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moon-in-daylight · 4 years

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Save you (Part 1) / Dhawan!Master x reader

Summary: Traveling with The Doctor had shown you incredible things: The existence of extraterrestrial live, the possibility of time travel and the most beautiful and remote places you could have ever imagine... But being with her had also made you develop some strong values. To be kind and always help those in need. But would you be up to help The Master now that he is the one who needs to be saved?

Words: 9112

Warnings: Blood, near death situations, smut (in future chapters).

Note: Since I’m isolated at home with an hyperfixation on Dhawan!Master, I decided to write my first fanfiction in like 4 or 5 years. I thought I might share it in case someone is in the same situation as I am and has nothing better to do than reading it (please, stay at home). It’s the first time I write in awhile and English is not my first lenguage, so sorry if this sucks.

What’s written in italics are the reader’s memories.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

Gallifrey wasn’t how you had imagined it would be. At least, its current state wasn’t.

When The Doctor talked about her home planet –not that she really had lately, but she had told you about it sometime, especially when you had asked her about the Time War–, she always talked about the golden skies and the two suns shining above. It had always made you curious, to visit the place that had watched your friend grow up. But looking around you, you realized why she hadn’t brought you and the fam to visit what was left of it.

You were rushing through the ruins of what had been one of the most powerful civilizations in the universe, followed closely behind by Ko Sharmus, who had a rough time keeping up with your speed. The others had tried to stop you both from getting out of the TARDIS that The Doctor had prepared to take you home, but nothing they could say or do could have made you stay. You couldn’t leave that planet knowing that The Doctor was sacrificing herself and that you would never be able to see her again. You would never be able to forgive yourself if you did nothing about it, if you just stood aside. That wasn’t you.

“You may have made me but I have destroyed you…” As you got closer to the Matrix, you could hear The Master’s voice getting louder. You tried to follow that sound “Become death, become…” Breathless, you stood in the room, every ‘Cybermaster’ pointing their weapons at you while The Master focused his attention on your being before finishing what he was saying. “Me…”

Interlocking your stare with his sent a shiver down your spine. You hadn’t seen him in a few months, you never thought you would again after your last encounter, when the Kaasavin took him away. But there he was, right in front of you in the planet he had threated to pieces. Looking at him now, it was almost impossible to believe that he was the same person that had introduced himself as O so long ago.

The Doctor, seeing her childhood friend’s reaction, turned to see you. “Y/N! You shouldn’t be here!” She reprimanded as you looked behind you in search for Ko Sharmus, who you supposed must had gotten lost. “You can’t still be here I set the controls!”

“I followed you outside, I couldn’t let you do this on your own!” You quickly responded as you watched The Master approaching you, a slight smirk forming on his face. You didn’t have to be genius to judge by his reaction that he was scheming something.

“I believe we agreed on no party crashers.” Grabbing you by your arm and dragging you to the center of the room with him, he laughed. “But this might be interesting.” His eyes looked at you and then at The Doctor as he tightened his grip on you. “Will you be able to sacrifice your loyal, little pet, Doctor?”

The Doctor’s eyes looked at you in despair. One thing was sacrificing herself and the apocalyptic remains of her planet for the well–being of the universe, but you being in the middle of it made things infinitely harder.

“Just do it, Doc.” You tried to encourage her as she held the bomb in her hands, pointing it to the Master. “It’s okay, I chose to stand by you.” Looking at you in the eye, The Doctor lowered her arm, putting her finger away from the detonator of the weapon that would end all organic life on her home planet.

“For just a moment there I thought maybe…” The Master looked away from his oldest enemy, frustrated at the turn of events. He sighed loudly before speaking again, now talking to you. “She’s weak.” He informed you, leaning over to your ear. “And the universe and you both are going to suffer for her weakness. I can promise you that.”

You gave an apologetic look at your friend, still hoping that she found the courage enough to press the button and end this madness once and for all.

“Not if I have anything to do with it.” Ko Sharmus finally intervened, getting in the room as well and walking towards The Doctor.

“Excuse me, are there going to be any more surprises?” The Master asked rhetorically into your ear, his heavy breathing hitting the skin on your neck and making you feel quite unsettled.

“Why won’t anyone listen to me?!” The Doctor questioned in frustration. “I told you all to leave!”

“I wanted to make sure these things are gone. And now I can be.”

“No!” The old man tried to grab the device that The Doctor still had in between her hands, even though he tried to persuade him out of his intentions.

“You didn’t start this, I did!” Ko Sharmus began to explain to The Doctor how he was part of the team that had tried to get rid of the Cyberium by sending it back though time, getting the calculus wrong and not sending it far enough. You swallowed the lump in your throat when you realized he wanted to take The Doctor’s place. “This is my penance. Mine to finish…”

You unconsciously sighed in relief as you watched The Doctor give the bomb back to his owner, glad to know that, at least, she got the chance to get out of there. You, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be that lucky. The Master was still holding you close to him, with no intention of letting you go.

“It isn’t going to be that easy, Doctor.” The Master intervened, rage filling his tone once again. “I still have her, and she’s not going anywhere. I die and she dies with me.” He stated, as serious as you had ever heard him. He had nothing left to lose.

“You can have me.” The Doctor was quick to say, trying to find a way for you to get out of this one. “This is between you and me, let her go and I’ll take her place.”

“Tempting, but I think I’ll pass. You can still stay and die by her side if you want to.” He laughed again. You took a deep breathe, trying to find the right words to say.

“Just go, Doctor.” You told her, no trace of hesitation in your voice. “This was my choice. I was the one who ran away from the TARDIS when you told me not to. Don’t blame yourself, it’s my fault.”

“Look at that, isn’t it moving?” The Master mocked you both. “She’s dying because of you and she doesn’t even blame you for it, Doctor. I don’t know if that’s sad or pathetic.”

“Don’t listen to him! Just run!” You tried to convince her to do as you said. “Yaz, Graham and Ryan still need you! The universe still needs you!” Tears began to form in your friend’s eyes

“I’m so, so sorry, Y/N.” She told you sincerely before running off.

“Doctor!” The Master shouted in frustration, his grip around you getting even tighter than before, making you squirm a little.

“Still feeling confident?” Ko Sharmus asked the remaining Time Lord in the room, getting ready to push the button and end it all.

The Master looked at the human in front of him defiantly, furious because his plan had been turned apart once again. You took a deep breath as you did your best to accept your final destiny.

There are always risks when travelling with The Doctor, you weren’t the first one to face the consequences. And you weren’t oblivious to them when you first stood a foot in the TARDIS. Death is always imminent when you live that kind of life, it had been several times that you had found yourself in deathly situations. Luckily, you had escaped from them all except for, of course, this one. Yet, you were copping surprisingly good with it. There wasn’t much left for you on earth anyway, you thought, and you had live a deeply intense and remarkable life. The things you had seen, the places you had been… You wished you had time to achieve more things, but maybe it was time. Maybe this was how it was meant to be.

“Kill him.” The sound of The Master giving the order to his army got you out of your own thoughts.

“Kill you first.” The old man threatened as dozens of lasers were shot against him.

Watching your ally struggle to keep himself from falling to the ground and taking advantage of The Master’s distraction, you set yourself free from his grip. You needed to be quick to grab the bomb from Ko Sharmus's hands as he fell dead to the floor. He had failed to complete the task again, and you couldn’t let the Time Lord and his monstrous creation get out of the planet. It would be the first, and most certainly last time that you kill someone, but you owed it to The Doctor. One final sacrifice to save your beloved universe. It needed to be done, even though you didn’t want to.

Just when you were about to grab the device from the old man’s apparently dead body, you realized your mistake. Ko Sharmus was still alive and his finger was barely a second away from making disappear all life from Gallifrey. In what you thought were your last moments, you turned to see The Master’s reaction, seeing him manipulating a watch–like device that was on his wrist. Just in time before the bomb detonated, he grabbed your arm, teleporting you both away from that room.

Out of nowhere, you found yourself inside of O’s house. Well, it wasn't really a house, and O didn't exist. You already knew that it was in fact The Master's TARDIS, but it was still hard to process. It took a moment for you to realize that you were in fact alive while the Master ran to the console and began to introduce some coordinates.

“We’re still on Gallifrey.” He clarified as he rushed himself to get his ship out of there. You weren’t really sure if he was talking to you or to himself. “There’s only a few seconds left before the expansive wave gets here.”

You watched him in confusion, still trying to figure out what had just happened. You were supposed to be dead. Not that you weren’t glad not to be. But out of all people, The Master was the last one you imagined would get you out of that situation. He was the one to put you in danger in the first place. What sense did it made?

Standing there, you watched in shock as he successfully got his ship into the time vortex. Once you were certain that you were out of danger, you decided to open your mouth again. “Why did you do that?” You asked him, a deep feeling of confusion taking over you.

“Do what?” The Master asked you back as he tried to decide when and where to go.

“You saved me.” Your voice was low as you did your best for both of you to remain calmed. The last thing you needed after escaping a certain death was to get yourself killed by an angry alien psychopath.

“I didn’t save you.” He was quick to correct you in his usual, cynic tone. “I saved myself and you just happened to be there. Do I look like a dog walker or something? I don’t take care of other people’s pets.”

You stayed silent as he worked. He wasn’t exactly easy to talk to, and you didn’t want to push him with noisy questions. Instead, you decided to celebrate the fact that you were alive by sitting on a chair and taking the deep breath that you had been holding for the last several hours. You weren’t completely out of danger, you were still in The Master’s ship. But for some reason he had decided you were more valuable alive than dead, you only hoped he wouldn’t suddenly change his mind.

Still trying to process everything that had happened in the last minutes, you realized The Doctor didn’t have a clue that you were still alive. You needed to get back to her, but that seemed a bit difficult at the moment. Eyeing The Master and seeing that he was busy controlling his ship, you reached for your phone only to find that the screen was shattered and that it didn’t even turn on. It must had had broke when you fell while running from the Cybermen earlier. Now it was useless. Wasn’t that just perfect?

There was no way to reach any of your friends and inform them of your situation, so you supposed you should focus on getting out of there as soon as possible and find your way back to them. The only problem was that you had no idea of where or when The Master was taking you.

“Why am I still inside your TARDIS?” Deep in thought, you asked in a low tone. Unluckily, not low enough so that he could’t hear you.

“You can throw yourself into the time vortex for all I care” He replied bitterly. Well, even more bitterly than usual. “Just make sure to close the door behind you.”

You weren’t really sure of how travelling in time worked, but you were pretty sure that wouldn’t survive if you just jumped out of the ship now, so you supposed you were stuck there. After a few silent minutes in which you tried to figure the situation out, you decided to dig a bit more into his intentions. He had had several opportunities to kill you, so if you were still alive was because for some reason he intended on keeping in that way.

Your eyes were glued to him as he read the screen in front of him. “Why did you take me out of Gallifrey?” You finally inquired again, your voice more confident than before.

“Would you have rather staying there?” The Master took a few seconds before answering your question, doing his best to keep himself calmed.

“I’m just trying to understand why I’m still alive. That’s all.”

The Master turned to you, his eyes furious as he quickly walked towards you and grabbed you by the throat. You gasped for air as he got you up from the chair, his face a few inches away from yours. “If that causes you any problem…” He stopped before he could finish the sentence, his eyes closing as he let out a groan from pain. As you observed him closely, you realized that his skin was extremely pale and that there was some cold sweat forming on his forehead. His grip on you was also weaker than you had expected it would be. “…I can fix that.”

His gaze was upon you for a few more seconds before letting you go. You coughed a few times as you tried to regain your composure. Don’t mess around with the sociopath alien, lesson learned. The Master walked back to the console and tried to get back to work, but you could see how tired he was.

“Are you feeling okay?” The Master could sense the worried tone in your voice. He didn’t even look back at you, ignoring you completely as he pulled a lever.

In a matter of seconds the ship had successfully landed, even though you had barely noticed it. The Master was a better pilot, his manoeuvres way smoother than The Doctor’s. You had to admit him that.

“Where are we?” You asked in fear of whatever you could find at the other side of the door. Probably it was best not to know, just by picturing all the kind of sick, doomed places his twisted mind could have chosen to take you to.

Almost as if you weren’t there, he kept messing around with the controls of the TARDIS. “Why don’t you go out there and figure it out instead of making stupid questions?” He spat, once again giving you the less possible amount of attention.

That wasn’t really encouraging, to say the least. But you had to admit curiosity was too much to bear. You had tons of questions and an answer waiting for you at the other side of the TARDIS’s doors. Was it worth to take risk? You took risks every day just by travelling with The Doctor, but you could feel the chances of getting into trouble multiply just by having the company of The Master instead. Taking a deep breath, you carefully walked to the front door. Your hand rested on it for a few seconds before you finally open it up to reveal your surroundings.

Surprise took over you when you recognized the place where the ship had landed. You had been there before, some time ago. The Master had landed in Australia, where he was when you first had met him as he was pretending to be O, an agent from MI6.

The Doctor’s voice could be heard even from outside of her console room as she rambled about something you didn’t quite understand. It wasn’t unusual to find her talking to herself, so you weren’t bothered by it until you entered into the room and heard another voice replying to her.

You hesitated for a few seconds before getting closer to where she was standing, realizing she was on a video call with someone.

“Y/N, hey!” She greeted you when she noticed your presence, turning to you with a wide smile spread on her face. “Come here, I want to introduce you to someone.”

“I thought you were rambling on your own again.” You laughed as you walked towards your friend, placing yourself next to her in front of the screen. “Who are you talking to?”

“Y/N, this is my friend from MI6, O” The Doctor introduced you as you gave the man a polite smile and a little wave.

“Nice finally meeting you.” He waved back as you observed him. He was a fairly good looking man with big dark eyes. “The Doctor talks so much about you.”

“Does she now?” You laughed, trying to hide your embarrassment. “I’m not really interesting, especially comparing myself to her. Hope she doesn’t bore you much.”

“No, I have a great time hearing about your adventures.” O smiled as he gave you a reassuring look. “According to what The Doctor says you have saved her more than once.”

You grinned nervously as you placed a piece of hair behind your ear. “Well, I should leave you two to keep catching up. Didn’t mean to interrupt you.” You shrugged, feeling bad for crashing their conversation.

“Oh, don’t worry.” The agent told you. “We were already saying goodbye.”

“Yeah, O is working on a case at the moment.” The Doctor clarified. “See you around!” She happily put an end to the call. It was only you and her in the TARDIS now.

“So…” You sighed, thinking of the best way to ask what was on your mind without looking suspicious. You had liked him, but first you wanted to know if there was anything going on between the two of them. “What is the deal with this O? How did you two meet?”

“We met some years back.” Your alien friend explained as she wandered around the console room. “He really is into studying every alien thing that crosses his path.”

“Why isn’t he travelling with us then?” The Doctor turned to you as you asked. You had never heard her talking about O before, so maybe there was a reason why she didn’t want him in the TARDIS. “He seems like a nice guy, he would enjoy this kind of life.”

“He does an extremely important job on earth.” She clarified. Both Torchwood and Unit were now gone, so knowing that there was still O left working for MI6 made her feel more secure. If any alien being attacked Earth while she was away, he would still be there to try and stop them. “Maybe some day we can take him on an adventure. Now, how about we go get the rest of the fam and go somewhere?”

You smiled at her while you nodded your head, still thinking about O. There was no denying you had taking a like on him, even though the Doctor was too much of a dork to notice. It wasn’t nothing serious, just a dumb crush, but you were hoping on seeing him again sometime. Preferably in person next time.

“Have you ever been to Barcelona?” The Doctor got you out of your thoughts. “Not the city Barcelona, the planet Barcelona. Do you fancy a trip there?”

The sun was setting just now. If you started walking, you would get to the closest population in a couple of hours. Luckily, you could get into a plane in the morning and be back to London by the end of the next day. You were free to go home, to go back to your fam. But since The Master was the one that had taken you back to Earth, you supposed things weren’t as simple as they seemed. There had to be a trick. There’s always a trick with him. He wouldn’t make it that easy, would he?

After taking a moment to admire the beauty of your own planet, you decided to head back inside of the TARDIS. Probably The Master would dismiss every single one of your questions, just like he had been doing, but you couldn’t leave without trying one last time. You would always be wondering why he had helped you if you left now. Curiosity was going to be the death of you.

Confusion stricken you again when you didn’t see The Master around the console. You were beginning to think that he was setting you a trap when you spotted him lying on the floor, passed out.

“Master!” You kneeled beside him, shaking his body slightly in an attempt to wake him up.

Nothing you did made him move a muscle. Worried, you placed a hand on his forehead just to find that his skin was practically burning. His breathing and heartbeats were also way slower compared to what you supposed was normal. If he did in fact had two hearts his pulse should be way more intense, or so you supposed.

Being as careful as you possibly could, you dragged The Master to the closest piece of furniture. Not without some complications, you laid him on the couch and observed him, in hopes for him to make any kind of reaction. There was always the possibility that he was messing with you. That this was a part of some bigger scheme and that you were falling straight for it. But you knew that, if by any remote chance this was real and you walked away, leaving him there on his own, you would never be able to forgive yourself. Sure, he most likely wouldn’t do the same for you, but you weren't the type to run away when help was needed.

Besides, he had indeed saved you from Gallifrey, even if you didn’t know the real reason behind it. In a way, you felt like you owed him.

The only thing was, you didn’t exactly have a medical degree. You knew the basic things to keep yourself alive, and that was practically it. Also, you weren’t even sure if that knowledge could be applied to the Time Lord’s biology. Were they even able to get the flu? Is that what it was? A flu? It seemed kind of dumb to think that a race like the Time Lords, one of the most powerful ones in the universe, could pass out because of a simple cold. Yet, the symptoms were cold–like. High fever, cold sweat…

But you had never seen The Doctor getting ill. Until that moment, you had thought it was impossible for them to get a minor illness. If only she was there with you, maybe she could do something to help him get better. Or, at least, diagnose him. You, on the other hand, had no idea on what you should do.

Looking around, you laid your eyes on the console. It wasn’t a exact copy of the Doctor’s console, the decoration was extremely different, but you could still see that some of the controls were practically the same as hers. You remembered that there was a telephone somewhere in there. She used it sometimes to call the fam. Maybe you could use it to reach her, to let her know that you were okay and inform her of the situation you had in hands.

Maybe she wouldn’t want to help The Master, and you couldn’t blame her if that was the case. Their relationship wasn’t exactly at its peak right now, but it was worth the try.

You were about to get up and walk to the console when you found a blanket lying in the back of a chair. After putting it carefully over The Master, you finally made your way to the console. Sadly, the TARDIS wasn’t exactly human user friendly and the more you looked at the confusing buttons and levers, the more you wished for a ‘How to fly a TARDIS for dummies’ book to exist. As soon as you could be reunited with The Doctor you were going to ask her to teach how to use the damn thing.

Just when you were making your fourth or fifth walk around the console, you found a phone hidden right under it. You took it out of its shelf and dusted it off. Good, you had found a way to reach to her, now the problem was that you didn’t know her number by heart. You closed your eyes as you tried to remember the damn number. You had no luck with it, but you did remember something equally useful.

The TARDIS was a living being herself. She was able to communicate with their occupants as well as just change her interiors at her will.

“Please, help me find The Doctor.” You muttered, looking at the center of her console, begging. “I know she can help The Master. Do it for him. Please.”

A few seconds passed before the TARDIS hummed at you. You supposed it was a friendly interaction, since the phone immediately started to dial. Sighing in relieve, you waited for her to pick up at the other side. The seconds passed. Nothing. No answer.

“Can you please try again?” You politely asked once more.

“What are you still doing here?” His voice sounded weak, yet menacing, when he woke up and found you on his ship. You turned to him and observed him carefully. He clearly wasn’t going through his best moment.

“You passed out.” You clarified.

“That’s not what I asked.” He tried to get up, but he only got enough strength to sit on the couch. He was doing his best to try and keep his balance, but his headache wasn’t helping at all. “I brought you back to Earth, why haven’t you left yet?”

“It looks like you need some help, so I thought I would try–“

As soon as The Master saw you holding his phone, he cut you off. “What are you doing with that?”

“I was trying to call The Doctor, I thought maybe she could help.” You tried to justify yourself, but he didn’t seem very pleased with your answer.

“Don’t you even think of getting her here.” The Master angrily hissed, grabbing onto his side in pain.

You let go of the phone that was still in your hands, worried about his state. You should have imagined that he would have rather die than let The Doctor help him.

“Ok, I won’t call her.” You assured him, noticing that his skin was even paler than before. You had never thought you would see him in that state. So weakened, so defenseless. You almost felt pity for him. “But please, let me help you.”

“Help me?” He mocked you with a quiet laugh. Not even in the state he was he could stop being his cynical self. “You are just a pitiful human. You can’t help me.”

“Let me try.” You insisted. Most people would have given up on him by now, plus you knew your efforts wouldn’t have a reward. He wasn’t the grateful type, that was for sure, but you weren’t planning on letting him die on his own. No one deserved that. Not even him. “What is happening to you?” You asked after a few seconds of silence.

“Are we playing doctors now?” As The Master talked, he could feel the strength leaving his body. It was obvious that his sarcastic answer hadn’t pleased you, judging by the look you gave him. He was doomed anyway, so he decided he might as well keep himself entertained by watching you fail over and over in the attempt of finding a cure for him. “It’s the Cyberium.” He told you.

“What?” You asked in confusion. “What do you mean the Cyberium?”

“As you already know, its last host had gotten a bit… Indisposed.” He let out with a proud smirk, referring to how he had turned the half–converted Cyberman into a tiny doll. “So I kindly offered myself as its new host.”

“That thing almost kills Shelley.” You thought out loud, remembering one of your most recent adventures with The Doctor.

“Because you humans are weak.” He really didn’t pass on a chance to remind you that, did he? “It holds too much information for you to handle. No wonder his mind was melting.”

“To be fair, it looks like you’re also having a rough time handling it.” His eyes gave you one of the coldest stares you had ever received when you stated that.

“It’s not the same.” He assured, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. You supposed that was a good sign, one that showed that he was feeling slightly better. “I am more than capable of holding all its knowledge within me. And believe me, it does have some really interesting ideas.”

“Then why is it making you ill?” You questioned, already trying to think of something that could help him. So far, he wasn’t exactly making things easy for you. “Can’t you just regenerate and heal yourself?”

“I believe the Cyberium is quite disappointed that you and your beloved Doctor have blown our plans.” The Master explained, getting up from where he was sitting and walking to you. His moves were slow and clumsy as he dragged himself to the console. Once he reached his destination, he took a deep breathe to try and regain composure before answering your other question. “It is inside me and it doesn’t have the intention to leave until I’m dead. It wouldn’t let me regenerate. It’s trying to punish me for losing our whole army to that little bomb you and your friends exploded.”

“There’s got to be a way to get it out,” The Master laughed at your words as he placed himself in front of the screen of the console, reading something you couldn’t understand because it was written in Gallifreyan. “a way to get rid of it.”

“That’s exactly what I thought about you, yet here we are.” He sassily responded, not even looking back at you.

“At least I’m trying to think of something.” His attitude was beginning to irritate you. You couldn’t hold back a sigh.

The way he turned to you with eyes full of rage caused you to intuitively jump back. “Well, you shouldn’t force yourself that hard. We don’t want you burning out the one brain cell you have left.”

You crossed your arms in frustration, ready to put up a fight. But when you were just about to ramble back against him, you realized what he was doing, what he always did. He was trying to push you away. It was the oldest trick in the book. Maybe he thought he was better off dealing with this situation alone, or maybe he really thought you were in fact useless. Either way, you had already invested yourself in finding a cure for him. And even if he didn’t want your help, you still knew you could be useful. You were totally on board now.

“I know what you’re doing.” He ignored you when you finally talked again. “You can try all you want, but I’m not leaving. You’re going to have to put up with me.”

The Master watched you as you left the console room and got deeper into the TARDIS, looking for the library so you could make some research on the Cyberium. He was right about you being a complete pain in the ass, but maybe he had underestimated you.

By the time one of your adventures finally had you involved with the MI6, you had completely forgotten about O’s existence. You hadn’t heard a word about him since that time he was video calling The Doctor. But it was normal. The Doctor wasn’t much of an open book, she didn’t usually talk about her past or about her other friendships, and you had learned not to ask. It was no surprise that she didn’t talk you about him.

Besides, you were too busy visiting other planets on a daily basis, you didn’t exactly have time to think about the handsome stranger you had talked to once through a screen. You hadn’t even met him in person.

It wasn’t until The Doctor mentioned him to another agent called C that he popped back into your head.

Apparently, O had had a fall out with the rest of MI6 and was working from an unknown location. Well, unknown to his fellow agents. The Doctor just sent him a voice message and in a few seconds she got back a picture… Of a fish? As weird as it was you had to admit you had seen way weirder things with her.

Agent C was giving you more information on the case he was assigning you when he suddenly got shot by a sniper.

You and the rest of your friends were quick to run to the TARDIS, being as fast as you could on your escape. If someone had murdered one of the leaders of MI6 just like that, you sure were an easy target. When you all got inside of the safety of The Doctor’s ship, she started to process that picture of a fish she had showed you earlier. As it turned out, the picture was in fact a coded message. Some coordinates, actually.

But there was another concern hunting you and your friends right know. An antropomorphic figure made of light was trying to get into the TARDIS, and not even The Doctor knew what it was. Luckily, she did know how to get temporally rid of it. After doing so, she started to organize you all, sending Yaz and Ryan to investigate Daniel Barton, CEO of VOR and taking you and Graham with her to meet O.

Well, this day was getting more and more interesting.

In just a few seconds after dropping your friends in San Francisco, you were in Australia. Following right behind The Doctor, you just looked around you, seeing that you were in the middle of the desert. And right in front of you was O, with two other agents. He was shorter than you had imagined him, but still quite attractive.

“I see you decoded the fish.” He greeted your friend with a smile, which she returned. “Fancy a cuppa?”

“Very much.” The Doctor gladly accepted his proposal. “Hello! This is my friend Graham, and I believe you already know Y/N.”

“O.” He introduced himself to Graham while politely shaking his hand.

“Sorry, you’re…?”

“O.” The agent repeated several times until Graham figured out that ‘O’ was in fact his name. “It was… A joke, by the others at MI6.” He began to explain. “Whenever I came into the room to meet C, he’d go ‘Oh God…’” You laughed at his anecdote while shaking his hand. “It sort of stuck and now I’ve owned it.” He smiled at you as he finished telling his story.

He then proceeded to introduce the two agents from the Australian secret service that were with him, but The Doctor didn’t seem really interested in them. “Can I take a nose around your gaff?” She asked and took off without even giving O time to answer. Graham followed her closely.

“Is she always that spontaneous?” He asked you.

“You get used to it.” You assured him in response as you watched your friend get inside of the house. Both you and O started to make your way inside too. “It’s nice finally meeting you in person.”

“You too.” O dedicated you a warm smile.

“I wish we met under better circumstances though.” You added, nervously putting some hair behind your ear. “You know, one in which aliens weren’t threatening to end the world as we know it.”

“Well, you’ve got to admit there’s some thrill about this whole situation.” He said, looking in your direction.

“That’s true.” Your smile grew bigger. “But there always is when you travel with The Doctor.”

“How so?” He raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

“Things tend to get chaotic real quick.”

“And is that a bad thing?” You saw him smiling at you and looked away, feeling a bit embarrassed.

“Not necessarily.” You shrugged. “I kind of like chaotic.”

“It must be really interesting travelling with The Doctor.” O pointed out with the biggest smile on his face. “Maybe you could tell me about your adventures with her sometime.”

“Sure, as long as you tell me a few stories about your work on MI6.” As you both reached the door of his house, he opened it, letting you go first.”

“Oh, I mainly worked as an analyst.” He clarified. “But if you’re still interested I can show you some of my work.” You gave him a kind smile as you nodded, truly interested about his work. “Would you also like a cup of tea?”

As crazy as it seemed, The Masters’ TARDIS liked you. Well, you supposed she did. Maybe she just wanted you to figure out a way to cure The Master, your weren’t really sure. The point was that she was being very helpful, in opposition to the Time Lord.

While she helped you find The Master’s library and even created a room for you to rest in, The Master spent every waken second trying to push you over the limit, to make you give up. He didn’t have the slightest hope that you could find a way to help him. Mainly because not even he could find a cure for himself, so he knew there was no way you could come up with a realistic, practical solution.

If he couldn’t think of anything to get out of that situation, no one could. No stupid human pet of The Doctor’s could be able to outsmart him. He would rather die than to see that happen. And it was most likely to end that way.

Yet, nothing he could do or say seemed to persuade you to drop everything and leave. And it was not because he wasn’t trying. With the little strength he still had, he tried to torment you time and time again. Maybe if he had been in a better state, he could have gotten you to leave, but he barely could stand on his feet for more than a few minutes and you didn’t seemed to be bother at all by him.

Soon, The Master had fallen asleep again. The Cyberium could end him instantly, but it had chosen to torture him, to give him a slow and painful death. You thanked the quietness that his nearly coma state brought as you finally put yourself to study. You needed to know what the Cyberium was exactly, how it had been created, and most importantly, how to kill it without hurting its host.

Unluckily for you, the history of the Cybermen was surprisingly wide and the Cyberium was described more like an urban legend than something real. According to the only paragraph that talked about it, the Cyberium was the essence of all the cyberknowledge personified and the Cyberman that hosted it would be the one that lead its race to the total control of the universe.

“You must be the most irritating human to ever exist.” You heard The Master’s voice as he did his best to keep himself awake, the Cyberium attacking every cell of his body. You kept reading, ignoring him completely as you waited for him to fall asleep again. You had learned that that was the best way to deal with him. “No wonder The Doctor left you to die on Gallifrey.”

Those words hit closer than they should have.

“I told her to.” Without looking away from the book in your hands, you reminded him.

“It’s true.” He admitted, turning his head to you. “But she didn’t put much of a resistance, did she? You just told her to leave and she did.” The Master sadistically laughed. “If you ask me, she was taking an enormous weight off of her shoulders. And she was well aware of it.”

You could feel tears forming in your eyes as he spoke, but you did your best not to give him the reaction he was looking for. The Master was playing tricks with you and you couldn’t let yourself fall for them.

“I mean, she didn’t hesitate to leave you not only to die, but to die with me,” He continued, pushing harder. “knowing what I am capable of.”

“Are you capable of shutting up?” Your voice came out showing you more vulnerable than you would have wanted to sound.

“You don’t know The Doctor like I do.” He laughed again, even though it made every muscle on his body ache. “Not even she knows herself like I do. You were a burden. You had been for a long time, but she didn’t know how to get rid of you. Guess I made her a favor.” The Master observed you closely, waiting for you to finally melt down. “I know you felt it too. You were dispensable. The weakest link. That’s why it was so easy for me to approach to you as O.” You instantly stood up, closing the book with a loud noise and wiping away the few tears that were running down your face. “I didn’t have to do anything, and you were at my feet. You would have done anything I would have asked you to, wouldn’t you?”

“Shut up.” You demanded, taking your things and making your way to the interior of the TARDIS.

“Where are you going?” The Master asked when he saw you taking the book with you. He was hoping he had finally pushed you hard enough for you to leave, but apparently not.

“Somewhere where I can work in silence.” You held the book close to your chest, The Master sighing at your relentless attitude.

“Why won’t you give up?” He asked, his voice making you stop instantly in the place you were standing. “What do I have to do for you to leave me alone?”

“I don’t give up.” You simply said after swallowing the lump in your throat. “There’s only two things you can do to get rid of me, you either get better or you die. Whatever happens first.”

“I should have left you on Gallifrey.” His eyes were full of hate as he watched you clean your tears away. Human emotions were absolutely pathetic.

“Well, maybe you should have.”

“You know if I were in your position and you were the one dying, I would kill you myself.” His breathing was heavy, getting more upset by moments.

“I’m not you.” You reminded him. “The Doctor taught me to never give up and to help those in need, no matter what. Even if it’s you the one that needs help.” Your fingers dug on the book’s cover as you tried to relieve some tension. “I’m not doing this for you, and not even for her. I’m doing this for me, because these are my values.” You were about to leave the console room when you stopped again and looked The Master in the eye. “By the way, you have had several opportunities to kill me today and if I recall it correctly, all you did was get me out of the dying ruins of your home planet and bring me back to mine safe and sound. If you really mean to kill me, you’re doing a terrible job at it.”

The Master smiled as he watched you finally leave the control room. He didn’t know you had that in you.

The sun was rising outside and you had barely had a few hours of sleep.

It had been a crazy night, and not the good kind of crazy. It wasn’t every night that you were attacked by creatures made of light, you got to trap one to study them and then Yaz switched places with it. The Doctor was still trying to understand what they were and what they wanted, or how had they brought Yaz all the way from San Francisco to Australia in the blink of an eye. It had been a long night that had created more questions and given you no answers.

You had been talking to Yaz for a while, trying to be there for her as she told you about the place those creatures had taken her to. She seemed quite unsettled and, sadly, you couldn’t do much to calm her down. After a little chat with her on the front porch of O’s house, you decided to leave her some space and get back inside.

“Good morning.” You heard O’s voice coming from his little kitchen as he made some tea. “Want some?”

“Morning, and yes please.” You sat close to him, rubbing your eyes as a yawn escaped your lips. “I could really use one cup of tea now.”

“Did you get any sleep at all?” He asked in a worried tone as he poured some water to boil.

“Like an hour or two.” You held your head between your hands, elbows on the wooden table, as you did your best to stay awake. You raised your look to him, worried about him. O wasn’t used to all this craziness, so you couldn’t imagined what that night had been like for him. “How about you?”

“About the same.” O sat across from you while he waited for the water to start boiling. “Is your friend okay?”

“She will be.” You assured. “She’s one of the strongest people I know.”

“And how are you?” That question caught you by surprise.

“I’m holding up.” He looked at you with sympathetic eyes as he heard your answer. “I have seen a lot of things, but never something like these creatures.”

“That makes two of us, if it’s any consolation.” O said with a kind smile. “Apart from The Doctor, this is the first time that I see extraterrestrial live right in front of my own eyes.”

“It’s a bit crazy, isn’t it? Everyone denying the possibility of life on other planets when there’s actually so many species you can’t even know them all.” You sighed, immersed in your own thoughts. “For all we know, human race could have come from out of space too.”

“I’ve been gathering alien evidence half of my life.” He told you, looking at you in the eye. “And everyone treated me like I was crazy.”

“3 years ago I would have probably treated you like that too.” You admitted, remembering your life before meeting The Doctor. You had always been kind of skeptical, but your life had changed for the better when you found out about everything that was really out there. “But joke’s completely on all of us now.”

O laughed slightly as he got up to the sound of boiling water. He poured the hot liquid into two cups, handing you one. You thanked him with a kind smile.

“Why did you move to Australia?” You asked him as you stirred the sugar in your tea with a spoon. “Couldn’t you work from London or anywhere else in the UK?”

“I never really liked the city.” He confessed, taking a sip of his own cup. “Too many noise. I work better from here, in the middle of the desert.”

“Doesn’t it get lonely?” You asked without thinking about it. When you realized how your question might be perceived, you looked down at your cup and took a sip, trying to hide your embarrassment.

“Sometimes.” He replied, his smile not leaving his face. “But it’s for the best.”

The light was starting to come through the windows as you both had breakfast in silence. If it had been any other person, you would have felt awkward being in silence for so long. You would had probably forced yourself into some small talk to try and fill the silence. But for some reason you felt comfortable there with him. Just having breakfast without saying a word.

“How long have you known The Doctor, Y/N?” He asked you when you had both finished your cup of tea.

“It’s hard to tell.” You sighed, trying to calculate how long had passed in your own personal time line. “Things don’t happen in a straight line inside the TARDIS. Time loses all of its meaning.” O looked at you with questioning eyes. Maybe The Doctor hadn’t told him about time travel, you thought. “How much do you know about all of that?”

“A bit.” He shrugged. “Our paths crossed very briefly once when she was a man.”

“What do you mean ‘when she was a man’?” Disbelieve took over you as you tried to understand what was going on.

“Oh.” The smile left momentarily his face. “She never mentioned that?”

“I didn’t know she meant that for real.” The both of you laughed. “With her, you never really know when she’s being serious.”

“Her species has this ability, a way to escape death.” O began to explain you. “When their life is in danger, they change every cell of their body, giving them a random new face. They call it ‘regeneration’” Amazed, you opened your eyes as he spoke. “I’ve been trying to gather information about her too.”

“I kind of want to know what she looked like as a man.” You bit your lip as curiosity aroused in you.

“I was able to get some photos of some of her previous regenerations.” He stood up and walked to a shelf in which he had a bunch of papers piled up. “This whole shelf is full with all the information I could gather of her. There are a lot of inconsistencies, but it’s still really, really interesting” You looked at the documents almost like if you were starving and they were a delicious buffet placed in front of you. “Do you wanna have a look?” You energetically nodded as he offered you a way to satisfy your curiosity.

O took the folders and brought them to you, letting them on the table and taking the empty cups to the sink. You grabbed one of them and opened it to find the photo of a man in a brown suit next to a young blonde woman.

“Wow.” You couldn’t hold back the exclamation as you eyed the page in front of you. “Is this what she looked like when you met her?” You asked O as you pointed the man in the picture.

“Not exactly.” The agent shook his head. “She has had many faces. That is just one of them.”

You kept reading the papers in front of you, finding out more about The Doctor’s past. There was a lot of facts about The Doctor that you could have never imagined, so many names, so many organizations related to your friend. You were half through the first page when you stopped reading and put the paper away.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be reading this.” You sighed, feeling guilty. “Isn’t this like a violation of her privacy?”

“No.” He was quick to respond. “In fact, it’s not that you should, you must know all you possibly can about her. You travel with her, you risk your life every day for her. How can you let your life in hands of someone who hides her past from you?” Your gaze switched between the papers in front of you and O’s eyes, thinking about his words. “Do you know where she’s from?”

“She’s from…” You hesitated, not being able to remember the name at first. “Gallifrey. She has mentioned it sometime.”

“What do you know about Gallifrey? Have you ever been?” He asked you, his tone more inquisitive than it usually was.

“Not much. Just what The Doctor said about it.” You recalled the few conversations with your friend. “I believe she mentioned there are two suns instead of just one… But The Doctor never took us there.”

“I think I might know why.” O handed you another file about your friend’s home planet. You eyed it. “It was placed in the constellation of Kasterborous and it was home to the Time Lords, The Doctor’s species.”

“Was?” You asked when you realized that he was using the past tense.

“Something terrible happened to Gallifrey.” He pointed the picture of an enormous dome in an orange sky. “There was a war and–“

“Come on, you two. Everyone out front. Lots to chat up on.” The Doctor surprised you by coming out of the TARDIS. You quickly dropped the sheet in your hands and hid it in its folder. “I made ice tea. Possibly.”

Holding the large glass in her hands, she made her way out of the house as you and O rushed to clean up the mess of documents on the table. You helped him put the folders back to the shelf where they were before.

You were making your way outside when O stopped you by grabbing your wrist. He leant over your ear, careful not to be overheard by anyone.

“I’ll tell you the rest when we get a chance of being alone.”

#Doctor Who #Doctor Who fanfic #Dhawan!Master #Dhawan!Master x reader #Dhawan!Master x you #Dhawan!Master fanfic #The Master #Master x reader #Master x you #dhawan master x reader #dhawan master x you #Sacha Dhawan #Sacha Dhawan x reader #Sacha Dhawan x you #Doctor Who imagine #DhawanMaster imagine #Dhawan master imagine

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wildwoods1 · 3 years

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Honoring the Sadhus who volunteered to be photographed and painted as a gift toward our Consciousness.

BLUE RAY: LEVEL 1 He was from another century, loincloth, and all. He appeared in the meditation as if Allen had slipped, tumbling from the stillness on his own. He did no such thing. This visitor was seeking him out and interrupting. It was important. It was LifeChanging. It was Blue, iridescent beams of Royal/Pthalo light filled the room!

“Dear Heart,” uncharacteristically, he addressed Allen with deep affection as well as respect. “I am here to bring you news of your unfoldment. I shall begin with our overall subject first. You are Blue Ray, this you know. You are also, however, a unique variety. You are Level 1.” Allen looked puzzled. He started to protest such a proclamation. The Sadhu continued “There are very few Blue Ray Level 1s, it is a rare type and one of the highest vibrations capable of incarnation in these dimensions as human.” Allen tugged at his beard, looked around the dim room now shy of light since the sun had just set. What was happening? What was he supposed to do with this information. He took a breath and looked back at the man sitting in front of him in mid-air, beaming from ear to ear, and saying “It is joyous, is it not?!” Before Allen could utter a word his new companion revved up once again to tackle the challenge at hand. “Rare, very rare! You see, if there are too many level 1 Blues on planet at the same time it will create a severe imbalance for the human population. The Stronger humans who are most likely to reach further in their Spiritual Journey could choose not to bother as much because they can now sense there may be no need; there are already more Blue 1s and the effort is not required! Psychological diminishment! Tsk tsk,” he shook his head, “we simply cannot have this. There are other reasons, to be sure. For now, let me say that there are many reasons for you to deny this possibility. I understand. You are concerned that you could not in any way be qualified! Yes?! “YES!” Allen blurted out as the panic began a slow rise from the pit of his stomach. “Most assuredly and unequivocally YES!!!! ….Oh God, yes!” he ended in a whisper. “Now, now, my son, you are in good hands. Truly, you have nothing to fear at all. While I may not seem to be much by human standards…. I am more than capable of your protection under any circumstance.” Allen stopped wiping his face and looked up. The man….the being, well, he was glowing softly, brilliantly. His voice, when next it crossed those few feet between felt like a silk cape with shearling collar around him and even though it was ‘only’ energy, it was the most comforting thing he had ever felt in his life. “Calm, my son. Allow me to continue.” “Blue Ray ones have a similar foundation but are all different. They carry a wide range of expressions. But what they carry in common is a unique assignment, each one to his own. They are highly sensitive, tend to withdraw from others and even though it is an uncomfortable life, they are ever-loving, with hints of purity, high creativity and a rather delightful cosmic hint of madness! They are not meant for the life of others. They do know anger and depression, whatever befalls within the human. They are here to serve in ways others are not. For example, while everyone is focused now on reaching into deeper work and connections, Blue Ray 1s are based in deeper connection, not merely developing the capacity but their very presence, along with others, helps create the depth itself. They tend to take on some of the more severe clearings of the collective and most will have difficult burdens from which to rise. Their sensitivities can be deceptive! They may have scars that make the immediate recognition of them quite difficult. You assumed you could not be such a being because you do not see yourself as this level of ability/capacity/mastery! This is truth.” “Yes, it definitely is!” Allen, not wishing to be rude, held back his auto-pilot protests. “That is because you have not been awakened. I see how humans regard this notion of being awakened: it is the means by which they become aware of the Ascension Process. Blue Ray 1s were born to Ascension process, yet, and I say this with caution and no care to inflate any assumptions, have been kept in a semi-stasis until time for the individual’s particular manner of extensive awakening. In order to qualify, you must complete much your personal clearing and then reset the extra

burdens you also carried. You will no longer “carry for the tribe.” (taking on some of the collective work directly) This must happen prior to certain self-revelations. Once completed, you will be introduced to your deeper skills and capacities, en toto.” “In your case, you are older, one of the very first. You were sent earlier than the Indigos to help clear/stabilize, and, should, if all goes well, have the blessing of being part of the Collective Rising. It will be harder for you, but you can do this. You can awaken in a way you feel inside of you yet never believed would actuate itself. At least not here….now….as this you!” “I will give you are few days to mull this over. And if you doubt this, well, what harm could it do to simply look for both me and the possibilities in the event something occurs that seems to overwhelm? We will be with, I assure you!” “Dear Allen, yours has not been an easy path. You are who you are and because of many factors, you never quite found purchase in your own power. Now you can. But give yourself this gift: know in your deep humility, your heart and soul are the breath of the planet, of this galaxy, this universe. Know that your hints of purity are being shaded from sight, your Love, which already shines bright, will rise to that of the Sun. You, my dear, beautiful Soul, along with all who follow the Light, are the templet and the gauge which the Great Ones said would come. You are not replacing the Buddha or the Christ…. however, given the depth of your true humility, you are their direct child and will soon realize with the Oneness of ALL, the fullness of them in you! We are the Oneness and in us, all Love shall shine. Because of the work of every soul, all can meet and Be Light. The Blue Ray 1s require the work of every other being to manifest their assignments. EVERYTHING IS INTERDEPENDENT. No one is of any greater status or value. So you can relax all of that foolishness thinking you are not “good enough” to fulfill such a work as this. It is yours because of that which the Source has used to accomplish the work, utterly free of ego. You are the sum of your parts and both the sum & those parts (the totality of your being) are now required. Time to collect all your bits and pieces to offer to the cause. It is as simple as that. IF any felt superior, their capacities would fade, leach out into the sand. That soul would lose their place and be replaced by another ready to fulfill the task. It would mean the result would not be the same! It would change with every adjustment the Whole is required to make. Not that those who fall would not be mourned, but the ego rulership has no place here. It cannot survive and is indicative of work left undone. But we are blessed with energy to smooth the way, as long as we accept the challenges, releasing the fears as we go, we will know the blessing of realization, Ascension. Ones know better than anyone that energy shy of the true depth required for certain projects of consciouHonoring the Sadhus who volunteered to be photographed and painted as a gift toward our Consciousness means the dream is not possible. They also know that without Infinite Joy, nothing will prosper! And that is the difference that the Blues make! The sense of All being great joy! They understand it in stillness and they know it in chaos in ways that penetrate not only the rabble, but the unspeakable center of the Pearl. They understand this and treasure it as an integral part of the depth required to meet transformation on every level of existence. It is why they can plunge into that great spring of Life and feel all the pain, rising again with a kind of interminable vigor that knows no end! That is its own joy! You, my dear being, known as Allen, and every other one of your kind, is privileged to tend the Spirit of the ones transitioning into the higher realms. You know better than most, without Joy, Light cannot be Love. So allow that to grow in you, my son. Allow Joy to lead, It will be as if your Soul has been partially holding its breath waiting for you

to come home to yourself, fearlessly and whole! It will now Breathe!! It will come forward in you in ways it has forever withheld its dearest expressions. You know now that what I am saying is not merely pretty words! They are truth. They are real---as are you! Pretty is nice. Always dive under the pretty—you know this, but I am saying that when your capacities begin to surface, never blink!!” he nearly shouted, which startled Allen. “See them all as nothing but the next step and the next. Never be impressed with what you can suddenly do— none is all you, it is all of us being through you!!! Think well on this!!! All of us through you! No ego can be heard/felt over such a din!! Imagine, the energy from much of the universe pouring through a few billion humans! And now we reach the crux of my mission today:…” The seeming man from ancient jungles of India uncrossed his legs and stood, walked around the illusion of a room and sat once again in the exact same space…different Now. “I have shifted this…you call it a Timeline? Yes, well, it is a different Now and you will learn from this place. You understand? Do you?” Allen’s mind, busy trying to run alongside the planet as she spun, looked up with a face that was understanding, then bewildered. “You are a being of many planes and dimensions. Sometimes, especially during transitions, your stability in one dimension is unreliable. I merely switched your timeline, usually adopted by consciousness, to a frequency more in harmony with your new material and the consciousness growth currently taking place. It was necessary for you to become aware of it for the information to find purchase in your psyche. To make it stick.” Allen nodded to indicate he had followed the explanation. “Let us imagine you have realized your new tasks and abilities, you are confronted with a particular challenge that requires, as you see it, immediate action before you are certain you are fully prepared to manage the work, but you have to try. Here is the process with which it will happen: you will be attuned to Universal, Divine, Holy (or whatever designation you give equivalent interpretation) of such energy. That is your connection. Then you will act according to the will of what you refer to as Highest Self dedicated to said Universal energy. This sublime Union has already taken place. The Highest Self and Universal Divine energy are already One. They have merely been waiting for you. At this point, you have been dedicating every cell and thought to this purpose. Your higher awareness practically leaks out of your cells and ears, you have light coming from your hands every moment. (he giggled) It is not a state of perfection. It is, however, sufficient to the immediate task and your thoughts have now reached a high neighborhood of expression (more often than not). It will be the Universal energy that actually accomplishes the work, of course. As with healers, you are a conduit. But now, there is greater consciousness in the Universal energy than before. It will be this which guides you even more precisely than your Guides do now. This energy is the sum total of All and it is developing such awareness as even humans can understand. It always has been this, it is simply evolving as you do! But it is Omnipresent and now grows in what you may call “both” directions”! It is easier for the lower vibrations to read some of its wisdom than it ever was before. To be a conduit of this energy, you must allow yourself to become this energy! Become, Be, Express and allow the fullness of it as you never have before. And isn’t it a gift that every time you surrender utterly to this energy, you become more of it. You evolve beyond what you were a moment ago! Is this not an extraordinary process!??? Is this not the high reaches of Joy!!!???? And by realizing the energy that passes through you is literally ALL OF US passing through you, imagine what your consciousness could do with this. There is no stopping anything now, if you are amenable. It is up to you. You may choose this version of your path, or you may

refuse. You will be given another chance, as many as it takes, though none quite as thrilling as this one. THIS Earth, this time, this now, is a unique process and it will never need repeating again. My advice, my dear, beautiful Soul, is to make the most of it while you can! It is GLORY! It is JOY! ……………….Any questions?” “What do I call you?” Allen asked a little bewildered and looking for whatever replaced his reason. “And yes—I do have a question.” He reached out to the napkin he had used earlier and once again wiped his face. Took a sip of water… a deep breath …before he looked back at the Sadhu. “The Sadhu laughed outright. You may call me Murma,” he replied with a crafty chuckle. Don’t worry about the meaning. It is nonsense. I am nonsense! Most other of the Sadhus find me outrageous!” “Thank you, Murma, thank you for a means to address you. My question”…. Allen’s voice drifted off…. “Uh, no. Well, Yes, I mean … here’s the thing: You are saying I should allow Joy to lead. But all that I have studied from teachers tends to encourage the student to release all thought, feeling, any indication of self from their contemplations, meditation, ways of thinking. They seem to consider something like Joy entirely too alluring or distracting to allow true stillness. So I don’t quite see what you want me to do.”

My dear Allen, do you know why there are Gurus and Lineages? Because each sees the Path to Realization as close to the individuals’ Soul as possible. No two people are going to have the exact same journey. It is very simple. It’s a custom job! Every step, every pause, every breath! Some will be their Soul through asceticism, some will be a beacon through the deepest love beyond the human references. Some will laugh, some will suffer beyond reason. For YOU the path is Joy. (It is not wasted distraction.) You will be, as a level 1 Blue, a being who plows the road. All of you are that. In your case, tending to the Spirits of those around you, your task is to help them sense…SENSE: that means silence, stillness, pure, focused in JOY! You do not think of Joy, you allow stillness in the silence. That is accomplished by your method to realize it. I am suggesting you find the doorway through the Heart, enter, and then release all else. Use all the discipline you feel appropriate. Then, once you have recharged and reconnected in a high frequency, realize that the way of expressing that Heart & Soul is JOY! Think of it as a cousin to Bhakti Yoga. Find your way through the disciplines. Understand? Try non-being! Work with it. The journey is accomplished through the heart to get to and release Soul from degenerating energy. Joy is an expression of Love! It will be the new fuel for the rocket!!!! It will be what powers the rocket they use to transcend conditioning and pain! They may arrive at this through Love, through Joy, Bliss, Creativity, Communication and many other endless means. But it will always be the Soul, speaking through the Heart for you! As much as you feel bonded to the intellect, you will Rise with JOY!!!!” He finished with a flourish and allowed a slight bounce of his body seated there in the air. His voice tilted upward like a bird, “UNDERSTAND???” “Yes, Murma. Allen closed his eyes as the power of these thoughts entered him like a waterfall. Sacred Water pouring in. Sacred Love pouring. Sacred pouring. It was all true and right. It was what he deeply wanted and had tried to change because he thought he was wrong, that he was not living up to the deepest, the most spiritual path! Waste, indeed! He felt the bliss as his gratitude overflowed on the return journey out/IN to the Sadhu… “I am already in you, dear Allen. I will be there and I will be here….I will be. No limits. Waste no time wondering where I am. I am ever, not where. There is no when. I AM. His voice trailed off as he dissolved from view, whispering “I am ever with you…”, the blue lights fading from the seemingly empty air of his room. Allen was in a state of shock. No thought. Nothing happening except on a very deep level, he could feel something like an origami paper bird….slowly, deceptively fast yet ever imperceptibly unfolding itself. There were no sounds, even if it seemed there should be, there was nothing to indicate anything beyond .....this. And yet…it was happening….. Now.

#Blue Ray #personal realization #Ascension Lightworker

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skgway · 4 years

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1832 Nov., Mon. 12

9 1/4

12 1/2

Pickles came at 9 1/4 which roused me up – To see him after breakfast at Lower place or he to call here again in the evening – Letter 3 pages and ends from M– [Mariana] (Lawton) vide line 27 page 285. Inquiries about Miss W[alker]. Smokes what is going on. Writes with implied affection, true and great as that of former days. Is unhappy and carless off living long, and has made her will and …… the tears started to my eyes and all my own affection burst upon me again –

Breakfast at 10 40/.. with my aunt – George Robinson came almost immediately for near an hour – Settled with him for stone leading for James Smith’s road etc. – He proposed some means of getting rid of Lower Brea lane footpath – To see about another day –

Breakfast at 11 40/.. – Told my aunt of M– [Mariana]’s letter – Came to my room at 12 20/.. – Fire in my room and from 12 25/.. to note 2 pages of 1/2 sheet from Miss Walker at 1 10/.. in consequence of which off in 1/4 hour to Lidgate and there in 25 minutes –

Home again in 1/2 hour at 5 20/.. – At my desk in about 10 minutes – Wrote the last 1/4 of page 3, and the ends and under the seal and finished my letter to Breadalbane MacLean – Began yesterday – Thanks for her letter and the willows (sent off Monday 29th instant from Coll house)

"which I am very anxiously expecting, not only for their own sake, but because they are associated with many remembrances that I value most highly" –

Should have written some days ago, but waited in the hope of announcing the arrival of the cuttings – Shall write by tonight’s post to Glasgow to inquire about them – Bavardage amical – Wonder how her people did without her so long (5 weeks away)

"Your life is one continued benefit to them; and a five week’s arrear of such services is hardly to be made up" –

Sorry her father is so dead to the world and that Sir Hector’s health is so failing – Mention the death of old Lochiel on the 19th September – Only known to Lady S– [Stuart] on the 6th ultimo and not known to Vere on the 24th ultimo the date of her last letter to me (from Turin) – Hope

"if Lochiel is obliged to come over immediately surely V– [Vere] will remain with her friends till he can return for her – I should quite dread her being hurried across the alps at this season of the year …. You would all be pleased at dear Vere’s having got her rank – Surely, it has some value in a world of vanities like this" –

Civil congratulations on Mrs. Maclean’s being again about to increase her family and sorrow at Mrs. Hunter’s having lost her youngest daughter – The loss of my steward and my aunt’s suffering health have kept me so long here or I should have been on the continent again before this – But my aunt so very much recovered, no longer uneasy about her – She herself spirits me up to get off, and I hope to leave here about the end of January but all things here so uncertain never think much of plans very long beforehand – Kind regards to all I know "and believe me always very truly yours A Lister" –

Had written the following 2 1/4 pages to M– [Mariana] just before being off to Lidgate –

"Shibden Hall – Monday 12 November 1832

Mary! I have been late this morning, and have done nothing but see and speak to Marian, and breakfast, since reading your letter – It would be difficult to describe the effect it has upon me – It is many months since I have basked beneath the beam of happiness, and without courage to think of the past, or hope to calculate the future, I am attempting to answer your letter –

Your account of yourself unnerves me – I grieve over your leaving Lawton, and tho’ I could, and would, see good in your going to Leamington, if you would let me, I am now uneasy at the thought, and little out of sorts than you can be – The only thing I rest upon, is the manner in which you mention coming here for a few days –

It makes me fancy, nay almost hope, my scheme is not quite impossible – You would have been agreeably surprised, and satisfied to hear what Marian said about it – Say I am not well (God knows I am sick enough at heart) or, which is true, that I am in great perplexity, or that my aunt is poorly (tho’ she is very much better, and probably in no danger) or say what you please, but lose no time in coming to me for at least a few days –

I really do want to see you – I will take the carriage and meet you at Manchester – Do pray make an exertion and get off – At any rate, answer my letter by the second post after you receive it, and tell me if you cannot come off immediately – Nothing like the spur of the moment –

You will get my letter tomorrow afternoon – and, if your answer is off on Wednesday morning, at night on that day I may hear whether I may be off for you on Thursday or Friday morning at seven, or not – Bring merely a few things and yourself – I will take care of you from and to Manchester –

You will see from my manner of writing, that I am not likely to relax my interest while it is yet necessary to your happiness – Your pages of Saturday make me fancy, I may have been mistaken, and that, in the bitterness of disappointment and regret, I may have miscalculated what it was my interest and desire to estimate most correctly

This here written after dinner –

It is needless to write more – I shall anxiously and impatiently wait your answer – I would give worlds to hear of your being in better health and spirits – I had a letter from Eugénie last night – I consider her engaged; and she is to wait my orders till January –

I cannot enter upon the subject of my friend, as my aunt and sister laugh and call her – I am too much thinking of the interests of other days – Come if you can – You might be almost ride over to Manchester –

But cheer up, my dearest Mary – Time was when I had power to charm you into pleasure-stirring thought, and almost into happiness – I am what I was – And yet this power is gone, – Parted like Aynt never to return?

God bless you! The heart knoweth its own bitterness – ’Tis harder than you think to break the spell of twenty years – Entirely and very especially yours AL –

Sent off at 8 by John my letter to Miss Maclean of Coll, Coll house Aros North Britain and my letter to Mrs. Lawton Lawton Hall, Lawton, Cheshire and my letter to the “Reverend T. Ainsowrth, at Miss Bentley’s, 1 crescent, Salford, Manchester”

George Robinson then came and staid till 9 – Said Ramsden, now the constable of H–x [Halifax], bought the last ground sold adjoining my Northgate land at 11/6 [shillings/pence] a yard – and Stancliffe bought his ground fronting into Broad street the street given at 12 /. [shillings] or 12/6 [shillings/pence] a yard but then it was cleared, or sunk down ready for building –

Had seen Bates of Washer Lane who said that I might build a good corn mill at Mytholm with saw and goit and wheel and machinery for £1500 and might have 7 to 7 1/2 percent for my money tho’ people in general did not look for much for their money now –

Some man (Brook?) of Brighouse is letting a mill had 10 percent on his money for the 1st ten years, and then 5 percent rent afterwards – The Embargo on Dutch vessels has already made a great difference – Has stopt the German trade –

Went into the other room for 1/2 hour till 9 1/2 – π [Mariana] thought I might have gone from York to Langton

"Is it Miss Walker of Crow Nest with whom you seem so suddenly to have formed an alliance? You mention her twice as "my friend" and as you were not wont to bestow this title lightly I am puzzled to unders[t]and, not having ever heard you mention her name, how Miss W[alker] has so quickly succeeded in adding herself to the list so designated.

You say, "I shall be glad to hear your friend was etc. etc." I am glad to hear anything that gives you pleasure, and so far shall be pleased to hear all possible good of Miss Walker, but as I don't remember ever having seen her.

She must be satisfied with secondhand interest for I cannot fancy her at all one of those who could herself awaken it. So far as her better health can contribute to your comfort, I rejoice that it is likely to improve and hope by this time she has somewhat recovered the loss of her particular friend" –

You say ‘I always tell you how much better Mr. Lawton is,’ because you always ask me. In bodily health he is certainly better than I have known him for years, but in mind and temper he is infinitely worse. As he improves I fall off, and I have been weak enough to fret and discomfort myself about this Leamington plan until I have almost made myself ill –

M– [Mariana] in very bad spirits about going to Leamington – "and if I could get to you, I should come for consolation" – Should be glad to spend a few days with me but does not know how it can be managed –

Watson more philosophical than π [Mariana], thinks she shall get all her mistresses things off to a place of safety

"Made my will the other day, and told Watson where to find it – I do not fancy, my dearest Fred, that my health or happiness will claim your attention 20 years longer, so dont relax your interest while it is yet necessary to my happiness. I live in so much discomfort that it cannot be expected that I should covet living forever”

Concludes with

God bless you Fred. Whatever I have said or may say, trust me, there is not much warmer affection bestowed upon you than that which flows from the heart of yours, very entirely, Mariana –

Poor π [Mariana].

Vide line 4 of today – The following is Miss W[alker]s note

I have received a letter, which you shall see, but we must meet on different terms. Oh that I had taken you at your word last Monday, and as you said finished the matter on that day. I should then have spared you this additional bitterness.

I did hope when my word was once given to you that I should have felt at rest and satisfied, but in reflecting on all you have said and trying to turn it to my own advantage I cannot satisfy my conscience, and with such sufferings as I have endured since Wednesday, I feel I could not make you happy. That I should only bring misery upon you, for misery I am sure it would be to you to see me in the state I have been in for several days.

It was this sort of wretchedness that was expressed in my note on Friday. It was these miserable feelings that prompted my request

(that is I suppose for me not to send to York for the ring)

For your own sake, fly whilst it is yet in your power,

(I smile as I copy this sentence)

and believe that I will never intrude myself in any way upon you (unless it is your wish) whenever you revisit the neighbourhood.

Nov[embe]r 12 eighteen hundred and 32 writton [written] on the outside of this half sheet but under cover,

Read this alone

–

Off I set. Found her twenty minutes ago returned from Cliff hill and lying on the bed in tears. Kissed and soothed her till in a few minutes she went down to dinner. I remained in her room a little while read overMr. Ainsworth’s letter pathetic appeal to her feelings, making sure that she must be engaged and hoping that her choice would do all he, Mr. A[insworth], had hoped to have done.

Begging her to take the scrapbook as a friend and to condescend to write in answer to say if he might send the book and a narrative of himself. And if this business should be the death of him, he would only pray for blessings on her. But much bad tact and the whole ill done, tho better than I expected.

I went down before dinner was over. Agreeablized and amused both Miss Parkhill and Miss W[alker]. Then pretending business letters for Miss W[alker] to answer, Miss P[arkhill] left us, and I talked the poor girl into admiration of my conduct and into thorough approbation of my writing and sending (I wrote there and shewed it to her) the following to Mr. Ainsworth,

Lightcliffe Mon[day] 12 November eighteen hundred and 32.

Sir, I am commissioned by Miss Walker to acknowledge immediately the receipt of your letter of Saturday and to inform you that she has given me for the future, at least for some time to come, the surveillance of all her letters and parcels.

I am Sir your obedient servant, Anne Lister

Before writing I had asked if it was her heart that had changed towards Mr. A[insworth]. No, it was all her conscience. She owned she was not in a fit state to judge fairly and tho she had felt great affection for him, yet she did not know how it was, now all seemed dead. And if she felt at liberty, she did not know or think he was quite the man she should choose, in spite of the two great things, his being a clergyman and liking to live at Cliff hill.

‘Well, but what would you have done had I not been here?’ She said she would certainly have exone[ra]ted herself now. Would have gone to her aunt Ploughs in London and then brought down the Chapmans with her. She would not have been alone and would have kept out of the way and done the best she could.

This, said I, is enough. In answer to her note said I did not think her at liberty to marry anyone without my consent, in which she agreed, and that Wednesday had given me a power over her which I was determined to use in her service. She would be better by and by and more able to judge for herself, and then she might try again, but now I should not let her.

She might safely trust to my honour, but I pledged myself to nothing. She brightened up and owned how much better she was. I even brought away, with her full consent, and A[insworth]’s letter, and the book of prayers he gave her with a long rigmarole written on one of the flyleaves promising to get her another of the same from London, and on asking for my dirty night things to bring back she said no till I promised to send clean ones, and we parted very good friends.

She agreeing with me that she had reason to be thankful for the great event of Wednesday – Who could have anticipated such a result as the consequence of her note? She likes me. But my affections are not so fearfully and I irretrievably hers as she thinks, and I shall manage well enough, tho I really will do her all the good I can –

Writing the above till 11 – Came to my room at 11 20/.. and then wrote note to Mrs. Holroyde

“Mr. T. Holroyde Esquire Solicitor Halifax” in answer respecting the land at Northgate – Not in any way anxious to sell, but would sell lot A as marked in the plan if his client would give my price – But before naming any terms I wished to know what sort of buildings it was proposed to erect –

Wrote to desire Booth to get me Gilpins practical hints on Landscape gardening and theform of family prayers published by Hatchard and Son Piccadilly London 8 edition 1828. 12mo. [duodecimo] pages 159 and 2 bottles of Albin and Chapman’s chemical writing ink –

Did my clothes for the wash. Very fine November day – Fahrenheit 49º now at 11 40/.. – Sent off my note written last night to Mr. Holroyde –

[in margin] vide line 12 page 286

nothing like the spur of the moment

very fine November day

#anne lister #ann walker #shibden hall 1832 #mr. ainsworth #anne lister code breaker

4 notes · View notes

ytsthepodcast · 4 years

Text

Infinite Consciousness Could Be Predetermined As Energy (#20)

Infinite consciousness could be predetermined as energy, which is never created or destroyed, which kind of lends to reincarnation. But that might be another thing, but definitely what we do in life. And those set milestones, you know, get a diploma, get a job, get a big house, nice car. Having the awareness that there is life and certainly something that you can look into things.

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LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Is the D.A.R.E. program good for America's kids (K-12)?

The 5 big lies that D.A.R.E. told you about drugs.

David Icke

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SHOW NOTES

How our social upbringing plays an impact on complacency.

It's when you're at the lowest frequency and we're soaking up informationSubliminal messaging in television shows.

The problem with the DARE program.

And much more.

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Transcription

You have to have a definition of success. If I could go back, this does not mean things that I would go back for, but what do you do when you lose your purpose? It's okay to struggle. It's okay. That you're not okay. I am your host Craig for Vasa together. We will go on a journey. The show is all about surpassing our internal dialogue.

We discovering. The true identity in new foresight, we have a chance to make the world a better place for our chip. Starting leaning in the example today and become your future self tomorrow. If you can leave our viewers with some good advice to follow, what would you let them know? These things that you're afraid to do?

Go boom.

We're tapping into surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern-day and honing in on new foresight, methodologies, and clairvoyance. You never knew this is your transformation station with your host, Greg Abaza.

Then, the military gave me this fire inside, and lately, I just feel like I've been struggling to keep it ignited. I'm pretty sure it's probably not so much the fire that they instilled in you as much as it is the fire that you already have, that they help jar out. You already have that power and that flare and drive.

It's just that being put in that situation drew it out of you more than it would if you will like a regular citizen, the situation that I've noticed. Okay. I'm an introvert. However, you put me into a situation where I have men that are below me waiting to react to my command. I can, I completed one 80 into an extrovert, all a passion, anger, and frustration to deliver the very best I can be for them.

And that is wood is something that I don't because you want them to be able to obtain the frequency that you have got to. You want to draw out in them the same way things which are not in you. Which still means that they have that fire in them. But in this scenario with you as a leader, you draw that fire that's in them up to the surface.

And that is within the regimen. It's in command is taking orders and following tasks. Nate, welcome to your transformation station. How are you doing brother? I'm great. Thanks for having me. What's that with you when you do it right now. Now right now, I am trying to find out where I'm going in life. And, uh, obviously I'm doing this podcast with you.

It's really relatable. Like what are we doing with our lives? I was dunno, man. I fell out. Most people just go day to day and never think it through like wake up and react to the day rather than planning it out. Exactly. That's all people do. They let things happen in set up, making it happen themselves. What do you think that complacency it's taught through childhood up until school?

You know, the entire indoctrination of the system is kind of why most people are where they are now. So it's like an industrialized mindset. Hasn't left. That they're still, it still carries over because it's enforced through school such as we were taught to just obey, listen, learn, and then go to college, then get a job, get married, and then die.

Exactly. It is. This sounds miserable when you say it out loud, that is, that is. Um, it's what you make of it to a certain extent, but it starts from before school, you have parents, for example, that will transition the knowledge of the system. They were taught to their newborn baby babies to toddlers young children before they even get the chance to go to school or kindergarten or whatever it may be, keep going.

Okay. So for example, we are taught from an early age, that dreams are not real. So if a young child has a nightmare or a bad dream, it's put down to be in a boogie man under the bed, or, you know, Oh, it's just a dream. It wasn't real. But keep in mind, this is some of the most influential ears of your life.

It's when you're at the lowest frequency around that four Hertz range and we're soaking up information. And it's all coming from parents that have been felt through the system and a system through technology, through phones, tablets, TVs. Um, that has become a surrogate parent of sorts to children because they spend so much time watching television and soaking up all of this information.

Not realizing that it's not organic and it's preprogram prescheduled pre-installed is all decoded and they're recounted into saying a child's show. And then it's broadcast and the child was soaking up all that information, not knowing whether it's positive or negative because their young brains are too young and underdeveloped to process that from wrong.

So are you saying subliminal messaging in children's shows? Exactly. Can you elaborate on that? Um, I mean, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a child show, but the Simpsons have, let's say, had its fair share of interest in the media over the last few years. Um, they predicted a lot, you know, obviously Donald Trump's presidency, the nine 11 incident we had happened here in America, um, is being installed into personal homes.

You know, they've polluted to quite a lot of stuff. I can pick that up in a second. As far as indoctrinated of what our family values are, what our parents believe. How did you come to understand that is what's happening today in America? Well, here's the thing. Um, being able to, and being allowed to are two separate things.

Most children won't venture out because they're afraid of what their family, their peers or say. And when you're a young child, you have more fear of both Dorothy than certain people do as they progress through life. But. When all is said and done, the child was told not to put the curve and the hands in the cookie jar, normally of the children that end up doing it and have a face full of crumbs.

I don't know if you're familiar with the dare program. It stands for drug abuse, something. I can't remember the exact words I have to look that up and then I'll enter in the show notes, but the whole point of it is to teach children that drugs are bad. It's like, if you smoke weed, you are Brian to smoke other drugs.

You will pretty much, the backfire as well, they tried weed. Oh, I didn't end up homeless. Okay. So let's try it. Let's try some heroin. Let's try some, let's try some crack. It just kept going. And they were like, well, fuck, they didn't plan that. So would it relate to what you're saying? Or is this a completely deeper topic that I'm going on too?

So I think with drugs is subjective to an addictive personality and it depends on why someone would use weed, um, would lean into whether they were more prone to, or not try other drugs, have a harder, more chemical substance. Is let's face it, not everyone that smokes cannabis ends up being a method.

It's just not known plus cannabis hasn't as far as I'm still aware, ever had a recorded history of death in human history. So, and obviously math, cocaine, heroin opium, all of these other things they can kill and they have, and they will, I think the tobacco industry. Is also fighting that, wow, it's not death from a cigarette.

It's cancer that is caused by proxy. Yes. Cell killing people left-right. And center every day. Doesn't change. Let's go back. You've said the child being brought up at a certain frequency. What do you mean by frequency? So when you are born and you're out of the worm, As, you know, a child's head is not the same size as an adult head, which means, you know, the brain is softer and more vulnerable, I guess, to young babies.

That's why, you know, people take extra care with babies over a 13-year-old boy, for example. Um, and with that, The brain, as it evolves and grows gains mass, as well as soaking up all this information. And so I guess the frequency that I was pertaining to is when you are a certain age between. One and four you're around a lower Hertz frequency range, um, like radio waves for G wifi, um, and information that you process through the senses.

You know, the smell, touch, airing, taste, all of this pertains to what a child will learn. So basically. If they're exposed to the good things that those senses can pick up, then they're going to have a headstart over someone who is born into negativity. I'm a broken home. Uh, parents are, it did to a substance of some kind, um, abused being shown.

Some things on television aren't appropriate for that age range. But most importantly, I think it's what the child sees outside of the home as well because that's another thing that they decode different than say, someone of older age, because someone that say 13, that's been to school and being a part of the programming.

We'll see. Mainly the programming outside of the score outside of the family hub. It's. Pre-installed whereas a young child, they don't have a bad experience with the outside world and they haven't been indicted translated yet. So they decode it differently than someone older say, decode, I'm referring to the way they perceive things.

The way they look at the world and everything in it. They look at the world in a more your perspective, something that caught my ear. Uh, it was, uh, Broke up was prime. It made me want to think of prime, a decode Prince sold. Maybe these children are being primed or something it's preemptive. Yes. Yeah. Now, what do you think people in societies actually being primed for?

To answer. Some of this is to open up a real big hole and it's kind of endless. So you have to first acknowledge the separation of self and everything else that isn't the self. So when you say what splits up a person's life, pretty much from their true calling, you have. You know, for me, Nate, that works at the store and it's Nate at the store.

That's what people say. But the real stuff isn't even bound to Kara tourist steaks or the true South. Isn't the body I'm in. It's more of infinite consciousness now. Yeah. Again, I've been inspired by David Ike for years. And a lot of this, I have picked up from him and when I was younger, I really didn't understand it.

But nowhere near as much as I'm starting to now. And he just described the life that we lead as an experience, we are infinite consciousness, living, and experience, and infinite, conscious snares could be predetermined as energy, which is never created or destroyed. Which kind of lends to reincarnation, but that might be another thing, but definitely what we do in life.

And those set milestones, you know, get a diploma, get a job, get a big house, nice car, have a family and kids that are nice. And that's certainly something that is good and you can look into it, but the true meaning of life and this is where it gets kind of dark there. Isn't one. It is purely what you make of a miraculous existence that you've been thrown into because no one's ever asked to be born.

They just are. But the energy for that existence is drawn from somewhere. Yes. There's conception, childbirth, all the Scientifics that you can apply to it. But if you look so much. Deeper than what may as science and that alone has a lot of gravitas. Me as science. Science is a base Foundry for everything pretty much.

But if you look further than science and just, you know, an egg or sperm and, you know, contraceptive, not contraception, um, conceiving, then you really start to look way deeper, a lot deeper. Like the chicken before the egg, which came birth and still no one really has the definitive answer to that thing.

Now that is really interesting in who is David Eick. David Ike is someone that actually was born and raised, not too far from where I lived in England. A car thinks quite off the top of my head where it's from. It might have been, sorry, maybe Norfolk. But I was born in Leicester, share, raised in a little town called Burbage.

And I think the sky was like maybe an hour or two in a car away from where I live my whole life growing up. So now it just took a wild turn. What are you doing in America? So I actually met a girl that I knew online, did the whole internet date in thing. And between her and my wanting to leave England because of everything I had seen that growing up and I felt like there was never really a good Avenue for me to branch out into not many job opportunities, really, not a lot of anything.

There are all the manufacturing jobs were closing down because England had been in a recession for many years. And there was just no room for growth there. So between meeting her and the potential of life over here and my wanting to leave, that was kind of where that came from. Do you tell me you met a girl off tender protocol now it was back in 2013, 2014?

I believe to leave England. Yeah, the pursuit of happiness. I guess. So you, you don't have any family here, you met a girl online and you just said you're the one I'm I'm a nappy. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. It was, uh, she, uh, she came to visit England before we left. Wow. Yeah. She originally went to Wales and then came them, I say, over to England, depending if you're wild shot, now it's the same place.

But, um, yeah, when we got together and did our little thing and you know, and we, I came over on a visa originally and then, uh, transitioned through that, paid my dues to the government, got an old uncle. Sam's got to have his current right. And, uh, basically here I am still living in America and all my paperwork up to date.

Don't come to get me and we are all good. So we did you come here on a temporary visa for a little bit, and then somehow had to go back and then the chick that you're seeing go back to Anglin. And then from there, you decided to. So originally how that was meant to play out as I was meant to go back after six months and it never happened because we got married.

Yeah. And in the state of Missouri, if you do that, it waivers the visa. Apparently, this sounds like one big green card thing going on here, but it's not a problem. Let's, let's rewind. And let's what got you into understanding how our minds pick up neuro. Would that be the frequency in our brains that is being delivered out?

And how did you come upon this information? I think I figured it out at a very young age, probably around. Doris says four or five. And basically what that pertains to was I looked at things differently than all the others is in my classes. And I'm not really sure why, but they were so focused on doing this paperwork and pleasing the teacher.

And I would just sit there thinking about all the things taken in the day before, or. You know, little things, you know, like out of the window in the school. And I guess that's one of the reasons why they labeled me as like special needs kid in school is they put me on a statement soon after I didn't really perform to their standard in the classroom.

And, uh, it kinda just snowballed from there, but I was never really into the whole, you know, Being a part of the mainstream, even as a little child, I didn't really know what it was back then, but I knew it didn't feel right. And like, guess everything I did from that point on was more self-discovery than letting myself be in a cog in the system.

When you say self-discovery, were you something that, that happened later on in life and you kind of just blown with the system, but lived in a different realm? Perse, you know, for me, Nate, that works at the store and it's Nate at the store, that's what people say. But the real self isn't even down to characteristics of the true self isn't, the body I'm in, it's more of infinite consciousness now.

Yeah, again, I've been inspired by David Ike for years. And a lot of this I have picked up from him and when I was younger, I really didn't understand it that nowhere near as much as I'm starting to now. And he described the life that we lead as an experience, we are infinite consciousness, living experience and.

Infinite consciousness could be predetermined as energy, which is never created or destroyed, which kind of lends to reincarnation. But that might be another thing, but definitely what we do in life. And those set milestones, you know, Get a diploma, get a job, get a big house, nice car. Having the awareness that there is life and certainly something that you can look into things.

But the meaning of that, we don't, this is where it gets kind of dark hole there. Isn't one. I think we can understand that is surely having a love of Mirage likes this instinct to, or how do we think no one's ever asked to be born. They just are, but the energy for that resistance is drawn from somewhere that happened in the past, conception, childbirth, all the Scientifics that you can apply to it.

But if you look well so much deliberate science and alone has a lot of gravitas. Mia science, science is a base Foundry for everything pretty much. But if you look further than science and just, you know, an egg or sperm and, you know, contraceptive, not contraception, I'm conceiving, then you really start to look way deeper, a lot deeper by the book before the day.

Yeah. And still, no one really has the definitive answer to that of think. Now that. Really, I'll be sure to link a bit. First off I have five or who is David? David. Ike is someone that actually was born and raised, not too far from where I lived in England. Uh, coughing quite off the top of my head where he's from it.

Might've been sorry. Maybe Norfolk. But I was born in Leicester, share, raised in a little town called Burbage. And I think the sky was like maybe an hour or two and a car away from where I live my whole life growing up.

What are you doing in America? So I actually met a girl that I knew online, did the whole internet date in thing. And between her and my wanting to leave England because of everything that I had seen that growing up. And I felt like there was no right branch out because. Yeah. Or to challenge somebody let's say knowledge would have another lens.

England had been in a recession and there was no room for growth there. So between meeting her and the potential of life over here and my wine to leave, that was kind of why that came. Can you tell me, you meant girl?

It was Facebook. Oh, Facebook. Yeah. Back in 2013, 2014, I believe. And that was your primary driver? Yeah, the pursuit of happiness, I guess. Very well, but

you don't have any family here? Is that a girl? You're the one. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. It was a share. She came to visit England before we laughed. It seems like no, everybody's she originally went, nobody's going to step outside their own, say over to England, depending if you're wild Shaw, now it's the same place.

But, um, yeah, when we got together and did our own little thing and you know, and we came over on a visa originally and then, uh, transitioned through that, paid my dues to the government, got an old uncle. Sam's got to have his current right. And, uh, basically here I am still living in America and all my paperwork's up to date.

Don't come to get me and we are all good with it. So I'm going to go off.

We did you come here on a temporary visa or a little bit, and then somehow had to go back and then the kick that your theme. Go back to Anglin. And then from there, you decided to come back. Yeah. So originally how that was meant to play out as I was meant to go back after six months and it never happened because we got married.

Yeah. And in the state of Missouri, if you do that, it waivers the visa apparent. This sounds like one big green card thing going on here, but it's not a promise. No, no, I'm curious. I heard this story. Well, what was the girl's name? Uh, wow. She went by many names on a real name's Jess in the note. What's the last name, but I'll be sure to edit this out.

Alright, bringer. Yeah, no, cause it blows my mind. Because I don't know. I was talking to the girl. It's all starting to take a picture of when we originally started out children being a blank canvas, all their parents' values passed down onto them, whether they want that or not. Is based on it indoctrination, that's the beginning process, the moment.

And they have the self-realization to know that they're worth more and can do more. Most people find that when they're at the lowest place in life and they will question, why am I here? What am I doing? Where will I end up? It's kind of like how people in an interview will say, where do you see yourself in five years from now?

Now, um, they're talking about the system, the construct in the workplace, the real self-discovery of why you'll be years to come can only be unlocked three around self-realization. And I think a part of that is revisiting past events. I'm looking at where you are currently and having that movement, that plan, that regime to progress for the, as an individual.

Cause I have so many cons there are so many things that are going through my head that I want to take this. As far as we reach self-actualization between age 35 to 45 or even never. And that's for somebody who. Takes the appropriate steps to learn their own image that they carry. And also who others perceive them as, because what we think about ourselves and what people perceive us are two different identities.

And once we

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reach that self-actualization, we understand those two factors plus our purpose, our direction, and our vision in life. And that's how we define meaning. When we come to that ultimate question. What is the meaning of life that there's so much work behind that? And that's what we have to do. We have to put in the work nature, want to leave our audience with anything?

Yeah, I would basically say no matter how you feel, when you wake up in the morning, take a second to quiet your thoughts. Don't reach straight for the farm. Don't turn on the television thing to yourself. What would I like to achieve today, analyze to yourself if it's possible and how much you can port of yourself and that effort that you have?

Into that plan. And even if you don't succeed, you do everything you can to make it happen. Because like I said before, I have everything to gain from trying and everything to lose from not trying. So no matter how bleak it may seem in the day and in the moment take life by the horns and you don't know necessarily is it's going to lead, but it'll lead somewhere and somewhere is always better than nowhere.

Nate. I appreciate you coming on to your transformation station for this weekly uplift. Absolutely man. Thank you for having me. You've been listening to your transformation station, rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet. We hope you enjoyed the show and we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information.

Join us weekly on Monday for the YTS challenge and biweekly on Wednesday for the exclusive interviews at 8:00 PM central time. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and

Instagram at. Y T S the podcast we'll be back soon until then this is your transformation station signing off.

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deliciousscaloppine · 5 years

Text

Unclean Realm

I said I was going to write some nieyao, but my hand slipped and wrote some xiyao instead. It’s in Meng Yao’s pov, when he got kicked out of Qinghe, how he met Lan Xichen, and what he did to save him. You can find all the other ficlets from the same cycle here- though they are in Huaisang’s pov.

He had always expected this moment. The moment he leaves Unclean Realm for good. In fact it was an inevitable, fated thing waiting to happen for years. If anything he was lucky it had lasted this long. He takes his time walking away, and not just because there's a stab wound somewhere in his chest. It's that secretly he waits for someone to call him back, inconceivable as that is.

When no one comes, he begins walking faster. There are a lot of men that actively disliked him. Without Mingjue's protection they might come after him and Meng Yao is not ready to die yet. He makes it deep into the woodland. His first stop is going to be the workshop of a silversmith that is nearby. He will trade his silver hair piece for some old clothes and a bag of rice.

He could get a better price for it at a jeweler in some city, but maybe he has been declared a fugitive and it could give him away. At least with the silversmith, out here in the country, he can always claim he was robbed and that's the only thing he could hide from the robbers.

He doesn't head there immediately. It would be best to arrive closer at midnight. This way his story could be more convincing. As night falls, he makes a small fire and waits. Inevitably he starts thinking about Nie Mingjue. He really did drive him away. He didn't kill him, or put him in a cell. He even let him leave like this with a wound untreated. He really just said “Go die somewhere else out of my sight”.

Nothing of the things they did, the things that made him happy really mattered. And why should they, really? It's not like he didn't know these comforts were utterly meaningless. If he fell like that for Nie Mingjue, then his mother's life had really taught him nothing.

At that thought he laughs. Hadn't his mother always placed her love and trust to man who couldn't care less? Didn't he just do the same? He remembers his father crashing the pearl button in his hands, like the cheap, meaningless thing it was. And then he recalls the many men who had visited his mother. When she got sick, who concerned himself with her health?

When she died who attended her funeral? If it hadn't been for him, her son, she would have died completely alone. Completely uncared for. His mother had been fortunate in her misfortune to have him at least, to care and love her. And now without her, how meaningless it all was. He thought living at the Unclean Realm with Nie Mingjue was finally something. But it had all been as frivolous and passing as a summer dream, much like the affairs of his mother.

“See, mother, I am really just like you.“ he smiles.

His wound hurts at these thoughts. It has swollen and opened up painfully. And then he remembers it was because Nie Mingjue kicked him there. And then he had the nerve to say he would spare him because Meng Yao had saved his life. Well, if he doesn't seek treatment soon, maybe he won't even survive the night. So he stands up and makes it uphill, where the workshop is. He is quite sad to have to distress the silversmith's household, but they are kind, common people.

They take him in and feed him, they give him medicine and clothes. The next day the silversmith examines the silver hair piece, admiring the intricate work. Meng Yao has to spend some time to convince him to melt it down. “It is an unfortunate object” he has to remind him. “I wore it and I got robbed, you should melt it down.”

They let him stay for a few days, to recover his strength. He has the time to wash and mend his clothes. At the next town he could sell the silk to some merchant. There is enough material to make something new out of it, and he needs the silver pieces to travel. Perhaps he is going to go to Gusu, to see if it really burned down. Such a thing seems so unreal to him. How could a mountainous stonghold fall like that? Is Lan Xichen Zewu Jun really out in the run?

.......

The Wen are progressing steadily through the land, could it be that they will win this war? And now Xue Yang is out, supposedly he has already made his way out to Lanling. Meng Yao had made the same journey some years ago with that pearl button and he got kicked down the stairs of Carp Tower. Xue Yang will go bearing the fabled final piece of the Yin Iron. Surely his welcome will be a warm one. Perhaps warm enough to make his return as well possible.

But he won't go there yet. He must give Xue Yang some time.

Walking through the land helps keep his mind clear. He enjoys that clarity that comes from walking. If he were to stand still he would probably die. Every night when he lies down to rest his mind flies back to Nie Mingjue, as if his thoughts are a bird and Nie Minjue is its nest. It does not surprise him that he misses him. He had gone to great lengths to keep him pleased all these years. And he had been happy too. But not happy enough to regret his actions.

How wrought Mingjue had been with the captain's death! Meng Yao had never been as important as that man and he knew it. After all the captain had parents. Parents who had expectations. Parents who would seek justice for that child. Meng Yao had no one. To Nie Mingjue he was infinitely more dispensable than the man who bullied and harassed him. Their lives did not even have equal value.

The funny thing is he always thought it would be the captain to drive him out one day. He spoke against him so publicly and so many times. Everyday felt like it would be his last. That's the day the army revolts and asks Mingjue to send me away, he thought. Nie Mingjue really never said anything to him. Meng Yao had to smile and accept the insults and try harder to do better.

He had to look at Mingjue's face everyday and smile to him and think of something extraordinary to say or do, just to convince him that he had a place by his side. Everyday he thought this is the day I am not enough anymore. It's not like affection like this is not fickle. But in the end, the captain managed to drive him away. At least he paid for it with his death. A small pleasure.

When he arrives at Gusu, he is somewhat surprised by the destruction. The Wen really decimated the place. And now there are rumors about another massacre at Yunmeg. Their army is everywhere, always on the move, seeking for something that by now should be safe at Lanling. No one will suspect the Jin Clan for such a fine betrayal.

The devastation, however, breaks his heart. Cloud Recesses had been the most refined place he had ever been. It really seemed these rules they followed had some real meaning.

He asks around seeking to learn the fate of the disciples. “They must all be dead” he hears people say. “And now the same at Yunmeg too. They even kill children.” Meng Yao refuses to believe they are all dead. If they are then the next calamity will hit Qinghe. He can't bear the thought of that even if he was driven out. Surely some must live. Zewu Jun at least survives.

Now that he is here, he can start looking. And it doesn't take long. Famous people are always easy to find. A handsome man defended a small village up a mountain path, he killed quite a few soldiers and had a jade flute with him. He wants to tell these people to stop spreading rumors. If the spies of the Wen hear them they will surely send someone important to decimate the place. And then Zewu Jun who has moved on won't be there to defend them. But it's not really his business so he moves on seeking the man with the jade flute.

You would think he'd make a better effort at hiding, but no. He moves visibly, making use of his connections in the region to stay here and there and replenish his strength. And that's how he is ambushed in a beautiful mansion- after all its residents are massacred. He puts quite the fight, the low level officials of the Wen are not even his match, but when the fight is over, Zichen does not move on. In fact he just stands there among the bodies seemingly thinking if there is a point in fleeing anymore. That's when Meng Yao has to appear.

His hands are trembling from the weight of the book he carries with him. It must be so difficult trying to protect something so meaningless in a war. So he takes it from his hands. He takes the sword too.

“Lord Mingjue sent me to find you.” he lies and Xichen suddenly seems relieved.

As if now someone else can take over. He leads them away, back to the decimated towns and villages of Gusu. “We'll head to Lanling” he says. “If we go through the burned towns and villages no one will notice us among the refugees. There you will meet with my father. If anyone could persuade him to rise against the Wen it's you. Lanling is probably the only place with enough wealth to support an army made from the other Clans.”

Lan Xichen is too stunned from his ordeal to offer his ideas. He listens silently, nodding his head. “That is the best course of action” he says.

They spend all the night fleeing. And come morning they rest at another smoking residence. In the light of day, these pilaged places look dreadful. And that's why no one will look for them here. He cooks rice in the courtyard from the dying embers of the place, letting Xichen rest by the fire. It's different killing people, it must be much harder for him than say kill a ghost. One has to think where it all went wrong, has to remember the faces and wonder what it means when he no longer can.

Rummaging through the ruins he finds a chest, a little burned at the edges, but it has some clothes inside. The hidden gold and jewels seem to have been taken by the soldiers who looted the place. All that's left is smashed porcelain and burnt books. This is a depressing place. But he gets to work. He digs a hole by the burnt plum tree to hide Xichen's treasures, the sword and the flute.

“We need to be less conspicuous” he advises. “We'll surely come across the Wen. Their army is everywhere.”

Then he takes the book, and with some effort, he removes the hard cover. Xichen watches, his eyes betraying some pain, but not once does he object. Meng Yao then wraps the pages tightly in some silk and hides the little parcel in his bag of rice. He doesn't need to look at Xichen's face to know he thinks that's brilliant. Then he offers Xichen the clothes he has found.

As Xichen dresses, he makes bandages from his fine clothes, to cover his face and arms. He makes some effort to soil them with soot and grime. If their circumstance was not so dire, he would laugh that the Clan Leader and he are playing such a game. It's funny to disguise as something you are not.

“This way you do not have to speak, and if I tell them you are sick with some disease they will be too afraid to come near you. Let me do all the talking. It's for the best.”

It's Xichen's idea that he should also have a walking stick, and maybe a hat with a veil. Meng Yao takes the silver piece from his head, and also the Lan ribbon.

He has become so bold, he forgot to even ask. It must be so peculiar for a man of his stature to have a servant handle him like that. But Meng Yao also served Nie Mingjue. He made sure his belt was properly buckled, and his hairpiece secured. It's not that Nie Mingjue couldn't do these things for himself, it was that he liked being handled. Maybe Xichen is the same.

He folds the ribbon carefully, tying it between its ends. “If they search us it's best if they find it on me” he says and hides it by his breast. “But we'll have to find someone to melt this” he says holding the silver piece. “We'll need a lot of silver to go to Lanling. If anyone recognizes us, we'll have to bribe them to live.”

.....

Xichen doesn't speak often. His eloquence has dried from the brief brush he had with atrocity. In fact having someone lead him around, wash his clothes and cook his food was an unexpected respite from the burden of living. Meng Yao can't help but recall how pleasant it was living at Qinghe by Mingjue's side, when he didn't have to be a servant anymore. When others washed his clothes and made his food and all he had to do was be simply brilliant.

It brings to mind that time he traveled with Huaisang. Poor Huaisang at Qinghe, who always asked for more than Meng Yao could give. There were quite a few times when he could close his eyes and imagine that he had a brother. A little, defenseless brother that relied on Meng Yao to live. He can't tell Xichen this, but when he took from him Bieling and Shuoyue, he did it so that his life would be in his hands alone. It would shock Xichen to his core to know that his mind works this way.

That day in Cloud Recesses when they had smiled at each other, seems such a foreign feeling now. He asked himself many times from Gusu to Qinghe why had he smiled? Maybe the thought of being loved still had some meaning back then.

Then maybe this is what this journey is. A respite from meaning. Drifting along a stranger again, doing things only family does. Maybe that's how he can keep on living. By pretending day and night to be something he is not. Sometimes he really looks at the reflection of his face on the water and thinks “I do not know this person.”

Well, just as he holds Xichen's life in his hands, maybe that's how Xichen holds the memory of his personhood. Maybe at the end of the journey Meng Yao can wring it out of his hands and back into himself. These thoughts make him smile a lot. Xichen says he has a pleasant face.

“I feel safe with you” he whispers sometimes by the fire, as if making some meaningful confession.

“I will get you to Lanling, Clan leader Lan.” is his reply.

Xichen has more words the following days. Mostly of disbelief. “Why did you beg that shopkeeper to let you wash dishes? Didn't we have enough money to spare for a meal?”

These words bring even more smiles to his face. Xichen has never lived in the real world.

“And where did a sick man and his young brother find this much money?” he asks. “Anyone would think we are disguised lords hiding from the Wen. And maybe some would show sympathy, but others would betray us. They might send bandits after us, or kill us in our sleep. It's best to keep the money for transportation.”

Xichen admires these thoughts. They seem to him as precious as the commandments of the Lan. Perhaps a venerated opposite to them. Lie, cheat, gamble and pretend.

Such a thought excites him so much that the next day when they happen upon a camp of the Wen he begs some of the soldiers there to let him wash their clothes for some of the game they hunted. Xichen must be so shocked with his audacity. There is one in particular who laughs at them, even strays as close to Xichen.

“My brother's disease is contagious” he says. “He is so very ugly. If you touch him you will become as ugly as him.”

The other soldiers laugh, but no one takes him up on his offer. So he gets on his hands and knees and begs with his forehead on the dust of the road.

“Please” he says. “We are so weak. I'll even carry water and cook for you.”

A man kicks him then. He kicks him hard on his shoulder. But Meng Yao does not waver. “Please” he says again, until one group calls them. They are sitting around a fire, oiling their swords- the swords they must have run through several people. They bring their clothes, they hand him their bamboo canisters. They look tired, they look exhausted, as if they too are fighting a war they do not understand.

“Can my brother sit by the fire? If you do not touch him, you will not get hurt by his disease” he says.

He can see it in their eyes that they are kind-hearted. They nod silently yes. Xichen later will admit his surprise.

“Those people were with the Wen, but they treated us well.”

How can he tell him that common people are just like that. Sure they can be petty and cruel like all the world is, but most times they are more generous and more kind than the mightiest lords.

They spend all day together. He brings them water, and twigs for the cooking fire, and he washes their clothes by the river, while the sun sets. A couple of them even wander close to him.

“You are so very handsome” they tell him. “How old are you?”

Meng Yao smiles. It's been a while since he has paid a meal with sexual favors. It seems so funny to him now to be asked such a thing.

“You and your brother can spend the night at our tent.” one of them offers. “It's warmer inside.”

Meng Yao smiles silently imagining what new shocks the Clan Leader of the Lan is discovering right now. The soldiers loiter on, looking at him, smiling. They have handsome faces. If the river was not so very cold they would have taken off their clothes and jumped in it just to get to him. He smiles back, shifting his eyes to better regard them. Really handsome faces.

“We do not have to spend the night here” Xichen says when they are gone. He sounds like he is struggling to speak.

“Why not? They will give us breakfast in the morning.”

There is something alluring about Xichen's sudden silence. Like he is pondering the logic of it. Or maybe it's a secret thrill. After all he has never lived in the real world. No one had told him how perfectly commonplace prostitution was.

“When you smile like that-” he says. “They must think you like them.”

“I don't” Meng Yao says. “But they will give us breakfast.”

“You've more than paid for it with all the clothes you've washed.”

Meng Yao has to sit by his side. The breeze is so very cold, and he is drenched in cold water. He would like to be warm. He would really like to be warm.

“You don't have to come by and see. I will come get you when it's over.” he hears himself say.

And after that night, he thinks he has traumatized Xichen enough. Even though he can't stop himself from smiling at the thought. When they make fire by the shore of a river- a boat will pick them up in the morning- Xichen finally takes off his disguise and breathes in the night air. He seems so very bewildered. Like as if he is at the end of his endurance. Meng Yao could go on forever like this.

“You even had to do things like that.” he mumbles at some point. Possibly referring to his past.

Meng Yao has to admit falling back into being a servant was a strange comfort. And last night when he was kissed and fondled like something precious, it had put him in a great mood. No more torture for Xichen, he had thought. Tomorrow we land on Lanling. What can he really tell him when he is so sad. That nothing hurts? At least not anymore? The fire by their feet is pleasant.

“When my mother died” he starts “she left some jewellery behind. So I could sell it and survive without her. But the jewellery was worthless. Or at least that's what the shopkeeper told me, because I was young and naive. I had nothing when I arrived at my father's palace. And I was starving so much. I looked at the splendor of Carp Tower and looked at myself, tired and penniless and immediately knew I would not be accepted. But I was so hungry. I thought maybe they would give me some money and tell me to be on my way, or treat me to some food. I thought a servant would take pity in me.”

Xichen does not reply. He gazes silently at the flame.

“When I left Carp Tower, after having seen how my father lived, after having been thrown down his stairs, I feared the Jin more than I feared others. Even if they mistreated me or were cruel to me, it didn't matter, because they were not my family. Doing a thing like that was no longer scary if it meant I would live just one more day in the world. That's what's unfair. Having to eat everyday, needing clothes everyday. But life was not difficult, you can even find agreeable people to do that sort of thing for you. So do not think on it like some great humiliation, Clan Leader Lan.”

“A-Yao” Xichen says. It has such softness inside it. Meng Yao would like to find it in himself to shed a tear or two. Instead he looks on at a lighted horizon, the splendid capital of Lanling.

“When all of this is over. If I could, I would like to help the Lan Clan rebuild Gusu.” he says. “Gusu is such a splendid place. Dignified and elegant. The world should make it its example. I don't really have any funds, but I remember the place. I remember it exactly. I could tell you the distances between two stone lanterns, and the height of a door frame. In fact when I close my eyes, I often see it in my mind.”

Xichen smiles. It seems he too can see it in his mind. The road from Caiyi town, up the mountain, throught the main gate, into the sprawl of its magnificent gardens.

When the boatman arrives, putting an end to their ruminations, he takes most of their silver. Xichen finally understands how a simple thing like crossing the river can be a matter of life and death.

When they finally land, Meng Yao craves a bath. A long luxurious warm bath. But even before that they really need to wash if they are to find a proper inn to take them in. Stripping to his waist he washes at the bank of the river. The water is so cold, it makes something inside him stir. I am still human, he thinks.

“A-Yao” he hears Xichen say with some worry. He has noticed the scar from the wound on his chest. “Was there a battle at Qinghe? Did you get wounded there?” he asks with so much concern.

Meng Yao is so exhausted. He can't really keep up the lie.

“Actually, Lord Mingjue didn't send me to you. I killed a man at Qinghe and I was driven out and exiled. This is my atonement.” he says gesturing to the river, as if it somehow represents the journey. “I thought if I could save a life, I could somehow make up for the one I took.”

Xichen is in awe. Meng Yao can't really describe it as anything else. As if the truth has explained to him something vital about the way life goes. Meng Yao likes that expression, like thousands of veils have been shredded and it's just him and this other person alone in the world. Like two ghosts that see each other even in a thick mist.

I do not regret killing that man, he wants to say, but maybe Xichen can't handle this much truth. Maybe it's better for him to think that the humiliations he endured were somehow vital to this atonement.

“That is why, when you see Lord Mingjue, you must not tell him who it was that saved you.”

“Why not? You did a noble thing, Meng Yao.”

“He will not understand it. Anyway, this was my atonement for the man I killed, not for the trust I betrayed. I will have to find some other way to amend that.”

He wonders for a moment if he means the things he has said. The way Xichen looks at him, he wants it too. He wants to mean every word, to be the kind of person that has some internal purpose, that's not just drifting through life, with each tragedy serving as an anchor.

When they arrive at the gates of the capital, Meng Yao finally gives back to Xichen the book and his ribbon. He does not expect Xichen's hands to clasp his own- as if they too were precious treasures of the Lan.

“Don't leave. Come with me to the tower. When I tell them what you did, your family will reward you.”

Meng Yao remembers Xue Yang. Maybe now it's not the best time to return to his ancenstral home. Not because his plan could backfire, but maybe because he wants to remain the person Xichen would like him to be. He sees Xichen's hands, tenderly holding his own, his face brimming with emotion. How wonderful would it be if this impression he has now could last forever.

“I will wait for you at the gate. You go and tell them what needs to be done. If they see me with you, they will not want to help you. I am an unfortunate person and they are superstitious.”

“I will tell them what you did.” he insists and Meng Yao smiles.

“They did not want me when I was a child with no one in the world, they are not going to take back a criminal burdened with murder, ousted from Qinghe.” he whispers. “Zewu Jun, you are not being realistic. I implore you to not tell them anything. If people who don't like me know I am here, they might even try to kill me.”

It's another shock to Xichen that a show of kindness can lead to death, but it is something he can wrap his mind around. So he takes his things with meaningful glances and leaves, heading to the looming Carp Tower in the distance. Zewu Jun is a famous person, even in these simple clothes, he will not be turned away.

And Meng Yao would really appreciate a warm bath and a sip of wine, maybe he could offer to wash dishes for it, or do other kinds of favors. He smiles at the thought of that and wanders into the city.

When the night falls and he lies with his back at the wall of the city, all he can think about is Nie Mingjue again. Like a bell resounding in the vast silence of his mind. Nie Mingjue. Nie Mingjue. Nie Mingjue. On his throne at Qinghe. Brokenhearted and lonely. The night is not at all cold and the shadows of the trees play against his face. His wound hurts, like it has not healed inside. Meng Yao finds it so difficult to understand how at some point he could be held like something precious and then be kicked down like the vilest thing.

But he is here now, waiting still through the night as the moon climbs the sky. And Xichen is at the golden comfort of his father's palace, probably still imploring and arguing. What an honest man! He really didn't say anything to anyone about who brought him here. Meng Yao has to wonder at himself why he is still expecting someone to call him back.

But even if Xichen kept his silence, aren't they curious at Carp Tower? Was it such a small feat to bring the most famous fugitive of Gusu, all the way to Lanling, through the enemy's camps? Maybe the Wen are really going to win this war.

Author's note:

I had this whole second part about Meng Yao going to the Wen really believing they will win the war, and being the one who strategizes the taking over of Unclean Realm, and originally feeding the other clans information to lure Mingjue in a trap and leave them without a general, and only marginally switching to the other side because Xichen realizes who is behind the correspondence and thinks it's Meng Yao atoning for betraying Mingjue's trust and trying to contact him etc. But I am not going to write it because Meng Yao's mind is full of angst. So please imagine it.

#the untamed #the untamed fic #meng yao #jin guangyao #lan xichen #zewu jun #unclean realm fic #xiyao

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thereismagicinthesepages · 5 years

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Pop Culture Entity Challenge: Hircine, Part 1

Stolen from @highpriestness

This is meant to be a sort of bonding and questionnaire in regards to spirits, entities, and deities you may work with in Pop Culture.

You can use it as a 30 day challenge, an ask meme to ask for questions, or simply write them all however you feel.

General Questions:

1. What is the name of the entity and what is their canon universe?

Hircine. The Elder Scrolls anthology.

2. What drew you to this entity? What drew you to their world?

The Elder Scrolls universe has been close to my heart for a very long time. In particular, Skyrim. It’s a beautifully created fantasy world full of colorful characters and lore, and it came to life for me. I’ve put many hours of playtime into the game, running new characters with varying skills and trying new things. It’s always a unique experience and one I never regret diving into.

Hircine himself interested me from the first time I met him in-game. He is the Great Hunter, and the quest in Skyrim (my first encounter with him) leads you to him by way of helping a werewolf NPC who had been cursed by him. Many of the characters in the game frame Daedra as being evil or bad, they are considered demons against the godly presence of the Aedra; the Divines. Hircine’s actions throughout this quest are harsh, but he is also one of the more agreeable Daedra.

Hircine appears in the game as a white stag that you need to hunt down and kill, then his Aspect will appear to tell you to hunt down the same werewolf who asked for your help. You can refuse, but he will warn you that other hunters will be going after the werewolf regardless. You then have two options; Defy Hircine and save the werewolf from the hunters, or join the hunt and kill him. Either way, Hircine will reward you with one of his artifacts. I always choose to spare the werewolf.

What actually draws me to Hircine is my already great love of nature. Deer and Wolves have always been very close to my heart, wolves in particular. Hircine is the father of lycanthropy and thus werewolves are his people. Also while I myself am not a hunter in the strictest sense, I do support and respect those that do hunt, and I respect and make use of animals’ sacrifices on a regular basis. I often pick up roadkill or take hunter waste and use the bones, pelts, feathers, ect. in crafts, as offerings to my gods, or just as general decor,

Also, going back to Hircine’s Quest, if you choose to kill the hunters to save your werewolf friend, Hircine remains impressed with you for “turning the hunt inside-out.” He appreciates alternative thinking, and he just wants to see his Hunters overcoming obstacles to reach their goal. That’s the true Hunt, and he reminds me of that frequently. I don’t have to dawn a bow and shoot a deer, my Hunt can be any goal I’m reaching for, every obstacle I am trying to over come, regardless of how small or massive. Afterall, hunters take on prey of all sizes, right? From a hunting spider catching a tiny insect, to a dragon hunting a mammoth.

3. Did you choose them or did they tap you? How?

A little bit of both. I am a fairly recent baby witch and pagan, and at first I was really only looking into “real” gods, in particular I started with the Egyptian and Greek pantheons, as I already had very strong connections to both. However, I did begin to see others weaving pop culture into their witchcraft, and I eventually discovered Pop Culture Paganism. It clicked for me, it made so much sense, that these worlds and characters that I put so much love and time into, that someone put heart, soul and life into, could be considered “real” and hold power in their own rights.

I already believed in the Infinite Universes theory, wherein there could be a universe out there somewhere where literally anything could exist. Hearing that others worshiped gods based on works of fiction, or even other non-deified entities from those works, was eye-opening for me. I started researching. I wanted to learn more. I found a particular tumblr user who worshipped the Daedra and that clicked with me. I love so many of the Daedra, something about them always spoke to me. Clavicus Vile, Sheogorath, Molag Bal, Hircine....

Shortly after this revelation, I started researching how to worship PC entities. I wasn’t really all that solid on my more “traditional” pagan beliefs, let alone branching out into mostly uncharted territory. There was so little help on how to begin. I found posts about manifesting, about working with them as spirits, as archetypes, creating thoughtforms and servitors.... It was a lot of information to pick through, and a lot to think about. Even now I’m having some trouble beginning working with some entities I’d like to approach, because thus far all of the beings I’ve been working with are considered gods in their own rights. I am having a harder time figuring our how to work with a mortal character who may not want to be deified.

Regardless, while I was in the midst of all of this research and soul-searching, Hircine did tap me. I had actually forgotten the initial feeling, I had to go back to my journal to remember. I was asleep in bed asleep one night and heard a sort of crinkling sound. I got a vivid vision of large, leather boots crunching through dried leaves in a dense forest. My mind immediately screamed Hircine.

I put off contacting him for a bit after that, as I was still unsure, but upon realizing that the Hunter Moon was coming up, I couldn’t ignore the signs. I found a young buck skull that I got from a roadkill deer I processed a few years ago, and set it and some crystals out near a window where they could absorb the moonlight. I left him some bread and water, and waited.

I don’t remember if it was the following day, or a few days later, as I’m terrible at keeping an up-to-date journal, but I know that shortly thereafter, I was heading to work early in the morning. As I was walking out to my car, I felt a compulsion to look out at my back yard. There were a number of deer standing there. That’s not so uncommon, we have a doe that seems to frequently hang out behind the house, I see her often. What was unusual, is that she was accompanied by three other does. I usually only see the one. As I cautiously stepped forward for a better look, a large buck suddenly bolted past, leading the does back into the woods.

The feeling of elation that rose inside of me was amazing. I love seeing deer anyway, but to me it was very strongly a sign from Hircine. I sensed a presence there that I’d never before experienced. I thanked him, watched the herd leave, and continued on my way.

Since then, I get occasional messages from him, either in similar form, or just hearing his voice. I get this with most of my main deities, either hearing them in my head, or just getting a strong feeling about a situation and knowing it to be one of my gods communicating. I have a fair number of deities I appeal to, so sometimes it’s hard to decipher who exactly is trying to speak. I have no such ambiguity with Hircine, as I always distinctly hear his voice from the game, that clever, echoey sort of voice that emanates from the Stag aspect.

4. How do you typically communicate?

This is what I get for writing too much for each question;; As stated above, he often speaks directly to me, in the voice I know as his from Skyrim. He often gives me advice, though it’s usually in a sort of “tough love” form. If I’m feeling frustrated or discouraged, he’ll tell me things like “a hunter presses on regardless of hardship” or “the hunt is not yet over”. Usually it relates to hunting, but it always fits my circumstances.

5. What role does this entity play in their universe?

Hircine is the God of the Hunt and Father of Manbeasts. He created the various forms of lycanthropy in Tamriel. Every Era, he will put on a Great Hunt for which he will choose a number of mortal candidates to participate in. It could be as simple as sending hunters to kill a rogue werewolf, to making his champions navigate a maze of Daedric creatures while transformed into hares.

Hircine is revered by hunters and offers his followers the chance to hunt with him for eternity in the Hunting Grounds, Hircine’s Oblivion Realm. He has a fondness for predators, and values Strength, Speed, Guile and Cunning.

6. What kind of relationship do you have with this entity?

I offer my personal “hunts” to Hircine, using his wisdom to overcome the obstacles in my life. He offers me advice and council, occasionally being stern about it, but really only when I need it. We have a pretty positive relationship, I think. I have always had a reverence for nature, and I think he appreciates that. While I don’t actually hunt animals as prey, I still am able to take the lessons he teaches to put towards everyday life, and I am still able to offer him what I consider traditional offerings, like bones and pelts from animals, due to my taxidermy work.

7. What aspects does this entity reside over?

Traditionally, the Hunt is his Sphere, called many names (the Great Game, the Chase, ect). I also consider the other traits he values as being part of this. He values strength, speed, guile, and my personal addition; cunning. He often appears as a fox to trick people, and will grant those he finds to be clever knowledge and tricks of their own. He takes pride in seeing someone openly defy him and turn a hunt around on his chosen hunters.

He values loyalty. He values nature and animals and a respect for them. He values pride in oneself and strength of heart and character. He values independence, but also the ability to run with a pack or herd. He values both the hunter and the prey, and he values someone who can flip on those roles very highly.

8. What kinds of offerings do you/would you give this entity?

I am still discovering this myself. Certainly a very traditional offering to Hircine is the act of hunting. Again, I alter this to be overcoming challenge or reaching for a goal. I will sometimes dedicate such things to him as offerings. I would also offer him animal bones or pelts. I believe he would like prey animals, like deer or rabbit in particular, but also predators like wolves or big cats. I often offer him cool water, which is a traditional offering for many old gods, and in the wild is such an essential thing. Though I have not yet, I would offer him natural foods; berries, fruits, thinks like that.

I offer him meat sometimes, usually whatever I have, though I think he would particularly appreciate things like venison, rabbit or bear meat. I have given him a number of stones and crystals in the past, things close to the earth. Alcohol is another thing I have and would like to offer him. Particularly I think he would appreciate red wines and mead, though I have access to neither right now.

Arrows, arrowheads, daggers or hunting knives, bows, and other hunting tools would be other good things to dedicate to him, I think. Especially if they’re used to hunt with. Imagery of deer, wolves, bears, foxes or werecreatures would all be good as well. I also associate him with crocodiles, mostly because of his Daedroth creatures. I feel like he would also appreciate tattoos as well, particularly of a tribal sort.

9. What kinds of animals, stones, elements, plants, etc do you associate with this entity? Why?

Stones I used for him were clear quartz, like a clear lake or like the full moon. Moonstone, for obvious reasons; bloodstone, representing blood from his prey. Red or orange stones, representing the blood moon. I’m still learning and experimenting with others.

Animals that I associate with him, I mentioned some, but really any hunter animal. Wolves, bears, foxes, crocodiles, spiders, and birds of prey in particular. Deer and elk are also very strong associations for me, as well as other antlered or horned prey animals like gazelle. I also associate him with other creatures in Tamriel such as Daedroth, dragons, unicorns, sabrecats and werecreatures. I also have a loose association with him and sharks, again for the predator aspect.

I strongly associate him with the element of Earth. I always feel a connection to the Earth with him, to plants and animals and nature. He makes me feel very grounded and in touch with my surroundings. I could also connect him to fire, for the occasional harshness he exhibits, the flaming reds of the blood moon, his ability to go from warm and gentle to fierce and burning. I could make connections to air and water as well, but Earth is certainly the strongest elemental association for him, to me.

Plants are tricky, I’m still learning meanings and correspondences so I have trouble pinning them to spirits and deities, though I do strongly associate him with Hemlock and evergreens in general. As well as with fall foliage. I have the image of a stag moving through a forest of evergreens and that feels very Hircine to me.

I associate him with the smell of musk, pine, and a general earthy smell, like freshly disturbed soil. I associate him with the smell of the forest, with the crisp mountain air. The sound of birdcalls and wolf howls. The full moon.

10. Are there any songs, books, or quotes you associate with this entity? Why?

I’m still looking for things like this that remind of of him. Of course there are his in-universe books such as The Totems of Hircine, and any of his spoken dialogue in game (”Well met, hunter” springs to mind), but as for things in our world, one song I really strongly associate with him is “The Stampede” from The Lion King soundtrack.

11. How and when did you first encounter them as an entity?

Told the story above, but there was the strange dream/vision of him walking in the woods, and then the buck in my back yard.

12. How are they particularly involved in your life? Do they teach you anything specific? If so, what?

He teaches me patience and control, dignity and pride, perseverance and strength. He reminds me that a successful hunter has to be aware and in control of her surroundings. He reminds me that sometimes the prey escapes, and that’s okay. He reminds me that even the greatest hunters sometimes lose their mark and go home hungry. He reminds me that it is important to keep trying and keep improving. To keep my eyes on the target, but not to get lost in it either. The wilds are dangerous and they require my attention. They are also beautiful and demand my reverence.

There is excitement and also sadness in a successful hunt. You have taken something very beautiful and precious from the world, and that demands a moment of introspection. But you have also triumphed over your trial, and you will continue to thrive now with all that the hunt provided you. You have food, tools, clothing and shelter. The good sometimes comes with the bad, there is balance in all things and that must be accepted to be able to move on with one’s life.

He teaches me that there is a time and a situation where one should rely on the pack, be content and dependent upon the presence and assistance of others, but there are also times when the hunter must venture out alone. Some prey are best taken down with a group, some are best to be hunted solo.

He reminds me that all things are not as they seem. The hunter may hide himself from the prey if he is skilled enough. I must take care not to become the prey myself, and if the hunt should turn upon me, I must be clever and resourceful enough to escape my hunters. I must be mindful of those hidden hunters, and I must be hidden myself to be successful; either as a hunter or as prey. The strong and the smart survive, I must be one of the two to live; I must be both to thrive.

13. Do they have any identifying symbols in canon or otherwise?

Deer, mostly. Hircine is most known for appearing as a stag, or having the head or skull of one. But he has also appeared as a fox, a bear and a man. His children are the skinshifters, the werecreatures. His weapons are the spear and bow.

14. Do they have alternate versions, verses, or canons? Do you communicate with all or some of them?

Hircine appears slightly differently in each TES game, though it is always the same entity. I have based most of my worship on his appearance in Skyrim, as that is the one which I have the deepest connection with.

#pop culture entity challenge #popcultureentitychallenge #pc pagan #pop culture paganism #pop culture pagan #pop culture magic #my gods: Hircine #pcp Hircine #pcp gods #pcp entities #my gods #hircine #TES

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dearmyblank · 5 years

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to sitra

i’ve always wondered if id ever get the chance to see you again and…a chance to tell you how sorry I am. And tell you how much I still love you. i have imagined for myself a way for me to fall back in love with you.. but how do I do that, if i never stopped loving you?

Making the decision to walk away from our relationship was the scariest thing i ever had to do. I wanted to do something good. And I wanted to save you; from some of the pain. Maybe for a short while I didn’t save you from anything. Maybe you lived with the pain every day until you didn’t. I blame myself for thinking I knew what was best for you. I blame myself for thinking i knew what was best for me; when it was you that was best for me. I don’t believe that being in love absolves you of anything. I no longer believe that all’s fair in love and war. I’d go so far as to say your actions in love are not an exception to who you are. They are, in fact, the very definition of who you are. But It’s very easy to rationalize what you’re doing when you don’t know the faces and the names of the people you might hurt. It’s very easy to choose yourself over someone else when it’s an abstract.

I’ve got a lot of good inside me. A lot of pain, too.. about the past, about you. I wrote this because i don’t want to be living with regret. You can only forgive yourself for the mistakes you made in the past once you know you’ll never make them again.. I went back to the graveyard a few times and i sat there and wished things had happened differently, but I can’t just wish away the bad stuff. I have to think about all the good stuff I might lose, too. I couldn’t lose the thought of you. I truly believe we were meant to love each other. I needed a chance to remember that. I’m not saying we’re gonna be together. I don’t know that. And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll miss you so much, i’ll barely be able to move. I’ll feel i have no purpose… no reason to go on. But there’s nothing to do but wait. Wait and it’ll get clear to me. i’ll get on with my life.. Just as i have. I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is just a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, that’s just too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I’ve ever made, every decision I will ever make. If our fate is determined with every step we take … it’s too exhausting. I’d prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.

i cannot just un love you. that i know is the hardest thing i have ever tried to do. I have looked in so many other girls to stop it. Protect me from it. But I’m young.. It’s not just that you make me a better person. You do, but, I impact you too. I challenge you, surprise you. I make you question your life, beliefs. anybody you date after me is different. Their love is pure and they’ll always be good for you. But i’m either the best thing for you or the worst. We had the best and we’ve been through the worst.. now i want forever. if you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren’t neat and clean. They’re ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. That’s what I think. I think if you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances; you don’t hide behind them.

We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once. It was a once in a lifetime thing. I hate to think it, but I bet it’s true. It’s too bad for us that our once in a lifetime happened when we were too young to handle it. And that’s why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I’ll never forget a single moment of it. I still remember every story you told me. Whether it be about your family, your past, your friends.. I know it all. But I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don’t. Not anymore. The scariest thing about distance is that you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget you.

When you chose him, in time the hurt began to fade and it was easier to just let it go. At least I thought it was. But in every girl I met in the next few months, I found myself looking for you, and when the feelings got too strong, I’d write you another letter. But I never sent them for fear of what I might find. By then, you’d gone on with your life and I didn’t want to think about you loving someone else. I wanted to remember us like we were. I didn’t ever want to lose that. From the moment i saw you i knew that I loved you. I also knew that I would never fall back from that love, never try and never want to. I never reached out to you but i’ve loved enough to know that love isn’t selfish and that love is kind. Most nights it took everything in me to not message you. I want you to be happy. But I also know that’s not true, not fully at least. And part of loving someone, part of being the recipient of trust, is telling the truth even when it’s awful. I could only imagine what you must’ve thought of me and i was scared of what you might tell me. When you chose him, that initial anger I had felt turned to sadness, and then it had become something else, almost a dullness of sorts. Even though I was constantly in motion, it seemed as if nothing special ever happened to me anymore. Each day seemed exactly like the last, and I had trouble differentiating among them.

Every now and then, I’d meet someone. And I think that we were getting along great, and suddenly I’d stop hearing from them. Not only did they stop calling, but if I happened to bump into them sometime later they always acted like I had a virus. I didn’t understand it. And it bothered me. When i saw you, you still, all these months later, shine brighter to me than other people. Even after I moved on from you, I was never able to extinguish the fire completely, as if it’s a pilot light that will remain small and controlled, but very much alive. Every good thing that has happened to me, I wanted to tell you. And every bad thing..I wanted you to hold me. And when I was alone at night, I wanted you and I cried for you. But the thought of you, always put me to sleep, even when i was losing my mind. Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness. I find myself searching the crowds for your face.. I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself. You were always like coming up for fresh air. It’s like I was drowning and you saved me. It’s all I know.

With time, it got harder and harder to keep blaming the girls that i came in contact with, and I eventually came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with me. That maybe I was simply meant to live my life alone. But that’s just it.. i would stop hearing from them because although my head was in it.. my heart wasn’t. You know I never had anything close to a real relationship since you. One girl, I really liked, but she left. Or I let her leave. I should have made it work, but sometimes it’s easier just to let things fall apart. It was almost as if i wanted it to fall apart. I met her and it was an amazing distraction from you. It was a frivolous; not having any serious purpose or value, and fun and insane and highly unrealistic..and i liked her..but i loved you. They say your first love is everything all at once. A love so big, so strong, it never dies, never fades, never loses its electricity. The kind of love you fight for. I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take. I’m OK in this moment. I don’t need to find the perfect thing all the time. Just need to find one that works, and go with it.

There was a point where i just wanted a chance to see you and to talk to you. To heal a little. To love you again. People spend their whole life looking for that and they never find it. And i wanted to be the lucky one that did. No matter what happens, Sitra, I want you to know how grateful I am. because at the end of it all…l get to say I know what it’s like to have loved someone. Truly love someone, because l’ve loved you. Looking at you now, recalling what it used to be like between us, how I liked myself around you, how I felt good about the world and my place in it with you by my side, how I ached when you chose him, I remember what it feels like to truly love someone. For the right reasons. In the right way. When I see you again, I’ll believe we’ve been given a second chance. That the universe has decided to give us that. You may have commitments, I understand, and you may want to keep them. I can only love you more for that.

I was reading about different theories about the universe. I was really taken with this one theory that states that everything that is possible, happens. This is happening every second of every day. The world is splitting further and further into an infinite number of parallel universes where everything that could happen is happening. This is completely plausible. It’s a legitimate interpretation of quantum mechanics. It’s entirely possible that every time we make a decision, there is a version of us out there somewhere who made a different choice. An infinite number of versions of ourselves are living out the consequences of every single possibility in our lives. What I’m getting at here is that I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices that led me somewhere else, led me to someone else…And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn’t end up with you.

So here i am writing this to you because If you love someone, you tell them. Even if you’re scared that it’s not the right thing. Even if you’re scared that it will cause problems. Even if you’re scared that it will burn your life to the ground, you say it and you don’t turn back. If I simply ignored the feeling, I would never know what might’ve happened, and in many ways that’s worse than finding out in the first place. Because if i’m wrong, I could go forward in my life without ever looking back; over my shoulder and wondering what might have been.I think… that when it comes to us, anything is possible And you are the love of my life. Even if we both move on with other people later on in life.. i know that we’ll find our way back.. I would be lying if i didn’t hope to see you again someday. Just know that when we were together..it was the best of my life. I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I’ve ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we were together, was the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours. You were my best friend, as well as my lover, and I did not know which side of you I enjoyed the most. I treasured each side, just as I have treasured our time together. I loved you so much it sometimes burned in my chest. I know what it means to miss you. and I don’t ever want to feel that again. As I write, I am struggling with the ghost of someone I loved and lost. I now understand more fully the difficulties people were going through, and I realize how painful it must have been for them to move on.. especially when they still love. I don’t want you to date other people. This may not be enough for you, but I’m trying here so I don’t want you to date anybody but me. That’s it. Except I’m scared as hell to want you. But here I am wanting you anyway. And the fear means I have something to lose, right? And I don’t want to lose you.. not anymore then i already have. I believe that we can be extraordinary together rather than ordinary apart. I can live without you, but i don’t want to. I don’t ever want too. I love who I am when I’m with you, Sitra. You are my dearest friend, my deepest love. My first love. You are the very best of me. You have always been it for me.

forever alisha.

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formofaservant · 5 years

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Musings on Death, Suffering, and Suicide

“Take courage, my heart; you have been through worse than this.”

- Odysseus, The Odyssey

When met with insurmountable pressure, the words of Odysseus may seem like a meager attempt to rough out the storms of this world. These words set a rather bleak, yet familiar approach to life that many seem they are forced to take. “Take courage,” he says while acknowledging the difficulties he weathered in his immediate past. The words “you have been through worse than this” echo a rather iron-willed approach to life, a grasp for hope by interpreting his survival of his previous encounters a mark of hope for this next challenge. But these words alone are not soothing to all, nor should they be. These are the words of one grasping for hope wherever one can find it. Its hope is in perseverance and survival, not in rest and deliverance. Not all are like Odysseus and not all can afford to survive the worst.

Albert Camus also wrote of the anxiety humans faced in regard to their circumstances and their seeming lack of purpose in this world. Reflecting on the story of Sisyphus, Camus asks what Sisyphus’ reaction is to his own fate. Sisyphus in this myth is confined to the fate of rolling a giant rock up a hill only to see it roll down. So when the rock rolls down, Sisyphus must go down with it to repeat the infinite cycle of monotonous and hopeless acts. Camus states that unlike other forms of torture which other Greek myths provide, Sisyphus still possesses a special privilege. Other forms of torture leave the one tortured in a constant state of agony, unable to contemplate their own misery, but only left to be miserable. Sisyphus, however, has ample time to think upon his miserable state as he walks down to roll the rock back up to its rather purposeless heights. In light of this, Camus asks a rather important question. Is suicide an answer for Sisyphus? Is death more honorable than torture? For Camus the answer was no. Providing even a suggestion that Sisyphus’ entire existence, the powering drive to live and act in spite of his allotment by the gods, should be viewed as happiness. So Camus concludes that Sisyphus’ existence as a giant middle finger to the purposeless and insane circumstances of life itself is enough to live. Sisyphus must then be considered to be “happy.”

The problem with suicide or rather how people talk about suicide is that much of it is surrounding the morality of suicide. Is it okay to take my own life if the circumstances justify it? The Christian witness to this question is mixed and the line between martyrdom and suicide was at many times blurred. I know that this may not entirely answer the question, but I do think that it is important to see what the bible’s emphasis on suicide is. I believe that focusing too much on the morality of suicide actually detracts from the lessons we can learn to prevent suicide. To simply say, “suicide is wrong,” is not enough to address the circumstances that led to the act.

The Bible is relatively clear in its advocation and high valuation of life (though there are some things that are of higher importance than the longevity of life such as wisdom). Life itself is a gift from God, and to take it by one’s own hand without God’s permission is a sin not against man, but against God in whose image we are made. To further this, skirting one’s responsibilities or trying to escape one’s circumstances is not highly valued. Scripture sees challenging circumstances as tests to build character and not opportunities to abort life. Suffering, especially on the cross of self-denial, is valued not for the pain it brings, but the character formation of the individual so that they are more aligned with Christ in whom the good life is found.

When we look at the instances of suicide in Scripture, we see people who are driven to that option as a last resort because all of life’s circumstances have gone against their flourishing. It is an option taken either out of spite of one’s circumstances or done to salvage one’s honor. It is, so to speak, better to die by one’s own hands than in the hands of one’s enemies. Suicide is also an option taken by those who have lost all contact, and contemplated by those who feel lost and alone in a cruel world. So also suicide is contemplated by those who feel that they have failed miserably to achieve or be what is expected of them. Even the prophet Elijah calls out to God for death because he feels that he is no better than his sinful ancestors.

Suicide is often considered when death itself seems more pleasurable than life. The Christian answer to hard circumstances is not to escape such circumstances, but to grow in the joy of becoming more like Christ despite the circumstances at hand. It is a life of witness and hope in resurrection that allows Christians to undergo and suffer even the worst.

But what do we say of those Christians who take their own lives? I think we ought to say that it is easily a temptation for Christians who suffer deeply and greatly to think that suicide will end in bliss. There is a temptation to think of oneself so secure in Christ, that God would just receive them if they should die. If this life sucks and life with Christ is the best, then why not just quicken the process? Or so the logic goes. However, Christ Himself was told to escape His sufferings by throwing Himself off the temple by Satan. Satan’s hook has the bait which attracts the deeply hurt with false promises of a quick-out, that there is nothing more to live for, that there is no joy here in earth. Yet even though Paul desired to be with Christ, even though Paul himself contemplated death as a way to reunite with Christ, he never so much contemplated taking his own life to achieve such an end. But why is this the case? I believe that in Paul’s mind, our life is no longer our own. It belongs to Christ. Suicide in light of this is a denial of Christ’s lordship over us. For Paul, a slave had no say over their own life. So long as the Lord deems our life is needed for His plan, we live to witness His good character. To take suicide as an out calls into question God’s good character as it calls into question His stewardship of our lives.

Suffering before the cross, may have seemed pointless or even merely a punishment for sin, but the cross overturns our expectations about death, misery, suffering, and temptation. Can we see and learn that life now, though it may seem endless in its miseries, is fertile ground for growing in Christ-likeness?

The Christian answer to suicide is not the answer of Camus or Odysseus who have learned to spite suffering despite the inevitability of it. The Christian answer to suicide is to embrace suffering because it offers us a path to becoming and knowing the Christ that we all love. It may be true that we could just end our lives to be with Christ, but to do so would be to deny a fundamental aspect of who He is (that is Lord); however, the one who loves Christ is willing to learn of Christ. Suffering has now become an unexpected friend who aids and not hinders our conformity to Christ. So James states, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2).

So what happens to the Christian who committed suicide? Only God knows. But I fear that this question is too easy of a question to ask. The questioner seeks to be consoled by hearing words such as “at least he is happy now.” This again does nothing to address all that I’ve stated before. This question can only be answered by abstraction, presumptions, and uncertainty. The harder question to ask is “how did we get here?” Instead of asking “where someone who died goes,” why not focus on the why? Because that question makes us have to contemplate how the world has so broken down that death has become more precious than life. It makes us uncomfortable because its forces us to find hope in more than obscure and uncertain sentiments of hope. So we say to ourselves, “as long as I know he’s in a good place, I’ll be okay” while the circumstances we place on ourselves and others are perpetuated.

Kyrie Eleison

Lord have mercy

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writingsofwinchesters · 6 years

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what mountains taught me about identity

This past summer, my sister and I road-tripped to a little town called Dillon in the heart of Summit County, Colorado for vacation. The only thing we planned ahead of time was the Airbnb. The rest of the trip was spontaneous. One day we hiked the Tenderfoot trail, another we visited the local farmer’s market, another we walked up and down the tourist-trap main street of Frisco, and yet another we attended a church service at a outdoor amphitheater. We let each day kind of just happen - and it was my favorite.

The entire trip was one of the most restful and peaceful experiences of my life. One of the best parts was the absolutely stunning, panoramic view of the mountains from the balcony of our condo, second only to the fact I got to spend that time with my sister. I can’t quite describe how incredible it was to be able to sit out there for hours, reading, talking, journaling, watching the sunset, and just being still with my gaze on the mountains in awe.

Fun fact: the first draft of this post was written on that balcony. I wanted to capture some of the peace and awe I felt in one of the most tangible ways I know how - through words.

I have a confession to make. It may be obvious from my social media posts, but just so it’s out there explicitly.

I am fanatically in love with mountains.

I don’t know if I can quite explain why. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try. Something about them simultaneously quiets my soul and also, like, yells at me. Like “SOAK IN THIS SERENITY. PAY ATTENTION AND REST NOW.” A little paradoxical, I’ll admit, but it’s a heady, mesmerizing mixture of feelings that I can never get enough of. I could literally spend all eternity just staring at them.

I know it sounds strange, but I miss the mountains. I nearly cried as we were leaving Dillon. As we wound down to Denver, I spent more time than I should have watching the mountains shrink in the mirrors of my car. For context - I was the one driving. For sure not the safest time to be staring out the window. (Do not mention this to my sister, by the way; she’d retroactively scold me to keep my eyes on the road.) I choked back tears as we got past Denver and I discovered I could no longer see the mountains on the horizon. My heart ached at the fact that I would not see them again for over a year. This strange kind of heartache doesn’t really make sense, but it was heartache nonetheless.

Admitting all that makes me feel a bit ridiculous. Maybe it made you laugh or shake your head in confusion. Maybe you feel the same way I do. I still don’t quite understand why I feel this way. I mean, they are just formations of sculpted rock and earth, right? Why do I feel so connected to them, like they’re living, breathing things?

As I process through that feeling, I begin to wonder if it has to do with how connected to God I feel when I’m in the mountains. He is so real to me there. I feel Him in the cool, thin air. I see Him in the snowy mountain peak that breaks apart the sky. I hear Him in the quiet stillness as the jagged rock blocks and muffles the sounds of busy city life.

But, like, the mountains themselves, though. They’re just stunning.

First of all, mountains are gorgeous. Absolutely breathtaking. And not just because of the thinner air up there. Ba dum tiss. I know God is the most beautiful being in all existence because I see His beauty in how He molded the mountains and how He paints the sky around them. If His creation is that beautiful, how much more beautiful must the Creator be? For God to imagine up this beauty, He must be fantastically beautiful Himself.

Second, mountains are just so freaking majestic. And MASSIVE. I am fully aware of my tiny humanity when I gaze at the miles and miles of mountains. Just one mountain can take up my entire field of vision and even the smallest one exhausts me quickly when I try to scale it. The peaks stretch up to the sky and skim the clouds. We can’t build something that tall (we’ve tried - hello, Tower of Babel). There’s also something...unassuming and bold about a mountain, too. It’s not flashy or showy. It just sits there, confident and quiet, knowing it is one of God’s most incredible creations. That’s God too. He is majesty. He is enormous. He is the Most High King. His reach expands the entire universe. He is infinite. I can’t even fathom how big He is or how much He sees. He proclaims His glory in His creation - quiet yet bold. He is confident in His perfection and glory. His reach is not only wide but deep. He is personal enough to know every little detail of the life, body, and heart that He has given each of us.

Third, mountains are really complex and diverse. Some have rounded peaks, while others poke holes in the clouds. They are covered in millions of trees - pine, aspen, fir, and so many more. Their needles and leaves combine to become a blur of green around the base. Some mountains are short enough the trees and grass grow all the way to the top. Others are too tall that plant life can’t survive on the top piece, and they become warm brown rock with a snowy-white cap. Or maybe they’re slate-grey or even a blended brownish pink. Imagine all the animal life that exists on that one mountain! There’s so much detail in that delicate balance and God knows every single piece of it. What a mind our God has to create such diversity! He was intentional to place each rock and tree and animal and crevice and snow just exactly how He wants it. He put so much care and deliberation into His creation.

He crafted the mountains as a display of His glory and His majesty. How freaking amazing!

Phew. I need to take a deep breath for a second. I get way too excited about mountains.

Whoosh. Okay, back at it.

Since that’s how God created the mountains, unaware pieces of earth, what does that say about how He created us, moving, growing beings to whom He has given the breath of life? We are His creation, just like the mountains, and not only that, we are the crowning jewel of His creation, the final piece.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” -Genesis 1:26-27

We are the only thing in all of creation that was formed in His image, created to bear His likeness and have dominion over the rest. Up until this point, He called His creation good, which includes the mountains. Do you know what He says on the sixth day, after He created us? “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) What does that say about our identity?

Identity is a common human struggle. I think it’s something we all search for out of a desire to be known deeply by someone other than ourselves. As I was growing up, I tried to find identity in being the best at everything I did. I had to be the smartest student, the most athletic volleyball player, the most popular kid in class, and the prettiest girl. To assess this, I developed a habit of comparing myself to others constantly.

Of course, I never met this impossible standard I set for myself. There was always someone smarter, someone more athletic, someone more popular, someone prettier. My reaction to this realization was to berate myself. Suck it up, I’d tell myself, work harder, be better. When that didn’t work, I turned to relationships with others to prove my value and identity. If this person liked me, if that person called me their friend, if that boy called me his, then I would be somebody. I’d finally be worthy, special, and valuable.

No surprise here, but that system failed quickly and often. Human beings are always changing - it’s in our nature, even our bodies change daily - and as a result, my perception of my identity fluctuated constantly. Identity is not designed to fluctuate. That was not God’s intention. The moment I realized my identity was actually inexorably connected to the God who is unchanging and eternal, the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8) my whole world shifted. That’s when I gave my life to Him.

But - sin is sneaky, you know? Years later, after I thought that I had dealt with that particular sin right there and then, it reared its ugly head again. I thought it was one and done - I put my identity in who Christ says I am once and I’ll never have to think about it again.

Yet, I discovered I was putting it elsewhere, only now, the “elsewhere” was dressed up in Christian-ese and sneaky adulty things. Instead of daughter of the Most High King, I was a youth group leader. Instead of saved by grace, I was a good auditor. Instead of designed by the God of the entire universe, I was wanted and needed by a community of other Christians.

So God had to teach me again. What a loving, patient Savior. He saves me even from myself.

What would it look like if we fully believed in the identity God has given us? If we lived confidently in it? Just like the mountains, God intentionally and carefully created each one of us. He chose the unique color of your hair and the shape of your eyes. He chose the length of your toes and gaps between your teeth. He selected each tiny piece of your heart, the skills you use in your career, the passion you bring to your friendships, and the tenderness you have for your family. He chose and customized every little piece of you.

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” -Psalm 139:13-14

How special and precious are you, dear friend! You are chosen to reflect His heart.

A few years ago, I was on a youth group trip to Colorado (sensing a theme here) and our morning activity one day was a hike. We wound up the mountain as a large group, sucking thin air into our flatlander lungs and then turned around before we got to the top so we wouldn’t miss lunch. Priorities.

As we were on the way down, we started to kind of spread out. I was towards the end of the group because I couldn’t stop looking around at the view. Then, we went around a curve and the entire valley and distant mountain range opened up below us. It was spectacular. I was overwhelmed with some emotion, something that I - to this day - can’t quite find the right words to describe. It might have been true, unedited awe and amazement, or a heartbreaking kind of gratitude to our mighty God. I stood off to the side of the trail to just drink it in, letting the others pass me. I wanted to remember this moment, this feeling, for the rest of my life. I was in tears and I didn’t fully understand why.

Why?

The question wouldn’t leave my head. I kept asking God - why? Out of all of this? These mountains and these clouds and these animals and these trees? Out of all this creation - this splendor and majesty laid before me? Even that was merely a drop, a small pinprick of all He had created. Miniscule in comparison to the entire universe. Why us? Why me? Surely the mountains are more beautiful and more deserving of His love than I am. Surely the sun and clouds and stars in the sky are more worthy to bear His image than I am. Why would the God of all of this awe choose human beings, choose me, to love, to place His image upon, and to have a relationship with? Why did he want me?

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” - Romans 11:33

In the stillness of that mountaintop, I heard Him whisper to my anguished soul, “It’s not about you, dear daughter. It’s about me.”

What a relief. It’s not about me. It’s all about HIM. This world, these skies, these mountains, these people - this is all about God. This is His choice, His story, His love, His beauty, His grace, His glory.

My identity is that I am a tiny, but adored, treasured, intricately created, and delighted in piece of it.

And dear friend, so are you.

What amazing grace.

#grace #Jesus #identity #mountains #travel

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THINGS

If you're going to have to trick yourself into doing it. If we ever got to the point that their culture prizes design and craftsmanship.1 It would take a book to answer that. If you see pictures with man-made things in them, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to. A recession will if anything make it cheaper still. And being a boss is also horribly frustrating; half the time talking to executives at cell phone companies, trying to arrange deals. It's a lot harder on stuff they like, 2 that the standard office environment is very unproductive, and 3 that bottom-up.2 And if, like most people, who are still in denial. Better how?

Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, however, and I wrote a signup program that ensures all the appointments within a given set of office hours are clustered at the end of 1997 we had 500. That is one of the reasons I disliked the term Web 2. Within the office you now have to convince instead of commanding. I should be working. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. But the first time, is that they don't try hard enough.3 There was that same odd atmosphere created by a large number of people have rejected the idea that succinctness power.4 One drawback of this approach is that it won't produce the sort of distribution you'd expect, the number of startups per capita in each. Our case is an unusual one.5 People who like New York, where people walk, but not, probably, than the offices of their investors.

The atmosphere of the average site in the late nineties. They're too busy trying to spend all that money to get software written faster was to use a more succinct language, and have a compiler translate it into machine language for you.6 In any purely economic relationship you're free to do what you want to slow down, your instinct is to lean back.7 Such centralizing forces make it harder for new silicon valleys are Boulder and Portland. When designing for other people you have to remember to do something in an ugly way to get the scale he needed. So some founders impose it on themselves when they start the company.8 That about sums up my experience of graduate school. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. The SEC defines an accredited investor as someone with over a million dollars worth of stock will not, as VCs fear, cause most founders to be any less committed to the business. In most American cities the center has been abandoned, and the answer is: not much. But this was less costly than giving in, which would probably have destroyed the company. Startups are very counterintuitive.

There's more to it than that. At best you may have a couple internships, but not as misleading as it might seem. Why did no one propose a new scheme for micropayments?9 So they never realized they were zooming confidently down a blind alley. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't be any easier to read, because the board of directors might be composed of two VCs, two founders, and one that it would be misleading even to call them centers. What we know of their predecessors comes from fragments and references in later works; their doctrines could be described as speculative cosmology that occasionally strays into analysis. He did the research that won him the Nobel Prize at Bell Labs when he started asking such questions. That's what compilers are for. And newspapers and magazines. Among other languages, those with a reputation for succinctness would be the ones to look to for new ideas: Forth, Joy, Icon. 0 conference turned out to be more specific than they suck or we'll work really hard.10

We did the first thing we thought of. But if we make kids work on dull stuff now is so they can, for example, if you want to do on the maker's schedule?11 And a startup is to get bought, and acquirers are less prone to irrational exuberance than IPO investors. Anyone can do this or not, that you were rejected by another several months ago, while visiting Yahoo, I happened to get hold of a copy of The Atlantic. I still have it somewhere. That is a fundamental change.12 And when they did, the founders could get nothing.

It doesn't even have x Blub feature of your choice. That last has to be more specific than they suck or we'll work really hard.13 Lisp our development cycle was so fast that we could hold our own in the slightly less competitive business of generating Web sites for art galleries. Answer: immediately.14 In principle anyone there ought to have been able to work on what you do enough that the concept of spare time seems mistaken. The other reason you need to launch is that it's such a risky environment. The best way to prepare yourself to start a startup and tell everyone that's what you're doing; even if you're never called on to solve advanced problems, you can expect to have a nice feeling of accomplishment fairly soon.15 And it's not just that the risk is decreased.16 At the time that this was the final state of things, began to realize it wasn't the last word I'd use to describe the way good programmers write software.17

Notes

He devoted much of it.

A professor at a friend's house for the future as barbaric, but corrupt practices in finance, healthcare, and then being unable to raise the next round. So starting as a type of proficiency test any apprentice might have done all they could just use that instead of using special euphemisms for lies that seem promising can usually get enough money from the rest of the economy, you can't mess with the buyer's picture on the side of making a good plan for life. While environmental costs should be.

That's a valid point. These two regions were the people who currently make that leap.

That is where all the free OSes first—A Spam Classification Organization Program. That wouldn't work for startups is that you're paying yourselves high salaries. I think the usual way will prove to us that the middle class values; it has to grind. They did better than their lifetime value, don't worry about the paperwork there, and partly simple ignorance.

But while this is not just that if you know about this trick merely forces you to test a new search engine, the second clause could include any possible startup, both of which he can be times when what you're doing.

Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been peculiarly vulnerable—perhaps partly because it doesn't commit you to agree. It's interesting to consider how low this number is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's to make it harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we realize, because what they're going to get only in startups tend to be obscure; they may try allowing up to two of each type of x.

Mueller, Friedrich M.

If you wanted to have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal for the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I should degenerate from uppercase to any-case, companies' market caps do eventually become a function of the causes of the most successful startups looked when they decide on the young side. But there is some kind of secret about the right thing to do good work and thereby subconsciously seeing wealth as something you can hire unskilled people to claim retroactively I said that a their applicants come from going to use some bad word multiple times. And they are so different from money raised in an era of such high taxes? Since I now believe that was a false positive if the public conversation about women consists of fighting, their voices will be inversely proportional to the yogurt place, we used to say exactly what they're doing.

In practice you can ignore. An influx of inexpensive but mediocre programmers is the case of the anti-dilution protections.

Even Samuel Johnson seems to be combined that never should have become good friends. Its retail price is about 220,000. Till then they had in school math textbooks are similarly misleading.

Since people sometimes call us VCs, I had zero false positives reflecting the remaining 13%, 11 didn't have TV because they are so much a great programmer is infinitely more valuable, and this tends to happen fast, like arithmetic drills, instead of uebfgbsb.

It's worth taking extreme measures to avoid faces, precisely because they had to both. Instead of making a good grade you had to pay dividends. And maybe we should at least a partial order.

The word boss is derived from the moment the time I did when I was writing this. For most of the mail on LL1 led me to do this all the combinations of Web plus a three letter word. In this essay.

This is not a remark about the smaller investments you raise them. There is no grand tradition of city planning like the stuff they're showing him is something inexperienced founders. There's no reason to believe is that you'll have to factor out some knowledge. When we work with me there.

Startups Condense in America. I'm thinking of Oresme c.

And the expertise and connections the founders realized. This is why search engines. I think lack of movement between companies combined with self-interest explains much of the canonical could you build this? Incidentally, the closest most people haven't noticed yet.

On their job listing page, they will come at an academic talk might appreciate a joke, they sometimes describe it as a kid.

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jemandrr · 6 years

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Thoughts on the NSFW Purge

So, like, I’m nobody and my thoughts are unorganized, but hey, it’s my opinion time.

First of all, I don’t consider the concept of sexuality to be inherently corrosive, including for minors. I can’t personally draw a line that defines what age someone is suddenly ready to explore their sexuality. It’s probably a futile endeavor, to be honest, and there’s always drawbacks to any way you could handle it: If the parent controls it, then they could groom their child, oversight of any kind really could facilitate forced out-ing, etc. (Though, sex is not the only kind of abuse that can be harmfully ideologically groomed for by an adult who can control what media their child has access to...). And no matter what, kids find porn. It’s basically an open secret. Adults’ job is not to enable it, is all. When I was 11, like half the dudes in my grade talked about it at some time or another.

It’s a complicated subject and it isn’t tumblr’s job to navigate that, as the laws are what dictate that. I didn’t go into that to say there was an easy answer. It’s just relevant. For someone whose value system considers keeping porn out of the hands of kids to be of paramount moral importance in order to keep the chaste purity of the generation that will guide the future, or something like that (i suspect they don’t actually think that far ahead, reacting simply to the negative stimuli rather than any particular consequence), then I can see why they’d consider this a move worth making moralistically. I don’t believe in that consequence, and I don’t consider porn (or porn-adjacent content, given the restrictions) to be a negative stimulus, so that tells you a bit about how I weigh the situation.

And on that, I want to note that economics are not on my mind. Verizon will act on money. That’s not something I’m equipped to argue with. I don’t care or know, and I have no idea if they’re financially in the right. But plenty of people agree with the move, or are only bothered by the side effects and juxtaposed inactions (Which isn’t to say that I disagree with these latter two points, nor that there aren’t people who use them to support beliefs similar to mine). I may infinitely begrudge Verizon, but my quarrel is with those people, who are moralistically opposed to me. Verizon has no beliefs, so there’s no point arguing with them on that axis.

So there’s a couple points that I want to add/complicate on top of the more popularly discussed narratives, which I’ll do in whatever order.

The first of which is the relatively underwhelming presentation of most tumblr blogs. Blogs aren’t designed to shower you in content; as each element is curated, there’s generally more focus on individual posts than on other sites that allow nsfw. On the creator side, that means posts are longer, images and videos are better supported, and both of these things tend to be expressed in preview without needing to open the post separately. That’s a totally different user experience that also influences content creation/curation. Other websites have different primary goals, which is why migration is both difficult and imperfect. This general concept also applies to things like tags (which are used for a variety of things on tumblr. The existence, implementation, AND COMMUNITY TREATMENT of tags on other sites are all different).

These types of implementation details can change the tone of things a lot. It can be a lot more personal, connecting you with a person and allowing you to see other things they’re interested in, or how they communicate with people. Plenty of blogs with porn on them aren’t just porn blogs.

There’s also massive interconnectedness due to reblogging. And it’s not the same as having a video in your playlist that you saw in someone else’s, or retweeting. There’s context and captions and the choices people make to add to, remove, or replace them. It serves as an extremely easy way to find yourself in similarly-curated content, it gives you a better sense of how active a post is than a view count. Its also harder to be a purely passive commenter. It’s easier and more beneficial to like/reblog things you enjoy and incidentally create a porn side-blog if you already have an account, than it is to have a half-decent pornhub or twitter account. In that way, you get more vectors of exploration and more curated content. Sure, you might retweet all the porn you like, but it’s really not going to be the same for a user to navigate (though the vector of exploration aspect is there, sure).

Also, images and short clips just seem to flow through tumblr a lot more smoothly than the alternatives. There’s also something to say about the centralization of videos and stuff. If pornhub is working, then there’s one video, and you go there. On Tumblr, you don’t *go* anywhere unless you want to.

Next, Curation of sex content is super important. I’ve yet to find twitter or pornhub accounts that approach it quite the same way, though I admit I haven’t looked too hard. Anyways, tumblr porn blogs are generally suited to an individual’s taste (or an aspect of it). This is actually super important. As a byproduct, you can often avoid overexposure to the branches of even niche fetishes or focuses that you’re not into. There’s a lot of often subtle variation in taste and extremism that is absolutely huge when navigating this. Not just for sheer ease-of-fap-ness, but also in learning about what you’re into, what your limits are (and what they might be in real life, often different from what you’re capable of getting of to the idea of), etc. Further, any minority or people into something niche (and harmless) has something to gain when it comes to representation and stuff. I’ve found it very difficult to really find good content along specific lines on other platforms. (Though I’ve already outed myself as a deviant, I ain’t giving examples). And when I do, it tends to be super mixed in styles and extents.

Now, in both of the above categories, I touched on exploration (both the ability to do it, and the enabling of a range of things to explore that can be meaningfully different). And that’s, like, super super important and adjacent to the ultimate point I intended to come to.

And that’s (indirectly) because allowing pure porn to mix with casual subjects in the same platform makes a massive difference. That’s the crux of it, to me. The idea that you go to some sites for porn and some sites for memes and that there’s no point in intersection is what gets me the most. That’s certainly a sustainable way of doing things, and most people probably get by in that manner.

But it absolutely affects peoples’ behavior on that platform in a unique manner. Like...say what you will, but a forum where people can just argue while nudes are being posted along the same thread is fundamentally a different experience and you can totally expect that the topic and way the conversation goes will be influenced by that. It’s a different type of being open, that influences behavior and interpersonal communication. Talking to someone who knows what you’re into, even if you’re anonymous, is unique. It’s a vector of understanding.

And this type of unique environment can be huge for communities centered around a sexual orientation. Which is where my life comes in. I’ve been on places that mixed politics, cute things, funny things, and gay sex for...a long time. Longer than I was even aware I was gay. (Not because I knew what being gay was and I was in denial, but because there was such a lack of narrative around homosexuality that even when I came across things that were explicitly gay, it never crossed my mind. I also didn’t think of my life in straight terms either, really. Though I had crushes, and urges, and looked at things, it took a long time for me to actually consciously realize that there was this part of my identity that..existed.)

I have no idea how long it would have taken me to realize, let alone explore, my identity without that kind of place. It really helped a lot with learning how to process and express my sexuality and what that did and didn’t mean about the rest of my life. I got to know a lot of people, learn a lot of things, hear about a lot of life experiences, good, bad, unverifiable. Major influences, and I won’t pretend that often times these major influences were enabled because i was a horny teen with a crush or who had a particular interest in someone’s taste. (Oh gods, I still hate the fact that I can now say teen entirely as a retrospective)

To some extent, what I know about boundaries and self control and respect and consent is because of overpursuing people (aka being a creep) and being shut down. Part of the reason I prefer to be compassionate than cynical is because of interactions and stories that crop up because sex and sexuality often lead to very earnest conversations about the darker side of life. I had and have no way to verify that other guys weren’t just, y’know, being overdramatic or ‘attention-seeking’ but it was conversations like that that made me realize i didn’t want to be the kind of person who overlooked these things if they were true. And it was there I decided that even people who just want attention probably need it. You see different sides of people in that kind of community. I’m not saying anything in this paragraph is the only conclusion to the same situation, just that I question what opinions I would have without these experiences. I regret that I have so little memory of a lot of these things that I know shaped me.

Exploring your sexuality is huge on its own, but the other opportunities to explore yourself that are opened up by being in a place where you can freely express and explore your sexuality. That’s big too.

And the place I had a majority of those kind of experiences, at some point years ago, got a separate channel to put nsfw. And that just...was a fundamental change in the community. Especially when old people left and new people came who hadn’t been socialized in the old ways. It’s hard to succinctly describe, which is why I’ve simply said it’s unique so many times above, but things change a lot when you just put the nsfw elsewhere, even if you contact the same people between the nsfw and non-nsfw areas. Not just in obvious ways, or even ways that really have a visible cause and effect. But I’ve seen the shift a few times and I do believe it to be profound.

That’s the reason that I, someone who has never put anything visually sexually explicit on my blog, utterly protest against this change, and why after the change goes through, I’ll let my queue run, and I won’t just leave, but I fully expect and intend to gradually migrate off. And I hope there’s some platform out there to catch me by the time it’s tapered off to nothing.

#tumblr #purge #sfw #opinion

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theoreticallyawriter · 6 years

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Chapter 4: No Place Like Home

Read on Ao3

I push the front door open and listen to the electronic lock reengage, it’s the only noise in the house besides my own breathing. I live in a really nice part of the city. It’s near the center and relatively big because my mother is our faction head’s right hand. There’s no one home to greet me, there never is. I like it, or at the very least, I’m used to it.

“Home sweet home,” I say to nothing. I look around and try not to think about how this is the last afternoon I will ever come back to this house after school.

I walk up to my room and drop my schoolbag next to my desk. Then I walk out and down the hall stopping at the first door to the right of mine.

We have guests often enough to warrant a guest bedroom, which is what Melanie’s old room has been converted into. Mostly it’s just Jeanine, working too late into the night to bother with driving home, but my cousins come to stay from time to time as well. Two years ago, Victoria lived with us for several months and this is where she stayed. It’s not really something that I like to remember, probably one of the most miserable events I’ve ever experienced second-hand. Her parents died horribly and she was living in a strange faction with her sister who’d transferred years ago and was woefully unprepared to raise a child. That was before Gwendolyn and Melanie were living together, when Gwendolyn was still looking for a house because her apartment was little more than a hole in the wall that she barely even lived in. All she’d ever needed it for before was to have a bed to collapse into after working all day and through most of the night. I went there a few times; there were six pieces of furniture at the very most and she’d never really bothered with decorating. My family did everything that we could for the two of them, but it wasn’t easy then and I would argue that it still isn’t easy. Victoria fits well in Erudite; she’s studious, and quiet, and well behaved. But she’s closed in on herself in a way that even concerns Gwen, who has very few friends to speak of on account of the fact that she cares about Vic, Melanie, and her work and basically nothing else.

I flop down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. I remember very well what this room looked like before Melanie was gone; the clothes everywhere, the messy desk, the bookshelf packed beyond what it was really meant to hold, a corkboard where she kept pictures and other keepsakes from events. It was a lively kind of chaos that’s not like how Melanie is now. She grew up; she’s poised, and perfect, and elegant just like our mom. I sometimes wonder to myself if I’ll grow into that too and I’ve just yet to figure it out. Unfortunately, I don’t really have the time to see if that’s what happen; if I really can just grow into everything I’m supposed to be. Melanie’s been perfect to some degree or another for basically as long as I can remember. Even before she was the way she is today she was always good at everything she tried and always tried at everything she did. I’ve looked up to and envied her since I was a child in the way that most younger siblings do.

I wonder if she feels the same way about Minerva. Probably not; Minerva’s amazing but she’s different, she fundamentally grates against the values that were instilled in us since we were children with basically everything she does. She doesn’t believe in tradition or convention and she’s never tried to hide that. But Melanie – and Michael too actually – for as much as the love her, don’t really seem to agree. Michael, I know, thinks that everything has limits and there’s only so far that you can push.

It’s not as small minded as it sounds, I promise. Erudite is a lot of things but small minded isn’t one of them.

I pick at the plain bedspread, fighting the urge to fall asleep here. I wonder what my parents will do with my bedroom after I’m gone; what project they’ll take up. Maybe a private library like the one Jeanine has, like the one they’ve wanted for years but never truly got around to. Instead, our books are scattered on high shelves about the house, packed tight with my parents’ impressive collection of material.

It used to feel like my siblings lingered in their old rooms, the twins in particular. Parts of Melanie and Michael stuck around long after they left in a way that they didn’t with Mark and Minerva. I was young when they left; not too young to feel it but too young to be close to them like I was close to the twins. Michael used to tell me stories, read to me, explain the latest thing he was learning about to put me to sleep when I was young; Melanie taught me everything she learned to entertain me. They were born to be Erudite and I was their precious little sister.

I love them. They linger.

I love Mark and Minerva too, but they don’t feel like that. It doesn’t feel like the ghosts of them wander around the house when I’m lonely. Maybe that’s because I was so young when they left, maybe it’s because every trace of them but our family photos has been scrubbed clean by time and change; or maybe it’s just been so long that my connection to living with them, the way that they were an inextricable part of my day to day life is nothing but a fond memory. I wonder if my parents feel that way too; I wonder if they’ll feel that way when I’m gone. In these recent months I have missed living with my siblings more than I ever have before and it’s hard to tell if that’s because I actually miss them and constantly having them around or simply longing for a time when I didn’t have to worry about growing up. I was seven when Mark left and that was the first experience I’d ever had with losing someone so close to me. I don’t remember how my parents reacted, but I remember that Minerva was furious and I was terribly upset. I didn’t really understand why my eldest brother had decided to just leave like that. It wasn’t even close to the last time I ever saw him of course. I’ve seen him many times since then, and I try to keep that in mind every time I get scared about never seeing my family again. Mark and Minerva are still as present in my life as they can be; sometimes it feels like they are about as present as the twins are. That’s not really something I like to think about either; no matter how pleasant the thought may be I know it’s not true and all it serves to do is drag me down.

It’s not that I resent any of my siblings for chasing the life that makes them happy, for doing everything that they want for themselves. I love them, it just gets sort of depressing being all alone in this massive house when I can very clearly remember a time when I was never alone, when there were always people around. Things still get crowded from time to time; my parents still have people over for all sorts of things and we go to even more social events than we host, but it’s not the same without my siblings. It’s boring and almost everyone I meet at those events is boring, and sometimes Erudite feels like everything I could ever want and need but sometimes I’m just bored of it all and there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do to get away. I wish that I could talk to one of the twins about it or something, or maybe Gwendolyn or Maureen would be better because they’re both transfers. Gwendolyn came from Dauntless, she would know what it’s like; but she never talks about it, she says that she left for a reason and that’s all she’s ever said of it. She and Maureen are perfect Erudite too, just different kinds. Gwendolyn devotes her entire life to her job and always has; she’s like a supercomputer, it’s really incredible actually. She’s this quiet genius who doesn’t waste time talking and is mostly action.

Maureen has always been great at balancing her life. She’s struck a perfect harmony between her work, her new family, and her hobbies. Her life always seems so simple and easy and I know that’s because she’s put so much work into getting it figured out. I don’t ask her about Candor often, but what she does tell me is hardly anything that I want to do. I never thought to ask her or Gwendolyn what it was like to transfer. I guess I shouldn’t now or that would probably give something away.

Both of them and the twins would tell me to stay; in my position I’m sure that they would stay. I am mostly Erudite so it is only logical that I choose Erudite. My parents would say the same thing.

Mark and Casey would both want me in Amity with them; would try and convince me that it is the place that I would be happiest. And they’re probably right; Amity is an infinitely kinder place than Erudite or Dauntless. But I’m not really sure if kind is what I want or what I am.

Minerva would probably just give me some non-advice like ‘do what feels right’, the problem is that nothing feels right. Nothing feels exactly like it fits me, like I’ll fit anywhere, like I don’t fit anywhere. I just want to be satisfied wherever I am, and I don’t want to fail. I want to be somewhere where I can go far, where I can at least try to live up to my family’s legacy. I am so afraid of falling behind if I stay; afraid of getting lost in the crowd and unable to ever rise to prominence like the rest of my family has. God knows Eliza could and does outclass me easily. Even the rest of the people that I don’t like, like Dahlia, just because I hate them doesn’t mean they aren’t smart. Can I really risk the embarrassment and disappointment of not just falling behind, but never making up to a rank of any importance in the first place? There are so many people that are far more talented than I am, people who work so much harder than I do and I don’t want to fall behind. Erudite is huge, and difficult, and daunting and I can’t say with any certainty that I will survive here; there are so many that don’t.

But would I fare any better in a place like Dauntless?

I like to think that I’m pretty fast; and I might not be as strong as some of those born into the faction but I am far from weak. Still, I’ve heard terrible things about Dauntless and the people that live there and what if that’s just as bad as trying to survive Erudite? What if I can’t make it there either?

I rub my eyes and sit up, drumming my fingers on the bed before standing up again. The clock on the nightstand tells me that it’s almost five. It will be another three hours at least until my dad comes home, and he’s the one of my two parents that comes home early. I very severely doubt that my mother or my siblings will make it over tonight. Between the problems with the Aptitude Tests and the last minute preparations that need to be made before the initiates arrive I am sure that everyone is plenty busy.

It’s okay though, I’m used to it.

I read until my dad comes home in the late evening, finishing up a novel that I wasn’t actually very interested and would never read again even if I would get the chance too. I hear the front door shut faintly and finish up the last paragraph of the book before getting up and opening my bedroom door. From the balcony that overlooks the living room I can see him pacing back and forth, on the phone.

“She’s going to be so disappointed; you know that, right?” He runs is hand though his hair while the other person talks. “You know I love you and she loves you too, but that doesn’t mean she’s not going to be upset. I mean you’re working through the last night we may ever get with her.” He rolls his eyes at the person on the other line’s response and I realize who he’s talking to immediately. “I hardly doubt that matters, she’ll just want to see you. Send Jeanine, Gwen, and the twins my love. Bye, Dear.” He hangs up and turns, seeing me looking down.

He sighs and then smiles feebly. “Hey, Mim.”

“Was that Mom?” I ask.

He frowns. “Yes. She’s, uh, not going to be able to make it for dinner. None of them are.”

I nod. I figured.

“But, uh, that’s okay. Your mother says she’ll be home later and we can do something then.”

I nod again. ‘Later’ with my mother always means in the very earliest hours of the morning so she can get a few hours of sleep before going straight back to work. I guess I’ll just see her tomorrow at the Choosing Ceremony.

“Why don’t you take a seat on the couch and you can tell me about your day while I get started on dinner.”

I walk downstairs and sit on the long couch. I know that I’m doing a poor job of masking my disappointment, I did a poor job of masking it when Melanie had to leave. I’ve come to expect it, but it still stings every time it happens. I can tell that my dad feels bad about it, and that he feels like he has to make it up to me. My dad is almost always doing extra things for me when my mother can’t be around. I think that he thinks that I don’t understand, but I do. I know that she’s busy; I know my whole family’s busy just like I know that he makes a conscious effort to take off early so I’m not alone into the late hours of the night but my mom is the faction representative and she doesn’t have that luxury. Having to work all the time is basically in her job description and I know that.

I still miss her though.

“How did the test go?” my father asks from the kitchen.

“The test was fine.”

“Melanie said there was some sort of malfunction with a few different ones.”

“Yeah, she was telling me about that this afternoon. Some sort of system failure in which the results had to be entered manually.”

“Happens pretty much every year,” my father says. “You’d think with how far we’ve come in these past few decades we’d have better testing equipment.” He glances back at me and chuckles. “Don’t tell Jeanine I said that.”

I laugh. “I’ll be sure to do exactly that.”

A long time ago, Jeanine worked on the team that developed the serum that they use for the Aptitude Test today, she and another scientist perfected it and that was the achievement that helped get her into office. Its why she’s so popular; everyone knows what a genius she is and everyone is very aware of how much she has done for this city.

At the same time, my mother was already the faction representative. She got elected when she was twenty, the youngest ever, after her predecessor and mentor died suddenly of some sort of allergic reaction. She was poised to take over for him anyways and that process just got expedited after his sudden death. She has been serving on the council for the vast majority of her adult life and has held office for the second longest duration of time out of the ten council members. The only one who’s been serving longer than she has is the Dauntless leader.

“Did anything interesting happen at work today?” I ask.

“Not in the slightest. I mean unless you want to hear about the seating arrangements for the Choosing Ceremony as well as the truly ungodly amount of meetings that it takes just to settle a minuscule component of our,” he sighs and turns to look at me, an insincere and saccharine grin on his face. “endless dispute with Abnegation.”

“Not really.”

“So, big day tomorrow.”

“Really big day,” I agree.

“Have you given any thought to your choice?”

“Tons.”

“And? How’s that going?”

“Just fine.” I leave out all of the parts about freaking out because I’m something rare and dangerous and I don’t really belong anywhere. “What was choosing like for you, Dad?”

“Oh. Well, it was never much of a choice,” he says. “I always knew what I wanted.” I’ve heard people tell stories about choosing their faction before with wistfulness for their youth. But my father just sounds bitter about it; I don’t know why, he was born Erudite, there shouldn’t have been any bad blood there.

“Were you excited?”

“Sure,” he says, though his voice suggests otherwise. “Always exciting, getting to start your life and whatnot. You really figure out who you truly are.”

We’re silent for a minute before I speak up again. “Dad.”

“Yes, Sweetheart?”

“Why did you choose Erudite?”

Give me a reason to stay, I think. Give me a reason that doesn’t involve the family. Tell me why you didn’t leave.

He is silent for a long time before he says, “Because it was the only place that I ever wanted to be. I knew – I knew my friends, and my family, and I knew myself, and Erudite was the only place I felt like I belonged.”

“You already knew Mom back then, right?”

“Mhm. Your mother, Jeanine, and I were good friends for quite some time before our choosing.”

“So you stayed for her? – and, uh, the rest of your friends?”

“I stayed for me.” And he sounds so sure of himself when he says it; sure of himself in a way that I don’t know how to be. He knew himself, and he knew what he wanted, and he knew where he wanted to be. Everything that he did, he did for himself. For him, there was never any other way to go.

“Mimette, I want you to stay. But if that’s not what you want, then you should follow your heart.”

“Like Mark and Minerva did.”

His brow furrows slightly, “Right.”

It doesn’t take a Candor to tell that he’s being insincere. Neither of my parents really approve of Mark and Minerva’s choices, though they will never say so aloud.

“What about Mom?” I ask. “Why did she stay?”

He shrugs, “I think she knew what she wanted out of life too. She was born into a life very much like yours and she was very determined to be a certain way. I honestly don’t know, Mimette, you’ll have to ask her.”

I wish that I were like my parents, I wish that there were never any other way for me to be. I wish it were easy for me to stay, to look around and know that Erudite is all that I have ever wanted.

“What was your Choosing Ceremony like, Dad?”

“Well, I was a little older than you because that was just how things were back then. Why they changed it, I’ll never understand.” He rolls his eyes. “But I digress. It wasn’t so different; same ceremony, different names. Nothing exciting. But the look on his face suggests something else, a tense smile like it was interesting.

I shrug. “You should tell me anyways. I don’t really have anything else to talk about.”

“Well, didn’t you see your sister today? How was that?”

I scoff, “Oh yeah, I saw her for all of five minutes before she had to rush off back to work.”

“Don’t be like that,” he says. “How was she while you saw her?”

“Fine, I guess. I mean, she seemed busy, but she always is.”

“Mimette,” my father says. “You know that your sister loves you very much, right? Your mother does too; they’re just busy. Everyone is busy; that’s just how life in Erudite is.”

“I know.”

It’s part of the reason I don’t want to stay. I’ve seen pretty much everyone I know get completely absorbed by their work. It consumes them and it sucks for everyone else in their life. I don’t want that; I don’t want to do that to other people and I don’t want to do that to myself. I’ve never been afraid of hard work; but I’m a little uncomfortable with Erudite’s insane workload. It doesn’t seem like something even the most talented people could handle, even though they do, and it certainly doesn’t seem like something I could handle. I don’t have that kind of resolve that people like Eliza and Kira do. Just another thing that makes me glaringly not Erudite.

“By the way,” I add, “she was wondering if you had the number of Damascus’ floristry.”

My father visibly cringes. “Uhm…Nope. No, I don’t think I do.” His voice is strangely high and tense. I’d expected him to be annoyed, not…whatever he is right now. He lets out an uncharacteristically nervous laugh. “Anyways, how are your friends doing?” he asks. “Cassandra and Elizabeth, did their tests go well?”

I accept the change of subject and say, “Yeah, I think so.” I don’t tell him about how Casey plans to leave and how I know that I could follow her and Mark and that is a viable future for me. I could, but I’m not sure if I could ever thrive there. I don’t tell him how I know that Eliza will fit better in Erudite better than I ever could and how I wish that I were like her. I wish that I could be Erudite enough.

“That’s good. You girls must be very excited.”

“Mhm.” Maybe I’d be more excited if I didn’t know for a fact that Casey was going to leave me; that if I stay I will always have Kira and Eliza but I might never belong the way that they do and I’m not sure how to keep that from bothering me. When I was younger I just assumed that those roles were something that people grew into, that by the time my Choosing Ceremony rolled around I would be as mature, and intelligent, and elegant as the rest of my Erudite family. But here I am a day away and I don’t feel like any of that; I just feel like me. My father scoops the pasta he was making onto two plates and sets them on the table before returning to the kitchen to clean up before we sit down.

“I know that you’re nervous,” he says. “But I promise this is nothing to worry about. It’s the start of the rest of your life, it’s a happy occasion.”

I nod.

“It can be...difficult to change and to lose people. They say that one in ten people transfer out of Erudite every year. But some people just aren’t cut out for it.” There’s that thousand-mile stare again, like he’s going back to some bad memory. “It’s not...not nearly as hard as you think it is.”

I’m not sure if he’s right about that. My father is Erudite, so it comes naturally to him. But for me it all seems insurmountable at times. It feels like I would be better off leaving to do something else, to go somewhere where I have a better chance at making it through. I know just how difficult Erudite can be; just how absolutely horrific certain facets of being here can be and a small part of me can even understand why people in other factions might hate us. From the outside looking in, we must look awful to some people. For the Abnegation, who live dull and simple lives in their silence and complacency, we must look horrible. It’s no secret that they find everything that we do, the way that we live, offensive on the deepest level. We are in direct contrast to everything that they believe in. I will never be Abnegation, that I know for sure. And I’ll never be Candor, so that’s two out. But I think about Amity and I think about Dauntless and to an extent they both seem feasible. If I were to work hard enough, maybe I’d be able to shape myself into what they are.

I get up from the couch and pick up my plate. “Dad, I think I’m just going to eat in my room. I – I have a lot to think about.”

He looks up and smiles softly. “Okay, Mim. I understand. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

I start up the stairs and leave him to eat alone and I do feel sort of bad about that, but we both know that I really do have a lot to think about. My entire life depends on the choice that I make tonight.

No pressure or anything.

I guess what it really boils down to is what I want out of life. More than anything I want to live up to my family’s legacy. I want to be as great as they are. I want to do something important, I want to be important. If I stay, I would never stop working; I would never be able to. I could throw myself into my work and let everything else become background noise. I could become well respected in my field, I could discover something important. I might just be able to do some real good. There’s so much that I want to do and I’m not sure how to do any of it.

I could stay and I could always have my family close to me. I would always have my parents and the twins and everyone connected to them. I would get to keep almost all the people that I care about. I would get to keep everyone but Casey.

Or I could follow her to Amity. I could spend all of my days in the fields with people that are always smiling. We could be happy together. Someday the time that I would have Mark around would be greater than the time that he was gone. I would get to keep my first friend, and get my eldest brother back. I would never stop smiling; I would never be unhappy.

Or I could be Dauntless. I would have none of the security or the familiarity, but all of the adventure. I could decide for myself and by myself what sort of person I am and who I want to be. I would never have to worry about my family’s expectations ever again because the choice alone would defy everything that everyone thought I would be. I could be strong, and bold, and loud. Dauntless have no sense of propriety or elegance and there is something amazing in that. Something awe-inspiring that draws me to them just a little bit. It would be a place of my own where I could establish myself without ever being in my family’s shadow.

I wonder if this is how Mark and Minerva felt when they decided to leave. They got to stake a claim to Amity and Candor respectively and no one ever associated them with who they were related to. If I go to Dauntless I could do the same.

But then I would never have those ties to my friends and family. I would grow apart from my friends and eventually lose them entirely, the time and the distance between us would eventually grow too large for any of us to hold onto anything but nostalgia. I might never see them again. I might even begin to forget them after a while.

If I become Amity I would lose all of the potential that I have to do something really amazing. Amity aren’t exactly known for their complexity. Short of becoming a faction leader there is nothing that I as an individual could do for Amity or for Chicago. I might be losing my chance at greatness. I like and respect Amity and the people there; I think that there is a lot of strength in being so gentle and they play a great role in everyone’s prosperity. We would not survive without them. But they’re not exactly what I want. I mean, I see how I could choose there and I know that in some ways I could be happy. But I’m not sure if I could ever really be satisfied there, if I could live my life without ever looking back and wondering what might have been if I wasn’t so afraid to try something.

If I stay, I might fail. It’s as simple as that, I might wash out of initiation entirely or I might just never get out of my family’s shadow. I could never amount to anything and simply be a disappointment. I could just as easily do exactly what I aim to and lose myself entirely in the process. I could lose all of my friends and everything that I care about and simply let my work become my entire life. I could do something really important and lose everything in the process. Worst of all, I’m not sure if that isn’t worth it.

If I go to Dauntless I would be alone. I would know nothing and no one and I could still fail. Hardly anyone transfers to Dauntless because the chance of getting chewed up and spit out into factionlessness is so high. It’s not for the faint of heart, though I suppose that is the point. I want to imagine that it’s all thrill and fun, it looks like it’s so much fun. Every Dauntless I’ve ever seen always looks so happy, like their whole life is an adventure. Part of me very desperately wants to feel that way, wants to feel free and reckless. It should all send me running, it should grate against everything I know and it does, but it doesn’t irritate me and it certainly doesn’t scare me. It fascinates me far more than it probably should. Fantasies are all well and good, but I’m supposed to be the person that my family wants me to be, and I do think that I have the best chance of doing that in Erudite. I want to be like my family, I want to be like my mother and to do that I have to stay Erudite. That is the highest score on my aptitude test and therefore it should come the most naturally to me. It is who I am. It has to be.

September 1st, Year 499

Tomorrow is the Choosing Ceremony and this year I will be a part of it. It’s the day that every kid in the city waits for with great excitement. It’s the day that we become adults. But me, well I’m terrified. I’ve never been totally sure of myself or my footing in Erudite, I always thought that I might just grow into it eventually. But clearly that hasn’t happened. A few years ago, I started wondering if I just wasn’t meant for Erudite; if maybe I belonged in Amity or Candor like Mark and Minerva did. It fascinated me as much as it terrified me. I knew even then that to be either of those things I would have to leave behind everything that I know. I would have to give it all up and hope that I’m making the right decision. I never really stopped thinking about that, but as my Choosing Day drew closer I just started pretending like nothing was wrong. I was hoping that the Aptitude Test would tell me how to decide, that it would clear away the fog and show me what had always been right in front of me this whole time; who I truly am.

Instead it only confused me more.

Apparently, I’m some sort of rare freak that can fit into more place than one and just writing this out could get me into some serious trouble. My test administrator never really told me what sort of trouble beyond ‘don’t tell anyone ever’. I don’t ever want to find out exactly what those consequences might be. The test told me that, theoretically, I could suit Erudite, or Amity, or Dauntless.

I had never even considered that Dauntless could be a possibility. I had hardly thought about them at all except for the tiny glimmers of admiration I keep to myself. I mean, who doesn’t admire them? They always look so happy, so free; they’re like a daredevil version of the Amity – and I’m sure that any Dauntless would punch me for saying so, but it’s true. It’s just that, the way they are was always sort of alluring to me; I guess I’ve always sort of fantasized about what it might be like to never be bound by things like propriety or convention. If I thought I could be that then I guess I might try to, but as much as I like to imagine it I don’t think I could ever be like that. I don’t think that I am the sort of person who could ever fit among them.

Except, according to the Aptitude Test, I am.

I’ve never been especially superstitious; it’s really hard to be in Erudite, which places importance on things that can be observed by at least one of the five senses and theories that can be tested over everything else. No one really believes in fate, or soulmates, or destiny, but I hear them used in hyperbole. I’ve heard enough about fate and destiny that even though I don’t really believe in it, I can still think about it and sometimes I wonder if there really is something like it, if all of our choices are decided for us before we’re even alive and there’s nothing we can do to change it. Though, I guess that’s a little bit bleak; I guess that really takes all of the control away from each and every individual and none of us really have any choice in anything. So maybe being fated for anything isn’t really a good thing.

I have a choice tomorrow. They will call my name and I will choose my faction and that will be the rest of my life right there, that will become my path. Whether or not I manage to actually make it wherever I choose is something else all on its own. I decide the way that I want my entire life tomorrow, and I’m terrified.

It should be easy; the answer should obviously be Erudite. I know this place like the back of my hand, I’ll have at least one friend here for sure and more than half my family. I could do something really amazing here and I can’t just let that go to waste. I’m smart; I like learning and I’ve never been afraid of hard work. I know how to act and so many people already like me. If I make it through initiation then it should be very easy for me to climb to the top. I’ve put very little thought into what I really want to do with my life – I always thought that I should wait until I knew where I was going to choose to decide the career I wanted to pursue – but I have always been fascinated by the faction council. I guess that’s one of the side effects of being the daughter of the Erudite rep and a council liaison. I think the work that the leaders and the people that work at the Hub do is interesting and important. I know that it can be vicious, and petty, that the reality of working on or for the council is often hard, boring, and thankless. I know that there’s a million rules to it that no one ever teaches you and one misstep can ruin you.

But still, I want to be there.

It’s lofty, and it’s incredibly ambitious, but that’s part of who I am and it’s what most of my family does. I’ve never thought that I’m very arrogant, but I really do think that I can do it. Like I said, I have never been afraid of hard work. That career is something that I could do anywhere, it’s all a matter of how easy the climb will be. I think that every faction presents its own unique challenges, especially Erudite, if I stay I will be subjected to the especially cruel and brutal competition and the mad grab for attention and the power that comes with that attention that every initiate who doesn’t want to be lost in the pack has to make. I’ll have to be prepared to fight tooth and nail for everything and I’ll have to be prepared to fail. I have a bit of a leg up because I already know how Erudite’s initiation works. But the thing that Michael told me about it that always stuck with me was that no matter what it will make you feel stupid and like you don’t know anything and can’t form an argument, because you are, and you don’t, and you can’t. Erudite bleeds the weak ones dry and that’s why there’s a twenty-five percent failure rate. Even some of the ones that manage to make it through suddenly find themselves swept away, unable to keep their heads above water or are eaten alive. Loyalty can either mean absolutely everything or absolutely nothing to people and sometimes that will change the moment they have the opportunity to get ahead. It’s vicious, and I don’t love it, it terrifies me. The twins never seemed bothered by it, but I guess they were always very confident in their abilities. I don’t know how to be ruthless, that’s not me. If nothing else, I am very sure of that. I just want to be happy in life and I want to make other people happy; I want to be able to do some good.

I guess that’s the Amity in me.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this. I don’t know how I can possibly choose between my family and everything that I know and…something else? Something that might fulfill me in a way that Erudite couldn’t? Something that makes me happier than I am here? I don’t know; I don’t know why I would ever even consider leaving, but I still do. I don’t want to leave and I don’t want to stay and I can’t really think of a good and definitive reason for either. I can think of certain advantages and disadvantages to both possibilities, but neither are exactly something huge enough to make my decision even though some things should be. I should stay for my family, I should stay for my friends, I should stay for my future and to be the person that my family has always wanted me to be, the person that I have always wanted to be. I should go because I’m not really happy here, I should go because I can’t stop thinking about what it would like to be anywhere but here, I should go because I crave a life that no one can stake a claim to but me, I should go because there’s a sliver of a chance that I might be able to survive without everything I’ve ever known and part of me wants to take that chance.

I just want to belong somewhere. I’ve always felt a little too out of place in Erudite, a little too much like I was playing a part that I was trained to fit into rather than being the person that I am. Erudite is in my blood, it is all that I have ever been taught to be. Everything my parents taught me to be was under the assumption that I would be Erudite and a really incredible one at that. They tried to show me the reality of being powerful in Erudite as best they could and I have met the most powerful people in Erudite and I have grown up around wealth and prosperity. I can name every department head and most of their family members. The department heads and those who work for the Faction Council are among the most powerful in Erudite, the ones with all of the luxury and glory. I have been meeting them since I was very young and I have been taught how to be the perfect daughter. But I’m not sure how much of who I am is predisposition, a part of my personality, and how much of it has been ingrained into me because that’s just how I’m supposed to be. I know how to be perfect, I was raised to be perfect. But can I keep this up my whole life? Will it eventually become natural or will I always feel out of place in my own faction?

But if I leave, if I become Dauntless and forgo everything that I know for a wild kind of freedom that I’ve never really experienced, then I would be the first in my family to do so. I would have no one to help or guide me, I would be totally alone and I wouldn’t have any connection to anything or anyone from Erudite. Dauntless and Erudite don’t not get along, but Erudite does sort of have a superiority thing over them. I guess it’s just that we’re a little more elegant and refined then they are. I know that if I left my family would never approve; I know what they think of the Dauntless. But if faction before blood is to be believed, I guess it doesn’t matter what they think of my choice.

Except that it matters to me. I love them very, very much and I want them to be proud of me. I’m growing up, but in a lot of ways I’m still just a child looking for attention and approval.

UGH! I don’t even want to think about this anymore, it’s kind of giving me a headache. I just wanted things to be normal; I just wanted to know what I was supposed to do and then do it. It wasn’t supposed to be this complicated, I wasn’t supposed to not fit anywhere. Maybe I should just choose Erudite because I know it best, because it would be easy to blend in and pretend like I’m normal and pretend like everything’s fine forever. I could live a long and happy life here; I could achieve the life that my siblings have if I really tried hard enough. Or I could try to live a life apart from everyone and everything and hope that it all works out for me. I could take a chance and hope that I don’t crash and burn. It might be good for me, it might even be great.

I spend the rest of me evening reading and eating. I only fall asleep because I don’t have anything better to do, and I’d like to delay the next morning as long as I can.

“Mimette,” someone’s voice breaks through my dream. “Mimette, Sweetheart, wake up. Everyone’s waiting downstairs.”

I open my eyes and blink a few times before rolling over. My mother is standing over me, looking like she either just came from work or is just about to leave.

“Come on, the others are downstairs.” She turns, beckoning for me to follow.

Confused, I sit up and after a moment of trying to wake up I stand up and follow my mother downstairs. Before I leave I take a quick glance at my clock, it’s only a little past three in the morning.

I plod downstairs after my mother, squinting in the bright light but my eyes pop open at what I find waiting for me in the living room.

“Surprise,” Melanie says, grinning.

“Wh-what-” I yawn. “What are you all doing here?”

“We felt bad about missing dinner,” my mother says. “So we figured we’d make it up to you the moment all of us could.”

They all look exhausted, all except Maureen having just come off of what was most likely a twenty-one-hour day with only tiny moments of reprieve and here they all are like they’re not all totally wiped. They all came; Gwendolyn and Melanie are sharing the love seat on the far side of the living room, Michael is sitting on the arm of Maureen’s chair, and Jeanine sits on the couch. My mother joins her there. In the kitchen, my dad is pouring mugs of coffee, still in his pajamas with sleep in his eyes and his hair curling up at weird angles.

“I can’t believe you all did this,” I say, tired but thrilled with a genuine smile tugging at my lips.

“Anything for our little sister,” Michael says, smiling at me.

I kneel on the floor in front of the coffee table and my dad sets a mug in front of me on a coaster before moving to the couch and curling up next to my mother, who puts her arm around his shoulders.

“So, Mimi,” Jeanine says, she’s the only one that calls me that. Everyone else just calls me Mim or Mimette. She’s had that nickname for me ever since I was a kid. “Do you think you’ve come to a decision?”

I look up from my coffee at her, and then at everyone else. They all stare at me sort of expectantly and I know the answer they all want, the answer that I want to give them.

“Yeah,” I lie. “Of course I do. Wasn’t exactly that hard of a choice.”

I wish that that were true; I wish it were true more than they could ever know. I know exactly what sort of person they want me to be and I wish with all my heart that I could give that to them. I wish that I could just definitively say that I’m Erudite, that I am their perfect daughter, their perfect sister, that I’m someone they can really be proud of.

“And that choice would be?” Michael says.

“Erudite, obviously.” The lie almost physically pains me, it makes my chest contract in a weird way as guilt and fear twist together inside of me. It kind of sounds right; I can just get up tomorrow and get ready and then choose Erudite and come right back to the faction I’ve always known. No one would ever have to know that there was something different about me. Or I could leave, and they would all know that I lied to them.

But the way that they all smile almost makes it all worth it, and it makes me want to stay. I love my family, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. Not even my own adventure.

Right?

We talk for a while, a small lively little gathering in the dead of night. I’ve heard of the image that some of my family members project, I’ve even seen it sometimes. But when they’re home, it’s hard to ever think of them like that. It’s difficult to ever see Gwendolyn as cold and silent, always watching and always scowling when she has the loudest laugh among us and one of the softest, most genuine smiles I’ve ever seen. She looks gentle and kind, and it’s a wonder how people don’t see it. Michael likes to present a similar persona; all apathy, and rolling eyes, and icy professionalism; but he laughs like Gwendolyn, and banters easily with Melanie, and looks at Maureen with so much affection and adoration. My family is so warm, and kind, and full of life and I don’t want to leave them. I want to be the person they want me to be; I want to make them proud.

I don’t even remember falling back asleep. What I do remember is my mother guiding me upstairs and putting me back to bed. She pressed a kiss to my forehead and then left me to my rest.

#divergent #fanfic #the anthem series #update day

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yeehawrachel · 3 years

Photo

I approached the manifesto from a post-modernist perspective, which arguably made it infinitely harder to complete. If there are no hard-set rules without exceptions, who am I to shout directives at anyone? Or even just into the void. I researched existing manifestos and garnered some prevailing themes that seemed to exist across time and platform. One idea that artists and manifesto creators seem to agree on and preach as a lifestyle is “fail forward” (Popova, 2021). Which seems like a guileless starting place. But how can one tell others to “just act” or “just create”, even if it’s bad or clumsy or wrong, when our creations have the potential to influence lives in potentially damaging ways? Consider the makers of the film “The Birth of a Nation”. The filmmakers probably thought they were creating art, representing their culture, promoting American values, and showing the world their heroic side of the story. But this film is widely credited with generating renewed interest in the KKK, a surge in KKK membership, and frankly it’s beyond likely that many people died due to the hysteria incited by this film. It’s actually probably more important to communicate to a larger audience that people don’t often know when they’re on the wrong side of history. People are generally trying to do good things, stick up for what they think is right.

Take, for example, the artist, singer-songwriter SIA, who recently made a film called “Music”, which was an ‘homage to her autistic half-sister’ and childhood companion, and made in good faith, under the impression that she was giving exposure to an underrepresented community. But this movie was critically received as a disgrace. SIA herself is not autistic, nor is the main actress she chose to represent the autistic individual. She likely didn’t intend to cause any harm, but she reduces autism into a cartoonish and childlike of itself, completely lacking the nuance and sensitivity that it would require to immerse the viewer in their world, put us in their shoes, and bring their story to life. So what should we take away from this? Could this film have been made elegantly, so that it would have been received with grace? Do we adopt a blanket principle that no one should tell any stories about marginalized, disenfranchised, or underrepresented communities unless they, themselves are part of that community? That’s where we find one of the pitfalls of post-modernism. Infinite consensus can create paralysis. Our entire nation is grappling with that notion, at the moment.

Another feature common to these artistic manifestos is the idea that consumerism is the antithesis of progress, that our graphic design skills are absolutely wasted in these capitalistic endeavors, and that we should instead dedicate our time to more virtuous, important tasks (Garland, 1964). At first glance I agreed with this sentiment. Runaway capitalism profits from (and has historically profited from) slavery, and the capitalist creed isn’t exactly something that I want to align myself with completely. But it is worth noting that consumerism is generally the niche that we graphic designers occupy in society, and I don’t think that’s altogether terrible. I have this memory of my friend purchasing a box of adult diapers for her infirmed grandfather, and on the front cover of the box was a handsome young man- maybe 30 years old- wearing an adult diaper. When she bought the box we both had a giggle imagining this man, just after he had accepted his job offer, excitedly calling his mom on the phone like, “Mom, I got the job!! I’m gonna be a MODEL!!” And to be honest that idea still makes me giggle. But the point worth noting here is that he’s a cog of the capitalist machine, just like the rest of us (or, most of us). And we’re all going to have to work less-than-glamorous jobs at some point. But directing anger with the system towards other people who are just trying to make ends meet—doesn’t strike me as a helpful thing to do. So even if you’re employed to make packaging design by a company that makes laxatives, or whatever, just do your best and make it attractive. Or funny. Not solely or necessarily so the company can increase the profit margins of our employers, but so that we can make our world a more beautiful or enjoyable place to live in, however we can.

Lastly, a trend in manifestos and an explicit goal of artists and graphic designers that has caught my attention is the imperative to “make something lasting”. Which didn’t sound completely right to me for some reason. Of course, I believe in making the world a better place for future generations, but achieving that by making something lasting, even if that thing isn’t a physical entity- strikes me as a fallible approach. Ideas change, and there’s almost 8 billion of us on this planet. Sometimes the best way to make the world a better place is to feel small, be kind, and just try to be a good human. Setting out to create things that last, either physically or metaphorically… that’s how we ended up with so many statues of racist war generals. Just saying. Maybe let’s not make “lasting” one of our ultimate motivations.

I had about a million points that I wanted to make in this manifesto, and with each point I got immediately fretful about the million consequential counterpoints. So I went about this manifesto in a way that I felt best demonstrated the idea that there are often at least two sides to every issue, depending on the filter you view it through. And that sometimes a bit of a filter is necessary to make sense of things at all. When viewed with one filter, my manifesto conveys suggestions of silliness and harmless rebellion, and the other through filter is a message more along the lines of “live a humble life and drive safely”. The trends in graphic design that I do enjoy and abided by are the style of write everything in capitals, split things into discrete, brief phrases, using slightly provocative rhetoric, occasionally featuring ‘foul language’ (Hanna, 2021). The back of my manifesto is a drawing (created in photoshop and printed) of mine that I found to be a lighthearted reflection of postmodernism.

Regarding my specific methodology, my manifesto is printed on cardstock and sits within an envelope that has acetate windows on each side to filter out red and blue light respectively. The card, outside of the envelope, is a printed with superimposed messages in red and cyan, that are difficult to read without a filter, but are legible when viewed from within the envelope. The only material problem I encountered along the way is that acetate paper is extremely static-y, it pulls dust out of the air and sticks to clothing because of its charge, and thus constantly appears dirty and gives you little electric shocks when you’re handling it.

I feel like my manifesto is an accurate representation of myself and my views. It is an attractive object containing both information and irreverence, it is a symbol in and of itself, and it is a representation of my present and future approaches to my work in graphic design.

#manifesto

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welcometomy20s · 3 years

Text

March 27, 2021

Hololive Minecraft and the Impending Meaninglessness of Work

For the past decade or so, I have been looking for work, for about half that time, I was successful at securing work, mostly in tutoring, but at the time of the writing, I am currently on the other side. While I was looking for work, I was also working to get a degree, mostly to show competency of my skills as a person in a society...

But lately, those skills have become harder for me for no discernable reason, other than perhaps aging, and I have become increasingly frustrated by the current process of finding work and measuring my productivity. It seems that all I want to do is to watch and gather data about a bunch of people rigged to look like anime characters playing video games, especially an open-world sandbox game made in the early 2010’s.

And I will precisely use the video game and people playing them to illustrate why I should be so frustrated with the current system and why I should just watch and gather data about people rigged to look like anime characters playing video games.

When you start Minecraft, your first objective is... to survive. To gather resources necessary for your continued existence. The world is out there for your own taking, punch some wood, gather some fruit, build crude items to gain minerals in which to build standing structures... eventually you will become efficient enough that you don’t need all the stuff that you have accrued for your survival. This is what we know as surplus. And if you try to reach this state intentionally, that surplus is now known as profit, and if you use this idea of surplus as a commodity in itself, then the term that describes this new commodity becomes capital.

But fortunately, you live in a society. Our species was somehow evolutionary pressured to create initial organisms that are not very much equipped. If giraffes are like your standard indie game, where you just have to download and off you go, then humans are like your free-to-play mobile game, where when you download you have a basic structure of the game, but to have a game that actually functions, you need to pay more. Why is human designed in such a resource-grubbing hack way, well, that’s for a different post, but suffice to say, we need a lot of people around to be at a point where we could be one of the people who is around those proto-people.

Since, you are surrounded by those people, you can throw the surplus into a big pile along with other people’s surplus, and just take whatever you need from there. Note that money doesn’t come at this stage. If you participate or witness a bunch of kids finding many sugary edible substances, you will find that allocation of resources doesn’t quite require the presence of tokens which we call money. Now, when you do need money is when those surplus and resources are not enough and we have to delineate who gets to live and who has to die. This is basically how sovereignty works, and this is the power that governments use to create and circulate a token known as money.

Money is a token given for service of some work which the society think it’s necessary, which can be exchanged for goods and services, including ones you need for survival. Therefore, it’s a form of coercion that we willingly participate because we believe society has rightly allocated things that need to be done and how much they are valued.

But are they? Bullshit jobs are jobs that exist to stamp people as valued by society but are not necessary for society’s continuation. There might be jobs that people value but are not necessary that people want to do... and there might be jobs that people don’t usually want to work at, but are necessary for society’s continuation so we put a high benefit to entice people to work. Those people do work for the paycheck, but work is valuable in itself, so we can kind of get away with it. And we can see those jobs make quite a lot of money, I’m thinking plumbers and garbage collectors and so on...

But if a work is not wanted by people, or the society... then why does it exist? Perhaps it’s because society is very... emo. As in they believe induced misery is a necessary part of life, and that we must force misery on people in order for... society to hold?

I’ll go back to this idea in a moment, but let’s continue with our analogy.

Now, if you are skilled enough in Minecraft, then you might create something that gives you infinite resources. And if you create that... well, you are kind of done. Well, least you don’t need to work to survive. In fact, you don’t need to work at all, I mean you might need to maintain your miraculous machine, but all you are doing is for non-work purposes. There’s always a time where you need to defend against acts of God, but most of the time, you can just chill and rely on your creativity to work for whatever.

Hence the state of something like the Hololive Server. You come in and out as soon as you have an idea to add to the land, and those landmarks and entertainments will slowly fill the landscape. This is the world of post-scarcity, where technology has outstripped our need for work for survival. Surplus is a guarantee and we don’t need to worry.

Indeed, as technology improves, it will start to displace work, and most of the productivity will come from improving technologies rather than labor. And that has been the case in the 1970’s... not because technology reached a certain stage, but because the government realized that’s basically the case and made it so to be that way.

Money can be still used as a token of approval, but it’ll just be that token of approval... unfortunately things become a little screwy in the between phases. Think about those entertainers in our original analogy, we throw them money because we appreciate their... well, existence, in a sense, but this appreciation becomes the approval in order to live, which really must screw up with your sense of work, and that’s because we decide to smash two very different things together in an unholy combination.

At this point, let’s get to the emo-ness of society, this idea that society wants to force misery into people. Well, one explanation for such emo-ness is the ideology of Capitalism, as in society’s purpose is to create profit for the capitalist class. And society uses coercion to force extract the worth of labor into the profit of the capitalist few... but in this post-scarcity society, not only is this idea quite mean, it’s meaningless, since endless profit can be created without using any labor or least minimal labor. So the fat cat can be fat as they want and workers don’t have to be miserable for it.

So the reason for this induced misery must be something a bit deeper, in fact it’s probably foundational. Idea of hierarchy is that some people should be miserable and others should be happy. It’s a foundational scarcity... and the most reasonable foundation for this is... well, what Noah Smith quietly points out, love.

And that’s why far-right organizations usually spring from relationship forums, or forums complaining about one’s lack of love or relationships. Because there’s the foundation. But by now, we have strayed too far away from our original topic, so I’ll stop here.

#economics #socialism #work

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roguelike-theory-blog · 6 years

Text

Pure waste of bandwidth

A few Girard-inspired, mathematical-theological stories for my friends.

Voting for itself. Girard dismisses the Hilbert’s programme, comparing the attempt to prove mathematics using mathematics to “the parliament voting for itself”. It is a correct comparison, yet its value as a criticism is ambiguous. As a french logician, Girard might actually know that the French Republic – and arguably the modern politics – has actually been founded with the parliament voting for itself. In 1789, the new-founded National Assembly of France was concerned with the question, whether it actually does represent the general will? This question was resolved affirmatively by the notorious Abbé Sieyès, who took the structure of his argument from the catholic thinker Nicolas Malebranche.

Malebranche was concerned with proving prothestants wrong, as catholics usually are. The problem was, whether the Catholic Church, that is, its body of cardinals was the one, unique representation (in the yet religious sense, from which we will later found the legal concept of representation) of God on Earth – as opposed to the possibility of the multiple, partial, conflicting representations of his will favored by the protestants. His thought experiment was simple: “Say we gather all of the cardinals together and let them take a vote, whether they, together, do or do not represent the god’s will. The ones who say ‘no’ are obviously not real cardinals: you can’t be a cardinal if you don’t believe in the institution. So everyone who is a real cardial will say ‘yes’, thus determining by unanimous vote that the Catholic Church is indeed the one and unique representant of God”.

Now let us postpone the matter of the obvious begging-the-question; let us also not indulge for now in the beautiful ways with which Malebranche tries to fix it; let’s focus on how this argument is still at work in our very lives. Abbé Sieyès used this very same argument to prove that the Assembly is the real representative: if your particular will is against it, you’re just not of the Republic and your will doesn’t count. The whole seeming ridiculousness of the argument pales in comparison with its incredible effectiveness: the modern politics was born with all its representative-democratic weirdness. There’re likely philosophical ways to ground this idea onto something more fundamental, yet the notoriousness of such an ouroboric event is clear, and the break that happened here is on the level of a new self-supporting thought from which, however, the ‘real things’ are being created on a daily basis.

Can’t we say that Hilbert’s programme is the same type of event, just imposed kind of retrospectively onto the history of mathematics? The mathematics voting for itself, let the naysayers be damned into luddistic hell? In this case we can go on living with its theological form while embracing the fruitful mathematical content it gave us. And then our next move, the move of the ones who dares to respect and use mathematics without believing in it, should obviously be to look for the heretics and the heretical thoughts. We should not be content with those who just dismisses mathematics altogether (the boring, impotent atheists) – the real heretic is the one who is of the mathematical practice, but questions its belief structure. How do you call the hagiography but about heretics? Heretography?

Hysterizing the computer. Now one of those heretics is Brouwer, whose whole project was about questioning the givenness of the a priori. Insane idea, completely against Kant, of course, as it questions the very distinction between thinking and praxis. A priori as something completely given assumes some kind of a collapse of the process of thinking in time, with all of the theorems already there somewhere, indeed nothing more than Anselm’s ontological argument, but about mathematics. Brouwer scouted this a priori and found his own fixed point theorem, which states that there’s something that exists but can’t be found. Now that’s unsettling for Brouwer who is, by the way, of a Schopenhauer’s persuasion. To question the whole thing, Brouwer looks for the most extreme point of this a priori givenness, and it’s nothing else but the law of the excluded-middle: it’s only there if you can always do the anselmnian jump to the farthest conclusion. Brouwer slows down this seemingly instantaneous jump by denying it, inventing the intuitionistic logic, and actually somehow manages to get pretty far with it, reformulating even a part of topology in this new light. However this heresy was not approved by his holiness Hilbert, already too influential on the continent – isolated Brouwer loses his mind and dies, never seeing any hope of his work being useful.

A different development was up at the same, however, concerned a piece of metal to be called computer. There were a few of those machines already, and it was obvious that there’s going to be more. On the other hand, it didn’t actually take very long for people to notice how incredibly useful the intuitionistic logic was for this machine: much more than the ‘classical one’. The computer became the redeeming object of Brouwer’s logic – he never saw one, never even thought of one, yet turned out to provide the most important concept for its study. The depth of Brouwer’s premature contribution to Computer Science is beyond the wariness of tertium non datur: his work predicted the notorious problems with the floating-point numbers, and his topology turned out to be a weird tool to study computable functions, which is a cross-sub-disciplinary link of strange awesomeness for the easily excitable people like me.

So if we’re desperately looking for any escape from the horrible weight of the Kantian-Hilbertian mathematical theology, shouldn’t we look into the computer? One of the weird things about the computers is how easily we all were persuaded, not so long ago, that everything in the computer is “virtual” (not in the sense in which philosophers use the epithet, but in the sense the marketers use it), that is, not exactly material… Which is nonsense, a structure of disavowal, which has to be thoroughly contradicted on all the levels, starting on the level of primitive processor instructions which, according to the simplest laws of thermodynamics, can’t perform any destructive operation – can’t forget any value of any variable – without wasting some energy, emanating some heat. This kind of thought is as material as it can be.

Right here, right now, I can show you how the materiality of computer affects our everyday life in a very noticeable, annoying fashion. Let us recall that to study the whole population of computers a special concept was invented, ‘the Turing machine’. It was a strange abstraction, seeking to provide an ideal type for those machines, a link between their real bodies and the computable functions which are performed by them. It is used in science, yes, but it is also used too much in the arguments between the adolescent programmers, if you ever dared to talk to them – “C and Lisp are the same thing because of the Turing machine”... But let’s leave them be. Where’s the Turing machine’s fault?

Turing machine is imagined to have an infinite time and an infinite memory space. That’s what we can sometimes believe about our computers. When our computers run out of time – that is, we subjectively feel that they are slow – we’re annoyed and happy to fix it. The existence of the computer as a time-consuming device is obvious and we’re perfectly equipped to notice it; every second it’s slowing down we’re feeling it, I think, already at the level of our bodies; yet there’s no realistic limit to how long a computer can run. What is harder to notice, yet much more objective, is the limit of its memory: the computer runs just happily, using as much memory as it can, until there’s no more memory at all. Then strange things begin to happen.

What does exactly happen when the computer is out of memory? Of course, it can just kill the hungry program: it’s not part of the algorithm’s mathematical abstraction, but at least predictable. Usually, however, stranger things happen. One of the ways the computer pretends to have more memory than it actually does is by “swapping”: using the HDD instead of the RAM to store whatever is to be stored in memory. HDD is 10k times slower than RAM: when it’s used for memory too much, nothing crashes, but everything is suddenly very slow. We hear strange noises. The computer starts misbehaving. Random things crash because of the timing issues brought by the lack of speed.

Now we can allow ourselves to see this “lack of memory” in the aristotelian-lacanian light, as something that is material by being actively opposed to the (mathematical) form, not-reducible to it (if only to escape the attempt to inscribe the whole OS, other programs and the hardware into one big ad hoc mathematical structure making any mathematical study of the algorithms pretty much useless). I say “lacanian”, faithfully to Lacan (his Real was Aristotle’s matter), because this is indeed the very point where the subjectivity of computer in the lacanian sense is obvious: it lacks memory (desire) – it acts out (hysteria). If we consider how hackers use a similar problem, the buffer overflow, to do whatever they want to the computer, the analogy becomes rich enough.

The materiality of the neural network. In 1892, one W. E. Johnson described “symbolic calculus” as “an instrument for economizing the exertion of intelligence” (btw, Johnson is described by Wikipedia as “a famous procrastinator”). Far from enabling new types of intelligence by itself, the thing was to save on the wasted expenditure of the old ones. With this I want to introduce another dimension of the materiality of the computer: the one which I’ll describe from a paranoid-marxist perspective, following the Adorno’s belief in the truth of the exaggerations.

Neural network is an amazing shiny new thing, it economizes our exertion of intelligence all right, yet the weirdest part of it all is that we kinda have no idea how it works. We can describe the output (in our terms which we impose on it), and we can describe the inner structure (it’s all matrix multiplication), but there’s no translation between the output and the inner structure except for the one that is by running the neural network themselves. The neural network’s thinking, in general, lacks the conceptual content we’re so much used to, it doesn’t exactly distinguish the parts of bodies and stuff like that. It operates on a belated, not-yet-conceptual level. We can actually through pain identify some general things that it actually notices on the images and stuff like that, but only partially and constantly recognising that it’s we who’s pulling the vague ideas of the NN to this conceptual level.

To illustrate how the NN works there’s no better example than the notorious network which draws cats upon sketches of cats: http://affinelayer.com/pixsrv/index.html . Try it out, you can do it online. Now, what are the concepts with which the neural network thinks about cats? It’s… well, it knows an eye, but that’s more-or-less it. Everything else is more like a texture of a cat, in a very weird sense of a texture, the one available to us after we discovered the 3D rendering.

So there’s knowledge of things in the NN, yet it’s either not on the human level, or it’s somehow hidden. To explain this, Schopenhauer comes to mind: “an entirely pure and objective picture of things is not reached in the normal mind, because its power of perception at once becomes tired and inactive, as soon as this is not spurred on and set in motion by the will. For it has not enough energy to apprehend the world purely objectively from its own elasticity and without a purpose”. That is to say: NN understands cats exactly as much as it needs to (with the need imposed by its operators, most of the time the Capital), and no more.

Now the paranoid-marxist intervention: what is this lack of knowledge? Who has it? Is it not the proletariat? If we have a training set of thousands of pictures, on which a neural network is trained to recognize dozes of features, those features had to be tagged beforehand by some pure workers (most likely from India, am i right?), who themselves were likely constructed through a cheap-labor marketplace such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (the name familiar from Walter Benjamin), pretending to be machines to create a neural network which pretends to do the human work. Can’t we say, exaggerating, that the neural network is a labyrinth of numbers in which anyone looking for the human [labor] is to lose his track?

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