, and while Roque is excluded from the OCTOPATH acronym clique (which seems a bit arbitrary to me given how far on the periphery Tanzy and Trousseau are, but yeah, sure, he's not in the conspiracy), greed certainly isn't helping anyone, but so much of the human side of Vide being brought back seems to be despair and trauma and depression being put on fantasy steroids. And in that context everything Oboro does is still terrible and wrong. But like I get how he screwed up that badly. (And still. Poor Hikari. AU where Hikari read the book as well everyone has the worst time ever)