#psychic defense

[thatwhichdoesnotsuffer]

Study the full lecture here:

"We have a duty to protect ourselves. If we are really working on this spiritual path, it is because we believe that there is a way to really serve God and help humanity in the process. And so when other entities try to seduce us, to manipulate us, to attack us, we have a right to protect ourselves and we have a duty to protect ourselves, because the work that we are doing at this time is very important. Many, many people are suffering, and the work that we are doing to become better human beings, to connect with divinity, to follow the will of God through the guidance that we are receiving internally, is very important, because as we see every day on the news, this planet is going through an intensifying period of suffering. So the more that we are doing to preserve our covenant with God and to work with the three factors to strengthen our consciousness, to live ethically, to follow the guidance of our own inner divinity, the better it will be for us, for everyone around us, and for humanity as a whole. So take spiritual protection seriously, and do what you can, but most importantly, know that by purifying your own mind through daily meditation and following God's guidance in comprehension, that is the best protection that you can have."

[kairennart]

YOU CAN LOVE HIM BUT YOU CAN'T KEEP HIM

[kabutoden]

listen i know i said they dont have godtier powers but au where they do. list. listen. are you hearing me. mage of time ceruleanblood with intense and volatile emotions and low emotive knight of doom rustblood. its doomed yuri. its timed yuri. ill love you forever but we dont have that. and we never will. duty. knowledge. resignation to fate. a single moment between enemies/lovers to last an eternity the scorpion and the fly..........

[s-aint-elmo]

digging out my eah content part 4: the kittycorner (ba-dum-tss)

ID: a set of sketchy digital drawings featuring kitty cheshire. the first five make a short comic. one: kitty earnestly slow-blinks; her catlike eyes are bigger and shinier when she opens them. two: a bemused lizzie hearts playing with her deck of cards asks, “...huh?” three: embarrassed, kitty blurts, “nothing. bye.” and disappears. four: lizzie waves after her, still confused as she replies, “oh--bye???” five: maddie hatter pops up behind lizzie, blushing and delighted, exclaiming, “oh my, kitty!”  six: kitty lounges on a tree branch, smiling mischievously, one paw-like hand raised near her face as she says, “y’know, like nya” with a cat-shaped speech bubble. off-screen, indicated by a wolf-shaped speech bubble, cerise replies in all-caps: “stop.” seven: a grinning bust of kitty in a less cartoony style winks at the camera. end ID.

[pianokantzart]

I posted something somewhere about Papa Mario’s “these are boys” line being wholesome (and made more so because of who voices the character!) and I got some comments from people who hated the line because it was clear Pio “didn’t give a shit” about either of his sons and only accepted them once they gave him something he could brag about. In other words, he only “cares” about them when they make him look good. I don’t think this is the case, and I get the feeling you don’t either. Can you do a brief analysis on the character given what little we’ve seen of him? :)

Yep, I 100% agree with you. Mario and Luigi's dad may have his flaws, but he definitely cares about his kids.

The thing about Pio is that he strikes me as the family patriarch? At least for as long as the grandpa has been in his twilight years. Not only does Pio appear a lot more emotionally restrained than Uncle Tony and Uncle Arthur, but he's bulkier and moves with a lot less pep. Either he's a good number of years older than either of them, works a far more physically demanding job, or both. Whatever the case, he takes matters with a lot more gravity, and his lapse of judgement at the dinner table seemed to be out of genuine worry rather than disdain or apathy. At first he did his best to talk about anything other than Mario's failing plumbing business, keeping his head down and eating his pasta while everyone else was either defending or teasing Mario and Luigi.

It's only when Mario directly asks his dad for his opinion that he gets right to the heart of the matter:

"I think you're nuts. You don't leave a steady job for some crazy dream. And the worst part? You're bringing your brother down with you."

It's harsh, but you can tell he means well. This is not the face of a man who "doesn't give a sh*t." This may be a big joke to Arthur and Tony, but to Pio it's dead serious. Mario's taking a huge gamble with his and his brother's financial stability. Yes, this is Mario AND Luigi's dream, and Luigi is perfectly capable of making his own decisions... but it's clear who's leading the charge and making a lot of questionable choices along the way. If Pio has a place of headship in the family like I suspect, then this statement has a lot more weight to it– he knows what it is to have other people's wellbeing rely on you. It's important Mario understands that if this longshot fails, he won't be going down alone.

Did Mario already know this? Yep. Was telling him he was bringing his brother down a step too far? Absolutely, but Pio was not trying to emotionally gut his son the way he did.

When Mario storms off, he looks blindsided by the reaction.

When everyone stares at him in surprise he asks "what did I say?" in a tone of genuine confusion. This was meant to be a wakeup call for Mario, not a slap in the face. Apparently, Luigi's inability to read a room is hereditary.

But Pio's not a man of pure stoicism, he's still a hot-blooded Italian at his core, so of course he gets so excited when his kids appear out of nowhere to decimate a giant turtle dragon and his invading army??? (Please note the way he's leaning way too far out of that window in his excitement. It's lucky he's got good core strength or he'd be falling right out of the third story into what is still an active war zone.)

When the smoke clears both Mia and Pio are climbing over wreckage to get to Mario and Luigi, well before a crowd has gathered to cheer. The "these are my boys!" was a continuation of the pride Mario's dad had already expressed before he realized anyone else was watching. He has absolutely no idea what just happened, but anyone with eyes can see that Mario and Luigi just did something fantastic! And as much as Pio sees Mario in the leading role– responsible for his and his brother's failures– he also sees him as responsible for their victories.

So yeah. Conclusion: Mario's Dad is a flawed guy who makes big mistakes, but there's no doubt in my mind that he cares a lot about his kids.

[chicagognosis]

Learn to defend yourself in spiritual warfare. New video with transcription and accompanying podcast!

[couchtaro]

Do you get together with your friends once a week to imagine best friends you made up holding and getting held in desperation and terror as one of them rapidly turns to stone, the other flooding her with his literal life force, which manifests as a visceral compulsion to survive, in the hopes that it will somehow help her resist, offering “the closest thing to a prayer he has” as he begs his warlock patron to do anything at all, telling said patron “you don’t know her, but she’s everything” and pleading for her to live while watching her literal actual light gradually extinguish as the petrification overtakes her, all the while she is using what little mobility she still has to hurl lasers at the monsters attacking their friends who are defending them so he can focus his energy on saving her. Or are you normal

@justabitscrewy used every single one of her turns in a session-long combat to hold Phaela and RP her guts out and like. My word. I have to lay down. Let them hug. They’re goin thru it

ID and slightly more context below the cut

Image 1: a roughly sketched digital drawing of two D&D characters. Izen, a drider, is shown in his form of dread, a defensive state designed to frighten off attackers. In this form his face is bare skull, with four pairs of hollow eye sockets and purple mandibles on either side of his jaw. Tears run down the stark bone of his face. He is wearing the bracers that Phaela decorated for him by wrapping them in ribbon. With both hands, he holds Phaela’s face. She is a tiefling woman who looks up at him with wide eyes. Izen’s prized possession, a talisman secured by a ring of straps, is wrapped around her shoulders. Her chin is tilted up as if the stone spreading up her body is a rising tide she is trying to stay afloat in. She is petrified up to her neck with only her head and extended left arm free. Both are suffused by a starry blue glow, which is no longer present in the dull stone overtaking her. She holds starlight in her free hand that she has been trying to defend them with. Her expression is a mixture of desperation, determination, fear, and guilt.

Images 2 and 3: a roughly sketched comic. 1) Izen faces us. Phaela wraps her arms around him with her back to us, her head pressed into his chest and shoulders hunched. His hands rest on her back. 2) Izen bends down to hug Phaela properly, wrapping his arms around her and resting his head on her shoulder. His pedipalps also wrap around her for extra huggage. 3) Izen straightens and lifts Phaela up off the ground, his pedipalps forming a sort of platform that she sits on. 4) Phaela curls into Izen like a child, tail hanging limply down. One of his hands securely circles her back, the other rests on the back of her neck. He rests his head on her shoulder and one of his spider legs comes forward to hold her as well. Maximizing points of contact here. 5) Phaela wildshapes into a cat just to get super extra held. She is nestled in his arms, tucked under his chin, being gently stroked. Her face is still not visible.

End image ID.

[juvian]

Deoxys, the DNA Pokemon -> 386

Do not repost - Requested by @doyeons

[brawltogethernow]

Increasingly difficult to be on an affectionately disrespectful first name basis with Magneto the more names he accrues. Stop dodging I AM going to refer to you exclusively in the least formal mode possible.

[see-arcane]

I wonder if Lucy was naturally more sensitive to psychic forces?

Oh, I've been chewing on this topic with regards to her and Mina, actually 👀 I kind of picture it as both girls being on different ends of the Eerie Energy Radar spectrum, for better and worse.

Lucy is more susceptible to the unpleasant vibes Dracula is sending out, versus Mina who is aware of something being off, as seen with her unease over Jonathan's absence and Dracula approaching the shore. As the novel progresses, we're going to see exactly what kind of psychic weight Dracula has to throw around with 'susceptible' minds, human or otherwise, just as we're going to see flashes of Mina's more-than-average intuition come into play.*

*(There's some foundation to her stand-ins in the Nosferatu films having blatant psychic ability.)

[technovillain]

guy who repressed his impulses so hard he blew a fuse and exploded somebody and also himself with his brain.

(some story stuff under the cut)

Dogen Boole is trying to stop being psychic. He was trying to accept that part of himself for years. He slowly weaned himself off of wearing his hat. Slowly became more comfortable that nothing bad would happen again. Doing his best to repress any intrusive thoughts, he prevented explosions.

Dogen's intrusive thoughts are what cause the explosions. It just becomes all that he can think about and completely out of his control, he manifests his psychic powers. Dogen starts to completely repress his natural thought process to avoid accidentally acting on these intrusive thoughts. He keeps his mind eternally busy with multiple things. When things bother him, he pretends he doesn't even see them and moves on immediately. This caused so much pressure to build up inside him.

Then there was an unexpected incident. While on a mission, something caused him to snap, and he relapsed and exploded someone with his mind. Because of the way he was holding it all in, the sheer power of the psychic blast gave him burns/scars on the sides of his head. He absolutely obliterated the person and injured the other people he was working with. He was inconsolable about the situation, and so he went into hiding. He wears a gigantic hat/helmet designed to completely repress his powers. He just doesn't want to hurt anyone ever again. It would be easier if he wasn't a psychic at all.

(Have to work this bit out but he seeks help in finding a way to stop being psychic without damaging his brain and ends up working with someone dangerous and accidentally feeds them information about the Psychonauts and a way to permanently disable them. He only wants to keep others safe by changing himself but inadvertently putting everyone at risk.)

[onbearfeet]

Queerwolf By Night: Queercoding, Media Literacy, and Werewolf By Night (part 3)

Lovely to have you back for this, the final part of our examination of WBN being queer as fuck. If you missed the earlier presentations in Media Studies and Writing Hacks With Kat, Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

We've gone through the Hays Code AND the AIDS crisis so far, and that's a lot, so could I interest you in a cup of coffee brewed over a campfire?

Thanks, Ted. You're a peach.

So let's look at the final scene of WBN through a queer lens. There's a needle drop, color is restored to the world, and we see Jack waking up in the woods to drink coffee, grunt at Ted, and eventually decide that sushi should happen.

(Side note: I have a whole rant about queercoding and sushi, but I cut it, so here's a gif of Aziraphale gayly eating sushi in Good Omens, which you should watch.)

Okay, enough queer angels. Time for more queer monsters.

First things first: this scene is SO DOMESTIC, y'all. They're literally playing house in the woods, in that Ted has built Jack an adorable little house and brewed his morning coffee. The camp is littered with little domestic touches like the French press and the guitar. It's a homey, if slightly eclectic, vibe. (Where did Ted find a payphone?)

There is no explanation for these objects being there, afaik; Ted and Jack both have presumably come from some distance away, involuntarily in Ted's case, so there's no reason Ted would know the location of a well-stocked camp to put an unconscious Jack down in if Jack even set one up. Presumably the camp is Ted's work, but there's never an explanation for where he got any items other than the robe and the phonograph. (I'm particularly curious about the flower mug, personally.) Yet the objects are not remarked upon, and the entire scene is played as if this is a relatively normal morning for the two of them.

In fact, most of the mechanics of the scene are effectively those of a morning-after scene, perhaps a morning after characters fall into bed for the first time. Jack wakes up groaning, crawls out of bed to see where he is, and finds his partner has laid out something like breakfast for him and is prepared to discuss the events of the night before whenever Jack is ready.

And speaking of that discussion, we once again have displays of queercoded masculinity: Jack and Ted being physically affectionate, playful banter, and emotional vulnerability when Jack asks about Elsa. You know the drill by now. The camera pans up as "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" swells and fades out.

Wait.

Rainbow?

Let's talk about music in this film.

Michael Giacchino is primarily known as a composer of film music. WBN is his directorial debut. I guarantee you've heard his music before, because it's basically in every summer blockbuster franchise. If you can't get John Williams, Danny Elfman, or Hans Zimmer (all of whom are getting long in the tooth), you get Giacchino and he turns in a fucking SCORE.

Now, I am not a music person. Not at all. But even my musically illiterate ass knows that traditional film scoring derives a lot from classical music, especially Romantic composers like Beethoven. And that means LEITMOTIFS, baby!

(I learned about leitmotifs from Bugs Bunny and Star Wars. Do not be impressed.)

A leitmotif is a short musical phrase that can be used to signify a character, object, or theme in a larger work of music. For a very basic example of this, look up the Force theme from Star Wars and watch a supercut of all the times it was used to indicate that someone was using the Force. Or just watch this Sideways video about why the music in Rise of Skywalker was ass:

Anyhoo. The point of leitmotifs is to give an audience a feeling without necessarily tipping them off to exactly WHY they're having that feeling. And Giacchino LOVES his leitmotifs.

So when he uses someone else's music, he's extremely aware of the emotions that can come attached to that music. It's literally what he does.

There are two pieces of music used in WBN that Giacchino didn't write: a late 1930s recording of Vera Lynn singing "Wishing Will Make It So" and Judy Garland singing "Over The Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz. Let's start with Vera Lynn.

Vera Lynn was an English singer most associated with big band music before and during WWII. During the war, she was known as "the Forces' sweetheart", both for her efforts to entertain the troops and for the fact that she was kind of every British fighting man's waifu. What Betty Grable's legs were to American GIs, Vera Lynn's voice was to British servicemen. She's best known for the song "We'll Meet Again", which is about exactly what it sounds like. She was a nice lady, by all accounts, and there is a ferry boat named after her now.

A Vera Lynn song about childhood and wishing is what Verussa plays in the labyrinth, apparently to annoy Elsa, who switches it off (even though that's going to inform everyone of where she is). For the purposes of queercoding, Vera Lynn is mom and apple pie, or possibly mum and fish and chips, and above all she is safe, compulsory heterosexuality. The Forces' sweetheart.

Judy Garland, on the other hand, is a queer icon.

I can't overstate what a Big Deal Judy Garland and Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz are in queer culture. The themes of the story, including acceptance of the unusual and embrace of a found family (along with the sapphic elements of some of the books), resonated so deeply with queer people that for several decades, "are you a friend of Dorothy?" was code for "are you gay?" The US Navy actually launched an investigation to find the mysterious "Dorothy" who was supposedly the ringleader of all the gay sailors.

And then there's the song itself, with its theme of longing for a faraway, more colorful place where those who don't fit in at home are loved for who they are. It's, uh, pretty resonant with the queer experience.

So I now draw your attention to the phonograph. Gramophone. Record player. Whatever it's called.

In WBN, we first see the player set up in the labyrinth, presumably by Verussa or at her orders. It's playing a Vera Lynn song about childhood and wishing, which apparently annoys Elsa so much that she switches it off, thus alerting Jack to her location.

The next appearance of the player is in the camp, where it's now playing "Over the Rainbow" beside Jack as he wakes up. Ted has presumably stolen it; there's no other candidate for that, and we already saw him swipe a murder robe for Jack, so why not a record player too?

In other words, Verussa Enthusiastic Heterosexuality Bloodstone sets up the Compulsory Heterosexuality Machine, after which Elsa Ally-Coded Bloodstone turns it off in disgust, and Ted swipes it and turns it gay for Jack's benefit.

That's the coding. That's BARELY subtext. I really don't know what else to tell you. This essay started with my making an offhand joke to bluemoonperegrine about Ted and Jack being "literally friends of Dorothy" and then realizing nobody else in the conversation had noticed this stuff.

So what do we do about all this? Is WBN queer? Does all the Wolfstone stuff pale in comparison to the glory of Russallis? Am I trying to start a ship war in a fandom so small it probably wouldn't fill up Vera Lynn's namesake ferry boat?

Jack, you can answer this for me.

Nope. Not trying to start anything. I happily read Wolfstone, and technically have written some. I love all three WBN leads and am happy to enjoy them in any configuration (although my personal preference is group napping in a puppy pile, because these characters deserve naps).

I just figured it was worth documenting all this so people who haven't had the benefit of my very strange education would be better equipped to recognize (and ideally enjoy) old-style queercoding when they see it.

Wait a minute. You promised writing hacks. It's in the series title and everything.

Shit, you caught me.

Obviously, queercoding isn't a universal tool. There are plenty of storytelling contexts in which it's much better to make characters explicitly queer. Representation matters, and all that.

But sometimes you won't have time for explicit confirmation (like when your story takes place overnight and nobody really has time to play tonsil hockey). Sometimes you won't be able to include it due to outside constraints (like Disney being Disney).

And sometimes, you'll remember that there are plenty of people who can't or won't pick up explicitly queer media. Homophobic parents who won't let their kids watch Love, Simon ... but who WILL let them read your YA novel about unicorns or whatever where there are two female unicorns who are, uh, life partners. Grumpy uncles who refuse to acknowledge their nephew's boyfriend until they notice that, hey, they kinda act like Finn and Poe from that Star War. And so on. Sometimes, coded rep is the best rep you can get ... and so it's useful to have. A good toolbox has ALL the tools.

So if you're building characters for your story and don't or can't have specific queer goals, throw in a little coding. Put a rainbow T-shirt on a kid. Let two boys hold hands or have literally any feelings. Let a girl say a girl is pretty. Look up some of the older symbols for queer love and have someone growing lavender in their garden, or use newer queer symbols and have a character crack an egg in a key scene. Have a character who's content without a romantic or sexual relationship, and has an arc about something else, because aces and aros exist too.

There's a whole universe of coding out there. Go add some layers to your work.

Or better yet--see if they're there already. You might surprise yourself.

Sometimes the monster has a familiar face.

[axle-does-draw]

Age swap AU where Mob still starts out thinking Reigen is a psychic because the kid's really good with emotions and says he's the greatest empath of the 21st century, and Mob- who has the emotional intelligence of a wet mop & understands how powerful he himself is- believes it. (not the greatest bit ofc, but it acts as a red herring in the beginning).

[napping-sapphic]

Hang on i’m sending all the girls that are sad they don’t have a valentine this year psychic flowers and chocolates

[jaypgartifacts]

a weird guy appear

[ndscottsummers]

X-Men v2 #18