#jungian shadow

[theshadowworker]

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are

- Carl Jung

[filmslore]

thinking about how spike had one sex dream about buffy and concluded that he was in love with her.

thinking about buffy having confirmed sex dreams about spike as early as season 4 and repressing them. thinking about buffy in season 5 delighting in beating the shit out of spike. thinking about buffy also being on the receiving end of spike’s chivalry in season 5 and being repulsed by it. thinking about buffy in season 6 teasing herself by spending her free moments in spike’s company. thinking about buffy pining. thinking about buffy also giving in to her darkest desires finally forcefully kissing spike and then beating him up before they fuck a building down. thinking about buffy cutting off her relationship with spike because she’s done with the self harm. thinking about buffy in season 7 saying she feels for spike. thinking about how she never kills him even when he begs because she’s not ready for him to not be here. thinking about buffy admitting she needs spike. thinking about buffy letting spike treat her tenderly and comfort her in touched. thinking about buffy finally done repressing her feelings for spike and telling him she loves him right before he dies to save the world.

[bmtalbott]

So long as you feel the human contact, the atmosphere of mutual confidence, there is no danger; and even if you have to face the terrors of insanity, or the shadowy menace of suicide, there is still that area of human faith, that certainty of understanding and of being understood, no matter how black the night.

~Carl Jung, CW 17, Para 181

[fiststornasunder]

Immortal Hulk, transness and the Jungian shadow

Yes, Immortal Hulk again. I have a thesis to write about this behemoth of a run and I'm documenting every single idea that pops into my rotting brain before I actually start that process. I'm 4 months ahead anyway.

I believe Vol. 6: We Believe in Bruce Banner to be the most politically charged volume in the collection, and yet one of the most powerful political messages for me, a trans woman, comes in Vol.7, Issue 32: Hulk Is Hulk. At this point, Ewing has dropped 2 very subtle, almost imperceptible hints that point toward Charlene McGowan being transgender before outright saying it to our faces in issue 31, though that revelation would only have any meaning for people who know what HRT is. In this issue, though, it's Charlene herself who reveals her status as a trans woman to Doc Samson (who she may or may not have a crush on).

This doesn't come out of nowhere; at this point in the story, she's suspecting that Xenmu has rewritten the colective consciousness to make Hulk seem like a villain, and she connects her ability to remember Bruce for who he was to her own process of self-discovery as a trans woman. She's able to reject this brainwashing, however, thanks to her very acute awareness of her own identity, one that she's had to assess very carefuly during her self-examination process. She's been, through her life, discarding the parts of herself who don't belong to her, and embracing the ones that do.

This makes sense from a diegetic perspective; of course someon who has a very grounded, realistic and controlled view of themselves would be able to call bullshit on Xenmu's brainwashing. Thematically, however, there's something deeper going on here, something that led me back to the concept of the Jungian shadow, a concept Ewing clearly wants us to analyze the run through considering how prominent it is during the literal first issue.

See, the Hulks in this run (Devil Hulk, the "Big Guy" and Joe Fixit) are shadows of Bruce Banner. They're feelings and ideas Banner has pushed into the back of his mind due to his mind considering them incompatible with a hypothetical ideal version of himself. In short; they're projections of things Bruce fundamentally is, but that he represses due to societal rules and expectations.

The thing about being trans is that the entity you've spent your entire life repressing, your shadow, is likely to be at least in part made out of gendered ideas you consider incompatible with yourself due to having been forced into a particular gender at birth. In this framing, looking into your shadow while unaware of your queerness will inevitably lead to the realization that you are trans, and with a little bit of luck it will kickstart that process of self-examination McGowan speaks of.

This is the reality of why she's able to resist Xenmu's powers: she is already cloaked in her own shadow, she's taken control of her life and turned herself into the repressed version of herself society tries to bottle up.

[simpleman193]

[spiritofwhitefire]

There is a deep gulf between what a man is and what he represents. Between what he is as an individual and what he is as a collective being.

Carl Jung, Psychological Types (1921)

[enbycrip]

[trappaskunk]

Only Shadow Trappa Skunk 2022

[bumblehaven]

hello horse fandom, you have called me back to you once more. prepare for apple horses and shenanigans.

[04dissection]

So like.... Real quick.

In Deep Cover Kotoko potrays everyone as chess pieces, right?

But the thing is that the shadows of these pieces ARE the characters- despite how she sees them, she still potrays their shadows as human.

And for Kotoko, SHE doesn't transform into the wolf.

But her shadow does.

[theshadowworker]

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer

- Albert Camus

[cauldronlakefiles]

what if Scratch was the friends we made along the way

[bmtalbott]

The word panic comes from Pan. He went about whistling or playing his pipe and frightening the shepherds. The shepherd's fear is like the stampede of the herds.

Occasionally a herd begins to stampede for no obvious reason, it is as if they were suddenly frightened by something. That happens to us also; at certain moments in the midst of real nature one is suddenly seized with terror without knowing why. Sometimes it is a particularly lonely and uncanny spot, but at other times one cannot say what it is, a kind of animal fear seizes one.

“It is the great god Pan that causes the panic terror. Then that nature demon became a great philosophical god on account of the transformation in the meaning of the name.

The Greek word pas means all, the whole, and pan, the neuter, means the universe; and that meaning became attached to the god as the universal nature spirit.”

- Carl Jung, Visions Seminar, Pages 580-581

[russenoire]

one thing that strikes me about mob psycho 100 is how closely it hews to shigeo's direct emotional experience. depending on your tastes in worldbuilding and characterization, this can either be a strength... or a weakness.

the only characters fleshed out somewhat are those shigeo is truly close to; almost everyone else is painted with just enough detail to make them feel like people. but not much more... not unlike real-life acquaintances. this rings mostly true for events in the story, too. MP100 also shines very little light on what strangers think of its protagonist, in part because he doesn't notice or care all that much.

and even those people who matter most to him? shigeo doesn't really ask about anyone's inner lives, so we only get to know others at a 'surface' level. what's ON that surface is still rich AF, but it's mostly free of backstory: we get impressionistic flashes of who reigen, and dimple, and ritsu, and teru are almost entirely from what their lives are like in the present. as a result, the story is a very autistic (and for me, relatable) headspace to walk around in.

the mutual bond ritsu and shigeo share would not feel as strong without ONE letting us rummage around inside the younger kageyama brother's head for a bit, of course. shigeo loves his little brother more than anyone else in the world, but he isn't even privy to ritsu's emotional landscape until ritsu lashes out at him in an alley one day.

and we wear reigen's skin the longest, apart from shigeo's, because the boy spends most of his free time at spirits and such. but who was he before shigeo shyly opened his office door in search of empathy? surely he was more than a bored salesman everydude looking for something to give his life meaning, but this is all that we are shown clearly. unfortunately reigen's inner life is terra incognita to shigeo: he doesn't share it with the boy and shigeo doesn't even begin to ask until the story is nearly over.

shigeo in turn shares so little of his inner life with reigen that the man isn't even aware the child has friends his own age. and his immense, map-redrawing destructive capabilities frighten reigen all the more because shigeo never fully trusted him with that knowledge. the wrath of shigeo's shadow self is as ruinous as it is because shigeo couldn't trust anyone with his emotional insides, either.

how well do we really know those we love? how well can we know them?

how well can we know anyone?

[a-sketchy]

ohhhhhhhhh “sea of thy soul” = personal unconscious, “sea of souls” = collective unconscious. hey guys did you know that persona is kinda jungian