#illuminatio

[dlstmxkakwldrlarchive]

240524 SHINee World VI Perfect Illumination: SHINee's Back Day I

ONEW One Shot

[mrsdesade]

American Sweetheart

Since most of you became really curious about my The Boys OC Ophera, I decided to write down a backstory timeline for her; also for anyone who's interested in engage roleplay with her!

Tw: SPOILER WARNING, randomly mention of these dark topics, blood, violence, human experiments (compound V), harrasement, scars

adding here her playlist for the vibes

Origins

Miranda Reinslayer was raised in the Vought Labs by a young Madeline Stillwell with other many young supers. The experiment on her weren't that brutal, only injections of compound V to test the effects. She bonded a lot with a super younger than her, who will be renamed Lesh Reinslayer. They consider themselves brother and sister.

She has developed metal tendons in his arms, they act as a magnet to control the metals around her. Due to an injection that was too powerful, her vocal cords were transformed into shiny metal; everyone thought she would die, but she only developed an extraordinary, unique ability to sing.

Miranda and Lesh attend classes at Godolkin University remotely, and only show up in person a few days a year.

When she was still in training to learn how to use her powers, she once escaped from the labs and found herself in a theater at Vought spectacles floor. To avoid being caught by scientists, she climbed onto the mezzanine floor above the stage, and after a scare due to someone in the darkness of that place, she fell down. Feeling the void under her, she developed vertigo and the fear of great heights.

At the age of 25 she was introduced into the Sevens, when Lamplighter left his place empty.

Her format is to embody the woman desired by the public, the Vought vintage and fascinating pin-up, she received the name of Ophera, because her mask was inspired by a victorian novel. She manages to find a modest job even for his brother Lesh. Who will be renamed again as Illuminatio, a superhero magician with telekinesis abilities.

Season 1

After Starlight's entry into the team and Translucent's disappearance, Ophera continues to work in the Seven, maintaining a good and neutral relationships with everyone, his musical career also grows.

As also happened in the past to the other women on the team, Homelander tries to exploit her popularity as his own advantage, and during an interview admits that him and Ophera are dating.

Ophera is not at all happy about the revelation, her nature makes her independent and difficult to capture, she's sarcastic and often rude with him, but she's forced by her contract to continue the show and pretend to be the perfect girlfriend. In private she suffers quite a few abuses from him. He likes to play with her fears and her body too much.

Madeline dies and leaves her place empty at Vought.

Ophera sees some of Homelander's weaknesses and decides that she would take the reins of the situation, foolishly ambitious, she thinks she can manipulate him to make her life more calm. So, she begins to be gentle and more caring towards him, and the two inevitably bond. The farce of the false couple soon becomes a twisted romance, where it is difficult to distinguish reality from fiction.

There are no romantic feelings on her part, just a strange and sincere affection that she cannot deny. On the contrary, he begins to demonstrate some sort of dependence. They continue to live together as colleagues, bed friends, often sarcastically teasing each other.

Season 2

Homelander and her starts cover up crimes together. His brutal methods and desire for power influence Ophera and she becomes even more greedy and ambitious. She even kill another super during a competition, just because he wanted to take her place in the Seven.

Illuminatio, after that, begins to see something rotten in Vought's intentions and threatens to expose their experiments on kids like him and his sister. During a show he threatens to kill some spectators and is killed by Homelander in front of the whole team.

Days after, Ophera, tormented by the loss of his brother, must save people inside a skyscraper that risk to collapse after a bomb explodes, Homelander intervenes and joins her on the ongoing mission. But his intentions are less noble than expected. Feeling that he has become too attached to her, he thinks she is a danger and uses his lasers to try to kill her. Causing the entire building to collapse.

She is presumed dead, and receives a public funeral. Stormfront takes her place on the team.

Season 3

After a long period spent hiding among normal people and healing his wounds, thanks to the complicity of Starlight, Ophera joins the Boys team, interested in getting her revenge. The white mask that she has always worn only for beauty and because of her costume, now serves firmly on her face to hide the big burning scar that Homelander's laser left on the right side of her face.

He works with the team to create the perfect opportunity to take Homelander down, but often end arguing with Butcher and Soldier Boy. On the contrary, she gets along very well with Kimiko, the girl loves when Ophera hums her old songs in some lonely moments.

I won't go into detail about the Herogasm event. But know that it's a quite familiar place for her, and she knows perfectly well how to access it. Many are surprised to see her around again. During that event she meets Homelander for a moment, and he almost doesn't recognize her due to her scar, he's surprised to see her alive, but also he appears somewhat disgusted by her actual appearance.

During the battle at the Vought tower, where she can let go of all the anger she's been holding in for months, she finds herself saving Ryan from some pieces of heavy metal that were about to fall on him. After that, she loses consciousness due to a fight with Homelander. And her body disappears again, not even the Boys know where she ended up.

Season 4 (working on, following the s4)

When she wakes up, she's in a hospital bed, with half her face bandaged and no idea how she ended up there. A single word from Ryan that he feels grateful to her for being saved was enough for his father, to save her and decide to operated to give her back her vintage diva face.

Initially she refuses, categorically not wanting to return to work for the Vought. She is asked to return to singing on stage, to enjoy the crowds, being under the spotlight and leave the miserable life she was doing outside Seven. Greedy for power, ambitious, feeling cornered by Homelander Ashley, she finally gives in and agrees to return to the team. And it makes her spectacular return, gaining even more popularity than before.

Ophera will remain faithful to the Boys group, and by staying in secret contact with Starlight she will monitor things from the inside the Tower. But she can't deny her unhealthy desire to be a successful woman once again.

Who knows if she will be able to maintain her fame and at the same time find a way to take revenge for the things she being through?

-------------

That's all for now! Things for Ophera will definitely change with the arrival of seasons 4/5 (and If we do roleplays I will make it canon for her), we'll see! Thanks for the attention you're giving to my girl <3

[ossifer]

What of the Sun?

AKA: Alecto, Gaea, and Uranus—why John Gaius is connected to Dominicus.

Special thanks to @the-sword-lesbian for inciting me with this question, and then going on to listen to all the conspiracy board rambling that ensued whilst offering up her own excellent questions:

Alecto, Gaea, and Uranus

Alecto is, as we know, named after the Fury of the same name from Greek myth whose name literally translates to ' the implacable or unceasing anger'. John, after becoming God, took the surname Gaius, the masculine form of the name Gaia.

Something notable about the Alecto of myth is her parentage: she is the daughter of Gaea (also spelt Gaia), the personification of the Earth, who was fertilised by the blood of Uranus, the personification of the sky (who was also Gaia's son and husband). Uranus' blood was spilt when his and Gaia's youngest son, Cronus, castrated and overthrew him, with the blood from his severed genitals falling upon the Earth (Gaia) and birthing Alecto in the process; Cronus is sometimes interpreted as also being Chronos, the personification of time.

Dominicus, the name John bestowed upon the resurrected Sun, has its origins explicitly stated by John. It is derived from Psalm 27:1, which he partially quotes while talking to Harrow: “The Lord is the source of my light and my safety, so whom shall I fear?”

“A myriad ago, I resurrected nine planets,” he said. “And I reignited the central star, and I called it Dominicus. As a reminder. Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea, quem timebo? God is my light.[...]

Dominicus and Thanergetic Stars

He said, As the world went up I remade us both. I hid me in you … I hid you in me. And when we were together … once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God. He said, It wasn’t enough. He said, The ships … the ships were still full of people. I reached our hand out into space. I extended. I struggled. He said, I bit through the sun first. It’s human nature. That started things going. Once you take down the sun, you’re cooking with gas, pardon the pun.

It’s a dark and cold and unlovely part of space, and the stars there are old and were nearly dead then. We nuked them with thanergy and now they’ll shine forever, but the light is not the same …

From the glare of the plex window, beside some perfectly ordinary white twill curtains, the buried monster turned herself so that she was lit in the light of the undead stars.

THE MITHRAEUM, THE SEAT of the First Reborn! The Sanctuary of the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the bolthole of God—the removing place of hallowed bones, and the ossuary of the steadfast! A space station hidden forty billion light-years from the ever-burning light of Dominicus, lit by thanergetic starlight, set in the midst of the circumstellar disc, an ancient jewel within so much dead gravel.

As we see from the above, stars are implicitly naturally thalergetic in character, and through necromantic intervention (nuked them with thanergy) can be rendered thanergetic: undead and everburning, emitting thanergetic starlight. Curiously, nuked them with thanergy is eerily close to how flipping a planet is described by Harrow:

You drove the point of the bone-sheathed blade into the talc—obviously you never wanted it to have an edge of any kind, ever again—and using the sword as your focus, drove a killing lance of thanergy right into the planet’s heart. The planet did not quake, or howl, or freeze, or writhe, skewered on your necromancy’s tines. You began the cascade outward, as you had been taught. A wide thanergetic scythe sheared out into the mantle, deeper into the minute thalergy of the rock, into the solid stone’s buried recollections of the day its ball of dust was formed.

Flipping a planet involves focusing thanergy into a killing implement that is driven into the planet's heart, its soul, inducing a cascading thalergy-thanergy reaction that fuels itself, thanergy decaying thalergy into more thanergy and burning through it:

The thanergy scoured through the soul like a lit taper touched to flimsy. The living flush of this rocky outcrop began to die in dizzying, concentric rings: flipping, the thanergy feeding on the thalergy as locusts fed on wheat. As the soul tore away, an extra thanergetic bloom fanned the fire of what you had already done.

Planets, as we are told in Harrow the Ninth, have souls: a communal soul, arising from the thalergetic complexity of the microbial life present on them much in the same way a human's soul emerges from the thalergetic complexity of its internal microbial life.

“And what has a soul?” “Anything with a thalergetic complexity significant enough to … have a soul. So, humanity.” [...] “A planet’s a ball of dust. Its thalergy comes from the accumulation of microbial life. You can’t consider it one coherent system.” “Call it a communal soul,” said her Emperor. “What’s a human being, other than a sack of microbial life?

This explanation has always reminded me of how the human body is explained in terms of a hierarchy of organisation and complexity: the lowest unit is the cell, cells come together to form tissues, tissues form organs, organs form organ systems, and the sum total of these connected systems is the human body. The soul, then, is implicitly the organisational level above the body: the body is the tissue, the soul is the organ; it is shown by Anastasia's tripod principle that the soul indeed plays a vital part in the functioning of the body:

“There was a bad option where your soul snapped straight into her body, leaving your body stuck with no soul at all, and that would have been a shit time all round.” “Would I have died?” Nona asked, interested. “You’d have tried to,” said Pyrrha. “The body needs thalergy and a soul to keep the lights on. Anastasia’s tripod principle. Body plus thalergy, but no soul, is basically a very weird vegetable … after a while it gives up and shuts down.”

Without a soul, the biological processes cease and the body shuts down; thalergy, in the absence of a soul, decays into thanergy. Flipping a thalergetic planet involves thanergetically disrupting its soul to induce a cascading thanergetic reaction. Thalergetic stars 'nuked' with thanergy become undead, ever-shining, thanergetic: they are flipped.

Stars have souls. Dominicus has a soul.

Why John Gaius is connected to Dominicus

You said, “So if you die, the Houses die with you. The star warming our system fails, and—becomes a gravitational well, as I understand it?” “Yes. A black hole, like the one that took out Cyrus,”

The Sun would need to be about 20 times more massive to end its life as a black hole. Stars that are born this size or larger can explode into a supernova at the end of their lifetimes before collapsing back into a black hole, an object with a gravitational pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Ergo, the black hole part is a load of bullshit—but, you know, necromancy; the important part of that quote is that John claims that when he dies, Dominicus dies with him.

When Mercymorn tries, and fails, to kill John, Dominicus falters and does indeed begin to undergo a collapse: John's 'death' somehow affects Dominicus from all this distance away, and him coming back results in it stabilising again.

“Right,” he said, and closed his eyes briefly. Then he said, “The sun has stabilized. Hope the Sixth House didn’t get cooked in the flare.”

John says that he reignited the Sun, yes, but I think it goes deeper than just that: I think John put more than just Earth in Alecto's body, and more than just his soul in Alecto's.

Anastasia's tripod principle stipulates that a body with thalergy and no soul shuts down—Dominicus undergoes collapse when John's body is destroyed by Mercymorn, when his soul is decoupled from its material tether—John's soul is the Sun's soul.

“Once the shaman had claimed the sun … I became God.”

The soul of a planet is communal, composed of the sum total of the life present on it: John killed the life upon Earth by inciting a global nuclear war, then killing those humans who were spared the fate of atomic fire. He had to kill the world to put his hands around her throat. He became God by eating her, by hiding him in her, and her in him—the shaman claimed the sun.

He said, I bit through the sun first.

Alecto was born from the blood of Uranus being spilt upon Gaia by their son Cronus; Uranus is the personification of the sky, the husband and son of Gaia. John took the name Gaius when he reignited the Sun, after spilling its blood upon the Earth and creating Alecto: he became one with Gaia, tied his soul to hers and to the sun's.

The Mithraeum is 'a space station hidden forty billion light-years from the ever-burning light of Dominicus, lit by thanergetic starlight'. The ever-burning light of Dominicus contrasted by thanergetic starlight. Immortal, but alive.

“The eyes have it, John.”

He approached her, and she saw that his sclera were black as space. The irises were dark and leadenly iridescent—a deep rainbow oil slick, ringed with white. The pupils were as glossy black as the sclera.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses drummed his fingers over his belt. It still hurt you a little, to look into his terrible eyes: the irises like black shadows of the Canaanite white, that iridescent absence of colour, a shade rather than a tint; the purity of the white ring; then the matte black of the sclera. “A myriad ago, I resurrected nine planets,” he said. “And I reignited the central star, and I called it Dominicus[...]

You could study him without shyness: the shining iridescence of his irises, the unyielding black of the cornea and pupil, the long, square, urbane face.

And his eyes were just absolutely, insanely fucked up: deep black wells, this unreflective flat black. Even from where I was, I could see the white light that circled the irises: a cold, flickering perimeter.

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

37

Ninth skull - whole.

“A myriad ago, I resurrected nine planets,” he said. “And I reignited the central star, and I called it Dominicus. As a reminder. Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea, quem timebo? God is my light. Harrowhark, if I went under—I’d enter that senseless state, and I am God. What if, forty billion light-years away, my people looked up to see Dominicus falter and go out? What if the very House beneath their feet died all over again, as I turned my back upon it?”

The Latin means "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?"

Okay, well, this is... scary. God resurrected entire planets - created resurrection beasts, nine total - ten thousand years ago.

But hang on, - God didn't have a cavalier cus he's not a Lyctor - but he has another initial, "J G" - or does the G just stand for God?

“If I fought the Resurrection Beast I’d leave my Houses to die,” he said. “If I fought the Heralds, I might well go mad, which would be the same thing. So I’m shut in here—walled in, really—to prevent the Nine Houses becoming none House, with left grief.”

I do enjoy the random memes coming up now and then.

Though - that does sound really scary - and also inevitable, given we've been counting down the time until he dies from the start of the book.

Are you and Ianthe being safe?” It was your turn to sit up straight in your chair and intone, constructing each syllable with the same rigid emphasis you might give to a skeleton: “We—are not—intimate.” “Sorry—I mean, you’re about the same age, I don’t really know how this goes anymore, we’ve all been alive for too long…” “Neither are we romantic—neither are we, frankly, platonic—” “Sorry! Sorry. Sorry,” he added, “I should not assume these things.”

God is so awkward Dad coded. Lmao this made me laugh as wel.

No,” he said. “Let’s talk about her. Let’s talk about my bodyguard.” Carefully, you sat back down. God said, “You’ve been listening to Augustine and Mercymorn.” “Yes.” “It wouldn’t be Ortus. Poor Augustine. Poor Mercy. They still feel badly … they still carry their apportioned blame. I think, yes, that it’s time for you to know about A.L.”

So he did have... someone. Not quite a cavalier - a bodyguard.

“I like to think that she would like you. You’d make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark. I sometimes indulge in the wish that you’d been mine.” What dismantled you—you bereft idiot—was not even the God who made the Ninth House, the Emperor All-Giving, the Kindly Prince; your end appeared in the form of a grown adult telling you that they might have liked you for their own.

Oh this fucking KILLS ME. Haaarrrrooooowwwwww 😭😭😭

And he said, “Harrow, whatever you thought you did, you didn’t.” “I opened the outer door.” “Okay,” he said. “I went up the passage.” “I’ll accept it, though that thing’s a literal death trap,” he said. “I broke the ward and I rolled away the rock—” “There’s where you’re wrong,” he said.

Ohohohohoooooooo, this is sooooo interesting. Harrow didn't actually break into the tomb?

So even - even Gideon thought Harrow broke in, and she told Harrow's parents, who killed themselves immediately after. Gideon was wrong about this as well???

Ohhhh, this is soooooooo interesting ----

though not as interesting as this next part ----

Then God’s eyes widened fractionally, and his voice became altogether different when he said: “Harrow, who the hell’s been tampering with your temporal lobe?”

And also -

Your body rolled itself off the table, with such a reflexive suddenness that you were not sure that the action was through your conscious effort. Your meat floundered to stand, wild with shards of lead crystal and a dozen cuts through your clothes, and you turned away. The Emperor said, “Harrowhark?” as you stumbled away from the table, and more plaintively —“Harrowhark!” as you unerringly careened to the door, but he did not follow. Somehow your hand slapped the pad that slid it open—somehow your meat dragged itself away from him—and you walked, and you walked, and you walked.

That really sounds like it's not Harrow controlling Harrow's body here.

And with good reason -

she's been RUMBLED!!!! The emperor himself found out about the memory alterations!!! Or at least, changes to her brain!!! The jig is UP!!!!!!

..... much to think about.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.

- Eugene Ionesco

Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586, it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press.

Last year the University Press announced it would be changing its branding and logo which had served it so well and was iconic the world over. The new branding was designed by an agency named Superunion with refinements by typographer and logo designer Rob Clarke.

The new logo featured Oxford’s name and an icon showing the turning pages of a book forming the ‘O’ of the popular university press. It represented Oxford’s heritage as a print publisher, and its transformation to a future of multi-format content publishing. Or so they say.

The old OUP logo had the university coat of arms in which was the Latin quote: Dominus illuminatio mea. This is Latin for 'The Lord is my light’. It is the incipit (or opening words) of Psalm 27 from which the motto of the university was taken.

That motto has been in use there since at least the second half of the sixteenth century, and it appears in the coat of arms of the university. The origins of the motto shdes light (no pun intended) on the origins of the mission of the university as it was back then. Roman Catholic priest and theologian Ivan Illich explained that ancient university motto was being formulated around a time when scientists were progressively replacing the concept of vision as a gaze radiating from the pupil by the concept of vision as the retinal perception of an image formed by reflected sunlight. Illich wrote, “To interpret De oculo morali, the relationship of things to God "who is light" must be understood. This is the century (i.e. the thirteenth century) suffused by the idea that the world rests in God's hands, that it is contingent on Him. This means that at every instant everything derives its existence from his continued creative act. Things radiate by virtue of their constant dependence on this creative act. They are alight by the God-derived luminescence of their truth.”

It seems the Oxford University Press, in all its wisdom, threw out hundreds of years of tradition in the name of digital transformation to advance knowledge to all fours corners of the globe. In other words just another bland soulless corporate entity. As one critic said Oxford had gone from ‘maybe god will read your book, but no one else’ to ‘look here’s a visual representation of the drain your book will disappear down’.

[kaosithesecond]

Dominus illuminatio mea

[lesser-known-composers]

Franz Tunder (1614-1667) - Dominus illuminatio mea - Qui tribulant me ·

ORFEO Orchestra · PURCELL Choir

[280507]

dont know if I stopped, in the middle of the street, masking

delirium under an umbrella. Perhaps I jumped (no doubt it's illusor:

vas convulsively illuminated, I laughed, I imagine, while running

One

despair is r

without ir

possible,

this "leap

the

8o

to

solitude

Doubt fills me with anguish without respite. What does illuminatio

mean? Ofwlww "c with anguish

Of whatever nature it should be? Even if the fash of sunlight blinde

ne internally and set me on fire? A little more, a little less light change

nothing; in any case, solar oF not, man is only man: being only

man, not

getting out of it; it's suffocation, weighty ignorance, the intolerable

Bu

myself

of this

later, I

absurdi

of beir

man?

we are

"I teach the art of turning anguish into delight," "to glorify":

[kikotapasando]

Presentatie van het jaarverslag en de jaarrekening van het Gemeenschappelijk Hof van Justitie

Presentatie van het jaarverslag en de jaarrekening van het Gemeenschappelijk Hof van Justitie Op vrijdag 12 juli 2024 werd het jaarverslag en de jaarrekening van het Gemeenschappelijk Hof van Justitie gepresenteerd tijdens een persconferentie op de vestigingen Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten en Bonaire. Het thema van het jaarverslag, “Extranea lux, illuminatio interna” (zicht van buiten, inspiratie…

[cebozcom]

Illuminatio: La Propuesta Artística de Kadir López en Neón | www.ceboz.com

Descubre la muestra personal Illuminatio del artista cubano Kadir López, centrada en el uso del neón como elemento principal.

[mrsdesade]

Lately I've been pretty busy and I've no motivation time to draw or write, but I still want to bring The Boys OCs content here, so here's Ophera and Illuminatio social media pages 🌟

site credit: here

[cnvisualart]

I am happy to announce that I will begin research toward a Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Art at the University of Oxford this Fall!

Last year, I introduced a mode of fine art practice entitled Marked (Black) Axiological Shifts within thesis research at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning program in Art, Culture, and Technology. Utilizing the marked conventions of urban visual culture, relational aesthetics, black feminist geographies, and digital computation, I attempted to move beyond the limits of geographical knowledge in visual articulations of representational space, particularly black space. During my two years at MIT, I scratched the surface of this discursive. With more time, I would like to delve deeper into this discussion, inviting specialists, collaborators from Oxford, and the greater community to participate in the fluid exchange of ideas and knowledge pivoting contemporary practices in black aesthetics.

As a doctoral candidate at Oxford's Ruskin School of Art, I will strengthen the coherence of my artistic language and approach through practice in the art studio. I intend to explore new points of entry into this discursive through the production of new time-based media and writing informed by my creative queries and thesis research, a grand departure from theory.

It is a great honor to be offered a place in a course at the University of Oxford. I look forward with much enthusiasm to joining Oxford's community of scholars, and making a meaningful contribution to the university's legacy.

Dominus illuminatio mea. England, here I come!

[myfanfictiongarden]

Upon my trip to Oxford this summer the tour-guide pointed out the entrance to the School of Divinity and the official motto of Oxford University

Dominus illuminatio mea

this is Latin for "The Lord is my Light" (Psalm 27)

or a longer part would be "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?"

this reminded me of a part in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series

little Leia: How does it work? The Force. What does it feel like? 

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Have you ever been afraid of the dark? How does it feel when you turn on the light? 

little Leia: I feel safe. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Yes, it feels like that.

[thewallpapersnet]

Step into the magic of a glowing Christmas tree, where the tree's lights twinkle with warmth and holiday spirit. The tree becomes a beacon of joy, illuminating the winter night and creating a mesmerizing display of festive radiance.