#if you have a magical healing metal substance

[insanescriptist]

you know, a lot of people in the DC fandom are like "pit madness doesn't exist,"

except

the Lazarus pits, depending on continuity (and placement of the pit)

are

A. connected to a demon,

B. full of Dionesium, a naturally occurring liquid metal with supernatural healing properties that's usually found mixed with other substances

C. got space substances from a meteor

D. all of the above

so if "pit madness doesn't exist," I hate to say it but metal toxicity certainly fucking does

[tadpolesonalgae]

Azriel x Borrower!reader: The Secret World of Borrowing

A/N: uh, so, yeah…making it so borrowers have little wings in this, so I guess you could just call them fairies at this point.

Warnings: none???? for once??? maybe like bad language if I’m really trying???

Word Count: 3,327

-Part 2-

Anything in excess will do your body no good.

Initially, you had dismissed the thought—living off sugar cubes sounded like absolute heaven. But after about a month of surviving solely off the sweet substance, you’ve begun to dread your next meal.

Your stomach’s rumbling again, so you hop from the burnt out candle pot—cramped as it is—hidden behind a stack of books, perched precariously at the edge of the fae’s desks. So far, you’ve managed to avoid them all, darting behind teacups or ducking beneath the lip of a plate, and soon, you’ll be done with them. Just one more week, and your shimmery, iridescent wing will be fully operational.

It’s already been three since that dreadful storm that had sent you whipping through the air, smacking into the wooden frame of what you’ve now pieced together was a window ledge. From there on, you’d used your small reserves of magic to bind and set your wing, but it’s been lessening your healing powers—hence the exacerbated pain and elongated recovery time.

Slowly, carefully, you peek out from behind the towering stacks of parchment, spotting the sugar jar that’s kept on the desk. A quick scan of the room tells you the fae that inhabits it is not around at the moment. While you’ve made a point of remaining hidden and out of sight, you’ve noted a few peculiar things about the male. There’s a strange darkness that wafts around him, a bleakness that surrounds his wings—great things, that stick out from his back and loom over his shoulders! He has an odd sort of schedule, too. Blasted male. He often works late into the nights—confining you to your too-small candle pot that’s cramped, and stuffy, and really not good for your healing wing.

But you can blame him for all those wrongs until the day you die—for now, your keen nose is picking up a delicious smell. Doing another scan, you peek out further, to spot a plate laden with food.

Dear Mother, it’s one of the most beautiful sights you’ve ever seen. You ignore the meat at the side, instead staring at the beans, and salad, and beside the plate— Berries! You could dance, leap for joy, cry, or sob, at the welcomed sight. You rush out, darting over the grain of the wooden desk. The small, glass bowl comes up to your stomach—a little taller than the plate—and you eagerly grab a berry.

The food is still warm though, which means he will likely be returning at some point soon. You turn, scanning the flat expanse of his desk. There’s a metal-looking container, housing some ink pens. That will do perfectly well should he return.

You open your mouth, poised to chomp down on the berry, when the hairs on your neck rise. Then something snags your ankles, pulling you off balance. A tiny scream spills from your lips as you drop the berry, face smacking into the desk. Quickly, you flip over, ignoring the blood dripping down your upper lip. It’s that darkness he’s always wrapped in, but—why is it bothering you? You didn’t know it could detach from him? That’s unfair!

You shoo it away, kicking your legs but it curls higher, tentatively. You snarl, writhing more frantically as it creeps up your knee, over your thigh. A growl rips from your throat in warning, but it doesn’t listen. Instead, more darkness swells, wrapping up your hips and around your waist. You shriek in anger, practically vibrating as the shadows press and push at your skin.

The final straw comes when you receive a pinch on the ass, red colouring your vision as magic wraps around your hands and you grip a strand of darkness firmly, yanking it off your body as if it were some weak rope. The darkness twitches, writhing in your hand, suddenly desperate to get away from you. “That’s what I thought,” you snap, indignantly, tossing it off you.

It slinks away, once again leaving you to the berry. You huff, wiping your nose on your forearm, attempting to get rid of the blood. But then you’re knocked into from behind, making you stumble. The shadows coil, springing forward, tackling you to the wooden desk as they keep you pinned. You struggle and writhe, worried about what this position will do to your wing, but then you hear the ominous scuff of boots in the hallway.

Panic surges in your chest, and you once again coat your hands in magic, but the shadows have learned from last time, shackling your wrists to the wood so you’re unable to touch them. You snarl in fury, pushing the magic to your mouth as you sink your teeth into the shadow. It twitches and jerks about, but you hold fast. The constraints remove themselves from your wrists, and you take the chance to flip the shadow over—the others that had been holding you down skittering away, scrambling for cover.

With your hands now free, you keep it pinned to the table, slamming your magic coated fists into it, beating it off you until—

Reinforcements have come, and they’re dragging you off the smaller shadow that’s twitching and flickering. “Let me go!” You snarl, tugging against the restraints, “it started first! Let me finish it!”

The door swings open, and you all freeze.

It only takes a second, but then his hazel eyes have landed on you, piercing into your form as he stiffens. His shadows release you, darting away as if they were completely innocent, and then you’re scrambling for cover. You were mistaken though, his shadows didn’t go into hiding. They were grabbing a jar.

You slam into the glass, a fresh wave of blood running down your upper lip as you smack your palms into the glass—to no avail. On the bright side, the berry’s in here with you. You grab it, placing it between you and the edge the desk, between you and the approaching male.

His eyes are marginally widened as he comes to a stop, pausing warily as he takes you in. You go rigid under his scrutinising gaze, crouching down behind the berry. It only comes up to your knees, but it’s better than nothing. A shadow curls over his ear, and you hiss at it, backing as far against the glass as you can, keeping your magic on hand.

Slowly, he pulls out the chair, lowering himself into the seat, still staring at you. You offer him your most scathing glare, trying not to be too intimidated by his size and piercing eyes. “Let me go,” you shout, scrunching your hands into fists over the berry. His features shift into mild shock, or surprise. “You can…talk.”

You don’t lessen your glare, instead you make it harder. “Of course I can talk, you blithering idiot! Why wouldn’t I be able to talk?” You snap furiously, nails sinking into your palms. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, bracing his fingers on the table. Your eyes dart to his hands, cringing further back against the glass.

He lowers his hands, and you stop trying to push through the jar.

“You…what are you?” He asks, settling his hands on the wooden chair arms. Your nose wrinkles as you stare at him for a long moment. Then, “I’m a Borrower,” you spit out, “and you have no right to keep me here. None. So let me go.”

Again, he shifts in his chair, those great, powerful wings at his back catching in the light, showing off the gilt looking membrane of the inner skin. “You’re a what?” He asks slowly, as if your size would somehow interfere with the speed you hear. “I’m a Borrower. And I’m not dim. I can hear you perfectly fine. Just a bit muffled through the glass,” you snap pointedly, eyeing the confinement he’s trapped you in.

He’s quiet for a while, and your heart spikes. What’s he going to do with you? With his size, and shadows, a number of cruel fates await, all because you’re a little too small for him to consider a life form. He raises his hand to rub over his mouth, appearing in thought. Then, “you’re the creature the made those little footprints, aren’t you.”

You blink, caught of guard, “I— What?” He nods his head, as if confirming something. “You got stuck in the gravy, didn’t you? That’s where those marks came from.” You flush with embarrassment, baring your teeth at him, “it’s your damn fault for swamping your food in that rutting sauce,” you snarl viciously, remembering how the gloopy liquid had come up to your thighs in some places. It had taken a lot of work to get clean again.

He nods quietly, watching you with those piercing hazel eyes of his that make you want to curl up in your candle pot. “I’m Azriel,” he says at last, making you jump. “What’s your name? Or are you just called Borrower?” He inquires, seemingly earnestly. It doesn’t stop the fumes pouring from your pointed ears, “is my name Borrower?” You repeat, rage building in the pit of your belly.

“Insolent! Arrogant! The lot of you!” You shout at him through the glass, magic flaring in your palms, but you tamp it down. “We have names, just like you. How would you like it if we all insisted on calling you by your kind’s name?” You snap aggressively. His brows raise a little at your outburst, raising his palms in what you guess is supposed to be a calming gesture. Red tints your vision, “don’t you try and placate me! Condescending brute!”

“I meant no harm,” he says, “but I want your name. So I know what to call you.”

You hesitate, pausing your rampage. “Why should I tell you my name?” You ask, eyes narrowing on the male. He makes another calming gesture, and you settle a little, “I’m not trying to antagonise you—you’re a creature I’ve never even heard of before, so I’m going about this as logically as possible,” he replies smoothly. You deflate a little at how genuine he sounds. “So,” he says, sensing your mood calm, “what is your name?"

Your head dips down for a moment, hands wringing in your lap as you keep near your berry. “I…I don’t know,” you stammer, softly. His brow furrows in confusion, “what do you mean you don’t know?” Your eyes flit about, darting away from his. “My mother… I can’t read. She wrote my name down for me, so I would never forget it, but I was never told what it was.” You laugh quietly to yourself, “three hundred years, and I’ve never gotten the chance to learn. Or ask…” His eyes soften at your harrowing tale.

“I could read it,” he offers. You peer up at him with wide eyes. “Provided it’s in a language I know,” he adds, hastily. You suppress the urge to snap at him that you have the same language, why would it be written differently? Instead dip your head almost imperceptibly.

You get to your feet, hesitantly making your way to the front of the clear glass jar. He leans in closer to be able to see and you reach into one of your pockets, then pull out your fisted hand, holding it out toward the glass. Azriel squints a little as he peers closer, hoping to at least give you the knowledge of your name…and after three hundred years, too.

Daintily, you raise your middle finger, effectively flipping him off, “eat shit and die, asshole.”

Silence stretches between you, a storm brewing in the air, and you tense, waiting for him to break upon you. But then he huffs out a puff of air, and his eyes are crinkling and he’s laughing, chuckling softly to himself. You stare with wide eyes, tiny finger still raised in defiance as he laughs to himself.

You flush with indignation—he should be furious! “Hey!” You snap. “I don’t know what the hell you’re laughing at. It’s not funny.” He laughs harder, hiding his face in his the crook of his elbow and you watch his shoulders tremble as he attempts to control himself. “Hey!” You repeat, a little bewildered, “Azriel!”

After a few moments, and a few more deep breaths, he raises his head so he can peer at you. You take a few shuffling steps back away from him, returning to your berry. “If you won’t tell me your name,” he says, smiling faintly, “will you at least tell me what you were getting into a scrap about with my shadows?”

“They attacked me first,” you snap at him, scowling. His eyes flick over your bloody nose, “you were stealing my food.” You narrow your eyes at him, “I was hungry.”

“So you thought stealing was a good idea?”

“You shouldn’t leave food out where nasty little Borrowers can get their grubby little hands on it,” you counter, folding your arms over your chest.

He pauses, eyes running over you properly. “Why are you in my room?” You know he marks the way you stiffen, but you force every ounce of nonchalance you have into your body as you shift your weight to one hip, examining your nails that aren’t as clean as you would like. “Because I seem to come by a lot of free meals.”

It’s his turn to furrow his brows, leaning closer, examining you, “how long have you been in here?”

“Long enough to know you’re a cranky old bastard who’s so obsessed with his work he’s unable to notice when a little thing like me sneaks in,” you reply smoothly, holding your own as he stares at you. He nods again, “a while, then.” You nod, giving him a smarmy little smile.

He leans forward more, resting his cheek on his forearm as he looks at you sidewards. Gods—he’s so much bigger than you. “Where have you been relieving yourself, then?” You’re stunned for a moment, before you dig your nails into your palms, stomping forward to the edge of the glass cage. “In your food,” you snarl angrily, flushing at the rude question. His lips quirk up at that, crossing his arms over the desk as he rests his chin on the table, “I’d been wondering what that sweet flavour was.”

“You crass, brazen, pig,” you snap indignantly, absolutely appalled.

He chuckles again, seemingly enjoying getting under your skin. “You Big Ones are all the same,” you hiss. “You’re rude, disgusting, and have no concept of manners.” He blinks as you blow off some steam, going on a rant that matches your size. “Big Ones?” He asks, “is that your name for my kind?” You nod in response, a stern dip of your chin. “So are you a Little One, then?” He asks, mildly pleased when your lip curls back from your teeth. How can something so small carry so much anger in her little body? He’s surprised you can fit it all in. “Don’t call me that,” you snap, plumes of smoke practically shooting from your little ears, “it is rude.”

His smirk widens, “what about Tiny? Or Goblin?” Your lips part in astonishment, “I am not a goblin.” A tiny foot stomps down on the desk. “You might be a goblin,” he says, amusement dancing in his hazel eyes. “They’re old wives tales. Folklore, nothing more,” you snap indignantly, tapping a tiny, impatient foot on the wood. “I don’t know what they look like,” he reasons.

You scowl at him, “they’re ugly little things.” He smiles a little, a single dimple appearing beside the edge of his mouth, “they could be lovely, little things with ugly tempers.” You snarl at the taunt, practically vibrating with anger.

“Is this how you’re going to torture me? By boring me to death? Pretty unimaginative, if you ask me,” you snarl, nails digging into your palms as you glare at him. He regards you silently; it’s an effort not to shift beneath his gaze. “What makes you think I’ll hurt you?” He asks softly, watching from beneath dark, silky locks that curl over his brow. You narrow your eyes at the male suspiciously, “it’s what you do. Don’t try and make a fool out of me. I know your kind’s tricks.”

His frown deepens, watching you in his glass jar. “I’m not going to hurt you, or torture you, for that matter,” he says at last. It’s your turn to frown, “you’re letting me go?” His eyes narrow a little as he peers at you closely. “Do you want to stay?” You take a subconscious step away from the edge of the jar, then shake your head.

Azriel sighs, then removes the confinement, releasing you back into the world. “Go on,” he says, nodding to the window. “Get a move on.” You flush, eyeing the distance from the opening far above to the level of his desk—to your eyes, at least. Turning back to him, you scowl, “I’m not even allowed my food?” He arches a single brow, lips quirking at their corners, “I would have thought you’d be leaping at the chance of freedom.”

“Well, I don’t want you watching me,” you snap, folding your arms over your chest standoffishly. He smirks, “oh yeah?”

You scowl. “Yes.”

He leans back in his seat, wings flexing at his back, making your working one twitch in response. “So it’s nothing to do with the bandage around you wing, there?” He points, and you try to tuck them in tight, but a spike of pain licks up your spine, making you bite your lip. You shake your head adamantly, “I’m fine.”

He hums in response, and before you know it, his shadows have you by the waist, the ankles—everywhere. You shriek with anger as he lifts you into the air, depositing you back into the jar, this time with it the correct way up. His shadows give you an unfriendly shove once you’ve settled, and you snap your jaws at them, making them hurriedly scuttle away.

“So if I leave you now, you’ll be gone when I return?” He asks, brow raised in silent taunt—he knows something’s wrong. You narrow your eyes, but say nothing. Amusement gleams in his gaze, triumph and satisfaction quietly mocking you as you scowl.

He rolls his shoulders, muscle shifting beneath his leathers, “I don’t think I can trust you not to go through my things, or to try and escape only to get yourself killed in the process…” He drawls. “How long until it’s healed? You can stay until you’re ready for flight.”

You’re too stunned to speak.

He’s offering to…help you?

Can’t be.

“In exchange for what, exactly?” You ask warily, squinting at him. He laughs a little at that, and you’re confused why. “Can’t it just be for the pleasure of your wonderful company?” He asks, deep voice lilting with mirth. Still, your brow narrows into a scathing glare, “you want me for your pleasure? Is that it?” You spit out, feigning fury even as terror warms your lower belly.

His grin widens, “with your size? What could I ever do with you?” He inquires, laughing, “have you run up and down my skin with those tiny, bare feet of yours?”

A wild flush warms your cheeks at the image, making you snarl. “Laugh all you want. I know what your kind is like.” He gives you a challenging look, “pray tell.”

“You’re crass, cruel, and lewd. You won’t trick me,” you declare.

“‘Crass, cruel, and lewd,’ huh?” He repeats, smiling faintly, leaning in a little, “sounds like a good night, to me.”

Your jaw drops open, rendered speechless. Then red is seeping in, and magic coats your hands as tiny fists slam into the glass. “Big! Arrogant!” You snarl, fractures spiderwebbing through the jar.

“You’re going to rot in hell for that, Azriel!”

General Taglist: @myheartfollower @tcris2020 @mali22 @amygdtjhddzvb @sfhsgrad-blog @needylilgal022

Az Taglist: @azrielshadows1nger @jurdanpotter @positivewitch

[ystrike1]

Hwang Young's Misery - By Yeaze (9/10)

Yandere for profit. An author that writes miserable stories about psychotic love, just to get clicks. He meets an obsessed fan. One that wants to role play every part of his most popular story from beginning to end, even though it's not finished yet. What ending will satisfy the monster? Hopefully, not the original one he had in mind. He has to change the plot, in order to survive.

"Sheldon" is a lonely but successful webtoon author who sacrificed everything to get to the top. He has never written a happy story. He believes endless drama is what thrills viewers that are trapped in their normal, everyday lives. He gets rejected countless times. When his first webtoon gets approved he doesn't expect it to be a success, but it is.

Hwangyoung's Phantoms. It's a long-form yandere thriller about an author with a weak mind. Poor Hwangyoung. He relies on his doting lover for affection and stability and money. Dohyuk is the ideal partner for a lonely author. He is patient and kind and he manages Hwangyoungs schedule and he takes advantage of Hwangyoungs poor memory to sneak into his life. Dohyuk originally wasn't dating Hwangyoung. He lied about that while Hwangyoung's metal health was very low. Hwangyoung doesn't even remember his own name. He should be in a mental hospital, not a relationship, and his loving partner is downright dangerous. Hwangyoungs mental state will continue to decline if he doesn’t get help, but Dohyuk doesn't seem to care as long as Hwangyoung relies on him.

It's a layered thriller.

"Sheldon" isn't in a relationship. He's in an awkward hook up situation with someone, but it's not going anywhere. He's very lonely. He's drunk when he meets Dohyuk. Dohyuk is his biggest fan...and he looks exactly like fictional "Dohyuk". He even has features that aren't common in Korean men, like super deep dimples etc. Hwangyoung falls for the compliments. Dohyuk's smile is so familiar, and he is crazy handsome.

They flirt.

"Dohyuk" is not his real name. He brings "Sheldon" home. When Sheldon is dead asleep he uses a hammer to fracture his leg. I'm telling you right now the depiction of this injury is extremely realistic. Due to a combination of pills and alcohol "Sheldon" doesn't figure out what happened for a while. He is in panic mode for a few chapters, unable to move or negotiate in an unfamiliar house.

He is not a super genius.

He is an author.

"Dohyuk" almost murders him several times when he tries to escape. He gives up, and Stockholm Syndrome comes in...kinda. He thinks he's using "Dohyuk", but it's clear that the kidnapper always has the upper hand.

"Sheldon" doesn't have very many close relationships. His life has been his webtoon for several years now. The third season is about to begin. Nobody finds him for three months. "Sheldon" isn't an awful person or anything, but when his friends don't get an answer they just assume he's working.

"Dohyuk" uses this to make "Sheldon" even more lonely.

Also he calls "Sheldon" "Hwangyoung".

"Sheldon" based his yandere story around people in his life. The main character is based on him and his loneliness. "Dohyuk" picked up on this, and now the author must literally play that role.

The role makes him break down constantly. "Dohyuk" is not a perfect captor, but he is well prepared. It takes months for that wounded leg to heal as well. When he is healed his spirit is broken. He continues to write his webtoon, but he lives in fear of "Dohyuk". His kidnapper is his biggest fan, and his opinion is the only opinion that matters.

He knows, deep down, that he will lose his leg again if "Dohyuk" doesn't like the new chapter.

Or the ending.

His mind is not in the best condition for several reasons. "Sheldon" is a fully grown man, and "Dohyuk" isn't magic. The kidnapper uses underhanded methods to keep his favorite creator weak. "Sheldon" downs a cocktail of pills every morning. He manages to spit out some, but his mind is muddled by illegal substances. He can write, but he spends most of his day in bed. He has constant headaches, and consistent stomach pain throughout the story.

"Dohyuk" only cares if he has the ability to write.

Nothing else matters.

He thinks his true love will be fulfilled after the story is written. Then he will act out the love scenes with the real "Hwangyoung".

"Sheldon" has been in denial for quite some time. It's clear that his friends are worried for him. He isolates himself. He only writes disturbingly sad stories. He has trouble with romance, and creating relationships in general. He's got depression, and he hasn't admitted that to himself yet. He has been interviewed before, and the press was shocked to hear that his thriller BL is based around people he knows. He is scared of committing to his casual lover. So he wrote about that lover pining for Hwangyoung while he is kidnapped by Dohyuk. This happens in real life as well. Wo-ilk returns pained to see "Sheldon" with a handsome new lover.

"Sheldon" has never been normal. He just doesn't know it yet.

He is extremely hard on himself. He makes fun of himself for "acting like a wimp" even though being kidnapped was not his fault. His thoughts turn to self hatred pretty quickly, and this causes him to fall prey to Stockholm in just a few months.

I thought it was strange.

From the very beginning he believes no one will look for him. He doesn't have a shred of hope. He thinks he can save himself for a bit, but then he gets lonely...and he just can't function.

It's a somewhat normal reaction, but it happens too fast.

He has no faith in his relationships.

He writes season three, but he doesn't try to ask his editors for help. It is too dangerous. "Dohyuk" is watching through spyware, but he seems to believe his coworkers don't care either.

He gets better at manipulating "Dohyuk", but it's...not enough? He is fooling himself. "Dohyuk" is incredibly happy. "Sheldon" plays the role of "Hwangyoung" every time he leaves his room. Heck, it even escalates to him acting as soon as he wakes up in the morning. He is losing. His "victories" are just "Dohyuk not killing him", "Dohyuk letting him walk around the house" etc.

He's so caught up in the story.

He can't see the light anymore.

I assume his actual sort-of lover tries to break in, because I can't imagine him escaping on his own at this point.

[onlycosmere]

Snote85: Let's say I had a really hard/special/magic metal file. I took it to Roshar and started shaving pieces off and catching them in a bowl. Would they dissipate and kinda puff into embers like the Shardplate does in places or would I actually have a bit of metal? If I did, would that metal shaving be able to be burned by a Mistborn? I won't ask what it would do, as I know that's a RAFO, just, would it be possible?

Brandon Sanderson: Yes, this is possible. Shardplate that grows replacement parts and/or heals itself (through using stormlight) is converting investiture into metal. So, in your theoretical world with a file that could file some off, you'd end up with a substance that you'd call a metal, though not one we have on earth.

I'll RAFO if a Mistborn could burn it, but what you want to do here could be done. This is assuming that you're using a suit of dead Shardplate, as is commonly seen in the books so far.

[outoutdamnspark]

*holds up ‘Twelve’ and shakes them*

Y’ALL WANT SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY TV-HEAD-SONA?!

📺 Twelve’s pronouns are They/Them (very rarely he/him) and when they “speak” they actually refer to themselves in plural. (I.e. “We/Us”) Very “We Are Legion” but without the sinister implications.

📺 This is because they’re the embodiment of the Midnight Channel from Persona 4, which is a collective of people’s subconscious desires. Twelve spawned because that collective needed a physical form, and before Twelve’s creation the Midnight Channel was just a vast open space with individual dungeons. With Twelve, the Channel has a form, and the rest of the TV world can more easily be organized into separate parts to accommodate individuals. A “person” to populate the space.

📺 They hang out in the P4 Backlot near the entrance, often sitting on top of the stack of tvs that leads to the outside world.

📺 They’re actually quite friendly, and are mostly Chaotic Good. They’re curious about the world outside the TV and are easily enamored by animals, but they also enjoy utterly fucking with people. They’re a gremlin at heart.

📺 They don’t speak with a physical voice; when they try it comes out like TV static, or like that horrible, multi-layered “voice” you hear when skimming through radio stations. Instead, they communicate through sound clips and symbols on their face screen.

📺 When flustered, Twelve will often make a computer dial-up noise. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, and no one knows why they do that.

📺 They also tend to make the PS1 startup sound as a greeting. (Know one knows why they do this, either.)

📺 Twelve actually has a mouth. Their screen face can split open. looking like a huge, jagged crack in the glass that resembles a jack-o-lantern smile. (Description by my Wife~) It’s their only actual facial feature, since they usually don’t emote any sort of eyes. They do, however, have a fucking tongue. Why? No one knows. They sure as hell don’t use it to speak. It’s long and prehensile and looks like it’s made of thick metal cable; segments and all. They also - for some inexplicable reason - drool a watery, oil-slick-like substance that is believed to be liquid Shadow. There doesn’t seem to be a purpose for it, other than Twelve may very well be part Shadow, since they’re the embodiment of subconscious wants - which can evolve into Shadows when suppressed.

📺 Sadly, Twelve is bound to the TV world and can’t leave; every time they try, they’re dragged back by living power line cables. As of yet, they haven’t been able to properly meet any of the humans that frequent the TV world (the Investigation Team), though they would dearly love to help in the cause; Twelve wants the corruption banished just as much as the humans do, and, given the chance, would happily act as a summon-able ‘Persona’ for the Investigation Team’s leader.

📺 Twelve’s main magical element is Zio (thunder.) They also know Mudo (darkness) and Dia (heal), but usually don’t get the chance to use them.

📺 (If they had parents, they would 100% be the spawn of Kanti from FLCL and Primadonna from ‘Echo’ by CrusherP.)

[silver-ink-iron-words]

Thank you so much for these requests. You all give me life

----

CW - Blood

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Loose Lips Sinks Ships, Part 5

“You know, if we fuck this up, you’re royally screwed.”

Artemis eyed the gun in their assistant’s hands. The black metal glinted under the laboratory’s bright fluorescents.

“Thank you, Macy,” they said, “for that very encouraging comment. The notion had never occurred to me.”

“No need to be rude.”

“Just shoot the damn thing already.”

Artemis heard the bang first, like thunder right in their ears. Then the tremor of the bullet reverberated through them in one enormous shuddering breath.

A howl launched from deep within their lungs. They dropped to the floor, blood pouring out their stomach by the bucketful.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” they groaned. “Quick, get the – get the . . . Fuck!”

Thankfully, Macy was already positioning the camera equipment.

“You’re doing great, boss,” she said.

“Shut up.”

“Has anyone ever told you how gracefully you handle pain?”

Artemis fought the urge to grip their stomach, to collapse, to scream their head off at Macy. Their vision spotted. Hellfire and brimstone raged through the lab.

Slowly – agonizingly slowly – the pain lessened from unbearable to excruciating. After a while, it finally settled into a terrible ache.

Artemis laid on the hard vinyl floor, gasping for breath, certain they would vomit. “Please tell me you got that.”

“Yep,” Macy said, looking at the monitors. “Come see.”

They started to ease themself into a sitting position. The floor teetered up and down around them.

“Describe it to me,” they said, lying back down with a grimace.

“It’s like your red blood cells took a combo hit of steroids and crystal meth,” Macy said, looking over the microscopic x-ray photographs. “I’ve never seen them produce granulation tissue this fast.”

“Of course you haven’t,” Artemis said, reaching for the tray of cookies Macy had placed on the floor beside them. “That’s why it’s called a superpower.”

The irony was not lost on Artemis that out of every possible person, it had been them – a scientist kept safely within Agaria’s borders – who had developed healing powers.

When the war had first started, it had been for the typical reasons – land, resources, ego. But after a couple years, the two nations found something else to fight over. 

In the middle of no man’s land, a crack opened in the earth, stretching for miles. From that crack spewed the ignotus compound. Or, as the soldiers liked to call it, magic.

At first, everyone was warned to stay away from it. But when the privates started flying, and teleporting, and electrocuting their bunkmates, the compound’s uses could no longer be ignored.

In a sense, it was a blessing that only around one in ten of those exposed to the compound developed abilities. Those initial weeks would have been disastrous, had the change been universal. But it also meant that Artemis’s superiors were ravenous for that incredible untapped potential.

Artemis had been the first to shine any kind of light on the mysterious substance, mapping out the long and confusing chain of chemical reactions that allowed the compound to alter a person’s genetic makeup. The breakthrough had earned them research grants, a shiny new title, and sky-high expectations.

And thus, their job was twofold: figure out how to 1) give powers to everyone else in the military and 2) do so without also handing over the negative side effects.

And then single-handedly win the war, the voice teased. Simple, right?

Side effects, such as having a manifestation of the magic itself speaking nonstop inside your head.

Belabouredly, Artemis heaved themself off the floor, powered by nothing but cookies and spite. They stumbled over to the monitors, and squinted at the images on screen. Macy had been right; the muscle tissue healed so fast that it was unnerving. As they studied the x-rays, the pit of their stomach dropped lower and lower.

“Chex mix, boss?” Macy said, handing over a bag.

“That’s all you have to say after watching your mentor bleed out on the floor?”

Macy shrugged. “I honestly didn’t watch you much. This equipment’s too cool.”

“Just glad to know I’m a priority,” Artemis said, munching on the salty snack. Even with their healing powers, they could use the electrolytes.

“How are you not awestruck looking at something like this?” Macy said. She flipped through the images, her eyes glued to the screen.

Artemis sighed, and settled onto a rolling chair. “I’d be more chipper if we hadn’t just done all that for nothing.”

This statement was enough to draw Macy’s attention away from the photos. “What do you mean?”

“The experiment failed,” Artemis said, gesturing to the monitors. “We didn’t get what we needed. No hints here about why my cells have changed and yours haven’t.”

To call it a disappointment was like calling a hurricane inconvenient weather. They had been so sure that if the injury was significant enough, that if it took long enough to heal, they could finally capture the data they’d been tearing their hair out looking for.

Macy scrolled back up through the images. “Maybe we missed something.”

Artemis rubbed at their face, working to keep the despair from climbing up their throat. “You’re welcome to keep looking at it.”

You got shot for nothing, the voice sing-songed. Just like Bryn, just like those soldiers, just like –

“Doc!” Macy shouted. Artemis realized, with a start, that she’d called them multiple times already.

“What?”

And then they glimpsed the little stream of blood trickling down their shirt, adding to the dried remains of the gunshot wound.

“Ah goddammit,” they said, putting a sleeve to their nose. This was another one of those lovely side effects.

“How many times is that this month?” Macy asked, rising to help them.

“Doesn’t matter,” Artemis said, gently waving her away. “Can you pass those tissues?”

She handed the box over. “Seriously. Should I be getting worried?”

“It’s fine,” Artemis said, trying for a smile. They’d never been that good at smiles. “Honestly. Everything’s under control.”

They knew they’d be getting light-headed soon, so it was best to start moving while they still could.

They rose from their seat. “I just need to get to medbay, talk to Connie . . .”

They stilled when the lights shut off and the laboratory went completely black.

“Macy, what did you do?”

“Right. Because everything’s my fault.”

Then, dim red emergency lights flicked on, and alarms started blaring. They sounded in a recognizable pattern – two quick cries, one long one, two quick. The code had only one meaning.

The Vekalese were inside the base.  

Part 6

----

Taglist: @iamtheshriekingguineapig  

[theressomethinghappeninginparis]

I have Carvier's diary pages next to me, but I don't want to read them now. I...can't read them now.

Instead, I want to show the analysis I found by Kurmo Konsa, a professor in Estonia who specialized in history and archeology. He wrote about "Technology creating a new human: the alchemical roots of transhumansit ideas". He is a professor with kind eyes mostly writing in Estonian, yet this one was in English. I'll write down what is important for me, the whole text is here to read.

Transcript of the first, second and third page: On the first page, he assures that alchemly is a science teaching how to transform any kindof metal into another and that by a "proper medicine". This certain "medicine" is called Elixir and when it is cast upon metals or impoerfect bodies it does perfect them in the very projection. This Elixir seems to be a cure-all, and it could be that "imperfect bodies" really means organic material since alchemy also deals with illness and healing.

Konsa references Roger Bacon, a man who dealt with mathematics, philosophy, optocs, alchemy and magic. According to him speculative alchemy was practised by only a few alchemists both with lifeless bodies and living substances and the human body was indeed the main subject. He also claimed a person could prolong their life if they used the "right tools"; whatever that means.

Finally, Bacon also claimed that since accidental processes and external factors can shorten a lifetime, there was also a way to prolong it. He also recommended a theoretical foundation of the Elixir: The elements have to be prepared and purified, so that they would be reduced to pure simplicity, and that would make the "perfect medicine".

Transcript of the fourth page: Here are the most important points I've taken:

Perfect imperfect bodies is a goal

Human beings, dead or alive, were used as subjects

Lifespan can be (probably) extended

Elements have to be purified for the "perfect medicine", an Elixir

Separate humours to purify them

I know I'm tinfoiling but I can't help and write down whatever comes to my mind. So. If Eckhardt is the 500 year old dude from Germany that was supposedly killed by the LV. And Vasiley, who uses the LV symbol in his papers, is also an anceint being. What does this tell us? I'm perhaps tripping, yes. Maybe Vasiley just has an old family tree. Okay, but then the Black Alchemist was killed, again, int he 14th century. But he was an alchemist. And he keeps popping up like the Lux Veritatis and Lara Croft and Vasiley.

Mega-tinfoil: What if both of them really are old, old, ancient, dusty as hell people and exist today? If the castle was owned by the LV, and Vasiley was/is part of them, he MUST know Eckhardt. This shackled Nephilim drawing with the helmet, do you recall? What if it's him and they kept him in the castle?

Transcript of the fifth and sixth page: My so called "theory" which is none since there is no proof but only speculation is as follows:

Eckhardt was killed by the Lux Veritatis in 1445

the LV were hired/owned(?) the castle Bouzor from 1939-1945

Vasiley uses the symbol the LV use as well

One of Werner's mails gives me the impression the Lux Veritatis, Eckhardt and the paintings are connected (how??)

the Obscura paintings were found in a monastery, what is the link to religion? Is there an alchemic one?

since the membership of the LV was hereditary, are there any members today?

the Periapt Shards are said to be the weapons of the LV

So. All this leads to this funny graph. Eckhardt is murdered by the LV. Their weapons are Periapt Shards. Vasiley uses their symbol. They were in castle Bouzor so Vasiley might know. He found the Obscura Engravings. Werner has knowledge of them. The Obscura Paintings also exist. And von Croy has been murdered by...Lara Croft? I seriously see no reason for her to do that. I mean, maybe it was personal. But all the shit that is tied to this, is this on accident?

Okay... I'm officially losing it, if you want to stop reading, go ahead. Also check the death notices in the newspapers please, I might appear there. You need to get my notebook and destroy it, I don't want anyone to think I am insane. This blog, too. The access details are on my desk, second drawer.

You will do that for me, right?

Right?

[primordialpaper]

Just something I’ve been working on recently. The premise is Gray has just been stabbed with a magic spike that goes deeper when you try to pull it out. Wendy deals with it as only an Enchantress can.

“It needs to come out,” Wendy murmured, scraping together the pieces of her composure. She couldn’t heal him with the vengeful spike still in his chest. “His lung’s punctured, and he’s losing blood, and fast. But if I try to pull it out, it’ll just go deeper. It’s still going deeper.”

What was she supposed to do? She’d memorized pages upon pages of healing texts, consumed countless medical encyclopedias, poured over even the most basic and rudimentary first-aid tips, and none of that knowledge could help her deal with a wound that was capable of fighting back. What was she supposed to do?!

Abruptly, gauntleted hands came to rest atop her own. Looking up, Wendy found herself the subject of the famously steady gaze of Erza Scarlet.

“The spike needs to be removed,” Erza agreed, voice firm and placid. “you just might have to do so more thoroughly than you initially planned. Don’t focus on excising it from Gray’s body. Focus on removing it from existence entirely. Unmake it, Wendy.”

Wendy’s gaze slid down to the metal barb cruelly lodged in her friend’s sternum, her senses attuned to its progress beneath his skin where she couldn't see. In merely these past brief moments, it had worked itself a few dangerous millimeters deeper, on course to skewer Gray’s heart within minutes.

Unmake it... What a ridiculous proposal. Matter could not be created or destroyed, only changed. 

The old adage, a relic from her lessons under Porlyusica, rose to the surface of her thoughts amidst the caustic analysis of just how long Gray’s wound would permit her to helplessly dither.

Not created or destroyed, but changed... Before her mind’s eye, Wendy could still picture the bevy of swords jutting from the ground, neatly arranged into the shape of a flower. With little more than a tap from a wooden staff, the blades all dissolved, scattering in the wind like dandelion seeds. Was that what Irene had done? Changed them? Had she affixed her power to the swords, and, rather than bolstering their might, instead plucked apart the blades in her grip at their basest level? 

Could Wendy do the same?

A choked, feeble gurgle from Gray informed her that she didn’t have the luxury of uncertainty.

Blue light flickered across her fingers, which was Erza’s cue to remove her hands, and let Wendy get to work bending this small bit of reality to her will.

(At any other moment, the gravity of such an undertaking would likely have more of an impact on her. It would be humbling, sobering, to recognize how expansive her powers had become. From chasing away poisons and bolstering allies in battle, to altering the very existence of something in her grasp.

This was the kind of power, she thought, that had helped make Irene into what she’d become. Someone unmoored by the world and people around her, never willing to deny herself anything, because she had the ability to contort all of it to her liking.

The woman herself had claimed the two of them shared a likeness, something that normally sent a shiver down her spine. Now, though, Wendy could only hope her assessment had been correct.)

With hands ruthlessly rid of even the faintest tremble, Wendy directed her magic towards the spike. She enveloped it, let her power crawl over every inch of cold or blood-warm metal, until the whole thing was pulsing with her signature cerulean glow.

She could feel it, like some vile substance coating her hands, the malignant intent affixed to this object. Its sole purpose was to kill, to worm its way through its hapless victim until it reached their heart. There was no telling how many lives this weapon had claimed.

But it would not claim this one. Nor any other ever again. Wendy would make certain of that.

It felt like trying to move her fingers through stone, or ice, as she slowly began to curl them inwards. She was fighting to compress everything this spear was, every nuance and facet of its existence, into something she could crush in her fist. It was only logical such a task wouldn’t be easy to accomplish.

But Wendy had seen what an Enchantress’s hands were capable of. She liked her chances.

Tighter, she pressed against the spear. Harder. The tendons on her hands were starkly visible, fingers developing the slightest tremor, as she enforced her will over the weapon on the ontological level.

You are no more, was her edict, delivered coldly and with severe finality. You will cease to be. Your form is dismissed and your presence a memory. Begone!

The spear, for all the heartache it had wrought in the brief time since Wendy had first laid eyes on it, was helpless to resist the crushing authority of her command, the sheer force of her insistence that it cease to be.

The light of her magic became blinding. Space shuddered and folded. Time seemed to redouble, knocked briefly off balance by her desperate meddling. Reality gave an ominous rumble. Wendy, distantly, felt something crumble into irrevocable nothingness as her fists closed around air.

And then she was kneeling in the mud, hunched beside a friend who was now bleeding copiously from the empty hole in his chest.

She’d never been so thrilled to see such an open wound.

“Gray!” it felt... strange, almost, to call healing magic to her hands. Like in the past few minutes she’d somehow forgotten she was capable of such a thing.

Thankfully, years of ardent practice meant Wendy was capable of going through the motions largely on autopilot. 

[goji-pilled]

MK-S: Candeloro Journals number 7, and a link back to journal 6. Enjoy!

March 14: Yep, rats were hostile. And now I know what happens if I get tears in my ribbon arms: THEY FREAKING HURT!

I don’t know if it’s my nature as a witch, or if I was always this vengeful (never really had anyone or anything that hurt me so much it made me desire to hurt them back tenfold. I’m referring to physical hurt, and Kyubey can’t feel pain, though not for lack of effort on my part…or Homura’s, Oktavia’s, everybody. So he doesn’t count.), but I took Immense satisfaction in squeezing that abomination until it popped…or broke? It was more of a little bit of both. Strangest part-(I need to say this as I just wrote those two words. “Strangest part”…I’m a freaking sentient cloth creature, inside a non-Euclidean space in between the walls of my house, and I’m about to refer to part of a clockwork rat (sidenote, that actually could work as a name): HOW DOES ANYTHING STILL SUPRISE ME ENOUGH TO EARN THE USE OF “STRANGE”?!?!)

Where was I? Oh, strangest part (Nagisa, first quit spoiling the journal for yourself. Though I do thank you for acknowledging my wishes when I was having a personal rant/vent a while back. Second, and the main point, I’m not being a hypocrite with the use of word strange, that was commentary on how bizarre my life has ended up compared to what I ever thought was possible a few years ago.) was that it didn’t bleed blood. (Ugh, another side note so soon? That aside, since it didn’t leak blood, does that mean that “bleed” would be an accurate term? I don’t care enough to bother changing my writing style if I’m wrong, but…well, call me curious. Then again, we can say a leaky pipeline may be “bleeding oil”, so I guess as long as we clarify the substance we’re good. Hmm…I guess “we” refers to writers in general. Or maybe I’m writing as if I’m conversation to my future self if/when I look back at these.)

The creature bled a black substance. I believe it was oil some form of oil, but…it was leaking out of living, or at least once living veins. It looks as though this mechanical monstrosity cannibalized a former subject of the Rat King’s army. (Just realized not everyone uses that term like that; it wasn’t a machine that ate the rat, it was a machine built using or around the corpse of the rat.) Blood vessels used as plumbing to a mechanical heart, some sort of rusty pump. Bones used for their original purpose, and bolted to metal frames that gave it its extra bulk and newer claws. Skin really only covered most of the head, all of the back, but only bits and pieces of the front.

It’s a bit hard to role-play with my own curiosity about this thing. So many questions are flying through my head: Was this one of the actual rats in our walls? Who built this thing? Was it built or did it just sort of manifest into existence? Oh, yikes, are there more? That’s a scary thought. And quite frankly, I think I should be more horrified at how a dead body was used for a machine, since if you applied that previous statement to a human body it would be mortifying…but, I just can’t help but think about how cool this is. An actual monster, a creature to fight unrelated to a (another?) Witch or her familiars.

Oh, another question: would this thing still exist/work outside of the Expanse? (Loving how naturally that flows of the tongue/pen) Is this built to survive on its own, or is this place the only thing keeping it held together? Dang, now I think I get why some people like dissection in school; wasn’t sure why some people liked cutting things open, but now I think I see the appeal in satisfying the curiosity of discovering how something else works. It’s much easier to view it as unnecessary when someone else has already cut a creature open and documented their results.

Ribbon arm healed up well with magic. I was tempted to see what happens if I just shifted back to human form with it still torn, but decided against it; either it would heal or my arm would be split in half from hand to elbow. Could probably heal it still, but then I’d get blood on the floor, and it’s always hard to remove if I even can…why is that anyway? You know what, got my phone with me, I’m gonna google it…oh, after a first result on google not-so-deep-dive, apparently it’s because of the hemoglobin; the same stuff that causes exposed blood to clot also causes it to bind to surfaces. The more you know.

MK-S: Had the first half of that entry sitting around for a while now. Lost track of what I wanted to do next, so just a single day entry of Candeloro reacting to a new enemy and some of the thoughts running through her head. Hope this was fun to read!

NEW ENTRY LETS GOOOO

[psychreviews2]

Psychoanalysis - Sigmund Freud & Beyond

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis, as introduced by Freud, contrasted with past therapeutic measures by trying to remove magical beliefs. For example, shamans used to heal psychological problems by projecting evil forces to sources outside of the patient. With Exorcism, both the exorcist and the possessed had to believe in angels and devils for the exorcism to work. If taboos were violated in primitive cultures, then only direct punishment, without any attempts at understanding, would follow. With Mesmerism, the patient had to believe in unbalances of an invisible substance in the environment. Magnetism allowed the practitioner to provide suggestions to influence the patient, and Spiritism tried to connect the patient with the dead, to access their supposed knowledge. The patterns we see here are about externalizing all internal conflicts. With Freud's method the aim was to look inward instead.

Patient's would lay on a sofa with Freud behind them and out of sight, and Freud's early practice of touching people on the head was removed. James Strachey described the proceedings. "The session thus proceeds like a conversation between two people equally awake, but one of whom is spared every muscular exertion and every distracting sensory impression which might divert his attention from his own mental activity...In order to secure these ideas and associations he asks the patient to 'let himself go' in what he says, 'as you would do in a conversation in which you were rambling on quite disconnectedly and at random'. Before he asks them for a detailed account of their case history he insists that they must include in it whatever comes into their heads, even if they think it unimportant or irrelevant or nonsensical; he lays special stress on their not omitting any thought or idea from their story because to relate it would be embarrassing or distressing to them...Gaps appear in the patient's memory even while he narrates his case: actual occurrences are forgotten, the chronological order is confused, or causal connections are broken, with unintelligible results. No neurotic case history is without amnesia... If the patient is urged to fill these gaps in his memory by an increased application of attention, it is noticed that all the ideas which occur to him are pushed back by every possible critical expedient, until at last he feels positive discomfort when the memory really returns. From this experience Freud concludes that the amnesias are the result of a process which he calls ‘repression’ and the motive for which he finds in feelings of un-pleasure. The psychical forces which have brought about this repression can also be detected, according to him, in the ‘resistance’ which operates against the recovery of the lost memories...The greater the resistance, the greater is the distortion."

How it was believed that psychoanalysis was an advancement, James argued that "the objection to hypnosis is that it conceals the resistance and for that reason has obstructed the physician's insight into the play of psychical forces. Hypnosis does not do away with the resistance but only evades it and therefore yields only incomplete information and transitory therapeutic success...Freud has developed on this basis an art of interpretation which takes on the task of, as it were, extracting the pure metal of the repressed thoughts from the ore of the unintentional ideas...The task of the treatment is to remove the amnesias. When all gaps in memory have been filled in, all the enigmatic products of mental life elucidated, the continuance and even a renewal of the morbid condition are made impossible. Or the formula may be expressed in this fashion: all repressions must be undone...Another formulation reaches further: the task consists in making the unconscious accessible to consciousness, which is done by overcoming the resistances. But it must be remembered that an ideal condition such as this is not present even in the normal, and further that it is only rarely possible to carry the treatment to a point approaching it...So the aim of the treatment will never be anything else but the practical recovery of the patient, the restoration of his ability to lead an active life and of his capacity for enjoyment. In a treatment which is incomplete or in which success is not perfect, one may at any rate achieve a considerable improvement in the general mental condition, while the symptoms (though now of smaller importance to the patient) may continue to exist without stamping him as a sick man."

One fatal flaw of psychoanalysis was the age limitation. Strong habits and forgetfulness become more difficult to deal with as we age. "If the patient's age is in the neighbourhood of the fifties the conditions for psycho-analysis become unfavourable. The mass of psychical material is then no longer manageable; the time required for recovery is too long; and the ability to undo psychical processes begins to grow weaker...Freud requires long periods, six months to three years, for an effective treatment." Yet for a lot of critics in Freud's time, they felt that he was only about sex and that maybe recovery would be faster than six months to three years by just simply suggesting patients engage in sexual activity. Freud responded "...would it not be simpler to aim directly at recovery by recommending sexual activity as a therapeutic measure, instead of pursuing the circuitous and laborious path of mental treatment?...Sexual need and deprivation are merely one factor at work in the mechanism of neurosis; if there were no others the result would be dissipation, not disease. The other, no less essential, factor, which is all too readily forgotten, is the neurotic's aversion from sexuality, his incapacity for loving, that feature of the mind which I have called ‘repression’. Not until there is a conflict between the two tendencies does nervous illness break out, and therefore to advise sexual activity in the psychoneuroses can only very rarely be described as good advice."

In Wild Analysis, Freud clarified his broad view of sexuality to prevent confusion. "In psychoanalysis, the concept of sexuality certainly embraces much more; in both higher and lower senses it reaches beyond the popular meaning. This extension is justified in terms of the human genetic heritage; for us, 'sexual life' includes everything that prompts those tender feelings deriving from the original source of primitive sexual impulses, even if those impulses have been subjected to inhibitions placed upon their original sexual aims, or if they have exchanged these aims for others that are no longer sexual. That is why we prefer to talk about psychosexuality, and thus stress the importance of not overlooking or underestimating the emotional factor in sexual life. We employ the word 'sexuality' in the same broad sense as the German language uses the word 'lieben' [to love]. We have also known for some time that emotional frustration can persist even where there is no lack of normal sexual intercourse...and often hardly lend themselves at all to being channeled off into coitus or other sexual acts."

Constant development

Freud's professional development was like that of a man learning from failure. Successes were often short-lived and early therapists such as Freud had to be ready to innovate. "In its first phase - that of Breuer’s catharsis - it consisted in bringing directly into focus the moment at which the symptom was formed, and in persistently endeavouring to reproduce the mental processes involved in that situation, in order to direct their discharge along the path of conscious activity. Remembering and [emotional discharge], with the help of the hypnotic state, were what was at that time aimed at. Next, where hypnosis had been given up, the task became one of discovering from the patient’s free associations what he failed to remember. The resistance was to be circumvented by the work of interpretation and by making its results known to the patient. The situations which had given rise to the formation of the symptom and the other situations which lay behind the moment at which the illness broke out retained their place as the focus of interest; but the element of [emotional discharge] receded into the background and seemed to be replaced by the expenditure of work which the patient had to make in being [required] to overcome his [now new criticisms] of his free associations...Finally, there was evolved the consistent technique used to-day, in which the analyst gives up the attempt to bring a particular moment or problem into focus. He contents himself with studying whatever is present for the time being on the surface of the patient’s mind, and he employs the art of interpretation mainly for the purpose of recognizing the resistances which appear there, and making them conscious to the patient. From this there results a new sort of division of labour: the doctor uncovers the resistances which are unknown to the patient; when these have been got the better of, the patient often relates the forgotten situations and connections without any difficulty."

One of the big discoveries for patients unearthing their pasts had to do with rivalries related to the Oedipus Complex, including influences from caregivers and competition for scarce attention, leading to the later defenses we see in adulthood. The patient then has to change their attitude towards their illness. "He has usually been content with lamenting it, despising it as nonsensical and under-estimating its importance; for the rest, he has extended to its manifestations the ostrich-like policy of repression which he adopted towards its origins." Through deep understanding of the illness, the patient learns more about their instincts. Because instincts provide constant pressure, they can continue repeating unconsciously until the conscious mind understands them. The understanding allows for more control of impulses, and plans to discharge impulses in appropriate ways. "Only where the resistance is at its height can the analyst, working in common with his patient, discover the repressed instinctual impulses which are feeding the resistance; and it is this kind of experience which convinces the patient of the existence and power of such impulses."

Grieving

These repressed instincts did achieve early forms of satisfaction, but most often led inevitably to loss. Loss of loved ones to death, or rejection. The wounded mind can turn to despondency and begin the pathological process of infantile compensations. Sometimes there are excessive repressions and self-denial. This is partly from a fear that "all the good things in life will being taken away, so why bother?" Freud's method was to go to the repressed emotions and to discharge them to an acceptable enough level so that one goes back to a healthy norm afterwards. Grieving is a normal part of life, and once death and impermanence are accepted, one can continue enjoying life with an ability to let go, and also the ability to appreciate transitory beauty. Just because things don't last forever, doesn't mean they don't have value. Quite on the contrary.

In his paper On Transience, Freud explored the pathological human response to impermanence with descriptions of two different responses. One was despondency or a fear of risk-taking, and the other was denial. For Freud, "transience value is scarcity value in time. Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of the enjoyment." Lost objects, or people we keep in our memories, are to be appreciated precisely because their goodness doesn't last. Freud also understood relevance. It feels relevant for us what we lost because we are the important component of the loss, because we were the ones there that could love the object. "A time may indeed come when the pictures and statues which we admire to-day will crumble to dust, or a race of men may follow us who no longer understand the works of our poets and thinkers, or a geological epoch may even arrive when all animate life upon the earth ceases; but since the value of all this beauty and perfection is determined only by its significance for our own emotional lives, it has no need to survive us and is therefore independent of absolute duration."

Louvre - Paris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vuFh6NNa70

What pathological responses are doing in Freud's perspective are attempts to try to avoid the pain of mourning, but this not need be the case. "Mourning, as we know, however painful it may be comes to a spontaneous end. When it has renounced everything that has been lost, then it has consumed itself, and our [cravings are] once more free (in so far as we are still young and active) to replace the lost objects by fresh ones equally or still more precious...When the work of mourning is completed the ego becomes free and uninhibited again."

One of the ways the mind can get caught is when it has made an emotional investment and becomes preoccupied with blame of others, but also blame of oneself. In Mourning and Melancholia, Freud talked about this painful conscience that seems to lose belief in oneself and attacks the ego. "The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment. This picture becomes a little more intelligible when we consider that, with one exception, the same traits are met with in mourning. The disturbance of self-regard is absent in mourning; but otherwise the features are the same."

Instead of healing, the mind can get caught in a destructive loop where the distinction between the inside and outside is lost. "The melancholic displays something else besides which is lacking in mourning… an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale. In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself. The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he reproaches himself, vilifies himself and expects to be cast out and punished. He abases himself before everyone and commiserates with his own relatives for being connected with anyone so unworthy. He is not of the opinion that a change has taken place in him, but extends his self-criticism back over the past; he declares that he was never any better. This picture of a delusion of (mainly moral) inferiority is completed by sleeplessness and refusal to take nourishment, and…what is psychologically very remarkable…by an overcoming of the instinct which compels every living thing to cling to life...The analogy with mourning led us to conclude that he had suffered a loss in regard to an object; what he tells us points to a loss in regard to his ego."

The loss of self-esteem is essentially how objects can be taken into the sense of self with identification. Because we identify with the lost person, their weaknesses become something we identify and attack ourselves with. There now develops an empty attitude of self-distrust. The healthy grieving process must include an appreciation for the lost person's good qualities and a championing of those qualities without identifying with their bad traits. Their love and passion can be taken in by us and maintained through our inspired love. As life moves closer to death, for a healthy ego, letting go is possible and it allows one to pass on this passion and appreciation of life for new generations, so that what is valuable, even if impermanent, can last as long as possible. Through preservation of good objects, one can leave life with a sense of contribution.

Craving/libido types

Naturally as Freud saw more patients he was able to categorize them into a cute early form of personality typology. The 3 main categories of people he encountered were erotic, obsessional and narcissistic. "Observation teaches us that individual human beings realize the general picture of humanity in an almost infinite variety of ways. If we yield to the legitimate need to distinguish particular types in this multiplicity, we shall at the start have the choice as to what characteristics and what points of view we shall take as the basis of our differentiation. If we confine our effort to setting up purely psychological types, the libidinal situation will have a first claim to serve as a basis for our classification. It may fairly be demanded that this classification should not merely be deduced from our knowledge or our hypotheses about the libido, but that it should be easily confirmed in actual experience and that it should contribute to the clarification of the mass of our observations and help us to grasp them. It may at once be admitted that these libidinal types need not be the only possible ones even in the psychical field, and that, if we proceeded from other qualities, we might perhaps establish a whole set of other psychological types. But it must be required of all such types that they shall not coincide with clinical pictures. On the contrary, they must comprehend all the variations which according to our practical judgement fall within the limits of the normal. In their extreme developments, however, they may well approximate to clinical pictures and in that way help to bridge the gulf that is supposed to lie between the normal and the pathological."

"The erotic type is easily characterized. Erotics are those whose main interest - the relatively largest part of whose libido - is turned towards love. Loving, but above all being loved, is the most important thing for them. They are dominated by the fear of loss of love and are therefore especially dependent on others who may withhold their love from them. Even in its pure form this type is a very common one. Variants of it occur according as it is blended with another type and in proportion to the amount of aggressiveness present in it. From the social and cultural standpoint this type represents the elementary instinctual demands of the id, to which the other psychical agencies have become compliant."

Can't buy me love - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srwxJUXPHvE

"The second type is what I have termed the obsessional type - a name which may at first seem strange. It is distinguished by the predominance of the super-ego, which is separated from the ego under great tension. People of this type are dominated by fear of their conscience instead of fear of losing love. They exhibit, as it were, an internal instead of an external dependence. They develop a high degree of self-reliance; and, from the social standpoint, they are the true, pre-eminently conservative vehicles of civilization."

Taxman - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0zaebtU-CA

"The third type, justly called the narcissistic type, is mainly to be described in negative terms. There is no tension between ego and super-ego (indeed, on the strength of this type one would scarcely have arrived at the hypothesis of a super-ego), and there is no preponderance of erotic needs. The subject’s main interest is directed to self-preservation; he is independent and not open to intimidation. His ego has a large amount of aggressiveness at its disposal, which also manifests itself in readiness for activity. In his erotic life loving is preferred above being loved. People belonging to this type impress others as being ‘personalities’; they are especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role of leaders and to give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or to damage the established state of affairs."

Money (That's what I want) - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeWjEYhk7Xo

"In the erotic-obsessional type it appears that the preponderance of instinctual life is restricted by the influence of the super-ego. In this type, dependence at once on contemporary human objects and on the residues of parents, educators and exemplars, is carried to its highest pitch."

Oh! Darling - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BznFjbcBVs

"The erotic-narcissistic type is perhaps the one we must regard as the commonest of all. It unites opposites, which are able to moderate one another in it. One may learn from this type, as compared with the two other erotic ones, that aggressiveness and activity go along with a predominance of narcissism."

She loves you - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S302kF8MJ-I

"Finally, the narcissistic-obsessional type produces the variation which is most valuable from a cultural standpoint; for it adds to independence of the external world and a regard for the demands of conscience a capacity for vigorous action, and it strengthens the ego against the super-ego."

Think for yourself - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtx5NTxebJk

"One might think one was making a jest if one asked why no mention has been made here of another mixed type which is theoretically possible - namely, the erotic-obsessional-narcissistic type. But the answer to this jest is serious. Such a type would no longer be a type at all: it would be the absolute norm, the ideal harmony."

Michelle - The Beatles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoBLi5eE-wY

These different personality types can be lopsided but they all have their specialties. Their skills in each of the domains of weakness are essentially undeveloped and frustrating to work with. Frustration in areas of weakness can lead to typical Freudian problems. "It seems easy to infer that when people of the erotic type fall ill they will develop hysteria, just as those of the obsessional will develop obsessional neurosis; but these inferences, too, share the uncertainty which I have just stressed. People of the narcissistic type who are exposed to a frustration from the external world, though otherwise independent, are peculiarly disposed to psychosis; and they also present essential preconditions for criminality."

Alterations of sources, aims, and objects

Compared to later psychologists, Freud became more of a doctor of desire. At his time it was too early to really understand psychological problems based on biological sources of pathology, the way we can now. Freud focused more on frustrated desire and how a person's experience of happiness is affected. How we learn to deal with gaining and losing objects of desire starts early and desire for Freud has to include sexual desire, especially in regards to "the triangular character of the Oedipus situation and the constitutional bisexuality of each individual...A boy has not merely an ambivalence towards his father and an affectionate object-choice towards his mother, but at the same time he also behaves like a girl and displays an affectionate feminine attitude to his father and a corresponding jealousy and hostility towards his mother." What we look at as a fixed character is deceptive, and opens up to more or less a plurality of developed identifications. "It is interesting that in connection with early experiences, as contrasted with later experiences, all the various reactions to them survive, of course including contradictory ones."

Freud was an early precursor to Vittorio Gallese's work on mirror neurons, the ability to imitate, and he saw that we are all mapping out desires of other people so we can understand who, what, when, where, why and how they desire. This way we can ingest their benefits through the imitation. A lot of the motivation for learning is contained in our wishes to achieve satisfaction with what we learn. As we get good at different identifications, they can condition and strengthen with a variety of intensities and change throughout life. "Analytic experience then shows that in a number of cases one or the other constituent disappears, except for barely distinguishable traces; so that the result is a series with the normal positive Oedipus complex at one end and the inverted negative one at the other...At the dissolution of the Oedipus complex the four trends of which it consists will group themselves in such a way as to produce a father-identification and a mother-identification. The father-identification will preserve the object-relation to the mother which belonged to the positive complex and will at the same time replace the object-relation to the father which belonged to the inverted complex: and the same will be true...of the mother-identification. The relative intensity of the two identifications in any individual will reflect the preponderance in him of one or other of the two sexual dispositions."

Vittorio Gallese - From Mirror neurons to Embodied Simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlV7F3MHuEk

How people can flip on sexual desire and any other desire is based on having and being. Part of our empathy and love is to be able to imagine ourselves as the love-object with our ability to imitate their desires by intuiting their purposes. The success with one or more sexual dispositions depends on how skillfully a person identifies with them. When people partner up, each individual is a mixture of masculine and feminine in highly variegated ways. When Freud was thinking about this and the sexual act he said "...I am accustoming myself to regarding every sexual act as an event between four individuals."

As we sexually fantasize, how we are able to see all the steps in our minds of getting masculine or feminine satisfaction, essentially the accessibility vs. frustration dichotomy, arouses us, or turns us off. These are pleasure procedures, and are not only related to sexuality. Any skills we don't understand tend to inhibit or frighten us. Inevitably, what we are not skilled at has to look cooperative to us so we can HAVE them if we can't BE them. When we lose objects we HAD, there is a panic to try and replace what we lost by BEING them. Freud said "'having' and 'being' in children...After loss of the object it relapses into 'being'. Example: the breast. 'The breast is a part of me, I am the breast.' Only later: 'I have it' - that is, 'I am not it' . . ."

Neurosis and Psychosis

Much of what Freud was working with patients on was their sense of frustration with reality compared to their wishes. What he usually treated was Neurosis and Psychosis, which are two pathological ways to deal with "frustration. The subject was healthy so long at his need for love was satisfied by a real object in the external world; he becomes neurotic as soon as this object is withdrawn from him without a substitute taking its place. Here happiness coincides with health and unhappiness with neurosis. It is easier for fate to bring about a cure than for the physician; for it can offer the patient a substitute for the possibility of satisfaction which he has lost...Frustration has a pathogenic effect because it dams up [craving], and so submits the subject to a test as to how long he can tolerate this increase in psychical tension and as to what methods he will adopt for dealing with it. There are only two possibilities for remaining healthy when there is a persistent frustration of satisfaction in the real world. The first is by transforming the psychical tension into active energy which remains directed towards the external world and eventually extorts a real satisfaction of the [craving] from it. The second is by renouncing satisfaction, sublimating the dammed-up [craving] and turning it to the attainment of aims which are no longer erotic and which escape frustration."

One of the escapes for Freud is going inward and satisfying oneself in dreaming and substitute pleasures, but this has a danger of focusing on past forms of conditioning. Instead of further development, there is regression. "...There is a risk of the [craving] becoming 'introverted'. It turns away from reality, which, owing to the obstinate frustration, has lost its value for the subject, and turns towards the life of phantasy, in which it creates new wishful structures and revives the traces of earlier, forgotten ones. In consequence of the intimate connection between the activity of phantasy and material present in everyone which is infantile and repressed and has become unconscious, and thanks to the exceptional position enjoyed by the life of phantasy in regard to reality-testing, the [craving] may thenceforward move on a backward course; it may follow the path of regression along infantile lines, and strive after aims that correspond with them. If these strivings, which are incompatible with the subject’s present-day individuality, acquire enough intensity, a conflict must result between them and the other portion of his personality, which has maintained its relation to reality."

How people can fall ill is through frustration, but also illness based on inflexibility. Essentially a Darwinian problem. "He falls ill of his attempt to adapt himself to reality and to fulfill the demands of reality - an attempt in the course of which he comes up against insurmountable internal difficulties...In the first type the subject falls ill from an experience; in the second type it is from a developmental process. In the first case he is faced by the task of renouncing satisfaction, and he falls ill from his incapacity for resistance; in the second case his task is to exchange one kind of satisfaction for another, and he breaks down from his inflexibility. In the second case the conflict, which is between the subject’s effort to remain as he is and the effort to change himself in order to meet fresh purposes and fresh demands from reality, is present from the first."

Blow up the outside world - Soundgarden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC2GjXMk7i4

Naturally, frustrations happen throughout life and they create "an inhibition in development." There are people "who have thus never reached a phase of health - a phase, that is, of capacity for achievement and enjoyment which is on the whole unrestricted. Their [craving] has never left its infantile fixations."

Like with Csikszentmihalyi's Flow system, there is a need to balance craving with pursuits and sometimes it's not the pursuits that cause frustration, but something else. "As a result of their having reached a particular period of life, and in conformity with regular biological processes, the quantity of [craving] in their mental economy has experienced an increase which is in itself enough to upset the equilibrium of their health and to set up the necessary conditions for a neurosis...Here the damming-up of [craving] is the primary factor; it becomes pathogenic as a consequence of a relative frustration on the part of the external world, which would still have granted satisfaction to a smaller claim by [craving]. The unsatisfied and dammed-up [craving] can once again open up paths to regression and kindle the same conflicts which we have demonstrated in the case of absolute external frustration."

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

In A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis, Freud described another problem with frustrated desires, which includes extreme forms of repression, where alternative demonic evil objects are chosen for satisfaction. Since so many of us are capable of bad desires, we project what we hate in ourselves onto ghosts and demons influencing the public. "In our eyes, the demons are bad and reprehensible wishes, [alterations] of instinctual impulses that have been repudiated and repressed. We merely eliminate the projection of these mental entities into the external world which the middle ages carried out; instead, we regard them as having arisen in the patient’s internal life, where they have their abode." In simple terms, demonic influences outside ourselves are signals of our potential for bad desires. How can they influence, unless we have a potential to enjoy them? They would look like a blank wall, disgusting or uninteresting. If we are capable of imagining those pleasure procedures and feel excitement, then we have to admit that we are afraid of the social consequences of imitating bad desires, but we don't pretend that we aren't capable of them. The devil is inside all of us, and so is much of the conflict.

With Freud's Ego, Id and Super-ego system, he was able to map out these frustrations with reality in the mind. "...Neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis in the analogous outcome of a similar disturbance in the relations between the ego and the external world." The conflict is exacerbated by demands of civilization and harmony with the super-ego, which imitates cultural demands. "...Neuroses originate from the ego’s refusing to accept a powerful instinctual impulse in the id or to help it to find a motor outlet, or from the ego’s forbidding that impulse the object at which it is aiming. In such a case the ego defends itself against the instinctual impulse by the mechanism of repression. The repressed material struggles against this fate. It creates for itself, along paths over which the ego has no power, a substitutive representation (which forces itself upon the ego by way of a compromise) - the symptom. The ego finds its unity threatened and impaired by this intruder, and it continues to struggle against the symptom, just as it fended off the original instinctual impulse. All this produces the picture of a neurosis. It is no contradiction to this that, in undertaking the repression, the ego is at bottom following the commands of its super-ego - commands which, in their turn, originate from influences in the external world that have found representation in the super-ego. The fact remains that the ego has taken sides with those powers, that in it their demands have more strength than the instinctual demands of the id, and that the ego is the power which sets the repression in motion against the portion of the id concerned and which fortifies the repression by means of the anti-[emotional investment] of resistance. The ego has come into conflict with the id in the service of the super-ego and of reality; and this is the state of affairs in every...neurosis."

Psychosis for Freud has some similarities to Neurosis, but a difference is that the id is able to use the super-ego to overwhelm the ego's grip with reality. "It consists in a frustration, a non-fulfilment of one of those childhood wishes which are for ever undefeated and which are so deeply rooted in our [inherited] determined organization. This frustration is in the last resort always an external one; but in the individual case it may proceed from the internal agency (in the super-ego) which has taken over the representation of the demands of reality. The pathogenic effect depends on whether, in a conflictual tension of this kind, the ego remains true to its dependence on the external world and attempts to silence the id, or whether it lets itself be overcome by the id and thus torn away from reality..."

Shine on you crazy diamond - David Gilmour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiXNIjGX1hY

Freud includes melancholia, where the super-ego depresses the ego, and essentially becomes a narcissistic psychoneuroses. It becomes a psychosis when the Super-ego takes over and all the cultural ideals remove one from a connection to reality. This is partly why narcissists can be depressed, but also they can steamroll other people on their way to places in the world that provide Prestige that the Super-ego wants fervently. These leverage points of power in the world relieve the depression temporarily, that is until a new point of Prestige is chosen and the old one becomes boring. When higher levels of Prestige are lost, then the lower levels are idealized once more. The Id feeds the Super-ego desire and the Super-ego provides excuses for short-cutting the path to the goal that unfortunately will cause conflicts with the goals of others, since a grip on reality has been lost.

Freud summarized these theories of confrontations with reality in The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis. "...In a neurosis the ego, in its dependence on reality, suppresses a piece of the id (of instinctual life), whereas in a psychosis, this same ego, in the service of the id, withdraws from a piece of reality. Thus for a neurosis the decisive factor would be the predominance of the influence of reality, whereas for a psychosis it would be the predominance of the id." When people have neurosis, they run away from reality with repression, and avoid contact with the parts of reality that are unsatisfying, to gain short-term relief. In Psychosis, relief is found when reality is replaced with a preferred fantasy. "The [next] step of the psychosis is indeed intended to make good the loss of reality, by the creation of a new reality which no longer raises the same objections as the old one that has been given up."

On the Dynamics of Transference

One of the later innovations that Freud brought to his Psychoanalysis was the understanding that we project our internal attitudes onto reality. It's a transfer of attitudes that patients are only partially conscious of. "...Transference arises not just from conscious expectations but from repressed or unconscious ones." These attitudes can be more or less developed, and they can help to explain the psychological experience the patient is going through. "Our experience shows that not all the impulses that determine erotic life have undergone a complete psychological development; the portion that has, is aligned towards reality, is available to the conscious personality and constitutes a part of it. Another portion of these libidinous impulses has been arrested in its development; it is removed both from the conscious personality and from reality, and has either been unable to create a space for itself anywhere but in the imagination, or has remained in the unconscious and thus unknown to the individual's consciousness. If somebody's erotic needs are not completely gratified by reality, he is obliged to project his libidinous expectations on to every new person he meets, and it is very likely that both parts of his libido, conscious and unconscious, are involved in this projection."

These differing levels of development help to explain how extroverted or introverted a person's cravings are depending on whether fantasy or action predominate in the patient. We can fantasize what we would like to happen: introversion, or we can actively think and act to make something happen: extroversion. "[With Introversion of [craving]...there is a decrease in the portion of the libido that can be raised to the conscious level and is aligned with reality, while there is a corresponding increase in the portion that is unconscious, turned away from reality, and able to nourish the fantasies of the individual while remaining in the unconscious. The libido has retreated - in the whole or in part - into regression and reactivated the childhood imagos. The analytical cure pursues it to the same place, with the aim of seeking out the [craving] and making it accessible to consciousness and eventually amenable to reality. A conflict is guaranteed whenever analytical inquiries locate a [craving] that has withdrawn to its hiding places. All the energies released by the libido's regression will rise up as 'resistances' against the analyst's efforts, in order to preserve this new status quo." The problems with our internal cinemas are that they can be an escape, just like the external ones. Then there's the danger that we can cling to those internal movies, preventing psychological development. This is where therapists can provide realistic suggestions so that escape isn't necessary.

Yet the analyst has to be careful not to overuse suggestions so that the patient is just copycatting the therapist. Patients are looking for permission to develop themselves, and with a good analyst and analysand pairing, the patient is free to develop themselves in the sessions and eventually out in the world. "...The results of psychoanalysis depend upon suggestion. But 'suggestion' must be understood as...influencing an individual by means of whichever transference-phenomena are possible in his case. Our concern is to create independence in the patient by using suggestion to permit him to complete a psychological operation that will necessarily result in a permanent improvement in his psychological condition."

Constructions in Analysis

Getting at the purpose of Psychoanalysis, Freud in Constructions in Analysis, wanted patients to learn more about themselves. As they learn about their regressions, repressions, over-compensations, patterns of avoidance and defense mechanisms, there's a gradual appreciation for how stressful, and inhibiting these behaviours are. To live with less defensiveness, to allow development of new skills, helps the patient complete their infantile development. With free associations, dream analyses, and transferences, which are like the patient's guesses/suspicions, help to describe their current skill level and pathology. The analyst can then piece together the associations with historical facts, and with enough imagination, they can reconstruct an individual's past: a semblance of a prior life that is now more or less understood by the patient. Much like a noting meditation where the ego can be dystonic when labeling thoughts/defense mechanisms/avoidances etc., or syntonic when lost in identification, the patient can learn to disidentify from past defense mechanisms, avoidances, and by understanding their avoidance motivations, the patient can let go of weak tools and replace them with superior ones.

To recognize "this is a defense mechanism and it doesn't work," helps to begin a search for new skills. To realize "this is a pattern of avoidance and it makes things worse," helps one to face problems head on. To realize, "this is a form of magical thinking, unrealistic wishing, and thoughts not based on facts," brings a healthy sense of reality to life, and realistic responses to the real environment. To trace an imitation that goes back to a role-model outside oneself, that now doesn't have to be identified with anymore, frees one to choose differently. To let go of perfectionism, allows one to drop inhuman standards to be able to learn. To see that one's current desires have a mixture of regret, and realizing that addictive replacements are unfufilling, allows one to prioritize to chase more satisfying goals. How energy is waylaid with these habitual reactions is that it gets tied up with the lower levels of pleasure, and the relief that they provide create resistance to change. Old habits are comfortable. The difficulty is that the ego can't function properly with this energy drain. "...Inhibitions....constitute a restriction of ego function, occurring either as a precautionary measure, or because so much energy has already been used up elsewhere."

Psychoanalysis takes months and years because of the resistances, fear of embarrassment, fears of being found-out as being a pathetic person, and shame. Like Freud's example of psychological archaeology, the process isn't perfect and there are always some doubts and imperfections in the reconstruction. The patient will always have some information that is forgotten, repressed, or evaded. Success in an analysis has more to do with how independent minded the patient becomes and how they are able to become more assertive and rely on themselves more and more. "...The object of analytical work is to bring the patient to the point of removing the repressions - in the widest sense of the term - of his early development, to replace them with reactions more in keeping with a state of psychological maturity. To do this he has to recall certain experiences and the emotional impulses they gave rise to, which he has now forgotten. We know that his present symptoms and inhibitions are the result of such repressions; in other words, they operate as surrogates for what he has forgotten."

The 'Ratman' - Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gu9qj-case-studies-the-ratman-freud-and-beyond.html

Female Sexuality

One of the difficult areas for Sigmund Freud to reconstruct in analysis was female sexuality. It ended up being one of the areas that Freud would have to punt towards other psychoanalysts, including many female psychoanalysts. Famously in a letter to Marie Bonaparte he said, "the great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'" Using another form of the Oedipus Complex, Freud pieced out female development in On Femininity, as beginning with a desire for the mother, just like the boy, but eventually a gravitation towards the father. The early period towards the mother in many cases reached a duration of up the 4th year, in one case Freud saw, up to the 5th year. "Indeed, we had to reckon with the possibility that a number of women remain arrested in their original attachment to their mother and never achieve a true change-over towards men. There's a negative Oedipus complex at the beginning and during that phase a little girl's father is not much else for her than a troublesome rival, although her hostility towards him never reaches the pitch which is characteristic of boys."

Part of the haziness of the subject for Freud related to transference. He felt that female analysts like Jeanne Lampl-de Groot and Helene Deutsch could learn more when they received a mother-transference. What Freud could still see was "that the bisexuality, which is present, as we believe, in the innate disposition of human beings, comes to the fore much more clearly in women than in men. A man, after all, has only one leading sexual zone, one sexual organ, whereas a woman has two: the vagina and the clitoris...The sexuality is divided into two phases, of which the first has a masculine character, while only the second is specifically feminine."

Freud posits a castration complex for women, but it comes about in his controversial penis envy. "She acknowledges the fact of her castration, and with it, too, the superiority of the male and her inferiority; but she rebels against this unwelcome state of affairs. From this divided attitude three lines of development open up. The first leads to a general revulsion from sexuality. The little girl, frightened by the comparison with boys, grows dissatisfied with her clitoris, and gives up her phallic activity and with it her sexuality in general as well as a good part of her masculinity in other fields. The second line leads her to cling with defiant self-assertiveness to her threatened masculinity. To an incredibly late age she clings to the hope of getting a penis some time. That hope becomes her life's aim; and the phantasy of being a man in spite of everything often persists as a formative factor over long periods. This 'masculinity complex' in women can also result in a manifest homosexual choice of object. Only if her development follows the third, very circuitous, path does she reach the final normal female attitude, in which she takes her father as her object and so finds her way to the feminine form of the Oedipus Complex."

How women go from the strong attachment to the mother to that of the father Freud lists out many possible events:

Childhood love is unlimited, and not being able to be content with less than all, hostility and disappointments are inevitable. Unsatisfying objects can be replaced by new ones.

Early passionate love of the mother can lead to disenchantment with all the disappointments, hostilities and boredom that arise later. Freud here compares this to a passionate 1st marriage that burns brightly but unsustainably. He viewed 2nd marriages as better.

Freud also ventured into mimetics. Being nursed is a passive situation, and all children, and even adults, move between to have or to be. "The first sexual and sexually coloured experiences which a child has in relation to its mother are naturally of a passive character. It is suckled, fed, cleaned, and dressed by her, and taught to perform all its functions. A part of the libido goes on clinging to those experiences and enjoys the satisfactions bound up with them; but another part strives to turn them into activity." For Freud this partially explains the girl's desire to play with dolls. Both passive and active developments help to create active and passive options for the later adult.

Like with 'The Wolfman,' Freud also posits a biological block. Part of the mind rebels against homosexuality due to the presence and use of the genitals. This is often triggered by a new arrival, where both the boy and the girl wish that they could give birth, whether the boy replaces the father, or the girl replaces the mother in their phantasies. "With the turning-away from the mother, clitoridal masturbation frequently ceases as well; and often enough when the small girl represses her previous masculinity a considerable portion of her sexual trends in general is permanently injured too. The transition to the father-object is accomplished with the help of the passive trends in so far as they have escaped the catastrophe."

Being this 1931, naturally a lot of development on the subject has advanced. A summary of these in the modern discussion in On Femininity, is as follows:

Venturing out for sexual partners has an element of betrayal towards the mother, but also of compromise. Girls can essentially take the mother's place, and have the father, by finding someone outside of the nuclear family. Early feelings of the mother owning the daughter's sexuality, can create a sense of guilt in the daughter after a rebellion, which is more or less resolved over time.

Identification with the mother and her relationship attitudes and beliefs have a large impact on the daughter relationship patterns.

There is more ambivalence than Freud thought. Daughters can oscillate between loyalty to mother and father much more rapidly. It's not just one big shift.

Part of the separation of daughter and mother comes from direct competition where the daughter becomes more independent, but fears losing support from the mother at the same time.

Girls often try to hide their aggression in jealous conflicts. "While bullying, punching and other forms of overt aggression are the preferred outlets for boys in the schoolyard, girls resort to cattiness, backbiting, secretiveness, and social exclusion to express their aggression and competitiveness."

A castration complex is not as important for the formation of a Super-ego for girls as a fear of a loss of love from important authority figures. For both boys and girls, a Super-ego develops from multiple influences throughout childhood and adolescence.

Genital self-stimulation happens much more early than Freud thought, and yes they do feel a sense of limitation for being a girl, but they are also aware of the pleasure female bodies are capable of.

Girls also become aware that they can have a baby and fantasize having one. These are positive identifications, so girls don't necessarily have to be stuck in hatred for their genitals. Here there are more fears of accommodating a penis and a baby, as the girl repeatedly imagines the process while growing up.

Boys can manifest envy for the positive qualities of girls, just as girls can envy boys.

Girls can also compare their bodily characteristics, body shape, and breasts with the mother and other women they feel they have to compete with. How a mother looks in comparison to the daughter can have many consequences for self-esteem depending on how well or badly the daughter compares.

Freud opened up a can of worms with is bibliography, but it inspired later psychoanalysts to add detail. Freud was from the 1800's but helped to usher in much of the 20th century and still influences today. The goal of course for modern therapists is to add much more detail to their insights so as to resonate with patients more effectively.

Freud and Beyond

Freud has been a big exploration for me since 2017, and there was nothing like actually reading and engaging with his ideas. Listening to other's opinions of Freud's work, reading about the petty fights between different psychological schools, and reading truncated textbooks on his ideas, were all misleading in the end. Like a form of splitting, Freud didn't have the answer to everything, yet he wasn't someone to just cast aside or to worship. Freud's story is a long one but it's also a foundation for understanding the modern world, and all the later intellectuals who imitate, borrow and steal from him. If you're being stolen from it's because you did something really good. Knowing what is good can sometimes be buried in endless lists of what is bad, but below are a sample of some pathological defenses that become a hindrance for enjoyment in life, and learning about them can only be a help. Being able to recognize optional reactions and diffusing them, is a benefit of Psychoanalysis. Truth be told, defenses are needed in a hostile world, but there are many periods of time when they are not needed, and we can fail to experience peace even when we are free to be at peace. The mind scoops up so many influences and they have a life of their own in our minds as Objects. These rehearsed Objects follow us wherever we go, drain a lot of energy in how they talk to us, and especially in how they judge. Excessive judgment is exhausting. Psychoanalysis can help the mind get rest from those reactive entities, by seeing clearly, and losing trust in these weak skills. When one wants to save energy, one can learn to drop excessive judgment and transform it into discernment.

Climbing up the walls - Radiohead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkOz9Ve2mio

Imitations, or introjections take in so much from family and culture that they can develop in an adult brain to the point where one can feel a tug of war between the different voices in the mind. The exploration of these influences is a real challenge to our beliefs about our authenticity. If imitated desires can often lead to less than good results, one is free to question how authentic that conditioning really is. In Freud's Super-Ego, we collect a lot of critical voices from authority figures that obviously were picked up after birth, and some of these voices are self-destructive. "Other inhibitions serve the purposes of self-punishment...These are things that the ego is not allowed to do because they would bring advantage and success, something that the stern super-ego has forbidden. The ego therefore refrains from these activities too - in order not to enter into conflict with the super-ego." Detecting as many pathological voices as possible, and recognizing who those voices belong to, helps to disidentify from them.

Some defense mechanisms actually behave in an opposite way, as offensive mechanisms. An example of this would be an identification with an abuser. Abusers provide role-modeling of sadistic pleasure in their behaviours, based on their ability to instill fear in others and to maintain control. At some point many abused people will get fed up with masochism and take on the sadistic stance to recover their self-esteem. The important thing for a patient that identifies with an abuser needs to see, is that attacking as a form of defense is rarely needed and most certainly will worsen relationships. Worse relationships, again means more optional stress.

With introjection, the negative side of it relates to blaming oneself for what's on the outside, even though what is blamed is out of control for the subject. It leads to depression and a lack of self-trust to be able to take control over one's life. For example, in pathological grieving, a loss of a loved one can lead to a sense that one is lost and at fault. Finding fault with oneself for anything in the universe that one cannot control, is more optional stress.

In projection, people can transfer prior experiences onto new ones to try and predict behaviours and events. Unfortunately many of those predictions are wrong and tell more about the personal experiences of the subject making the prediction. Of course, some predictions are correct, so to understand projection is that we all use it and need to use it, but relief can only happen when we try to wait to get confirmation for things before we make a judgment. Constant judgment of course means constant stress.

Melanie Klein's projective identification is more complex. Here a person has already made the judgement or prediction, based on their own experiences they've introjected, and then they repeatedly, and aggressively, nudge the other person to behave according to their expectations. Patients like this cause a lot of damage because they utilize the social desires we all have to be open to influence. They use the naivety of targets, and literally brainwash them with their own prescribed associations, and repeat them until targets begin to cave to imitation. It creates a similar feeling as Kafka's K. in The Trial, and Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. The perpetrator of course enjoys the control of an environment that is already understood in their point of view, and holds no surprises. But having your identity snatched from others in this way is another form of stress and conflict.

Idealization is a defense mechanism that's used to control stress and boredom. Since childhood, a need to believe in authority figures as being there for our well-being has to be outgrown. Most people who take a good look at politicians, workplace politics, and modern intimate relationships are forced, even painfully, to let go of the belief in a great protector. That protector is either absent in this world or exists only in an afterlife. Stress may be avoided in the short-term, but it returns when there's a betrayal.

Devaluation naturally follows idealization when the illusion is finally seen through. This is quite common when people chase perfection in life. The constant disappointment that life can only provide fleeting moments of perfection leads to a hatred of normality and endless devaluation. Devaluations are also judgments, and therefore they are another optional form of stress.

Connected with idealization and devaluation is splitting. Here child-like beliefs in people can reflect all good or all bad characteristics in others, which can make for bad relationships as an adult. Most people are a mixed bag, but for some, any imperfections are treated as if the person is ALL BAD. For example, and especially in politics, every election appears as the end of the world in a fight between pure good and evil. It's true that some events in life have higher stakes, and that there is evil in the world, but to split mundane experiences into stark contrasts of good and evil means that stress will be triggered constantly throughout life. Every small infraction is treated with the same intensity as a major betrayal. Again these are stressful judgments that are self-inflicted forms of pain, and they also hurt others. More deeply in splitting is the need for people to understand different points of view, but without the concerted effort to see objects as they are, a mixture, it can be hard for people to see things clearly. For example, reward and consequence. Part of the ego splits off into varying points of view, and the way to heal these conflicts and rifts between different, political points of view, ideas of what happiness is, costs and consequences of pleasures, the ego has to take in all the perspectives and weigh them purposefully so that extreme idealization and devaluation dissolves into intelligent responses to reality.

For psychoanalysts, splitting can come from the pressure to discharge instinctual cravings, and the need to assess danger in reality. Sometimes the mind just wants the discharge and disavows the reality to get to that pleasure as soon as possible, even if part of the mind is aware of the danger. The mind can also be hooked through splitting by manipulators providing hazy promises that turn into disappointment, and devaluation, when more unsavory details are observed. I reviewed this in Cult Psychology. Cultists can control your reality by constantly promising things that hook on your instinctual wishes, but facing reality can be a form of freedom where one can assess reality for oneself, without giving transference to emotionally and financially draining cultist vampires. We don't have to give transference to others once we understand why we were doing that. We were doing that because we had a habit since childhood to ask parents for permission. We can learn from trial and error and give ourselves permission to explore what reality is really like. In the end, a healthy patient does things for themselves, and only outsources when the limitations are real, and not self-imposed.

Despite the endless number of stressful defenses, what is underneath them is a happiness that is based on absorption in interesting and fulfilling projects. There's a possibility for Flow when there's a lack of self-preoccupation. Csikszentmihalyi provides a meditative question, "how absorbed are you?" Most meditation questions are answered by actively engaging in projects. Look at the questioning in the mind that prevents you from engagement and try to find the defenses that are preventing you from continuing. Those are the self-imposed stumbling blocks. When you are able to "get on with it," and when there's a lack of self-preoccupation in the super-ego, there's less paralysis, and more presence for the ego to work with. Actions to take responsibility for one's life are taken as signs of progress in the mind, and re-establish that sense of self-trust, and a grip on reality.

Religion

Tellingly, with a process such as psychoanalysis, all the prior forms of talking therapy, including religions themselves, came under scrutiny. As with prior episodes, religion is hard to avoid even if you are an atheist. If you have role models in life there's always some element of prestige you have for those who have something you want. As said before, we want to either be our role models or have them, if being is not possible. Then the imitation squeezes tight on our choices with these limited binary options. It's like the mind is looking for quick replacements, or substitutes for advantages that cannot easily be attained. Like in The Ego and the Id, some of these desires we pursue involve big life goals or are replacements. As we fill our lives with replacements, the repressive side of the mind creates a sense of remorse that is similar to how Judeo-Christian religions describe sin. Whether we are religious or not, we have to face up to remorse.

The Ego and the Id: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html

Freud's difficulty here is in expanding beyond religion without going into complete nihilism. It requires developing some distance from culture to see how traditional religions operate. In The Future of an Illusion, Freud said that "...people generally experience the present naively, so to speak, without being able to appreciate it's contents; they must first gain some distance from it...The present must have become the past before one can derive from it clues for making judgments about the future." For Freud, religion is a cultural artifact that provides comfort for the helplessness we all feel towards our inevitable death, and a glue that keeps a society together to avoid a complete breakdown. "The defense against helplessness in childhood lends its characteristic features to the reaction to the helplessness the adult must acknowledge; this reaction is the formation of religion."

Freud then connects this to our ultimate wishes to continue on and be protected, and when these wishes become desperate and impossible to realize, the panic leads to obsessive rituals that are similar to those modern bird experiments referenced in my Totem and Taboo review. Rituals have a sense of desperate hope, and any successful coincidences that match up with the ritual become associated. Whether the methods are scapegoating, prayer, or different kinds of rituals, the successes that coincide with a ritual, become projected with the supernatural. These powers are expected to prevent worldly punishment from celestial parents, who also instill guilt on top of our natural remorse as we grow up. Eventually these rituals become an indispensable method to regulate emotions.

In Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices, Freud described these ritual behaviours in psychological obsession. "Neurotic ceremonials consist in making small adjustments to particular everyday actions, small additions or restrictions or arrangements, which have always to be carried out in the same, or in a methodically varied, manner. These activities give the impression of being mere formalities, and they seem quite meaningless to us. Nor do they appear otherwise to the patient himself; yet he is incapable of giving them up, for any deviation from the ceremonial is visited by intolerable anxiety, which obliges him at once to make his omission good. Just as trivial as the ceremonial actions themselves are the occasions and activities which are embellished, encumbered and in any case prolonged by the ceremonial—for instance, dressing and undressing, going to bed or satisfying bodily needs. The performance of a ceremonial can be described by replacing it, as it were, by a series of unwritten laws."

Many rituals involve a sense of cleanliness on the outside and the inside, like one is trying to cleanse emotions, and Freud zeroed on the reason. "The lesson that bodily cleanliness is far more readily associated with vice than with virtue often occurred to me later on, when psycho-analytic work made me acquainted with the way in which civilized men to-day deal with the problem of their physical nature. They are clearly embarrassed by anything that reminds them too much of their animal origin."

Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0_zzCLLRvE

Freud wants patients to continue growing in their humanity instead of relying on rituals. Originally our helplessness was in childhood when we had to rely on our mortal "gods," our parents, and they could only provide intermittent forms of comfort and protection. The difficulty in growing up is that death, disease, conflict, power, exploitation, injustice and despair are very real. Some people are able to accept this, but others find that religious beliefs help to create resilience for people who expect that all injustices will be righted in the afterlife. Beliefs in a celestial parent go back for Freud to the early days of Totemism. Fights over scarcity of sexual partners, and wealth, including intergenerational fights, lead eventually to threats of a breakdown in society. At some point the protection of the primal father is missed by the rebels, and prohibitions, especially the prohibition against incest, slowly develops a desire to expand and create relationship choices towards others in a tribe, and to think of cultural solutions to societal breakdown, however superstitious. "Insecurity of life, a danger equal for all, now unifies people in a society that forbids the individual to kill and reserves for itself the right to communally kill anyone who violates the prohibition. This, then, is justice and punishment...So as not to lose the connection with our theme, one must bear in mind that at the start of such a course of events, in early childhood, there is always an identification with the father. This is then rejected, even overcompensated, but in the end reasserts itself."

Civilization and its Discontents

As expected, religion continued in Freud's time, and still does so today. For many people it works. Religions also include the results of prayer and meditation. For Freud, prayer and meditation are regressions, though pleasant ones. The purpose of contemplative practice is to reduce the stress that the ego falls under in a pitiless world, and to rest in an oceanic unconscious.  "...The ego is originally all-inclusive, but later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present sense of self is thus only a shrunken residue of a far more comprehensive, indeed all-embracing feeling, which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world around it. If we may assume that this primary sense of self has survived, to a greater or lesser extent, in the mental life of many people, it would coexist, as a kind of counterpart, with the narrower, more sharply defined sense of self belonging to the years of maturity, and the ideational content appropriate to it would be precisely those notions of limitlessness and oneness with the universe – the very notions used by my friend to elucidate the 'oceanic' feeling."

The problem of course is that the drives are still pressing for satisfaction, and for Freud maturity is to not go back to that oceanic feeling, or to at least not rely on it, but to develop a civilization that can satisfy drives more effectively. People "strive for happiness, they want to become happy and to remain so." Happiness as Freud sees it in people is to increase pleasurable feelings and to reduce pain. Regardless of what methods people use, there's always a threat of aggression when people try to correct injustices that naturally occur as people conflict over their pleasures. In the modern world this is precisely the challenge to religion, to be able to find a way to prepare each generation on how to deal with these conflicts. Freud felt that religion was still a regression in that it ill prepares generations for conflict. What happens if one is pious and follows good ethics? In a modern society, that person could easily fall behind creating a moral quandary between doing the right thing and satisfying drives. Freud was worried about too much renunciation leading to psychological, or somatic symptoms.

Freud also criticized parenting as he saw it then. The fight between love and aggression, in societies struggling to satisfy wishes, presents the great difficulty for each new generation, and development for Freud has to go beyond religion, and culture, towards a rational science. "'Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all …' That a modern upbringing conceals from the young person the role that sexuality will play in his life is not the only criticism that must be leveled against it. Another of its sins is that it does not prepare him for the aggression of which he is destined to be the object. To send the young out into life with such a false psychological orientation is like equipping people who are setting out on a polar expedition with summer clothes and maps of the North Italian lakes. This reveals a certain misuse of ethical demands. The severity of these would do little harm if the educators said, 'This is how people ought to be if they are to be happy and make others happy, but one must reckon with their not being like this.' Instead, the young person is led to believe that everyone else complies with these ethical precepts and is therefore virtuous. This is the basis of the requirement that he too should become virtuous."

Last I heard (...He was circling the drain) - Thom Yorke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I03xFqbxUp8

Leading up to WWII, Freud saw that as technology increased our wealth it could also be our destruction. "The fateful question for the human race seems to be whether, and to what extent, the development of its civilization will manage to overcome the disturbance of communal life caused by the human drive for aggression and self-destruction. Perhaps in this context the present age is worthy of special interest. Human beings have made such strides in controlling the forces of nature that, with the help of these forces, they will have no difficulty in exterminating one another, down to the last man. They know this, and it is this knowledge that accounts for much of their present disquiet, unhappiness and anxiety. And now it is to be expected that the other of the two 'heavenly powers', immortal Eros, will try to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee the outcome?"

Sigmund Freud's last years

Towards the end of Freud's life, he came to a more solid conclusion of what his method entailed. Similar to what you notice from the Buddhist mindfulness technique, one instead is working with a therapist to mindfully explore together what impulses, thoughts and defenses are running amok in the mind and to understand them very well. In Freud's system, the pre-conscious is where the Ego stores knowledge about internal and external experiences. The more one knows about oneself, the less surprising reactions are, and the ego progressively gains control over the psyche. The aim of the method "is to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the superego, to enlarge its field of perception and to expand its organization so that it can appropriate new pieces of the id. Where id was, there ego shall be." It's like a vigilance to catch impulses and to assert the ego again and again to herd reactions back to where the ego has already chosen its goals. It's important to see that how we talk inside our minds has an energy of judgment that is painful, and habitual defense mechanisms that aren't needed should be relaxed so that the pleasure principle can act more effectively, and can also be enjoyed without unnecessarily being tainted by overbearing criticism from these imitated, abstract, and distorted voices.

In Freud's late years, he was very popular amongst aficionados, and reviled by many critics. His fans warned him of the onslaught coming to Austria from Nazi Germany, and of course Freud's books were amongst other books written by prominent Jewish authors that were burned by Nazis. Freud refused to leave Austria due his familiarity and comfort with Vienna. When his daughter Anna Freud was interrogated by the Gestapo, he had the motivation necessary to make the move to England. There he basked in his glory and began to see many offshoots of his psychoanalysis with younger theorists. In Freud and Beyond, by Stephen Mitchell, he covered those new schools most influenced by Freud: Kleinian, Self-psychology, Ego psychology, Object-Relations, and identity schools.

Sigmund Freud eventually ended his life at the age of 83 in an assisted suicide with morphine administered by Max Schur, to end the suffering of his mouth cancer. He remained atheist to the end, despite many letters attempting to save his soul before it was too late.

No surprises - Radiohead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7374CZQoS2Y

Within his family, his work continued on with his daughter Anna Freud.

Why the Germans? Why the Jews?

Sigmund Freud left the world during a tumult that many modern people find hard to understand, but is precisely why psychology is so important. This inability to grasp what happened in Europe during the 1st half of the 20th century is precisely why it can come back again and again. Götz Aly of Why the Germans? Why the Jews?, saw the danger in forgetting the precursors to the Holocaust. Not being aware of those precursors dooms future generations to repeat them. "There is no way around the pessimistic conclusion that evil can never be quarantined once and for all in a way that would rule out such horrors. Another event structurally similar to the Holocaust could still occur...[People] should not kid themselves into thinking that the anti-Semites of the past were completely different from who we are today."

The reason why this is so important to understand can be seen in psychology, or psychoanalysis for that matter. Being inhibited, envious, self-attacking, identifying with an abuser, and destroying others to restore self-esteem, are attitudes that many humans can have. The story doesn't have to include only the Germans and the Jews. Any society that peddles social projects that look heroic, for the common good, and noble, can be in fact ways to attack success, diminish others, and to scapegoat, and have the potential to be the new authoritarianism that people gather around with, and often unknowingly. People say "I would never be a NAZI!" Yet people forget that hazy cult-like promise of prestige and utopia. "We are demanding justice! Climate Justice! Racial justice! Economic justice! It's scientific! It's a public health initiative! We care more than you! We have empathy!" It takes effort to think about consequences of new social experiments.

DNC Panelist: Use Green New Deal To Further The “Destruction” Of Capitalism [Watermelon Communists - Green on the outside but Red on the inside]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VF0GKltg0

Those caught in what may seem like cutting edge social experimentation may just be deflecting their emotions of inadequacy and embarrassment. Most especially, they are deflecting their envy and schadenfreude by trying to improve their personal situations by joining moralistic social movements. Like in Bandura's Moral Disengagement, there's an eerie tendency to hypocrisy that we all are capable of. Moral Disengagement is the ability to make excuses to hurt others by reframing those behaviours in moral standards. The irony seems unavoidable, and the reality of most members of social movements, is that they only partially follow their own rules. Part of the unconscious is trying to thrive in ways that most people find recognizable. People want to feed literally and emotionally, and what they want to feed on is imitated and therefore predictable. When people don't like rich people, it's quite possible that secretly they want what rich people have. When people are emotionally hungry, the sadism can be hard to control. As in the prior episode, Sadism has a quality of separating wheat from chaff, but this is dangerous when involving human beings. This abuse becomes easier to fall into when entire groups of people are labeled as a PEST, an OTHER, that interferes with social, and especially individual goals. The reality is that anybody can be an authoritarian, as long as they are capable of ENVY.

The trick is to take a stigmatized symbol and change into a heroic or benign one. It seems like a simple trick, but these tricks work for many people. Peter Hitchens, a recovered communist himself, explained his view on the gullibility of people. "I think the great bulk of people are incredibly easily misled...It takes some nerve not to run with the crowd...I do not run with crowds, but most people do and they are happier that way."

Peter Hitchens | The Authoritarian Left never rests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbfKBXpHNUU

For example, people can talk about the environment, but as people become activists, how much unconscious self-interest is buried underneath? Once people gain power, they have access to more consumption, and naturally economic data shows that as people make more money, they spend more money. To separate consumptive self-interest from any social movement is next to impossible. What most people are doing, whether they will admit it or not, is trying to narrow the gap between themselves and envied Others.

Karma Police - Radiohead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCOAPR33ME

Leaked Seattle Gov’t Documents Allege Justice System Is Built From ‘White Supremacist Culture’ - Daily Caller: https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/25/leaked-seattle-documents-justice-system-white-supremacy/

In the early part of the 20th century, the Jews in Europe provided examples of people being self-made, and naturally, social mobility is the visible marker that onlookers measure their own self-esteem, and use to elevate their terror at the prospect being left behind. Because these feelings are unconscious, though very powerful, envy is too embarrassing to admit. Embarrassing feelings always have to be displaced, or reframed to maintain comfort. The reframing can also provide creative excuses that make it easier for people to satisfy their schadenfreude and resentment. Aly quoted one of the few perceptive critics who predicted the Holocaust, Siegfried Lichtenstaedter. "If Jews as a group were perceived as being 'disproportionately happier' than other groups, Lichtenstaedter wrote, 'why shouldn't this give rise to jealousy and resentment, worries and concerns about one's own future, just as is all too often the case between individuals?" In Forecasting the Holocaust, Lichtenstaedter was quoted as predicting that the Nazis "will beat the 600,000 Jews in Germany and the 200,000 Jews in Austria to death, steal their belongings and give those possessions to Aryans."

The problem of course with being a Cassandra that people don't want to listen to, is when they finally get around to your prediction, it's too late. "Furnished with a law degree, Lichtenstaedter was a Jewish gay man working as a high-ranking public servant while producing three substantial essays, books and brochures...Since Lichtenstaedter remained unmarried, he frequented several restaurants and local pubs where he 'gauged the Germans' shifting attitudes toward Jews.' By May 1931, Lichtenstaedter noted that Germans were increasingly being seduced by Nazi propaganda, falling for their stupidity [Verblödung]. At the same time, he harshly criticized his fellow Jews who still believed in assimilation...While foreseeing what was going to happen, Lichtenstaedter himself was taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp and murdered on the 6th of December 1942. On his Jewish ID [Judenkarte], it says that he departed to Theresienstadt. Hideously, the Nazis used the word abreisen which means 'going on a trip', a 'holiday.'" Lichtenstaedter even predicted Hitler's annex of Austria only 2 years too late. The obvious way that Siegfried was able to predict so much was because he read Nazi publications and refused to look away. If people are willing to look at political opponents, the clues are right there to follow in their communications with each other.

Aly's description of what envy does to people helps to remove that sense of strangeness of the Nazi period. In a lot of ways it reminds me of modern White Supremacist groups and Communists. They appear proud, special, and they expect we should take them seriously, but if one is sensitive enough to notice, there's an insecurity and emptiness there. "Envy dissolves social cohesion. It destroys trust, creates aggression, promotes suspicion over proof, and leads people to bolster their sense of self-worth by denigrating others. Those who achieve success, especially if they are also outsiders, are invariably subjected to sidelong glances, malicious rumor, and libel. At the same time, as enviers know only too well, jealous people gradually poison themselves, becoming ever more dissatisfied and bitter. Thus they tend to conceal their shameful, base resentment of others behind supposedly more sophisticated arguments - for example, those of racist theory. Enviers brand those more intelligent than they are as clever but not profound. Upset by others' success, they dismiss those they envy as immoral, egotistical, and despicable, while they themselves pose as respectable moral authorities. They pass off their own failure as modesty of ambition while accusing those they dislike of always pushing to get ahead...The envier doesn't necessarily seek to emulate the object of his envy; indeed, often he very vocally refuses to do so. As Immanuel Kant observed, the envious instead devote their energy to 'destroying the happiness of others.' The envier feels deep satisfaction and enjoys expressing his scorn and schadenfreude whenever others lose their advantages. Do those envied deserve assistance or even pity? No, answers the envier. They always thought they knew better."

The inner core of insecurity can also move from the individual to national identifications. "What are the sources of envy? They include weakness, timidity, lack of self-confidence, self-perceived inferiority, and excessive ambition." Aly quoted Julius Fröbel who was a supporter of German unification, that failed to materialize in 1848-49. "The German is always at pains to emphasize how German he is...The German spirit, so to speak, always stands in front of a mirror admiring itself, and even if it has looked itself over a hundred times and become convinced of its perfection, it still harbors a secret doubt, which is the hidden core of vanity." Aly also matches with Susan Fiske in looking at a big source of envy, which is the fear of competition and rejection. In Psychoanalysis this would be a narcissistic wounding, or castration.

The Neo-Freudian René Girard in particular influenced many to take Freud's love triangle to include any desires for anything scarce, including positions of respect, power and savouring. Redekop and Ryba in René Girard and creative reconciliation, describe this need to narrow the gap between rivals. "Inherent in mimetic [imitative] games, is a sense of justice - if the other person can have a certain Object, then I should have a right to the same thing. In the case of lateral violence directed to one's peers within an oppressed community, it becomes, 'If the other person (Model) is getting (Object), and I am not getting ahead (Object deprivation), I will make certain that the other person will be brought down (deprived of Object).'" I would also add some meditative detail in that when people observe a Model savouring an Object or situation, their imitative abilities are already feeding in wishes and fantasies. These wishes and fantasies are loaded with pressure and clinging to imitate. That pressure and clinging is the beginning of entitlement, a need for equality and fairness, but also a relief from hankering. This means it can work fast and unconsciously on people, like a hunger pang. As we know with the unconscious, it can motivate behaviour before more aware parts of the mind can assess the possible damage of such actions.

Now German readers, if they're still here, may be feeling that they don't identify with these descriptions and are tired of narratives of Germans and Jews. But I say it's important to study because it was well documented, and it helps to understand motivations wherever there are humans. A later example, which didn't involve Germans and Jews directly, was in Rwanda. Though as I continued reading, it does indirectly involve Germans, so bare with me!

The authors describe this very feeling of resentment and unfairness with the history of the Hutus and the Tutsis. "In the late 1800s, German explorers came upon the Tutsi kingdom of what is now Rwanda and Burundi. Seeing the efficient organization and administration of the kingdom in which a Tutsi king and elite governed a mixture of Tutsis, Hutus, and Twa peoples, the Germans declared the Tutsis to be Aryans with black skins. In the 1900s, Christian religious educators favored the Tutsis, giving only them the education needed to be leaders within society. Proverbs within the culture systematically made the point that Tutsis were superior. Tutsis received satisfiers for their identity needs: recognition as historically superior; connectedness through solidarity with colonial masters who were now the Belgians; security through the resources and status that flowed to them; power to take action, lead, and make things happen; meaning through a worldview that legitimated their place in society. All of these satisfiers became Objects of mimetic desire on the part of Hutus. It is easy to see that with this desire for the Objects was an ontological [Being] desire to be like the Tutsis - to be Tutsi."

"In the 1950s, a Hutu power movement took hold within the country, and when the Belgians left the country, the majority Hutus took political control, which they held onto until 1994. Through the years there were periodic massacres of Tutsis. The education system was used to demonize Tutsis and the elite structure was taken over by Hutus. All of this can be seen as a protracted attempt to acquire the Object - to have the recognition, power, position, superiority, and control that Tutsis had previously had. However, there was always a nagging sense that at an ontological level, Hutus never became Tutsis, that Tutsis just might be superior, might have something more that was unattainable. In other words, the Tutsis were an Obstacle to obtaining full ontological parity."

"New factors were introduced in 1994 that threatened the ontological goals of the Hutus. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) made up of expatriate Tutsis in Uganda had been making incursions into Rwanda. For them, the Object of mimetic desire was control of and status within Rwanda, which had been denied them for nearly fifty years. The Arusha Accords negotiated between the RPF and the Hutu Government of Rwanda had called for power sharing between Hutus and Tutsis. This represented a profound ontological threat to the Hutus. If they believed unconsciously that Tutsis were superior, while explicitly proclaiming their own superiority, then there was a fear that the Tutsis might again become dominant. From a realist perspective, the goods that were in the hands of the Hutu elite, would have to be shared. The solution that emerged for the Hutus was to exterminate all of the Tutsis. If the Tutsis were all gone, they would have overcome their ontological Obstacle. Driven by a Hutu elite who used the radio to all for the elimination of 'cockroaches' (code for 'Tutsis'), the Hutu population reacted with widespread violence, using the thousands of machetes ordered for the occasion to hack to death their Tutsi neighbors while the international community stood by impotently. Over 800,000 were killed. Eventually the RPF attacked and defeated the Hutu government, establishing a Uganda-Tutsi dominated government led by President Paul Kagame. In the process, Tutsis mimetically engaged in revenge killing, putting 80,000 Hutus to death."

Rwanda radio - Hotel Rwanda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qx7JMpOI

"Many identity groups, if not most, have their own bloody histories. The 'Chosen Trauma' of one group becomes the basis for 'righting the injustice' and mimetically perpetrating violence against former oppressors resulting in a 'Chosen Glory,' for the first group and a 'Chosen Trauma,' for the second. In each of these stories, elements of the histories of Hutus and Tutsis can be seen, always with a significant role for mimetic desire, rivalries and violence."

I would continue to add to this narrative some elements of projection. Why people often tell on themselves with projection is partly because envy and imitation are intertwined. If one side is considered hostile, then they can be labeled as deserving hostility. Then with moral disengagement, those who feel oppressed can now start to oppress without cognizance of the similarities. The reason people aren't aware of their hypocrisy is partially that they are so certain that the other side is all evil, and their side is justified. This way you can enjoy vengeance with a double-standard. It's like tunnel vision. Eventually each side is so compromised morally that no one can really be pure, but one can feel that one is pure when one identifies with the struggle of one group over another.

René Girard described this conflict as a conflict of sameness. As people imitate each other's Being, there is a conflict because the sameness can't always be shared. As people become more the same, get caught up in social climbing, apply for the same jobs as everyone else, try to live in the same countries that everyone wants to live in, try to live in the same gentrified neighborhoods, the sense of Otherness increases in each person as they all become obstacles to each other. Sameness in objectivity and Otherness in subjectivity. For Girard, the cure is to realize that all possession leads to emptiness, because it's really about the thrill of the chase and the sadism of conflict. When you remove role-models from objects, the objects often lose their luster, or at least they remain only in their practical qualities. This can be a blessing in disguise if one is capable of enjoying what is undervalued.

For those who can't see, a lot of the envy is knowing that another person is enjoying something, and it's not going to be shared with you. The greed partially is about making sure that all known forms of savouring are owned by oneself, and one can rest assured nobody has a surprising angle. One's status is safe and confirmed. Then when a new angle is discovered, the stamped to imitate starts again. So there's boredom in possession, but urgency in poverty. It's like the wild cat chasing the moving object, and the sweet spot is in the chase to acquire lines of possibility, or to investigate mysteries. There has to be movement. Complete knowledge is static and boring, and lacking fresh projects to chase is depressing.

Eric Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon, describes that feeling of emptiness, anticipation and greed when the main character in a café, is struck by boredom towards married life. The boredom then is cast aside by envy of Parisian women going about their day towards lines of possibility that are inaccessible to him through barriers of natural time and resources. One cannot be everywhere at the same time. "I also feel my life passing by as other lives unfold along paths parallel to mine, and it frustrates me not to be a part of them, not to have stopped these women for a moment in their hurried rush to some unknown job or unknown pleasure, and I dream. I dream that actually I possess them all." Yet does he really want to possess them all? Earlier in that sequence he says, "what makes the streets of Paris so fascinating is the constant yet fleeting presence of women whom I'm almost certain never to see again. It's enough that they're there, indifferent, conscious of their charm, happy to test its effect on me, as I test mine on them...I feel their seductive power without giving in to it." So there's a fear of giving into the seduction because it may turn into boredom or disappointment. The chasing in the mind continues to thread one thought after another and one chase after another to maintain the high of intensity. Even death becomes a concept to chase after or run away from, yet the body just does it on its own. There's nothing the ego has to do. The same goes with appreciation. The perception is able to recognize what is interesting and beautiful, and the ego doesn't need to do anything to appreciate except to get out of the way. Relaxing the predatory ego is a must if peace is to be found.

The Tourist - Radiohead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OzU1jdjSZA

This emptiness of modern life shows the value of psychology in that the unconscious can take good things, like a good marriage, and completely wreck them. It can take a successful society, and periodically tear it down. The civilization and its discontents are always struggling to achieve endless meaning, in work or relationships, or to stumble on deep and long-lasting peace, or at least to find enough entertainment to distract us from our mortality. When it periodically fails, often with economic downturns, many people can only find surrogate meaning in violence. Self-destruction, and or destruction of others.

When talking about the controversy over Freud's Death Drive theory, Otto Kernberg reminds us why it can't be so easily cast aside. "The importance of this controversy relates directly to the social and cultural problems of the twentieth century and the beginning of this new century. The fundamentalist regimes of the last century were unprecedented in their primitive and brutal aggression, both systematic and daily. The tens of millions killed in the name of German National Socialism and Marxist communism are beginning to be replicated under new banners in this century. But no society, no country is free from the history of senseless, wholesale massacre of imagined or real enemies. The relative ubiquity of these phenomena throughout the history of civilization cannot be ignored. The question of the existence of the death drive as part of the core of human psychology is, unfortunately, a practical and not merely a theoretical problem."

Freud on Freud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj2JFI4BsRQ

The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud: Kindle: https://amzn.to/3qk4e7d

Mourning and Melancholia - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781905888061/

Freud, S (1931). On Femininity: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781855757011/

Splitting of the Ego and the processes of defense - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781855757554/

Deceit, Desire, & the Novel - René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801818301/

Psychoanalytic Diagnosis - Nancy McWilliams: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781462543694/

Freud and Beyond - Stephen A. Mitchell: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780465098811/

Freud: A Life for Our Time by Peter Gay: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393328615/

Thomas Klikauer (2020) Forecasting the Holocaust and destruction: on Volks-spirit and hatred of Jews, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 19:2, 262-264

Beyond the Pleasure Principle - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780141184050/

René Girard and Creative Reconciliation - Thomas Ryba: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780739169001/

The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud - Ernest Jones: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140206616/

Moral Disengagement - Albert Bandura: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781464160059/

Eric Rohmer - Six moral tales: https://amzn.to/3402wPE

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

[girlthing-the-batthing]

So I realized I didn't talk about magic at all in the previous posts in the system I'm working on so I'll do that now. There's three main types (that can be mixed);

Crystal magic is the simplest and the middle child of the three. Crystals of different colors have elements affiliations based on their colors, and can be activated via pumping energy into/across them and made stronger by being surrounded by similar materials (orange crystal is fire affiliated, can be activated with a flame (or other type of magic), and can be strengthened by surrounding with embers.) The types of crystal are: pink (life/healing), red (magnet/pull), orange (fire/heat), yellow (air/wind), green (poison/disease), aquamarine (ice/cold), dark blue (water/current), purple (electricity/shock), black (null/antimagic), and white (light/blinding).

The oldest and next simplest of the magic types is blood. Blood does also work with other valuable substances procured from living things, but blood is the usual one used for being somewhat easy to get while still powerful (sweat is less dense with power, but could still work in a pinch, same with tears). Blood magic allows the expenditures of ones own or others bodily elements (usually liquid for ease of use) to power magical incantations, these effects usually aren't very visible but are very useful, ie increasing the chance to not be hit by a stray bullet, making oneself more convincing in an argument, heightening ones senses, and so on. Notably blood can be used to fuel either other type, and can also be sacrificed to try and gain favor with gods or other powerful beings, being willing to hurt oneself for a cause shows great commitment, and there's power in that.

Finally there's runic magic, which I am very far from done with, as it's the version of magic here that functions most like programming. Runes are inscribed in a kind of "sequence" with channels connecting them, generally fluids connect and fill these channels and ruins but some solids and gases can do the job just fine too. Runes can either affect what is flowing through them, or the object they are inscribed on dependant on if they have a "subject" or "object" rune at the start of the series. Then an "apply" rune would apply what ever other effects are in the sequence (such as repel, heat, acceleration, deceleration, cool, so on). There are also "modifier" runes that do not apply to the main sequence itself but rather act as a filter for the mainline runes (IE putting a modifier rune for "metal" on the "repel" rune would cause it to only do that effect to metal). Also good to note is that for the purpose of an "object" rune (targeting the object the runes are on), it would target only what the apply rune is on, so if you were to have a bunch of runes in sequence in a gun, but have the apply rune on a bullet with channels from the chamber leading to it, all the effects would apply to the bullet, not the gun.

[nobody3xe]

Divine Aid

-Malleus Draconia

Part 1, Part 2 (tba)

main navigation

Before you read: gn! reader, reader is the mc, yandere malleus, manipulation, gaslighting, stalking, mentions of gore/hemophobia, graphic descriptions, established relationship.

Word count: 710

Characters: 3963

Spoilers for chapter 7, part 36

Idea by @lilliannotfound

Blood

Black blood spluttered out your throat as you held your neck from the immense pain you felt. Dread enveloped your mind as the metallic scent took over your senses. You felt so physically empty, almost as if you had spilled out your guts entirely. Maybe that actually did happen, you couldn’t tell since your vision was practically blurred from the adrenaline that circulated through your vains, overwhelming you to the point you couldn’t comprehend the situation you were in. So you did the only sensible thing you could think of. In other words, calling malleus. He was the only person you would wholeheartedly trust to see you in such a disgusting and vulnerable state.

In a hurry, with trembling hands and shaky breath you had called him. You weren’t a hundred percent sure whether he would pick up or not, since he had never had a grip on the whole concept of technology. But you couldn’t go out in this condition, so your only option was to call him. Much to your surprise and disappointment, he declined the call. Before you could even think of a reason on why he would decline, you heard a gentle voice, a few octaves lower than yours call out your name in a worried tone.

As you turned around to meet his figure, his eyes appeared to be widened as his gaze was averted to the floor where you threw up your guts along with something black. Although you couldn’t pinpoint what the black substance was, you could only assume it was some sort of biological reaction related to a body’s exposure to magic or something along those lines.

“Dear!?” Malleus exclaimed before he rushed to your frame. As soon as he saw partially black blood dripping down your chin, his eyes widened. After a slightly prolonged silence, he suddenly hugged you, your face now buried in his chest as he gently stroked your hair in an attempt to calm your uneven breathing. When you finally calmed down, you pulled yourself away from him. Not wanting to beat around the bush, you blatantly asked him what caused this, since his expressions made it clear that he knew. Much to your disappointment, he shushed you, before continuing, “When you will have fully healed, I shall answer all your questions. In the meantime, you must take a rest for at least a few days. Also, do not fret about matters regarding your work.”

“So… to summarise, I won’t be able to survive without your help. Since your magic is the only thing that can save me..” Malleus noticed how you looked conflicted, barely able to form coherent sentences. He had you in high regard, especially at that moment. Any other human would be screaming in desperation if they heard such a news, begging him to save their fragile and pathetic little life. That wasn’t the case for you though, you handled it rationally.

Not to mention, you trusted him enough. To think that he would save you, a nobody’s life and waste his own, albeit not as much. He was the villain that everyone warned you about, nonetheless, you humored him despite the warnings thrown at you. So naïve.

So easy to destroy.

Oh, but do not fret! Your oh-so sweet boyfriend is there to help you. No, he doesn’t enjoy your pain, he isn’t a sadist, why would you ever think that! All he has been doing was slowly and slowly leading you to safety, his safe and ‘warm’ arms, protecting you day and night by keeping an eye on you 24/7. And here you are, antagonizing him! I suggest, keeping your mouth shut. After all, I doubt your lover would humor the thoughts you are having currently.

“You are correct dear. Only I can fix you. But-” He said before sighing, continuing after gazing at the floor with an expression that could only be described as melancholic. Or at least that was what it seemed to the human eye.“-I do need your full consent.”

You did not understand why he needed your approval, he was a talented mage who could perform the most complex of spells with just a flick of his wrist. You nodded nonetheless.

If only you knew what you enabled.

© nObody3xe do not plagiarize, repost or translate without permission.

[mieshamitchel]

Keto Breeze Reviews - Shark Tank Keto ACV Gummies! *Updated 2022*

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Keto Breeze Shark Tank - https://www.offerplox.com/weight-loss/keto-breeze/

You can try out these easy home-made detox drinks to boost metabolism and kick start your weight loss journey. Relapse Detoxification is a vital step in getting clean, whereby the body is weaned off the addictive substances in a carefully measured fashion and any withdrawal symptoms are treated. We'll help you find the best drug or alcohol detox program for you or a loved one. Chelation therapy is the administration of chelating agents to remove heavy metals from the body.

Dairy, such as yogurt or cheese, should be full-fat and unsweetened. "Fat, fiber and protein slow the absorption of sugar, so taking out fat from dairy will make you absorb sugar faster," Alpert said. Once the first three days of the sugar detox are completed, you can add an apple. "There is no one person who wouldn't benefit by eliminating added sugars from their diets," Lustig said. If you've read about the latest wellness trends, you may have entertained the idea of a diet detox.

Being addicted to opioids and heroin is more dangerous than the withdrawal; regardless, the symptoms of withdrawal can be extremely rough. Luckily, a clinician coupled with a successful treatment program can help ease the symptoms of opioid withdrawal, cutting back on the uncomfortable feelings that come along with it. Alcoholic liver disease. All alcohol consumption should cease in order to allow the liver the best chance for recovery. The liver has an amazing ability to regenerate and heal once active injury has been stopped. Creative people share the homemade recipes they count on to detox, cleanse — and refresh.

Keto Breeze ACV Gummies - https://www.offerplox.com/weight-loss/keto-breeze/

The information we provide is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider. How long Keto Breeze ACV Gummies takes depends on the substance used, the amount of the substance used and the length of time the person has been using the substance.

Exercise is great for your overall well-being, and when you decide to exercise weight loss, it becomes a necessity. When it comes to exercising, there is no magic at all and you don’t just lose weight; it’s a gradual process. This can be achieved by eating healthily, reducing your intake of calorie and also adding exercise to your daily routine. This might seem to take forever, but it is the best way to get rid of that excess weight permanently. The best way for anyone to actually lose weight is by going through a gradual process with consistency and perseverance.

[primarchstory]

a somewhat serious bio of Ferrus

Ferrus Manus

Short About- Ferrus Manus as a infant, crash landed on the planet called Medusa where after a series of events led to the myth of Gorgon. The official title that was given to Ferrus who landed on the death planet as a baby. Ferrus is also a primarch, one of the superior genetically enhanced sons of the Emperor of Mankind. Someone who, you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley if you can help it. The Iron hands is the name of his legion , aptly named for the primarch…Iron hands. 

Primarchs are also warp entities stuff into a meat suit that only looks human, but unfortunately can never be human, some could theorize that all primarchs are reflections of parts of the Emperor made manifest. 

Personality- Ferrus Manus is a perfectionist, one who wouldn’t hesitate to call out on others for any perceive mistakes that could happen. He has high standards for everyone around him, and for himself as well. He has no sense of humor, no sense of camaraderie or patience between himself and other people. 

He’s also someone who respects strengths and those who constantly strive to better himself, which makes it less surprising that he took pains to be friends with Fulgrim the Phoenix, someone who wanted to improve themselves constantly as well.

Ferrus range of likes and dislikes is dependent on wether you can actually live up to the standards he never tells you by voice, but by actions. He’ll be subtly impress though by people who can stand up to his presence or at least, sleep in it since as a primarch, theres very little mortals who can actually stand next to him and fall asleep.

He’s a very serious person , and rarely does he smile. The only points of where he does smile is when he is next to his brother Fulgrim and just that brother alone. Alas rarely do they come together. 

Ferrus actually hates his own hands, to which his own legion got the name from. Since he believes with sincerity that anything his hands do, isn’t really his strength at all and wishes to find a way to separate the metal coating it from his own body. 

He’s also competitive as heck, a trait he shared with his own brother Fulgrim. 

Abilities

Ferrus is at least 11-13 feet tall. 

Strength- His strength is capable at least lifting heavy weight like building walls and solid steel. The primarch at least have the strength to, when they punch a genetically enhanced being head off with one strike. 

Durability- normal bullets and blaster strikes won’t do much damage to him , but he can still be killed by normal means like giant bullets if they pierce any major parts like the neck though it has to be a straight decapitation, or a shot straight to the brain. His body also doesn’t have much resistance to demonic weaponry, or magic infused weaponry but it has to be concentrated magic. 

Healing Factors-primarchs have amazing healing factors though Ferrus healing factors is that as long as something doens’t kill him outright , he can recover even lost limbs. Alas if the main brain is dead or the primarch is decapitated, thats just death. Only one other primarch can actually revive from the dead and its not Ferrus. An example is that one standard primarch was cut straight to the bone from the skull and minutes later he’s already recovering skin and yellowing bruises form.

Necrodermis hands- Ferrus hands were covered in a metallic substance known as necrodermis,  Ferrus didn’t need any hammer or flame to mold anything as it was capable of retaining heat and molding any temperature molten steel to any shape he desires. 

Speed- Faster then a normal human , and can barely be seen by enhance humans. 

Equipment

Forgebreaker- a legendary thunder hammer that is so large, only Ferrus can wield it. It can also generate lightning from its broad side to boost its attack. 

Medusan Carapace- A suit of armour that boast several unknown support systems and servo mechanism. Has built in plasma blaster, a graviton gun which releases a stream of particles that effect the gravity of its area of effect , depended on setting from heavier to lighter. At its highest setting it can even rupture organs from inside armour. 

A built in grenade harness , a grenade launcher mounted on top of the armour which can fire frag grenades.

[minecraft]

Potions Overview

Sugar/Swiftness - While I think that potions of swiftness also contain high amounts of sugar, it seems likely that caffeine - or some other stimulant substance would be the resultant chemical produced by netherwart. However the potion produced remains the same color as water, blue. Due to this I think that swiftness potions probably taste like blue Powerade, since it has a very similar mouthfeel to water. Slowness - Tastes like root beer, but in an objectively bad way. Probably contains alcohol and sedatives. Drinking this is bad but it won't kill you.

Rabbit's Foot/Leaping - Probably something that increases muscle performance and elasticity. I'm guessing a mix between whey protein and creatine. On a meta level though, the drink is green and it improves jumping… and you know who else loves jumping around a lot? gamers. and the "notorious green gamer drink" is mtn dew, therefore Leaping potions probably taste a bit like a subtly creamy milk-punch version of mountain dew.

Glistering Melon/Healing - Hmm. most likely extra vitamins and minerals. Although it would be easy to say the flavor is watermelon it's watermelon that has been magically combined with gold… I want to say it would taste like raspberry-watermelon with maybe a bit of a hint of jackfruit. the consistency is likely that somewhere between cough syrup and juice. Harming - Methyl alcohol and Acid. Strangely, smells like grape juice, tastes like spoiled wine and pain. Don't drink.

Spider Eye/Poison - Cyanide, like nuts/almond. Probably a bit of a seafoodish vibe going on too since it comes from giant spider eyes. like that one sushi that can kill you if not prepared right. However it also probably has an overall denser consistency, so it would be a bit like milkshake. Don't drink.

Ghast Tear/Regeneration - Regeneration is about FAST healing and it's likely the body activating itself to heal itself as fast as possible rather than providing an external nutrient. So I'd have to guess this potion contains adrenaline and general-purpose pheromones. (this also kinda comes across in a gender-y way because it's purple?) Because of this, this potion would be perfumey in nature and likely slightly alcoholic like Kombucha tea. The flavor/aroma would probably be like that of blueberries and cherries, with hints of salt, honey, and cashews. Magma Cream/Fire Resistance - Overall, due to the slime used to make this potion, it would have a definite stickiness to it. Due to crafting lore we can likely assume that slime acts biologically upon blaze powder somehow, probably oxidizing it and drawing out metallic content so magma slimes have hard but flexible metal shells. Obviously there is some sort of phosphorus in this potion, but there is also a very metallic tang to it as well as a mushroom-ish sweetness from biologically altered slime. I would say that this potion most likely tastes like energy drink mixed with Lemonade and charcoal, but overall an unpleasant taste. This isn't the kind of potion you drink unless you have a good reason. Pufferfish/Water Breathing - This obviously contains some sort of weird exotic gas-exchange/capture molecules or oxygenated liquid. Tastes like pufferfish/seafood but in a objectively pleasant way, so even if you dislike the taste of fish you'd still like drinking this. This potion is extremely bubbly but has no other textural qualities other than being like water. Golden Carrot/Night Vision - Vitamin A but also likely exotic light amplification/psychoactive substances. Due to the slightly hallucinogenic nature of the chemical composition of night vision potion, it has a scent similar to disinfectant alcohol or wet nail polish, but taste-wise, it is sweet but earthy carrot/orange taste, perhaps similar to Hi-C. Despite being fully liquid, drinking it probably feels slightly "gritty" in the same way that drinking chocolate milk does. Invisibility tastes the same, but more "burnt" or caramel, and with a much stronger chemical smell, which is unique in a sense because it's hard to determine where this smell comes from when blindfolded. Turtle Shell - Calcium, Iron, and Zinc along with extra vitamins probably. The taste would be similar to coconut milk mixed with acai berries and lime juice. Maybe a hint of pineapple. A rather overpowering tropical combination. Phantom membrane/Slow Falling - I won't get into the chemical part of this but I just know it's similar to Night Vision in that it smells like nail polish. However, it tastes like fried bacon and calamari. There is definitely a grittiness in the aftertaste that can only be described as "like toenails". Weakness - smells like rotting flesh, tastes like mold mixed with whip cream.

[bontenten]

Bewitch

Pairings: Osamu x F!Reader x Atsumu; Miyacest WC: 7.4k Genre/Warnings: smut, fairytale retelling (Hansel and Gretel), magic au, dubcon/noncon, incest (miyacest), fear, knife, monster, bondage, snuff, vore, gore/blood, object insertion, body horror, a bit of size, tummy bulge, oral (m.receiving), anal (m. receiving), masturbation (f. & m.), voyeurism, arson...

Summary: The unexpected guests at your cottage have a mysterious past and hidden agenda. Will they allow you to accompany them on their journey?

Travelers are advised not to spend the night in the Dark Woods. It's said that beyond the last hiking trail, past a brook, lives an Evil Witch. That witch is vile and merciless; often, fools lost in the woods are never seen again. It's said that she must be over 800 years old, feeding off of the essences of children and young men unfortunate enough to cross her paths. It’s said that she even eats fellow witches. No one really knows. After all, no one who has seen her has lived to tell the tale.

It's been a few months since your teacher has left you to fend for yourself here in the woods—your first time alone during this apprenticeship. She said she had to attend a big conference with a whole bunch of other grand witches. You asked if you could tag along, but she insisted that you stay and watch the cottage. The lack of company is about to drive you insane so you often resort to conversing with yourself or the forest itself.

The soft moss muffles the sound of your footsteps as you begin the trek back home, a faint off-trail path away from the main road that no one else would usually notice. On any other day, you would just go home without a fuss, but loneliness makes people do some bizarre and odd things. For instance, the desperate longing for companionship leads to you dropping a not-so-hidden trail of fancy pebbles to inadvertently lead someone to your abode.

For most travelers, going off-trail is akin to a death sentence as any wrong turn might lure them into the forest's deadly maze. Not for you though, you know this place very well: every fallen tree, overturned log, the wanted signs nailed to the trunk...

Wait. A wanted sign?

You can make out from your distance that there are two heads on it, but the details are fuzzy, and the bounty looks smudged. Before you can get a closer look, you hear the birds caw in the trees, signaling the beginning of sunset. You pull your attention away from the poster and continue on to your way home.

The cottage is extremely cozy and warm. The windows are bejeweled and the door is solid wood. You live here comfortably with your teacher, after all, learning about the principles of magic and what it means to be a witch. It's much more than curses and spells, as your teacher would tell you, witches have character and a moral compass. Although there are certainly those who decide to experiment with the darker arts.

While you get a fire going in the huge furnace and boil some water on the stovetop, you hear two voices squabbling outside followed by three raps on the door. You're stunned by the noise, turning to face the shut door wondering if you were just dreaming about the noise. Is it? Visitors? No, you must have heard wrong.

"'Samu, I bet it's a farce, let's not." The voice sounds both tired and weary, almost out of breath.

"Let me just try again, I can smell a working kitchen in there, someone is definitely there," another voice insists. Three more knocking sounds. "Excuse me! Is the owner of the house available? My brother and I followed a path of colored stone and came upon your establishment...could you spare us some water? A bite of food?"

Two men, though they sound friendly. You're frozen in the kitchen, staring at the door that remains between you and the strangers.

"Is there someone home?" The second voice tries again. "Please, my brother is not feeling very well."

Your initial wariness for the stranger melts when you hear about the brother, which does not sound like a lie based on the raspy voice you first hear. A witch's character is fundamentally kind to all sentient beings, especially those in need. But you're still nervous, so you end up grabbing a metal ladle before carefully going to open the door. When you crack the door open, you see a pair of twins. Beautiful men, one blonde and one grey-haired. The former, with a quirky grin, although his eyes certainly look lackluster. But the other seems like he's at the right place, eyes peering past you into your home, fixated on your kitchen.

"I'm Osamu. And this," he gestures to his twin, "is my brother Atsumu. We're a bit lost, you see."

You nod your head in a casual greeting and introduce yourself as the resident apprentice at this cottage. As a good host should, you open the door to the weary guests preparing to welcome them in.

"Are we welcomed in?" Osamu asks, not moving from his spot. Atsumu isn’t budging either, arms crossed and only looking at you from the corner of his eye, waiting for your answer.

Without giving much thought you nod and open the door wider. "Both of you are most welcomed in."

"Then we thank you for your hospitality," Osamu says, taking a step inside, dragging his twin with him.

Words, especially spoken words carry power and hold intent. And a witch's words, no matter how careless they slip out, contain magic. Welcome, as you say. So welcome, they are.

You shut the door behind them and prepare to go give your first-ever guests some water. When you turn around, you notice Osamu already in the kitchen, the sleeves of his tunic rolled up past his elbows.

"Your food is about to burn. Heat's too high," he tells you, expertly taking control of the sizzling pots and pans. "I got it, don't worry."

Feeling flustered at the faint smell of scorching food, you hurry over to see if you can be of any assistance. "Let me help out."

"No, it's quite alright."

How can a host let her guests do all the work like that? And the first company in a while too! What an utter failure.

"How—" you try to argue back, but you're cut off by Atsumu tugging on your wrist, dragging you over to the sofa in the corner.

"Don't worry about him, he loves to cook." Atsumu brushes out the wisps of his bangs with a huff. "And actually quite good at it. Anything that goes through his hands...well, in short, all become part of his design."

Like his twin, Atsumu's frame is broad and huge, but there is a quality of emptiness of sorts. Osamu's shoulders are wide but there's more substance to it, whereas Atsumu's form seems contained. You can't help but use your learnings to see if you can figure out just what's off about Atsumu. He's slowly walking around the living room and studying the portraits hanging on the wall. He picks up a frame that is set above the fireplace and comments, "None of these are you. How come?"

"Oh, they're my teacher. I'm just a witch-in-training at the moment, so—"

"A witch?" Atsumu questions, clenching the frame tightly. His hands begin to shake, the glass under his thumb beginning to crack.

You did not expect Atsumu to display such a visceral reaction upon the mention of witches. After all, witches normally stayed far away from ordinary human society and when they do mix, it's often a role of healing. But the look that sparks in Atsumu's eyes, it's almost—feral.

"'Tsumu!" Osamu yells while stalking over quickly from the kitchen. He throws his arm around Atsumu's neck and drags him off into the shadows. You can't make out the muffled voices and deep growling noises that are coming from down the hall.

It's their private matter, so you go back to the kitchen. True enough, Osamu's hands are almost like magic. The bubbling pot of broth doesn't seem to be on the verge of overflowing, the onions caramelizing beautifully, filling the air with deliciousness.

Moments later, the twins come back. You notice that Osamu clothes are wrinkled from tugging Atsumu around, but at the very least, Atsumu is looking much better than before.

The three of you set the table for dinner. Osamu brings out the plates as though he knows the kitchen inside and out already. Atsumu comes emerging from the cellar with two bottles of fine wine that you didn't even know your teacher had stowed away. Surely, she wouldn't mind? With Osamu and Atsumu sitting to the left and right of you at the round table, it almost feels like a more familiar, cozier gathering between friends than a situation of a host and her guests.

They tell you that they have been traveling across the lands for a long time now, looking for a cure for Atsumu's illness. It reminds you of the hollow, repressed form you saw earlier and your curiosity gets the better of you. They don't tell you the nature of the malady, but what they do share is that they are looking for a witch to undo the curse on Atsumu, a result of dark witchcraft.

"I am a witch!" you exclaim, feeling your call to action at the moment. "Please, is there truly nothing for me to help to undo the spell?"

Osamu leans in close to you, and wipes a bit of sauce staining the corner of your lips with the pad of his thumb. He smiles. "We're looking for a very high-level witch. One day, maybe you'll get to the level of magic needed."

"You're too weak," Atsumu bluntly points out. You're sure Osamu means to say the same thing, but Atsumu's words are really sharp.

"I know," you sigh. "My teacher tells me that all the time. So, I'm really trying. I'm sure there's at least something I can do."

"I definitely think that. Don't be so hard on yourself," Osamu comforts. "Have you been living alone here for a long time?"

You feel two pairs of eyes glued onto you waiting for your answer. You smile reflexively before your eyes trail to the empty plate and carefully choose your words. "Yea. Just me and my teacher. She's a grand witch...maybe if you wait here for a few days, you can meet her when she comes back from her conference."

"We—"

"We'll be gone tomorrow!" Atsumu snaps, staring into Osamu's eyes.

Osamu doesn't pay any mind to Atsumu, and puts an extra piece of dessert onto your plate.

"We have a long way to go. Atsumu's condition isn't getting better, so we can't stop in one place for long."

It makes you a little sad, because you were hoping to spend some more time with the twins, both of whom you have grown fond of. Osamu and his gentleness. And even Atsumu, despite his quick remarks and outbursts, adds a particular spice to your mundane life.

"Maybe we'll bring you with us," Osamu comments lightly, "'Tsumu, wouldn't that be nice?"

"She'll just be dead weight," Atsumu retorts. You wonder if he absolutely hates you. Is that why he is always so against you being next to Osamu?

Osamu puts an arm around you and blows on the shell of your ear. It tickles and you can feel his body enveloping you. "But she's so sweet," he tells Atsumu and whispers into your ear, "Aren't you?"

You find your wandering gaze looking into his half-lidded grey eyes. His face is right next to you, lips just hovering barely five centimeters away. The overwhelming presence of him is undeniably alluring. Your breaths become shallow as your heart rate speeds up with desire.

"I'm exhausted! 'Samu you too. We're going to bed!" Atsumu drops the silverware onto his plate and stands up. He comes around the table, muttering curses under his breath. Atsumu grabs Osamu by the wrist and drags him off towards the guest bedroom you have shown them before.

You didn't quite catch Atsumu's angry mutters, but you hear "slut" and "harlot" thrown around a few times. Were they directed at you? No, you're not like that, you tell yourself. Atsumu must have been thinking that you are trying to seduce his twin. After you clear out the table, you decide to clear up any misunderstanding.

You tip-toe down the hall to the guest bedroom prepared to knock when you hear muffled sounds coming from inside. You carefully press your ears to the crevice of the door and clamp a hand around your mouth upon hearing the stream of moans.

"'Samu, 'Samu please, ah—"

That's Atsumu? Your eyes are wide and still trying to process the shock of what you're hearing. You tell yourself you shouldn't be here. You should not be listening to whatever is happening behind the closed door, but you can't help it. Hearing Atsumu's moans makes you want to squirm.

You slightly jump when you hear a slap, followed with a pleasured groan. The sound is so clean it feels as though the phantom hands are touching your own heated skin.

Osamu's chuckle nearly makes your knees weak.

"Don't get cocky, if it were any other day ngh—, any other day, I would be the one pushing you into the mattress."

Slap. "Shut up, cute 'Tsumu. I like you being so needy for me like this. What do you want from me? Tell me."

"Fuck me, 'Samu."

"With pleasure."

The wood creaks loudly and you tell yourself, you really need to get out as you back away and try to quickly walk down the hall back to your bedroom.

You throw the door open and lock the door behind you with a click. With your eyes closed, you try to steady your breath and the building heat in your core. It's quiet. There's no noise coming from their room. But they are twins! 

You remind yourself that a witch is all-accepting and kind. There are so many circumstances beyond your understanding, judgement is not a part of your nature. And if what they are performing is wrong, what should you say about yourself? You peel off your clothes and step out of the soaked panty that is proof of your lust.

Pillows are fluffed and covers are pulled over your body. You try to sleep, but each time you are about to drift, Atsumu's cries of pleasure come back into your head. Your hand trails down your navel until the fingertips trace over your clit. Gathering some slick from your cunt, you drag it across the sensitive bud.

You shudder from the touch as images, constructed in your fantasy, cloud your mind. You imagine Atsumu's hands spreading your legs apart and Osamu's teasing words next to your ear. He would tell you to open wide and shove his cock down your throat. You suck on three of your fingers until lips wrap over the knuckles, your saliva pooling from hunger. And slip your fingers into your cunt easily, curling them against the plush walls.

"F-fuck me," you moan into your pillow.

With pleasure.

You quiver, clit pulsating, and your pussy juice dripping into your palm. The wash from the high soon takes you into sleep. All throughout the night, you squirm and feel the phantom sensation of being watched. Not just observed, but studied, by two pairs of glinting hungry eyes. You can almost imagine them on either side of the bed, trapping you into the mattress no matter which way you turn.

A few times the weird feelings almost pull you awake, but you don't dare crack an eye open to confirm your suspicions until the morning light begins to filter through the windows, rousing you from sleep. The air is filled with fragrant herbs and the sizzle of delicious brunch from someone awake before you.

No doubt, it's Osamu, because who else can it be? Atsumu? Please. The twins....

You climb out of bed and stretch your neck on the way to the washroom. Your bedroom door is open, but it's too early to notice that detail.

"Morning!" Osamu greets you from the kitchen. You find a fresh mug of coffee shoved into your hands from him.

You mumble thanks and sip at the brew while watching Osamu fry the eggs. Osamu looks to be deep in thought, probably thinking about something pleasant from the faint smile ghosting on his face. You feel a pang of guilt from both listening to their private lives, and also the strange feelings that maybe they heard your private life too—it's all your paranoia talking.

"You're so talented," you blurt out, fisting the fabric of your long skirt.

"Thanks, but better not let 'Tsumu hear ya, he gets jealous super easily."

Even if Atsumu hears, it's fine. You really mean both of them. Both of the twins both seem super talented as a duo; like they've been out there and seen the world. Meanwhile, you're still stuck here, without company. Would it be possible...if they simply stayed?

Osamu senses the words that are stuck in your mouth and answers them for you. "We're gonna be leaving right after breakfast. There's still lots of ground to cover today," he explains, plating the pancake before preparing to ladle a spoonful of batter for the next one.

"Do you have to leave?" you ask, almost pleading.

"It's cozy here and comfortable. We enjoy your company too, but we have to go. Your teacher would hate us, immensely, and on top of that...let's just say, we're always on the run."

"You say it like you two are fugitives or something."

Osamu chuckles and leans closer to you, hot breath flaming your cheeks, or maybe it's just the heat from the stove. A teasing grin pulls his cheeks up slightly as your eyes flicker over to see his lips spell out, "Maybe. Scared?"

Embarrassed, you take a defensive step back, squeaking and bumping into another body.

"MORNING!" Atsumu announces behind you. He's in good spirits and he has his hands on your waist to steady you; he sniffs your hair and smiles before letting you go. "I smell something delicious."

"Breakfast is ready," Osamu says, plating the pancakes. "Hungry 'Tsumu?"

"Tch." Atsumu shoves past you and knees Osamu, mood doing a complete 180. You're almost left like a fly on the wall as you watch the scene unfold.

Osamu is quick to catch his balance while keeping watch on the stove. "Not awake yet?" Osamu grins and passes him a plate of pancakes, essentially telling him to shut up and eat. "Who shoved a stick up your ass? Go eat."

"Fuck you."

"Hm."

Atsumu grumbles but digs into his food anyway. Osamu catches your amused expression in the corner and explains, "It's always like that between us. It's our...way of showing how much we care."

"I know." It's sort of endearing, the banter between the two brothers. Even if the world turns against them, no matter what the odds are, at least Miya Osamu will have Miya Atsumu, and Atsumu will have Osamu. Perhaps it's exactly that sort of bond the two share that you're envious of. Body and soul. Because if only you could have just an ounce of that sort of familiarity with another. But you're just an outsider without an invitation to join in.

While you're mulling over your thoughts, you don't catch the darkening gazes being exchanged between the twins. At some point, Atsmu's plate is already emptied and the wooden table is cleared while you're still lost in your mind. Osamu is fiddling with the metal tea strainer, bobbing it up and down to brew a mug of tea. He threads a cotton string in and out like it's a plaything.

"Do you really want to be with us?" Osamu asks nonchalantly. "'Tsumu and I were talking about it. If you do, maybe we can work something out."

"I just..." You feel like this is your final chance to tell them that you don't want them to go. None of the going around circle hinting that you have been doing. This is the moment to just tell it to them. If you miss this chance, you feel like you won't have another. And even though a pit pulls at your inwards telling you to reconsider, you're brave. "I just want to be together with you all, and help you cure Atsumu. My teacher is so talented, I'm sure she'll have a remedy."

They grin.

Osamu is a great cook, he can do that. Atsumu sometimes seems lazy, but he's super strong and quick to help too. And you can pick up all sorts of other tasks in the area! Maybe because they're so helpful, your teacher will even let them stay once Atsumu is cured. Maybe they can learn magic too! You have heard of warlocks who are powerful with spells too. And you can already imagine, the three of you, like a team, eventually going out into the world to fight demons and monsters and—

"Open wide," a sultry voice sounds next to you. Backing away automatically, you find Atsumu standing right behind you.

"W-wait," your voice shakes, stuck in your throat. "What are—"

His fingers reach for your mouth, prying it open. Before you can voice your distaste, a warm, metal ball gets shoved into your mouth, the thin chain quickly tangles into your hair. The faint traces of tea seep out of its small holes down your tongue and throat, while some spill out the corner of your mouth like trails of drool down your jawline.

Osamu smiles and wipes the liquid away with his thumb, relishing in how your widening eyes gape at him in confusion.

"Being together," he answers the question you wanted to ask, "is what you want isn't it?" He takes a spool of kitchen twine and begins to secure the tea strainer in your mouth. The thin cotton threads wrap around your head over and over again, tightening the steel against your tongue.

You shake your head and try to take another step away from the man you're beginning to become wary of, but the strong grip of Atsumu's hands on your shoulder prevents you from squirming at all. His fingers dig into your flesh, and when you turn to look at him you catch a glint in his eyes, glowering down at you.

"No, no, no, behave," he taunts you, "listen to 'Samu. He'll make you feel real good, trust me."

With the gag in your mouth, all you can let out are weak, warbling gargles from the back of your throat. Why are you doing this? You weren't like this before? Loud snorts flare out your nostrils from the fear screaming through your body.

Osamu comes back with a paring knife, examining the edge under the sunlight filtering in through the stained glass. He presses the cool blade along your cheek, dragging with the dull edge just enough so the sharp end doesn't cut your skin. You feel your knees growing weak and if not for Atsumu's hold on you, you would sink into a shuddering heap on the floor.

"You know, I think you might be the best meal yet," Osamu compliments, blade trailing down to your collarbone. The tip of the knife toys with the first button, pressing tension on the x-cross stitching. Snap. The first button pops off, dropping onto the wooden floor and rolling away to an inconspicuous corner. "I'll prep you well."

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. The knife flicks again and all the buttons clatter on the floor before running away for refuge.

Atsumu has cleared the table already and you find yourself hoisted up and laid onto the surface like a slab of meat on a cutting board. The cold surface presses against the back of your shoulder and ass. Osamu ties your wrist together with a hemp rope and secures the other end around the table leg. He also secures your ankles to two other anchor points.

You're utterly exposed and ashamed at your body's display, mortified at how your body is reacting when you catch sight of Atsumu, his eyes dilated, looking at your slit that you know is drenched already. The rough texture of the rope presses painfully into your skin from how tight the bindings are. You can only let out gagged whines in complaint, chest rising up and down from the loud breaths.

"Can't do, love," Osamu chides, kissing the knot at your wrist, satisfied with the results. His fingertips trail down to cup your jaw and his thumb runs across the tea strainer. You close your eyes and groan at his touch. Osamu murmurs, "I won't let anything go to waste."

Atsumu is growing impatient at the sight of his twin treating you like the finest specimen ever. You're not the first one. You won't be the last one, but he still can't stand the sight of someone looking just like himself having first tastes while he's missing out himself. He wants to shove Osamu aside, but he knows that Osamu absolutely hates it when he ravages the meal when it's not ready.

Atsumu unzips his pants and lets his hardened, leaking cock spring free. You stare at Atsumu who is fixated on his own pleasure. His hand wraps around his cock and pumps the length up and down.

Osamu turns your head to look at himself instead. "Someone there is impatient, but let's not learn from him, okay? I want to take you slow, make sure you'll be ready. I don't want you stressed, you release too much cortisol and that toughens the meat."

Anything that goes through his hands...well, in short, all become part of his design.

His hand kneads your breast and toys with your nipple, circling and tugging on the tiny, erect bud.

"Relax," he whispers into your ear. "Just like you did last night."

You try to clamp your thighs shut from reflex. Immediately the resistance from the rope ties stop your movements. Osamu squeezes your thighs and pushes them apart once more.

"Right here isn't it, after hearing me fuck 'Tsumu..." Osamu's finger runs down the sides of your labia. "You just couldn't help touching yourself too huh?"

He knows. They know. You feel your cheeks burn at the realization.

"There's nothing embarrassing about it. If anyone should be, it should be us twins, " Osamu's fingers easily slip in, your pussy already dripping with arousal. "Oh woops, I shouldn't need to comfort you. You're clearly not shy."

Osamu's fingers are thick and long, able to reach far deeper than you ever can. Your tongue is still struggling against the gag while your saliva steeps the tea leaves trapped in the ball.

"Oi," Atsumu cuts in with annoyance. "I thought you said to not play with food. What the fuck are you doing, chef?"

Osamu stops his finger in you for a moment before dragging them out. You're trembling at the sudden emptiness and desire to fill the space immediately. The lack of stimulation is irritating and you are desperate.

Osamu walks up to Atsumu, bringing his drenched fingers covered in your slick to his lips for a taste. Before he can do so, Atsumu grabs Osamu's wrist and takes in those digits, sucking on them gingerly.

Osamu smiles and runs the other hand through Atsumu's hair.

"Patience is a virtue, 'Tsumu, I was just getting her fully prepared for you. I'm giving her all to you already, you couldn't even let me have a taste of her?"

Atsumu releases Osamu's fingers with a pop. "I never said I wasn't going to share," he mutters before pulling Osamu in for a kiss, passing the taste of you along their tongues.

Your body jostles as you finally get a visual matching what you heard last night. You feel your pussy leaking with more excitement, the arousal drips all the way down to your asshole. And the more you squirm, it's as though the rope ties become tighter and tighter, rubbing your skin raw. But even that pain is incomparable to the need to quell your fire.

Atsumu pulls away and presses one last kiss on Osamu's nose. "I always love what you serve, thank you 'Samu." Your heart rate rapidly speeds up as Atsumu comes towards you. He's positioned between your legs, both hands on your thighs, marveling at the display of your body. His hands feel hot.

Atsumu grins. "You probably didn't expect me to be the one taking you, huh?" He guides his cock to your entrance, the bulging tip prodding along your puffy lips. "Did you want Osamu to be the one fucking you?"

No? You want to argue, straining your head up slightly, but only tea-laced saliva drips out from the corners of your mouth.

"'Fuck me, 'Samu. Fuck me, please.' Is that what you heard? Is that what you wanted to say too?"

Your screams are muffled whimpers.

Osamu snorts off to the side, watching Atsumu do exactly what he accused Osamu earlier of: playing with his food. Hypocrite.

Atsumu glares at Osamu before turning his attention back to you. "You'll be begging for me, Atsumu, after I'm done with you."

He lines himself at your entrance and inches himself in, groaning at how your cunt is somehow just sucking him in. You're so warm and tight inside, wrapping perfectly around every part of him. He sits in you for a moment, just enjoying being blanketed by your muscles and chuckling how you tighten around him every now and then.

You whine, urging Atsumu to move a little.

"Okay, okay. Geez, and 'Samu says I'm impatient." Atsumu slowly draws his cock out and snaps his hips forward, the base of his balls slapping against your ass. He delights at how you squeeze your eyes shut and continues rocking into you at a comfortable pace.

Osamu enjoys standing off to the side for a while. He always liked watching Atsumu savor and delight the food he prepares. Atsumu always eats with such gusto. It should have always been that way, until the witch ruined everything. The curse, an experiment with the dark arts, should have never happened. Above all else, it should never have been on Atsumu. Osamu can only wonder if the reason they are subjected to this fate is because they are twins. Until a cure is found, Atsumu, his most beloved other, will have to replenish himself in this way.

A sharp pain rips through you and tears well up in your eyes. You feel Atsumu's cock suddenly begin to pulsate and grow in size. At first, you thought it was because you're clamping down on him too hard and will yourself to relax. But the cock, the thing, is certainly unnatural now. And between your tear-stained vision, you can just barely make out... Monster.

You begin to thrash wildly, head tossing side to side, back arched as much as you can in a futile escape attempt. Atsumu's claws rest on your hips while he pounds into you furiously. His groans, now deep growls, send vibrations that you can feel within your throbbing clit. You fear that you'll actually be ripped in half by the way Atsumu is thrusting into you. The engorged cockhead hits your cervix each time and his ball sack, even heavier, bowls and knocks against you.

Osamu unfolds his arms and comes over.

"It'll only hurt if you don't relax," he tells you, reaching out to press on your clit. "Just let him have his way."

"Go fuck her somewhere else," Atsumu snarls. His voice is warped and bellowing. Your mind is getting foggy as Osamu's fingers on your clit don't stop teasing the bud while having a petty talk with Atsumu. And Atsumu, ticked off by Osamu, picks up his speed.

"There we go, now that's beautiful," Osamu comments, taking his hand away and watching you unfurl in your pleasure. Your abused cunt is puffy when Atsumu pulls out, and you feel the thick liquid start to flow out when you take breaths.

"No, don't do that," Osamu chides, taking three fingers to gather the cum spilling out and stuffing it back in. "Better keep it all in. 'Tsumu isn't done with you yet."

Not yet? You can't even voice your thoughts except weakly shaking your head and moaning into the steel gag. In the moment, your stomach rumbles loudly.

"'Samu, she's hungry," Atsumu points out, rubbing your tummy. "You feed her and I'll stuff her."

Osamu ruffles Atsumu's long hair and gives his new, erected horns a teasing squeeze. Atsumu yelps at the touch. "'Samu!"

"Okay, okay," Osamu relents and stands next to your head. You see him take the paring knife again and slide the icy blade between the cotton ties and your hot cheek. A quick slice and you feel the pressure of the gag release. Osamu removes the tea strainer from your mouth and tosses it into the sink.

"Must have been so over-brewed, I apologize for that," he says. You know he doesn't mean it at all.

"Why?" you croak out. Your jaw and cheeks are sore from being held in position for so long. There's so many things you believe you can ask why about. Why they are prepping you like a meal, fucking you like a toy...Why Atsumu is the way he is. Why Osamu is not who you think he is either. Why you.

Despite Atsumu's grotesque figure, you're sure that you fear this twin more. Osamu's thoughts are so well-hidden behind his eyes; he never gives away what he's thinking or planning. You can only accept his decisions from the receiving end.

"Because of Atsumu," Osamu answers. Everything is for 'Tsumu. "I'll feed you."

Osamu cradles your head with both hands, his fingers tangled in your hair. He prods his cock against your lips. Feeling your resistance, he grips your hair tightly, painfully pulling on your scalp, and presses the tip of his cock to force your lips open. You nearly gag at the length entering your throat and your hands ball into tight fists. Your nose is buried in the base of his cock, pressing into his balls. Each breath you take is heavy with his musky, hot scent.

It's easy to focus on Osamu's cock fucking into your throat, leaving an unamused, monstrous twin off to the side preparing to turn your attention back to him by force.

Atsumu rubs himself against you, preparing to enter you again. You're sure that he has become even bigger. When the tip pushes through, your body attempts to fight the intrusion in self-preservation. The claws at your hips dig in and Atsumu all but pulls you onto his length like a sock. You scream around Osamu's cock, throat clenching around his thick length, and nearly black out from the stretch.

You never had anything this big in you before. Atsumu lifts you up slightly, his grasp becoming large enough to encircle around your whole waist. Your ankles are still tethered and tug on you, much to Atsumu's annoyance. He easily slices through the bondages with a sharp claw. Now free of restraints, Atsumu can cradle you more easily, finally pushing the last section into you. 

Crack!

You can’t cry while you're stuffed with Osamu’s cock, but tears stream endlessly from your eyes. You’re sure your pelvic floor is broken, completely forced apart in a futile attempt to accommodate Atsumu stuffing you beyond your physical capacity. Your hips give out as your two legs, bone out from their sockets, dangle grotesquely.

“Just focus on me,” Osamu wipes your tears away and continues to pump into you. But you cannot focus on the human object in your mouth when your whole lower half and inwards are broken, stretched or squashed.

"Hey look ‘Samu! It's bulging," Atsumu marvels at the imprint of his tip pushing your flesh out from the inside. “Look, my cock is saying ‘hello’.”

Atsumu excitement translates into messy thrusts, treating your body like a game. “Maybe I can even touch your dick through her!” 

Your whole body is numb, the brain shuts its pain signals off completely, and hormones pour through your bloodstream in overdrive. The broken climax spasms through your body like the last bits of a faltering system.

“Better hurry...she’s...she’s fading soon,” Osamu warns between his grunts. He clasps your head and spurts his seed into you. You mindlessly swallow every drop of him, letting the contents slowly flow down your throat. You can’t process anything nor recognize any of the murky images. Who are you? Where are you?

Your memory fades in and out as your eyesight drifts between black and white. You can’t do anything about how the monster is now on all fours over your body, unrecognizable as Atsumu. You don’t feel any fear towards this grotesque figure. You don’t register how his tongue licks your neck.

Your mouth is now empty but you can’t formulate syllables.

“I’m sorry,” you hear Osamu whisper before sharp fangs pierce into your jugular, digging in deeper and tearing a chunk out. Red sprays across your body in fast spurts, drenching Atsumu and covering Osamu. The teeth at your throat gnaw at the flesh, starved, tearing through the skin, fat, and tissues like a child crunching fruit. 

You can feel the droplets falling onto your face like fresh rain after a storm. You vaguely remember your teacher and her warning of strangers. She always reprimanded you and you wanted to make her proud. There will no longer be any chance of that now. You weren’t a good student, and only an utter failure.

Osamu waits for Atsumu to finish you off. Atsumu always gets messy at this point. Osamu tried to help Atsumu section his prey off by cutting and organizing the limbs and even attempted to debone the meal beforehand, but Atsumu has his preferences, and Osamu respects them. So, Osamu delegates cleaning duties to himself instead. 

You’re already beyond recognition when Osamu comes back with barrels of oil. All that is left is a kitchen stained with blood and a pile of bone with chewed connective tissue left. Atsumu sometimes eats the bones too, but not always.

“‘Tsumu, are you full now?” Osamu asks, reaching out to cradle his twin. Atsumu has now transformed back to the way he is supposed to be. Osamu threads his hand through Atsumu’s blonde hair and inhales his twin’s scent.

Atsumu doesn’t respond and tugs at Osamu’s collar, trailing down his arm to bring Osamu’s hand to his own cock.

Osamu grins and kisses the top of Atsumu’s head. “Do you want to fuck me ‘Tsumu? I know you like to, after your meals.”

Atsumu whines and nips at Osamu’s jaw, pushing the twin down on the blood-stained floor.

“Okay, okay.” Osamu unzips and pulls down his pants before crawling onto all fours.

Atsumu’s hand cups Osamu’s ass and pries the cheeks open before curiously fingering at the specimen plugging Osamu’s hole. Atsumu holds onto the base and turns the object, before laughing.

“‘Samu, what is this you have in your ass,” Atsumu teases. “I like this presentation.”

This time, Osamu is the one embarrassed. “Last meal, it hurt like hell. So...I wanted to prepare a little.”

“With an egg holder?” Atsumu cackles again, fiddling with the ceramic object. “Should’ve just told me ‘Samu, I could never bear to hurt you.”

Atsumu holds onto the base and slowly pulls the object out before tossing it aside. He smiles and teases Osamu’s enlarged hole that’s opening and closing around nothing. Gathering up some saliva, he spits onto Osamu’s asshole before lining his cock at the rim and slowly pushing in.

Along with the curse comes a near insatiable lust. Atsumu knows that if he doesn’t fulfill his need to fuck or be fucked, he will snap. He doesn’t really care who he kills during a frenzy of that sort, but it’s too risky to get Osamu caught up in the collateral.

The witch that wanted to create the perfect weapon, failed. She failed because she underestimated the twins’ bonds for each other. She failed because the twins discovered that witches excrete a very special hormone in their body after climax, and it is exactly that substance that is slowly curing Atsumu. With every witch eaten and absorbed, Atsumu is healing and gaining magical powers. He is even capable of passing those essences to Osamu. One day, everything will be the way it's supposed to be.

Osamu plays with a few strands of Atsumu’s hair. Atsumu’s softened cock still buried inside of him. Atsumu has his jaw resting on Osamu’s shoulder.

“You make me feel so good,” Atsumu sighs, enjoying the quiet moments after his high.

“And what about her?” Osamu asks, gesturing to the table where your remains are still at.

“She made me feel good too. The best one yet, but don’t be jealous.”

“Come on, let’s clean up and get out of here.”

After washing their bodies and changing into clean clothes, Atsumu and Osamu are ready to say goodbye to the cottage they have overstayed their welcomes at.

"Let's go 'Samu, we're already behind." Atsumu finishes dumping the last bucket of oil along the edges of the room.

The clamor of boots stride across the creaking wood. As though with the passing of its owner, the cottage itself has lost the will to live.

"Coming," Osamu calls back, walking past the makeshift funeral pyre for you. He notices a flash on the ground and bends down to pick up a button.

"'Samu! Get the fuck out or I'll burn ya down too!"

"Yea, yea."

Osamu drops the button into his shirt pocket and joins his twin outside. Atsumu strikes a matchstick and tosses the small flame into the cottage. Fire meets oil and spreads in an instance, engulfing the cottage in an angry blend of orange and red, devouring all contents and remains within. The smell of scorched wood reaches the twins who are looking at the sight from a distance.

"She was good," Atsumu comments, looking at his twin unsure about what Osamu's grey eyes are thinking about. Atsumu realizes that he didn't specify what good exactly means. But it doesn't seem like Osamu is paying much attention. Is Osamu thinking about you? Is he unhappy? Does he regret what happened to you? Although what's done is done already, if time can go back, would Osamu choose? You or Atsumu?

Osamu slips his hand into Atsumu's, erasing the unspoken worries away. He gently leads Atsumu onto the trail, leaving the burning cottage behind.

"Stop thinking such nonsense," Osamu mutters, squeezing Atsumu's hand. No matter what happens, Atsumu will always come first. His needs, his desires. That's what it means for Osamu to love Atsumu. Even though the rest of the world may not understand the relationship the twins share, calling it depraved and disgusting, it's still selfless on their part. What sin is there to honestly love? What sin is there to try and save his loved ones?

While Osamu admits to himself that he does feel a deep attraction to you and knows that Atsumu feels the same pull as well, there's nothing that can be done about Atsumu's condition. But it's not as though you are completely gone. Your essences and core are within both twins, being absorbed as one with their bodies and soul. You'll forever be with them in that way, even if you no longer have any sentient memory of it.

Osamu fiddles the button in his pocket; there's still a physical reminder of you in that tiny form.

It must be about a twenty-minute trek from the burning site. Although the flames are already far from eyesight, the scorching smell and embers still drift over. The twins pick up their pace, eager to exit the forest before nightfall and make it to the next destination. On the way, they pass by the tree trunk with a wanted poster.

"They never get my best angles!" Atsumu complains, ripping a wanted poster that is nailed to the tree trunk.

"It's not like you have a good angle, ‘Tsumu."

"Shut it, we look the same ‘Samu. You're just calling yourself ugly too!"

Osamu shrugs and continues his trek down the main trail. Atsumu huffs, tearing the parchment into indistinguishable pieces before throwing the shreds up into the air like confetti.

"Wait up!"

Osamu stops in his tracks. "Hurry up, loser. We still have a long way to go."

Atsumu takes a few wide strides and swings his arm around his twin's shoulder. Behind them, a very light drizzle falls from the sky.