#i really wonder these people can go about with their lives hating and sabotaging others

[rantingravingliving]

Shut up, fuck off and just listen to this with your headphones on. Park Jimin sounds fucking amazing.

So fucking amazing all I am hearing (and seeing) is how great his debut is despite people trying to drag him for almost anything.

Well, you know how karma works, right?

Anyway, Alone is my fave FACE track, but SMF Pt. 2 will always make me gasp whenever I hear it and more so when I see Jimin performs it.

So you, fuck off your opps. Jimin has shown what he can do, and the world responded with applause and praises.

[weebsinstash]

I’m honestly living for the potential Miguel angst in your YouTwo fics, like him realising it’s pretty much entirely his fault that you got so injured/traumatised. Excellent Yandere potential right here lmaoo.

No but really, because like your standard edition default yandere could be like "oh, you're so weak and delicate, only I can protect you, only I deserve to have you, oh you're so wonderful and lovely, you are incapable of actually truly taking care of yourself like i can" and you know all the mushy shit that is varying degrees of truth and delusion

And here you have Miguel, who like, let's look on "the timeline" that we've kind of established here, ok, because, wow does he have some reasons to uh, go feral

-you guys have a cordial, team-up kind of first meeting against an anomaly in your home dimension, you wind up being invited to Spider Society, one day your home universe is JUST GONE while you're out and about in Nueva York or elsewhere

-You're like basically homeless, traumatized, depressed, like what was all of that for, what was all your suffering for, those deaths and tragedies you experienced, you SUFFERED to be a Spider, and now, your home is gone, what does this mean, like, you have the most justifiable existential crisis one can imagine, you had a DESTINY my dude! And it's GONE NOW, POOF

-Spider Society becomes new home, new community, new thing to keep you going and alive and grounded and they all like you and sometimes you think you're actually happier than ever, you feel very loved and supported, even teach your own class, people like you, little do you know how much lol

-but you still have depression and anxiety and self doubts but hey everyone supports you 🥺 part of being a Spider is picking yourself back up right?

-youtwo shows up, you feel weird, somwqhat threatened by their presence but, also some kinship actually, maybe they even feed you some story either genuine or a lie and you allow them to be you once or twice, they get drunk on it, kind of trick you, fans out, starts stealing your identity. Suddenly what purpose you had in your life is at question. If anything and everything you can do can simply be replicated, what use is there for you? Whatever depression and issues you have before are amplified

-members of the community start mistaking you for the replica and treat you varying degrees of disregard to outright disrespect and you wonder what that means, if they were all just nasty liars to "real you" or if you were just never really that special or anything to begin with and they just latched onto "real you" for some random reason

-you get framed for something youtwo does,sabotaging a big society construction project that you saved the day on but got injured for. YouTwo doesn't even need to pretend it wasn't them, you're framed and people believe it, they believe the narrative that you wanted to feel needed and set this up to be the hero and people treat you with either pity or disgust or just coddling "oh, poor them :( they shouldn't have done that though..."

-you just kind of start hating everyone because it's at the point where now YouTwo hasn't just stolen your life but put you in a position where EVEN WHEN your identity was believed, your reputation and relationship with others is tarnished. Like picture with me here, put yourself in the moment, you're crying you're feeling so sad and outraged because you genuinely cannot believe what you're hearing as Miguel stands there forcing himself to be emotionless and saying "the footage doesn't lie and we have a witness" and it's just YouTwo planting bombs and they stole your costume or were manipulating people and spreading lies or something, and you're just, like, feeling literally fucking violated that this is happening to you, you're literally sitting there with like a hip or broken femur because of being injured in the incident, where you also saved other people by the way, and you're being accused of being the perpetrator, after everything you've done for them, with them, after never having done this sort of thing before, you're just. Outraged doesn't begin to describe it. Whether you love or respect him you can't believe someone who was like family to you, not just him but by extension all of them, would do this to you. You're more alone than ever, and stuck in a wheelchair where they try to pitying dote on you while you completely clam up and some of them interpret it as guilt and you eventually just tell all of them to leave you the fuck alone (again, a little interpreted as guilt)

-Miguel like legitimately thinks he's doing what's best for you. The time he finally truly sides with YouTwo and winds up actually hurting you the worst is when he's trying to be like, "see I finally believe you, Im sorry I doubted you, I'll fix this I promise, I'll get rid of the second one" and he's saying it all to. YouTwo. Like imagine how bad that fucking hurts. You're either crying or just laughing at the absurdity of it, either weeping or actively antagonizing him until you blip away from having your bracelet broken/removed when you're "exiled"

-after you're gone, that's when he realizes how BAAAAAAADLY he's fucked up. He's got definitive evidence the you in front of him is the fake, he has no idea where you are, if even that you're alive. really, you glitching away instead of outright dying basically makes you an anomaly, even more than before anyways. Maybe the fact you just vanish instead of have the whole cell death thing gives him hope that you're still out there and he obsessively searches for you, but can never find you

-until one day when he's at his near breaking point, I mean this man is hanging on by THREADS at this point, you just, glitch back into his life. Like a miracle. And you're hungry. And you're cold. And you're hurt. And you need help and he NEEDS you, needs to be the one to help you, to atone for what's happened, especially when he sees your deteoriated state mentally, physically, and emotionally. Like. He latches on to you like a parasite, please please PLEASE let him make this up to you he is like BARELY holding himself together he NEEDS you and needs to help you (oh wow that whole construction disaster "causing a problem to reap the benefits of fixing it" is unintentionally coming back full circle for you ain't it dude, the apollo gift of prophecy levels of projection lmao)

And you know I mentioned in the past "what if you get rescued by another Miguel and latch onto him" but like if Reader is so emotionally and mentally worn down, I think really having "your" Miguel so desperate for your forgiveness and seeming so genuinely attached to you would really sort of activate the Oh God I Just Need Someone To Love Me And Need Me insecurities and traumas. You wake up from a good rest after first coming back and he's apologizing to you profusely and you just kind of break down and immediately accept him back because you just. Need to feel like you matter. Like the toxic codependency of you needing to feel loved and him desperately wanting to make things up to you, giving you any praise or affection or attention he wants to give you and you feeling somehow reassured by the dedication, but also him being in this position of power and authority over you where he, if he wants to, has extreme control over your life. You're just over here barely keeping it together and critically depressed and needing hugs and needing to matter and you have this hulking almost 7 foot behemoth of trauma of grief who has a More Than Unhealthy Attachment to you who does have Intentions is now being fully in control of your care, of your safety, of your environment, with a heightened emotional investment in just. Literally everything about you

Oh yeah, he's all too happy to give you food and shelter after your traumatizing multiverse travels. But he also didn't want to let you leave in the first place. Now he won't let you. He's partially convinced he shouldn't ever let you out of his sight ever again, period. He's just becoming Downright Mentally Unstable because not only have these things happened to you, between you and him, but also, there were people who helped YouTwo, helped the scheme, whether intentionally or not, and now he's more untrusting of his peers and surroundings. He grows colder to the ones he doesn't trust. He programs his own watch to give him notifications on your status on those occasions you're apart like when he has to go fight anomalies, which is suddenly magically Way Too Dangerous for you to do anymore you're basically on house arrest

You really truly become All He Has Left, like borderline his reason for living at this point besides his own motivations and drive as Spiderman 2099 and his mission to protect the multiverse. But you're a big thing keeping him going. Even if you don't love him, he'll make sure to stay by your side and not leave you ever again. He won't make the same mistake twice, he promises. You just have to give him the time to prove it

[starpirateee]

Drabble request (there are two because theyre extremely similar so pick whichever you fancy, i just need more Clivesdale content lmao)

Either:

The Nerdy Prudes decide to go on a daytrip to Clivesdale to try to vandalise the cherry festival, but a musical apocalypse causes them to rase the nantucket bridge, stranding them there

Or:

The Nerdy Prudes go undercover in Clivesdale’s High School to try to screw over the Chemists so they can win the big game

I love your writing, cant wait to see what you do with this :D

First of all, thank you! That means a lot! Second of all: Clivesdale prompt???? Hello???

The leaves were starting to fall, and the last breaths of summer were hanging in the air. Hatchetfield's honey festival was right around the corner, but that wasn't what was on Ruth's mind. She proposed to the others a huge, very ambitious plan to spend the last few days of summer… Somewhere else. for her, this was a really interesting idea, but of course, she couldn't do it without the help of her friends.

"Are you crazy?" Richie asked, as if he hadn't heard her correctly and needed clarification that he was, in fact, hearing the plan right. "You want us to take the week in Clivesdale?"

"Just the weekend!" Ruth clarified, a bright yet oblivious grin on her face. They all saw the honey festival year after year, and she was looking for something slightly different. She'd heard people complaining about Clivesdale's cherry festival for a while now, and yet she'd never been to explore the place herself. There was that insatiable part of her mind that really wanted to find out whether it was really as stupid as her friends and neighbours let on. "We'll go to the cherry festival, and see what's going on! And… Well, while we're there, we might as well show em just how much nobody wants to go to their stupid cherry festival…"

"Are you suggesting we sabotage the festival?" Pete raised an eyebrow, sceptical of their abilities as three people who had barely scraped sixteen. Ruth gave him an eager nod and his brow furrowed. "How the hell are we gonna do that? We're kids!"

"I dunno! But we aren't gonna be able to figure it out till we go over there and see what we're messing with! Then after that… Well, we'll see, won't we!"

She was so confident in this idea of hers that it was almost compelling.

"You really think it's that easy?"

"Sure! How bad can it be?"

That was the thing abouot Ruth. She was really convincing when she wanted to be. Once she'd tided them over, it was enough of an argument just to see what the hell everyone hated so much. None of them had ever so much as been to Clivesdale, so really, it was a matter of seeing what all the fuss was about.

While the final preparations were being made for the honey festival, and while the women of the town were signing themselves up for the honey queen pageant, three teenagers crossed the Nantucket bridge and headed for Clivesdale. None of them knew what they were setting themselves up for here, but if all went according to plan, then they would manage to successfully sabotage the cherry festival and then return home before anyone was the wiser.

That was the plan, anyway, and Richie and Pete had been so won over by Ruth's blatant confidence that they'd agreed without thinking about what it was going to entail, and how the people of Clivesdale would see them. Maybe they would be seen in the same vein that they would be seen if they came to Hatchetfield. Maybe it would be obvious that they were from out of town, and they would be driven back before anything happened. Once a nighthawk, always a nighthawk, after all…

Pete wondered whether the cherry festival was the same as the honey festival. That perhaps there was a chance that this rivalry was no more than a petty squabble between towns, and in fact, they were remarkably similar. He imagined one of those stages people set out in the middle of fields, filled with live music and speakers large enough that you could hear what was going on from miles away. He imagined stalls filled with baked goods, as many different shades of red as could be thought of… Hell, maybe people actually put heart into this festival thing.

Richie thought about how weird it would be to set foot in a different place. He'd heard things about Clivesdale, for sure… Everyone had, that was the standard for rumour being spread around Hatchetfield High. All the footballers talked about what happened when they went there, and how fucked up Clivesdale was as a place. They all talked so passionately, but Richie was willing to bet that Clivesdale didn't have people disappearing on the regular, or strange ghost stories that only seemed to take place on the far east of the town or in the woods.

For Ruth, this was a chance at seeing something new. There was still a huge part of her that wanted to travel with a theatre company, going all over the country and maybe even the world someday… That was her dream, elaborate as it was, and this was a good start. She wasn't privy to a lot of the comversations that happened in the football locker room, and Richie didn't often talk about it, so she didn't really know why the Nighthawks talked so much shit about the Chemists… That was one huge mystery that she couldn't wait to unravel, and getting to see the cherry festival firsthand would be a bonus too, there was never anything wrong with cherries, after all.

While they walked across the bridge, they talked about these possibilities, as well as the strange happenings of the night before.

"My brother said he drove home in some freak storm last night… Full thunder and lightning…" Pete hummed. "Lotta people said the same thing, apparently."

"Oh yeah, I heard the thunder for a while…" Richie shivered at the thought of it, drawing himself in a little closer. "Nobody saw it coming either, the weather reports apparently said it was gonna be clear all night."

"Really? Huh…."

"That's not the best part about the storm, you guys!" Ruth interjected, to which Richie hummed.

"Oh, you're talking about the meteor, right? The one that crashed through the Starlight?"

"Course I am! What're the chances of a meteor's crash course being that precise that it manages to land right in the middle of the stage?"

"How d'you know it landed in the middle of the stage?" Pete asked, raising an eyebrow. He'd heard reports of this meteor, as had everyone, but there was nothing on the news that suggested that people had known where it landed. "Wait, Ruth.. Did you go check on the meteor? Have you been to see it?"

"Sure i have! Heard it crashed through the theatre and I wanted to take a look!" Ruth answered like it was obvious, shooting Pete a pointed glance. "It was huge, broke the stage floor and messed up the first few rows of seats! I mean, I'm not entirely sure I should've been there, but… Y'know, it was cool!"

"You weren't worried at all about being caught?"

"Uh… No, nobody else was daring to go in there…"

On one hand, it was a good thing when Ruth had a brave streak. Her anxiety meant that often, that just didn't exist as an option for her, so when she was flooded with adrenaline and decided to make a rash decision or two, it was always a show of her combatting the worst of her thoughts. On the other, she was impulsive, and whichever decisions those tended to be were often not the type to be thought of as admirable. She had no fear, only a crippling nervousness that came before.

But, nonetheless, she had seen the meteor. And that was, undeniably, quite cool. "Well, did you get a picture of it?"

"I'll let you see when we make it to Clivesdale!"

Most of the traffic on the Nantucket tended to head one way, out of Hatchetfield. They were following much the same path, leading themselves away from their home town and out into the wider unknown. They kneew they were nearing Clivesdale when they started seeing posters and banners, decorated in a red overlay, and dotted with the world's most generic images of cherries. Both festivals tended to run in tandem, and that had started when Clivesdale picked up on the popularity of the honey festival and fancied making one of their own.

Of course, it felt all wrong. First of all, it was three weeks before the honey festival, and nobody could figure out why that was the case. Second, it seemed like a place that was way too busy, way too disorganised. Pete knew he wasn't a fan of such chaos, though he'd never quite seen the extent to which the cherry festival fell into their disorganised mess. It genuinely didn't seem like thhey knew order, that they were able to lay their stalls out in the most haphazard way possible and call it a day.

Once they were certain they'd arrived in the town, the three of them took a seat on a bench and the boys eagerly watched Ruth pull out her phone and try and locate the picture of the meteor. What she showed them was a rather bland looking rock, which would've been completely so if not for the fact that it was pretty much the size of the stage itself, and oozing some kind of strange, blue substance from the most visible crater. Richie gasped when he saw it, and leaned in as close as he could to get a better look at it.

"Good god, that's bigger than I thought! You sure that didn't hit anyone?"

"If it did, I don't think they'd know, they'd be pretty much crushed underneath, wouldn't they?"

"What if it was like the Wizard of Oz?"

"You mean… We could still see their legs enough to take off their ruby slippers? I don't think so…" Pete hummed. "A meteor of that size is gonna be hard to even try and get away from."

"You never know… Maybe they were at an unfortunate angle," Ruth returned, with twice the gusto that Pete had given his entire statement in. "But no, there was nobody there. Not that I could see, anyway."

"That's kinda cool, Richie's right… But a hell of a lot of a bill to rebuild the place once they get rid of it, huh?"

"Oh yeah, it's gonna be out of commission for months now!"

Weren't they saying something about a busy season not too long ago? Richie thought about what would happen to the shows now they didn't exactly have a theatre to perform them in. There were always other places they could rent out, but god only knows the theatre department in Hatchetfield didn't get the funding enough as it was. They wouldn't be able to just rent out some other place, not even for a few days!

"So, what's the plan here? Or did you really just wanna take a trip into Clivesdale..?"

"Well, kinda, yeah. But I guess it hasn't really changed since the last time I tried to pitch it. We're gonna go in there and see what this cherry festival is all about, then maybe we'll make a few attempts to sabotage it, just to really get things going. But, we can't make it really obvious, y'know?"

That afternoon, the three of them spent the time scoping out the slowly assembling stalls and see what the deal was with this cherry festival. There were all sorts of vendors, selling all kinds that managed to take them by surprise. Richie found an old man selling nothing but crystals in more forms than he had ever thought to use crystals for. Pete spent a while looking at a bunch of old books that the couple selling them had repurposed into keepsake boxes. Ruth was originally drawn in by the smell of fresk baking, but was taken by this stand that had a large barrel of wrapped gifts in various sizes, evidently some kind of luck game with fake gifts and real ones.

This to say, it looked like fun, and by the time the evening came, the three of them had reconvened with a plan. For a while, they were just gonna try and fit in together. Clearly, they got visitors from all throughout the neighbouring towns for this festival, and they were going to be just like those visitors. They would blend in as best as they could, try their hand at a few of the stalls and peruse the various wares… And then they would strike. Richie had pitched an elaborate plan that involved pretending to be involved with the backstage acts, and then cutting off the audio signal to the stage. Originally, this planhad been a little more complicated, but Pete made him promise he wouldn't actively mess with the soundboard.

The last of the daylight hours wound out, and the festival became more of a festival. People began arriving en masse, and soon the stalls were bustling with various different crowds, all looking for something different. Ruth gave the signal when the coast was clear, and the three of them started pushing through the crowd to check out the main stage. According to the poster on one of the streetlights, there were going to be three acts on one after the other in quick succession. If they couldn't figure out their issue with the sound, then none of them were going to be heard properly when the time came to perform.

"Did you hear what was happening in Hatchetfield?"

"Mhm, that meteor is causing a hell of a lot of damage, and I heard there was some kinda ruptured gas line?"

"That'd be the one. It's killing people off, apparently."

The three of them didn't make it to the stage. When they passed the open bar, they overheard a conversation that sent them into a vague panic. When someone mentioned that people were dying, it sent a violent shiver down Pete's spine. To think, whatever it was could've affected them too, if they were still there. They had chosen the right day to leave town, that was for sure. But, there was the hope that the people were just being dramatic, and that people weren't actually dying in Hatchetfield as soon as the three of them had left.

"What the fuck was that?" Richie whispered hurriedly, as the three of them tried to force their way through the crowd towards somewhere more private. Once they were alone, they silently decided that the best course of action was to go back to Hatchetfield, and try and explain the situation for themselves. They refused to believe that so much could happen in the space of only a few hours, especially since they had left close to noon, and nothing seemed to be happening then…

"I dunno, something about a gas leak?" Pete bit his lip. "Do you really believe that?"

"Nah, I'm not buying it." Ruth's voice was decidedly stern. She was trying to force herself to believe that it couldn't be the case that everyone was dying in Hatchetfield. "This is Clivesdale, how do we know they aren't just a bunch of dirty fuckin' liars?"

"If they were lying, they'd be saying something like 'everyone in Hatchetfield is dying from some musical apocalypse that's infecting them like a plague'… Gas line sounds too plausible, especially since we don't know what that goddamn meteor hit…"

"A musical apocalypse?"

Pete threw up his hands. "I dunno! something like that, something that'd obviously be a lie! Y'know, I don't think they're just lying for the sake of trying to poke fun at us in Hatchetfield… I think something might be happening."

They wandered away from the festival, against the grain of the crowd. If there truly was nothing to worry about, then this was a weekend-long event, they could always come back and enact their plan on the stage at a later date. Not a word was spoken between them on the way beck to the bridge, and when they saw what they did, all of them froze at once.

Someone- some raging idiot- had raised the Nantucket bridge. Hatchetfield was completely sealed off from the rest of the world. If something was happening, then they would just be left to die out there, and nobody would be the wiser. Hatchetfield was a tiny island, a small town where near enough everyone knew everyone else. In a community that tight knit, something was bound to go wrong, and then what? When more communities banded together, more of them would die.

"Oh fuck."

"Jesus Christ."

"What are we supposed to do now?"

Three teenagers were stranded in Clivesdale, of all places. And none of them had the energy to try their hand at their sabotage plan, not when they didn't know what was going on in their town and there was no way of finding out. By the end of the day, the three of them were the only ones who hadn't been near an infected person in the slightest. If he knew what was actually happening on the island, Pete would have known that he was near enough spot on with his bullshit claim.

By the stroke of midnight, once the three of them had pooled whatever money they had and found some hotel room for the night, there were only five survivors left of the Hatchetfield tragedy. The three of them, a woman by the name of Emma Perkins, and one pocket sized squirrel that the military found buried in the chest of a local woodworker.

Once the bridge was lowered and they found someone who gave them answers, going back to Hatchetfield didn't seem like something they wanted to do. It had been completely wiped off the map, and there was no point in going back if there was nothing to go back to in the first place.

[ecargmura]

Oshi No Ko Episode 15 Review - The Shadow Of His Former Self

The first half of the episode ends the GOA and Abiko conflict happily yet there are still more problems as Aqua getting criticized for his lack of emotional acting. It turns out that his trauma from Ai’s death is repressing his emotions. I have to say that the transition from all the GOA-Abiko stuff to focusing back on Aqua was quite intriguing, but it flowed well.

For the first half of the episode, I do like that the weird game of telephone finally comes to an end as Abiko, GOA, Raida and Abiko’s editor are finally on a video chat with each other. If only they had done this sooner, this whole ordeal would’ve resolved earlier and the actors wouldn’t have to crunch the last two weeks of rehearsal for the revised script. Also, props to Raida for wanting the play to succeed to the point that he’d **** an old geezer’s ****—his words, not mine. I also like that he finally manages to convince Abiko to work together with GOA since he told her that the Ping Pong stage play was written by him.

Well, the resolution of this conflict was thanks to Aqua who now has an issue of his own in the form of emotions acting. Since he’s sixteen and he was around four when Ai died in front of him, it’s been twelve years since then. I do like that trauma just doesn’t go away and that he’s been living with regret and guilt for the past twelve years.

I feel like people say Aqua’s edgy, but he’s not. The trauma didn’t make him edgy; it made him empty. From what I can see, he likes helping people resolve their conflicts, even if he denies it. He says that it’s for his revenge plan, but I see it as a way to assuage his guilt from not being able to help Ai during her death. While sabotaging Ruby’s chances of being an idol was sort of jerkish, he did have good intentions as idol agencies are sketchy. He also helped Kana with the Sweet Today issue. He also helped Akane when she was getting hate comments and even tried to help the other members of the dating show cast make a video to let Akane know that she’s loved. He even invited Mem-cho to become an idol to help achieve her dream of becoming one. For this season, he even resolved the issue with Abiko by giving her a ticket for the stage play, which caused her to change her mind about the script and allowing Raida to get through her for good. While the trauma has caused him to become empty, helping people out were happy moments and it did feel as if recalling them has filled up the void in his soul in a way. It sucks that he only thought about happy memories after Kana accidentally triggered his PTSD.

The moment where the shadow of Goro showed up, preventing him from basking in happiness was really crazy. It was animated well and the color choices were a subversion of the usual bright colors Doga Kobo is usually known for. Like I mentioned in my previous review, how much of Aqua is Aqua and how much of him is Goro is still a mystery because when Goro died, he was reborn as Aqua and because the baby retained all of his memories from his previous life, Aqua never really had a chance to be an actual child. However, at the same time, it makes me wonder if Aqua was behaving how he did as a child because he had retained all of Goro’s memories and that made him develop an ego at an early age.

I’m honestly a sucker for sad boys, which is why I like Aqua the most in this show. I also tend to like sad boy x sad boy comforter ships a lot. I usually never had much opinions for Akane, but I do think she was the strongest presence in this episode with the way she actually figures out Aqua and Ruby’s connection with Ai and why he gets PTSD. Her analytical skills are crazy; she could seriously outclass any professional detective if she tried. However, I still do find it a bit…unsettling that Akane is comforting Aqua because she’s still acting the role of Ai but it’s something he needs right now as Aqua’s inner demons cannot be vanquished.

I wonder if Aqua can conquer this hurdle whether it be during rehearsal or during the actual performance. It’d be nice to see Aqua with emotions later on and not someone so consumed with revenge to the point that it’s the only thing fueling the emptiness inside of him. What were your thoughts on this episode?

[atopvisenyashill]

On the theme of Laenor living, what if the whole Dragonstone/Driftmark polycule is still kicking when Viserys dies? (Because in the book at least, I'm convinced that at least Rhaenyra had arrangements with both Harwin and Laena/Daemon, and who's to say Laenor didn't have his own with Harwin and/or Daemon?)

oooo good question.

so this goes similar to the “laena lives au” i talked about a few weeks ago (i think?) (can’t fucjing find it of course), where rhaenyra is in much better shape because a) she still has vhagar and b) she still has her husband as a shield. if we take out harwin’s death as well, this either means no one ever set the harrenhal fire, or only lyonel died in it, or even that it WAS set but they survived, and that gives her a powerful ally in the riverlands, somewhere she needs a little push due to the infighting in house tully. okay bullet pointing here-

aemond keeps his eye, but not only is harwin not sent away, rhaenyra herself is not sent away - remember, in show canon she leaves on her own but in book canon, viserys bars her from the capital to keep alicent happy (number one mistake viserys makes, and also, this is what i point to when people say she's entitled or spoiled. bruh she's literally barred from making allies at court by her father!!)

this means rhaenyra is likely splitting her time between dragonstone & the capital. there’s still a lot of ways that a fight can occur but i think it’s much less likely something as violent as the driftmark brawl happens. without that catalyst to really entrench everyone in their own spaces, there’s an interesting political shift that could happen.

we don’t get an exact read on lyonel and his feelings towards rhaenyra. in the show, he’s clearly scared for harwin’s life but like. does he hate rhaenyra for putting harwin at risk? does he want to get close to the velaryon boys? does he think this whole situation is way too risky for him to possibly benefit from? for example, does he suggest viserys let him go back to being master of laws or even let him leave the council in favor of naming laenor and/or rhaenyra as hand or master of laws? because this opens the door for rhaenyra to REALLY gain a foothold in the capital - AND imo, it gives her an excuse to move daemon & laena into dragonstone by naming daemon as her steward while she’s on the small council, and she would have lyonel to thank for that.

regardless of lyonel’s actions, it’s just objectively better that he remains on the small council as hand over otto because then the small council isn’t being stacked with greens. for all he's a bit of an enigma, lyonel isn't actively trying to sabotage rhaenyra. HOW those empty positions get filled is kinda murky - if lyonel is allowed to do it, i imagine he’s genuinely finding people suited for the job, which means master of ships is likely a manderly or velaryon, which is good for rhaenyra. for master of laws, i have no idea but i doubt it’s jasper wylde which again, better for rhaenyra. no way in fuck cole gets to just sit on the damn council.

it’s kinda tricky to ensure the entire polycule remains intact for seventeen years (seven years with one husband, a decade with the other is the timeline iirc) because i think, without the driftmark brawl, criston & alicent do something similar to what they do in the show, which is purposefully spark harwin’s ire re: the boys to get him sent from the capital. so even if we assume harwin & rhaenyra have genuine feelings, he doesn’t mind her relationship with laena & daemon, and the velaryons + daemon are all fond of harwin for being rhaenyra’s sword sword and being so loyal, i don’t think he can avoid being sent back home after a certain point.

however, i do wonder if rhaenyra, daemon, laena, or laenor don’t decide to get him a marriage match THEY want him to have - someone loyal to them, someone who won’t spill their secrets. daemon & laena’s girls are wayyy too young even for westeros marriages but there is one potential match here imo - elinda massey.

by the time viserys dies, i imagine the polycule is more of a poly-penpalship. rhaenyra in the capital, daemon & laena at dragonstone, harwin in harrenhal, laenor at driftmark. but if they’ve retained this loyal, romantic relationship between them all, AND rhaenyra is in the capital when viserys dies which allows her to lock down the keep, call daemon & laena to her side, send a message to harwin to gather some men, have her siblings Not Quite Arrested, and aemond doesn’t have vhagar, i mean…..dance OVER lmao, she can take the capital, and if alicent or cole try something, she can have alicent confined and straight up have cole executed.

obviously, there’s pushback here - alicent still doesn’t like or trust her, aemond is still Like That, otto is likely plotting in oldtown, cole still hates her guts, helaena and aegon are probably still having kids, and vaemond is still here. but vaemond’s window of opportunity is minuscule here, with laenor still alive (and unwilling to kinslay for his wife) and the hightowers not in power.

i imagine lyonel gets pushback whipped up by otto from oldtown - regardless of what lyonel does, people may see his actions as covering for rhaenyra to get his blood on the throne. but this is similar to the pushback against maegor, aenys, and early jaehaerys - very contained rebellions that can be headed off with enough dragons & soldiers, and even factoring in rhaenyra’s temper, if she never loses harwin, if the council isn’t stacked against her, if she starts the war already in KL, and with the seasoned warriors like harwin, daemon, laenor, AND corlys on her side, i think she can commit a few war crimes and still keep control of everything lmao.

the main wildcard factor here is the stepstones imo - daemon & corlys are gonna push to really hold it, and if rhaenyra is on the council (or laenor) she’s going to get involved. maybe this goes well, makes her look competent, if she’s smart she settles some people there to gain their loyalty, OR maybe it’s another endless war to get involved in and she looks kinda stupid.

post war, harwin is guaranteed a spot on the council, as is daemon & corlys. harwin has had at least one child, i think it’s not unlikely rhaenyra has at least one more child past joffrey (whether it’s daemon’s or harwin’s lol), i do wonder if daemon & laena don’t have any more children after the issue with baby aegon. both versions of daemon, imo, have some hang ups about death in childbirth, so i don’t think it’s unlikely he just gives up on having a son with laena & settles either for the marriages or even having a bastard with rhaenyra that they say is laenor’s. really playing with fire in that one lmao but when are those two Specifically not doing already doing that. i think they gotta be CAREFUL bc viserys will NOT appreciate her having daemon’s bastard SPECIFICALLY and they risk getting sent back out from the capital. but again, if he’s her steward at dragonstone, i think that keeps him a lil busy & she might be able to fudge a timeline easy enough to Genuinely pass her kid off as Laenor’s which also helps her.

anyways i’m assuming these people are a lot more rational than they are so let’s dig into some likely dumb decisions too-

again, if viserys realizes somethings happening, he’s having a conniption fit and neither daemon nor rhaenyra have ever been one for subtlety. i think the likelihood of her having daemon's kid in this scenario is kinda high and while viserys does tend to just overlook what her kids look like, if one comes out with daemon's face i think it will piss him off just a bit.

i mean if we want to get really poly with it, imagine if laena has a baby that looks like harwin. that actually helps rhaenyra a lot but also that's soooo funny.

let's say a fight still happens between the younger kids. firstly, it's likely coming a few years later than it does in canon, which might be good, might be bad, but it does mean that even if aemond does something absolutely wild like claim vermithor, silverwing, or grey ghost, he gets less time training on dragonback, and is on a smaller, potentially less bloodied dragon. however, the flip side is if it happens too late, when they're older and perhaps a bit angrier, it could spiral out of control in a more violent way. BUT if there's never a reason for them to be alone and purposefully unsupervised (WHAT WAS COLE DOING. HOW DOES THIS IDIOT STILL HAVE A JOB), there's also never a reason for them to get so violent with each other.

i mean we know CRISTON is bothered by rhaenyra's relationships, but one thing i think people constantly discount is that even with the ingrained sexism and general prudishness of westeros......it just doesn't seem like many other people give a shit. the high septon definitely cares considering he also dislikes lady sam when she remarries to lyonel, and i'm sure several reacher lords care. BUT. i do think the way otto and the greens go about taking the capital pisses a number of people off because a lot more people declare for rhaenyra at the onset of the war than aegon. if she's perhaps not being as obvious about her affairs because harwin is gone, daemon is gone, and she's either living by herself at the capital or In The Same City as Laenor, i really think she has an easier time convincing people she's a better choice than aegon.

BUT I do think it can't be understated that some people might turn against her if they feel like she's clearly having an affair with daemon, particularly in the Reach and parts of the Vale.

AT THE SAME TIME. if otto is doing exactly what he does in canon - which is fuck all, btw, everyone always whacks rhaenyra for being stupid but otto does not do anything particularly impressive to gain himself allies, he just expects that going "well aegon is a man" is enough and it's just not. even rhaenys had her supporters and rhaenys was never named princess of dragonstone! as a matter of fact, this man is SURPRISED at how many people don't declare for him which really speaks to a level of superiority and arrogance on par with like 90% of the targs in this era - but he's doing it from oldtown instead of the capital, he has nothing. he has jack shit. he's got what, a handful of houses in the stormlands, reach, westerlands, and the triarchy, and potentially doesn't even have the capital. i'm not saying rhaenyra is gonna be smart and non angry but it would be perilously easy to just send Laenor and Rhaenys to oldtown with their dragons to be like "send that bitch out here right now or we start burning shit" and lock aemond, aegon, and alicent up while parading helaena and her kids around to be like "see i'm not a kinslayer, i love my sister and her kids, they've simply been manipulated by my evil stepmother."

even if rhaenyra isn't in the capital, the war gets easier - Alicent and Cole would have to take the capital themselves and kill like a LOT of people to do it. and meanwhile Steffon Darklyn is sneaking out to let Rhaenyra know something is UP. Then we got every single experienced dragon on Rhaenyra's side, PLUS extra help in the riverlands and driftmark. either otto gets his shit together or he's even more fucked than he is in main canon.

[aeternallis]

I have an honest, genuine question here, if only for the sake of the fact that I would like to hopefully inspire some polite conversation about this very sensitive topic: what genuinely makes people in this fandom believe that by "watching the live-action drama only," it enables them to think they're free of any responsibility in contributing to these authors' platform and pockets?

(Lindsay Ellis talked about this with JK Rowling and how the HP fandom are struggling with this same exact issue, and a lot of her talking points can apply to the KP fandom too, if you'd like to watch her video on Youtube.)

And before I go any further, I know I may come off obnoxious and mean af, but I'm really really trying not to be. :'D This is honestly just a question I'd like to present to the KP fandom at large.

This question is not meant to be a jab at any of you nonnie(s) or to be provoking in any way, but I'm really just wondering if it somehow got lost in the sauce that DAEMI's involvement with this production was quite extensive (namely, with casting and the script). While I don't know the terms of how royalties are distributed from this show towards the original authors, what they may or may not gain financially, they do gain undoubtedly in platform and notoriety.

Because the way I see it, no matter how much we hate it, the fact still remains that DAEMI are still the original authors of the KinnPorsche franchise. Not reading the novel and/or pretending it doesn't exist won't erase that. If anything, pretending this novel series doesn't exist, or that DAEMI are not the original authors, only whitewashes this IP and the way I see it, not exactly the most conductive way in actually trying to have a meaningful conversation around this series.

Let's not even delve into the fact that by trying to erase DAEMI's name from this IP, people are essentially trying to steal an original creation of POC(s), give full credit to the production company of the show (who based their script on DAEMI's novel), all in an effort to make themselves feel better about engaging with it.

And don't get me wrong; DAEMI being POC does not exempt them from criticism and outright boycott.

Having said this, I may not like DAEMI as much as the next person and do not condone any of their harmful actions, but it also doesn't mean I condone stealing what's rightfully their written work and their monumental contribution to the show.

That, to date, KinnPorsche the Series is still arguably the biggest BL show to come out of Thailand, that this novel was undoubtedly the roadmap for which the drama was based off of.

That to sabotage the success of this novel license series also means to disregard the hard work of both the translators and the artist, to take away credibility from the original cast members who made the live-action drama such a large success that this novel license is even possible today?

That to sabotage the success of this novel may also mean to potentially close an avenue for other SE Asian queer media to succeed down the line?

Because I assure you, when it comes to this sort of thing, money talks. When the execs of SevenSeas looks at the performance of KinnPorsche the novel series and how the pre-order numbers are doing, the numbers tell them whether it's viable to invest in SE Asian queer media or not.

Because believe you me, considering SevenSeas most likely has a social media team, the vitriol being thrown around right now only tells them the VERY unflattering picture that the KP fandom (or any Thai BL community that has a fairly successful IP behind it) is volatile af and also incredibly BIASED, considering at least half of the people outright condemning this license and want it gone are also Build stans.

That at the end of the day, the only real, truest way to fully take away DAEMI's platform for good is to just flat out drop KP-both the novel series and the show-and let it disappear into the annals of entertainment history?

Now, am I pressuring you nonnie(s) or anyone to spend money on the authors? HELL NO. Do whatever you want with your money, I won't judge you.

But is it really not possible for the mindset of, "I do not condone these authors' horrendous actions in the past, but I would like to support the novel series in honor of the artist and the translators, as well as help contribute in bringing in more SE Asian queer content to a wider audience in the near future. My support of this novel series is not a full reflection of my own character, and I refuse to let online randos dictate it otherwise" to exist?

And honestly, nonnie(s)? That's something you all have to figure out for yourselves.

[utilitycaster]

The Beaujester/Widojest stuff actually reminds me of why I almost wasn't on board with Fjord/Jester at first - I really don't like ships where it feels like one party has to wear down the other, and at first, I thought that was the vibe. So I get really stumped on why people are pushing for closure here. It reminds me of that wild d&d court case. Why would they needlessly burden their friend (Jester) with this information? What do fans think would happen after???

Hi anon,

You are 100% right in that I also think of that D&D Court Case (for those wondering, it's the one that starts here and basically, a couple is playing in a D&D game together and the DM some time ago confessed drunkenly to the player who is writing in that he has feelings for the player's girlfriend...and is now romancing her in-game as an NPC). Like, for real, keep that to yourself! It's so awkward and for what! Tell your therapist! Tell other friends outside this social circle! Do some weird art about it! Have weird feelings! But do not say that to the actual couple involved, holy fuck.

It would require someone with far more knowledge of fandom history to back up my hunch here, so I am presenting it as just a hunch, but it feels like there has been a very heavy drive in the past maybe five or six years towards, rather than "oh man, I wish this ship had happened instead, and here are my AUs and fics in which it did" to "here's why the story is BAD and UNRESOLVED and WRONG." And I don't quite know how it came to be, since internet forums have been around for quite some time, and maybe I'm just clueless because I have come relatively late to every social media ever and it was always like this and the volume has just increased. My personal theory is that people saw all those quirky letter writing campaigns of the 2000s and didn't realize that mailing potato chips or whatever to an NBC exec who was cutting the show because it wasn't getting enough viewers by metrics that were well behind current technology and who would see this and say "oh, shit, this has fans, maybe we can make money off it" is very different than writing hate mail to actual creators, but I could be totally wrong.

But anyway, it is pretty apparent that Uk'otoa was left unresolved! Travis actually had laid the groundwork in-character as Fjord (the bounty hunter hire for Sabian, telling Jester in 2x117 he wanted to deal with Uk'otoa before other things) to return, but it made sense for the show to end after Aeor. Meanwhile, it's not unresolved for someone to quietly nurse a crush, and I'd argue, actually, that both Beau and Caleb's feelings were largely resolved in show. Beau outright told Fjord that she'd had a crush on Jester, but her feelings for Yasha were deeper and more real (and in general this tracks with Beau's repeated self-sabotage when things felt too good to be true). And if you take off the Widojest shipping goggles, it's hard to see Caleb's actions following the party's return from Rumblecusp as anything but quietly admitting that this is not going to happen, as he pushes Jester to dance with Fjord and finally tells her about his past. The goal post of "resolved" secretly means "the preferred ship happens instead."

And then no one ever has an answer for what happens after. Does Beau break up with Yasha? Does the entire scene in Aeor with Essek in 141 - absolutely pivotal, despite coming so late, to Caleb's arc - just not happen, because you really cannot read that as anything but romantic? Does Jester break up with Fjord? How do we reconcile that Jester does not wish to live in Rexxentrum as a housewife, and does want to continue to see the world and be able to regularly spend lots of time in Nicodranas? Do Caleb or Beau make even the slightest concession to Jester's wants and needs, in this fantasy?

I guess I'll wrap this up with this thought: I think that Beau and Caleb's romantic feelings for Jester and how they deal with them are very well played by Marisha and Liam and are incredibly important - indeed, crucial - to understanding their respective character development. But that's the thing in the end. The romantic feelings are deeply important to the stories of Beau and Caleb. They are a footnote on the story of the Mighty Nein. And they are utterly irrelevant to the story of Jester.

[ang3l-core]

Angel Numbers

I know that this might be very self sabotaging and maybe even a bad way of thinking

But I sometimes really wonder if maybe I do put myself in these situations

From a very young age I feel like in my life I really didn't have the proper guidance with some things

I've always had to find out a lot of things for myself

I feel like that's how I've always ended up getting myself in really bad situations

And I feel like over the years it's taken me a while to finally set some boundaries for myself with certain people and to stop enabling myself or others' pattern of certain toxic behaviors

And to learn to just think for myself cuz lord only knows how many times I felt like in so many circumstances like I had to be my own protector

Sometimes when things all get too much I wish I could just call out 444 to any kind of divine power out there or to see if I had any archangels who would come

So maybe they could take the job off my hands to help keep watch over me looking out for people who wanna act towards me out of any malice or with any bad intentions

Even it's for a little while so I could at least rest and ease my mind and finally be able to close my eyes for a second you know because I feel like for so long all I've been is just so hypervigilant but to tell you the truth really though it does kinda make me tired that I've had to go to sleep with one eye open for a while I think from so much distrust

I always felt like I always had to keep on looking over my shoulder

Sometimes I think about how it's almost miraculous I'm here at all, after all that I've gone through and the kind of life that I've had from dealing with shit with my debilitating health and needing so much support and never having the right people

Living in environments that you would probably consider "bad"

Never having the right cards dealt to me and trying to survive in circumstances that could've destroyed me but now that I made it out sort of alright I guess that people will call them more like adversities

But instead of feeling like I'm some sort of person who's brave and resilient at times I just feel like a failure and think about the fact that maybe that all wouldn't have happened and I wouldn't have had to experience all that if maybe I wasn't born a burden

Or to parents who maybe didn't really plan that far ahead and just might have been a little in over their heads

And sometimes I get lost in my head trying to make sense of all of it

But I guess that I'm here anyways so I should be present

And I need to be content or something

But these are some things that I still go on sometimes questioning in my head

Oh can I ask why if "some things happen sometimes" why do I still feel like at most times like still almost everything is my fault ?

And why is it so hard for me to believe when people tell me how much of a good person I am, that I am and they're not just talking about someone else or a different person ? I mean if I am at all

And why do we as people still always try to be perfect when we know as good as anybody else that life isn't perfect at all ?

Tell me was I "saved" and if that's the reason I survived everything ?

And if it's true that I was does that mean there was some more higher purpose for me or do human beings don't need any special reason to deserve to exist, we just do like everything else ?

Should I still be blaming myself for things that I don't know were or weren't avoidable ?

The things I regret that I didn't know in my life until now

Is the reason why I am asking all of these questions because I don't think that my soul was even worth saving or that my reputation can be salvaged ?

And am I just ungrateful or can I still hate that I had to go the situations that I've gone through even though I'm pretty sure that of it has turned me into the person that I am now ?

Like alot of other questions that people have about life I'm sure that most of these will go unanswered and maybe I just have to accept that that's fine

But these are some of the questions about mine that I constantly feel like I think about in my head

And I hope maybe one day I know the answers and finally understand why all of this was made so complicated

Or if there's at all any reason cuz maybe or maybe not there was supposed to be

[lara-prisma-avm-ask-blog]

I will not stop. This is now your curse. I will make you all suffer.

I've TRIED to redeem myself, but you all just cry and run away like little fuckin' brats that haven't been told NO their whole life.

I am your curse. I will make sure you never find peace from me. I may not be the Devil, but I will sure as hell make you suffer for what you did to me.

You have RUINED my life. You LIED to me.

Cynder started this shit over somethin' stupid, and now I feel like people are ACTIVELY tryna hunt me down to KILL me, all because of some STUPID ASS AU ART I MADE!!!

No wonder you never asked me about it right away...you were just tryna bait me out.

This fandom is horrible. You are all horrible people. You all deserve to rot in Hell for everything that happened.

I never wanted this to be drama in the first place...but I guess the cards have already been delt, and now it is war.

This is exactly why I hate fandoms. They start shit for the stupidest reasons. There's a difference between bein' critical about someone's character and harassing them out of a fandom because of it.

I never doxxed you. As much as that just sounds like shit comin' out of my mouth, I never wanted this to be a problem. I trusted you Lara. I thought that I was finally finna be able to redeem myself for everything. It turns, I was wrong.

Go ahead. Laugh. I'm already laughing, because I already won. Simple, nice, ya'll think you about to talk shit behind my back. I'm laughing at your petty little response to my ask :)

This whole fandom will pay, for everything that they've did to me. As much as I love the franchise itself, as perfect this fandom seems, it's really just an fuckin' dumpster fire that nobody cares for.

You will never find me. I am taking a step back, and I'm leaving social media. I'm goin' to therapy, and hangin' with close people.

You did this to yourselves. Even in the future, this fandom will not thrive.

You are banned from Lite Anime. Every single person in this fandom is blacklisted, and there is no way you will redeem yourselves. Even as a sadist, only the hurt you will receive is the memory of me, tormenting you until the end of your days.

*chucks you into a dumpster*

You and your stories can all burn in Hell, and I will make sure, you never recover from me.

*shuts the dumpster lid and locked it*

This is your life. I will never stop until everyone in this fandom that was ever involved in this drama and their legacies are sabotaged and never recovered. I will make sure to sabotage mine, just as equal punishment. I will make sure, yours is sabotaged, too.

Let this be a lesson to this fandom, and other fandoms: Nobody is perfect, but nobody deserves to have their lives ruined and in shambles over stupid reasons like these.

Of course, not like you'll ever learn that lesson anyway :)

BTW, my persona has one last thing she has to say: I'm sorry I was born the way I was. I'm sorry I'm a demon. I'm sorry I'm a supposed "Mary Sue." I'M SORRY I'M NOT YOUR IMAGE OF A GOOD CHARACTER. I'M SORRY I'M NOT PERFECT!!!

I've gotta go. I've got better shit to worry about than all you c***s.

Fuck you all! 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

So Good Riddance! 🖕

P.S. Max killing Cyn is not canon to her story :) fuck you

What a show!! Spent half an hour writing??

Fuck you man! Get a life! Touch some grass! Stop making stupid threats on the internet that will never be taken seriously!

Nobody will like you for these things! You say you tried to redeem yourself but lied about why cynder blocked you!

Try doing that again and I'll keep laughing in your face until you stop!

[chbobserver]

welcome to the first edition of the CHB OBSERVER!

within the following post, you will find drama, intrigue, betrayal, hookups, unrequited love, well-seasoned hate--anything you could want to know about your fellow campers. this newsletter marks the first batch of asks sent since the blog was opened, and will be published on a regular basis. however, from this point on, asks may be published in-between newsletters, at the asker's request, or if the gossip is particularly piping. this publication is the result of countless hours of investigation, footage capture and review, interviewing, and of course, the contributions of readers like YOU! i really couldn't have done any of this without you, remember that!

-xoxo GhostPheme

so many missions back to back with so many new players on the board, and people were bound to be paying close attention to their neighbors antics!! let's get into the first drop:

"a little birdie tells me that the son of aphrodite can spark a little love triangle, xoxo"

and i wonder which son of aphrodite they mean, first of all. morgan, perhaps? we did hear corban express interest in wanting to chat him up..but if so, who's the third? everyone keep an eye on this, let us know if we can narrow it down.

“i was told era’s body count is currently 56. not sure if he can count that high, but my professionally estimated guess is around 87.”

oh wow, i'm not even sure which part is more offensive, but i bet erasmo will clear that up for us.

"i heard that holli has a wonky boob."

there's certainly several people that could confirm or deny this one. any takers?

"i heard charlie would rather sleep his way to the top than work for it. fucking mythological creatures in the name of science."

omg the centaurs! i heard centaurs--you think he's really doing it like that? if so, i know it's not for science.

"after whatever calliope did to nico, some might think that he's been corrupted by the other side."

oh fuck, can she do this? is this a thing that can happen? someone better check, and quick, before he can sabotage anything! or anything else...

"avi doesn't seem like he has that much trust in himself. i've heard that he's not the same since he came back from the dead. my guess is that magnolia or hart took over his body."

you're saying we have TWO interlopers? right under our noses, jfc!

"is it just me or does andreas and nico seem to have a thing for each other?"

oh i've been thinking this! they definitely have a special connection. andreas should keep an eye out for selenur for us! that's the best persona for the job, keep close to nico, and they'll probably do it for free!

"i heard a satyr say that greyson fucks ghosts"

and it would be so easy and no one would know! he literally lives with them!

"i heard kitty making horse noises to herself, is she delusional?"

i don't have the dsm5 open in front of me, so i'm not entirely sure, but i wouldn't put it past her. kitty's just a little cuckoo; she's the horse girl your cool friends warned you about.

"avi smells like rotted day old pizza. he reeks!"

is it that bad? he's probably scared to wash between his cheeks, poor thing; a really terminal case of incel. actually...since he's constantly rejecting holli, does that make him volcel? brb going to get him kicked off his fav quarantined reddit subs.

"nico is always walking around like a stick in the mud. lighten up dude!!!!"

lighten up! you're not even that old! you don't have to lie to kick it, nico, you're just as messy and nasty as everyone else.

"biggest floozy?? bet it's our favorite nature-loving bark boy."

now we're getting somewhere! i bet there's some people out there with some real good stories and i want to hear them! i know kit isn't all doe eyed wonder and nature's harmony...or maybe his last shock wasn't a fluke and he just does whatever anyone asks all the time...

"why does greyson smell like hot topic? yiiiikes"

audience, i'll take the leap for all of us, and assume this contributor means he tries too hard to be edgy. you're welcome. if the earlier greyson entry was true, this one definitely isn't.

"is it just me or does ganymede look like a yassified version of andreas?"

i don't want this to come off like complaining, but you're not wrong. maybe they're related--pretty sure i've heard someone else say this too. couldn't hurt to assume.

"i bet if corban cut his hair he'd be a solid 9..."

corban, you got a date lined up if you want it! get a stylist and come getcha man!

"holli is short for hollandaise."

like real name? like her mom calls her that? no wonder she's fucked up.

and that's all folks! hope you enjoyed! i always want to hear feedback, and if you weren't mentioned but want to be: be less boring, do more crime, and a healthy dose of scandal.

[psychreviews2]

Ikigai

The Problem of Self-Development and Striving

As I'm reading all this Carl Jung information for a series on him, I've noticed that there's a big hole in the reviews I've already done. There are some hints in the videos for Letting Go, Flow, and How to Motivate Yourself. So far I haven't really gone into a deep enough dive on motivation. All these psychological videos involve some form of "you are here and you need to be there, and it sucks!" But without e-motions, emoting you with motivation to act, they end up being thoughts that quickly get replaced by habitual ones, and one then has to do enormous ego-forcing to take action. The irony in having to force yourself to be more authentic, is that it leads to inauthenticity. You're acting, pretending, faking it until you make it. There's a certain wisdom in doing that and you may have to fake it because of time constraints.

Letting Go: https://rumble.com/v1grbjr-mindfulness-letting-go.html

Flow: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

How to motivate yourself - Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv3zl-how-to-motivate-yourself-freud-and-beyond.html

Ideally, a person developing different cognitive functions, if they are trying Jungian Individuation, would look for the joy and benefits of the cognitive functions they hate, or find indifferent. Daydreaming about the benefits that one could gain in one's life by incorporating it into one's goals, can be a pleasing 1st step. With Thinking Introversion, one can daydream about personal principles that one believes in and to actually reduce hypocrisy by following them. One of the pleasures here is a clear conscience. Thinking extraversion involves facts and reality that can be confirmed by others. The connection of one's principles and logic becomes enjoyable when one can see confirmation outside of themselves. Feeling Introversion recognizes the individual. Individuals need freedom to experiment and to gain intrinsic motivation. Without self-gratification, it's well known that suicidal tendencies flow up to the surface. Therefore play and wonder are enjoyable in of themselves, and are healing. Feeling extraversion understands social bonds and the pleasure of intimacy and shared pleasure. It's true that to be able to experience pleasure with oneself in hobbies and jobs that one likes is a core part of the self, but another part of the mind enjoys good company. It may take a lot of effort to weed out people who won't sabotage your happiness, but when good friends and intimate partners are found, the pleasure of belonging permeates your entire body. Intuition introversion has a vision of the future. It's predictable that life is a bumpy ride, but not everything in the future is impossible to predict. Being able to plan farther into the future allows for the pleasure of a smoother life. Intuition extraversion looks at life as a smorgasbord of possibilities. There's enormous pleasure in exploration, and the more we explore, the more we realize what we authentically like the most. Sensing introversion gets us to check the world against what we think is reality, and every confirmation that we're on the correct path increases confidence. Sensing extraversion has a wonder in present moment sensation and so much art, and appreciation, can be created simply by comparing different sensations and learning to curate entertainment, music, food, sex, and thrills: Enjoying the sensation of being alive.

Not different than becoming a doctor or an Olympic athlete, people need strong reasons to make big choices or sacrifices, especially if they are trying to add to their personality. Of course I hate the term "sacrifice" because it means you don't really want to do that thing and would prefer to do something else. Much of the time when people are engaged in their work, relationships, exercise, and chores, if there's motivation there's no sense of sacrifice. Many of us have these motivations from time to time, but very often the motivation is the worst kind of short-cut mentality with just a means to an end. Being efficient is helpful, including actual short-cuts that reduce unnecessary work, but there's a temptation to use flimsy short-cuts that makes work slip-shod, relationships a going-through-the-motions, health routines a chore, and self-discipline a bane.

When reading this review, or any other, lists of actions to take and strategies are ego exhausting and the best way to incorporate lists into your life is to make them into motivating actions and eventually new habits. Like with our past conditioning, it came about through a lot of emotions and operate automatically as an adult. They can also harden and make character defects into cartoonish limitations as one gets older.

The typical Jungian development of targeting your weaker cognitive functions and developing them just becomes another chore to rebel against and ease back into those old ruts. People change their character when they FEEL like it and usually in small shifts that add up to something more. Sometimes people even have to hit rock bottom until they yearn for change. Yet no matter how PhD a person is with psychology and development, you can't live long enough to truly be master of all cognitive functions equally. There is also a legitimate argument for someone to want to specialize in an area that can provide you income and develop strengths so they are reliable, or a "Hero" function as many Jungians like to describe one's favorite cognitive function. These specializations extend into a social harmony when people can trade the value of those specializations.

Part of the Jungian mandala is to be able to have occupations for different specialties so that those specialties can be traded amongst ourselves. If everyone fights for the same jobs and industries, there will be a vicious weeding process to keep whole populations out of a profession, sport, art, or any other lauded occupation that millions try to imitate. As people languish in rejection, they begin to feel like Sartre who said that "hell is other people." A lot of the reason for people feeling down to their core, René Girard's "being-disease," where people hate their being and attack themselves with masochism or attack others with sadism, for temporary relief, has to do with population bottlenecks and conflicts over scarce occupations that provide a middle class lifestyle that holds up one's self-esteem. People who are poor are met with derision, disgust, and more rejection, which makes their attempts to improve their lot even harder. Being-disease can be caused by chasing after jobs for the right amount of dollars to buy the right kind of furniture, clothing, and toys to keep shame at bay, but ironically not too much wealth, because it may stoke envy in powerful others who could take those resources away from us.

Like with the current atmosphere of Cancel Culture, censorship, and dare I say it: Communism, the prevailing powers are doing what George Orwell warned of. "In our world, there will be no emotions, except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. The sex-instinct will be eradicated. We shall abolish the orgasm. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty to the party, but always there will be the intoxication of power. Always at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy that is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you." This is basically a sadomasochistic world with no other pleasures, most especially peace. Even in relaxed times, pleasure has to often be secretive, or else shared, to avoid envy consequences from narcissists. I think this is the main obstacle next to being one's own obstacle. People often have to lose friends and even family in order to develop. Many others will not celebrate your improvements because it means tolerating the feeling of a negative comparison. Then there's direct rivalry for positions that cannot be shared, as I explained many times before. The reason why this is a main obstacle is that the knowledge that one needs to advance is not in school textbooks and is often with people. That knowledge is political and may force you to reinvent the wheel over and over again to develop your own version of those skills. Then if you gain hard won knowledge you'll now become the person that wants to protect that information from all comers just as you resented those who held you back before. The pressure to perform for organizations meets head on with the desire to protect one's own butt. The happy medium is to be able to trade your skills with others who provide what you want, while fending off interlopers who want to be in your place or who want to interrupt the exchange or steal from it. People like your differences if they have no intention of going there and want what you have, and agree to trade. As soon as people can imagine themselves in your place, rivalry brews.

Orwell's final warning - Picture of the future - TJOP: https://youtu.be/9k_ptxWsadI

John Vervaeke - How To Deal With Losing Friends As You Develop - Chris Williamson: https://youtu.be/DSPJKuX5Cno

Jordan Peterson - How To Deal With Losing Friends As You Grow - Chris Williamson: https://youtu.be/ApoxLQuk06s

“We live in a time when smart people are being silenced so that stupid people won’t be offended.” - Sky News Australia Suspended - Alan Jones: https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/alan-jones/the-challenge-to-free-speech-is-real-with-youtubes-sky-news-australia-suspension/video/033e5f39dfc58cd93242906366f09a99

Like we see in modern day politics, there's a temptation to cut corners, cheat, rig the game, and slander others in order to amass enough power to win all the time. Usually with politics it involves the comparison of skills and the blaming of those who are incompetent, or to make others appear that way to avoid blame. If you do good enough work, you may last long enough to learn more skills so that work becomes more secure, and possibly you'll have more political power. In the blame game, some focus on developing their own skills and realize that one has to be the best, or at least "better than the other guy." We often don't know what's best without a comparison. Then there are others who have skills, but one of their main skills is being able to lie convincingly. Lies are like onions and those who are good at it are capable of creating layers of lies so that when one lie is peeled back there's another one to rescue it. The game is to exhaust the investigator so that they are not willing to keep on peeling the onion, because their eyes are watering. With enough skill, blame can be shifted to others, big mistakes can be overlooked, and corruption can expand. Those with little conscience have developed these skills since the days they were able to manipulate their teachers, for example. For truth tellers, facts and evidence have to be piled up in order to counter these tactics, especially in large bureaucratical organizations. When corrupt people are in deep, they are too emotionally invested in coming clean. Scapegoating and blame gets shifted to whoever is most convenient, and we are back to the scapegoating mechanism.

The Jungian project is more about balance, and of course this balance is achieved as one advances in life, work, and relationships, and it's not done all at once. Jung expected a certain order to that process, but people often enter backwards. Usually one has to work a lot when younger and develop a balance as one has more wealth to rely on in investments, pensions, after the children become adults, or after selling a business. Many of course never get to that point, and it can turn into just an expectation of social benefits, because most work money in low paying jobs are just enough to go in and go out. The need to develop is always lurking in the unconscious.

The problem is that self-development involves the same ambitious striving that drains energy just before you need it for an activity, and this is applies to any psychological model you are following. Perfectionism, striving, ruminating, worrying, and fretting will leave no energy left.

As an aid for your self development, no matter if it's Freud, Jung, religious models, atheist models, new age, or integrated models, this review will survey current knowledge of what is known about bringing that sense of intrinsic motivation, which is the opposite of the feeling of slavery and helplessness that so many find a regular part of their day. No matter how idealistic we are, there are limitations with these methods and there are no places on Earth that will provide endless Flow, Balance, Enlightenment, etc. The realistic goal is to find MORE ways of including that feeling into life so it's at least a larger part of it.

Since a big area of resistance to happiness involves work, let's start with the Japanese concept of Ikigai.

Ikigai

One of the more popular conceptions of happiness at work comes from the Japanese term Ikigai, which roughly translates into "reason to live/exist/be." In the book The Experience of Meaning, by Jan Zwicky, I like how she simply puts it that "Meaning is what Matters." This way we can see that Ikigai is best looked at as a way to engage in activities that more or less make some positive impact, and also importantly, we gain pleasure in these activities. On top of that, there's a desire for appreciation from others, which is another form of pleasure and meaning.

The regular interpretation of Ikigai is to view those related activities as a way to stave off feelings of being useless, unwanted, or helpless. In Ikigai - Giving every day meaning and joy, by Yukari Mitsuhashi, she says that "whatever gets you up in the morning is your ikigai - and no one can tell you otherwise...If you have a goal or something to look forward to, then - even if you feel that you're not in a good place right now - you are more likely to be able to see your current situation or circumstances as a pathway towards that future and to find value in the present moment."

Reading Japanese authors on the subject is a good way to help decipher what the Japanese mean culturally because a lot of Western ideas have intermixed in ways that can be misleading. The most famous is the Venn diagram which mixes some of Aristotle's ideas with it. "Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation."

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/tyvToPYsyaZXtaFiUISw-P6abde6j84YSh5o3tXq81c.jpg

Ikigai chart: https://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ikigai-chart-reason-for-being_1088160854.jpg

"The Venn diagram consisting of four overlapping circles - what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs and what you can be paid for - with ikigai at the intersection of all four...It took me by surprise. Why? Because it limits the concept of ikigai to things related to work: in this narrow definition, your ikigai needs to be something you can be paid for. But for Japanese people, ikigai is a much broader concept, and one that is rooted in our everyday lives. Ikigai might be our work, yes, but it can also be a hobby, our loved ones, or something as simple as enjoying the company of friends. In a survey of 2,000 Japanese men and women conducted by Central Research Services in 2010, just 31 percent considered work as their ikigai. In fact, ikigai was most commonly related to a hobby or leisure interest, followed by family and pets or time spent with them."

Like with most lessons on mindfulness, Ikigai includes those same lessons. "In our everyday lives, whether we are immersing ourselves in nature or devouring traditional Japanese food, paying attention to detail grabs our focus onto what is right in front of us instead of wondering about our to-do lists in our head. Our nature of paying attention to detail allows us to enjoy individual moments in our lives, permitting us to find joy and ikigai in simple, everyday things." To advance this enjoyment of everyday things, especially for those who tend towards boredom, I still suggest a Heideggerian meditation on wonder, where you avoid the usual comparisons of "this is better than that, and this is even better, and anything that isn't better is boring," and replace it with comparing something to non-existence. The world exists as it IS, and this IS-NESS is funny in how it manifests in a particular way, and when compared to alternatives, all you get is a blank, unless you are a special person connected to another universe, IS is all there IS. It pulls you out of the addictive boredom and tolerance that prevents many adults from tapping into that child-like wonder that was taken for granted when they were younger. It isn't a meditation where you are discursively talking in your mind about wonder. Your in a meditative Samadhi vibrating and shining in IS-ness, and a wordless appreciation is all that is needed.

There's also a sense of enjoying ephemerality, instead of the typical Buddhist letting go and being detached. "When something is hakanai, it is considered beautiful because it can be enjoyed only for a short period of time." As you develop, essentially enjoyment and appreciation skills, you can see how it connects, like with so many subjects. For example, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow. "Remember this when you are exploring your ikigai - it is something that will grow and change with you."

For Yukari, knowing about your Ikigai is like knowing more about yourself, your talents, skills, and preferences. We do this with comparison between activities. "A > B...whatever a person's ikigai, it has a tendency to be more A than B."

These small books on Ikigai are only general, but you can see how the specific builds up to the general principle. "It's worth investing this time and effort, thought, because once you understand your ikigai you can find ways to pursue it, and you may find that many seemingly unrelated areas of your life end up contributing to it in one way or another." This observation matches with more scientific studies on video games and learning. In Learning By Playing, by Fran C. Blumberg, there's an understanding that general transferrable skills help with learning and the enjoyment of using skills. The difficulties are making sure that people know that their prior skills can be used at specific times. Not cuing the skill may mean it is not used, and the opportunity is wasted. Their studies ended up matching up with Anders Ericsson's Deliberate Practice. "These games would target specific skills, would be structured so that they encourage the mastery of subskills required for the performance of these overall skills, would provide useful, informative, and immediate feedback [Flow precursor], and would allow players multiple opportunities to solve problems, with time and encouragement to reflect on the outcome of each attempt. Deliberate practice activities are not inherently enjoyable, and more enjoyable game components might be incorporated between deliberate practice activities to maintain motivation and allow students periods of rest."

Another area of connection with Yukari's survey of Ikigai is allowing that often maligned narcissism of showing your skills to others to enjoy pride. Considered a pillar of Intrinsic Motivation for authors Deci and Ryan, called Relatedness, the fact that a person likes an activity for its own sake means that it has emotional support so that if those activities are rejected in the public sphere the person may still continue these activities as a hobby. Narcissism is much more connected with doing things you hate in order to get the same attention. You lose connection with yourself, and that's a distinctive characteristic of Cluster B personality disorders, always looking for social rewards, prestige, domination, and losing connection, or never developing a connection in the first place to things that are enjoyable for their own sake. First, parents want the child to make them look good, then the child becomes an adult and has to make bosses look good. "Ikigai is not just something you find within yourself, but is often something that connects you to the outside world. For example, people enjoy hobbies, such as photography or baking, not only for their own sakes but also because they are able to share their experience or what they are good at with others. Work, hobbies and volunteering are all ways in which we connect to the outside world." Even if you have trouble separating, for example your art from what others like and their tastes, all you have to do is visualize the meaning of the art, imagine yourself in the art, if it's like a photograph, and just marinate until you see what's good about it, then you can go back to what people like or dislike about it, and often you see that it matters what you name your art, or photograph, because it can fail communication to the outside world, like a failed museum curation. You give people hints so they can put it together and get their own sense of Flow from your work. Maybe you aren't doing art, but some other form of work that isn't entertaining. Seeing the value of the work in terms of how it reduces pain for others or increases pleasure can be something that connects one to another by seeing OBJECTIVE benefits. Again the "meaning is what matters."

How to Appreciate Art: https://rumble.com/v1gvlhb-how-to-appreciate-art-psychology-of-things-22.html

For those with damaged selves, but not so damaged to the point of a personality disorder, one can still reconnect with what one liked in the past and this is often one of the remedies prescribed when one has separated from toxic relationships. It's a feeling of remembering an old identity that was lobotomized for a period of time. "What are you actively pursuing (even though, no one is asking you to)? Looking back over your life, are there things you have continued to do without conscious effort? Ikigai motivates you from within and is something you do because it makes you feel good."

When people aren't sure of their Ikigai, it helps to go into exploration mode. Technically, this is what parenting and childhood was supposed to be about. It's about finding individual talents, desires, and skills to channel into a future career, if possible. For so many people this promise was never fulfilled or the complexity of finding a calling was just too much. A more realistic way of infusing Ikigai into any job is to create self-made goals that allow for employee input and suggestions for improvement. Top down autocratic environments tend to discount frontline workers and treat them like robots, like the ones they hope to one day replace with actual robots that don't complain. In a study on job performance, Yukari found that "[allowing employees the opportunity for] customizing their job resulted in shorter call times and boosted their sales performance."

Other proactive tactics are purposefully paying attention to detail, experimenting, and finding room for creativity. Creativity here, I mean to be looking at products and services and trying to create something that isn't in the market yet. Like with Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, concentration on doing things well, which isn't always supported in jobs that focus on expediency, is like meditation and allows one to go into Flow while at work. When there are setbacks, concentrate more, pay attention to detail, add experimentation to learn more about a subject and develop skills so they can again be transferrable and applicable to your new activities. Like in playing a new video game, you tend to gravitate towards those games that remind you of old favorites because they provide just enough challenge to learn new skills.

"Boost your concentration level so that you are able to tackle things in a shorter amount of time...make the best of whatever time is available to you." This sometimes means going into recreation to find a place where Flow is more easily attained to get that feeling back again for inspiration. "I think the key is to take action. Although I wanted to stay in bed all day. I went out and met people to get inspired...Visit places that are a little out of the ordinary. Whatever helps you feel inspired, any action is better than no action...You don't always find ikigai right away; it often takes time to find one at any job."

The reality is that all these tips are general and one has to incorporate them with action, trial and error. This is a main point for Herminia Ibarra in Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader. "...You can only learn what you need to know about your job and about yourself by doing it - not by just thinking about it." In How to Ikigai, Tim Tamashiro also follows the A > B method of comparison when engaging in activities. What activities give more Ikigai? "Follow the clues. When you find things you enjoy, then do them. They will lead you to more."

From the Jungian perspective, if one is following Ikigai, one is most likely using their hero function, which is their most used and most consciously available function. It's where people regenerate their interest and it's the most confidently used function. It's the easiest to use and it feels like a refuge.

Blocks to Flow

Now it sounds simple, just "follow your passion, follow your Ikigai, etc." The rub of course is that we need a certain amount of obstacles to hold back boredom, but more realistically we find that the level of skill required and the challenges are more likely to threaten burnout than anything else. There is a real possibility of over-striving. This is why a mindfulness meditation practice is so necessary. When reading people like Cal Newport, in Deep Work, one could get the idea that furrowing one's brow, gritting one's teeth, and screwing your face up will do the trick. "Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea...High-Quality work produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of focus)...Schedule every minute of your day." In Buddhism, optional tensions in the mind and body are a form of what they call Fabrication, or Imitation, or Fakery, or Striving, and it literally hurts. I think focus that is more relaxed and based on consistency, rather than intensity, would be more sustainable. A lot of this advice is couched in "make sure to rest properly" and similar things because of the easy trap of falling into excessive striving and burning out.

The Jhanas: https://rumble.com/v1gqznl-the-jhanas.html

Nirvana: https://rumble.com/v1grcgx-mindfulness-nirvana.html

Any kind of intensity would be best if one followed Ericsson and realize that deliberate practice of mediocre standards leads to mediocre skills, no matter how many repetitions. Practicing to the edge of one's abilities and continually mapping out what high skill looks like in the real world will lead to better results with practice and more DEPTH as described in Newport's Deep Work, which is simply what standards convey to you, how much depth has been met. I'm sure in the modern world, many people have struggled with a computer skill, but they looked up a shortcut that saved literally hours of time. The end result was the same but a more efficient way was found. Energy savings and repeated rest will always be needed. This is often why people turn to a coach for help, but not all coaches are created equal.

One of the ways to assess whether you need a coach or not is to follow the Flow system to see what is accessible in terms of knowledge you can discover on your own. If a coach can't really provide any info that will fill in knowledge gaps, or if these things are accessible to you already, why waste the time and money? When you have a block to Flow, you can whip out this old list from my review on Flow:

Knowing what to do – Not knowing what to do next is anxiety or boredom. When exploring this block, try to find out what the next action needs to be, or at least the next exploration or skill that can lead to the next action.

Knowing how to do it – Not knowing how to do something is anxiety. This is more for the overall skill. Again, one can look at blocks to learning new skills, or seeing if information is unavailable, or more commonly, the knowledge is installed in people and that information is political. Reading endless textbooks and general information will not replace specific pointers that are undiscovered or protected by a gatekeeper. The typical way of creating checklists and procedures as you run into obstacles and have to solve them yourselves becomes your only way to gain knowledge.

Knowing how well you are doing – Uncertainty can lead to either boredom or anxiety depending on whether your situation is dangerous or safe. We often do this automatically. We measure self-narratives all the time and that's where a lot of the pleasure and pain come from, which twists and turns in narratives that are good or bad. Newport advises in his typical intense style, which is to "keep a compelling scoreboard."

Knowing where to go – Not knowing where to go is anxiety. This can often manifest when sources of knowledge are still unknown. Is it in literature or in people, or a mix of both? Is it something that is undiscovered and requires experimentation?

High perceived challenges – This prevents boredom. The prior steps help to assess the appropriateness of goals in terms of challenge. Doing these assessments also helps to relieve stress when one disengages a goal that is too difficult. It prevents masochism. Why approach goals unless you are reasonably prepared?

High perceived skills - This prevents anxiety. Knowing how good you are is usually easy to assess. You tend to see this in your life where your motivation comes easily. You just knock baseballs out of the park, so to speak. This is when you don't need excessive strategizing and permission from others to act. You just act on these skills on your whim.

Freedom from distractions - This is a difficult one and I often link it to trying to escape from quicksand. Intense distractions usually involve people, and can come in the form of family, friends, and co-workers. Managing toxic people out of your life means a very lonely existence for some people. You may have to move them ALL to the curb. This is often when people dream about running their own business so they can make all the decisions in their lives. It's when people do a massive reshuffling of relationships and realize, sometimes for the first time, that they were surrounded by negative energy drainers and envious fifth columns, this whole time! If you have to work with a team, you realize why so many bosses obsess about firing people and take great pleasure in it. You begin to "fire" a lot of family and so called friends who give the worst advice and are openly sabotaging you.

Being around these people for most of your life also means that they are living rent free in your mind. Psychologists call these imitated people in our minds, Objects, which are more or less assimilated into our habits. We can rehearse and practice arguments with these people and rehearse the same emotions. Trying to eject them our of your mind is more difficult and it's where visualization and imagery is so important. A modern life of constantly taking in opinions from others without any assessment as to their value or if facts support narratives is what Shakespeare accurately described as psychological poison.

Flow: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

Visualization

As we get close to the crux of the problem, which is reading about motivation, but not FEELING IT, it comes down to how crowded the mind is with habitual visualizations. A lot of our desires are viewed through the lens of others we've imitated, and in turn we can get stuck needing validation from others, needing to ask permission, when we are supposedly free adults, and energy predictably deflates. One of the more famous apologists for staying in this energy, or as she calls it, The Vortex, is Esther Hicks from The Law of Attraction fame. Certainly reading her materials and listening to some of the audio online, it's a mixed bag, but part of the fun of reading psychology is being able to see what is actually good in New Age/Self-Help books and to be able to add it to what you already know, instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Any metaphysical beliefs she has, that can't ultimately be proven, are similar to metaphysics in religions where they are used as helpful guides to put an overall theory in a neat package and to develop a form of meditation, which is really a forward-thinking visualization practice. "In order for things to change, you have to see them as you want them to be rather than continuing to observe them as they are."

Through the superstitions, including health claims that are very problematic, there's method in her madness that helps out with the above Flow list and how to navigate through it via imagination and feeling. Her practice isn't to ignore action, but instead to create the motivational energy needed so that action is less labored, and to learn to handle obstacles with more grace.

Part of the fun that made me giggle is seeing some of the Flow diagram mirrored in her advice, especially related to handling challenges and how Esther navigates difficult situations and people, and to be able to disconnect from needing to change other people, or to avoid banging one's head, so to speak, on impossible obstacles. How does one navigate the Flow diagram through skills and challenge only with feelings? "Be as detailed in your thoughts about your desire as you can be - and still feel good." As your imagery can contain more and more of your skills, and it also gets more detailed, the motivation increases, because the feeling of "I CAN DO THIS" also increases.

No matter how collectivized people feel they are from time to time, they are still individuals and will want to gain individual happiness while negotiating interdependence with everyone else. We all move with others between varying levels of harmony or conflict. "By focusing upon what you desire, you could ignore their opposition. If you oppose their opposition, however, then you would not be focused upon what you want, and your creation would be affected. It is easier to walk away where you no longer need to focus on the opposition in order to stay focused upon your desire. But if you need to walk away from someone because of the potential for opposition, then you need to get out of town, too, for most certainly there are those there who are not in total agreement with your ideas; and out of this country; and off the face of this planet. Removing yourself from opposition is not necessary. Just focus upon what you want, and by the power of your own clarity, you will be able to positively create under any circumstances."

"The Art of Allowing is: I am that which I am, and I am pleased with it, joyful in it. And you are that which you are, and while it is different perhaps from that which I am, it is also good...Because I am able to focus upon that which I want, even if there are those differences between us that are dramatic, I do not suffer negative emotion because I am wise enough not to focus upon that which brings me discomfort. I have come to understand, as I am one who is applying the Art of Allowing, that I have not come forth into this physical world to get everyone to follow the 'truth' that I think is the truth. I have not come forth to encourage conformity or sameness - for I am wise enough to understand that in sameness, in conformity, there is not diversity that stimulates creativity. In focusing upon bringing about conformity, I am pointed toward an ending rather than to a continuing of creation."

Here we have the essential description of boundaries, and people can safely move in those spheres, trading their differences and specialties with each other and allowing further creativity and experimentation in others. By choosing objects that have less social conflict, one is also more likely to achieve those things, feel a clear conscience, and steer away from converting people with one belief system or another. "You, from your physical perspective, may not be allowing your own expansion, and when you do not, you feel rotten. And when you do not allow another, you feel rotten." I am reminded of the late Buddhist teacher Rob Burbea when he recounted Buddhist students arguing about dogma instead of meditating. Rules are there to help guide, but the social brain has trouble with the idea of letting people be and keeps trying to gain attention and superiority through debate, which is addictive, but in a lot of cases your arguments are not as convincing as your actions, your savoring, and your actual wealth and success. Role modeling is more effective than preaching, and it reduces conflict because you focus on yourself first before debating with other people. "...Set the example of joy. Become a Being who thinks only of that which he is wanting; who speaks of only that which he is wanting; who does only that which he is wanting - therefore brings forth only joyful emotions...There is not a need to prove anything to anyone with your words. Let that which you are - that which you are living - be your clear example to uplift others." In the case of Jungian Individuation, where you develop weaker personality functions, a debate over which functions are important and how to use them, is not going to get you much further than actual development in your own life.

The attraction in The Law of Attraction, is the phenomenon of desire and projection, in that what we think about grows, and what is counter-intuitive is that desire can find negative forms of pleasure in the negative thoughts simply because one keeps the negative in the foreground of the mind, which tempts the short-term mind to make hay out of even the contemptable. The goal is to steer away from self-fulfilling prophecies by directing the short-term mind to something better it can chew on. It's very much a THINK POSITIVE method, and we are to add this mentality to all projects in life. "...If you hold your attention or awareness long enough, the Law of Attraction, will bring it into your experience, for there is no such thing as 'No.' To clarify, when you look at something and shout, 'No, I don't want to experience that; go away!' then what you are actually doing is calling it into your experience, for there is no such thing as 'No' in an attraction-based Universe. Your attention to it says, 'Yes, come to me, this thing I do not want!'" I could see how this might help someone who did something bad in the past, and they want to move on. Certainly moving on in Esther's method would be to move on by literally taking your attention span and moving on. Dangers with this type of moving on would be not processing past information emotionally, going into denial, steamrolling people, and just "moving on," and engaging in censorship with others, not reporting important details, and blanking out important negative details that have to be responded to. This practice has to be done with delicacy and not a lobotomy where you iron out the folds of your brain. It's okay to look at the negative, but once you've processed it properly, then staying obsessed isn't necessary. Also, one can daydream about positive aspects in response to negative ones, just like you would when you plan out strategies to overcome obstacles. Negatives can be co-opted into plans for overcoming, and they are pointers on where there are skill deficits.

Now, no matter what you read in this review, there's always a sense of obstacle, or limitation in life, which isn't always a bad thing, but the reality is that you will predictably progress in a direction that you CAN move in. Most self-help books, or even hardcore psychology books, derive a lot of their success in finding situations that are accessible for patients or followers. There is an outcome, including really bad ones, simply because time passes and progression can only move on opportunities that appear. If an opportunity appears, and a person acts on it, then there's the result. When people get good results from one method or another, they tend to worship what influenced that choice. This is even if the person would have chosen that opportunity with or without that advice, and also because that person's choices may have been very narrow in the first place. The inevitability can also be seen in Jungian psychology, because if you never visit a psychologist, you may bump into events that require you to develop without any need for guidance. Your feelings and skill development are right there. Also, when you gain more skills, more opportunities open up for you, just like in the Flow diagram. Some of those skills are transferrable to weaker ones, and then the pathway for growth can seem more accessible. This isn't lost on Esther. "The more you come to understand the power of the Law of Attraction, the more interest you will have in deliberately directing your thoughts - for you get what you think about, whether you want it or not...You will begin to notice that your own thoughts may be stimulated from something you read or watch on television or hear or observe from someone else's experience. And once you see the effect that the Law of Attraction has upon these thoughts that begin small and grow larger and more powerful with your attention to them, you will feel a desire within you to begin to direct your thoughts to more of the things that you do want to experience."

It's easy to see that this could lead to hedonism or addictions, but Esther's view of Inner Being, can include responsibility, but it's via emotions as well, and not egoic striving and pushing based on rigid principles. "Your Inner Being, or Source Energy, always offers a perspective that is to your greatest advantage, and when your perspective matches that, then positive attraction is occurring...Disappointment is communication from your Inner Being letting you know that that which you are focused upon is not what you want. If you are sensitive to the way that you are feeling, then the disappointment itself will let you know that what you are thinking about is not what you want to experience...Your negative emotion is your indication that you hold beliefs that are contrary to your own desires...Whenever you are able to identify something that you do not want, you can always then identify what is it that you do want. And as you do that again and again, your pattern of thought - on every subject that is important to you - will shift more in the direction of what you do want. In other words, you will gradually build bridges from any current beliefs that are about things you do not want over to beliefs about things you do want."

How one gets aligned, I personally think, is when positive desires are compared, like in the Ikigai A > B example above, and when one makes a choice that is inauthentic, there's a feeling that something more balanced or something better is missed out on. There are unpleasant consequences that one can imagine. The desire is hollow and unsatisfying, despite the fact that there's some pleasure. Yet pleasure is still the main goal and one just has to keep all the wisdom they've already learned and learn to find pleasure in those things that are more responsible, but based on the sense of remorse, and a desire for peace. To me that's one of the important areas of intrinsic motivation, because one wants to be responsible because one likes responsibility, not because they are afraid of what people will think. It's independent and free, because you're not lost looking constantly to leaders for every step of the way. You may look at Esther as another guru, and there are definitely signs in her books that show a desire for large amounts of money based on the early chapters and how she got inspired and the books she read for inspiration. Again, all these gurus and motivational speakers and coaches just provide tips and they are best used when you are able to navigate with all the other things you've learned and are comfortable with accepting or discarding based on your own feelings and results you see in others. So if you feel inner conflict, then Esther would still want you to listen to that. When you listen to that for long periods of time, you are listening to your own feelings for long periods of time. This enhances a healthy sense of self and independence where one can actually enjoy freedom without constantly looking for cues from authority figures. Having legal freedom is not the same as having psychological freedom. It's a support for psychological freedom, but being able to weigh options will always feel better than searching for others to command you. "Most of you have been seeing yourself, not only through your own eyes, but through the eyes of others; therefore, many of you are not now currently in the state of Being that you want to be...We are amused as we watch the majority spending most of their life seeking a set of rules against which they can measure their life experience, looking outside of self for those who will tell them what is right or wrong, when all along they have within themselves a Guidance System that is so sophisticated, so intricate, so precise, and so readily available...They have often become convinced of their unworthiness and of their incorrectness, so they are afraid to move forward, trusting their own guidance or their own conscience, because they believe that there may be someone else who knows more clearly than they do what is appropriate for them."

In psychology, the above practice is clearly getting people to know their sense of self in the body and in emotions. It's a reconnection, if one has been lost for a long period of time. "Few realize that they can control the way they feel and positively affect the things that come into their life experience by deliberately directing their thoughts. But because they are not accustomed to doing that, it takes practice...To make the statement 'I want to know what I want!' is a first and powerful step in Deliberate Creation. But then, a deliberate directing of your attention to the things you want to attract into your experience must come next...By deliberately directing your thoughts and by creating pleasing mental scenarios in your own mind that induce good-feeling emotions within you, you begin to change your own point of attraction...In order to effect true positive change in your experience, you must disregard how things are - as well as how others are seeing you - and give more of your attention to the way you prefer things to be...The variety of your life experience gives you the clay from which you will mold your life experience, and merely observing it as it is, without getting ahold of it and deliberately molding it to match your desires, is not satisfying - and is not what you had in mind when you made the decision to come into this time-space reality. We want you to understand that your 'clay,' no matter how it may look right now, is moldable."

As one gets better at the practice, Esther has deliberate pointers for the big picture topics to navigate through, such as in economics. "One who wants to sell does not do well to attract another seller. But the attracting of a buyer brings for the harmony." She also has pointers for modern day people who perpetually feel they are a victim. "More often, one who feels discriminated against is the most powerful creator in that experience...It is his attention to the subject of the prejudice that attracts his trouble." She has beliefs about co-dependency. "Unless you are selfish enough to care about how you feel, and therefore direct your thoughts in such a way that you are allowing a true connection to your Inner Being, you have nothing to give another anyway." There are beliefs about being a do-gooder who wants to save the world and accidentally gets in over their head. "One who sees himself as a 'savior,' saving little ones from the big ones, will find himself often coming across people who need to be saved...And if it is your desire to have these kinds of experiences, then continue the thought of those kinds of experiences - and the Law of Attraction will continue to bring them to you. But if you prefer something different, think about that - and the Law of Attraction will bring that to you. The subjects of your thoughts are preparing your future experiences." Following her reasoning to where the savior vibration goes wrong, that vibration can send the opposite signal of what was intended. She says that "the vibration that you are transmitting is actually saying to them, I do this for you because I see that you cannot do this for yourself. Your vibration is actually focused upon their lack of Well-being and therefore, even though you have offered money or food through your action, your dominant offering is perpetuating their lack...The greatest gift that you could ever give another is the gift of your expectation of their success."

When you make good choices of what to attract, your goal orientation in a sense keeps you safe, and by targeting Joy, the mind then makes a goal of searching for what makes joy for you, and because you are a particular person, only you can find this for yourself. "Deliberately guiding your thoughts is the key to a joyful life, but a desire to feel joy is the best plan of all...because in the reaching for joy, you find the thoughts that attract the wonderful life you desire."

The key to making this work is to keep returning to the feeling in the mind and body to avoid intentions that are dry and unmotivating. "They become impatient and try to make it happen by jumping into action." Similar to Freudian and Psychoanalytic drive theory, Esther agrees that "we want you to be aware of your emotions and then guide your thoughts until you feel relief." Then at times she repeatedly hammers home the message, much like Yoda talking about The Force, "Words alone do not attract, but when you feel emotion when you speak, that means your vibration is strong - and the Law of Attraction must answer those vibrations." If it takes some time to reconnect with the Inner Being, Esther recommends the typical waiting and letting the unconscious chew over a subject until good ideas pop out, much like what meditators experience when the try to concentrate and fail. "Have you ever been working on a project and you thought about it, you thought about it quite a lot, and suddenly you say, 'I have a good idea!'?"

The more serious side of this subject is how people feel so alienated in their lives and this can easily lead to extreme authoritarian politics as helpless people look for leaders to solve all their alienated feelings. In the above examples, Non-Alienation is directing thoughts with emotion, and alienation is just going through the motions and following orders. We all certainly have to follow orders to a certain extent in all organizations, but the creativity is found in each individual who is able to create their own metrics and sub-goals within overall organizational, or family goals, to create a sense of contribution.

In psychology, the more controversial element of these visualization practices is the possible bumping into vicarious relief and pleasure where motivation may in fact be discharged with the imagery alone, and researchers like Gabrielle Oettingen, would prefer people to hold the sense of lack for longer and use the imagery of the end point only at the beginning of the goal process. The sense of lack must be maintained while planning for actions that deal with obstacles. Then relief should only be discharged when the obstacles are ACTUALLY surmounted. The difficulty with planning is remembering to do what you need to do at the time when you need to do it. One of those methods Gabrielle recommends is Implementation Intentions. The mind tends to remember primed intentions where you say, "IF this happens, I commit to doing THIS." As people go throughout their day, and if they get used to practicing this method of priming and rehearsal, the mind, like a biological clock for waking up at the right time, brings up those intentions exactly when those IF-possibilities turn into present moment opportunities. Once the brain gets a handle on it as a useful tool, it naturally turns to it.

Gabriele Oettingen, gives Noah a Consultation using the WOOP App. on Swarfcast Podcast: https://youtu.be/74o2xP1aIpU

The Psychology of Thinking About The Future - Gabriele Oettingen: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781462534418/

Rethinking Positive Thinking - Gabriele Oettingen: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781617230233/

I think that both sides are partially wrong. Paying attention to the lack during the obstacle phase as Esther points out, could just be draining for someone who has regular depression and low self-esteem. They'll just give up. Those who are procrastinators may also totally forget their initial intentions with their visualization practice and get lost in short-term distractions. They may need primed intentions + vivid motivational imagery. Through trial and error, people will have to find out what a good balance is for them. A concentration practice of course can mediate all these methods and years of practice may make it easy to see both the end game and use intentions without being distracted.

One of the ways to create a visual that may include completion of the goal, but still includes a continued urgency, comes from Viktor Frankl. He wanted readers to look at a forward thinking form of remorse where one could imagine not having done things one wanted to do, then come back to the present moment and use the energy created by the remorse to act now while there's still time.

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780671244224/

How To Manifest Anything Using IMAGINATION - Neville Goddard: https://youtu.be/OBBcsbGa-ew

Certainly if one doesn't like washing dishes, or cleaning the bathroom, which many people have learned to enjoy, it's important at some point in a meditation strategy to enjoy day-dreams of clean dishes or a clean bathroom so that one can enjoy results FOR THEIR OWN SAKE, and repeated practice of any of these methods will lead to more powerful emotions and motivations to act. Eventually the repeated actions will turn into good habits that can be relied upon, and there will be less need for intense visualizations. Ideally this would great for parenting so that kids can have these habits in adulthood, but if we didn't get that growing up, we have to parent ourselves and be patient with slow growth. It would also be good for intimate relationships so that people don't have to command their spouses or be commanded. People are motivated and get things done, absorb themselves in joy, and reduce conflict.

In the application with work, one would have to daydream about work to reduce the feeling of grinding. Even if time pressure may not be totally controlled, there are ways to at least reduce the sense of grind. Similar to the Buddhist Right Effort instructions, one has to curate thoughts in the mind and direct them. Thinking about a beach, and being interrupted all the time at work, is a prescription for resentment and can easily be connected to what we see in radical politics for those stuck in alienation. Probably the most robust daydream would be to wish for processes to improve, because you get to provide some input on the job, and to actively wish for a steaming pile of crap for each project to solve, because you are likely to get it. Maybe a person comes into your office and bends over and leaves a hot mess on your desk. You can then wish to develop skills of using maybe some cleaning powder and a shovel to clean the mess, and then if your mind gets bored as you get better at cleaning messes, you can then move onto hydrochloric acid vomit or toxic waste. These are just facetious examples, but if you work on a line-job or have a lot of rote work, there needs to be some personal goals tied into the work itself to create self-gratification and to stay out of alienation. This is even true if your a Communist that thinks alienation is bad and you work on an line-job and are seeing the same processes.

As you thread daydreams and actions together, there's less need for defensiveness, resentment, and there is a lot more satisfaction, because many small goals were achieved during the day and mentally celebrated. If you don't self-sabotage with your daydreams, the only sabotage can come from other people, and then you would have to make plans on how to develop stronger boundaries, or to move to healthier environments. It's up to bullies to change themselves.

Finally, a Jungian practice involving dream analysis will only provide benefits if out of balance areas in life are addressed, and any feeling tones connected with dreams and imagery that rise up, are used to create more emotional motivation to address goals targeted to out of balance areas. Regardless of your situation, which usually involves relationship problems, financial problems, or health related problems, we all have to start somewhere and begin chipping away at those weaknesses so that a peaceful sense of wholeness can be felt.

I'll leave you with, Neville Goddard, an earlier proponent of visualization. "Always use your imagination masterfully, as a participant, not an onlooker. Using your imagination to transform energy from the mental emotional level, to the physical level. Extend your senses. Look and imagine you are seeing what you want to see. That you are hearing what you want to hear, and touching what you want to touch. Become intensely aware of doing so. Give the imaginary state all the tones and feeling of reality. Keep on doing so until you arouse within yourself the mood of accomplishment and the feeling of relief. This is the active voluntary use of imagination, as distinguished from the passive involuntary reacceptance of appearances."

How to speak your desires into reality - Neville Goddard: https://youtu.be/XJTzcdpfHx8

Overview of Flow

I know I covered a lot of Mihaly's work in the past, but this subject is so important that another survey of it is needed to flesh out some of the logical holes in the above methods. A lot of what Esther talks about regarding The Vortex, Inner Being, or Source Energy, is Flow. Her instructions on how to dodge pain in our goal setting is that navigation between stress, boredom, skills, and challenges that Mihaly studied.

"[Psychic Entropy] is a condition in which attention is incapable of ordering incoming information, making it difficult for the person to act effectively and with integrity of purpose. At a somatic level, severe psychic entropy results in what we call schizophrenia, which involves a loss of control over what we hear, think, or do; less severe forms include a witch’s brew of pathologies ranging from chronic depression to attentional disorders—all of which impair the person’s capacity to use psychic energy for coping with challenges in the environment, or for reducing disorder in consciousness."

Nlogax - Boards Of Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vHEtin2qsM

Nlogax: https://bocpages.org/wiki/Nlogax

Mihaly wants to avoid psychic entropy and have people experience more Flow, even if it can't be experienced all the time. One of the primordial ways of achieving this, which can also be seen in animals, is the instinct to Play. "In reading the literature I realized that all the studies of play were explaining it in terms of distal causes—which were perfectly good explanations of why such a practice survived generation after generation. But they were ignoring the proximal causes—namely, the reason why children—and adults—actually bother to spend their scarce psychic energy playing. The reason why they do so seemed obvious to me: play was fun. It was enjoyable. It was what the Greeks called an autotelic activity; namely, one whose goal was simply to be experienced, because the experience was worth it." The mind wants to be able to demonstrate for itself its skill. In a basic way, it creates a simple goal, and sets out with the current level of skill to attain it. When it is perceived that the goal is attained, there's pleasure. Without the skills, there's no attainment and no pleasure. "Across all the activities—playing music, bicycling, bowling, or cooking gourmet meals—one prominent common theme was that the activity presented opportunities for action, or challenges, that were just about manageable given the players’ level of skills."

To be able to create a goal and to act on it requires concentration, which is the ordering of consciousness, instead of allowing it to fall into passive psychic entropy where anything goes in the consciousness and there's no direction, like a kaleidoscope. "Optimal experiences are made possible by an unusually intense concentration of attention on a limited stimulus field...In such a state the rest of the world is cut off, shut off, forgotten...Optimal experiences occur when a person voluntarily focuses his attention on a limited stimulus field, while aversive experiences involve involuntary focusing of attention. In other words, the individual’s choice determines the quality of the experience."

There is also a sense that one is free to choose and when enough skills are present, and the self-esteem is such that it is sure of those skills, the subject is internally motivated to act because of the pleasure of anticipation of success, and then the actual success itself. "When situational challenges balance personal skills, a person tends to attend willingly. For instance, a chess player will concentrate on the game only when the opponent’s skills match his own; if they do not, attention will waver. This relationship between a balance of challenges and skills on the one hand, and enjoyable voluntary concentration on the other, has been found to exist not only in various leisure and creative activities, but in occupations like surgery and mathematical research."

Excessive risk with complex challenges, and especially social restrictions, can demotivate people to such a level that societal change through revolution is inevitable. People at some point have to have beliefs and personal values that connect with authority figures to make sacrifices feel less like a sacrifice. "But why is voluntary focusing of attention experienced as pleasant? If attention is the means by which a person exchanges information with the environment, and when this process is voluntary—that is, under the person’s control—then voluntary focusing of attention is a state of optimal interaction. In such a state a person feels fully alive and in control, because he or she can direct the flow of reciprocal information that unites person and environment in an interactive system. I know that I am alive, that I am somebody, that I matter, when I can choose to interact with a system of stimuli that I can modify and from which I can get meaningful feedback, whether the system is made up of other people, musical notes, ideas, or tools. The ability to focus attention is the most basic way of reducing ontological anxiety, the fear of impotence, of nonexistence. This might be the main reason why the exercise of concentration, when it is subjectively interpreted to be free, is such an enjoyable experience...It is an interesting fact that people can be forced to do practically anything, but their attention cannot be completely controlled by external means. Even slaves, labor camp inmates, and assembly-line workers cannot be compelled to pay undivided attention to their masters’ goals. The intense concentration required for complex achievement appears to be available only when given willingly. Of course, scientists or artists might be driven to their work by unconscious wishes, the need for money, or by greed of fame; what counts, however, is for the person to think of his compulsion voluntarily to tasks that are against their objective interests, as when workers are turned into their own slave drivers through religious or moral indoctrination. These arguments lead to a second generalization: Voluntary focusing of attention on a limited stimulus field is necessary to achieve socially valued goals."

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780671244224/

Since concentration in a modern world of distractions and controlled environments where play is little to non-existent, it's no surprise the value of looking at mental health and concentration, which is now more important than ever. If defects of The Self are more present, we have a moral obligation to figure out what those factors are in parenting, school, and in the workplace. "If people are to lead a satisfying life and if society is to progress, we have to make sure that from childhood on persons will have a chance to develop their ability to concentrate. In schools, at work, and at home there are far too few opportunities for people to get involved in a restricted world of which they can be in control. Even when the opportunities are present—and to a certain extent they are always potentially present—most people do not know how to concentrate except under the most favorable circumstances, and so rarely experience the enjoyment that accompanies the flow experience."

The Art of Focus - Christina Bengtsson:  https://youtu.be/xF80HzqvAoA

One of the prescriptions for improving experiences in day to day life is meditation. For those who are capable of training concentration, and confirming the daydreaming hypothesis above, to daydream about what's in front of you, instead of wandering elsewhere, helps to improve mood. "When a person is doing something voluntarily, concentration is accompanied by positive moods; when the activity is perceived to be forced, the correlation is negative. When a person is doing something, and focusing his attention on it, that person’s mood is in general more positive than when he is thinking about something else. For instance, a clerk who is paged while filing letters will report more positive moods when thinking about what she does than when her attention is somewhere else. Workers report feeling significantly more creative, free, active, alert, and satisfied when they are thinking about what they are doing, as opposed to thinking about something else, even when they are doing something they would not do if they had a choice...Optimal functioning at the individual and societal levels requires a certain kind of attention structuring; conversely, several personal and societal pathologies seem to involve inability to control attention. Studies of acute schizophrenia, for instance, have revealed a disorder called 'overinclusion,' which appears to prevent the patient from choosing what stimuli to attend to."

New Year's Day Guided Meditation: https://rumble.com/v1gvmab-new-years-day-guided-meditation.html

In a study that Mihaly references, we get a phenomenological example of what its like to live in psychic entropy all the time. "In a research on the effects of 'flow deprivation' we have asked subjects to go through their normal daily routines, but to stop doing anything that was not necessary, any act or thought that was done for its own sake. After only 48 h of this regime subjects reported severe changes in their psychic functioning. They felt more impatient, irritable, careless, depressed. The symptoms were quite similar to those of overinclusion. Performance on creativity tests dropped significantly. The second most often mentioned reason for the ill effects of deprivation by the subjects was 'the act of stopping myself from doing what I wanted to do.' Apparently the experimental interference with the freedom of attention may have been one of the causes for the near-pathological disruption of behavior and experience."

These findings have political implications where any social change has to constantly monitor the damage it does to people's ability to make their own decisions. A highly regulated environment may be so complex that people will invariably cross lines of a regulation, experience punishment, and then feel stifled to the point of psychopathology. For example, toxic intimate relationships restrict freedom to such an extent that it leads to predictable depression and other stress related illnesses. Voluntary participation in work and intimate relationships is needed, and like in real life, it's often negotiated, if it is at all, before marriage, for example, but then needs to be renegotiated again and again once people get the actual experience of living with another person, or working in a new job. "It seems likely that the effectiveness of political, religious, and cultural movements depends in part on the amount of flow experiences they make possible. A religious system that fails to provide clearly detailed activities in which the faithful can participate with the understanding that in so doing they are meeting the challenges of life, will not be able to offer- intrinsic rewards to sustain the interest of would-be followers."

"It is possible, for instance, to reinterpret the notion of alienation developed by Marx in his early manuscripts as referring quite literally to the workers selling out control over their attention to the employer. A wage laborer in effect consents to focus his attention on goals determined by the owner of capital. It is true that the consent is voluntary, but one can argue, as Marx did, that when there are few other opportunities to make a living, the voluntary consent is not perceived as offering much of a choice. For a large portion of his life the worker must concentrate his attention more or less involuntarily on stimuli chosen for him by others. If attention is equated with psychic energy, and if one accepts the premise that experience is determined by what attention can process through consciousness, one is led to taking seriously the conclusion that wage labor indeed results in the worker alienating, that is, relinquishing control, over his psychic energy, his experience—in short, the energy and content of his life. Of course this is an 'ideal type' description of wage labor that only an orthodox Marxist would take to be literally true. The task of the researcher is to find out whether, to what extent, and under what conditions the predicted effects are true. It is clear, for instance, that much contemporary manual labor allows workers choice over the directionality of their attention. Blauner, for instance finds subjectively felt alienation to be less among workers in automated chemical plants than among workers on assembly lines, primarily because the former are able to schedule their own work, move around the plant, and change routines with relative freedom...One might say that the survival of social systems depends on the balance in the ledger of attention income and expenditure. Conflicting demands for attention are a common source of stress in interpersonal systems...This is easiest to see in the case of the simplest social system, the dyad. A dyad survives only as long as the two people in it continue to pay enough attention to each other to make their relationship distinctly different from a chance relationship. For example, if two people do not agree to constrain their respective schedules so that they can meet at a common time, their encounters will be random, and hence nonsystemic. Unless two people synchronize their attentional structures to a certain degree by agreeing to common constraints, a relationship will be short-lived. Deciding to be at the same place, doing the same thing together, feeling similar emotions in response to similar stimuli requires restructuring of attention. Without it friends would not be friends, lovers would not be lovers. Even ordinary conversation between two people is only possible because each person abides by a complex set of constraints regulating when and how he should take the turn to speak or to listen. If one were not to pay attention to the cues that structure conversation, that interaction would soon become random, or stop before long."

Even if society ends up being more or less in lockstep with voluntary intentions, there still is the problem of dealing with complexity and the exhaustion created when there are high levels of mental processing, goal setting, and repeated failure. "Changes in consciousness that require great effort are likely to be those that involve radical restructuring of information, or complex processing of new information. In general, the less predictable an attention pattern is in terms of the genetic programming of man, the more effort its acquisition will require. Patterns required by complex social systems tend to require considerable effort to acquire." The payoff for tolerating difficult challenges comes when boredom is factored in, and is mirrored below in the section on the Opponent-Process Theory. Always having something to do and a purpose is more conducive to thriving than having easy challenges with huge time gaps in between full of boredom. "The analysis of differences in perception between happy and less happy individuals suggests that in the long run, seeking high challenges in the environment and developing necessary skills to deal with them may be more important. Continual growth and development is a slow but also a more reliable way to bring about subjective well-being."

So then, how does one learn to be aware of the factors leading to Flow in order to create it voluntarily?

"When an activity is able to limit the stimulus field so that one can act in it with total concentration, responding to greater challenges with increasing skills, and when it provides clear and unambiguous feedback, then the person will tend to enjoy the activity for its own sake. For it's own sake is the inherent pleasure and other depersonalization experiences like 'forgetting his or her own problems, and his or her own separate identity,' at the same time obtaining a feeling of control over the environment, which may result in a transcendence of ego boundaries and consequent psychic integration with metapersonal systems."

One of the difficulties with this type of knowledge is over-striving, a lack of skill, and excessive self-measurement to the point of interrupting Flow. Having skills practiced to the point of being automatic is what allows Flow to be possible. "It is the state in which action follows upon action according to an internal logic which seems to need no conscious intervention on our part. We experience it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future...Typically, a person can maintain a merged awareness with his or her actions for only short periods interspersed with interludes in which the flow is broken by the actor’s adoption of an outside perspective. These interruptions occur when questions flash through the actor’s mind such as 'Am I doing well?' or 'What am I doing here?' or 'Should I be doing this?' When one is in a flow episode, these questions simply do not come to mind...For action to merge with awareness to such an extent, the activity must be feasible. Flow seems to occur only when persons face tasks that are within their ability to perform. This is why one experiences flow most often in activities which have clearly established rules for action, such as rituals, games, or participatory art forms like the dance...The addition of spurious motivational elements to a flow activity (competition, gain, danger), make it also more vulnerable to intrusions from 'outside reality.' Playing for money may increase concentration on the game, but paradoxically one can also be more easily distracted from play by the fear of losing." Here the psychology of mastery comes into play. One of the ways to have self-created goals in a reward system is to create learning goals. You create learning goals that help you understand the overall skill, and even if there's a withdrawal of reward, the mind can then say "at least I learned something that I can use later." This of course would be in environments where you are allowed to fail and try again.

Part of the reason for desiring Flow in one's life is also due to our sense of self-narrative, especially if we don't like it. It becomes possible to escape into Flow experiences to provide relief from worry, rumination, and low self-esteem. It's also important for work, so that certain personality types can actually find work that remotely matches their Myers-Briggs personality type, to provide a Jungian example, so they can build a better life story. "A 'flow profile' might become a dynamic way to describe people for the purposes of finding the best match between their potential and the demands in the environment."

Off-shoring certain types of jobs and languishing those types of personalities connected with them, will leave them in a state of emptiness, frustration, and alienation with the mismatched choices remaining. People who hate their jobs will align with left-wing or right-wing options with the hope of relief from PTSD, either in more social programs from the left, so that one doesn't have to rely as much on work, to tax machinery that made areas of work redundant, or tariffs from the right to offset tariffs that invariably other countries impose, and try to produce those industries internally, and consume from within. The tariff cost, if there isn't a trade war, can be used to offset trade imbalances and to allow a wider variety of personality types to engage in their economy. They will feel less alienated, and they are less likely to join extreme political movements.

One of Mihaly's main resources to study Flow involves Experience Sampling, where people recount their phenomenological experience. One common example is of rock climbing: "The task at hand is so demanding and rich in its complexity and pull that the conscious subject is really diminished in intensity. Corollary of that is that all the hang-ups that people have or that I have as an individual person are momentarily obliterated… it’s one of the few ways I have found to… live outside my head… One tends to get immersed in what is going on around him, in the rock, in the moves that are involved… search for hand holds… proper position of the body- so involved he might lose the consciousness of his own identity and melt into the rock… It’s like when I was talking about things becoming 'automatic'… almost like an egoless thing in a way-somehow the right thing is done without… thinking about it or doing anything at all… it just happens… and yet you’re more concentrated. It might be like meditation, like Zen is a concentration… One thing you are after is one-pointedness of mind, the ability to focus your mind to reach something… You become a robot - no, more like an animal. It’s pleasant. There is a feeling of total involvement… You feel like a panther powering up the rock."

"Rather than an active awareness of mastery, it is more a condition of not being worried by the possibility of lack of control. But later, in thinking back on the experience, a person will usually feel that for the duration of the flow episode his skills were adequate to meeting environmental demands, and this reflection might become an important component of a positive self-concept."

The irony is that the sense of self has to recede into concentration-absorption to develop the sense of self, but what often happens instead is the sense of self interrupts conscious attention, or the subject celebrates too quickly. "In The Gita, Lord Krishna instructs Arjuna to live his whole life according to this principle: 'Let the motive be in the deed, and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.'" Yet we could not live without getting paid, and therefore paid work will always have a little tension connected to it because of its possibility of being taken away, essentially an introduction of a lack of control. One then has to just continue immersing oneself, when there are gaps in Flow, until one finds an opportunity for optimum challenges elsewhere. "The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move up only to keep the flow going. There is no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself; it is a self communication."

Instead of too much stress, if challenges remain at the same level, a subject can experience intense boredom. Instead of climbing up on the same mountain, a person may want to choose a different one, or to add complexity to the current challenge. A mountain climbing example could be to climb without ropes, or to choose another mountain with a sheer face. "An activity is initially absorbing because its challenges match an individual’s ability. With practice, skills improve; unless one then takes on new challenges, the activity becomes boring. To recover the state of flow, it seems that the individual must seek greater challenges, developing an ever more complex relationship with the environment...What makes flow so intrinsically motivating? The evidence suggests a simple answer: in flow, the human organism is functioning at its fullest capacity. When this happens, the experience is its own reward."

As the skills increase, and it's not a mystery that people who want to obliterate their negative self-narrative through absorption in Flow activities, the subject can find redemption in their narrative when there are signs of progress. "...Concentration on an activity produces feedback which nurtures the self. This is especially true if the activity is freely chosen, if it presents opportunities for complex interactions and allows the formulation of increasingly unpredictable intentions. As a result of such an activity- and assuming it was moderately successful—the self emerges strengthened from the evidence of its accomplishments. So the self gets lost when we search for it, and reveals itself when we forget it."

The constantly moving Self also sends signals related to authenticity. Those signals are achievements made through self-chosen goals or socially chosen goals. "To the extent that a person’s actions are not based on self-regulation oriented toward experiential goals one might say that the self is inauthentic. In other words, if a person consistently pursues goals that do not produce positive affect, but are chosen for other reasons, the self that is manifested is one that has been constructed by external forces. An authentic self, by contrast, is one built on goals chosen because they optimize experience. Such goals need not be lofty at all, as long as they reflect the person’s actual experiences." This is a big struggle for most modern people in a world of shifting jobs, redundancy, and automation. One has to carve out small bits of intrinsic moments out of every day, and include personal goals that harmonize with organizational goals. "By setting goals even as trivial as that of enjoying a nap every afternoon, it is possible to build a self that experiences itself as authentic because it knows that instead of being driven and flogged by external forces, it sets its own rules."

The ability to create pleasure in socially chosen goals helps to upset the norm of "The Grind." Enjoying play in the midst of a grind means that long-term goals for acquiring capital and investments doesn't have to be a masochism with a hope for a payoff of future happiness. "In most cultures, it is assumed that a mature individual is one who can delay gratification—in other words, one who opts for investing energy in future goals in preference to present ones. Yet, it is arguable that the ideal situation is one where there is harmony between future and present goals, and the person is fully functioning and involved in the moment without sacrificing future goals. This happens in those circumstances in which externally motivated behavior that initially did not produce positive affect is later reinterpreted by the person so that the experience is now positive (cf. integrated self-regulation; e.g., Deci and Ryan 1985). There is no distinction between what must be done and what one wishes to do. At that point, one achieves that amor fati, or love of fate, which philosophers such as Nietzsche and psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers have argued constitutes the fullest realization of an authentic self."

This is a reminder of the importance of the individual self and how people need this ability to have a relationship with one's life story in order to feel human and alive, but the reason why desire is treated with suspicion by religions is the difficulty of tying one pleasure to another without gaps where people often sin and look for socially unacceptable replacements. If Flow is not steady enough, an inability to tolerate withdrawal symptoms is the risk one is taking if one does not have any spiritual resources to prevent psychological disintegration. "It is the subjective reality that justifies the actions and events of any life history. Without it there would be little purpose in living, and the whole elaborate structure of personality and culture would reveal itself as nothing but an empty shell...Being a pattern, the self requires inputs of energy to keep its order intact. Like consciousness itself, of which it is one of the contents, the self does not keep its shape unless appropriate information is constantly provided to perpetuate its existence. To put it in the simplest possible terms, the self survives by assimilating feedback to intentions. Whenever a desire arises in consciousness and the self identifies with it, turning it into an intention, the stage is set for potential self-building feedback. If the intention is accomplished, the information will be incorporated into the self, which will appear to be that much stronger the next time it shows up in consciousness. Of course, if the intention fails, the feedback will usually result in a weakening of the self."

The Mice then can't find their cheese! Just like the psyche disintegrating, whole populations caught in disintegration disintegrate family, cultural, and political structures. Their survivability depends on how much Flow is accessible for people. Systems are now viewed as antiquated, which is regular debate with every political season, and then occasional revolutions rise up and fail for the same reason. No Flow replaced by No Flow. "The founding fathers wrote the Constitution and designed the American political system as a spontaneous, creative act. They were making history. We face the Constitution and the government as external givens; almost as natural forces like the weather or like the force of gravity. Activities that were enjoyable to those who first created its rules may be tiresome to those who feel obliged to follow them." The challenge for conservatives is to reassess what they are trying to conserve and determine whether it's worth it, and progressives have to experiment and find evidence of progress before new laws can be accepted. Both sides can fail in the endeavour, though I think the harder job is on the left because they are competing with their past successes. Many social programs that were dreamed about already exist. It's hard to justify 40% of the GDP in the hands of government being increased to 60 or 70 or 80%.

The Cure - Disintegration: https://youtu.be/BMOlZtpANa0

Once the general public gets better at picking challenges that are at the right level, then society will usher in a new cultural Renaissance where psychological well-being is emphasized the same as how physical comfort is now. "The ability to enjoy challenges and then master them is a fundamental metaskill that is essential to individual development and to cultural evolution. Yet many obstacles prevent individuals from experiencing flow. These range from inherited genetic malfunctions to forms of social oppression that reduce personal freedom and prevent the acquisition of skills. But even in the most benign situations, flow may be difficult to attain. For instance, in our society at present, most parents are determined to provide the best conditions for their children’s future happiness. They work hard, so that they can buy a nice home in the suburbs, get all the consumer goods they can afford, and send the children to the best schools possible. Unfortunately, none of this guarantees that the children will get what they need to learn in order to enjoy life. In fact, a growing number of studies suggests that excessive concern for safety, comfort, and material well-being is detrimental to optimal development. The sterile surroundings of our living arrangements, the absence of working parents and other adults who could initiate young people into the joys of living, the addictive nature of passive entertainment and the reliance on material rewards, and the excessive concern of schools with testing and with disembodied knowledge all militate against learning to enjoy mastering the challenges that life inevitably presents."

The Opponent-process theory

One of the more interesting theories of pleasure and pain came in the 20th century, researched by Richard Solomon. It measured how actions towards pleasure-stimuli leads the body to counter act it with boredom, and then painful withdrawal symptoms. Continued spoiling leads to a desolate environment where nothing is interesting. When going back to some form of work, the withdrawal symptoms appear and ruin the well-being that happens in a normal peaceful baseline state. An example Richard gives is that of a suckling baby. "When I allowed them to suck for 1 minute and then withdrew the nipple, the obvious of course occurred: The babies started crying with a latency of 5-10 seconds, cried for several minutes, and then went back to sleep. The babies would not have cried at that time had I not introduced the nipple and withdrawn it.- Affective contrast can therefore occur whether or not the positive reinforcer is 'needed' at the time. In this experiment, one can infer that the babies went from baseline state - State A —> State B —> baseline state."

The opposite occurs when there's a negative reinforcer introduced into State A. "Next is an example of affective or hedonic contrast that occurs when a negative reinforcer is presented and then removed. It comes from Ep-stein's report of work on the emotional reactions of military parachutists. During their first free-fall, before the parachute opens, military parachutists may experience terror: They may yell, pupils dilated, eyes bulging, bodies curled forward and stiff, heart racing and breathing irregular. After they land safely, they may walk around with a stunned and stony-faced expression for a few minutes, and then they usually smile, chatter, and gesticulate, being very socially active and appearing to be elated. Here again, one sees the affect sequence: baseline state— State A-> State B -> baseline state."

Inferring from this, an optimal state would be that of doing something that requires some effort first, and then to celebrate afterwards. Many studies on this theory support it, but there are situations where people over-exercise, over-work, and become extremely puritanical, repressed and depressed. When concluding a pleasurable activity, there's a natural coming down to the baseline that is empty, hollow, boring, and a let down. The opposite happens when you take a cold shower and then warm up, achieve some goal and then celebrate. Part of the interesting connection of this with Flow is how moderation of enjoyment allows for some forgetting and a return to a baseline, and this then can create appreciation for high moments that are lost through time. We look back with fondness. If one wants to continue repeatedly going for a positive stimulus, then periods of abstinence, like in meditation, where one can stay in withdrawal for long periods of time, can be a healthy buffer so that one doesn't have to be self-flagellating. It also supports the need to find pleasure in work and creative acts so that if the addiction moves higher and higher, with strong boredom tolerances, then it can allow for that increasing complexity that Mihaly talks about. When we are ready for the challenges, and if challenges of one level or another are accessible, then one can continue developing skills, pleasure and complexity to maintain a sense of aliveness through life. Even if skills diminish due to health reasons, then new appropriately chosen challenges can maintain some form of a self. This is why there is a danger when economic situations become chaotic. If one has only one intensified skillset and career, off-shoring, redundancy, and competition, become threats to the person and their only source of pleasure, and identity, at work, will turn into painful withdrawal symptoms.

Any economic systems will always do better when there are lots of replacement jobs, and huge amounts of variety to provide differing levels of challenge. Any forms of Capitalism or Socialism, which in reality will be some hybrid, will have to provide enough wealth so that people can procure the tools needed for hobbies, interests, and work. Any Artificial Intelligence replacements for human work has to provide some replacement endeavours for people to prevent violent unrest and mental illness.

A further warning for people working under powerful Capitalists and Socialists, basically the dangerous ones who want dictatorship and no accountability, the past history has shown that when people are considered superfluous, needy, or dependent, there's a desire in powerful others to dehumanize and exterminate those people. This can be under the guise of environmental concerns and population control. These threats to a happy society have to be looked at NOW before something comes along that competes with the 20th century. For Capitalists who want to avoid civil war, they would best find a way to make robots be things that people can own so they can directly control and benefit from them, and therefore maintain independence. For Socialists who push for a universal income, they have to set setup legal blocks to tyrannical behavior, which usually is about enslaving dependents, extermination, depopulation, and exploitation. At minimum there's always an envious attack on pleasure and a great mobilization to eliminate all pleasure from those who are ruled. This creates the pleasure of exclusivity in leaders and a miserable existence like those Biblical stories of slavery in Egypt. It has to be a Socialism that allows for pleasure, not miserliness. There would not have to be strings attached to this money, so people can learn from their own mistakes, and people don't have to suffer weird forms of torture, like forcing people to have bland diets with fake foods that remind me of old Star Trek episodes. "Eat that blue square! It's good for you." It would also reduce hypocrisy, because that desire for exclusivity will always lead to hypocrisy as leaders try to hide that they are enjoying something exclusive that's not available for those who are ruled. It's rare for humans to provide better quality experiences for others and repress their need to have better than others. It seems to support the human law that freedom of choice is required for pleasure to be a possibility.

France Flooded with People Fighting for Freedom - Bannon's War Room: https://rumble.com/vkrhca-france-flooded-with-people-fighting-for-freedom.html

Kristi Noem takes on Bill Gates' latest environmental demands: https://youtu.be/4KLFbgIV7Zk

[Not as scary] Does saving more lives lead to overpopulation? - Bill Gates: https://youtu.be/obRG-2jurz0

[More scary] Dr. Chant and the "New World Order": https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/australia-new-world-order-conspiracies-b1917082.html

"People always live forever when there's an annuity to be paid them." - Sense and Sensibility: https://youtu.be/WX6Iikuz9uI

So much of what allows our society to hang together depends on how we design it. Certainly we can hope for an afterlife that is better, but all we know is of this world for certain, and our projections of Heaven and Hell manifest in our world. We can pray to a great leader to fix it all, but as described above, the energy starts with each person making a voluntary choice. Like George Orwell said, "it's up to you."

Ikigai: Giving every day meaning and joy - Yukari Mitsuhashi: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780857835406/

Ikigai - Héctor García: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781786330895/

How to Ikigai - Tim Tamashiro: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781633539006/

Awakening your Ikigai - Ken Mogi: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781615194759/

Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology: The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9789402405514/

The Essential Law of Attraction Collection - Esther & Jerry Hicks: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781401950040/

The Opponent Process Theory of Acquired Motivation - Richard Solomon: https://gettingstronger.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Solomon-Opponent-Process-1980.pdf

Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader - Herminia Ibarra: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781422184127/

The Experience of Meaning - Jan Zwicky: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780773557437/

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

[boyfwarts]

i’m sorry for saying all those hurtful things to you. I wish i knew how to change the way i act and react to things. I’m just so exhausted

I’m tired of being myself. I wish you never told me those things. Telling me i was loved and that i was appreciated. I just wanted someone to care about me, to love me. I know i’m a bad person. I’ve heard that for almost my entire life.

I wanted to believe that maybe i really was going to be better but apparently not. I still find ways to self sabotage myself so hard it ruins mine and other people’s lives. I wish i wasn’t myself. I wish i was someone else.

I wish you or Mina hadn’t lied to me. I know you are happy and dating him but why did that even happen. Why did you let me cross the lines and get even more attached to you? It’s not your fault, i understand. Maybe you just didn’t want to hurt me. I will never know.

I appreciate that you were in my life and that we had even met each other. Even though, sometimes, I do wish i never met you. Maybe if we never met these problems wouldn’t be out there. I just want to save someone from myself.

I have bad habits. I tend to use people for my own personal benefit. I know it’s wrong but i just can’t help it. I am a selfish person. It’s wrong of me to wish someone would care and nurture me. It’s not their job and it isn’t their responsibility. I just want someone to tell me they love me, to look into my eyes, to embrace me.

I wonder if i’ll be like this forever. I hope i can be better. I hope i can change. I love you. I love you. I love you. Even if you hate me, I love you.

[pagerspages]

Because of the people I've loved

I am who I am because of the people I’ve loved. We go through our lives and we open our hearts to certain people and because of those people we are fundamentally changed. 

Because of my first girlfriend I believe that people who’ve dated can be friends (although this may be because we were friends for so long before and the fact that I might be gay). 

Because of the first boy I ever loved I enjoy music and I actively look for new queer creators that have music that moves me. 

Because of my oldest friend I know that we don’t have to see each other very often as adults to still be good friends. We also don’t have to agree on everything.

Because of a certain situationship I know that no matter how much I want to and how hard I try I cannot fix someone. Some people just have trauma and problems that they have to work through on their own. I also know because of them if someone won't respect your boundaries you don’t need to be around them. 

Because of my sister I know that someone can say how much they love you right to your face as often as they can and then turn around and complain about and hate an integral part of you.

Because of my mother I know that I can love someone with all my heart and not want them to know everything about me and not want them to be a part of certain aspects of my life. 

Because of my most recent ex I have a new respect for the environment and I know that even if I’m ready and am willing to commit to a relationship and fight through the urges of self sabotage because I don’t think I deserve to be happy, maybe they aren’t willing/ready to do the same.

I often wonder who I would be if I hadn't met these people. The older I get the more I realize it doesn’t really matter who I would be. It matters who I will be.

[neon-vocalist]

Hinata and Asaki and Nobu and Momnata teehee

🧸 A headcanon about their childhood

👻 A headcanon about what scares them

👽 A headcanon about a weird quirk of theirs

💤 A headcanon about their sleep

🫂 A friendship headcanon :)

💔 An angsty headcanon

🪢 A headcanon about their family

📓 A headcanon about their hobbies

🔪 A headcanon relating to fighting/violence

🌟 A headcanon about their desires/wishes

🍫 A headcanon about food

🎭 A headcanon about what they lie about

🖕 A headcanon relating to anger

😬 A headcanon about the worst thing they’ve done

😭 A headcanon about the worst thing that happened to them.

😶 A random headcanon!

You don’t have to do all of them 😭😭😭 I just I just

this is going under a cut because holy fucking shit. @interesteddisaster

Hinata

🧸 - When she was little, she couldn’t pronounce her name right, so a lot of people thought it was Hinana for like a really long time

👻 - Irrational fear of ducks

👽 - Does not swear ever. Makes everyone want to cry with the words she uses as replacements.

💤 - She has been able to lucid dream since she can remember and can’t figure out how to turn it off.

🫂 - You know this, but I want Tumblr to know this, so. She and Asaki first became sort of friends in early elementary, when Asaki pushed Haruto off a swing so she could get on. This was not because he liked her (he still hated her), but because he hated Haruto more.

💔 - Can’t seem to convince herself she’s a good person so she works herself half to death trying to do the best thing for everyone on a personal and global scale (while neglecting herself in the process). Positive she doesn’t deserve anything she has.

🪢 - Considers Tomomi and Asaki her brothers :)

📓 - LOVES those DIY craft videos. Her house is full of little DIY soaps and lip glosses and stuff.

🔪 - Runs people over with her wheelchair out of affection

🌟 - Wants to change the world and inspire people. Preferably through music or theatre.

🥇 - Best at… being a good sister :)

🍫 - Vegetarian! Tried to be gluten free & vegan in her past but it Did Not work. Girlie LIVES on pasta.

🎭 - Doesn’t like to lie, but when she does, it’s usually to protect someone else, and it’s as close to the truth as she can make it.

🖕- Never lets herself get angry. She’ll have one (1) vaguely upset thought about someone and then be like “I do not have all sides of the story. I will give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s probably my fault anyway. I am not allowed to be upset over this.”

😬 - She once sabotaged every other sprinter in a race so Asaki could win, since he was feeling really bad about himself and she wanted to cheer him up. Caused two broken legs on two different people. Never got caught.

😭 - I genuinely can’t figure this out. I have a vague idea but no details and either way it hasn’t happened in plot yet :)

😶 - Makes homemade candy and gives it to people. Can’t cook anything else. Everyone is BAFFLED as to how she’s mastered the handling of 300° sugar but can’t make a sandwich.

Nobu

🧸 - Does not remember his childhood (hmm, I wonder why /s) [his backstory hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet but it’s gonna be so bad]

👻 - Afraid of everything → tries to act like he’s not → fails miserably→ reads scientific papers about it until he’s less scared

👽 - Little guy is ENTIRELY weird quirks, like, there’s not a normal thing about him. He believes he’s a 17th century philosopher reincarnated. I don’t know why. He’s so weird.

💤 - Does not sleep ever. If he does, it’s on the floor. Has to be bribed by Hinata to use his bed (bribery often does not work).

🫂 - Has imaginary friends to make up for lack of irl friends. He doesn’t like calling them “imaginary friends” though. He says it’s childish, so he calls them acquaintances from his past life.

💔 - Absolutely TERRIFIED of going back into the system. Still doesn’t quite feel safe at home, still finds himself with urges to mask and hide and act normal to make sure Momnata doesn’t decide she’s sick of him.

🪢 - Has lived with the Suzuki family for five years. Before his adoption he can’t remember much, but sometimes he is reminded of a little boy just a few years older than he is, who taught him first how to walk and then how to love.

📓 - He doesn’t play any instruments, but taught himself to read all forms of music notation anyway. He creates those sheet music art pieces of his favourite birds.

🔪 - This kid does not have a single violent bone in his body. Sorry.

🌟 - Doesn’t know what he wants to do yet, but probably something very technical, scientific, and too confusing for anyone else too comprehend. May end up one of those crazy reclusive mathematicians who spends decades on one problem.

🥇 - Best at overthinking

🍫 - Loves to cook. Will cry if he makes something for you and you don’t like it.

🎭 - Absolutely the most brutally honest little asshole you will ever meet. Unaware of lying as a concept. Never heard the word before in his life.

🖕- Writes aggressive letters to the mayor &/or specific companies’ CEOs when he discovers social or environmental injustices. None of them ever get answered

😬 - Poisoned someone

😭 - Hehe :)

😶 - Spills all of Hinata’s secrets to her new friends, even the really embarrassing ones. Also, unrelated: idolises Asaki to a concerning level. Also also, takes EVERYTHING personally.

Asaki

🧸 - Childhood? What childhood?

👻 - He’s scared of a lot of things but has been taught he can’t show it. When Tomomi came around he wanted to strangle it because he was so afraid of Hinata abandoning him.

👽 - There’s nothing normal about this man. He needs therapy so so bad. But like… he’s really superstitious. Will cry if you break a mirror.

💤 - Can’t sleep a lot of the time. Struggles to get to sleep because of paranoia and struggles to stay asleep because of nightmares. Ends up having a lot of late night talks with Nobu.

🫂 - Has only had one friend ever (Hinata). Will bite scratch maim kill if he thinks there’s a threat to her or to their relationship.

💔 - This guy’s entire backstory is angst but uhh… eventually he starts feeling really bad about how he treated Tomomi which makes him start spiralling and pushing everyone away CERTAIN he doesn’t deserve to be loved

🪢 - When Momnata finds out what he’s going through at home, she works with some higher-ups to get him legally removed from his home. In the meantime, she just illegally adopts him. Extended sleepover starts now.

📓 - Speaks 10 languages plus conlangs, fluent binary & Morse, and multiple coding languages. Can play 8 instruments. Both these things may or may not be coping mechanisms.

🔪 - Punches people who hurt (intentionally or accidentally) Hinata, Nobu, or Naomi. Has punched Tomomi four times.

🌟 - Just wants to feel safe somewhere. Secretly wishes for the death of his father. Nobody knows about either of these things.

🥇 - Best at being a sad little train wreck of a human being. Does pretty impressive coding stuff, too, I guess.

🍫 - Doesn’t eat much. Could not give less of a shit about food. Eats what’s easiest because he has to.

🎭 - Lies a lot about a lot of things. Works with Hinata to stop lying a lot about a lot of things. Still struggles to tell people the truth about how he’s doing.

🖕- Uses anger to conceal all other emotions. Gets really pissed really easily. Goes straight to “fuck you fuck you bite scratch kill” immediately instead of any effort at communication or repair. Nobody is surprised why he has no friends.

😬 - Does punching Tomomi in the face (with his prosthetic) count?

😭 - There are genuinely so many things I could say for this one, but uhh… he once had to hide his sister and mom underneath the porch floor from his dad because he was threatening to kill them. Bad hiding spot. Only he and his mom made it out alive.

😶 - Is literally the only reason Hinata isn’t completely failing English.

Momnata

🧸 - Used to love those huge rainbow swirl lollipops. Got one for every holiday. Would collect the sticks. Still has some somewhere.

👻 - Has a lot of secrets. Afraid someone’s gonna find them out and ask questions and then she’ll lose everything.

👽 - Not really a quirk, more of a?? Talent?? But since her students work with dangerous acids, chemical waste, and sometimes fire, if someone screams/yells/makes any sort of shocked or afraid noise, she is going to be at their side in less than 5 seconds. Girl will jump over tables if need be. She is MAKING SURE that nobody’s gonna get chemically wasted on her watch.

💤 - Yells at her children all the time about the importance of a full night’s sleep (9 hours and 27 minutes for teens). None of them listen.

🫂 - Her closest friends are the lady she shares a classroom with & the other science department teachers. Often works with them to try and make things easier for struggling students.

💔 - Often has to sit and watch while her kids battle through things she doesn’t know how to make better. Kind of breaks her heart but she can’t do anything about it.

🪢 - Was married to Asaki’s dad before she realised what an ass he was and left with a significant amount of his fortune. Stole his son 14 years later.

📓 - Really good chemist! Adores Nobu’s interest in cooking and Hinata’s interest in creating cosmetics because it means they could one day follow in her footsteps (they will not).

🔪 - Did boxing in high school and has to restrain herself from physically harming people when she sees them harassing others.

🌟 - Just wants the best for her kids (Asaki and her students count as her kids).

🥇 - Best at giving big hugs and making good soup

🍫 - Absolutely happy to let Nobu take over cooking dinners. Has given up on trying to oversee his use of dangerous tools.

🎭 - Tells lies & breaks rules in favour of her students on occasion. Will cover for them if they need more sleep, a snack, a night off, whatever.

🖕- Gets so so angry at some of the ways her students are treated. Can’t do much about it though. Has many voice memos on her phone that are just her screaming.

😬 - From a legal standpoint? The snatching of Asaki’s dad’s money and children. From a moral standpoint… refusing to tell Asaki and Hinata just how close they really are. For selfish reasons. Ough.

😭 - “Was in a pretty abusive relationship in high school. Yikes.” (Apparently that’s all Sunnie has to say on the matter so that’s all you’re getting).

😶 - Will sponsor anyone’s therapy except her own. Does not think anything could be wrong with her. Consistently invalidates Hinata’s anxiety, OCD, and autism because of this.

[bigouncethehobo]

Howdy. How y'all doin? Thought I forgot about ya, huh? Nah. I wouldn't do that. I'm very forgetful lately but not about this. It feels nice putting stuff here when I need it.

I'll cut to the chase though. It sucks keeping shit bottled in. I have to let it out in controlled bursts, like a pipe full of steam that would blow up if you don't open the valve every once in a while. How do I do that? Well, I would normally do something sexy but that's kind of out of the question. Smoking? Just ran out of smokes. Vaping sure helps and gaming has been a little frustrating recently. The one thing that kept me going sort of ok was work and even that isn't an option. I've come under the impression that I may not be employed anymore. Hell of a cousin I have on that one.

So, here I am, unemployed(?), unable to do anything of the passionate variety, out of smokes, and frustrated with games. What's a man who doesn't know how to handle his feelings to do? Well, I have taken to fantasizing about picking fights with people. Not full on fisticuffs but I've been trying to egg people on to argue. I need an outlet and getting into a heated conversation just seems like the most sane way to do that. Hell, I've come very close to telling some people I hate that I hate them. But I have to play D&D with them and I like our mutual friends so I don't want to get kicked out of the group for being the asshole. I'm kind of running out of ideas here. I kinda hate my life right now. My body is breaking apart. Where I'm not broken I'm just fat. I can't hold a job to save my damn life. I'm the classic high school dropout failure and I kinda don't care and that sucks even more because I want to care. If anyone told me that I'd die in this country that I hate, I'd just say "Figures, with my luck", and keep putting changing my life off for "tomorrow" until the day I die in this country I hate. Living in this house has never brought me any joy. I've never been happy here. I only know that I hate pretty much everything. I'm like the dad on that Netflix show, "The Ranch". A surly, grumpy old bastard who hates everyone and everything. I never sugarcoat things even when it hurts people because it worth lying to someone when the truth is more important. On the other hand, if I go picking a fight with people, I'll quickly find myself out of contact with the only people who keep me sane. I used to love being alone. Nobody to keep track of. Nobody to bring any drama into my life. Nobody I had to care about for any reason. It was the dream. But then I had to make friends, like an idiot, and now I can't live without human connection. I hate it. I really do.

Hell, for weeks I've even been passive-aggressive at my own boyfriend because I don't know how to talk to anyone without being a jackass. Do you know what it's like to be subtle about stuff, then being so subtle that not even you know what you're trying to day half the time? I don't, cause I don't know what I'm trying to say half the time on account if being too subtle.

I'm just an idiot who thinks deserves better but just deserves to be alone and drunk.

I actually bought a bottle of vodka a while back. Still haven't drinked a drop of it. I'm afraid of becoming an alcoholic to cope with my lack of emotional availability. On the other hand, it would help people cope with my emotional unavailability. It'd let them blame the alcoholism rather than the fact I've never actually dralt with my emotions other than devising the fool-proof strategy of "Bottle it up until you die or explode. Preferably when you die in an explosion".

Sometimes I wonder if I'm capable of loving. Not just in a relationship kind of way either. I wonder if I can truly love a friend or family member. Like, what is that really like? I say that to my friends but I don't know what it means. I just see them as people who haven't realized I'm actually some jackass who's waiting for an opportunity to sabotage himself and leave me to my miserable existence.

I can't make promises of being better the next time I type something up in here. Hell, I don't even know when that will next be. I can tell you that I'll probably still be miserable when I do, though. And yeah, I know how I sound right now with the bitching and the whining. Depression is a hell of a drug. It makes you feel safe and comfortable in the thought that you're a failure so you shouldn't even try. If you don't try, you can't fail. If you can't fail, then you automatically succeed at not failing. That small comfort goes a long way to keep you down in the dirt where you "belong". I'm just tired...

[astaroth1357]

How the Brothers Would Try to Corrupt MC w/ Their Sin

I have a headcanon that it's part of demonic nature to try and corrupt humans. Though I think it would be unlikely that the brothers would try to intentionally corrupt MC post-pact, it's still like second nature to them. That means they may try to unintentionally, uh… infect their soul with sin and drag them down into eternal damnation! They don't mean it, but be careful MCs of the world.

Lucifer

One of the hardest things to do can be to make others take pride in themselves… but Lucifer is always ready for a challenge.

The name of the game is praise. The human mind can be easy to manipulate so with enough praise even the most stubborn human will start to believe a drop of their own hype.

Building up pride is a steady thing... He'll usually pick a strength or talent of the MC to give high praise. Perhaps they sing beautifully or they're rather clever, don't worry. He'd let them know.

Light sprinkles of praise steadily increase their self-esteem, which may seem nice and almost healthy at first, but in truth he's laying a trap… He knows how effective his words can be and he's just waiting for them to go to the MC's head.

You think then he would be done right? Oh no. That's not the fun part. What's fun is to then offend that pride he's spent so long building.

He thinks it's cute, really. A small comment here or a little condensation there and they'll get so mad. It's just so amusing!

Of course, he can't take what he dishes, so they'll need to watch out. But don't worry he loves them, even if they're just a little too fun to play with…

Mammon

Since when does the Avatar of Greed give gifts?

Really, that should be the MC's first red flag. Mammon isn't known for generosity, so when he's spending what little money he can hold onto on them, it's time to raise some eyebrows.

It may seem nice, almost sweet, when he manages to track down a rare vintage of wine for them or take them out to a ritzy restaurant for the night but unfortunately it's all just part of the plan…

Nobody has tastes higher than Mammon. He can't afford them most of the time, which leads to compromises, but given all the Grim in the world he'd be living in the lap of luxury - which is exactly the kind of lifestyle he wants the MC to crave too.

Anyone, no matter how modest, can give into temptation. How easy would it be to taste the sweetest wine or enjoy the most wonderful trip then want to do it again? It may seem innocent at first, but piling on the finer things can soon have the MC craving for them when they pass.

Then all Mammon needs is to make little promises, "If I make it big this time, then we'll go to France!" or, "If I win this next hand then I'll buy ya another glass." 

So how many times will the MC give Mammon a pass, then? Will they stop questioning how he comes up with his cash? Will they let him gamble just that "little bit" longer? Will they even join him...?

If they keep getting that taste of luxury, then maybe it's not so bad… right?

Leviathan 

You think the easiest way to get the MC jealous would be to flirt with other people since that's how most people go about it but, uh… 

This is Levi we're talking about. Casual flirting is pretty much out of the question.

So what is a demon to do to get their hapless human jealous? The answer is, be patient.

No one's perfect, humans especially! They'll slip up eventually… 

Maybe someone from back home just got a new car or they're sending out marriage invites. 

Maybe they have a friend who's better than them at school or sports or there's just someone who has something they want: Money, talent, looks, followers, friends, you name it. When they see it, he can feel that envy creeping in…

From there, all he has to do is feed it. Let the world poke at their little insecurities for him while he plays the supportive boyfriend!

"Did Mammon really get the promotion? I thought it would have been you! That's so unfair..."

"Satan beat your scores again? What is this, the third time? Doesn't that suck?"

Small little comments… but all with a goal to fill the MC with toxicity...

"Are Asmo videos still doing better than yours? I think I know how to drop his numbers... if you want."

And soon enough, anyone can be an enemy. Everyone has it better than them… so they push the world away in order to feel better. And they become so toxic, the world rejects them in turn...

Except, of course, for their loving boyfriend, Levi.

Satan

If you want to keep someone mad, it's best if you're not the actual one doing it.

I know, it sounds counterintuitive, but turning yourself into the enemy risks the target cutting you out. Satan knows this, so he'll never enrage the MC directly...

But indirectly? There's a start.

Everybody has little pet peevs. Tiny things that aren't important, but dig under the skin nonetheless.

Breadcrumbs in the butter, gum-smacking, toe-tapping, tones of voice, or just little annoying inconveniences that can sour one's day...

Satan is well-versed in these tiny annoyances, he'd dare say they're in his domain. And, perspective that he is, he'll know what frustrates the MC soon enough.

Then it's just a matter of execution.

Maybe he jacks with their toothpaste tube or "conveniently" forgets where they put their books... Or they keep mysteriously finding fingerprints on their game disks or seemingly can't keep their room organized to save their life!

It may just seem like the world hates them... but really it's just their demonic lover.

These tiny details and little mishaps will just build and build like cracks in their foundation until it all breaks and comes crashing down… and he'll be right there egging on every moment of it!

Asmodeus 

You would think that Asmo would have the easiest time tempting the MC into his sin, but that's not so.

Sure, most traditional definitions of Lust begin and end at carnal desire, but what about those MCs who maybe aren't so drawn to the sins of the flesh? Fear not! Because the keyword for Asmo is desire.

Really, Asmo is happy if the MC's mind is full of nothing but him. He wants them to desire him, to love him obviously, but to the point of obsession. His heated kisses and sensual whispers are only means to that end, which can change whenever he needs.

The MC will have their life bombarded by their beautiful demon. It's not an unwelcome smothering, he's among the best boyfriends they could ever hope to have, which is exactly why he’s so effective!

He wants them to need him at every moment. Soon it will feel weird to go places alone without their demon… Certain things they could do themselves, like their hair or getting dressed, they'll want him to do instead.

Of course, if he's able then he'll certainly seduce them as well and at every chance he gets! From the House to RAD and even in the throne room - he's shameless!... But that's the fun, isn't it?

Beelzebub 

Oh Beel… He's probably the most dangerous one of them all. Not because he's so demonic, but because he's so sweet!

When Beel makes food for the MC or orders them an extra side, he does so with love. He just wants them to be full! ...or so he thinks.

Beel's demonic instincts creep up on even him, he's just not one to really question what or why he does things sometimes. He'll know he has the urge to see the MC eat or just be indulgent… but he won’t know why.

You could actually say it works to his advantage. Whenever he offers the MC another turkey leg or a few more bites of cake, his tenderhearted insistence is often so sweet that they'll just go along with it and try to keep eating… even if they're already full.

Now, the human body can only take so much food at once, but over time it can adapt to changing habits.

Eventually, the MC will find their appetite expanding to catch up… They'll stop feeling full as easily as they used to and soon the bigger portions that Beel gives them will be all but a necessity!

Of course, the worst case scenario is that this doesn't happen at all and they do serious harm to their health by always pushing past their limits… but there's no guarantee Beel's solution won't just be more food anyway.

Belphegor 

Belphie is the only brother who will knowingly (and gleefully) try to make the MC as sinful as he is!

It's all for selfish reasons. If the MC is slothful, then they'll want to go out less and (probably) spend time with him more. Win-win if you're Belphie.

Since he's well aware of what he's doing, he's pretty damn effective at it. No other brother will be as committed to meddling with the MC as he is.

He'll convince them to cancel plans or sabotage their alarms so they oversleep. He'll suddenly be unable to sleep without them while his naps seemingly get longer and longer… And if they have something to do, he'll be the voice in their ear saying it can wait!

Really, at any opportunity he can get Belphie will try to drag them down or slow their progress with the sweet, sweet promise of relaxation or a good time...

Sure, it may sound nice at the time - great even! - but it won't take long for their promises to break or deadlines to pile up… Sure, the MC could try to catch up but wouldn't that be too much work? Wouldn't they rather rest instead? Why even worry about it?

It's a seductive line of thought and Belphie sells it well, it'd take only the most motivated MC to resist his charms but like that'd stop him. If he wants the MC for himself, he'll happily put their life on hold to do so. Just go with it... yeah?