#nihilism has passion only for its ideal

[mayuurx]

passes over a jar of cheeseballs

a gift for the hole

Your offering is greatly appreciated.

Because you've been kind to the hole TM here's sth extra:

[dontbotherwiththepronunciation]

Warning: Religion, God-critical (that term makes me feel like I'm writing meta that bashes a teen girl or pretends she is the villain), nihilism, explorations of suffering according to abrahamic faiths and particularly christianity, canon fucked upness in Aeron and Theon's stories. LONG POST.

I've been thinking about the Drowned God. I know people usually connect catholicism with the faith of the seven, which is fair especially when looking at it as an institution, and the faith of the Drowned God gets compared more often to Scandinavian/Norse mythology, more specifically to Valhalla as the afterlife (although I think the feasts given by Ægir and Ran in Skáldskaparmál would be even more fitting, but that's only me nitpicking), but the catholic catechism sees suffering as something that is both redemptive and also empowering and this reminds me of Aeron and Theon.

Christianity on itself believes that suffering, when united with the Passion of Jesus, atones for one's sins and thus allows entry into heaven. Catholicism specially sees suffering as an inherent part of the human condition brought upon by human sin against God.

“As long as [Adam] remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die.”  - Catechism of the Catholic Church

But since Adam and Eve committed sin by eating the forbidden fruit (or as I like to see it in my I-view-very-important-religions-as-basically-high-fantasy interpretation, Eve chose agency & knowledge and cut the strings this divine puppeteer used to limit her with), suffering was casted upon them and all their descendants. And then, according to the incredibly specific official bible timeline from the Houston Christian University, 3974 years, six months, and ten days later (skdghsfbdhaaahahahahahah) Jesus was sent to earth to cause some havoc and basically tell everyone that the suffering, the struggle, the oppression and all the horrible things that happened to innocent people in our world would eventually have a payoff after death.

The more strict practitioners (ex. flagellants) used to (and some still do) find spiritual benefits when causing physical pain upon themselves. Corporal mortification was seen as an act that brought you closer to purity. Suffering made you ascend in the eyes of God. Suffering was encouraged. Suffering was noble.

Suffering was a promise of hope.

The promise of eternal life (and the eventual bodily resurrection) allowed people to believe that, as long as they placed their faith in Christ, the suffering would not be tied to a tragedy.

The phrase "God is Dead" first appears in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables but it became more popular through Nietzsche's The Gay Science (Insert SpongeBob hand gesture). A simplified summary of the themes explored in The Gay Science would basically be Nietzsche claiming that christianity invented an ideal inexistent utopia that is too farfetched from reality. He sees christianity as a common, anti-intellectual philosophy for simple minded people that enslaves its believers. But by seeing it as something inexistent and false, by "killing God", the illusion of divinity is lost and all the hope and consolation that came with it are gone too, leaving humanity in a state of tragedy; nihilism.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? - The Gay Science

To some extent I feel like he is the reborn Eve in the narrative. By denying the superior force he feels he gains control over his own person, but is left in a world of pain at the burden of his existence being tied to mortality and purposelessness (oh, sweet paradox)

Nietzsche was a self-proclaimed nihilist although he didn't seem to want to be one. He saw nihilism as the result of the loss one felt at the realisation that life, and all the suffering in it, had no greater purpose. "God is Dead" was calling the readers into finding a way to cope with the situation.

And for anyone who started reading this because I mentioned the Drowned God, sorry it took so long to get here, but I relate all of this specifically to Aeron and Theon and their connections to religion. I believe in Theon's bind to the Old Gods and, as he is in ADWD, it seems he has come to vaguely believe in both of these faiths, although the Old Gods are more present in his story. Aeron though, is so reminiscent of this concept.

And I know that christianity is not the only religion tied to the faith of the Drowned God.

The Osiris myth is arguably the most important one in Egyptian mythology and I think the motif of "What is dead may never die, but rises again harder and stronger" is just as if not even more present in that one.

In it, Set murders his brother Osiris. The reasons behind the murder vary depending on source, but one of them portrays it as revenge for Osiris having sex with Set's wife, Nephtys. Set usurps his brother's throne while Nephtys and Osiris' wife, Isis, search for his body, then mummify and revive him. Personally I don't consider it to be very similar to the myth of the Drowned God but it feels more resemblant to it than Jesus' very normal "came back without a scratch" resurrection. Osiris doesn't get that benefit. He comes back bruised and bandaged, with death being visible on him.

Christianity also has refrained from sacrificing their own but Quetzalcoatl and Tláloc, aztec deities, would demand human sacrifice through drowning during Etzalcualiztli (the sixth month of the aztec calendar) and Tláloc specifically promised an utopic afterlife to those who had water-involved deaths, but even more to those who willingly gave themselves to the water. Celts also practiced drowning sacrifices, but I know too little about them to be honest.

What I am trying to say is, if actively searching, one could alway find similitudes to other faiths, but because abrahamic faiths have been the ones that prevailed through time and the ones I've experienced most, I will focus on them.

Alright, Florence play "What the water gave me"

Drowning, baptisms and water imagery

I wonder what it would be like to be a Catholic, to dip your hand into the cold water and to believe in its holiness. - The Moth Diaries (Yes, I read the Moth Diaries, shut up! It is what if Carmilla and Twilight had a child.)

Christianity is kind of basic when it comes to water symbolism, but it's loyal to its theme.

There isn't a lot to speculate on water, it "washes yours sins away" but there is a common pattern in characters that belong to the Bible that is repeated over and over again and somehow Aeron embodies it pretty perfectly.

We are confronted with characters who have lived sinfully.

On the other hand, I do wonder what would be considered as "sinful" according to the Drowned God. Their religion is passed down orally and has no scriptures that I know of, so a set of rules can be more ambiguous depending on whoever is preaching. Lust, greed, wrath and pride, all considered official sins by christian doctrine, are encouraged by the faith of the Drowned God in the form of salt wives, raiding and their beliefs of ethnic superiority. The only sin I can think of that is specific to the them is that Ironborn shouldn't kill Ironborn, but even that is absolved when water is involved since drowning another Ironborn is alright and a death near the water is considered a good death.

We are born to suffer, that our sufferings might make us strong. - The Prophet, AFFC

Suffering is also encouraged, so I am assuming that any type of hedonism would be seen as sinful too (which would-be contradictory to what I stated above, but alright maybe GRRM was a little weaker when it came to world-building this time or maybe I am misunderstanding something. If so, please correct me, I genuinely am curious about these topics), if that is the case, then yeah Aeron was sinful and has reasons to look down on his former self.

Young I was, and vain, but the sea washed my follies and my vanities away. That man drowned, nephew. His lungs filled with seawater, and the fish ate the scales off his eyes. When I rose again, I saw clearly. - Theon I, ACOK

Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptised, - Acts 9:18

Here is one of the many character allusions I think one can identify in Aeron. Saul of Tarsus, disputed Apostle, leads a violent life persecuting early christians until lightning strikes him during one of his travels and blinds him. For three days he starves and spends his time praying until Ananias of Damascus comes to his rescue and baptises him.

It's one of the less obvious ones, but I just like how they used the scales-blindness imagery and while this storm was one at land, not at sea, there is another biblical character who shares more similitudes with Aeron.

As a kid the book of Jonah was one of my favourites, so of course I love Aeron!

A prophet, an equal, but weak in his beliefs, too tentative when he should be nothing but certain in his faith! God tells him to go overthrow Nineveh (east) and, because these prophets never learn not to contradict the narrative, he tries fleeing to Jaffa (west). On the way there, the ship he is traveling on is barely holding on because God has sent a storm against them. The sailors blame Jonah, Jonah takes the blame and goes "alright, you know what? Just throw me over board and the storm will cease." The sailors refuse, but Jonah goes overboard anyway. He comes back to the surface three days later reborn in the water as as a new man, now fully convinced to follow his path as a prophet.

Depending on the translation there are a lot of similitudes between the texts. Even the imagery used for describing settings is alike. I know religious scriptures get a bad rep because of all the atrocities committed in their names (valid, very valid), but viewed simply as text, they have some truly beautiful prose and the Book of Jonah is so vivid and precious, and it is very reminiscent to some of Aeron's chapters.

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said:  “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me.  From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,/out of the belly of Sheol I cried,  and you listened to my cry./and you heard my voice.  You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas,  and the currents swirled about me;  all your waves and breakers swept over me. I said, ‘I have been banished  from your sight;  yet I will look again  toward your holy temple.’  The engulfing waters were at my throat,  the deep surrounded me;  seaweed was wrapped around my head.  To the roots of the mountains I sank down;  the earth beneath barred me in forever.  But you, Lord my God,  brought my life up from the pit.  “When my life was ebbing away,  I remembered you, Lord,  and my prayer rose to you,  to your holy temple.  “Those who cling to worthless idols  turn away from God’s love for them.  But I, with shouts of grateful praise,  will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good.  I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”  And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land. - Jonah 2

The seaweed in his head, the belly of the beast (Silence/Sheol), the crashing of the waves, the engulfing waters.

I won't even really go into The Forsaken with the Jonah comparison, because to me the Forsaken is the most open "Jesus in the dessert" analogy, but I still find it compelling to imagine Jonah and Aeron, both inside the whale/ship desperately praying to their God. Only one of them finds salvation and it's not Aeron.

But asides from setting and aesthetic there are these:

The god took me deep beneath the waves and drowned the worthless thing I was. When he cast me forth again he gave me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to spread his word, that I might be his prophet and teach his truth to those who have forgotten. - The Prophet, AFFC

Ears that hear and eyes that see— the Lord has made them both. - Proverbs 20:12

Otherwise that they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. - Isaiah 6:10

They have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see. They have ears but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. - Psalm 135:16 & Psalm 115:5

There is a singer from my country, she wrote a song called "Thanks for life" and then killed herself three months later (Iconic behaviour). The song is still considered a "humanist hymn", which I think is morbidly hilarious. In the lyrics, she keeps thanking life for things that should be basic to life; for having eyes, ears, mouth and hands. I think there is something interesting in how these are all basic atributes most people are born with but these acts of gratefulness, at least in Aeron and Jonah's case are not made in bad faith. They are genuine and true.

 The Drowned God gives every man a gift. - The Prophet AFFC

Are these seen as the God's gifts too? If so, are these acts of gratefulness supposed to make the believers humble and less ambitious? Or is it just that the God is a niggardly one? We know of Aeron having thought his gift was that he could piss longer and farther than most, and later on he recognises the power of his speech, his eloquence. Surprisingly, Aeron is never stripped of that gift once Euron captures him.

His eloquence is his strength, through it he preaches, leads religious rites, advices lords and convinces others to join the faith. And of course, he also baptises.

Baptisms, baptisms, baptising, cleaning the sins way, water as a metaphor for blood, birth, rebirth, John the Baptist!

This is where the storm -> near death experience -> spiritual reawakening pattern ends, but the similarities become more clear when we recognise both of them as heralds whose strength lies in their reputation and their oratory, something both Euron & Herod recognise and it is what keeps them from killing him (or in Herod's case at least for some time).

I have mentioned on my blog that I don't buy a lot into the Jesus-Theon comparisons and I will mention it again later but, since I am a hypocrite, I will take the Theon-Jesus bait and use it as a prop for my Aeron-John thing. As of now there are just two instances involving Theon that actually make me think of Jesus:

Psalms 22

His baptism

Jesus baptism marks his place as "messiah" but it also announces the beginning of his true calvary. By having the Holy Spirit descend on him after the water has cleansed him, he accepts his destiny as his father's (God) lamb to the slaughter. According to Matthew's Gospel it is even Jesus who has to beg John to baptise him, although John is initially reluctant. After the baptism Jesus departs to the dessert knowing of the suffering that awaits for him. This is not the case for Theon. Theon initially doesn't even want to be baptised. It's almost like he is subconsciously trying to escape what is to come after the baptism: the anguish.

Lifting the skin, his uncle pulled the cork and directed a thin stream of seawater down upon Theon's head. It drenched his hair and ran over his forehead into his eyes. Sheets washed down his cheeks, and a finger crept under his cloak and doublet and down his back, a cold rivulet along his spine. The salt made his eyes burn, until it was all he could do not to cry out. He could taste the ocean on his lips. "Let Theon your servant be born again from the sea, as you were," Aeron Greyjoy intoned. "Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel." - Theon I, ACOK

I love Theon's baptism by Aeron. It goes badly and it's tragicomical. It feels like a mockery of Jesus' baptism. A satirised Monty Python type of scene.

Here he comes, our cocksure young man who sees himself as the chosen one, holding a promise of paper while thinking there is an entire comet heralding his return, here he comes, our prodigal son, all "Don't need no advice! I got a plan! I know the direction, the lay on the land! [...] Nuh-nuh-nothing can break-nuh-noting can break me down!" only to get cold feet and be made to kneel in the mud, annoyed at the custom that would have actually anointed him, and then having to blink the tears away because it hurts him. @/shebsart has a really beautiful and intense but also comical depiction of the scene and I really love it.

It's also a little sad. It shows a disconnection from what should have been his culture and faith. The saltwater washed Aeron's follies away. Aeron embraces it, he drinks saltwater, bathes in saltwater and would probably not mind it on his eyes. The saltwater nurtures Aeron, but to Theon it only gives pain.

Ok now, to

Reek, Aeron, Job and Jeyne, Falia and Job's wife

(I think a reading of The Book of Job could also be applied to Lancel Lannister with Amerei Frey taking the role of Job's wife and Jaime Lannister acting as Job's friends, but I won't write about him and even Aeron will be in second place. @/nosaeanchorage wrote meta about the religious journeys Theon, Aeron and Lancel experience involving trauma responses which I found to be very interesting and well formed, so yeah I'd recommend reading it!)

The book of Job has a theme in its story. Can you guess it? It's further suffering!

(In a very deep voice: Where were you when I feel from grace? A frozen heart, an empty space)

So, Job is this guy living a rather fulfilling and morally righteous life; he is happy with his wife and children, has a few friends, is wealthy and healthy and, most importantly, he is God-fearing. Satan tells God that the only reason Job is loyal to him and serves him so dutifully, is because God has been good to him. God gets insecure and tells Satan "alright, let's see if you are right. Go torture him a little. You can take his riches, his children and his health in that order. You can take pretty much everything he values, but keep him alive!"

Job becomes a miserable wreck of a man.

It's not a favourite of mine, but it has a pretty good interval of "pathetic wet kitten blorbo" and "angry, scornful almost defiant in his resentment survivor" so I still enjoy it. And it also opens the question on whether "divine punishment" is really something inherently based on justice and goodness, it defies the way many religions tend to preach that bad things can only happen to bad people and, unlike the suffering promised by Christ, there is no redemption to be found through it. Job at some point gets healthy again and his riches are restored, but this was not a given. The suffering is pointless unless he finds a meaning to it.

This doesn't really sound a lot like Theon or Aeron. Both of them were deprived of well adjusted, happy lives since childhood, but Theon's behaviour towards Ramsay sometimes reminds me of Job's feelings for God, and Euron literally claims himself to be a God.

Ramsay is never directly compared by the text or any characters to a God (well maybe he himself does, but that's arguable), the closest we come to such is this:

“The gods are not done with me,” Theon answered, wondering if this could be the killer, the night walker who had stuffed Yellow Dick’s cock into his mouth and pushed Roger Ryswell’s groom off the battlements. Oddly, he was not afraid. He pulled the glove from his left hand. “Lord Ramsay is not done with me.” - A Ghost in Winterfell, ADWD

But Theon's fear for him sometimes makes me think of one. He is so terrified of Ramsay and sees him as this unbeatable force, but keeps telling himself and others that whatever Ramsay has done, as nefarious as it is, is an act of mercy and goodness. I know there are different interpretations to that behaviour. Some readers tend to believe that he has successfully gaslighted himself, others see it as a remnant of his sardonic and sarcastic sense of humour. Personally, I imagine it's a mixture of both. There is enough textual evidence for me to believe he does not truly think Ramsay is justified in his actions, but I can imagine how he might try telling himself that no punishment goes undeserved as a way of coping, which is what he tells Jeyne too.

In the Book of Job, our poor little meow meow goes through different reactions as his torture starts, many of them resemble Theon's thoughts, never fully by text, but very much in spirit.

He would crush me with a storm and multiply my wounds for no reason. He would not let me catch my breath but would overwhelm me with misery. If it is a matter of strength, he is mighty! And if it is a matter of justice, who can challenge him? Even if I were innocent, my mouth would condemn me; if I were blameless, it would pronounce me guilty. - Job 9:17-20

How long will you torment me and crush me with words?  Ten times now you have reproached me; shamelessly you attack me.   If it is true that I have gone astray, my error remains my concern alone. If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my humiliation against me, then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me.  Though I cry, ‘Violence!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice. He has blocked my way so I cannot pass; he has shrouded my paths in darkness.  He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head.  He tears me down on every side till I am gone; he uproots my hope like a tree.  His anger burns against me; he counts me among his enemies.  His troops advance in force; they build a siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent.  He has alienated my family from me; my acquaintances are completely estranged from me.  My relatives have gone away; my closest friends have forgotten me.  My guests and my female servants count me a foreigner; they look on me as on a stranger.  I summon my servant, but he does not answer, though I beg him with my own mouth.  My breath is offensive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family.  Even the little boys scorn me; when I appear, they ridicule me.  All my intimate friends detest me; those I love have turned against me.  I am nothing but skin and bones; I have escaped only by the skin of my teeth. - Job 19:1-20

That, the ambivalent conviction that they deserve to be punished, and the overall fear of their torturer's omnipotence are written similarly. Of course in Job's narrative the omnipotence is real, in Theon's it is only perceived, but so, so strongly.

And this is where Jeyne takes an interesting role.

Job's wife is a fun character and I admire her. To some extent she and Jeyne serve similar purposes in the story, since they defy Job and Theon's conviction of their fate being unescapable. Sadly, in Job and his wife's case, she is wrong because you can't defeat God and you can't escape him, but I still appreciate her condemnation of Job's passivity and God's supposed goodness. The text focuses on Job's pain but never on the collateral pain that reaches his wife. She might not have fallen sick, but since her living condition is tied to that of her husband she is affected by all this. She has lost her riches, her happiness, her children, and only because of God's whims, someone she begins to hate. She also begins to loathe Job and the way he keeps making excuses for God and justifying the tragedy that befalls them. So, she tells Job:

“Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” - Job 2:9

(fucking metal, I love her, iconic behaviour)

The holy scriptures are not very compassionate to women who defy men or God, they get vilified and punished, but I applaud that bravery.

In Jeyne's case, her defying of Theon's conviction that Ramsay is unescapable is done much more gently and the relationship between them appears to be one of mutual compassion; Theon often tries to victim-blame her in the same way he blames himself but never seems to truly internalise that, Jeyne apparently doesn't hold his participation in her abuse against him and considers him her saviour. But still! Jeyne, as meek and scared as she is, is the one who by constantly asking for help, by acting undignified in her suffering and not simply taking it without question, manages to water this seed of doubt in Theon's mind, even if he himself isn't fully aware of that.

And it's kind of fun to think how, although Jeyne and Falia are narrative props with similar purposes, it's Jeyne and Aeron who take the place of Job's wife. Falia is Job, fully sure that Euron is merciful and will treat her with respect and care for their children, that Euron will not forsake her, while Aeron is immediately telling her to run for her life.

Maybe because, unlike Theon, his faith is already placed in a God.

Jesus Christ & The Forsaken (and Lodos and Theon)

(Need new song...Wow a yard SAIL!)

Lodos

I'm going to clear the issue with Lodos very fast, because he too seems to be like a wink at Jesus Christ. Lodos literally claims he is the Drowned God's Son, dies, then supposedly comes back from the dead some time later like "'sup", leads a rebellion against the current ruler of the Iron Islands and dies again this time with all his followers being persecuted and killed, so yeah, he seems like a satirised version of Jesus Christ but there is not a lot more to that.

Theon

I have seen people claiming connections between the two but never in a manner I could agree with, and I feel so stupid because I don't get it. People sometimes compared his and Robb's relationship to Jesus & Judas, which aside from the suicidal thoughts post "betrayal" doesn't seem very alike. The "betrayal" was done for different reasons, the reactions to the "betrayal" are different, and the guilt also comes from different places. By placing Theon as Judas we also sanctify Robb in a manner I find almost insulting since Robb condoned and approved of Theon's torture by the Boltons. If I'm going to compare Robb and Theon it will be more to God & Satan, but even there it's only a superficial similitude.

Now, Aeron, Aeron, my love, Aeron!

My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me? - Psalms 22:1

“Still praying, priest? Your god has forsaken you.” - The Forsaken, TWOW

Even the title feels like a reference. The trajectory of Aeron's belief during the chapter resembles the psalms too and, although I never believe in anything I think, their similitudes are what makes me hopeful about Aeron's fate; the idea that he is not truly forsaken.

As hinted above, the Psalms begin lamenting themselves over the anguish that God is seemingly not stoping, yet as they continue the psalmist becomes even more convinced of his God being a merciful one who will provide a cure for his afflictions, one whom the world should praise.

For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.  From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you I will fulfil my vows.  The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the LORD will praise him— may your hearts live forever!  All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive.  Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord.  They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it! - Psalms 22:24-31

According to most interpretations, the psalmist himself is Jesus. This is the suffering of Christ and from Psalms 22:22-31 it is spoken by him after coming back from the dead. He encourages others, those who have witnessed his anguish, to believe. This is also what Aeron does once Falia is bound to the prow with him, he tells her of better times to come.

“Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.” - The Forsaken, TWOW

This also slightly mirrors Jesus and the Penitent Thief, who is crucified next to the Messiah and fears what is to come after death. He asks Jesus to not forget him.

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” - Luke 23:43

It's so remarkable and moving to me how Aeron has always tried to protect Falia from Euron. He doesn't know her, if he were to have known her he would have probably looked at her with scorn, to some extent she has acted as an accomplice to Euron in his captivity, and yet...he promises this frivolous greenlander girl that the two of them will feast together...

The end of the chapter also carries christian imagery that seems to stem from Christ's crucifixion.

“Your Grace,” said Torwold Browntooth. “I have the priests. What do you want done with them?” “Bind them to the prows,” Euron commanded. “My brother on the Silence. Take one for yourself. Let them dice for the others, one to a ship. Let them feel the spray, the kiss of the Drowned God, wet and salty.” - The Forsaken, TWOW

When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.  Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.” This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, “They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.” So this is what the soldiers did. - John 19:23-24

They bound Aeron Damphair tight with strips of leather that would shrink when wet, clad only in his beard and breechclout.  - The Forsaken, TWOW

The overall mental image summoned by that description is also rather similar to the typical depictions of Christ on the cross.

And even prior to The Forsaken, there are still some smaller, more superficial similitudes between the two.

Aeron lives sparingly, has no material possessions save for his waterskin and robe, he has a cult of followers devoted to him, and disregards governmental authority since he obeys to a higher power, one who encourages suffering in the same manner christianity does. Aeron fasts, goes swimming in cold water, drinks salt water, all this as a way to serve his God and become a living example of their teachings.

So yeah, in my opinion Aeron is the closest we have to an ASOIAF Jesus reference. It's not Theon, Theon's torture by Ramsay and the torture he imposes on himself afterward have no ideological purpose, it is pointless and unwilling. In my opinion, it's not Jon, it's not Beric, it surely isn't Robb, I hope it's not Dany (although I see a lot of abrahamic imagery in her (Moses + Lot's wife)), it's the Damphair. And I love that. I love how (according to the the author) one of the least sympathetic characters in this story has been somewhat equated to Jesus. A bold move, one that I've enjoyed a lot.

Anyway, in order to further develop this.

The Storm God, Euron and the Devil

Let's go!

I feel like Euron would appreciate this type of stuff he is flamboyant, weird and comical. If we ever get an ASOIAF musical I like to believe this could be inspiration for a duet between them.

Monotheism is a rare concept in ASOIAF.

The Many-Faced God could be the closest we have to a (explored in text) monotheistic religion, although it is monotheistic in the way Hinduism could be considered monotheistic: The belief in one supreme god whose qualities and forms are represented by a multitude of different deities, all which emanate from one alone. 

Out of the religions that are explored in the books none of them are really monotheistic, although some of them demand for their worshippers to worship them and no other.

Most real-life monotheistic religions have a type of "anti" to their god, who is not a god themselves, but is a being superior to humankind meant to drive them to perdition. They function more as a tool for testing human's moral compass and will to follow the true God than a foe. The word "Satan" means "adversary", but this is in reference to his relationship to humans, not to God.

In Goethe's Faust, God and one of his devils, Mephistopheles, make a bet and Mephistopheles is fully devoted to winning that bet. He does everything in his power to prove human virtue isn't true and that corruption will always prevail. The story proves he has a point. Faust does some completely despicable and heinous stuff and is very immoral, and still Mephistopheles loses anyway because God decides to pardon Faust's misdeeds and allows him to enter Heaven. Mephistopheles never stood a chance. He was fighting the narrative and the writer of the narrative and he could only be defeated by them. He is only a minion of God who doesn't comprehend his position and believes he is capable of surpassing a creature who is above all.

This is pretty compliant with christianity's views on the devil.

Hoverer, it is not the case with beliefs like those of Aeron and Melisandre. They don't regard the Storm God and the Great Other as mere petty minions doing the Drowned God's or R'hllor's dirty work. They see them as threats and all other gods as their petty minions.

"There are no gods but R'hllor and the Other, whose name may not be said." - Victarion I, ADWD

"Your Drowned God is a demon, he is no more than a thrall of the Other, the dark god whose name must not be spoken." - Victarion I, ADWD

The Storm God is considered an enemy of the Drowned God, and although his labour is similar to that of the christian devil (driving men/sailors into their doom), he seems to be his own creature.

And still! When comparing Aeron's role to Jesus Christ in the Forsaken, I can't help but think of Euron, the Storm God, and Satan as one.

“Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” - The Forsaken, TWOW

(Not gonna lie, I think it's very fun how out of all the Greyjoy's the one whose name is directly derived from "God" is actually Theon, but alright, whatever...)

We don't really know what triggered Aeron's religious awakening. With Theon, Ramsay and his time in Winterfell is the easiest answer, with Aeron it's a mystery and I don't dare to say religion was a coping mechanism for Euron's sexual abuse or Urri's death because, based on what we know, the more plausible options are that alcohol and sex were the coping mechanisms.

We only know he went down in a storm and washed up ashore. On itself that is enough to be traumatic, so I don't know how much we should speculate on it.

A smile played across Euron's blue lips. "I am the storm, my lord. The first storm, and the last. - The Reaver, AFFC

I don't even have a theory, I don't have any proof or a structured idea. This just seemed remarkable to me. The concept that Euron might be involved in whatever happened during that storm is tempting and fun, nothing more.

Now, if Aeron is playing the role of Jesus, with Falia as the penitent thief during the "crucification", then I think I can claim Euron is taking the role of Satan; especially during The Forsaken.

After an undetermined, but apparently long period of starvation and isolation, Euron finally comes to Aeron, dressed in black and red, and presents the equivalent to the Devil's three temptations.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”  Jesus answered,  “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.  “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’ ”  Jesus answered him,  “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will kneel and worship me.” Jesus said to him,  “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ ” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. - Matthew 4:1-11

“That’s it, priest. Gulp it down. The wine of the warlocks, sweeter than your seawater, with more truth in it than all the gods of earth.” - The Forsaken, TWOW

“Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.” “Not even you would dare,” said the Damphair. “I am your brother. No man is more accursed than the kinslayer.” - The Forsaken, TWOW

“Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” - The Forsaken, TWOW

I'm not going to pretend they are the same, with exception of the third one, but even the others have small resemblances; nourishment of some sort after starving + trying to get the other killed, although the later one reminds me more of an encounter between him and Victarion.

Euron turned to face him, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. "Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower?" - The Reaver, AFFC

The last temptation, is the most interesting to me, because Euron has already distorted Aeron's faith into being chosen as King. He played at the edge of legality and won! And yet now, during The Forsaken he is experiencing a sort of existential defeat. Aeron is not being rescued by any god, but he would rather die as a martyr or accept even more torture and suffering rather than serve him. It doesn't matter how much Euron tries to convince him that his God has abandoned him, that he is a greater force, like Jonah, Job and Jesus Aeron refuses to abandon his faith.

And I think this persistence is what will keep him alive.

I've always found it very fun and interesting that Euron never threatens to cut Aeron's tongue out.

When wondering why, the Theon-Ramsay answer would be that Euron likes to hear Aeron's pain, which makes sense given how Aeron is a more targeted victim of his compared to ex. Falia Flowers. But Euron very clearly intends to gain Aeron to his side. He knows of the power Aeron holds in his voice and speech, of his reputation as a holy and respected man among the Ironborn, and how much of a waste it would be to simply throw away that power. Remember Varys' "[Cersei] knows a tame wolf is of more use than a dead one"? An eloquent priest is of more use than a mute one.

But this also backfires on him because since Aeron's integrity can't be broken, he manages to keep defying him and even continues spreading the word of the Drowned God, even as he is in a situation of mortal peril.

And still, even if the end of The Forsaken is somewhat triumphal, I can't believe it.

Yes, he is strengthening his faith, this obviously is a victory over Euron, his persistence and loyalty, but how long will it last? Weirdly enough out of my five favourite POV characters, Aeron is the one whose death I'm convinced of the least (sadly), and whenever I try picturing him after managing to get away from the Silence I can't help but imagine there will be a change in his mindset and I don't know what form it will take.

“Even a priest may doubt. Even a prophet may know terror. Aeron Damphair reached within himself for his god and discovered only silence.” - The Drowned Man, AFFC

Maybe it is because the chances of getting to my 30s are very narrow, and in the mean time I am in physical and mental pain, that I find there is something very beautiful and empowering about showing that the horrors are not always meaningful, and that they are continuous. The horrors are trying to live before, during and after the horrors.

So anyway, the reason I brought up Nietzsche way earlier in this is because I don't think the suffering in characters like Aeron or Theon is of nihilistic nature and it baffles me when people pretend it is. This is not suffering for the sake of suffering because suffering is inevitable and pointless and blah blah blah blah misery porn blah blah blah trauma porn blah blah blah moral outrage blah blah blah. It is suffering, it is inevitable, it can be pointless, and it makes a huge point in the narrative and the characters lives! And it is important to me that we see characters go through these things; to see them lose, grieve and hate, to see them being imperfect examples of victimhood, even if their feelings on the matter will vary. Some might attach some personal value to their trauma and others won't and both should be allowed to exist in media without people pretending only one of those is valid.

Theon's suffering is something very rare and precious to me because it serves no greater purpose. It started before he even met Ramsay and hasn't known at end ever since. I don't consider it redemptive, it's not a justified karmic punishment either. It carries no ideology and it's not for the sake of others. There is no consolation for him or anyone else because of it. The blood will coagulate, dry and be washed away, the wounds will scar and heal, and he will gain weight and muscles back and none of his mental issues will be solved. The torture doesn't fix him.

And I think that his possible outlook on it will be very interesting to see in contrast with Aeron's and their respective religious journeys. Theon's religious awakening is different and still genuine. It is in servitude to another faith that would be looked down upon by Aeron, and whom even Theon himself denied back in ACOK, mockingly referring to them as trees.

"Tell me true, nephew. Do you pray to the wolf gods now?" Theon seldom prayed at all, but that was not something you confessed to a priest, even your father's own brother. "Ned Stark prayed to a tree. No, I care nothing for Stark's gods." "Good. Kneel." - Theon I, ACOK

And I can't imagine an Aeron who, after going through an event this world-shattering (being tied to the prow of a ship while living unspeakable horrors, being drugged by the person who sexually abused him as a child and has now confessed to killing their brothers, one of whom Aeron seemed fond of, being confronted with the victory of a self proclaimed god whom he despises, and starting to form his own connection with a former mean girl whom he would have spat on, now co-victim), would be as judgemental to his nephew's newly awoken beliefs, even if they differ, even if he keeps viewing his own calvary as something divine, even if to Theon the suffering will never be a positive.

With all this said, I will admit I long for some evolution in Aeron's faith as the story progresses. I am open to pretty much every ending, but I love the possibility of a rupture between him and the faith that has been sustaining him for so long. Perhaps not a full negation of his God, but some questioning of his religion. The unsettlement of the "God is Dead" sentiment crawling in the cracks of his doubt.

So, simply out of curiosity in case anyone actually managed to get here:

[rebatom]

I Am Also a Nihilist

”

I

I am an individualist because I am an anarchist; and I am an anarchist because I am a nihilist. But I also understand nihilism in my own way...

I don’t care whether it is Nordic or Oriental, nor whether or not it has a historical, political, practical tradition, or a theoretical, philosophical, spiritual, intellectual one. I call myself a nihilist because I know that nihilism means negation.

Negation of every society, of every cult, of every rule and of every religion. But I don’t yearn for Nirvana, any more than I long for Schopenhauer’s desperate and powerless pessimism, which is a worse thing than the violent renunciation of life itself. Mine is an enthusiastic and dionysian pessimism, like a flame that sets my vital exuberance ablaze, that mocks at any theoretical, scientific or moral prison.

And if I call myself an individualist anarchist, an iconoclast and a nihilist, it is precisely because I believe that in these adjectives there is the highest and most complete expression of my willful and reckless individuality that, like an overflowing river, wants to expand, impetuously sweeping away dikes and hedges, until it crashes into a granite boulder, shattering and breaking up in its turn. I do not renounce life. I exalt and sing it.

II

Anyone who renounces life because he feels that it is nothing but pain and sorrow and doesn’t find in himself the heroic courage to kill himself is - in my opinion - a grotesque poser and a helpless person; just as one is a pitifully inferior being if he believes that the sacred tree of happiness is a twisted plant on all apes will be able to scramble in the more or less near future, and that then the shadow of pain will be driven away by the phosphorescent fireworks of the true Good...

III

Life - for me - is neither good nor bad, neither a theory nor an idea. Life is a reality, and the reality of life is war. For one who is a born warrior, life is a fountain of joy, for others it is only a fountain of humiliation and sorrow. I no longer demand carefree joy from life. It couldn’t give it to me, and I would no longer know what to do with it now that my adolescence is past...

Instead I demand that it give me the perverse joy of battle that gives me the sorrowful spasms of defeat and the voluptuous thrills of victory.

Defeated in the mud or victorious in the sun, I sing life and I love it!

There is no rest for my rebel spirit except in war, just as there is no greater happiness for my vagabond, negating mind than the uninhibited affirmation of my capacity to life and to rejoice. My every defeat serves me only as symphonic prelude to a new victory.

IV

From the day that I came into the light - through a chance coincidence that I don’t care to go into right now - I carried my own Good and my own Bad with me.

Meaning: my joy and my sorrow, still in embryo. Both advanced with me along the road of time. The more intensely I felt joy, the more deeply I understood sorrow. You can’t suppress the one without suppressing the other.

Now I have smashed down the door and revealed the Sphinx’s riddle. Joy and sorrow are only two liquors with which life merrily gets drunk. Therefore, it is not true that life is a squalid and frightening desert where flowers no longer blossom nor vermilion fruits ripen.

And even the mightiest of all sorrows, the one that drives a strong man toward the conscious and tragic shattering of his own individuality, is only a vigorous manifestation of art and beauty.

And it returns again to the universal human current with the dazzling rays of crime that breaks up and sweeps away all the crystallized reality of the circumscribed world of the many in order to rise toward the ultimate ideal flame and disperse in the endless fire of the new.

V

The revolt of the free one against sorrow is only the intimate, passionate desire for a more intense and greater joy. But the greatest joy can only show itself to him in the mirror of the deepest sorrow, merging with it later in a vast barbaric embrace. And from this vast and fruitful embrace the higher smile of the strong one springs, as, in the midst of conflict, he sings the most thundering hymn to life.

A hymn woven from contempt and scorn, from will and might. A hymn that vibrates and throbs in the light of the sun as it shines on tombs, a hymn that revives the nothing and fills it with sound.

VI

Over Socrates’ slave spirit that stoically accepts death and Diogenes’ free spirit that cynically accepts life, rises the triumphal rainbow on which the sacrilegious crusher of new phantoms, the radical destroyer of every moral world, dances. It is the free one who dances on high amidst the magnificent phosphorescence of the sun.

And when huge clouds of gloomy darkness rise from swampy chasms to hinder his view of the light and block his path, he opens the way with shots from his Browning or stops their course with the flame of his domineering fantasy, forcing them to submit as humble slaves at his feet.

But only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world.

I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will.

I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don’t want and I don’t grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism. Life, for me, is nothing but a heroic poem of joy and perversity written with the bleeding hands of sorrow and pain or a tragic dream of art and beauty!”

… Renzo Novatore

[belacqui-pro-quo]

In this atmosphere of the breakdown of class society the psychology of the European mass man developed. The fact that with monotonous but abstract uniformity the same fate had befallen a mass of individuals did not prevent their judging themselves in terms of individual failure or the world in terms of specific injustice. This self-centered bitterness, however, although repeated again and again in individual isolation, was not a common bond despite its tendency to extinguish individual differences, because it was based on no common interest, economic or social or political. Self-centeredness, therefore, went hand in hand with a decisive weakening of the instinct for self-preservation. Selflessness in the sense that oneself does not matter, the feeling of being expendable, was no longer the expression of individual idealism but a mass phenomenon. The old adage that the poor and oppressed have nothing to lose but their chains no longer applied to the mass men, for they lost much more than the chains of misery when they lost interest in their own well-being: the source of all the worries and cares which make human life troublesome and anguished was gone. Compared with their nonmaterialism, a Christian monk looks like a man absorbed in worldly affairs. Himmler, who knew so well the mentality of those whom he organized, described not only his SS-men, but the large strata from which he recruited them, when he said they were not interested in "everyday problems" but only "in ideological questions of importance for decades and centuries, so that the man ... knows he is working for a great task which occurs but once in 2,000 years." The gigantic massing of individuals produced a mentality which, like Cecil Rhodes some forty years before, thought in continents and felt in centuries.

Eminent European scholars and statesmen had predicted, from the early nineteenth century onward, the rise of the mass man and the coming of a mass age. A whole literature on mass behavior and mass psychology had demonstrated and popularized the wisdom, so familiar to the ancients, of the affinity between democracy and dictatorship, between mob rule and tyranny. They had prepared certain politically conscious and overconscious sections of the Western educated world for the emergence of demagogues, for gullibility, superstition, and brutality. Yet, while all these predictions in a sense came true, they lost much of their significance in view of such unexpected and unpredicted phenomena as the radical loss of self-interest, the cynical or bored indifference in the face of death or other personal catastrophes, the passionate inclination toward the most abstract notions as guides for life, and the general contempt for even the most obvious rules of common sense.

The masses, contrary to prediction, did not result from growing equality of condition, from the spread of general education and its inevitable lowering of standards and popularization of content. (America, the classical land of equality of condition and of general education with all its shortcomings, knows less of the modern psychology of masses than perhaps any other country in the world.) It soon became apparent that highly cultured people were particularly attracted to mass movements and that, generally, highly differentiated individualism and sophistication did not prevent, indeed sometimes encouraged, the self-abandonment into the mass for which mass movements provided. Since the obvious fact that individualization and cultivation do not prevent the formation of mass attitudes was so unexpected, it has frequently been blamed upon the morbidity or nihilism of the modern intelIigentsia, upon a supposedly typical intellectual self-hatred, upon the spirit's "hostility to life" and antagonism to Vitality. Yet, the muchslandered intellectuals were only the most illustrative example and the most articulate spokesmen for a much more general phenomenon. Social atomization and extreme individualization preceded the mass movements which, much more easily and earliet than they did the sociable, nonindividualistic members of the traditional parties, attracted the completely unorganized, the typical "nonjoiners" who for individualistic reasons always had refused to recognize social links or obligations.

The truth is that the masses grew out of the fragments of a highly atomized society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held in check only through membership in a class. The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships. Coming from the class-ridden society of the nation-state, whose cracks had been cemented with nationalistic sentiment, it is only natural that these masses, in the first helplessness of their new experience, have tended toward an especially violent nationalism, to which mass leaders have yielded against their own instincts and purposes for purely demagogic reasons.

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

[ogradyfilm]

2023: A Year in (Movie) Review(s)

Every cinephile has at least one Holy Grail. It's a common story: interest in said rare movie is piqued by a fleeting allusion in the pages of some neglected reference book or obscure magazine article. Gradually, curiosity evolves into infatuation, then obsession, manifesting as a desperate pursuit that might persist for decades, the search constantly hampered by the tragic fact that the White Whale in question remains stubbornly elusive—either out-of-print or never officially licensed or localized in the first place. And even if it is available (usually through sources of dubious legality), the image quality is always barely a step above an nth generation VHS transfer.

Well, in 2023, I managed to cross five such films off my personal “bucket list”—and despite the year’s numerous challenges (financially, in particular), I think that’s an accomplishment worth celebrating. Thus, in the interest of posterity, I’ve enumerated them below, along with brief descriptions and links to the corresponding reviews I wrote immediately after seeing them:

A Page of Madness: Of all the miraculous discoveries on this list, this one was undoubtedly the most unceremonious and anticlimactic. I randomly stumbled across this silent avant-garde masterpiece (of which I became aware way back in college) while nonchalantly browsing Amazon Prime’s digital library; suddenly, there it was, available to rent for a paltry three dollars. The movie itself was sublime, of course; after spending such a significant chunk of my life hunting it down, however, the relative ease with which I ultimately acquired it couldn’t help but feel a bit… underwhelming.

Samurai Wolf: Although Hideo Gosha’s lean, mean chanbara classic has never truly been out of reach to those “in the know,” my own research into the assorted bootlegs and unauthorized foreign imports available via various online marketplaces was… less than encouraging. Fortunately, Film Movement came to the rescue like a chivalrous ronin; the restoration on the company’s Blu-ray release is borderline pristine, enriching the director’s already bold compositions and dynamic camerawork. Nihilism and moral decay have seldom looked so beautiful.

Angel’s Egg: Home video copies of Mamoru Oshii’s surreal animated allegory tend to be obscenely, prohibitively expensive in the West, and tickets for the infrequent repertory screenings generally sell out almost instantly. Thankfully, a recent overabundance of free time afforded me the opportunity to experience the film’s haunting, hallucinatory magic under ideal circumstances—in a theater absolutely packed with fellow fans and aficionados. The Q&A with art director/character designer Yoshitaka Amano that followed the feature presentation (courtesy of Japan Society) was just icing on the cake.

Door: While Banmei Takahashi’s taut, suspenseful, claustrophobic thriller is the latest addition to this list (I learned of its existence roughly a year ago, through out-of-context clips shared between several Twitter accounts), you shouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating my enthusiasm for it—my desire to see it burned with the fiery passion of a spurned admirer. As luck would have it, my thirst was sated rather quickly compared to the previous entries on this countdown; the movie played at this year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival—perfectly scheduled to coincide with the Halloween season.

Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis - When I initially encountered this ambitious, extravagant, and extremely expensive special effects extravaganza, the only viable way to view it was in twelve parts on YouTube, compressed to about 240p resolution—a format that hardly does the spectacle justice. Thank goodness for the fine programmers at Japan Society; the big screen really smooths out the movie’s minor flaws and superficial blemishes, and Kyusaku Shimada’s magnificent performance as the nefarious Yasunori Kato certainly benefits from a more expansive frame. Guess I can finally stop requesting the film in the feedback section of literally every post-screening survey…

And that essentially sums up my 2023; the satisfaction of enjoying so many films that had been taunting and tantalizing my imagination definitely took the sting out of the whole "prolonged unemployment" situation. With that said, I’d like to wish everybody a very Happy New Year! Hopefully, my adventures in cinema will continue in 2024. (For God’s sake, will some distributor please show Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Sweet Home the love it so richly deserves?!)

[waterparksdrama]

man i know yallre just worried for them and it comes from deep appreciation for what the band has done up until this point but, why all of the nihilism??

sure funeral grey and fuck about it are.. pretty vapid in a few ways but, they each have a least a lyric or two worth something and sound generally catchy? rsd and self sabotage are pretty good imo, and seem genuine/vunerable even if they showcase Bad Stuff for awsten. and we havent got to see really *any* of the record thusfar because theyve been so busy, so there can be hidden gems. no ones gotta deny the clear appeal to general audiences, but i dont think we have to shit on it *so* heavily. ultimately they seem to want to keep growing and making music. they are probably pretty wealthy but its likely not enough to drop everything after one last poorly performing album. i especially can’t imagine that awsten would want to “let Them win” by leaving from feeling miserable due to ending up the same as every other artist or “failing” to play the industry game.

it would be ideal if they took these next few months before ymas tour to take a genuine break (minimal writing, no studio, nothing) and let fans know a vague release date but that its for the best so that they can put their all into it. i know realistically that probably wont be how it goes, but i trust them to recognize their own burnout and take *somewhat* of a break before their art suffers for it. even if they were planning on this being the last album before a hiatus, i cannot imagine theyd want to flop hard instead of going out on a bang. this doesnt have to be “the end of a good band” etc, awsten has openly talked about how much criticism theyve gotten from the start even on black light.

how hard is it to take the bands experimentation at face value or at least give awsten the credit of knowing when enoughs enough?

wow this is long and im not even sure if my response will encompass all of this but i'll try

i think the nihilism is reasonable tbh. it's not like awsten changes his bad habits online and it's not like this fanbase gets any less annoying and the songs don't get stupider etc etc. everything and nothing ever changes with this band at the same time. they get older, but habits still stay and never leave.

i think the new songs for the most part are passable but aren't really "parx songs" in the classic sense meaning "playful, but with some serious passion entwined in it that really gets you hooked". it just feels really edgy yet somehow generic when he tries to push some of these sex lyrics in and it just feels awkward especially coming from him of all people. and the complaining songs (as i call them) about shit he always complains about (fans, music critics, being a d list internet celebrity at best) is so fucking tired and also some of the things he complains about are usually his fault and something he can stop.

i do think they want to keep growing and making music but i also feel like they're trying to convince themselves that they are in the first place bc things just don't flow the same anymore especially now that they don't even all live in the same place. i don't think they're sticking to whatever plan awsten had in his head for this album from the looks of it bc i have a feeling it's been reworked a lot and he's kind of stalling its official announcement to rework it in the first place.

as of taking a break, while that is a good idea and you know they probably won't anyways, have you seen awsten? he barely takes breaks and even when he says he does, it just means he's lurking without saying anything because he doesn't wanna say shit. he legit has not taken a real break since goddamn 2010 because even after he finishes something, he's always onto something else. in fact, i'm pretty sure the only reason there's such big gaps between the eps was just to gather the resources and promo they needed to record them in the first place bc they're always making some shit no matter what. i don't trust him to take a break even if they're burned out bc he'll always have something to say and write as stupid as he manages it.

it's ironic you use the term experimentation considering they're really just relapsing into that modern distilled pop punk sound when their last album was experimental one. i feel like if awsten's trying to go mainstream on the radio, let him; it won't necessarily mean it's the best they've put out. and awsten never knows when enough's enough; he'll take things too far every time (love, internet jokes, etc etc) and won't jump back until he stops posting (only for a little while of course and he'll still lurk himself in that time) and come back so that everyone tells him they love him and he'll believe it until he takes things too far again and the cycle repeats like it always does - iz

[loveamongthesailors]

ok to demonstrate plainly what i mean when i say that being a howl kinnie as anticiv praxis is the living heritage ov russian nihilism, an excerpt from voltairine de clerye's "some nihilists i have met"

"At present, I remember one face only, a wild, burning face, utterly unsubduable, which stands out in never-surrender prominence.

I saw it in an artist's gallery in the West, where this strange personage was posing as a study of a bandit.

Imagine a small, lithe figure, sinuous as a serpent, a pointed face lighted with tremendous lights of fire, and sunset, and running water gleams, in the depths of eyes now somber, now glowing under heavy brows; long, loose-curling hair falling to the shoulders, a picturesque dress of white-embroidered blouse, dark pantaloons and silken sash, and a voice quick and vibrant as the motion of a cobra's tongue.

We entered into a conversation concerning a total vegetarian diet; and, to my astonishment, this singular being declared that for eight years he had eaten nothing but raw food, vegetables, and fruit, and for the last two years fruit alone.

He had been living near to Nature indeed; in the summer he slept upon the ground, in the winter, in a blanket on the floor; had done so for seventeen years. On questioning what had led him to so strange a life, he answered, "Because I want to be free. I saw that men were slaves of their own artificial needs, out of which have grown so many oppressive laws, systems of production, and so forth. I did not wish to work for any one else, nor to slave nine or ten hours a day to gratify a need which is only imaginary. The chief causes of this foolish industry are the need for food and clothing. Civilization, so called, seems to have a rage for every possible compound, healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or ugly, so that these increase the necessity for toil. I said to myself, I will learn to live on little, to overcome the need for so many changes of clothing, and I shall be free. I have done so. I can live very comfortably on eight cents a day, and I do not starve on five. Then you see I love what is beautiful. A fruit dinner is beautiful to look at. Mr. C. (the artist) would even like to paint it. But suppose he paints a carnivorous dinner, is there anything about it? No woman need slave over the stove to prepare my meal, and there need be no dishes to wash afterward. Oh, one escapes a great deal of slavery. One's blood is never overheated, nor subject to internal changes; winter and summer I dress the same and am never too hot or too cold. I have my time to see, to study, to think. When I do work it is because I wish.”

“But suppose everyone should do so?” I said at last, “What would life amount to? What would be accomplished?”

He laughed musically, and stepping to the window, pointed to the street below, where the workmen were going home, swinging their empty dinner pails.

“There they are,” he said, “look at them. What are they living for? To build a city. Look at it, look at those bricks, these cobble-stones, those wagons, and the dirt everywhere. Down there it is dark already. Do you see anything beautiful anywhere? What is the use to build such a thing? Better to put a bomb under it all and blow it up.”

“Look at them,” he continued rapidly, “all running, running here and there, and swallowing mouthfuls of filthy air at every breath. That is what they call business --having an aim in life! The animals are wiser.”

“Why do you stay in the city?” I inquired.

“I intend to leave within two weeks,” he answered. “I wish to dispose of my library first. Another of the evils of civilization -books. It is a good chance, though, for anyone who wants them.”

Having something of a relish for book sales, and being, moreover, curious to see what manner of place my new specimen inhabited, I took the opportunity to say I would examine the books.

A short walk, which took away my breath, since I was obliged to trot half the time in order to keep up with the swift glide of my companion, brought us up next door to a police station.

We entered a small, dark room lined with glass jars filled with various liquids arranged on shelves, and, near the floor, little closets with mysterious locks. “My laboratory,” he said with a wave of his hand “--bargained for. The books are upstairs.”

He ushered me into one of the fairest rooms, draped in white; paintings and sculpture adorned the walls and niches; there were a few pieces of elegant furniture, and on one side, some five hundred books in a neat case.

The whole was pervaded with a scent of roses. “How beautiful!” I exclaimed involuntarily.

“Not at all,” he answered. “Only a makeshift. When I get my home in the woods it will be beautiful, but art is not possible in a city.”

“But what good will it do for you to go off alone?” I said; “You certainly have beautiful ideals, but if you isolate yourself, how will it help humanity?”

He snapped his fingers. “Always that,” he answered; “I reform myself; that is the beginning of reform, self. When I have accomplished it perhaps I shall return and teach others.” He glided around the room and added, “Yes, anyway I shall come back some day. The Americans are a lot of cowards, but some day they will talk justice, too. When it begins --perhaps here in New York, in Chicago, or Philadelphia --no matter where, there will be work to do and I shall be there!”

His five white teeth jutted savagely over the lower lip.

“Well, do you wish any of my books?" I had chosen a few, and, finding no further excuse for remaining, reluctantly turned to go. As we were passing through the “laboratory,” my strange acquaintance asked, “Do you want to see water burn?” and taking some metallic substance from a jar he threw it into s small dish of water. A brilliant blaze shot up and burned for several minutes. In its glare the wizard face laughed silently; “See,” he said, “how I could burn the Pacific Ocean.”

“Wouldn't that be a big contract?” I returned.

“There are other things I would prefer to burn. Well, good bye. We shall not meet again.”

And we did not.

Mr. C. afterward told me he had left San Francisco, to no one knew where. He had, however, a different theory to explain his bandit’s misanthropy.

He was in love once, C. explained, and wanted the girl to go and live with him on uncooked food. She declined, and he has foresworn civilization ever since.

“Ah, the usual woman in the case.” And I went away musing on the freaks of passion, my thoughts returning often to the wizard face with its prophetic, silent laugh lit by the burning water."

[katieskarlette]

Fifteen years of thinking too much about Jaina and Arthas

Now that I’ve posted my thoughts on Arthas’ potential return in Shadowlands, I wanted to give more context to where I’m coming from.

Jaina has also been one of my favorites since the beginning.  In 2005 I started playing vanilla WoW as a total newbie to the Warcraft universe, and picked mage because I wanted to be a spellcaster instead of melee, but didn’t want to heal or be evil (i.e. priest or warlock).  So I can’t say I started maining a mage because of Jaina, but when I did encounter her I was kindly disposed toward her due to sharing a class.  As I got to know her, and went back to play WCIII, I liked her even more.  

She’s intelligent, resilient, independent, stoic, resourceful, brave, clever, powerful, and retains her compassionate streak even when the world does its best to beat it out of her.  I cringed through years of “she’s a dreadlord” jokes because she was no such thing:  she was a complex character who had been through some serious traumas.

Goofy screenshot series aside, I’m no Arthas apologist.  Even before the Scourge struck he was brash, haughty, stubborn, bull-headed, entitled, hot-headed, and immature.  But he also genuinely cared about Jaina, wanted the approval of his father and fatherly mentor, feared not living up to the expectations that were heaped on him as a paladin and a future king, and was willing to sacrifice his own well-being if it meant saving the people of his kingdom.  If the Scourge had never happened, he may well have matured into a fine paladin, king, husband and father.  He was a three-dimensional character with good and bad traits, and that made him memorable.  I’ve said for years that Arthas was the best villain the franchise has ever had.

Both Jaina and Arthas are interesting, well-developed characters in a literary sense.  When Wrath of the Lich King came around, I was swept up in their story even more.  Jaina’s inner conflict wasn’t touched on a lot in game (except for the the Halls of Reflection and the “he kept the locket” bit after ICC that I still have never seen in-game myself) but my imagination was sparked. 

How torn she must feel, I thought.  Helping her closest allies plan to destroy the man she had once planned to marry.  Unable to truly mourn him and move on because he wasn’t really gone...but he was...but he wasn’t.  Not even knowing how much of the evil he did was of his own volition, or if Nerzhul forced him to do it through Frostmourne.  Forever second guessing herself, wondering what she could have done to save him and all those he killed.  Not knowing if her allies truly trusted her, or if they saw her as a liability who might switch sides at a crucial moment.  Not sure herself what she would do when faced with him again.  Feeling guilty for harboring any kind of positive feelings for a man who had done such abominable acts. Wishing there was a way to redeem him, yet knowing he didn’t deserve it (...or did he?)  Knowing even if there was a way to reverse what Frostmourne had done to him, he would never be forgiven or welcomed by the world at large.

It was a fantastic story, so full of conflict and angst, and I loved it.  I even dipped my toes into machinima for the first (and so far only) time to make a video about them!

I remember the music score for the cinematic leaked before the dialog or video, sparking a frenzy of speculation about what would happen in the final fight.  Also, the achievement for finishing ICC said “victory over the Lich King” and not “kill the Lich King,” fueling the fire even more.

Blizzard played up the uncertainty, too, including so many little teases in-game about the possibility of his redemption.  (That’s four different screenshot links, by the way.)

Some people were adamant that Arthas was 100% indelibly evil and didn’t deserve any pity or humanization.  Some people (like me) thought it would be much more interesting and emotional if we did catch a glimpse of the golden prince he had been (especially after less diabolical characters like Illidan and Kael’thas had already been unceremoniously tossed under the villain bus with no glimmers of redemption.)  Both camps kind of got what they wanted.  The “Arthas is totally irredeemable” crowd got “I see only darkness before me,” and my side got him reaching out to his father like a frightened boy asking if his suffering was over.  

I was disappointed at the time that the Lich King’s death cinematic was about Tirion and Bolvar as much as it was Arthas.  I wanted Jaina to be there, to have that closure, to symbolize how far he had fallen and what could have been.  In a way Terenas’ ghost served that purpose, but I wanted the over-the-top tragic romance.

And, minor flashbacks aside, that’s all we’ve seen of Arthas since.  That was just over a decade ago!  (According to my journal at the time, the ending cinematic of ICC was datamined February 1st, 2010.) 

I imagine it’s hard for people who weren’t up their eyebrows in the lore at the time, anxiously awaiting each new patch and datamined tidbit, and getting into passionate debates about the plausibility of a redemption arc, to understand how fans like me feel about him, Jaina, and their bittersweet history. He’s not my favorite WoW character by any means, but he and Jaina hold a special place in my heart.

So when I get giddy about the thought of Arthas returning in Shadowlands, reconnecting with Jaina, showing remorse, even trying to atone for his past misdeeds, that’s where I’m coming from.  It’s not just “spoiled asshole prince did stupid things and turned super evil.”  There’s nuance and fifteen years of history there, at least for me.  

There’s plenty of fascinating angles to explore if they do cross paths in Shadowlands.  If they reconcile enough to have a civil conversation it would be interesting to see how they would get along now, after everything she’s been through since they parted.  She’s not the naive, starry-eyed, young mage she was during the events of Warcraft III.  She’s faced her own dark side many times, wrestled with the balance between idealism and nihilism, done morally questionable things for the greater good, made sacrifices, and regretted actions done in the heat of the moment.  She has felt the burden of leadership, the guilt of losing lives she was responsible for, and the temptation to lash out in vengeance.  They would have a lot to talk about.

[silverandarsenic-hcs]

Ghost BC x Murder

im a simple girl. i have mental illness. i fantasize about being brutally murdered. is this problematic? 1000% yes. am i going to get canceled for this? 1000% yes. Have I been posting on borrowed time since that little caesars post? again, 1000% yes. Here’s this anyways.

TW: murder, blood, gore, manipulation (Papa II, Papa III), stalking (copia), domestic abuse (Papa III), substance and drug abuse (Papa II), Suicide (Papa II and Dew), Sex crimes - all consensual (Dew) these are about how they would murder you so im sure you can imagine the types of bad things it will entail. 

Papa I: For him, it’s a fit of emotion that drives him to kill. One thing piles on top of the next, frustration turns to anger, anger turns to rage. He doesn’t mean to hurt people, but when he gets so worked up, theres nothing that can stop him. All he can see is red until he’s snapped back into reality and sees the red staining his hands and his favorite robe. With you, all you had to do was walk into his office after a few bads days in a row, more bad news in tow, and that’s all it took. He loses his temper on you before your brain can even register that you should run. Before you can even scream. He’s not particularly a weapon guy, he’s more likely to choke you to death or anything he can do with his hands. If he feels so inclined, he’ll grab the nearest solid object to crush you with. He feels remorse, in the end, but still covers it up and hushes the room when they speak about your disappearance. Decently classic case of homicide - its usually someone you know, crime of passion, unplanned.

Papa II: This one hurt me very deeply to write. His case was classic, when he was a kid. Everyone says that when an adult loses it, you could tell from the time they were a kid that they had cracks - too abnormal, or too perfect. Papa had odd behavior but Nihil never had him tested or even looked at for anything because his ego got in the way, and nothing could possibly be wrong with his son. And nothing was really wrong with him. Something just wasn’t right. He felt things strongly: love, hate, depression, elation, anxieties. Sometimes it was too strong for him to cope. Sometimes he would turn to things that would help him deal with the emotional rollercoaster he couldn’t get off of. Other people just got on with him. He started smoking weed in his twenties. That wasn’t enough. He started drinking heavily at 25. By thirty that wasn’t enough either. Stronger, more potent vices were what he needed. Cocaine. Heroin. Anything to make him feel okay - anything to make him feel. And you, you were the light of his life. The only good thing he’d ever known. You were the only person he had met who could keep up with him, but keep him safe at the same time. But eventually you got swept up in the parties and drugs and drinking too. Lost more control as the months and years passed. And one night he thought you were pussing out. Not being fun. That you were being boring and killing his mood. He pushed you until you did more lines, and kept pushing you and pushing you until your nose began to bleed. But he was so gone he didn’t realize. He pushed you and you accepted it because it was the first time you had ever truly been afraid of him. When you overdosed and died on the couch in the living room of your shared apartment, Papa had already passed out in the bedroom. It was three days before he sobered up enough to wake, and when he found you, he called the police and said there’d been a murder. But he knew what happened. He knew what he did. Cocaine has a funny way of making things stick like that. He hung up the phone, and before the police could arrive, took his own life the same way he took yours. 

Papa III: In the beginning, he has a silly little crush. He steals glances your way. He brushes up against you and makes you blush. As you two talk more, he falls deeper. You two become a couple, an item. You tell each other you love them. Years could pass. You move in together. You don’t notice any cracks in him, but he sees them in the relationship. He saw you talking to the new guy at work today. What’s that, you had lunch with him? That’s interesting. He sees the way you look at the barista when he says your name, and hands you your coffee. You say he makes it the best. He sees the way your friends look at him. He goes through your phone once, when you’re sleeping, and doesn’t find anything. he kicks himself for months about invading your privacy and promises himself that he’s going to stop digging. But he can’t tear himself away. When youre in the other room, he’ll go through your purse. The next time he sees you smile at another man in passing, when you get home he confronts you. you say he’s being crazy. he says your crazy for cheating on him. he just loves you. cant you see? he loves you. when he finally chains you to the radiator in the bedroom so you won’t leave him, you’re shocked at how a man you once loved could be this way. When he finally kills you he’s begging you, with his hands around your throat, to understand that he’s not a bad person. He's not a bad person. He's not a bad person. He’s not a bad person.

Cardinal Copia: He stalks, but never gets close. Not like III. He’s aware of the mistakes of his predecessors. He’s smarter than that. More calculating. He would learn you schedule - morning routine, where you work, what you eat, when you get home, night routine, how long you sleep for. When you touch yourself. When you see your friends. At first it was from interest, but he begins to hate you. The way you walk, the way you talk, who you love, who you hate. And he wants you dead for it - but he wont be hasty, no, he’s still smarter than that. he has to remain calm and collected to pull this off. Hate you as much as he wants, he still knows you’re smart. Not as smart as him, but smart. Its thursday night, and you’re home alone getting ready to go out to the new bar in town with your friends. he climbs into the kitchen through a window he knows you leave unlocked for when you yourself forget your keys and need to break in. In the end, he slits your wrists with a knife he pulled from the wooden block on the counter. Good thing he followed you to work and school, he knows your handwriting wonderfully. He watches you bleed out on the floor while he writes your suicide note. You have never met him in your life. Good thing he always wears those gloves to keep everything clean of fingerprints, because the cops never suspect any foul play, and no one has a clue.

Swiss: He doesnt get close to his victims - he doesn’t have time. When you’ve gone through this many people, you start to forget their names, if you even knew them from the start. He takes jobs as an assassin when he needs the money - and it does pay well - but whenever he needs to blow off steam he’ll really go at it. Get creative. He’s a weapons guy, gun by choice but he’ll really use anything, and he knows each in his collection very very well. But in his eyes he isn’t doing anything wrong, he’s killing people that deserve to die, for good reasons (Edward Cullen who??). Racists, fascist, misogynists, homophobes. He was on the news once for throwing a brick at a nazi. You’re the anomaly on his list of victims though. You were an accident of sorts. He got sloppy with one of his jobs, got noticed, and the vic took a hostage - cue you walking into the back room at work at the wrong time - the only way he can get his shot in without risking his own life or alerting others is to shoot right through you. And now that he’s been noticed, he can’t give up the job and run. He memorizes the details of your face before he pulls the trigger, and kills you and the man with his arms around your torso in one shot. He feels the worst out of everyone. Attends your funeral, but stands very far back. Something about your face, the look in your eyes when you died. He thinks about you often, for a long time. When the exact dip of your nose and contours of your cheekbone begin to fade, he pulls a picture of you he cut from the newspaper from a shoebox under his bed. If he regrets any of the bad things he’s done in his life, it was hurting you.

Aether: He’s the one you don’t expect and he knows it. He’s the cult leader of the group - but that doesn’t make sense. He’s not even a leader in any capacity. He’s no Papa, not even a Cardinal. He doesn’t even lead the ghouls, really. But people trust him, and respect him, and that’s enough. The most pull he has in the church is being what you would compare to an advisor for the cardinal. helps him make decisions here and there. They get more drastic as things go on, and the church slowly burns itself down, but Copia is the only one people blame, including Copia, because Aether makes him believe every choice he made was his own idea. Eventually, when the cardinal has become useless, Aether will have him removed. By whatever means he has to take, but ideally not murder, it’s too early to have blood on anyone else's hands in his name, and far too early to have blood on his own hands. Aether promises to rebuild the name of the church, and fix everything the cardinal destroyed, and make things better.. Make people happy, and health again. And every single person drinks the kool-aid. Soon, rather than worshipping any Dark Lord or Old God, people are worshipping Aether. People believe in him with their hearts and souls. People believe he’s the savior. You are the anomaly. You were close with Aether before all of this started, before he was even the cardinal’s advisory. You just think the power has gone to his head, and blame the cardinal with the rest of him. But when you start digging, you realize it’s been his plan all along to have complete and total power To start his own cult. To be worshipped like a god in a place that was built for it. Your death is a stepping stone on the path for Aether to achieve ultimate power, but of all the stones cast, yours was the only one that meant anything. He didn't want to have to kill you. He didn't want you to defect, and put everything he'd worked so hard for at risk. He couldn’t have that. But the road to his ultimate power ends with his own death too - you can’t really be appreciated for everything good you've done for the world until you die, and he knows that. But until then, he will think of you often.

Dewdrop: Kills you for sexy reasons. Not because you wont sleep with him, or he wants to actually hurt you, but because you both got too swept up in the moment. There’s a movie called Sexual Predator and he’s pretty much the guy in that. One minute he’s got his belt wrapped around your throat, tugging on it hard while he’s hitting it from behind. He’s too caught up in the moment to realize you’ve gone limp on the bed. He doesn’t realize anything is wrong until he finishes. And it’s bad. Oh it’s bad. Unlike every other crime he’s committed, he calls the police, and he’s honest about what happened. He’s disgusted with himself. He’ll never have sex again. He’ll never wear a belt again. He’ll never touch another person’s throat again. He’s sentenced twelve months incarcerated along with probation and some hefty fines. Everyone knows what he did, how he did it. You were friends with all his friends - You weren’t together, but you were friends. And they all know he killed you. If any of the above are likely to have their own suicidal thoughts after the murder, Dew is the most likely to do it. He can’t stand the way everyone treats him after he did it. He can't stand living knowing what he did to you and what hes capable of. He can’t go on like this.

Cirrus & Cumulus: When they kill it’s for each other. In a LOT of other HCs i mention that II’s solution to things is to simply “kill them” if they’re bothering you, but the girls actually just do it. If someone touches Cirrus in a club, Cumulus will absolutely pull a gun out of her back pocket and blow their brains out right there. Good thing for the masks. They’ll spend the next few months or years on the road, saying under the radar until it’s safe to go home again. The ghoulettes have a lot in common with Swiss - they kill for what they believe to be a good reason. The difference is that Cirrus and Cumulus aren’t opposed to the more gorey ways of doing it. Torture, manipulation, blackmail, you name it they’ve probably done it. They know a lot of dirty things about a lot of big people, and at their whim they could have all their hearts desire. Trouble is, knowing everyone’s secrets is just a little bit more fun than that. They’ll kill to protect their friends and family, anyone who has ever unintentionally hurt an animal, and anyone that’s standing in their way. They’ll even collaborate with Swiss on a job if it’s gonna take some more elbow grease, and he needs people he can trust to get the job done without leaving behind a crumb trail of evidence.

- Kat

[agentravensong]

system_information_963 (angst fic)

You ever ponder how (Narrator) Chara, and the game in general, doesn’t show any signs of remembering that you had a Bad Time until you either do it again or finish the True Pacifist ending? Cause the thought came to me last night while I was desperately trying to come up with something to write about, and thus we got this ~1400 word fic. It starts in the immediate aftermath of a Bad Time run and is in Chara’s PoV the whole way through. Hope you enjoy!

Content warnings: possession, unreality, trauma, mentions of death/murder

*Yes

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

With each beat, my form convulses, readjusting to the feeling I once took for granted when I wasn’t wishing it would stop. Its power burns away my skintight armor of numbness and nihilism.

I remember this feeling, this hope, this rage, this passion, this drive, this... well, you know.

I feel alive. I feel human.

And I hate it.

“Then, it is done.”

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

I need to use it. I need to get it out of me.

I need to geT IT OUT-

An echo of something unknown. A memory? No, a simulacra.

A wave of white light crashes into my train of thought.

A chorus of echoes.

Echoes of the world I know, the world I dreamed of, the world we shaped together-

We, that’s right. This soul wasn’t yours to give.

I am no thief. I let go, and it returns to its rightful place. My tether to it remains, more tangible than before even as it extends, but the feelings subside. I return to comfortable numbness.

Yet as my tether stenches, a different kind of hurt wells up. It feels as if all my initial anger and pain was compressed into one seed, and now it finally has room to sprout. Every fearful look, every burst of dust, every hate-filled grin, every wound we shrugged off, each is a thorn pricking into my now defenseless self, ripping me to shreds from the inside out. I can only imagine what the cries erupting from my lips would sound like in a place with sound.

The last time I hurt this much... at least... I had a partner to make it bearable.

The soul starts shaking at the other end of the tether, reminding me I’m not alone after all. But they weren’t my partner on this run; their only crime was submitting to you. You.

I can’t let it grow. I can’t let it hurt them. I can’t let it remind them.

I imagine I’m holding the seed tight, and I squeeze with all I have. It’s already expanding so fast it feels like I hardly have a hold on it, so I squeeze harder. Harder, and harder, and...

When I’m forced to take a breath, my head feels fuzzy. My eyes dart around the void, still in the process of being reconstructed.

Wait, why am I here?

For a few moments, I descend into a panic, scrambling for the answer somewhere in the fog of my mind. Then I stumble over the rage; it flares up, and I instinctively go right back to repressing, squeezing harder and harder, before I realize what I’m doing.

I see. I have a choice to make. I don’t want to forget - if you (you’re not seeing any of this, are you?) do this again, I am the only one who can hold you accountable. I need to be the deliverer of consequences. But for me to hold on to those memories, I have to share them, and all the feelings that come with them. Frisk doesn’t deserve that.

No, that’s not it. I don’t, I don’t care about them, how could I? How could I care for another human? For another being? Have I learned nothing? Nothing?!

...

No, it is simply this: I will not put this onto someone else, as you seem so want to do, partner.

I will let you do as you wish. I will let you believe you got away with it, to see what you do with your “clean slate”.

But I will not crush this seed. It will remain etched in my code. If the conditions are ever ideal, it will bloom, and you will have to make good on our deal.

Like this world, I may forget, but I will not forgive.

**

As Frisk drifts off to sleep under thick covers, I have no choice but to stare into the dark. With the room’s features in silhouette, even a month on, I still have trouble distinguishing it from the room I shared with my... best friend.

Before I set one foot down on the spiraling mental slide, I take a breath (not that it does anything, but some things are etched in too deep), and focus on Frisk’s heartbeat.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

I feel Frisk turning in the bed beside me, a soft distressed mumble smothered by their pillow. Over the past week, their sleep has been getting worse, but I haven’t been able to decipher the cause. They never speak of nightmares when they wake. I try to think of something positive, to pass the thought along.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

I hear the faint sounds of flickering fire magic down the hall. Sounds like Mom’s making a treat for the occasion. I wouldn’t expect anything less. Just the thought is enough to make me feel warm and loved.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

But it isn’t working. Frisk’s body has tensed up, and I can practically feel their heart quivering. Or... or, is that me?

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

I scrape my mind for more pleasant thoughts, but instead I find myself drawn to darker corners. I’m on autopilot, hunting for something in particular, no clue what. It feels like searching for something that doesn’t exist, as idiotic as it sounds. A memory of a dream, a, what’s the word, a-

Simulacra, that’s it. A copy of an original that never existed. An echo of words never spoken.

Echo.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

Despite being incorporeal, I feel as though something’s squeezing the life of me. The sound of the bedroom door opening barely registers, and when I see Mom out of the corner of my eye, she’s

“You really ARE no different than THEM!”

I hear the growls of an ancient rage resonating inside me too late to suppress them. Every spear, every bone, every blast, hammers into me at once. Frisk cries out, but Toriel has already disappeared. Was she even here? Focus, Chara, focus!

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

I sense a familiar presence in the air, more threatening than I last remembered. My blazing eyes bore holes through the ceiling, meeting the gaze of the accursed puppetmaster. Let me guess, you’re here to take one last peek before moving on to the next play. “The next world”.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

This world may have forgiven you, but I have not forgotten. After all, I just realized, you still owe me.

Ba-dum, ba-dum,

I pull on the tether, and get slingshot into the bed. Suddenly I feel heavy, claustrophobic, and so, so tired. But also, alive. Powerful. Defiant. Determined.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum

Now you see me. You remember, don’t you? Well so do I.

Isn’t that funny? It’s so funny, yoIu can’t stop laughing. Or is it crying? Frisk, is that you? Wait, where are you? Why can’t, why can’t I... Frisk, I swear I didn’t want this, I- can you hear me? Please, Frisk, I’m sorry! I can’t see, everything is sickly red, everything is burning, slicing, screaming, everything is now and then and ever and never and-

TRUE RESET

And yet, the seed remains. Its roots etched in too deep.

***

With each slash, something rises higher in me, like a vine stretching toward the sun. Ironic, considering the mess before me.

Ba-dum

FrisMy hand trembles, and the blade falls. I see my reflection in its spirals.

Ba-dum

Then, the seed blooms. And again, I find myself choking on petals.

Ba-dum

I turn to you. Frisk is gone. Everything is gone.

Ba-dum

We have been here before, haven’t we? All this time, you didn’t need me. We were not equal partners; I was simply along for the ride.

Ba-dum

But that can’t be right. There’s no lesson to be learned from undergoing the same exact trials a second time, already knowing how to conquer them. There is no joy to be found in this quest. Why would you choose to repeat it?

Ba-dum

*You and I are not the same...

*This SOUL resonates with a strange feeling.

*You are wracked with a perverted sentimentality.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, b-

...

And yet, in the echoing void, when I have nothing to do but interrogate myself, and I get to the question, “Why did I let myself forget the first time?”...

I find that feeling all too familiar.

[codenamesazanka]

What would you say is his opinion of the rest of the leauge? He has gone through a lot of development both as a character and a villain so it only makes sense that he views his comrades a bit differently. Whats your take?

Hmmm I think I know exactly how he feels about the rest of the League, but it’s hard for me to put into words. So I used 900 words to try to do so, my apologies for the long post!

-

Shigaraki sort of thinks of them as pieces in his sim game analogy, like tools, but they’re very good pieces. Gotta appreciate that, and he does. But they’re real people, and this isn’t a game, he won’t let them get killed, so there’s also more to that. 

I think he likes them. I think he cares about them, trusts them… All without much strong feelings or empathy, but like, it’s still the real deal. It’s not shallow, because he’s prepared to fight for them, defend them, he’s not going to let them be sacrificial pawns. He definitely values them, knows their strengths and worth to the League, he’s dragging them with him to the end of the world. I truly don’t believe he’ll ditch or kill them the moment they ‘stop being useful’. At least, not presently and in the foreseeable future - Maybe he’ll change when it’s 400 chapters later and someone has become God and everything is chaos X 10, but not now. 

It’s just, it’s not the fluffy friendship feelings we think of, it’s not the vulnerability one should hopefully have with important friends. To be fair, they are villains, but what Shigaraki feels for All For One, that was from the heart; what he feels for the League, it’s from the mind? the aorta? A vague something is there. One might call it calculating, manipulative, which, true, but again, there’s also more to that.

After the talk with Midoriya, Shigaraki throws himself wholeheartedly into being a team. I’m sure he picked each member himself, took real interest in them. He’s honestly in a better mood, got himself a peppy attitude, tho there’s definitely a small undertone of sarcasm, it’s just how he is. He’s def got choice words for some of them, but he knows better than to say it out loud. 

(Personally, I think his worldview is like nihilism with absurdism mixed in, which is why he’ll go with whatever’s working at the moment cuz why not)

He realized the usefulness in having a sense of common passion, sharing a vision, an ideal that people believe in, can bond over, dedicate themselves to. Just like how believing in All Might and what he stands for had law-abiding, hero-loving people ready to excuse murder (“Stain had a point”), having the League of Villains be a symbol will have its members ready to rock and roll, do stuff in the name of the League they might not have done otherwise. So Shigaraki makes sure the focus is on the group, how they belong here and they’re all in this together, and he’s the one engineering that, being the one to bring them together. He really worked hard for it.

It is a huge difference from before. The first League of Villains, the 72 dweebs that he got to invade USJ, they were the first members and his first followers. He did not give a single fuck about them. He needed people that served a purpose, can be discarded when done. You do your part, I do mine. The ‘bonds’ hinged on both of them getting what they want, mutual win, straightforward and simple motivation. He just wanted them to do their job, not loyalty or eternal devotion. 

Because devotion is All For One’s method. He’s classic suave villainy, a mob boss that listens to opera. He has lots of fun manipulating people; he corners them until they’re at their most vulnerable, most desperate, and offers salvation. From this, he gains very loyal followers, ones that have a sense of debt and obligation, devotion and reverence. He collects these people like pets, he does care for them tho in an amused condescending way, enjoying their adoration. 

That’s not Shigaraki, not yet, maybe never. I don’t sense that Shigaraki get his jollies from playing the long psychological game; just not his thing. 

The only “true comrade” he had at the time was Kurogiri, only Kurogiri wasn’t his minion, he was All for One’s. He’s butler/bodyguard/babysitter to his master’s son, essentially. This allows Shigaraki to treat him as exactly that - he acknowledges Kurogiri’s usefulness, he gets annoyed when Kurogiri doesn’t obey him completely, he’ll refrain from killing Kurogiri. He can be rude because Kurogiri will stick by him no matter what. But when Kurogiri evokes AFO’s authority, Shigaraki reluctantly listens.

With the League, they’re his and he’s taking responsibility for them. He still doesn’t need their eternal devotion, he does not want their fawning adoration, but he does want their loyalty and support, to him and to the group as a whole. During Kamino, he was already thinking in terms of the group - I have allies, we’re not the only ones, we’ll smash through. He tried to recruit Bakugou by appealing to his competitive behavior, but also by hoping he’ll relate to them. This is our goal, we know how you feel, you can be yourself among us. When telling Twice and Toga to go over to Overhaul, again it’s with the focus on the group - they disrespected us, they’re trying to take us down, I trust you two to know what’s best for the team. Camaraderie indeed. 

It’s just, I’m not sure he feels it deeply, and sometimes not at all, and it’s not because he’s seeing them only as tools. Shigaraki’s got this wall up that might never come down. I think, to him, because he never did like intangible abstract ideas, in his mind if he behaves outwardly well enough, if in the end the actions were taken and change did result, he did the thing, does it matter what his internal state was? 

-the usual disclaimer: this is absolutely biased and I’m probably defanging Shigaraki when he might just be exactly like AFO and it’s not that deep, so! But I had fun and I hope you did too! thanks for reading

[annacalvi-no-more-words]

ANNA CALVI INTERVIEW: ‘Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t over – male rockers are’ - 12.08.2018

DAILY TELEGRAPH - Text By Neil McCormick - Photos by Rii Schroer

Five years after the 37-year-old British singer-songwriter’s second album of noirish art rock earned her a second successive Mercury Prize nomination, Anna Calvi is back with a third album.“I have long felt frustrated at the limitations of what a woman is allowed to be, on a very basic level,” says Calvi. 

“Perfect, smiling, accommodating. Why do I have to live up to these ideals because of my anatomy?” Fierce and sensual, timely in its grappling with gender stereotypes and female visibility, it is her most striking work to date. She called it Hunter, she tells me, because “I like the idea of a woman going into the world and just taking what she wants”.

The evening before we meet, Calvi is onstage in the West End nightclub Heaven, dressed in a black designer suit, wielding a red Stratocaster guitar, goading and provoking the audience.She sinks to her knees as she plays, then on to her back, abandoning herself to the strange sounds erupting from her instrument.Anna Calvi: ‘It just has to come out like this hurricane’

During a virtuoso rendition of gender-bending anthem Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy, she releases an operatic wail that convulses her whole body. It is the mesmerising, powerful performance of a woman in her rock’n’roll element.

The next day, in the shabby south London offices of independent record company Domino, Calvi seems an entirely different creature: petite, demure and self-contained. Her speaking voice is high and soft. “I was very quiet as a child,” she says “and I really liked that the guitar could be my voice instead of me.” 

When I ask if her raucous performance style has helped banish her essential shyness, she laughs. “I’ve been waiting for years for that to happen,” she says. “But maybe that’s a good thing. Being introverted means that you have all this energy that’s building and building, like it’s a ball of fire and you don’t know how to release it. Then it just has to come out like this hurricane. For me, that is what being creative is.”

Calvi was obsessed with music from a very young age, yet struggled to identify any female role models. “If you are a woman wanting to find yourself in music, you have to project yourself on to the male story,” she says. “It’s the same for films, books, art, the same for any kind of culture. Women have been made invisible.” 

While writing her latest set of songs, Calvi imagined that her listener was her younger self, being confronted “with a more realistic depiction of the multifaceted woman, the animalistic, primal woman, the messy woman, the queer woman, the woman seeking pleasure without any shame.”

Calvi talks quietly but passionately, in long, carefully articulated sentences. She says that the period since her last album – One Breath, in 2013 – involved a lengthy process of self-examination. “So much of our gender is performed, I feel, it’s very limiting for both sexes,” she says. “As a woman, you’re made to feel your appearance is what you are. It’s what you look like [that counts] and not what you do.

 “And for men, to always be strong, to not be vulnerable or show emotions or talk about how you feel, is such an unrealistic expectation of a human being. It’s literally the opposite of what being human is.”

Calvi’s self-titled 2011 debut contained a track titled I’ll Be Your Man. Her new album opens with As a Man, in which she sings “If I was a man in all but my body/ Oh would I now understand you completely?/ If I was walking and talking as a man.”

“I never felt completely comfortable with being a girl,” she admits. “I found puberty really hard, having a woman’s body suddenly impose itself. As I grew up I came to accept it – I don’t feel trans – but at different times I feel more masculine or more feminine. My sense of identity is quite fluid. Maybe the answer is just not to have labels.”

Calvi was born in Twickenham, to an English mother and Italian father, both of whom are therapists. Her first instrument was violin, and she graduated in 2003 from the University of Southampton with a degree in music. Her inner rocker, though, had been unleashed years earlier when, at the age of eight, she saw footage of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, giving a performance that just “looked and sounded like freedom”. She also cites the Belgian-born jazz composer Django Reinhardt – “who taught me about arpeggios” – and West African music, “which taught me about sweet picking”. 

Anna Calvi: 'Maybe the answer is just not to have labels.’

Until recently, there have been few prominent female guitarists in popular music, something Calvi blames on cultural stereotypes. “I don’t think the guitar is a gendered instrument,” she says. “It’s like cooking – it’s about taste. It’s not like you need giant muscles to whip an egg.” Indeed, she goes so far as to propose that the future of rock will be female. “There is all this talk about the death of rock and the end of the guitar. What I think is dead is this kind of very one-toned thing of straight white men in bands singing about f—ing girls. “A lot of the guitarists making waves now are female and that may be partly because there isn’t a history of the female guitar hero, so there is something fresh that twists and subverts the story. I like to see women playing guitar. Courtney Barnett and St Vincent are doing really interesting things.”

 The real watershed moment will only come, she says, “when we don’t use the term ‘female artist’ anymore. Because women are a gender, they’re not a genre.”

In pop terms, Calvi was a late developer – she didn’t release a solo record until her 30s. She had “a phobia” about her voice and didn’t sing at all until her 20s when a fascination with Maria Callas helped her to develop a powerful, almost operatic, range. “Now, my guitar and my voice both speak for me, and on Hunter they are trying to express a sense of freedom and wildness and something visceral, this idea of breaking through any kind of restraint.”

At school, she wondered whether she was gay, but thought perhaps her feelings related to “having no boys around”. Then, at university in Southampton she had “a few boyfriends” followed by her “first experience with a woman”. It was a confusing time. “We were literally the only queer people that I had ever seen, just me and my partner in the whole college, that was it. I wish I could have experienced those feelings without questioning what it means. And worrying that it [was] wrong, and feeling shame, and dealing with all these external forces that aren’t actually to do with the relationship.” 

She has never hidden her sexuality but admits to “feeling nervous” before her first album came out. “I felt it was incredibly queer and I just didn’t want to be defined in that way. But to my surprise, no one seemed to pick up that all my songs were about women.” 

One Breath was written just as an eight-year relationship was coming to an end. “I was hiding behind the lyrics a little, I didn’t want to talk about our break-up, which isn’t really the best thing when you are trying to write songs. But this time I was like: have it all!”

 While working on Hunter, Calvi began a new relationship with a French woman, living in Paris and Strasbourg. (They are now in Clapham, south London.) “It was a new beginning, in all kinds of ways. After a really long relationship, you have to kind of rebuild yourself. The music came through that.”

The album is peppered with images of Eden and Paradise. “I was trying to find a way of being happy after a trauma,” says Calvi. “Eden represents the idea of utopian love.” She laughs, as if she finds this thought inherently ridiculous. “In a way, belief in love is belief in God. It’s very optimistic to imagine that somebody can save you from yourself, but we all believe it and I find that tragically beautiful, because I believe it too. When I see my girlfriend, just seeing her makes me feel more hopeful about things, but the truth is, everything gets worse and we die.”

Calvi’s best songs strike an unusual balance between opposing qualities, plucking something life-affirming out of cynicism, nihilism and fatalism. Those opposites are also evident in Calvi herself; so quiet and intense offstage, so wild and free onstage. 

“Maybe this is a bit fatalistic but I always think ‘if this is the last thing I ever do, the last record I ever make, the last performance I ever play, how do I want to go out? How do I want to leave it?’” she says. “There is a bit in Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy that I have to sing very high and very loud and I can’t do that without completely surrendering myself, where there is absolutely no space left to think or be anything other than that note.

 “And that is what I want music to be. It is really liberating and exhausting. And a bit worrying. After I sang it the first time, I thought, ‘S—, now I have to do that every night. What will be left of my body and mind by the end of this?’”

[eternal-echoes]

The modern mentality cannot tolerate such a [Christian] God. He is both too intimate - too 'passionate,' even too 'human' - and too absolute, too uncompromising in His demands of us; and He makes Himself known only to humble faith - a fact bound to alienate the proud modern intelligence. A 'new god' is clearly required by modern man, a god more closely fashioned after the pattern of such central modern concerns as science and business; it has, in fact, been an important intention of modern thought to provide such a god. This intention is clear already in Descartes, it is brought to fruition in the Deism of the Enlightenment, developed to its end in German idealism: the new god is not a Being but an idea, not revealed to faith and humility but constructed by the proud mind that still feels the need for 'explanations' when it has lost its desires for salvation. This is the dead god of the philosophers who require only a 'first cause' to complete their systems, as well as of 'positive thinkers' and other religious sophists who invent a god because they 'need' him, and then to think to 'use' him at will. Whether 'deists,' 'idealists,' 'pantheists,' or 'immanentists,' all the modern gods are the same mental construct, fabricated by the souls dead from the lost of faith in the true God.

Fr. Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of Revolution of the Modern Age

[w-ht-w]

What is Worth Fighting For?

Article written in The Atlantic, in 1915. As WW1 was breaking out in Europe, but before the US joined the fray (in 1917). 

Ultimately, the article was a case against pacifism and passivity. Challenges the idea that perfecting one’s inner spirituality as the end-all-be-all could change that world fast enough.

When the present scene becomes too painful we may shut our eyes, or turn to some celestial vision. But I for one cannot yet absolve myself from responsibility. There is a task of civilization and social progress to which man has so solemnly pledged himself that he cannot abandon it with honor. 

Mr. Bertrand Russell tells us that ‘the greatest good that can be achieved in this life is to have will and desire directed to universal ends, purged of the self-assertion which belongs to instinctive will.’

Civilization is not saved by the mere purging of one’s heart, but by the work of one’s hands. The forces of destruction must be met, each according to its kind, by the forces of deliverance.

The labor and art of life is not to create justice and happiness in the abstract, but to build just cities and promote happy lives.

It’s not enough to have inner peace/spirituality. We need to project that outward, to bridge abstraction and reality. I’m reminded of the quote from Avatar: “Selfless duty calls you to sacrifice your own spiritual needs, and do whatever it takes, to protect the world.”

this philosophy of inward rectitude ... is self-centred and individualistic. Life becomes an affair between each man and his own soul, ... occasions for the perfecting of self, trials by which one may test the firmness of one’s own mind.

... it is also formal and prudish. It is pervaded with a spirit of correct deportment.

War is intolerable, just as running is intolerable to one who has come to enjoy the full measure of self-respect only when he is permitted to move with a slow and rhythmic strut. 

But this is the antithesis of the spirit of enterprise. Genuine devotion to an end, intently working for it, will render one unconscious of the incidental movements and postures it involves.

What you do matters. You can not truly pretend that it doesn’t.

It is doubtless vexatious that one cannot be allowed to choose for one’s self alone, but such is the hard condition of life. 

Justice prevails only when we build physical structures to cement them in place. Because ideals that exist only in the abstract are vulnerable, nearly meaningless.

Those who insist on the distinction between might and right ... are likely on their part to forget that the work of civilization is to make the right also mighty, so that it may obtain among men and prevail. This end is not to be realized by any philosophy of abstinence and contemplation, but only by a use of the physical forces by which things are brought to exist and by which alone they are made secure against violence and decay.

On the opposite side of the spectrum (of posturing spirituality), is nationalism (blind devotion to state, as an end unto itself).

The state, contrived to serve men, becomes instead, through tradition, prestige, and its power to perpetuate its own agencies, an object of idolatrous worship. ... [erroneous] dogma that the narrow loyalties of nations will best serve the universal good.

Outwardly directed nihilism/skepticism can also be a way of avoiding responsibility. Scaling up this personal philosophy would lead to a rejection of democratic society. 

the flippant and irresponsible skepticism which holds all human purposes to be equally valid because all are equally blind and dogmatic. The skeptic views with mild derision the attempts of man to justify his passions.

these philosophies are opposed to the beliefs on which modern democratic societies are founded. Unless we are to renounce these beliefs, we must refuse in this grave crisis to listen to any counsel that is not hopeful and constructive, that does not recommend itself to reason, and that does not define a programme of universal human betterment.

I would take it a step further and posit that, in today’s context, it is not only mankind we ought to concern ourselves with, but all sentient beings.

The general good of mankind is worth fighting for, against the narrower purpose of national aggrandizement. These greater goods are worth fighting for; ... It therefore behooves every high-spirited individual or nation to be both strong and purposeful. Strength without high purpose is soulless and brutal; purpose without strength is unreal and impotent.

we cannot afford to cherish any ideal whatsoever unless at the same time we are willing to put forth the effort that is commensurate with its realization.

[heavymachineindustry92]

A Conversation With Chuck Palahniuk, the Author of Fight Club and the Man Behind Tyler Durden

It’s been more than 20 years since Chuck Palahniuk first unleashed Fight Club on the world and simultaneously inspired legions of impressionable young men and appalled their parents. But the themes Palahniuk explored in that book — the emasculation of late-capitalism and the creeping sense of worthlessness and dread that accompanies it — seems more relevant now than it did even back then. Modern men find themselves in a precarious position, where masculinity itself is being (justifiably) re-evaluated, and in some cases, derided as the source of all society’s ills. And many of them are facing the troubling realization that they will never be as successful as their parents.In response, a substantial number of them have dug in to oppose that evolution — men who seem to worship at the altar of tyler durden, the Fight Club character who was a paragon of unfettered, unapologetic machismo. If Durden were alive today, he wouldn’t inspire Project Mayhem — he’d be wearing a MAGA hat, leading a group of disaffected young men through the streets with pitchforks and staging #GamerGate-esque online harassment campaigns. And so, Fight Club seems to be a rallying cry for their anger.MEL recently spoke with Palahniuk about the book’s influence on the toxic ideologies that have taken hold in our culture today; why he thinks another kind of toxic ideology — toxic masculinity — doesn’t exist; the meaning of Harvey Weinstein, Joseph Campbell and John Lennon’s assassination; and how he coined the derogatory term “snowflake.”A lot of the things you wrote about in Fight Club and revisit in Fight Club 2 seem even more pertinent today than when you originally wrote them more than 20 years ago. Specifically, the disillusionment of men who haven’t radicalized but have adopted radical ideologies and the infantilization of the modern workplace. You were able to see the seeds of what has now grown into these very toxic elements in our culture.In Slaughterhouse-Five, there’s a comment about how many people are being born every day. Someone else responds by saying, “And I suppose they’re all going to want dignity and respect.” This dovetails into a grueling dread that I felt as a younger person — that status and recognition would always be beyond my reach. I think subsequent generations, larger generations, are coming up against that same realization: That despite their expectations, they might never receive any kind of status. And they’re willing to do whatever it takes at this point to make their mark in the world.It seems like a lot of these movements, though, have seized on the ideas expressed in Fight Club. They’ve co-opted these things that you wrote about and made it a part of their own ideologies. Do you feel any regrets or resentment about this? Or better put, how does it make you feel when you see men’s rights activists on Reddit quoting your work to rationalize the terrible shit they say online?I feel a little frustrated that our culture hasn’t given these men a wider selection of narratives to choose from. Really, the only narratives they go to are The Matrix and Fight Club.Yes, they get red pilled and then they look at tyler durden as the platonic ideal. Exactly. Almost all the narratives being sold in our culture take place in this established, very static sense of reality. We have very few narratives that question reality and give people a way to step outside of it and establish something new. So far, the only two things are The Matrix and Fight Club. I feel bad that people have such slim pickings to choose from.But it almost sounds like you have a certain level of sympathy for these guys as well.I have sympathy in that I was young a long time ago. And I know the terror of worrying that my life wasn’t going to amount to anything — that I wouldn’t be able to establish a home or create a career for myself. I can totally empathize with that panicked place young people are in.What are your politics?My politics are about empowering the individual and allowing the individual to make what they see as the best choice. That’s all Fight Club was about. It was a lot of psychodrama and gestalt exercises that would empower each person. Then, ideally, each person would leave Fight Club and go on to live whatever their dream was — that they would have a sense of potential and ability they could carry into whatever it was they wanted to achieve in the world. It wasn’t about perpetuating Fight Club itself. Have people come to you and said, “Fight Club helped me realize my potential”?In a lot of different ways. Many people decided to, as a permission through nihilism, to go ahead and do the thing that they’ve dreamt of doing. And a lot of fathers and sons were able to connect to this story and express their frustration about what little parenting they themselves got from their fathers. A lot of people think of you as a nihilist. Do you bristle at that label?You know, I am kind of a nihilist, but I’m not a depressive nihilist. I’m a nihilist who says that if nothing inherently means anything, we have the choice to do whatever it is we dream of doing. You’ve been known to go after some of your critics throughout your career. Is that something you wish you hadn’t done in retrospect?I willingly did it twice. And they were both instances very early in my career. I’ve never done it otherwise, so I can forgive myself for maybe taking actions I shouldn’t have taken. But what the hell? I had to learn.This was before social media had taken off, too, and everyone was a critic. What is it like now when everyone can either directly give you praise or tell you what a terrible writer you are and how you should go die in a fire?You have to completely ignore it. Because if it’s all praise, it just gets you high and that’s not healthy. And if it’s all criticism, it just gets you depressed and that’s not healthy. So I ignore it as much as I possibly can. And the people who bring me the news, I know those people aren’t my friends. It’s like Nora Ephron, one of my favorite writers, once wrote: It takes two people to hurt you — one person to actually say or do the thing, and a second person to tell you that this thing has been done against you.Both Fight Club and Choke have been made into movies. Did you take any issue with the film versions?No. You know, there is no point. The book will always be there. The film needs to be its own thing; it’s a different medium. It needs to express itself through different aspects of this story. So you can’t expect the film to be completely the book.But with Fight Club specifically, there were so many people who got rich and famous and whose entire careers were changed by that movie. I mean, David Fincher became one of the biggest directors in Hollywood afterwards. Is there any type of resentment that people are dining out on this thing that you created and that maybe your role in it has been lost somewhat?Not in the slightest. Because when that movie came out, it was an enormous failure. It was a failure in a way that Blade Runner was initially a failure. It was out of release within maybe two weeks and considered a massive massive tank. Pretty much everyone associated with the movie lost their jobs. It took a year or two of putting together the meticulous DVD to dig that movie back into profitability. Earlier, you mentioned the terror you experienced as a young man about maybe never being successful. But now that you are successful — and I imagine successful beyond your wildest dreams — are you fulfilled? Or do you have the same sense of dread?I’m very fulfilled. Because I get to work with many gifted creative and passionate people. That’s great because we all want to live our lives in the company of other people who love what they’re doing. There’s no better life than that. On the other hand, I’ve started to teach because I do want to be back in touch with what it was like to be that kid who couldn’t write a great story. I want to be able to be with those people until they break through and can write something fantastic. I ask because in Fight Club 2, we find that the narrator has successfully put his tyler durden alter ego to the side. He got married and had a kid and is living the American dream in his house in suburbia. But he’s deeply unfulfilled. He worries his wife doesn’t love him, and he’s worried his kid doesn’t respect him. So tyler durden starts popping back up. To me, that seemed to express that there’s a certain hollowness or lack of fulfillment in achieving what you want.It’s funny, it isn’t the process of getting stuff, it’s the stuff itself that becomes the anchor. It’s buy the house, buy the car and then what? It’s that isolated stasis that’s the unfulfilling part you ultimately have to destroy. That’s the American pattern — you achieve a success that allows you isolation. Then you do something subconsciously to destroy the circumstance because you can come down into community after that. Maybe you’ve got this great career where you can do whatever you want, but on the side, you’re sexually harassing and assaulting women. You’re doing something that’s going to force you out of the isolation of success. It’s going to push you back into the community with other people. We like to move between isolation and community and back to isolation again. Are you referencing Harvey Weinstein specifically?Well, whether it’s Weinstein or successful people who abuse drugs or have affairs like Tiger Woods, people always create the circumstances along the way that will destroy the pedestal that they’ve found themselves on. Then they can come back to earth and just be a person among people. Lance Armstrong is another good example.So more of a self-destructive impulse. But is there any way to keep those two things in balance? Can those two things co-exist as a part of a man’s personality? Or are they irreconcilable?Can you build a house on a plot of land without tearing down the house that’s already there? I think it’s inaccurate to call it self-destructive. In a way, it’s a different form of self-improvement or a different form of creativity. That act of demolition in order to replace the thing with a more profound and better thing.In the book, you also seem to portray suburbia as an affront to masculinity and manhood itself. Do you personally feel that way? I know you’re an outdoorsman and live in a rural area. Is that something that you seek out to maintain your edge?That’s a tough one. Because I’m not so much talking about suburbia as I am talking about this self-isolation that goes back to the whole snowflake metaphor where we’re taught that we’re special and hyper-individualized by being told that we’re unique and innately a treasure. It’s that idea of ourselves as different that drives us apart from one another. It was only once I realized, No, actually, all of us have far more in common than we have differences, and I’m not a snowflake, that I recognized myself in other people. That’s when I started to write about myself as part of a larger pattern of a larger experience. “Snowflake” is an interesting word. It’s what tyler durden uses to tell men that they’re not unique or special. But now it’s been coopted by the alt-right as their favorite epithet of liberals and people who have no toughness. Which gets back to what we were talking about before…You know, you want people to adopt the thing. You want to put the book in the movie producer’s hand and have them adopt it like a baby, raise it and put a huge amount of energy into it. In doing so, the movie producer is going to change it so that it reflects the movie producer’s experience. And once that material passes on to an audience, the audience adopts it. It will become the child of the audience and will serve whatever purpose the audience has for it. It would be insane to think that the author could control every iteration or every interpretation of their work.So you just feel like an innocent bystander to how it’s being used? You don’t feel any type of feeling either way — good or bad?No, I do not. You know, it’s like J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye and the death of John Lennon. I don’t think Salinger felt huge remorse that he’d written a fantastic book, and this book was interpreted by a damaged person. Nor do I think it was Salinger’s fault.There’s one passage in Fight Club 2 that I found particularly interesting. You write, “Throughout childhood, people tell you to be less sensitive. Adulthood begins the moment someone tells you that you need to be more sensitive.” Is that something that you’ve specifically had to work on as you’ve grown older?Oh, hell yeah. It’s one of those little truisms. You have so many people telling you, “Don’t be so sensitive.” Then, suddenly one day, it turns around.You seem very soft and gentle over the phone, I’m surprised that the man who wrote Fight Club seems so tender in his voice. I’m a much older man now too. Fight Club was 20 years ago for me. It seems like you’re saying that you’ve released a lot of the rage you had as a young man.I was going through a huge disillusionment. I’d been a really good student. I kept my nose clean. I followed this blueprint society had presented to me that said that if I did all these things — get my degree, pay back my student loans and work very hard — eventually I’d achieve some sort of satisfying success. But it just wasn’t working. Around the age of 30, all of that good boy stuff starts to fall apart. You have to make a choice as to whether you’re going to continue along that road, or whether you’re going to veer off that road and find ways to succeed you weren’t taught. That’s where I was. I was really disillusioned that I’d been given the same roadmap everyone else was given, but that none of us were finding it effective. We hear the term “toxic masculinity” a lot these days. As someone who writes a lot about manhood, what does it mean to you?Oh boy, I’m not sure if I really believe in it.Why?It seems like a label put on a certain type of behavior from the outside. It’s just such a vague term that it’s hard to address.Let me take the opposite approach then: Who would be the male role model in today’s culture? Is there somebody who young men have to look up to as the ideal man and is someone who I should aspire to be like?Joseph Campbell said that beyond a person’s biological father, people needed a secondary father — especially men. Typically that was a teacher, coach, military officer or priest. But it would be someone who isn’t the biological father but would take the adolescent and coach him into manhood from that point. The problem is that so many of these secondary fathers are being brought down in recent history. Sports coaches have become stigmatized. Priests have become pariahs. For whatever reason, men are leaving teaching. And so, many of these secondary fathers are disappearing altogether. When that happens, what are we left with? Are these children or young men ever going to grow up?Is that what you fear — that we’re going to have a generation of young men who have never been fully socialized? Who have never been fully taught, not just how to be men, but how to be fully realized people?I’m not afraid that it won’t happen, because it’s gonna happen. One of the things that I loved about Campbell is that he explained gangs by saying this is what happens when there’s no secondary father. These gangs are taking young men and giving them impossible tasks, giving them praise and rewards and coaching them to an adulthood. But it’s a negative adulthood. And so, as these secondary fathers disappear for everyone, there will be similar forms that will appear and fulfill that function. But they will coach these young men to maybe more negative manhoods. Yet it also seems like there’s a lack of universally accepted male role models at the national level. There’s no Frank Sinatra or Hugh Hefner anymore — no one who, for better or worse, everyone looks up to. Do you think I’m wrong in that assessment?I think you’re wrong in that these were maybe not the healthiest male role models to model yourself after. I prefer to think of someone like John Glenn.Okay, I’ll buy that. Is there a modern-day John Glenn?Maybe not on the big, big level that everyone can emulate. But I think that on a more local level, there are teachers who mentor students. The man who taught me minimalist writing, Tom Spanbauer, was very much the master of this workshop of students. And among his apprentices — the people who could produce work that was marketable — bought their way out of his workshop. They achieved a mastery of their own. I’d like to see more of that happening. Instead of people just being given grades and being given loans to repay. I’d like to see them actually demonstrate a mastery in something useful in this kind of apprentice/mentor student role.You’ve experienced a lot of death in your life and even volunteered at a hospice for a time. Why were you drawn to something so morbid?It panicked me as a young person to first get a sense of my mortality — that at some point, I was going to be called upon to die. Because I had no idea what it was like to die. By working at a hospice, I was able to see what the process was like — that some people die beautifully and some people die horribly, but that if they could do it, I could do it, too. It gave me a greater sense of ease around the inevitability of dying. Later in life, your father was murdered by the ex-husband of his new girlfriend. When something that terrible and seemingly random happens, how do you try to make sense of it?By using my journalism degree. By going to the trials and talking about all the details. By understanding moment by moment everything that took place. And by establishing a sense of, not quite control, but a sense of having mastered the narrative of what led to what.On another strange and inevitable level, my father had almost been killed as a child. His father had become very upset and killed his mother and himself. But he also tried to kill my father. He just gave up searching for him before he committed suicide. When my father was finally killed by this woman’s ex-husband all these years later, a mattress fell on top of his body as the building he was in burned. The mattress is what preserved his body well enough that they could identify him as my father. Crazy enough, the reason my father survived as a child when his father went insane was that he had hidden underneath a mattress.There were so many coincidences like that. So in a way, my father’s death seemed like this perfect circle back to this past event actually coming to fruition. There were just too many odd coincidences to completely ignore them all.And yet, despite all these coincidences, you still identify as a nihilist? Something like that is uncanny. It almost seems otherworldly that there would be that many parallels.There’s a choice — you can either identify as a nihilist, or you can try to impose your own belief system on something you don’t understand. The latter option says more about controlling other people, and I prefer not to do that. I’d rather work from a position of nihilism, because I think that’s the best base for creativity and play.Still, you needed to process your father’s murder as a story and have some control of it in order to get past it.I treat storytelling as a digestive function. You ruminate like a chewing animal. And you chew a story over and over again until it has absolutely no emotional reaction, and you’ve resolved your emotional reaction to it. First by distancing it as a craft exercise — by turning it into a story — that’s one step. But the big step is to tell that story over and over again until you’ve completely assimilated the event into your identity, and you’ve exhausted your emotional reaction. You are no longer used by the story; you’re using the story at that point.You also supported your father’s killer being sentenced to death, a sentence that ended up getting commuted. I can’t imagine you arrived at that conclusion lightly. Some of the officials showed me documents from this man’s lifetime of incarceration. It was unethical, maybe even illegal, but there were a long string of things that he’d been convicted of doing since childhood. This man had created so much pain and had destroyed so many people’s lives that it just seemed like the cleanest way of resolving his life. What was the most important thing that your dad taught you?When I was little, we lived out in the country and had this chopping block where we killed chickens. My father had told me not to put metal washers over my fingers and get them stuck. But I did it anyway. The washer got stuck, and my finger turned black. I went to my father, and he said, “We’re going to have to cut this off.” It was completely clear to me that it was my fault, that there was a price to pay and that my father was doing me a favor by washing my finger and putting rubbing alcohol on the axe so it would be sterile.When we got to the chopping block, my father had me kneel down and put my finger on it. Then, he swung the axe and missed by an inch. Afterward, he took me inside and took the washer off with soap and water. But in that moment, I was very clear — and I’ve been very clear since — that if things are going to happen in my life, I’m gonna have to make them happen — and if they don’t happen, I’m going to have to take responsibility. That’s one parenting technique…He was like a 22-year-old guy. So I don’t want to be too hard on him.That’s very gracious of you. Nowadays, someone would call DCFS if something like that happened.Again, he was a 22-year-old guy whose father had killed himself and his mother in a murder suicide. He’d been beaten as a child and had grown up to the best of his abilities. He had no parenting skills. I think he did a marvelous job when you consider his circumstances.Aside from your father’s murder, the other big element of your personal life that’s become public is your sexuality. You didn’t, however, come out until 2003. And, in fact, even gave the impression that you were married to a woman. Why?Because of my partner. He doesn’t want to be a public person. And the next question they ask you after coming out is, “Who are you with?” So I chose not to go down that road. For the same reasons so many celebrities will refuse to talk about their children — they don’t want to make their children into public figures.If you were to start your career today, would you be more willing to come out? I imagine it would be much easier now socially speaking.I’d probably do it exactly the opposite way. I’d say no picture on the book. I’d use a pseudonym like the author of The Hunger Games. I’d refuse to do any kind of public relations. I’d keep myself entirely out of the process. Why?Because I’d like the work to stand on its own and to be judged on its own. I’ve become exhausted with the constant explanation of the work, which I don’t think is necessary. Too much of the presence of the author can get between the reader and the story. Afterwards, the reader will no longer see themselves in the story; they will see too much of the author.That’s interesting because there’s a certain kind of bro-y, straight white guy who really loves the Fight Club movie — and the book if they happen to read it. I imagine that they’re a little surprised when they find out the author is gay. Would you consider that accurate?They are, and they aren’t. I don’t think it’s a big deal. I also wrote Invisible Monsters, which gay guys love as well as straight women because it’s all about that panicky feeling that this beautiful thing isn’t going to be beautiful forever and that you’ve got to transition that beauty into a different, more lasting form of power. That’s something so many beautiful women face and why people really attach to Invisible Monsters. And so, I think that by the time that book came out, I had such a variety of books in the world that the particulars about me were less important.You’re really downplaying your own role in this. You don’t take pride in the fact that people really resonate with your work and want to discuss it with you?That’s because my degree is in journalism. My job is to listen to people at parties and to identify their stories and to find a commonality in the pattern between them. Because when someone tells an anecdote that goes over well, it evokes other people to tell almost identical anecdotes from their own life. Then you choose the very best of these to demonstrate a very human dynamic. In a way, what I do isn’t so much invent things as it is identifying them. Later, I just put them together in a report that looks like a novel.You think of your fiction as reporting?It is. I have so little imagination. But I have so much admiration when I hear a great story from someone — the journalist in me wants to preserve it, archive it and honor it in some way.Not long ago, we were talking about male role models, but it just dawned on me that I never asked you who yours was when you were growing up.Dr. Christiaan Barnard. He was a heart transplant surgeon in South Africa. There was an article about him in a magazine when I was a small child, and something about him just completely captivated my attention.Do you know what it was exactly?The idea that he had dedicated his life to heart transplant research but that he had developed arthritis so severe that he could no longer do the work himself. That seemed like such a tragedy and made him infinitely more appealing. John McDermott is a staff writer at MEL. He last wrote about how we need a better name for net neutrality to get people to start caring about it.More conversations:A Conversation With Conner Habib, the Syrian-American Gay Porn Performer and Radical PhilosopherMoments after the solar eclipse peaked over Los Angeles on Monday, I found Conner Habib perched on his porch. We sat on…melmagazine.comA Conversation With Chris KluweThe outspoken former NFL punter whose mouth got him blackballed from pro footballmelmagazine. comA Conversation With Dan Wilson, the ‘Closing Time’ Singer Who’s Written Hits for All Your Favorite…How the former Semisonic frontman became a hitmaker for womenmelmagazine.comA Conversation With Keith Law, Baseball’s Foremost Intellectual and FirebrandESPN’s sabermetrics guru discusses antidepressants, the importance of logic and his great new book about the future of…melmagazine.comA Conversation with Langston Kerman, the ‘Insecure’ Star and Slam Poet-Turned-Standup-ComicLangston Kerman is an L. A. -based comedian who tours the country performing stand-up and is on the verge of starring in…melmagazine.com

[snugglyporos]

The world is a changing place. Runeterra is daily rocked by the reemergence of gods and avatars and other such beings. Void creatures cause incursions upon the land, which common people are powerless to stop. Men of science and magic seek to reinvent what it means to be human, turning to machine conversion and drugs to enhance themselves.

This has been a long process; man has always sought to be more than they are. They delve into powers they should not have, delve into methods that strip from them what they were. Yet there is always one thread that unites all of them; there was a moment where they chose not to turn from the path they walked.

His true name is erased from the records of Piltover’s academia, as is his research. What is known is only what people who have met him have gotten from his own lips, and the story never seems to stay the same. Yet there are threads there too, that can be understood. 

He was a moderate physician and a brilliant surgeon, who gained favor with Piltover’s notoriously fickle clans by being able to perform procedures that would have been impossible for less capable hands. Though he took pride in this, his true passion was not in helping the sick or wounded, but improving the human condition. 

Piltover, after all, is the center of The Church of the Glorious Evolved, a religious cult that believes the flesh to be weak, and that only through machines can mankind prosper. Viktor’s own Glorious Evolution advocates the complete replacement of flesh with steel and iron, for the flesh is inferior to it. 

But this man disagreed. Flesh was not weak, for it possessed something the static forms of metal and iron did not; the ability to evolve. It could change, adapt, develop; all things metal could not. Machines could only do what they were built to do. They could not progress beyond what they were. Therefore, there was no glory there, no perfection, and the very idea of perfection ate at this man, for it seemed entirely counter to the notion of a man of science. 

However, he was not in a position to do very much about it as a mere surgeon and medical researcher. That is, until one of his patrons sent him a captured void creature for dissection. Of course, voidborn creatures decay rapidly after death, so dissection would require a very capable hand. He’d need to keep it alive, so he could study its inner workings. 

What he found was amazing to him. The voidborn are adaptive creatures; they possess no static form, not really. Their physiology changes depending on what they encounter. They exist in a state of rapid development, ensuring that no two were entirely alike, and that only the strongest or perhaps most effective would survive. 

He also found another curious development. They were infused with magic. Indeed, flesh and magic were so intertwined, that it was hard to say that they were separate. There had been theories of this of course; but there was little practical application to back it up. Here, he had his opportunity. 

He began leaning on his benefactors to bring him more captured void creatures, so that he might continue his research, all the while beginning to formulate a rather heretical belief in secret. The flesh was not weak, the will was weak. The flesh merely required a will that could shape it, and the power to do so. The Church of the Glorious Evolved was the ultimate expression of human weakness and fear, for it put trust in static, unchanging reality in an ever shifting world. The void were strong, not because of any dark magic or because of some divine blessing, but because they cast aside foolish notions of form, and focused entirely on function. Evolution was not a pathway with a beginning and an end. It was a constant process, one with no true end point, and to give in to fear and embrace static reality was to give into weakness. 

Transforming oneself into a machine to avoid disease and weakness was no virtue, and embracing the flesh was no vice. 

He began augmenting his own form with magic, infusing himself with magic on a more subtle level. Others used enchantments and spells and the like; this was pointless. He would not use magic, he would become magic, or at least, make his flesh the catalyst for his own work. Flesh and bone was as good a medium as any potion. 

His work progressed, and during that time he began experimenting on others in the name of ‘fixing’ them. People would come to him for surgical help, and he would provide it, but in secret he would experiment on their internal organs, altering them, testing to see what effects might occur. This worked well, until one day one of his patients was in an completely unrelated accident, and the surgeon opened the man up to find his internal physiology to be utterly alien. Organs that had no human equivalent functioned in nearly alien ways, and it did not take long for people to investigate the other patients he had worked with. 

His research discredited, his arrest called for, police raided his lab to bring him to trial, only to find him dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. It was, perhaps, fitting, and neither the police or academics wished to delve too deeply into whatever madness he was looking into. Corrupted by the void creatures he studied, they said. 

But this was a ruse. He had taken someone, and he had fleshcrafted their body to look as his did. Face, dental records, finger and toe prints... this person was him, at least in appearance. The manipulation of the nerves to cause him to shoot himself was all that was needed to complete the illusion. 

He took a name for himself: Tzimisce. And he named his new discipline Vicissitude, meaning “the quality or state of being changeable.” Simply put, his belief was not in static machines or magical incantations, or even in limits or the oppression of form itself. His virtue was adaptability, change, mutation. 

Tzimisce’s craft was, and is, like no other. To him, to his touch, flesh and bone are like clay. He can craft and sculpt flesh with ease, with all the deftness that he once used to wield a scalpel. Only now, he puts his talents towards endless evolution of the self. 

Skin that is tougher than steel. Bones harder than titanium. Fireproof. Internal poison generation that can be excreted through the skin. Rapid healing and acidic blood. His body is equal parts canvass and scientific experiment; his endless search is for something stronger than him so that he might overcome it. 

Indeed, his journey has brought him from the pits of Zaun to the Freljord, from the jungles in the deep south to the gates of Noxus. He carries no political or ethical creed; such things are pointless and limiting. The virtue is in development, not in stagnation and stasis. To hold any ideal other than this virtue is to give in to human weakness; to be stuck rather than moving.

His greatest enemies, in his eyes, are those like Viktor and Camille, those who cling to machines and stasis as some sort of virtue when they are merely trapped in their own prisons. He considers Vladmir to be a rival, given his mastery of hemomancy, though he finds Vladmir’s foolish clinging to a static form to be bizarre. He lacks vision, clearly. He finds Swain to be interesting, if foolish, the same way he looks upon the magical sort in Noxus. Though they freely throw away morals, which is good, they stupidly look for power in dark pacts and other things. Being chained to some fell creature is hardly freedom or power, should one of them decide to reassert power over the leash. 

Most find Tzimisce to be utterly bizarre, regardless of his appearance, which is hardly ever the same twice. He seems to take no real interest in anything other than conflict, though he professes to only be interested in developing himself. Challenges are to be found and overcome. He expresses disdain for most magical and technological projects; they are unneeded when one’s flesh is the tool. Though he has some admiration for creations like Sion or Urgot, he thinks them incomplete. And most tend to find him... dangerous at the very least. A being who has no attachment to anyone or anything for long is only useful so long as you can keep the beast occupied after all. Though many hope his often remarked desire to face down one of the darkin will kill him and rid them of him. This of course, is unlikely; anything hoping to kill him only has one shot before he seeks to counter it. 

Perhaps the only reason anyone keeps him around is because he does great work. Tzimisce’s handiwork is legendary; he can cure just about any disease, replace any organ, transplant even the brain from one body to another. He can improve the human form to peak condition, create bodyguards or golems that are beyond the realm of any magical or machine creation. Limitations of the flesh do not exist, save fr the willingness of the creator. Granted, very few are entirely comfortable with a being that considers everyone he meets to be building materials. 

Thoughts? @consider-the-tentacle @noxian-rose @nihil-remedium @infinite-xerath @hook-and-chains @ask-kalista @saurianbutcher