#it's the predestination and the free will and the way it RESOLVES and just

[incomingalbatross]

Still a little insane about how Connie Willis handled time travel in her WWII books specifically. Don't have the energy to articulate it but I need you to know this.

[lenaellsi]

One thing that really gets me about the opening with angel Crowley is that he's not just excited by how beautiful his stars are, or how fun the process of creation is, or how impressed he's made Aziraphale. He’s not in it for the glory or the aesthetics. He’s actually horrified by the idea that the universe will just be "fancy wallpaper" in the future, even though Aziraphale assures him that humans will "marvel" at his creations.

What Crowley loves about his stars is their potential. He is building, essentially, a nursery. Most of the universe's stars, he explains to Aziraphale, will come pre-aged--but his are just starting out! After they're given time to grow, who knows what could happen! Good or bad, black holes or new constellations—there are so many possible futures ahead of them, and Crowley can’t wait to see what happens.

And then Aziraphale tells him that he knows what will happen: those stars will never grow up. They will never shine or burn out or implode or become anything new. They’ll be destroyed before they get the chance.

"You can't kill kids."

“Whose side are you on?” “God’s, of course!” “Same God that wants me to whack the kids?”

"People die." "They do, don't they?"

“Great pustulant mangled bollocks to the Great blasted Plan!”

"Don't test them to destruction."

"It's always too late."

"Nothing lasts forever." "No, I don't suppose it does."

This fear has been chasing Crowley since before the beginning. It’s what caused his first doubts, put the first traces of gray in his wings. He’s been raging at the futility of watching beautiful, complex things be damned or destroyed for his entire existence, and that’s why he seems to the audience and to Aziraphale to be a mess of contradictions.

He loves to follow the trends of the times, but he clings to his classic car in an era of planned obsolescence for vehicles. He lives in an ultra-modern flat, but finds his greatest comfort in the unchanging security of aziraphale’s old shop. He hates the idea of killing children, but is willing to see a child die if it preserves the rest of the universe and foils the Great Plan. He “goes too fast,” but his most unique and notable power is that he’s learned to stop time.

Crowley hates predestination. He hates divine intervention and the removal of agency. Crowley, the architect of free will, is constantly torn between his love of change and choice and potential and his terror that everything will be destroyed by an unstoppable, incomprehensible higher power. That’s his driving conflict in the way that Aziraphale’s is learning to find his own path without following Heaven’s rules, and I am fascinated to see how it resolves.

[seiwas]

here for your game!! i am kindly asking for megumi and royal au!! 💗 hope you’re doing well sel!!

cici!! thanks for playing with me 🥺 this was so fun to think about! i hope you’re doing well too 🥺

megumi + royal au

megumi was born to be your knight, and yuuji your prince.

at least, that was what was intended.

your mothers had all grown together in a town south of where she eventually married into. your mother and yuuji’s had both married into royalty, while megumi’s remained in the noble high class.

every summer, your families would gather on an island east of the southern sea—a place your mothers had spent their blazing summers in as maidens. it was where they could be free, without the watching eyes of their tutors from the academy.

it was where megumi’s mother had met his father, and where they eventually fell in love, then married. megumi was born in the winter, but you are certain that if he were born in the summer, his first breath would have been the crisp air of the southern sea.

the island is your second home, a place where you, megumi, and yuuji grew up together. afternoon tag games in fields of cosmos, and stargazing at night, just at the hilltop overlooking the island’s coast. it holds every memory you keep close to your chest.

you lost your first tooth there when you slammed face-first into yuuji’s back after finally catching up to him in your game of chase. yuuji ran straight back to the summer house to call for your mother, but megumi remained right there beside you, crouched low with his arm stretched out to your lips. he’d pulled his sleeves all the way down for it, offering up the fabric for you to bite into to stop the bleeding in the meantime.

memories of summer remind you of yuuji’s bright eyes, like the sun, constantly beckoning you and megumi for a day of adventure. they remind you of megumi’s, a deep blue-green that takes on light like the stars. a depth hidden in constellations; to this day, they still make you curious, and you still find yourself lost in them more times than you would admit.

you were a formidable trio, your bond unbreakable the same way your mothers’ was. a relationship grown in fondness but predestined all the same. you had an inkling early on that you and yuuji were to be paired at some point of your lives.

and you love him, yes. it is impossible not to, in some way. but you do not love him like that—for you, it has always been megumi.

since training for knighthood in your kingdom, and being orphaned from a tragic accident that killed both his parents, megumi has been by your side, his life sworn to yours.

he watches you quietly and carefully, standing close to you when you go into town. his body is but your human shield, though you know it is out of more than just his obligation when he remains on edge, even for paper cuts and needle pricks from sewing his or yuuji’s latest handkerchiefs.

megumi has a steady resolve and an even steadier hand; he would occasionally teach you the essentials of holding a knife, though you know combat training is far from what any of your tutors would want you to be doing on a sunday night.

“for your letters, and other things,” he’d penned on the note attached to his gift for your 16th birthday.

a thin, dainty thing. sharp at the tip with elegant vines at its base. a letter opener.

you do not receive as many letters as you send off, he knows that much. the only letters you write are for him and yuuji, but even those are different in nature; yuuji’s often come in elegant envelopes, wax-sealed with his family crest. megumi’s, however, are on papers torn in haste, folded to be slipped discreetly into his pockets, or to be slid right underneath his door.

‘and other things’ he had said, and you are certain he means ‘for your protection, when i cannot be there’. it fits perfectly into the palm of your hand and is light enough for you to carry wherever you go. he has given you enough lessons for you to know how to use it when you need to.

marriage is a topic you have yet to fully speak to your parents about. they have never imposed it on you, knowing full well there is no rush, especially when your father is not so particular about political alliances. but ever since you were young, you have always known it was predestined to be yuuji.

but again, that was what was intended.

during the tail end of your 17th spring, the gojo family put out a hunt. the royal family only comprised the lone gojo king, his own parents now retired and out of the political scene—and he needed an heir.

to your surprise, the king himself appeared on your family’s doorstep, carefully assessing all the boys in your household.

then, his blue eyes landed right next to you, to the boy who has always been right by your side; the boy who has sworn his life to yours by knighthood.

“you,” the gojo king points.

your megumi.

you freeze, gripping the letter opener behind you. you don’t know how to feel; you can’t tell if this is a good thing or not.

would he have to leave?

the gojo kingdom is further up north, and surely megumi cannot reign as its prince if he is away from it.

megumi looks at the king, then at you.

what do you do?

[stevensaus]

The Inevitable Fragility Of Time Loops

There's been a lot of good depictions of time travel in media lately. The History of Time Travel is exactly what you would expect to see on a knock-off Discovery Channel program. Bodies on Netflix is simply phenomenal. The Marvel TV show Loki has treated the subject well, and I'm definitely one of those people who will keep saying Edge of Tomorrow is phenomenally under-rated. But I've got a spoiler for pretty much all of them. Because every time-travel story with a self-referential "loop" has a built-in problem. Seriously.

Many depictions of time travel involve a loop of some kind. The one in Groundhog Day works just fine, but it becomes particularly acute in media where the loop is self-referential, like in Bodies or the Ethan Hawke film Predestination. Time isn't Jeremy Bearimy in these films -- it's largely linear. Even Loki with its multiverses still largely has "time" existing as a linear concept. Like this:

The plot in all of these involves a change to the original timeline. An intervention. Whether it is the delivery of a manual or the impregnation of your great-great-grandmother, an outside force creates a loop that is dependent upon the loop's creation, like so:

That loop then ... well, loops. An infinite number of times. {1} Except that it will always collapse and fail. Always. These loops require a specific series of events to happen within a certain tolerance for the loop to be able to repeat. That pressure backwards from the future to create the loop is an intervention. It adds something, making the loop a higher-energy version of what was there "before." That, however, makes it unstable. If the energy of that intervention changes sufficiently, then the loop does not continue. For example, in Bodies, simply changing one character's perspective on events is enough to start a chain of changes. Ink on a crucial equation in the manual smears. And so on. Given an infinite number of iterations, there will be a pass through the loop where conditions are such that the loop cannot continue. It may take forever -- Bill Murray's character spent 12,395 days in Groundhog Day -- but the likelihood of anything happening, no matter how outrageous (such as the creation of a whale several miles above the surface of an alien planet), is an absolute certainty. "Eventually" -- whatever that actually means in this context -- the manual will not be delivered, the ancestor will not be seduced, and the loop collapses. Arguably, such could be happening constantly and those uninvolved would be utterly unaware of it, as the loops would (from a viewpoint outside of time) collapse almost "instantly" (again, whatever that means here). Many of these plots also stop to monologue about the existence -- or lack -- of free will. What I've pointed out here, however, does not require free will for it to be correct. There is -- as best I can understand it, I'm not a physicist -- a fundamental, low-level randomness to the universe in quantum fluctuations. This is an effect that, in normal circumstances, has absolutely no effect upon us at the macroscopic scale. A time loop is not normal circumstances. If your decisions are not made by "free will," they instead depend "on the millions of factors and forces that have already happened to you that you're blissfully unaware of." (Bodies is seriously well-written.) However, those "millions of factors and forces" do include all that low-level randomness. The low-level substrate of the universe -- it's "seed number," if you will -- is not going to be identical through each iteration of the loop. The odds of there being a sufficiently large difference at the quantum level that it has an appreciable effect on the macroscopic level, sufficient to disrupt the time loop, are absolutely astronomical. Which doesn't matter at all when you're talking about infinity. Ultimately, these stories will all resolve the same way -- whether or not there's dramatic tension, whether or not it's fatalistic or idealistic, what philosophical thrust it has --- is entirely dependent upon our point of view in the story. Which, I guess, can also technically be said about any story. That said, I still recommend all the films and shows I've mentioned in this post. All of them are quite smart, will often make you think, and are a lot of fun. Check them out! {1} This statement alone is philosophically mind-boggling if you think about it too hard. How does it "loop"? Does that mean from a point of view? Or does that mean from all points of view? Are all of us literally experiencing the same part of time at all? Featyred Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Read the full article

[betawooper]

[ID: Three written passages featuring Kim Dokja and Lee Sookyung from Omniscient Reader. Dokja is transmasc. Joonghyuk is referred to with she/her pronouns. First Transcript:

“I had a really hard time. Whenever I went to school, walked in the streets, talked with someone I knew, it was like everyone was whispering about me in secret. I changed schools and it was the same.” I said, rubbing my arms, remembering the way everyone’s eyes widened when they heard my old name. “Do you know what they said? ‘Wow, is that really the daughter of the murderer? How sad.’”

Those who never experienced it would never know. The world was tenacious. Reporters stood in front of my home, and it always felt like every pair of eyes in the world were chasing after me. They wondered if that ‘daughter’ would grow up to have the same unhinged and terrifying look described when she brought a knife to their heart. They always scrambled away from her as if she was destined to snap and turn into her mother’s monster.

Second transcript:

“The ending of this story is important to me. When you were gone, it was this world that kept me alive. It was what helped me get through everything. You could never understand how much it has done for me, because you’ve been sitting behind bars coming up with other ways to ruin my life even further.”

Three Ways to Survive in an Apocalypse.

I didn’t know what the author intended with this title, but for me, it was my reality. To me, this world had become an apocalypse a long time ago. When I read TWSA every day, I continued to keep going. When Joonghyuk finally had that one hard conversation about herself and changed from ‘he’ to ‘she,’ I found that I could be something similar. 

I didn’t have to become my mother. I didn’t have to fall into predestined fate. I could break free from her completely. When a story had done so much for me in my times of confusion and distress, I couldn’t give up on it so easily.

Third transcript:

For the first time, an unfamiliar expression crossed my mother’s face. Sadness. Regret. Hardened resolve. Why was she given the right to feel this way? When she stood and a wave of magic power rose from her body, I internally hissed.

“I really didn’t want to do this, but you are really difficult to persuade.” She laughed coldly. “You really take after me, Dokja.”

A vein on my temple throbbed.

I stood and jabbed a finger in her direction. “Don’t you ever use my new name in that sentence! Don’t you ever dare compare me to yourself again! I didn’t become a man just so you could keep hanging over my head like you can still control me! Why can’t you leave me the fuck alone?”

End ID.]

dokja having a “mother-daughter relationship where the ‘daughter’ was no longer a girl” narrative + transfem yoo joo parallels = me being So Normal (lying)

[sepublic]

Philip’s Uncertainty into Belos?

I was replying to a post from @megadan94, and it made me think- What if Luz’s arc of uncertainty over her choices in life, of being judged over them and making the wrong decision, ends up providing insight into Philip’s transition into Belos?

How Philip went from someone who dreamed of both worlds connected and magic completely available- To someone convinced that these realms must be fused and that witches must choose and confine themselves to a specific magic track, because it’ll all boil down to just that one choice as most of them go back on keeping every option.

But unlike Belos, Luz managed and will continue to actually resolve her conflict and come to a mature understanding, instead of just giving up out of fear and confusion and backtracking to the security of a path chosen for her (like the coven system), when confronted with the uncertainty of free will and choices.

Maybe that’s why Belos made the coven system... He was terrified by the risk of free will, especially in conjunction with the unpredictability of wild magic that could lend itself to unforeseen consequences, the way Lilith’s curse went beyond a single day...

And the terror of making the wrong choice had him default to the safety of someone deciding that for him- A divine voice that has everything planned out, a secure spot for you that you never need to have to question or worry about (which would fit with with a certain thematic jab at another franchise’s way of deciding things for characters)! A place and system designed by the Titan, or at least claimed to be...

Again connecting to what Megadan94 said, how there was a comfort in being a chosen one for Luz, because then she could never be blamed for who she was? Just settle and be content and never have to worry about dreaming for anything else?

Maybe a wrong choice blew up in Belos’ face (a certain curse perhaps) and he bitterly, immaturely decided that people need someone all-knowing to decide for them... Possibly because Philip was in want of a mentor, or at least another voice, to help guide his confused young self?

Philip wished he had that, and this wish distorted into a cowardly desire for another person to figure out and decide things for everyone else? So Belos turned to the Titan, the actual one and/or the claims of it, to provide that security- An actual divine authority to trust... Because who better to put your faith into deciding your destiny than the God of this world?

What better word to have blind faith in, and let steer your path for you to make it all easy, than an all-powerful, unseen voice who created everything and gifted it all; And to go against this plan, for you and everyone else, and for how magic should be wielded, would be blasphemy!

The puritans DID believe in predestination, so Philip would have that type of system, that confining background of beliefs, to fall back on and give into. A set of beliefs that he tried to defy, only for it to be proven right with Philip’s own failures and mistakes under free will- So he defaults to the security that he once ventured away from, with nobody else to turn to for comfort and guidance, not after they all died...!

[grenade-maid]

or wait Top 5 Weird Shit that never comes up in conversation but somehow u still know about

Unfortunately my friend I know many many strange facts but the only way I remember anything is by it coming up in conversation.

(/ ‘ 0′)/ <( but I will do my best!!! )

In the 1980′s before floppy disk drives became cheap, cassette tapes were often used as a standardized way of storing data. They were rife with issues, though, because the reading and writing of data was effected by the recording level. So if the machine reading the tape wasn’t calibrated to the level the tape was recorded at, it might read incorrectly. As well, because data was transcribed linearly rather than on a spinning platter, accessing specific pieces of data as they were needed was difficult. 

In certain parts of medieval Europe, particularly Germany, marital conflicts could be resolved through a duel, just like any other kind of conflict. In these duels the husband would stand in a deep pit from which he could not move, and would be armed with a stick. The wife would be armed with a sack filled with rocks.

Side note: This may be apocryphal, because I can’t remember the source I heard this, but dueling wasn’t just a matter of honor or might makes right. In many parts of Christian Europe, it was seen as a test of divine favor. Because of the belief in divine predestination, whoever won the duel was not just a better fighter, but chosen by God to win, which also meant that the case they were fighting for was chosen by God.

Keeping to the medieval tradition, one of the biggest heretical sects of Christianity that kicked off the heretic hunting hysteria that would later evolve into the witch hunts of later times were the Cathars. They believed that there were two Gods, one good and one evil. The old testament God was the evil one, who made the material world in order to trap us in it. The new testament God was the good one, and blessed us with the knowledge of how to free ourselves. It was pretty antisemitic! They believed that the material world was fundamentally evil, and that the human body was a cage which angels were trapped inside of. Only by a certain blessing on the edge of death could they be set free. I may be mixing up my heretical sects (I studied this in like 2014), but I believe they also advocated against reproduction, so as to cut off the chain of souls being transferred to new cages upon death.

The best ice cream ever made on an industrial scale was produced in the Soviet Union. Anastas Mikoyan, one of the original crew of revolutionaries who would serve under Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev before passing away in 1978, was one of the key architects of the Soviet food system. In particular he had a keen interest in ice cream, because he believed it was not enough for a communist society to keep people fed with the necessary staples, but that there should be things to bring people comfort and joy as well. Stalin once famously joked of Mikoyan during this project that he seemed to care more for ice cream than for communism. Old timers in Russia claim to this day that the stuff made since 1991 just isn’t nearly as good.

There was a rich tradition of romanticizing homoeroticism among samurai. I can’t remember the precise date range because I took this class in 2019 and haven’t read about it since. However, many stories were written that were very popular in their day. In particular they often starred young men falling in love and then committing ritual suicide, because it was seen as noble and romantic to die together young at the height of beauty.

No picture for this one cause I couldn’t find a good one lol.

Hope you enjoyed!

[antihero-writings]

Jack of All Trade, in This Masquerade 

Fandom: Pandora Hearts

Fic Summary: Jack's stream of consciousness describes how society is like a masquerade, while his dreams show his own hypocrisy

Notes: Originally written for Phmonth18, Week 3, Prompt/Day 2: Mask. 

What started out as something that was supposed to be a short little fic about Jack’s internal monologue became an in-depth look into Jack’s psyche…hehe. I’ll admit, this is one of the weirdest formats I’ve ever used, and I’m not quite sure if it works, but I had fun with it! This is my first time writing heavily about Jack, and it’s about how his mind works….so forgive me if there are any inaccuracies to his character. 

If you like it, I’d really appreciate if you could leave a comment!! They really do make my week, and help me keep writing, especially when it comes to multi-chapter fics like this one!!

Chapter 1: 

Everyone always wore a mask.

That was how things were, how the world worked. No question. No alternative. No argument you could make to stop it. Like a plague that replaced everyone’s faces with the skin of monsters.

The world was a masquerade. A dance, where you trade partners, and you never quite know who you’re dancing with anyways. You’re thrown in without knowing the moves, and are required to learn as you go, because you can’t stop. If you stop, the music, the momentum of the world turning, doesn’t. So if you do, you may just be trampled, thrown off the world.

As you grew up, you learned the moves, programmed them into your bones until the motions were mechanical, and your body knew nothing else. Nothing but the lies. Grew up, painted your mask, made it more ornate, less likely to show your true colors, less likely to fall.

Something that made a louder crash when it did fall.

They always do. Eventually. Don’t think you can escape it.

Your parents, your family, your friends, they’re no different. When I said everyone, I meant everyone.

But when you grow up in gutters, in the stench and blood, the offal of humanity, and watch from afar, forbidden from the dance, but also from...not dancing, learning that you must dance to make in it the world...you may or may not grow to hate humanity.

I couldn’t wear a mask. But I was doomed to see through everyone else’s. See their lies, see their hypocrisy, their cold cut rules about how much of a clown you could be, I could see the puppet strings.

I learned to hate.

But.

******

The room glittered and gleamed; the chandeliers, the polished marble tiles, the wine glasses, the clothing of the dancers.

Jack stood on the sidelines. The black and white players spinning before him, coming near him in flashes and fake smiles.

Outside, snow fluttered down onto a darkened ground, so much so he couldn’t see past the wind and flakes to a world beyond.

He had to stay inside, or else the storm might overtake him.

Storm inside. Storm out. Between two evils, how do you know which is worse?

They didn’t know they were simply chess pieces. That this was simply a game, that they would be sacrificed, all for the sake of the king.

Once, he had found their twirls and fanciful garments fascinating; the masks shined and their feathers climbed towards a twinkling ceiling. He looked on with longing, then.

Now, the word fake grew out of the crevices where their eyes were meant to be, it crept along their porcelain cheeks, their feathered heads, their bejeweled necks—and they didn’t see the vines, the spiders, linked together into chains, strangling them, driving fangs into their chests.

At the same time, sickness pooled in his own heart, started creating ripples towards his thoughts, reaching his words, crashing upon the shores of his actions.

A sickness called hate.

It took him far too long to realize the motions held no meaning. They were all just tumbling in the dark and the cold, trying to make meaning of the moves when there is none. The shimmer on the surface of the water was reflected from a sky they could never reach, not something buried beneath the waves that they could touch, hold, and keep, if they just held their breath long enough to wrap their fingers around it.

The same was surely true for the waters in his own heart.

At least, that’s how it seemed, and what he told himself.

Black and white. No color. Pawns and knights in a grand game of chess.

What was real?

What would happen if it all just…stopped? What if we called the world, the dance by name?

A pause. A flicker. A flash. Color.

First it was red. Red like lamplight, in the night-soaked brightness of the room, a lantern of hope, guiding him across the lifeless waters of a stormy sea—navy waves, navy sky, (navy, not quite black, not quite blue), till they were indiscernible from each other—to a land where there was more light like hers. Red that burned—could it burn down the masks? Like blood. Like roses.

Red in her eyes.

Then it was her hair, a splash of brown, flowing between the sides of black and white. Some say brown isn't pretty, isn't really a color. But looking and the rich hazelnut locks he would beg to differ.

Then the violet of her dress, like flowers, like the fluttering butterfly she was, like she was the only royal in a council of fools and common sense.

He lost track of the moves to stare her way.

******

One day I met a girl—brown hair, eyes red as roses in the snow—who wasn’t wearing a mask. She told me she could see through the masks too. But instead of hating the world in general for the practice, she questioned, she wondered, and she cheated the game.

And looking into those red eyes, I realized nothing else mattered. Not the world, not the deadened grasp of humanity, the music, the moves, or the masks.…Just her.

I tried to follow her, but in the mix of feet, in the unlearned motions, I myself was trampled to the ground.

So I resolved to learn the dance—not to live, not for the dance itself—but to follow her. To trade partners until I found her hand. I had to get up, to sew together a mask, glue on the feathers with blood, and pull the jewels out of dead men’s hands.

Horror is the word, I believe. The one to describe the things I did. I think you’ll find that both joining the dance, and subverting it, will inevitably lead to that word. I followed in the steps of people who did worse than me. Danced with partners whose masks were sewn into the skin. I did things that’ll make you shudder to think.

All part of the dance.

                                        Nothing but her.

******

Outside, silent snow turned to to the taps of rain asking to get in, like little children knocking on the window frames to beg for some food.

As he stared the girl’s way, the masks knocked against his shoulders, they trod on his feet, and scoffed at his incredulity, scoffed at him for not knowing the moves he should have mastered by heart by now.

He looked over their heads, trying to peer through the feathers and jewels, catch another glimpse of the one real thing in the sea of falsity.

For the first time there was something compelling him more than puppet strings and patterns. There was something alive in him. His heart became a beating thing. His lungs a set of pumping parts.

For the first time he understood: the dance wasn't evil, he just didn't have the right partner.

She faded like a word on the tip of your tongue never breathed out into the air.

Living, which tasted so sweet, quickly turned sour, into something that hurt. His heart panged. His lungs thumped too fast. Fear, desperation set into to his fast-beating blood.

And, at last, his gaze on her fading footfalls, he moved.

Out from the sidelines, into the mix of motions. Out into the world, the sea that he always thought was full of things with teeth, that'd eat him alive if he got too close.

But instead of following the ordained pattern, he was a wrench in the perfectly predestined machine.

The other cogs knocked into him, dug their teeth into his shoulders. He tripped. Tripped into the workings of the machine, all the ugly machinations that made the pristine clock tick. The dance kept turning all the same, the other cogs kicking into him. Knocking him further, down to the tiles beneath, further below than he'd ever been. So he lay there, bruised and bleeding, staring at the calculated movements of the gears ticking above him. 

“Lacie!” his cracked voice called, reaching out his hand to the star he could never reach.

And on the floor, where all the broken parts, the scraps of things that tried to change the direction of the machine go, he realized that that the pattern was too ruthless to break. Kicked and beaten by the dance, he understood that the only way to follow her, was to join the dance.

He wouldn’t give up. He’d follow her footprints through the forest of feet and fakes.

If he’d bend the rules a little.

******

I set the moves into my hands and feet, resolved to be a bruising and beating thing, like them, clawed my way back into the artificial light, until that red was back in my sight. I took her hand in mine and—

She…didn’t remember me.

No peppered, cheerful hello. No pretense, or pretending.

No mask.

My free spirit. My unmasked beauty. My blood red girl. My Lacie.

In eight years, as I broke myself apart and sewed myself back together, as I metamorphosed into something I myself barely recognized, she still hadn’t changed, been chained; she was still the same dash of color in a world of black and white fakes. A player in a world of pawns.

Despite all the things I had done, I knew she was the one person who would still accept me. She was still the one who questioned the machine, and would accept the things I did to fight it, would understand that the only way to fight it was from the inside out. I'd done it all for her, after all.

There's no sunlight at the bottom of the machine. Eight years. Eight years in the dark. Eight years since I felt the warmth of sunlight on my skin, the touch of something, someone, living.

"Dance with me." I'd spoke the words a thousand times, but this was the only time I ever meant them.

When you find your color in a black and white world, your dream in a world of nightmares, your life in a world of walking corpses, you never want to give it up, to let the song end.

But.

******

After the moving maze, the muddied world of men, the journey to get back to her, his hand found hers.

Something real, something dynamic, instead of stagnant, something warm to the touch, not metallic and cold.

Standing before him—at last—was his pride, his prize.

She was on the other side of the endless ballroom, off to the side, her head turned, gaze out the window. But she was still dancing with someone. Slowly, their moves less cold and mechanical.

He didn’t bother with the pretense of the dance, or courtesy towards the one she was currently dancing with. He threw his arms around her, and held her tight.

The shock in her eyes told him something wasn’t quite the same.

—(Or maybe he wasn’t quite sane)—

Did she not remember him? That moment when color entered his world?

What was all of time for him, was a passing glimpse for her.

It didn’t matter. As long as she didn’t cover those pretty eyes with the mark of a fake.

And she never did. Not as long as he knew her

“Jack.” She placed her hand on his cheek, running her fingers along his skin, pushing a strand of his hair behind his ear.

She smiled, and it was the only real thing.

But that smile didn’t last forever; it became a twisted thing, etching itself onto her features.

A thing that certainly didn’t belong to her, even now.

Was this her mask? Could her face have been a mask this whole time?

She pulled away from him.

“You fool.”

He drew in a sharp breath, and it pierced his heart.

“You really don’t see it, do you?”

She gestured grandly to the room as a whole.

What? What didn’t he see? This was how it had always been. Nothing had changed.

She grabbed his chin and made him look away from her.

“Look at them.”

Then he saw.

The dancers around them weren’t just dancers, strangers, background.

They weren’t strangers at all.

Or maybe they were even less known to him than strangers would have been.

They weren't even in black and white after all; there was color all around him, the color that had belonged to himself. Many of them were wearing the same green outfit he wore presently, others were in red, and blue, some wrapped in a thin blanket…They all had the same blonde hair, sometimes in a braid like his, others messy and short.

And they all still wore masks, as if the emotions could be written and plastered on rather than felt—happy, sad, angry…that disgusting smile…

His disgusting smile.

Each and every one of them was himself.

Had it always been this way? Since the beginning? Or had they become this way? Somewhere in the middle, had strangers morphed into mirrors?

The music faded out, and the rain outside grew louder and louder until he couldn’t help but turn to the window, as if to demand some peace and quiet.

The drops that dribbled down and splattered across the panes were not clear, or grey, or blue.

That red he had once found so fascinating, once begged for, was painting the world.

He swallowed.

As he realized the change in scenery, all the other Jacks stopped, turning to him with mechanical motions, and faceless expressions, some creepy army of past-self-dolls.

“Lacie,” her name on his lips—(the word echoed through the crowd, the other Jacks moaning it as if remembering the one word that made them alive once, though it wasn't alive in their mouths now)—he turned to her, his one hope, his one safety in a world that had fixed its canons against him.

She was no longer beside him.

Laying in his hand was a limp chain.

He didn’t want to look, to follow the trail; he feared what he would see. But he chased the links to the ceiling—

Her body, suspended in the air above, like she was one of those twinkling chandeliers. Her body, pierced by chains.

That red rain was inside now.

And below her, looking his way, was someone else. Someone else in color. Someone else who wasn’t wearing a mask.

******

My Lacie, who lied, and died at the hands of her brother. For the simplest crime of never wearing a mask over those red eyes. For the simplest crime of existence.

Oswald. Her brother.

I should have hated him for taking her from me.

And there was a part of me that did. Surely. But he loved her too, you know. And it was some sick sense of duty that threw her into the pit, not his own will.

I was a question in his eyes, and he was an answer in mine. There’s something about mutual darkness between people; being able to look into someone else’s soul, and see your struggles reflected, and yet…not yourself… Something that we call friendship.

******

The first thing he saw was his cloak, like a wave breaking across his shoulder. Crimson, just like her eyes.

Just like her blood he spilt.

Then his eyes, violet, like her dress. But unlike with her, this violet, this royalty, was sharp, cold, and unforgiving.

Then it was the black of his hair and clothing. A deeper black from the dancers before. A darker sky.

He was the black king, after all, wasn’t he?

                          "Lacie is dead,”

                                                      “I killed her.”

******

It wasn’t malice, or revenge. It was the requirement and requiem of a leader.

Or at least, they poisoned his mind and made him think so.

I’m sure he would have joined me, if he wasn’t such a fool. If he wasn’t so wrapped up in his own ignorance.

(An ignorance that was my fault).

Joined me to get her, that is.

Death isn’t quite the right word. She was cast into the Abyss, into a place where "return" has no meaning.

But I learned that the masks, the dance, the masquerade, goes by another name:

Chains.

Chains come in many forms. There are the chains that killed her, those that we create contracts with, linking us to a place darker than the bottom of the machine. Chains between people; like friendship, like love, like hate. And the chains we create for ourselves, tying us to an abyss of our own making, with no need for outside temptation.

Then there’s another type; this world is a ruin—(I always knew it)—and the Chains around it are the only things keeping the world from the Abyss, in the same token as others tie us to it. They fall between the lines on the pages of our story, into the places our eyes can’t see.

Or, more accurately, keeping the world from her.

Blood red world. My gift for my blood red girl. And I didn’t care how much blood I spilled in the midst. Not really. Not enough.

This world is rotting anyway. I’ve known it from the start. But not to her. She saw the color, the life, the light. She saw the stars. She saw that there was something real behind those falsely shimmering lights. That maybe it wasn’t all on the surface. Maybe there was something beneath the waters that we could reach.

And I’d bring the world she loved to her.

                                                                          I’m doing this for you.

[cjrae]

How Do You Know It’s Finished? Or: Does God actually have a plan?

A Priest Walks Into A Bar is one of my favorite episodes of Lucifer. Full stop. Season 1 gets a decent amount of flack for some tonal issues as they were finding their feet, but if you’re looking for episodes that deal with the Big Questions, Season 1 really sinks it’s teeth into them. 1x09 deals with a larger question within the context of a more intimate one. Does God have a plan? More specifically, does he have a plan for Lucifer?

What we’re essentially asking is the question of pre-destination versus free will. Given that free will is one of the standard responses to the problem of evil, let’s take a (brief!) look at the Problem of Evil.

The Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil is the logical contradiction that arises from the following axioms. If God is all of the following:

1.) omniscient - all-knowing

2.) omnipotent - all-powerful

3.) omni-benevolent - good

Then why does evil exist? If God is any of the two, but not the third, then the state of the world is perfectly explainable. An omniscient and omni-benevolent God knows everything and is good, but lacks the power to resolve the problem of evil. An omnipotent and omni-benevolent God is all powerful and good, but lacks the knowledge of all evil in the world - evil is capable of hiding. And an omniscient and omnipotent God that is NOT omni-benevolent means that God has deliberately created evil for Reasons.

(It is worth noting that the idea of God embodying all three of these axioms is a very Christian concept of God, but given that the character of Lucifer originated from John Milton’s famous Bible fanfic, Paradise Lost, it may be fair. Of course, Gaiman himself is Jewish and some Jewish thought tends to drop omniscience from the equation. We’ll come back to this, because if you have a God that can change, then God becomes much more interesting in a narrative structure.)

This is, as you can imagine, a logical contradiction that has fascinated theologians and philosophers for centuries, but the most popular resolution within popular culture is the concept of free will. In other words, evil is our fault, not God’s. The ability to choose gives the very concepts of good and evil relevance, in fact.

Free will has plenty of problems, but its issues are irrelevant in terms of this discussion because we are dealing with a fictional universe, where free will and the axiom of choice work very well within drama. And within the universe of Lucifer, free will exists. Choice is a central theme because everyone in the universe self-actualizes to an extent.

Humanity chooses their final destination based on their own subconscious judgment (God is completely uninvolved). Angels literally control their own appearances and abilities subconsciously. Lucifer’s devil face (and later his entire transformation) are manifestations of his own self-hatred while Amenadiel’s fall and the restoration of his wings (but not his ability to slow time) are based on his judgment of his own virtue and his connection to humanity.

So, let’s wrap this back around to the big question - is the universe predestined or not? Do our choices actually matter or does God have a plan and your choices are an illusion?

Predestination

One of the things that makes 1x09 work so well as an episode is watching patterns come together. 

A parent without a child tries to reconnect with and guide the child of his lost friends, who has gotten himself into trouble. That leads him into Lucifer’s bar - where Lucifer just happens to have recently gotten involved with investigating homicides. Once Lucifer’s involved, Chloe gets involved when they find the head of the program murdered, leading them to Conor and the Spider’s operation. Which leads to Conor being literally put in the middle of two men fighting over him and being forced to choose between their very different visions of his life. Father Frank then chooses to put himself between Conor and the Spider, getting himself shot, which leads to him dying in Lucifer’s arms.

We know that at one point God had a plan - Lucifer confirms that. In fact, it’s the central tenant of Father Frank’s faith. The idea that all of his pain and loss had a purpose behind it is how he deals with grief and finds meaning in a loss that can and has broken people before him.

It’s Lucifer who points out the obvious - that killing a young girl and two loving parents in service of the Plan is cruel. It leaves two people behind who are broken in the exact same way, but who deal with it very differently. Frank finds faith and turns to helping others where Conor becomes extremely vulnerable and prey to the predators of the world like the Spider in his own search for a place to belong.

Perhaps that does a good job of illustrating the different choices available to people, but how much of a choice did Conor actually have? He was a child without the coping processes of an adult, grew up in foster care, clearly bounced around the system and so desperate for love and affection while also mistrusting healthier expressions of those emotions due to being (unwillingly) abandoned by his dead parents that he was drawn into a criminal drug operation in an attempt to find his place.

if we believe that this was all a plan, then both Frank and Conor’s choices were illusions. Yes, they made choices, but their circumstances and environments shaped those choices.

In a system like this, think of the choices people make in terms of a physics problem. If you’re looking at a single atom, it is chaotic - able to go in any direction. But, put that atom in a sea of other atoms, in various environments and you can start to predict with reasonable accuracy how the group is going to behave - which other atoms it might bond to, how it’ll react under pressure or with the introduction of other elements. Patterns begin to emerge. 

Lucifer had just put out a fragile tendril of friendship before watching it be cut away with Frank’s tragic fate, his friend’s last words suggesting that all of this was to simply put Frank in Lucifer’s path for…what reason? To remind Lucifer that his Father has a plan? That his Father isn’t done with him, to imply that all of Lucifer’s suffering up to this point has a Purpose? A role he is being shaped for?

Lucifer already knows this. Lucifer has already rebelled against this. Frank’s fate is just more evidence to Lucifer that his Father’s plans are needlessly cruel and manipulative.

And, honestly, Lucifer has a point.

Can God Change?

Earlier, we talked about the Problem of Evil. However, the role of God changes dramatically if we drop one of the axioms - and I would argue that Gaiman, as well as the Lucifer show runners have done just that.

God is, frankly, far more interesting if He is capable of change, just like our main characters. The biggest issue with the traditional Christian interpretation of God is His very perfection, which makes Him utterly static. A perfect deity is, well...boring. Especially within the context of a narrative.

At it’s heart, Lucifer is a show about family - the families we come from that shape us and the families that we create around us - and how the two can and do merge.

Imagine the frustration of a God who loves His son, has all the power in the world to effect change - but doesn’t know how best to employ it? Who didn’t see Lucifer’s rebellion coming and reacted out of anger or frustration or even sorrow, possibly understanding how things went so wrong in retrospect, but unsure how to reach out to a child who was holding that much anger and self hatred? How would that parent try to help their child? Do you give them space? Do you actively punish them so that they understand the consequences of their actions? Do you passively stand back and let the consequences of their actions play out so that they learn and grow?

Given how subtle divine intervention is within the show, it’s reasonable to assume that God is mostly trying to stay out of things - after all, why bother with free will if you don’t let people exercise it?

Free Will

We know that choice is important within the universe of Lucifer. So, if God is looking at humanity like a social physics problem, then He probably has a pretty decent idea of how general patterns will pan out and the divine intervention, as such, is much more subtle. Father Frank, after all, has a number of different ways he can attempt to help Conor, but he chooses to go to Lucifer Morningstar, a club owner known to grant favors.

Father Frank is a priest - presumably he believes in the Devil. He may not believe, when he first steps foot in LUX, that the man in front of him is the actual, literal Devil, but the absurdity is enough to rope Lucifer in. So, where did Father Frank get the idea to go to the Devil for help?

Well, we’ve got the luxury of having an episode told with God narrating it, so let’s briefly poke the bear that is 3x26 - Once Upon A Time.

Aside from arranging for Chloe to be born, God is very specific that He is NOT controlling the situation. In fact, in order to run this little experiment, He only makes one, tiny change. He moves a bullet a few inches to the left and John Decker survives the assassination disguised as a robbery.

The central question of 3x26 is, “Did God’s plan of putting Chloe in Lucifer’s path actually change anything?” And the answer at the end of the episode is a fairly clear ‘no.’

“And some, no matter how you shake things up, are drawn to the same people, the same passions. So all seems to have ended well, does that mean I never should have manipulated things to begin with? I have a better question: wouldn’t you, in my shoes? After all - a parent just wants what’s best for their child.”

Who knows whether God planted the idea or not, but a priest walks into a bar to ask the Devil for help.

Once that happens, the patterns continue to play out, but there is room for each individual choice to matter. Conor could have chosen to shoot Father Frank and prove his loyalty. Father Frank could have chosen to try to pull Conor out of the way of the bullet instead of stepping in front of it.

But they make the choices they make and in the end, Father Frank again lies dying in Lucifer’s arms, insisting that his choice was worth it because Lucifer’s Father has a plan - but the subtext has changed. Father Frank dies believing his death will serve the Purpose of showing two lost sons that they are loved.

The Messenger

The parallels here are not subtle. Conor and Father Frank are very much a reflection of Lucifer and his Father. Except that, in Lucifer’s eyes, Father Frank is fighting for Conor whereas he was abandoned. This episode is the first time that Lucifer is asked to question that basic assumption about his life.

Father Frank: “God has faith in him. In all of us. Even in our darkest moments.”

Lucifer: “You really believe that, don’t you?”

Father Frank: “I do. Why don’t you?”

Lucifer: (looking visibly uncomfortable) “Because he didn’t have faith in me.”

Father Frank: “I felt that way once too. But now I know, deep in my heart. God has a plan for me.”

Lucifer: (scoffing) “Oh his plan for me was quite clear.”

Father Frank. “How do you know it’s finished?”

From Lucifer’s perspective, that question should be terrifying. His Father’s plan has already gotten him sent to Hell to rule over the damned for all eternity. What more could God want from Lucifer?

I would argue that what God wants is quite simply what’s best for his son - his child who believes so throughly that he is damned that he’s manifested a completely different, horrific face to punish himself with. Lucifer doesn’t believe in second chances. So He shows him one.

Conor chooses not to kill Father Frank, twice. He chooses to stand against the Spider. Those choices cost him, but the cost of his actions doesn’t negate their importance. In the wake of losing Father Frank, Conor again chooses to help the police, taking down a drug operation that was preying on vulnerable children inside that foster center, which will presumably make L.A. a slightly safer place for those kids.

Chloe sees the potential for good in the consequences of this night, and she speculates about that to Lucifer. But Lucifer’s in no state of mind to hear it. What he does do, however, is significant. He allows himself to feel pain and, rather than numbing it, as we see him fail to light the cigarette, he yells at his Father.

The dialogue is one sided and angry, but it’s implied that this may be the first time Lucifer has spoken to his Father since he became the Lord of Hell. This is a relationship that had been depicted as broken beyond all hope of repair, both sides having shut down communication with the other.

Father Frank’s sacrifice changes all of that. Yes, the priest gets to fulfill his desire of helping Conor make a different choice, a better choice. But he’s also a messenger. The subtext becomes less, “you are being shaped for a role” and more “your Father still loves you and has never given up on you.”

What if what God’s initial goal was to simply get his son to talk to him?  

Redemption

The next episode, Pops, is very revealing when it comes to Lucifer’s internalized guilt that he won’t be able to begin voicing until the end of season three. The things he says about Junior’s relationship to his father again parallel his own estrangement from his Father.

Anne: “That ungrateful kid was given everything and he threw it all away. But it didn’t matter. He was still the favorite.” (emphasis mine)

Lucifer: “Because he was worthy of his father’s love! And he had a chance at redemption until you ruined it!”

This exchange indicates that God’s desire for reconciliation is mutual. That doesn’t mean that either party wants to go back to the way things were - Lucifer doesn’t want to change who he is or what he’s done, whether he regrets it or not. That’s impossible and he knows it. But there is a desire to move forward, and for Lucifer putting the past behind him is very much about leaving Hell and it’s throne firmly behind.

But getting to that point of reconciliation is already going to be hard enough without Lucifer trapped in the same spiral of anger, guilt and pride.

So God reaches out, using a priest who has a shocking amount in common with Lucifer, to try to begin mending the breach. The consequences play out far beyond the end of 1x09. In the climax of Season 1, as Lucifer lies on the hangar floor, bleeding out, we see him open a dialogue again with his Father. Yes, he’s desperate, but would he have believed that asking his Father might do anything if it hadn’t been for Father Frank?

And this time, we see God answer. When Lucifer is desperate for help, his Father doesn’t abandon him. Instead, he gives him an opportunity. Moreover, he gives him an opportunity on Lucifer’s terms. The only way his son knows to ask for help is to offer a deal - sacrificing Lucifer’s own agency in exchange for Chloe’s life.

Yes, it’s a sign of Lucifer’s growth over the season, but it’s made clear that Lucifer going back to Hell was always a much more likely possibility than Lucifer himself ever wanted to accept. Lucifer came to earth with multiple backup options to get back to Hell - first Amenadiel, who will happily drag Lucifer back. Then the wings, which he burns and finally the Pentecostal coin that we see Lucifer playing with over and over again. Lucifer has planted the seeds of his own escape from Hell.

God’s intervention is subtle. Again, all He does is make a slight change - He moves the Pentecostal coin from Malcom’s possession back to Lucifer’s. The biggest difference is that He lets Lucifer know that he’s involved at all.

[nichester]

Review: Extraordinary You

Media Type: Korean drama

Genre: Satire, Horror, High school rom com, sageuk (yes it is all of these genres just roll with it)

Summary: A typical high school girl starts experiencing memory loss, and feeling out of control of her actions. As it turns out, she’s not a typical high schooler, but a character in a manhwa--and not even the main character! Will she be able to change the story, or will she be trapped in the role the writer assigned her forever?

Why you might care: You love meta jokes, stories about stories, debating the concept of free will and predestination, and love conquering all

Why you might not care: You like a show to be what it says on the package, and would be disappointed by a high school rom com that took a sharp turn into existential crisis. You’re tortured by ambiguous endings.

Trope Bingo! Reincarnation/past lovers (it counts!), love triangles, love conquers all, high school romance

If you liked ___: If you’ve already watched and loved this show, and are trawling the tag trying to fill the void, I recommend watching the first season (better as a stand-alone season!) of Westworld, another show that tackles these same questions.

~Spoilers and overall thoughts under the cut~

This was by far tumblr’s favorite drama of 2019, and for good reason! I also loved it, and have very few criticisms, as well as some points where I think the drama went above and beyond all my expectations.

Plot:  The plot was engaging, high stakes, and excellently paced throughout the whole drama (I felt it sagged a little as it entered the final third, but that resolved again by the end of the show to finish on a really tense pair of episodes!). The writers didn’t sit on new plot developments until they wore them out, but instead kept the drama moving, while still giving the time and space for us to see the characters react to the plot (a crucial element that is often neglected when people try to write a fast-paced story!). The ending left a lot unexplained, but it felt like open-ended questions rather than plot holes, and I have no doubt the writers knew exactly where they were going from the beginning.

Central character(s): Eun Dan Oh is wonderful! Very much the main character, she holds this whole crazy story together with her incredible and varied performance. By turns funny, earnest, frustrated, devastated, optimistic, frightened, and head-over-heels in love, she feels as real as you or me. The actress is charming and charismatic, and I can’t imagine someone watching this drama and not falling in love with her. More importantly, Eun Dan Oh is a central character in the eyes of the plot. She drives the changes in the story, and the other characters revolve around her and her indomitable will. All of them are changed by her, and all of them are better people for it. Her own character arc is more subtle, since she doesn’t really change her opinions or beliefs much from the first few episodes (at least once she becomes aware of her set up). Instead, her journey is about finding the strength and courage to stay true to herself despite the increasingly painful barriers that she encounters on her way to self-actualization. The writers and actress together did a fantastic job with a character who is easily one of the best parts of this drama.

Romance: Here is where I felt the story was the weakest. This is personal taste, since I think it worked very well for most people, but I never fell in love with Haru the way so many other people on tumblr did. (This is NOT to say I thought she should have ended up with Baek Kyung--for obvious reasons that would have been Bad). It’s just that Haru had too little defining his personality and identity outside of Dan Oh for me to latch on to him--I cared about what happened to him exclusively because I loved Dan Oh, and she cared about what happened to him. For a romance to work really well for me, I need both characters to be fully developed people with outside interests and personality, and for a lot of reasons that made sense in-universe, Haru was not. However I was a big fan of the way the romance intersected with the other themes in the story, and I thought the writers did an excellent job integrating it that way.

Side characters/side plots:  I loved so many characters in this story, and almost all of them were engaging enough to carry a show on their own! I’ve seen the idea of a second season focused more on some of the other characters, and I would be over the moon about that. Do Hwa, Joo Da, Baek Kyung, and the Dried Squid Fairy had stories that were as poignant and engaging as those of the mains, and they had their own arcs which were executed with skill and grace despite their more limited screen time. One thing I would have liked to see more of would have been interaction between the secondary characters and Eun Dan Oh, which tended to fall away once the romance really got going. It’s a testament to how great the actors were that I missed seeing their friendship so much!

Integration of secondary roles with protagonist’s story: This is a point where I feel that if a drama can’t succeed, it should cut the stories entirely. This show in particular does a really good job making its side plots not only engaging, but crucial to illuminating the themes of the story. Joo Da and Do Hwa’s story contrasts with Eun Dan Ho and Haru’s, and both of them are contrasted with the Dried Squid Fairy, as we see different people react to impossible situations.  Their plot lines are carried throughout the whole show, and are concluded in ways that enhance the climax of the protagonist’s story. The drama would feel incomplete without these elements, which is far more than could be said for most drama subplots!

Tone: Now we come to my favorite and most elusive element of a show. If the show doesn’t hit the right notes for me here, I often just can’t love it no matter how good other elements are. On the flip side, I have watched some real messes just because I can’t resist a show with a strong sense of atmosphere and tone (Hong Sisters I’m looking at you)! Here is a place that Extraordinary You faced considerable challenges and pulls it off effortlessly. They needed to balance the light-hearted comedic moments with the darker, genuinely horrifying underbelly of the world they had created. To add even more complexity to the situation, they needed to communicate the different layers of story to the viewers visually and tonally. (One element I’ve commented on which was a real stroke of genius was changing the lighting in the “stage” to be darker and colder than the lighting in the “shadow,” communicating to viewers which type of scene they’re watching, but also conveying the themes of the show by making the scenes where the characters are puppets more tense than the ones where they are free to be themselves.) Simply put, Extraordinary You excels at tone. It is a masterclass in visual direction and balance, and never dropped the ball in this area, no matter how dark the show got.

Theme: A lot has been said and written about Extraordinary You’s themes, so I’m not going to try to cover everything (especially now so long after the show aired!). What I found so impressive about Extraordinary You was the way in which the acting, characters, subplots, and directorial choices served to explore and enrich the themes of identity, memory, and free will that are discussed in such depth and complexity in this show. Importantly (to me) they didn’t end the show on a hopeless note, despite the hopeless situation they had created. None of the issues are handwaved away, but the message that I got was that love was worth the struggle. Even if there’s no guarantee or even possibility of a happy ending, it’s still worth it to try. I love a show about the importance of love, in all its difficulties and complexity. It was clear from the first few episodes that the writers and PD came into this with something to say, and they executed beautifully. If you have any interest in these themes, (and somehow missed this show in all of the overwhelming hype for it) please check this out! You will not be disappointed.

[racefortheironthrone]

Thoughts on House of X #4

Over the halfway mark!

Look At What They’ve Done Infographic:

Suprisingly for an issue that, in retrospect is the climax of the standard superheroics part of House of X, this issue starts with an infographic, which turns out to be one of the more controversial in HoX/PoX.

Foreshadowing what’s going to come at the end of the issue, the tone is already different from the pseudo-academic objectivity of earlier infographics, although the term “mutant erasure” evokes the activist-inspired, post-cultural turn work of critical race/gender/sexuality studies, which is something of a stepping-stone. 

By contrast, describing Wanda Maximoff as both “the pretender” (does this mean “not-really-a-mutant” or “not-really-Magneto’s-daughter” or both?) and as associated with the Avengers is incredibly politically pointed, which speak to a particular kind of mutant nationalist identity that bears a good deal of grievance towards even benevolent human institutions.

Similarly, the term “human-on-mutant violence” is way too evocative of real world debates over racism and police violence to be accidental on the author’s point. It’s a depressing thought, but the 616 probably sees a lot of “what about mutant-on-mutant violence?” derailings, maybe as many as creep up in threads about HoX/Pox here...

So let’s get at the controversy: can Bolivar Trask be blamed for the Genoshan genocide? Contrary to a few voices in the fandom, I would argue strongly for the affirmative. As we see from his initial appearance, Trask created the Sentinels entirely out of racial paranoia/hatred; moreover, Sentinels have no purpose other than A. destroying all mutants and B. subjugating the human race along the way. Cassandra Nova’s actions on Genosha absolutely followed the Trask playbook of both father and son, and indeed relied on Larry Trask’s assistance to carry it out, making it a Trask affair from beginning to end. 

On a final meta note, this infographic really speaks to the outsized impact that Morrison’s New X-Men and Bendis’ House of M had on the X-line for the last 15-20 years. 

Observation-Analysis-Invocation-Connection:

But before we get to the punching, we get one burst of Hickman’s fascination with singularities and transhumanism, where for the first time we really get an example of how the Krakoan biological approach is going to work, showing us a surprisingly complicated biomachine:

Trinity (who runs the Secondary/External Systems part of Krakoa) uses her technopathy to gather intelligence from human mechanical systems: the Aracibo Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, “re-tasked SETI radio telescopes," both of which are real things, and the “Dyson solar observatory,” which isn’t. 

Beast (who runs the Overwatch/Data Analysis part of Krakoa) uses Krakoan biocomputers and his own scientific genius to “extrapolate that data into an actionable forecast,” to deal with the delay caused by the immense distances between Krakoa and Sol’s Forge.

Professor X and Cerebro handle the direct Connection between Krakoa and the away team, while the Cuckoos link Trinity, Beast, Storm into a psychic link with Xavier, which means all of the parts of the system work seamlessly even as Storm handles the Invocation of visually representing Jean Grey’s thoughts.

If you step back and think about it, this is an astonishing technological feat: with minimal reliance on machine technology, Krakoa has established a NASA “KASA Mission Control” that can send data across half a solar system almost(?) instantly. 

That’s before we even get to the whole secondary purpose of the system, which is to allow Professor X and the Five to resurrect an up-to-date version of anyone who dies on the mission, which is one hell of a life-rope. 

Thematically, we see a really sharp distinction between biological and mechanical transhumanism/singularity: “KASA Mission Control” is described in biological terms, “function[ing] as a singular organism,” and also in religious terms, with “eight of us acting as one” explicitly labelled as “Communion.” And yet...the eight people involved retain their separate personalities and identities and no separate, artificial intelligence is created. 

Should We Fear the Worst?

 And across five hundred million miles, all Krakoa gets is bad news. Archangel and Husk, the redshirt’s redshirts on this mission, are dead before they do anything; Nightcrawler has some level of “internal injury,” and Wolverine almost had his arm blown off.

Incidentally, page 7 is where something of a problem crops up with Jean Grey’s characterization. As people have noted, Jean Grey starts off in the passive communications role (indeed, she’s even reliant on Monet to do that job) and doesn’t really improve from there. With the added context of her wearing her Silver Age miniskirt costume, it’s all a bit sus, especially if you’ve been reading a much more self-possessed, confident, and all-around more powerful version of Jean Grey in X-Men: Red. For a while, many of us were thinking that Jean is a younger backup, but that seems to have been Jossed by the resurrection ceremony in House of X #5. 

Better characterization abounds for the men: following their conversation from the previous issue, Cyclops and Wolverine have different perspectives about the question of whether to continue on with the mission (another key element of the special ops/espionage thriller genre). Cyclops emphasizes pushing on to make Warren and Paige’s sacrifice meaningful, Logan agrees but rather because of the existential stakes of the mission. There’s an interesting parallel there between Xavier and Magneto and means vs. ends. 

Following the catastrophe, Nightcrawler successfully inserts the struje team, while “Jean and Monet will stay to maintain our connection with Krakoa;”we know know that part was crucial in more than one way, but it is a continuation of some troubling gender dynamics.

Meanwhile, despite being “technically...just an observer” (and doesn’t that ring of all kinds of Cold War proxy wars), Omega Sentinel takes action to prompt Dr. Gregor into retaliation, similarly playing to the nationalistic theme of “if you don’t, he will have died for nothing.” 

Orchis’ retaliation doesn’t go so well, as we see Wolverine carving his way through an AIM securtiy team and Nightcrawler bloodlessly tying up two scientists (note the further emphasis on differing personalities and values; whoever these X-Men might be, they’re not mindless followers) towards popping two of the four constraint collars.

Unfortunately, this is followed up by a couple pages of more Jean Grey being awfully Damselly: yes, she’s holding open the connection, but she’s coded as way more helpless and indecisive than Monet (who gets to go out like a badass defending the shuttle), and the line “I dunno what to say, Marvel Girl. Try harder” really sums it all up. So far, this is reading a lot more like Stan Lee’s Jean Grey (but not Jack Kirby’s) than Chris Claremont’s. 

With the tension ratcheting ever-higher, we see Cyclops succeeding at his mission, while Mystique...doesn’t and then gets promptly blown out an airlock. The “habitat” connection and the odd business with her getting “turned around” despite having the plans for the base in her head like everyone else is highly suspicious (it might suggest the use of a Krakoa flower, but no one’s ever suggested what her motivation would be for doing so), but it’ll have to go on the list of plot threads that weren’t resolved in House of X.

In a development that really ought to be troubling to more people, Dr. Gregor throws away whatever moral compunctions she has about waking up a potentially violently insane A.I because “I don’t let them stop us. No matter what,” a potentially existential downside to Omega’s strategy. 

Do Whatever It Takes:

Having reached the “darkest moment” in the story diagram, Professor X orders his students to “do whatever it takes” to prevent Mother Mold from coming on line. This prompts Cyclops to give the order to Nightcrawler and Wolverine to jump out into unprotected space to sever the last constraint collar. All in all, we’re following the traditional beats of the special ops/espionage genre pretty closely, down to the team leader’s moral anguish moment.

Appropriately, we then get a quiet moment where Kurt and Logan contemplate whether or what will be “waiting for us on the other side.” Even knowing what we know now about the resurrection system, there’s still a good deal of weight to this moment, because in a way this Kurt and this Logan are going to die and whether they’re the same Kurt and Logan who will be reborn is a matter I’ll take up in Powers of X #5 along with the difficult topic of the philosophy of identity. (I’m going to leave aside the question of them having gone to literal Heaven and Hell in the past, because my Doylist position is that those story threads were probably a bad idea and my Watsonian No Prize is that you can’t remember the afterlife once returned to earth.)

Surprisingly, things get only more metaphysically weird when the two teleport outside and Wolverine starts chopping his way through the last arm. Mother Mold wakes up and immdiately starts talking about Greek mythology. Mother Mold’s interpretation of the Titanomachy is a little choppy (as we might expect from an insane A.I): on the one hand, if humanity are the Olympian gods as the creator of the Sentinels and the mutants are the Titans because of “their spoiled lineage” (this doesn’t quite work, because the Titans preceded the Olympians), then the Sentinels being “Man” makes sense. And as someone who’s written his share of college papers about omniscience/predestination/free will in Greek myth and drama, there’s a plausible anti-theist position whereby human beings might “judge and find you both wanting.” (Although that language is too Book of Daniel for the Greeks.) On the other hand, if the Sentinels are man, them having “stolen your fire” doesn’t work either - humanity was given fire by the Titan Prometheus - unless the argument is that Wolverine is Prometheus because he yeets Mother Mold into the sun?

Regardless, it’s a very ominous note for Mother Mold to go out on, because the consistent anti-human/Olympian tone suggests this insane A.I might hate humans way more than it hates mutants. 

With the day seemingly saved, we transition into the Rogue One scenario where Cyclops is murdered by a vengeful Dr. Gregor and Jean is torn apart by Sentinel drones. 

As gruesome as all of this is, I think it does play a very important role in explaining a good deal of Charles Xavier’s change of mind with regard to human-mutant harmony and assimilation. While this incident didn’t prompt any of the decisions that he’s made along the way - this mission is happening post-Xavier’s announcement and a day before the U.N vote, making it quite late in the X^1 timeline - I think it does a good job of showing us the kind of thought patterns that have led Xavier to this conclusion. In addition to everything he’s seen from Moira’s past nine lives, which only lend a greater sense of urgency and the fear of inevitability, Xavier himself has experienced the deaths of “our children” over and over again as the founder of the X-Men, and clearly both the direct trauma (keep in mind, he’s hooked into the minds of all of his X-Men as they die) and the pain he feels at humanity’s apathy/atrocity fatigue, goes a long way to explaining why he’ll make the decision that integration and assimilation are no longer viable options.

For all the crap that people sometime sling at Hickman over his use of charts, I will say that the way that “NO MORE” weaponizes them by extra-textually demonstrating the breakdown of the facade of calm objectivity is incredibly effective.

[johnhmcintosh]

DESTINY

JOHN MCINTOSH

 Within the Grand Dream it ‘seems like there is such a thing as ‘free will’ but that too is just a dream within a dream. Everything that is going to happen in a given lifetime was orchestrated to occur due to ‘part of’ your ‘conditioning/karma’ that is here to be resolved … not balanced, since that suggests more karma … resolved/transformed back into nothing-ness.

 All manifestations within the Grand Dream that seem to have emanated ‘from’ individuals [false selves] are already destined to show up and the concept that they are so called ‘personal’ ideas or inspirations is an illusion. There ‘are’ no persons, no individuals, no unique ideas … only predestination oriented to the Freedom of the sleeping God-SELF.

 When one has Realized the SELF and returned to this Awareness in an unbroken flow, there are no agendas about what to do, where to go, what to manifest … nothing. There is simply an harmonic resonance as an individuated SELF [yet still ONE] occupying a body flowing with the Divine WILL in whatever way is required in the moment. IT acts or does not act according to that seamless unicity with the ONE IT ‘is’. Then what is to BE … simply shows up.

 BOOKS by John McIntosh

https://www.johnmcintosh.info/copy-of-books

SUBSCRIBE to John McIntosh’s BLOG

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[sachiwrites]

I actually would really LOVE to see something about Crowley educating someone he sired. It would be great if you considered writing it!! Thank you so much ♥♥♥

the hardest thing about writing this vampire dynamic is projecting emotions without actually connecting them to sincerity. but thats also what makes this series to much fun to write for because there are a lot of moods for vampires to not harbor any.

anyway ! thank you very much for inspiring me. i hope this is up to your expectations

Was his smile…

You imagined it to be more painful. The changing that is. You’d read about it more than once, been warned about the debauched act enough times to fear the transition. In hindsight, it ended up being surprisingly temporal, though wasn’t soft by any means.

The sharpness of his fangs pierced you like any blade would have, drying a brief cry from your lips. He told you beforehand that it would be an exchange. An equal sharing of souls. Or perhaps this is where they were lost.

The agreement is unspoken and with little room for change when his hand finds the back of your head shortly after pulling away, already guiding you in instruction. He encourages you to bite hard, the notion of breaking the skin highly encouraged.

You suppose it’s then that you realize the first enthralled of the upcoming change. Even in the passions of bodies you’d never been able to inflict any damage, bit even the indent your teeth as evidence.

It’s still not a simple task. Rather than the smooth cut of butter it’s more like a bite of tough bread, a necessary addition of force Judy do find the right grip to tear away.

The first taste is bitter, not at all what he described or any indication sun if the supposed elixir all vampires praise. It’s metallic and the taste of copper rings on your tongue like a dropped coin. Yet there isn’t much to overwhelm your palate when so much is being washed over your tongue. In this moment it’s less about equal sharing and more about filling you up.

He means to drown out your humanity and leave nothing but the taste of himself in your essence.

The last time you wake up is to a glass of blood and a plate of fruit. Instinct drives you toward the later and the consequence is the opposite of the sweet blend you remember.

Crowley watches it all with a raise brow and an expectant smile. Amongst your hacking you reach for the glass, liking the intent of it to a cool glass of water to soothe your ache. The outcome is more than enough, the vicious red bleeding into your veins like a life stream. You finish the glass within moments but he doesn’t produce another instead offering a hand that you grip as you have many times before.

He doesn’t expect the grace of Horn or the unyielding force of Chess, but he does envision loyalty. It’s made apparent the most among other vampires. You may have upgraded from livestock but you’re still a step below the rest. You were a mere follower yes, but his follower.

He truly didn’t ask for much. Satisfied with his two aides, intrigue in Ferid’s whimsical stratagem and you. Was your devotion much more in comparison ?

It’s not a seemly transition from the notorious trinity to the expected quadruplet you were projected to create. Crowley was more reserved of your presence as a new vampire than he had been in your human identity. You had a place near him, but not quite at his side.

A place you’d earn, he informed you, with a bit of tutelage.

There was one thing you’d gotten wrong in your new life. Actual dirt tasted much worse than the equivalent you thought the once beloved human delicacies sampled of.

“You’re way too slow.”

The snarky snip of Chess’ voice sounded almost gravely as your conscious wavered briefly upon impact.  She’d been relentless, no less than obedient under her Lord’s orders.

Eternity was already a forbidden gift, you suppose strength and stamina would have been a stretch even for the gods. Fortunately, or supposedly the opposite with how your body was straining under the training, Crowley was more than adamant on preparing you for the war to come.

He’d single-handedly seen to Chess and Horn’s lessons to develop them into his formidable left and right hand. The trio were already legends in the making, a historians dream of war and fatigue. Still, in between uneven breaths, you wondered; with two hands already accounted for, where did that leave you?

“She said you’re too slow. Why are you still lying around?”

Crowley was a picture of barely veiled disinterest, his crimson gaze already dulling behind the murky thoughts of schematics and strategies. He hadn’t even entertained the idea of bringing his sword along, the infamous companion likely lying haphazardly out of place in his office. At his side stood Horn, patiently waiting to intervene when advised.

Gritting your teeth, eventually your knees found their place beneath you and your feet following shortly. You certainly endured more than what you could have while still hanging on to humanity, but this was still a tier too many out of your league. You voiced as much with a bitter tongue,”I didn’t realize you were changing me to fight your war. If I wanted to be a soldier I could have done as much with my own kind.”

The fleeting glint of annoyance was your own warning before your back spasmed from a second impact, this one significantly more distressing with intent. While gloved, his grip was no less threatening, tightening gradually with every vexed word.

“I see I misinformed you of my tolerance of your brattiness in the past. You were too fragile to curb the habit without the misfortune of killing you. I won’t be as lenient from now on.”

His form takes up all the space from every angle, not that his gaze would allow you to focus on anything else. There is a tendril of fear, just a flickering reminder of the truth you already knew when you’d accepted this dance. One would think you did so blindly to so willingly fall in line with a vampire.

“Everyone has their use here. I will only give you so many chances to learn yours before I give up altogether.”

The courts were still a mystery to you. Not that you would have seen the inner structure even if you had been more versed. The hierarchical composition of the vampire race was becoming more complex than any of your former counterparts were aware of. Their numbers were small, but as a society they were a functioning force and there was no question of how they managed to enslave the world and reduce it to shambles.

“But if you’re a low-ranking vampire and I’m a low ranking-“

His voice is as cool as it is crisp, cutting off your speech. “I may be low amongst others but I have a rank. You have none.”

You’re both settled in his study, situated snug behind his desk while he overviews the current reports of the Progenitor Council. Horn and Chess left to their own devices hours ago, bored of their games and in seek of other alternatives. For a while you were torn, too transparent of the mundane lesson plans but craving his touch.

“Even as my sire?”

The history was murky but you suspected Ferid to be his sire by the associations they promoted. Amongst shared lineage they also harbored a near equivalent status. But apparently there were more steps slipped in your thought process.

His voice is bare to the stickiness of humor as it latches on to his words,”. You were but a human not long ago. You have much to climb.” Your curiosity permeates the air and his nose twitches at the stench. He cuddles you with a light kiss to your hair,” You’re mine. That’s a mighty social climb for any vampire this young. “

But you’d always been his, from the moment he ensnared your interest. A mere pet to most, but Crowley’s high regard for your existence spoke volumes with your transformation. You’d learned that the privilege of become a Sire was only predestined to those slated to be nobles. The knowledge made the silly childish free of being kidnapped and turned against your will nothing more than a scary story before bedtime.

They would much rather kill than sully their bloodline.

You watched as he discarded the report among the others, only losing sight of his hand for a short moment before you felt is curve under the line of your jaw.

“When I changed you, it was not without purpose. You will become someone worthy of my presence.”

“Easy, easy. I don’t care if they die but don’t make a mess.”

You refused to look them in the eye, not able to witness the sin of it even when you didn’t have the resolve to let go. Crowley had been meticulously with this lesson in particular, pulling strings in the shadows without your knowledge.

It had always been possible for you to obtain your own food in his manor. It never came from the source but a glass was only a request away. Still you suppose you’d gotten spoiled by the luxury, only receiving when it was offered directly from his hand. It was pure ignorance that subdued the infrequency that lead to your near starvation until a new spring was presented before you.

Crowley had guided you without instruction, silencing the warm body with a simple look. Without words, incomprehensible whimpers were fictitious in contrast the roar of your hunger. They didn’t have a face or a family. It was almost too much to even consider them human.

His unreserved touch is at your throat, coaxing the red essence down without a battle

The habitual warmth of mankind never felt so foreign, even as it ran cold.

It would take some time, but Crowley would mold you into a vampire fit to stand at his side.

Even if it made you a monster too.

- was his smile …. 

always so cruel?

[mattchase82]

Rising above your enemy is made far easier if you know who he is and what his goal is. Simply by knowing that someone is keeping you down, can empower you to get back up!

.

From The Mystical City of God as Dictated by The Blessed Virgin Mary to Venerable Mary Agreda

.

"And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the Woman, who brought forth the Man-child." When the ancient serpent saw the most unhappy place and state to which he had fallen, and that he was hurled from the empyrean heaven, he broke out in so much the greater rage and envy, like a wild beast tearing its own entrails. Against the Mother of the Word incarnate he conceived such a furious rage, as no human tongue or intelligence can ever describe or understand. But to a certain extent this anger can be surmised from that which followed immediately after that dragon found himself hurled with his hosts to the infernal regions. I will describe this event, as far as I can, and as far as it has been made plain to my understanding.

.

During the whole first week of the creation of the world and its contents Lucifer and the demons were occupied in machinations and projects of wickedness against the Word, who was to become incarnate, and against the Woman of whom He was to be born and made man. On the first day, which corresponds to Sunday, were created the angels; laws and precepts were given to them, for the guidance of their actions. The bad ones disobeyed and transgressed the mandates of the Lord. By divine providence and disposition then succeeded all the other events, which have been recorded above, up to the morning of the second day, corresponding to Monday, on which Lucifer and his hosts were driven and hurled into hell. The duration of these days corresponds to the small periods, or delays, which intervened between their creation, activity, contest and fall, or glorification. As soon as Lucifer with his followers entered hell, they assembled in general council, which lasted to the morning of Thursday. During this time Lucifer exerted all his astuteness and diabolical malice in conferring with the demons and concocting plans to offend God so much the more deeply, and to obtain revenge for the chastisement, to which he had been subjected. They came to the conclusion and resolved that the greatest vengeance and injury against God would be to impede the effects of the love, which they knew God bore toward mankind. This they hoped to attain by deceiving men, and persuading them, or even, as far as possible, compelling them to neglect the friendship of God, to be ungrateful toward Him, and to rebel against his will.

.

"This we must strive to do," said Lucifer, "toward this end we must apply all our forces, all our solicitude and knowledge. We will subject the human creatures to our influence and will, in order to destroy them. We will persecute this race of men and will deprive them of the reward promised to them. We will exert all our vigilance, to prevent them from arriving at the vision of God, which was denied us unjustly. I will gain great triumphs over them ; I will destroy them all and subject them to my designs. I will sow new sects and errors, and set up laws contrary to those of the Most High in all things. I will raise up from among men false prophets and leaders, who will spread these doctrines (Act 20, 30) and I will scatter this seed through them and afterwards I will assign to them a place in these profound torments. I will afflict the poor, oppress the afflicted, and persecute the timid. I will sow discord, excite wars, and stir up nations against each other. I will raise up proud and haughty men to extend the dominion of sin and after they shall have executed my designs, I will bury them in this eternal fire, and in so much the greater torments, the more faithfully they followed me. This is my kingdom and this is the reward which I will give to those who follow me."

.

"I will wage fierce war against the incarnate Word, for although He is God, He is also man, and therefore of a lower nature than mine. I will exalt my throne and my dignity above his; I will conquer Him and will humble Him by my power and astuteness. The Woman who is to be his Mother shall perish at my hands. What is one Woman against my power and greatness? And you, ye demons, who were injured together with me, follow me and obey me in the pursuit of this vengeance, as you have followed me in disobedience ! Pretend to love men, in order to destroy them; serve them, in order to ruin them and deceive them ; help them, in order to pervert them and draw them into these my hellish regions." No human tongue can explain the malice and fury of this first council of Lucifer and his hosts against the human race, which although not yet in existence, was to be created. In it were concocted all the vices and sins of the world, thence proceeded lies, sects and errors ; all iniquity had its origin in that chaos and in that abominable gathering, and all those that do evil are in the service of the prince of this assembly.

.

Having closed this meeting, Lucifer sought permission to speak with God, and his Majesty, for his own exalted ends, gave him permission. This was allowed in, the same manner in which Satan spoke to God when he asked permission to persecute Job (Job 1, 6), and it happened on the day which corresponds to our Thursday. He addressed the Most High in the following words : "Lord, since Thou hast laid thy hand so heavily upon me in chastising- me with so great cruelty, and since Thou hast predetermined all that Thou desirest to do for the men whom Thou art to create; and since Thou wishest to exalt and elevate so high the incarnate Word and enrich the Woman, who is to be his Mother, with all thy predestined gifts, be now equitable and just ; as Thou hast given me permission to persecute the rest of men, give me also permission to tempt and make war against Christ, the Man-God and the Woman, who is to be his Mother; give me freedom to exert all my powers against Them." Other things Lucifer said on that occasion, and, in spite of the great violence occasioned to his pride by the humiliation, he humbled himself never the less in order to ask for this permission. His wrathful anxiety to obtain what he desired was so great that he was willing to subdue even his arrogance, thus forcing one iniquity to yield to another. He knew too well that without the permission of the omnipotent Lord he could attempt nothing. In order to be able to tempt Christ our Lord, and his most holy Mother in particular, he was willing to humiliate himself a thousand times, for he feared the threat, which had been made, that She should crush his head.

.

The Lord answered: "Thou must not, Satan, ask such a permission as due to thee in justice, for the incarnate Word is God and Lord most high and omnipotent, though He is at the same time true man, and thou art his creature. Even if the other men sin and subject themselves to thy will, this will not be possible in my Onlybegotten made man. Though thou mayest succeed in making men slaves of sin, Christ will be holy and just, segregated from sinners. He will redeem them, if they fall. And this Woman against whom thou hast such wrath, although She is to be a mere creature and a true daughter of man, is to be preserved by my decree from sin. She is to be altogether mine forever and on no account or title shall any one else be allowed to have part in Her."

.

To this Satan replied: "But what wonder that this Woman should be holy, since no one on this earth will be allowed to draw Her to the contrary, or persecute Her and incite Her to sin ? This cannot be equity, nor just judgment, nor can this be proper and praise worthy." Lucifer added yet other blasphemies in his arrogance. But the Most High, who disposes all things with wisdom, answered him: "I will give thee permission to tempt Christ, so that He will be an example and a teacher in this to all the rest of men. I also give thee permission to persecute the Woman, but thou must not touch Her in regard to the life of her body. It is my will, that Christ and his Mother be not exempt from temptation, and that They be tempted by thee like the rest of men." This permission was more pleasing to the dragon than that of being free to persecute all the rest of the human race. In this he resolved to use more care than in the pursuit of any other project, as afterwards really happened. To no one else than himself was he resolved to confide its execution. Therefore the Evangelist proceeds to say:

.

"And the serpent cast out of his mouth after the woman, water, as it were, a river, that he might cause her to be carried away ; and the earth helped the woman and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the river, which the dragon cast out of his mouth." All his malice and all his forces Lucifer exerted and directed against the Mistress; for all those, who were ever tempted by him, seemed to him of less importance than most holy Mary. With the same force as the current of a great swift river, so the malice, and the lies, and the temptations flowed from the mouth of that dragon against Her. But the earth helped Her; for the earth of her body and of her inclinations was not cursed, nor did the sentence and punishment, which God hurled against Adam and Eve, touch Her in any way. For in it our earth is cursed and produces thorns instead of fruit. It is wounded in its very nature by its inclination to sin "fomes Peccati" (Gen. 3, 17), which continues to assault us and causes opposition. The devil avails himself of these inclinations for the ruin of men, for he finds within us arms for his offensive warfare; and catering to our evil inclinations by his false representations and apparent sweetness and delight, he draws us toward sensible and earthly things.

.

But the most blessed Mary, the holy and sanctified earth without touch of bad inclinations or evil dispositions, was free from all danger of corruption arising from the earth. On the contrary, since all her inclinations were most orderly, composed and obedient to grace, the earth of her body was in perfect harmony with her soul. Thus this earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the stream of temptations which the dragon raised up for Her in vain; for he found that material indisposed and unfomented for sin, unlike the other offspring of Adam. Their terrestrial and disorderly passions are more adapted to produce the floods of temptation, than to absorb them, since our passions and our corrupt nature are always in opposition to virtue. On account of the futility of his efforts against this mysterious Woman, Scripture says:

.

"And the dragon was angry against the Woman : and he went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ/ The dragon, having been gloriously overcome in all things by the Queen of all creation and dreading the furious torments of his own confusion and the ruin of all hell power, fled from Her, determined to make cruel war against the other souls belonging to the generation and race of the most blessed Mother. These are the faithful, who are marked with the testimony and the blood of Christ in Baptism as keepers of his commands and constant witnesses. For all the wrath of the demon turned so much the more toward the holy Church and its members, when he saw, that he would be unable to gain any advantage over Christ and his most holy Mother. Especially does he war against the virgins of Christ, and with a more particular hatred does he seek to destroy the virtue of virginity or chastity, this being the seed and the inheritance of the most chaste Virgin and Mother of the Lamb. On account of all this the Evangelist says :

.

"And he stood upon the sands of the sea." This is the contemptible vanity of the world, on which the dragon feeds and which he eats like hay. All this passed in heaven and many mysteries were made manifest to the angels in the decrees of the divine Will regarding the privileges reserved for the Mother of the Incarnate Word." I have been short in describing what I saw; for the multitude of the mysteries has made me poor and halting in the words needful for their manifestation.

[exxar1]

Episode 7: New Year, New Project (Sort Of)

1/11/2021

Happy new year!

           Things aren’t looking so good for the nation right now, but I’m pleased to say my new year is off to a good start. Sticking to my resolutions has been pretty easy thus far, especially the first one. Thanks to the Bible app on my phone and iPad, I’m able to keep up with my daily devotions on my lunch break. I also bought myself a Bible and a cover for it on Amazon as a Christmas present to myself. While I normally enjoy reading books on my Kindle or iPad, I decided that I prefer to read my Bible the old fashioned way. So I use that one for my devotions right before bed.

           This week I also began work on one of my other resolutions. Last month, as I was browsing Amazon, I stumbled across a book titled “Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity”. It’s by a young man named Gregory Coles. Both the title and synopsis intrigued me, so I bought it for reading later. This week, I decided to use my lunch break to read instead of just playing games or surfing social media on my phone. I started Greg’s book on Monday and finished it by Friday.

And…wow.

           This is the synopsis from Greg’s website:

Let’s make a deal, you and me. Let’s make promises to each other.

I promise to tell you my story. The whole story. I’ll tell you about a boy in love with Jesus who, at the fateful onset of puberty, realized his sexual attractions were persistently and exclusively for other guys. I’ll tell you how I lay on my bed in the middle of the night and whispered to myself the words I’ve whispered a thousand times since: “I’m gay.”

Is it possible to be gay and still follow Jesus? And if so, what happens next? If you believe the Bible calls you to celibacy, is it possible to embrace that calling without feeling like a divine typo?

Single, Gay, Christian is the story of one person’s journey through these questions. It’s about acting like your own alter ego, about getting epiphanies from mosquitoes, about singing happy birthday to yourself while literally hiding in a closet. It’s about being gay, loving Jesus, and choosing singleness in a world that fears all three.

           Greg is only in his late twenties, and he published his story just four years ago. I was immediately captivated by his writing as he put into words so many thoughts, feelings, doubts, questions, and fears that I wrestled with in my teen years and, again, have started grappling with after reaffirming my salvation and faith in God four months ago. Like him, I was terrified of anyone discovering my secret. Like him, I questioned why God had made me this way. But unlike Greg, the only way that I could reconcile my conflict was to reject God, the church and the Bible altogether. I chose to walk into adulthood on my own, living my truth as I saw fit.

           Greg, however, stuck it out with God. The end result is that he came to believe it was God’s will for him to remain celibate. He’s currently serving as worship leader in his local church while teaching English part time at the university as well as writing a second book. As for me, I’m about to start the very same journey that Greg just completed.

           Four months ago, when I finally surrendered to God in a heartfelt, pleading, somewhat awkward prayer on a quiet car ride home from work late one night, I knew in the back of my mind that I was going to have to return to the very same issue that I had wrestled with in high school. That was one reason I created this blog, and I’ve spent the last four months mentally preparing myself by slowly opening various doors to my past and peeking hesitantly behind them. The first door was episode two of this blog.

           This week, as I read Greg’s story, I slowly realized two things. One, it was time to tell my story, and two, it needed to be more than just a blog. One of my new year’s resolutions was to tackle the issue of homosexuality and Christian faith, to reconcile this once and for all so that I could move on with the rest of my life. Greg’s story gave me the realization that the best way to tell my story was to also write a book. So that’s what I’m going to do.

           But then something else occurred to me. I don’t want to tell just my story. I want to broaden the scope of the book to discuss this issue in more detail. I want to interview pastors and church leaders of different denominations to hear their interpretations of God’s view on this issue. I also want to talk to others like me who have been struggling with reconciling their faith in God with being gay. I want to deep dive on Google and Amazon to find books and other resources that will help me learn the history of the church and its relationship to the issue of homosexuality. My story is going to provide the frame. All of my interviews and research will be the painted portrait. I’ve even come up with a title: Living Beneath the Rainbow: Reconciling my Homosexuality with my Christian Faith.

           Early in my senior year of high school, as part of a joint assignment for my Bible and English classes, my teachers assigned my class a religious topic that we had to research and write up in a term paper. In addition to the usual library research, we were required to interview the pastor and other leaders in our church. As with everything else in high school I did the absolute bare minimum required to complete this assignment. I loved English but despised Bible class, and I can’t even remember the topic my partner and I were assigned. I think it was predestination. Whatever the case, I did the library research, we both sat down for all of 10 minutes with the pastor, and then I wrote the paper. I have no doubt that our teachers gave us a “B” at best, or, more likely, a “C”.

           Mrs. Tutty, I know you’re a regular reader of my blog postings, so I want you to know that I’m here for my makeup assignment. This time it’s just me, and this time I promise to do more than just the bare minimum. This project will require my heart and soul. In addition to the various research methods, Bible reading and prayer, I will be returning to my own past. There’s a scared, angry, frustrated, lonely – so desperately lonely – kid that’s been waiting 25 years for me to talk to him. I am going to have to peel away the faded scars of old wounds that I assumed were healed long ago. I need to reconcile with myself before I can start reconciling and building my new relationship with God. I know already that this is going to be painful, and part of me really doesn’t want to do this. I would rather just focus on the main issue and go from here.

           But, in the last couple months, as I’ve been my Bible and learning all over again how to pray, I have felt God strongly reminding me of that burden that I thought I had thrown away years ago. In many ways, I’m right back where I started as a freshman in high school. How do I reconcile my faith with being gay?

           But that’s not the only reason I need to write this book. Last year I decided that I wanted to get a boyfriend. I was tired of living the single life, and I had felt a need for quite some time to find that “special guy”. That was back in June when I created the Tinder profile and I met “Alfred”. And those of you who read my blog already know how that turned out. But that didn’t stop me from continuing my search for true love.

           But, right about that same time is when God started to actively work within me, flipping all kinds of switches that woke me from my 23-year-long selfish complacency. I gave myself back to Him started this new journey.

           Sometimes irony can be a real bitch.

           After finishing Greg’s book, I have been having all kinds of new inner conflict. The main question now is, what if God’s will for the rest of my life is that I remain celibate? Just when I have begun experiencing a new kind of loneliness and the accompanying desire to satisfy that romantic hunger, I am now faced with the prospect that that hope will be forever denied me. My secret hope for this new project that I’m embarking on is that I will find the answers I’m looking for. That I will find a new peace with God and I can finally put to rest this issue once and for all.

           But, deep down in my soul, my super-secret hope is that not only will I resolve and reconcile this issue, but that I will also be rewarded with finding love in a lifelong relationship with another Christian man. I desperately want to experience that love that my parents and all my brothers and so many other people in this world – especially other gay Christians – have already had the joy of living and experiencing.

           But…

           But what if I reach the end of this particular journey and I get the answer I don’t want to hear?

           I promised God four months ago that I was His completely – heart, mind, body and soul. I will do whatever He asks of me. And in my head I know that He will give me the strength and resolve to follow through on that promise when He finally gives me answer to His will. But in my heart, I just don’t know if I can accept the answer if it’s one I don’t want to hear.

           But I’m getting ahead of myself. In my typical, type-A personality fashion I’m listing all the things that can wrong with the car before I even begin the road trip. It’s time to just get in, turn the key, and start driving.

           There’s also one more good reason to embark on a project like this one. I came back from Christmas vacation transformed. Not only did I feel well rested and refreshed, I also felt a very distinct sense of inner calm and centeredness as I jumped right back into a full time work schedule at both jobs. I hadn’t realized until now, looking back over the last seven months, just how angry, frustrated, and downright hostile I’d become, thanks to all the shenanigans of this country’s citizenry. I spent most of my free time surfing social media, arguing with strangers, ranting and raving like Chicken Little on speed and steroids, and most of it was for very little real result, except maybe fueling my own warped sense of righteous indignation and moral superiority. (But, for the record, I was right about almost all of it.) It also didn’t help that I was charging through most of my days on just 4 ½ hours sleep per night, thanks to the two full time jobs.

           My ten day vacation was a Godsend, in more ways than one. Not only did I catch up on sleep, but I also took the time to do some serious reflection and prayer. When I returned to Las Vegas last week, I felt an eerie mixture of calm and peace, as if my whole self was enveloped in a nice, warm invisible blanket. Even that whole, crazy shitstorm on Wednesday at the capitol didn’t ruffle me. I completely ignored the TV in the break room at Walmart as I devoured Greg Coles’ story on my Kindle app. Even my interactions with the customers at both jobs were different. The old me would have been silently judging and cursing all the annoying people – the ones who take forever to do a simple task like printing off a bank statement for a loan application, or they ask dumb questions about common sense stuff, or they want to give me their whole life’s story while the ten people in line behind them silently glare at both of us.

           But not the new me. I came into the new year with a new attitude. I knew I needed an adjustment. That’s why one of my resolutions was to be more kind, sympathetic and understanding to the people I interact with daily. But I think my calm, peaceful state of mind is also due to my renewed faith in Christ. I know that no matter how shitty the world around me is going to get, I have faith in the One who’s really in control of it all. And now, thanks to my new writing project, I have something into which I can pour all of my free time, my energy, my passion and my creativity.

           I don’t know how long this will take. I’m hoping no more than a year, at most. I’ve already made contact with someone I found on Twitter who runs a ministry in Nashville, TN, that helps churches to create their own ministries specifically to help LGTBQ Christian teens who are struggling with their sexual identity and their service to God. I also contacted Greg Coles via his website to thank him for his book and I asked him if he would be willing to correspond with me to discuss his story – and my own project – further. No response as of yet.

           But now I have a special request for all you out there reading this. If you know of someone like me who’s going through this same struggle and is willing to talk about it, or if you belong to a church that is either gay friendly or not, or if you know of any resources that you can point me to that will help in my study and research on this topic, I would greatly appreciate the assistance. I especially would like to speak to pastors or church leaders of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian or Methodist denominations. (I already have a Baptist pastor in mind for my first interview, hopefully later this week.)

           Happy New Year, folks! It’s going to be a good one! I can feel it!

           As my brothers would say, “Hoo-Rah!”

[phynxrizng]

THE 10 ELEMENTS OF A SOULMATE

THE BLOG

07/17/2013 12:56 pm ET

| Updated Dec 23, 2013

The 10 Elements of a Soulmate Source, By Dr. Carmen Harra

As the American writer Richard Bach said, “A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are.”

Ah, soulmates. The epitome of love and partnership. In our fast-paced chaotic world, which boasts all sorts of different people, we find ourselves skimming through more relationships than we’d like in order to find that one person who can truly open our locks.

Not just anyone can fulfill you the way your soulmate can. There’s a world of a difference between your soulmate, your heart’s other half and a life partner — a person who lacks the elements to mold perfectly to you. Your soulmate makes you feel entirely whole, healed and intact, like no piece is missing from the puzzle. A life partner, on the other hand, can be a great supporter and long-time companion, but is limited in his or her capacity to enrich your spirit.

Most of us remain in life-partner relationships because we “settle,” for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, we may have a real subconscious fear of being alone. And since we’re biologically designed to fall in love, it’s only natural that we pair up in this world. But we sometimes prolong what are meant to be temporary relationships and mistakenly settle into them for good. There are relationships which must last for a certain period of time to close out a karmic chapter of life, relationships in which we’re meant to have children with our partner but not necessarily remain with them, and relationships which are just plain confusing because a melting pot of emotions doesn’t allow us to see our predestined path.

I’ve seen it all in my practice as a psychologist, from couples who married their childhood loves to people in their retirement years who still struggle with commitment issues. Most of us fall somewhere between these two extremes, meaning that we experienced several relationships before finding the person we believe to be our perfect pairing. Whether you’re currently married, in a relationship, or contemplating entering a relationship with a new love interest, it is crucial that you know what role this person will play in your life. After all, there’s no avoiding the inevitable, often uncomfortable question we must ask ourselves: Is this the person I was bound by destiny to share my life with? Or did I settle too quickly into a relationship with someone who can never complete me?

No matter the category you fit into to, there are several indications which clearly outline a soulmate bond (or a lack of bond) between you and your partner. As you go through this list, think about your partner or potential partner and evaluate whether they meet the soulmate criteria.

The 10 Elements of a Soulmate:1. It’s something inside. Describing how a soulmate makes you feel is difficult. It’s a tenacious, profound and lingering emotion which no words can encompass.

2. Flashbacks. If your partner is your soulmate, chances are he or she has been present in your past lives. Soulmates often choose to come back together during the same lifetime and scope each other out in the big world. You might suddenly and briefly experience flashbacks of your soulmate. You might even feel an odd sense of déjà vu, as if the moment in time has already taken place, perhaps a long time ago, perhaps in a different setting.

3. You just get each other. Ever met two people who finsh each other’s sentences? Some people call that spending too much time together, but I call it a soulmate connection. You might experience this with your best friend or your mother, but it is the telltale sign of a soulmate when you experience it with your partner.

4. You fall in love with his (or her) flaws. No relationship is perfect, and even soulmate relationships will experience ups and downs. Still, that bond will be much harder to break. Soulmates have an easier time of accepting, even learning to love, each other’s imperfections. Your relationship is more likely to be a soulmate match if you both love each other exactly as you each are, accepting both the great and awful tendencies we all have.

5. It’s intense. A soulmate relationship may be more intense than normal relationships, in both good and sometimes bad ways. The most important thing is that, even during negative episodes, you’re focused on resolving the problem and can see beyond the bad moment.

6. You two against the world. Soulmates often see their relationship as “us against the world.” They feel so linked together that they’re ready and willing to take on any feat of life, so long as they have their soulmate by their side. Soulmate relationships are founded on compromise and unity above all else.

7. You’re mentally inseparable. Soulmates often have a mental connection similar to twins. They might pick up the phone to call each other at the exact same time. Though life may keep you apart at times, your minds will always be in tune if you are soulmates.

8. You feel secure and protected. Regardless of the gender of your partner, he or she should always make you feel secure and protected. This means that if you’re a man, yes, your woman should make you feel protected, too! Your soulmate will make you feel like you have a guardian angel by your side. A person who plays on your insecurities, whether consciously or subconsciously, is not your soulmate.

9. You can’t imagine your life without him (or her). A soulmate is not someone you can walk away from that easily. It is someone you can’t imagine being without, a person you believe is worth sticking with and fighting for.

10. You look each other in the eye. Soulmates have a tendency to look into each other’s eyes when speaking more often than ordinary couples. It comes naturally from the deep-seated connection between them. Looking a person in the eye when speaking denotes a high level of comfort and confidence.

Whether you’re designed by the universe to be soulmates or two loving people who have settled for each other’s strengths and weaknesses, the decision is yours. The beauty of free will is that you can remain in or change any relationship as you see fit. To be with your soulmate is one of the precious treasures of life. And if you feel you’ve found your heart’s other half, I wish you endless days of joy and laughter, and countless nights of deep embrace, unraveling the mysteries of the universe one by one.

To love,

Dr. Carmen Harra

To connect with Dr. Carmen Harra on Facebook, click here.For more by Dr. Carmen Harra, click here.For more on emotional wellness, click here.

Dr. Carmen Harra Dr. Carmen Harra is a best-selling author, clinical psychologist, and relationship expert. Her newest book, The Karma Queens’ Guide to Relationships, is available everywhere

Found in the, Huffingtom Post.com Reposted by, PHYNXRIZNG