#source: trust me I’ve read a lot of those

[mumms-the-word]

Illithid Souls - Part 1

What’s up with mind flayers and souls anyway?

I know this deep dive has been done before like a hundred times, based on all the Reddit threads I’ve read, but I feel like a lot of the "evidence" has been scattered about in a lot of places (reddit, tumblr, other threads, other socials, etc). So I figured...why not gather a lot of it here in one place?

As with all my deep dives, this post is designed to equip you with some lore so you can build your own theories and ideas. I’ll offer theories that I find interesting or feasible, but lore is always a little hazy so I’m bound to be wrong or you’re bound to interpret things differently. Just have fun with the lore!

I’ll start by defining what D&D calls a soul, and then…well it unravels from there. In this part we're going to dive into the lore about souls, the afterlife, and where mind flayers differ, along with a bit of in-game context. In Part 2 we'll look at individual case studies (Tav/Durge, Orpheus, Karlach, and Gale).

Buckle up, folks, cause it's a long one!

As always, I’ll include images and image descriptors/text written out in case the pictures fail or are too small to read!

What is a soul?

The entire game of Baldur's Gate 3 is heavily invested in the idea of souls. Raphael wants to bargain with your soul. Mizora has Wyll's soul bound to a contract. Cazador plans to sacrifice 7007 souls. Vlaakith consumes the souls of her faithful. Karlach wants to collect (and use) soul coins. Every tadpoled follower of the Absolute is called a True Soul. This game is OBSESSED with souls.

But it never actually defines a soul, does it? So what do the official D&D rules say?

Well...they don't. Older editions used to split hairs about the difference between a soul and a spirit, but those older editions also used to say that elves, orcs, and half-orcs didn't have souls, so...we've moved on a bit from those days.

In the game, a book on soul coins defines souls as "the sum of personal and magical essence," which is both helpful and vague. The general player consensus is that a soul is the animating "force" that is made up of memories, personality, intelligence, and (possibly) morality, and that in some cases, such as the spell Speak with Dead, a soul differs from a spirit, which merely "animates" the body but does not actually possess the personality or the thinking capabilities of the deceased (though it may have access to memories).

Speak with Dead [...] Until the spell ends, you can ask the corpse up to five questions. The corpse knows only what it knew in life, including the languages it knew. [...] This spell doesn't return the creature's soul to its body, only its animating spirit. Thus, the corpse can't learn new information, doesn't comprehend anything that has happened since it died, and can't speculate about future events.

So there's a chance that while an entire soul is generally made up of personality, memories, and some element of active thinking/decision making/speculation (intelligence, for lack of a better term), the part of a soul that functions as an "animating spirit" is what houses memory. In other words, animating spirit (memories) + personality + intelligence = soul.

This idea of the animating spirit (memories) being housed within a soul, but also detachable from a soul, is important for later, so remember this in a bit.

Souls also have power, which is why the game is obsessed with everyone fighting over souls. Raphael, Mizora, and Cazador trade in souls in exchange for power. There are insinuations in the game that the gods want to stop the "scourge of soulless illithids" (Mystra's words) because souls are a kind of currency to them (though, trust me, trying to find a recent D&D source that clearly states that particular stance is a damn migraine of an endeavor). But Withers does say that souls imbue gods with power, so the game at least operates with that assumption in mind.

According to Withers…

We all know that Withers, aka Jergal, aka the Final Scribe, aka the former god of death, aka the expert on souls, has plenty to say when you ask him to elaborate on anything:

Well, okay, maybe he doesn't. But he does have a bit more to say about souls and mind flayers. For example, when he first brings up the topic of illithids and souls in Moonrise, this is some of the information he can give the player.

Withers: I shall ask yet again. Do illithids possess souls? Player: These abominations are soulless, surely. Withers: Correct. - Player: I'm not sure. Don't all living things? Withers: No. Nor canst thou count mind flayers among them. - Player: I admit I haven't thought about it. Withers: Thou shalt think about it now, and I shall give the answer. Mind flayers are soulless. Yet the Three amass an illithid army, void of apostolic souls that could imbue them with power.

A couple of things to note here. Jergal, the guy in charge of putting down the names of people who die and keeping track of where their souls go, is pretty clear that he thinks mind flayers don't have souls. But his last statement clarifies two things: one, that he is referring specifically to apostolic souls (more on that in a bit) and that souls imbue gods with power.

Souls give the gods a kind of strength. He brings this up when he criticizes the dumb plot the Dead Three came up with in his post-epilogue scene:

Thou sought to bolster thy strength by taking away the souls of mortals. But souls vanish when their hosts become mind flayers.

So we know that souls are a source of power for deities and gods because they imbue gods with power and strength. But gods only get the power of these souls after a mortal dies with their soul intact. If someone becomes a mind flayer...well, let's just say the natural order of things gets disrupted.

What happens when you die?

You see, normally, when someone dies in Faerûn (assuming they are humanoid), their soul travels to the Fugue Plane where it basically waits around until a deity picks them up or Kelemvor decides they're just going to be part of the Wall of the Faithless for forever. From the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (page 20 because I am, as youtuber Swoop says in her docs, a thorough bitch):

The Afterlife Most humans believe the souls of the recently deceased are spirited away to the Fugue Plane, where they wander the great City of Judgment, often unaware they are dead. The servants of the gods come to collect such souls and, if they are worthy, they are taken to their awaited afterlife in the deity's domain. Occasionally, the faithful are sent back to be reborn into the world to finish work that was left undone.

This is where the idea of apostolic souls comes in. Apostolic, in its most basic definition, means "having the characteristics of an apostle," or having the characteristics of someone who dedicates their entire lives to the teaching of a particular religious figure (in our context and reality, this mostly means the apostles of Christ, but in BG3 it would refer to any deity). I think here, the definition gets stretched a little thinner to mean any soul that is capable of devotion to a deity, rather than a soul that is already devoted. Apostolic souls can be Faithful, Faithless, or False (which is how souls are separated in the Fugue Plane).

In other words, an apostolic soul is a humanoid-specific soul that the deities recognize and can use as a source of power by inviting said soul into their domain. Mind flayers do not have apostolic souls. Emphasis on apostolic here, but we'll back to mind flayers in a minute. For now, let's look at the Faithless and False souls.

Souls that are unclaimed by the servants of the gods are judged by Kelemvor, who decides the fate of each one. Some are charged with serving as guides for other lost souls, while others are transformed into squirming larvae and cast into the dust. The truly false and faithless are mortared into the Wall of the Faithless, the great barrier that bounds the City of the Dead, where their souls slowly dissolve and begin to become part of the stuff of the Wall itself.

Depressing.

The distinction between a Faithless and a False soul is a little hazy, but according to the Forgotten Realms wiki, a Faithless soul is someone who never aligned themselves to the worship of a specific deity or who just didn't believe in the existence of the gods at all (think of Astarion, who outright rejects all gods). A False soul, in contrast, is someone who did believe but failed to serve their god or outright betrayed them (a fate that Gale feels he is faced with for being on Mystra's bad side). Allegedly all the Faithless end up becoming part of the Wall, whereas the False could get mitigated sentences, such as becoming guides for other souls.

Of course, there's nothing stopping deities from combing through Faithless or False souls to collect them into their domains. But it could take a while. Clearly, the more souls a god collects into their domains, the more powerful they become, but the gods are also not exactly fighting over the souls of Faithless or False people, because people can end up waiting hundreds of years before Kelemvor is finally like "guess you're part of the wall now." Your only option to get out of that is to sell your soul to a devil, which isn't a much better fate.

From The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, page 25, regarding servants of Asmodeus:

To those not so dedicated, priests of Asmodeus offer the prospect of a reprieve in the afterlife. All souls wait on the Fugue Plane for a deity's pleasure, which determines where a soul will spend the rest of eternity. Those who lived their lives most in keeping with a deity's outlook are taken first. Others, who have transgressed in the eyes of their favored god or have not followed any particular ethos, might wait centuries before Kelemvor judges where they go. People who fear such a fate can pray to Asmodeus, his priests say, and in return a devil will grant a waiting soul some comfort.

This makes me infer two things: first, that the gods are kind of picky about which souls they want to join their domain (regardless of what actually happens to that soul in a deity's domain, which is a topic for a different post entirely, because the results may vary) and therefore the gods aren't just going to go with any soul that ends up in the Fugue Plane. Second, that the gods aren't exactly in a hurry to choose among wandering souls, likely because the Material Plane just keeps producing and destroying mortals, resulting in a constant flow of souls.

We see a glimpse of a god's perspective on the influx of souls when Gale confronts Mystra in the Stormshore Tabernacle (in this case, when you play him as an Origin):

Gale: You're one to talk. How many innocents were you prepared to sacrifice if I detonated the orb? Mystra: Such eddies are unexpectional. Souls arrive and depart your plane with every tide, in circumstances just and unjust. The Weave cannot be lost because we are unwilling to cause a ripple. And that is what is at stake.

She then goes on to say "With each day that passes, the elder brain threatens to become a new kind of god, its worshippers a scourge of soulless illithids." This is what's at stake. The loss of souls on the Material Plane.

The Absolute plot threatens that cycle of birth and death, of souls arriving and departing. But how, exactly, is the mind flayer plot a threat?

Well, for one, if everyone with a tadpole turns into an illithid (which doesn't have an apostolic soul, Withers is adamant about this), and then all the illithids kill all the non-illithids...who is making new babies with apostolic souls? And if there are no new fresh souls, eventually the deities will just also die out, since no one will be left to believe in them and thus their powers will diminish and eventually fade. It might take a few hundred years, but it still spells death for everyone involved.

The irony here is that it means the Dead Three gambled and lost even if their plan to ascend a Netherbrain ends with a success, such as when Tav or Durge decides to dominate the world by controlling the Netherbrain. Either the brain is destroyed and they lose, or the Netherbrain successfully completes its Grand Design and they really lose, because the only winner here after a thousand years would be the Netherbrain. Thus we have Withers taunting them in the post-epilogue scene by asking if they really thought their ploy would succeed.

Okay...so we know that mind flayers killing everyone on the planet is a bad idea because it means that apostolic souls stop arriving in the Fugue Plane. But what about mind flayers? If they don't have apostolic souls, do they have ANY soul worth eternal currency?

Remember, the only way to create more mind flayers is to tadpole a humanoid creature. Without humanoids, mind flayers can't reproduce. But when humanoids turn into mind flayers, they allegedly lose their souls. Right?

Withers says souls "vanish" when the body turns into a mind flayer. But this is vague, and thus allows for a few different theories. Perhaps souls move on to the Fugue Plane while the person-turned-mind-flayer continues existing on the Material Plane. Perhaps the soul just becomes obscured and unrecognizable by the gods. Or perhaps the soul really does go poof and is replaced by something else entirely.

So which is it? Well...first of all, let's set the record straight on mind flayer souls.

Do mind flayers have souls?

The short answer is...yes. They just don't have apostolic souls.

According to Volo's Guide to Monsters (page 80 for those looking through their copies at home):

Illithids acknowledge the existence of divine entities, but it is unusual for any but a deviant mind flayer to actively worship such a power. Since they are capable of planar travel, illithids don't view the afterlife and the Outer Planes in the mythic way that most other races do. Illithids don't believe they possess souls whose eternal fate is governed by the gods. Instead, when a mind flayer's brain is returned to the elder brain to be consumed, the creature's intelligence lives on. Only if an illithid's brain isn't retrieved after death would its consciousness be cast into oblivion.

And on page 72:

An elder brain has a perfect recollection of its race's history. Consequently, it views itself as both a refugee and a victim, forced into hiding by barbaric monsters. An elder brain also sees itself as a savior of the mind flayer race and a living memorial that preserves the memories of the mind flayers' prey. By its twisted logic, humanoids whose brains are devoured by the colony are rendered immortal, their memories preserved forever in the elder brain's labyrinthine mind. When a mind flayer grows old, becomes infirm, or is previously injured, the elder brain absorbs it—another form of immortality, as the mind flayer's mind dwells within the hive mind forever after.

So essentially, mind flayers do have a soul, but because they are a) not humanoid but are aberrations from another plane, and b) not faithful to the deities of Faerûn, their souls are not recognized by the gods. The souls might not even journey to the Fugue Plane when they die. Instead, mind flayers give up their consciousness (their memories, especially) to an elder brain to become part of its eternal collective memory.

It's worth noting that Volo's Guide to Monsters puts emphasis on memory and intelligence here, but not necessarily personality. Mind flayers and elder brains do have a kind of personality, because they experience emotions (we'll look at some conversations with the Emperor in Part 2), but their emotional range seems to be a little limited. For example, regarding elder brains:

An elder brain is arrogant, scheming, and power hungry, yet quick to flee or beg for mercy in the face of a powerful foe. It has no conception of joy, sympathy, or charity, but is well acquainted with fear, anger, and curiosity. It is an intellect utterly incapable of empathy or concern for creatures other than itself.

These limited emotions suggest there might be some element of personality here, but it's not exactly the same as a humanoid personality, which would normally be capable of a wider scope of emotional range. We'll talk a lot more about personality and how transforming into a mind flayer alters that part of one's identity (if not their actual soul) more in Part 2, but for now, just know that a mind flayer technically has all the elements usually present in a soul: an animating spirit (memories), intelligence, and personality (emotion).

When mind flayers die, their memories and intelligence are usually consumed by an elder brain, but it's unclear if the personality is too, or if the personality is destroyed. However, if they're not enthralled to an elder brain or if they die and their brain isn't retrieved to give to an elder brain...then their soul is "cast into oblivion."

Being cast into oblivion could mean anything. It could mean that their soul simply wanders around wherever it died, untethered to anything but unable to move on. Or it could mean that their soul simply ceases to exist. No one really knows what happens to it because renegade mind flayers are extremely rare. BG3 has Omeluum and the Emperor, but other than those two, official D&D lore only lists a small handful of other renegades out of millions of mind flayers over time.

So now you're probably thinking, "Well, wait, but is a mind flayer's soul the same soul that a person had before they became a mind flayer?" And the answer to that is complicated.

Let's talk about ceremorphosis

Normally a mind flayer isn't supposed to remember much of its life prior to ceremorphosis. This is partly why mind flayers eat brains, so they can literally absorb the memories of other creatures and make those memories part of the hive mind. But initially, after ceremorphosis, it seems like the the usual animating spirit (memories) of a person gets destroyed or displaced.

The tadpole grows as it devours the humanoid's brain, attaching to the victim's brain stem and becoming its new brain. Over the course of a week, the humanoid body changes form, and a new mind flayer comes into being. The emergent mind flayer often retains a few dim memories from its previous form, but these vague recollections seldom have any bearing on its new life as a brain-eating monster.

So right off the bat, a typical mind flayer loses the memories (perhaps the animating spirit) of the original host, and it's likely that it loses a lot of the initial personality as well (since it seems likely to lose some of the emotional range). Its intelligence is likely altered too, since the tadpole is literally eating brain matter. So this could lead us to believe two things.

First, that ceremorphosis utterly destroys the host's body and the host's soul likely goes to the Fugue Plane because they have basically died. Their brain has been consumed and their body transformed, so in essence they can't be themselves anymore. Instead, a new soul has taken residence inside the mind flayer body, though where this soul comes from is unclear since tadpoles probably don't have souls. The original soul, however, is free to move to the Fugue Plane and beyond.

Or, alternatively, the host's soul is transformed, shedding memories and personality to become a non-apostolic soul that aligns with an elder brain's hive mind somehow. This means that the host's apostolic soul might be destroyed because it's been changed so drastically, but there are some parts of the original soul still left (the lingering memories, for example). This means the host's original soul didn't move on, but is tethered to the mind flayer body and has been changed into something unrecognizable. When the mind flayer dies, the former apostolic-soul-turned-illithid-soul is either consumed by an elder brain or cast into oblivion.

If the first theory is correct, it seems a little odd that the BG3 companions are so concerned about losing their own souls. If it would just be the same as dying, there would still be some desire to avoid the fate of ceremorphosis, but the companions seem incredibly concerned about losing their own autonomy, as if their consciousness will be trapped inside a mind flayer body and their souls forfeit and unable to move on to the Fugue Plane. After all, Withers is in the business of plucking souls out of the Fugue Plane when we inevitably die in the game.

Specifically, Withers can take a body that has been completely turned to ash and resurrect it with True Resurrection, a spell powerful enough to completely restore a body to its former state. However, there is some assumption here that he wouldn't be able to do this with a mind flayer body, thus the push in the game for a cure.

True Resurrection You touch a creature that has been dead for no longer than 200 years and that died for any reason except old age. If the creature's soul is free and willing, the creature is restored to life with all its hit points. This spell closes all wounds, neutralizes any poison, cures all diseases, and lifts any curses affecting the creature when it died. The spell replaces damaged or missing organs and limbs. If the creature was undead, it is restored to its non-undead form. The spell can even provide a new body if the original no longer exists, in which case you must speak the creature's name. The creature then appears in an unoccupied space you choose within 10 feet of you.

In other words, if theory one is correct, and a person simply dies when they become a mind flayer, Withers should technically be able to resurrect them by pulling their soul out of the Fugue Plane and giving them a new body. You'd have a weird mind flayer clone of you running around, but you wouldn't have to worry about ceremorphosis again.

(But then again, we know the game ignores the organ-regrowing properties of True Resurrection for Karlach, too, so the game intentionally limits the capabilities of True Resurrection.)

If theory two is correct, and the lore is extremely unclear about this process if this is the case, then the companions' reactions and dialogues make a bit more sense. They all talk as though turning into a mind flayer means their soul is somehow destroyed. Mind flayers having souls is likely not common knowledge in the universe (certainly no one in the game is arguing that they have souls), so if a person's soul is transformed beyond recognition it could certainly seem like the host's soul got destroyed. Additionally, this would result in a person's consciousness being trapped inside a mind flayer body, so the loss of autonomy would be a terrifying possibility here.

Plus, we know that when a mind flayer dies, the soul they have (whether a brand new soul or an apostolic soul that has been altered) is consumed or thrown into oblivion. So if theory two is correct, there will be no eternal consciousness for you, allegedly (though there's some debate as to how much eternal consciousness you have in the Fugue Plane or the Outer Planes too...)

We don't know which of these theories is correct, and the game sort of slides between these two theories (as we'll see in Part 2). But, and I cannot stress this enough, this lore only applies to normal mind flayers.

BG3 has altered the usual mind flayer tadpoles with Netherese magic such that things get a little wonky. And beyond that, the ultimate tadpole that changes you (or Karlach, or Orpheus) into a mind flayer capable of wielding the Netherstones is a Supreme Tadpole that has been further altered by the Emperor:

The Emperor: I took this one from the nautiloid. I have been nurturing it ever since - priming it for your use. It is not dissimilar to the experience you already had with the previous one. Only this one is much more potent. All you have to do is open your mind to it. Its latent potential will do the rest.

We don't know how the Emperor has been priming this tadpole, but if it came from the nautiloid, then it is imbued with the same Netherese magic as all the other tadpoles. It's not the same as the Astral-touched tadpole (from Act 2), which has been in the Astral Prism for millennia, but it is somehow more powerful, or at least more effective in transforming you into a new kind of mind flayer, one that can think independently of the elder brain.

So now you (or Orpheus, or Karlach) are a new special kind of mind flayer. Does that change anything?

Yes. In fact, it seems to change quite a lot. But this post is already super long, so you'll have to check out Part 2 to see what I mean.

~*~*~

You made it to the end! Gold stars!!!

✨⭐️🌟⭐️✨

I'll link part 2 soon~

Tagging those who wanted an update! @galesdevoteewife @stuffforthestash

[vessels-two-front-teeth]

In The Low Light- Chapter 2

Photo credit and source unknown

Notes: tumblr is fucking testing my patience with this. This will be about the 6th time I’ve tried to make this post, so if the formatting is weird I am going to break something. Quality control by @365granitegirlx thank you Professor Wolfie, you’re a saint and a lifesaver. Anywhoozle, this one has me allllll up in my feels. Enjoy!

Masterlist (please read first)

Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Tags/warnings/etc: Biker!IV x Fem!OC, disordered eating habits but you have to squint, smoking, aggressive words of affirmation, sweet sugary fluff that’ll make you diabetic

Word count: 2368

Summary: IV takes some time over the week to show Sadie that she can trust him, he drives her home from work, and he asks her on a date.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

The following day I found myself replaying the interactions with Mr. Numerals. He was clearly no stranger to dangerous situations and was not to be toyed with. He was about to offer to walk me home or something. Why was he so concerned with my safety? And my biggest question: why was he being so kind to me? He was obviously wanting to get something out of this for himself, but I was lost as to what. He didn’t act like a starving animal drooling over a piece of meat. He said it himself, he may be a criminal, but he isn’t a monster. Maybe he’s just genuinely being nice for the sake of being nice… I’m pulled from my conflicted thoughts by the sound of a customer obnoxiously clearing their throat at the pharmacy counter. I spend entirely too much time explaining to the senior gentleman that he didn’t have any refills left. When he finally leaves with a dramatic huff of frustration and a few colourful metaphors, I tell the pharmacist that I’m going on a smoke break. I take my name tag off, grab my cigarettes and lighter, and head for the front doors.

As I walk along the side of the building, my gaze focuses on the sight of a familiar looking motorcycle, the rider leaning against the seat. He’s wearing the exact same thing as yesterday—helmet on, the visor pulled down. In his hands is a cheap flip phone, and his fingers move deftly across the buttons. I bring my cigarette to my mouth and light it, inhaling deeply before speaking. “I thought I told you not to follow me.” I blow the smoke from my lungs and shiver as a cold breeze blows across the parking lot.

His obstructed face turns towards me and he reaches up to pull off his helmet. Underneath is the same mask as yesterday. “I’m not following you. I swear I had no idea you worked here.” Surprise colours his voice, and his eyes reflect this. I almost believe him.

“Mmhmm…” I walk to the wall of the building and lean against it, taking another drag off my smoke. My eyes catch on his, and I hold his gaze for a few seconds. “I’d tell you I believe you, but I’d be lying.”

He chuckles slightly and breaks eye contact first. “I don’t blame you for not trusting me, however I am being honest. I’m here to make a business deal. I didn’t know you worked here.” He brings his eyes back up to mine, and I see no deception in them.

I struggle to find something to say, and before I can, my stomach growls loudly enough for him to hear it, even from several feet away. I wrap my arms around myself as another icy breeze hits my skin.

“Have you eaten anything yet?” Before I can answer, he turns to the back of his bike, opens a large compartment, and begins searching through it. He seems to find what he’s looking for and turns, walking closer until he’s in front of me. He holds his hand out, one of those high calorie protein bars in his palm, though it’s a brand I don’t recognize.

“I’ll be fine.” I shake my head no at him. My stomach growls again in protest.

“Please, I insist.” He pushes his hand even closer. “You need to eat.”

I sigh, reaching out and taking the bar from his grasp, a small smile playing at the edges of my mouth. “Thank you.” I rip open the wrapper and take a bite. It’s chocolate and some kind of dried fruit. It’s absolutely delicious. My eyes shut of their own accord as I enjoy the taste. “Oh my god…”

I hear a deep chuckle from him and feel a flush in my cheeks. I open my eyes and find him watching me, his eyes crinkled at the edges from the unseen smile on his face. I pull my eyes away and look at my feet, the warmth in my face burning even hotter now. I take another bite.

I hear a faint buzz, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket. “Unfortunately, I need to cut this short. Enjoy the last few bites, princess.” He gives me a small nod, and turns back to his bike. He picks up his helmet, but turns to look at me before he puts it on. “I like it when you smile. Your whole face lights up. It’s a beautiful sight.” With that he pushes the helmet over his head, settles into the seat, and the engine roars to life. He backs out of the parking spot, and drives away leaving me reeling from his compliment.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next day happens much the same. Only this time when I walk outside, his helmet is off and in his hands are a to-go cup from the coffee shop across the lot and another protein bar. He hands me both when I get close enough, our fingers brushing for a second before he pulls away.

“I didn’t know what you’d like, so I got peppermint tea with a little bit of honey. And another one of those bars.” His voice is soft, with a touch of uncertainty. His eyes avoid mine, and his fingers twitch.

He’s so charming. This thought flies through my mind, catching me off guard. “Uhm- Thank you, you didn’t have to get me anything.” My voice is hushed. “It’s too kind of you.” I step away, moving to stand against the building. A harsh cold wind blows over the parking lot, and I hold the cup close to my chest to absorb the warmth. I shiver hard and my teeth chatter together.

“Actually,” he rummages through the compartment on the back of the bike again, this time pulling out a small throw blanket. “I think I did. I wanted to make sure you had something to eat, and a hot drink.” He shakes out the blanket and walks toward me. He stops directly in front of me, and holds the blanket out with an expectant look in his eyes. “May I?” I hesitate for a second before timidly nodding and pulling away from the cold wall behind me. He drapes the blanket around my shoulders, pulling the corners across my chest and I tuck them under my arms. His fingers land on my shoulders and trace down my arms lightly, and I glance up to find his eyes on me.

A few moments pass before the words tumble out of my mouth. “Why are you being so kind to me? You don’t owe me anything. And besides, you said it yourself: you don’t need to clean up someone else’s mess.” I pause as I flick my gaze between his eyes. “What do you want from me?”

His hands drop from my arms and he lets out a small exasperated laugh; he shakes his head slightly and looks up at the gray sky. “Princess, I don’t want anything from you…it’s what I want for you. And that’s your safety. As for why? Well, I feel obligated to take care of you. Lastly,” he turns his eyes on mine, and I’m captivated by the intensity there. “You are a person deserving of kindness. You are not a mess that needs to be cleaned up. Do not take what I say to a couple of idiots for what I think about you. You would be sorely mistaken.” There’s a stern tone to his voice that makes me feel like a child in trouble. “Am I understood?”

I swallow heavily and nod, my eyes glued to his.

“Words, please, princess.” His eyes are still drilling into mine, and his voice borders on frustration.

“Yes, I understand.” My voice is quiet, and I can breathe again when he finally releases my gaze from his. I study my shoes, and I hear him heave a sigh.

“I should go. Keep the blanket, you need it more than I do. I’ll see you soon.” He puts his helmet on, and starts the engine, quickly pulling out of his spot and driving away. Once again, I’m left standing playing his words over in my mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the rest of the week, the pattern repeats. He hands me a hot cup of tea and a protein bar, and I pull the blanket around my shoulders. We talk about nothing special for a few minutes. He never stays for long, five minutes at most. I don’t question his motives, and I accept his offerings without hesitation. He makes kind gestures to me, and we share a few touches here and there that linger for just long enough. He never pushes any further than that.

Until Friday that is. “If you’re comfortable with it, I’d like to drive you home today. I don’t like the thought of you walking alone in the cold on such a busy street.” He’s leaning against the wall beside me this time. Today he has his own cup, and when the breeze blows just right, I’m greeted by the aroma of decadent hot chocolate.

I’m halfway through my tea, and swallow the last bite of the bar before I answer. “Sure, on one condition.” He looks at me with an odd combination of disbelief and curiosity. I hold his gaze with my own. “Tell me your name.”

He drops his eyes to the ground and laughs softly. “For now,” He looks back at me, and reaches up to his left shoulder and taps his finger on the numerals. “You can call me four. And yours?”

A small smile washes over my face. “Sadie. It’s nice to meet you IV.”

After a few more minutes of easy banter, he finishes his drink and makes for his bike, pausing and turning back to face me. “What time are you off?”

“I finish at 5:30”

He nods, and gets on his bike. “I’ll see you then.” He puts his helmet on and pulls out of the lot.

When my shift ends, I find myself filled with a strange excitement. I put on my warmer layers, and head outside to the usual spot.

He’s there waiting, an extra helmet under his arm. When I stop in front of him, he stands and flicks his visor up. “Ok, first off, you’ll have to take your hat off. It won’t fit under the helmet.” I take the woolen hat off, and stuff it into my pocket. “Now, you’ll have to tie your hair back. Or it’ll all push into your face and you won’t be able to see anything.” I pull my hair back into a low ponytail and look at him expectantly. “Perfect. This is going to feel a little tight at first, but it’s supposed to fit a bit snug. We don’t want it to come off too easily.” He places the helmet on the top of my head and gently pushes it down. Once fully on, he leans his forehead against mine, his eyes holding mine. “How’s that feel?”

“Good. A bit snug, but good.” My eyes flick between his eyes. They’re so pretty. I could look into them for hours. They crinkle at the edges with a hidden smile.

“Good.” He drops a wink at me, and leans back. His deft hands reach for the chin strap, fastening it under my jaw. Lastly he reaches up and pulls my visor down, then his own. “And we are good to go. Ready?”

I nod, “ready.”

He gets on first, and I climb on behind him. He shows me where to rest my feet, and I hesitantly hold onto his sides, suddenly overtaken by shyness. He turns his head towards me. “You’ll want to hold on tight, love. Don’t worry, I don’t bite.” I can hear the smile in his voice. I slide my arms around his middle and lean further into him. I catch a little of his cologne, and the heady scent leaves me breathless. I feel one of his hands come to rest on my forearm for a moment.

He asks me my address, and I freeze for a moment. Anxious thoughts flit through my mind but I push them down before answering him. The engine roars to life and we pull out of the lot.

The ride is short, much shorter than it would be to walk. When we pull into the parking lot of my apartment building, I feel a little disappointed that it’s over so quickly. We climb off the bike, and he takes off my helmet for me. I can’t stop the wide grin that consumes my face, and my cheeks hurt. It’s been a long time since I’ve smiled this much.

He takes his own helmet off, and his eyes have those little crinkles at the edges again, and my fingers twitch with the desire to gently brush over them. He’s so beautiful. “I’d like to take you on a proper date sometime. I hope that’s not too fast.”

My cheeks flush, and my eyes drop to the ground for a second before flicking back to his. “No, that’s not too fast. And I’d love to.” My face still hurts from the smile plastered across it.

He places a hand over his heart, closes his eyes and tilts his head back, while releasing a relieved sigh. His knees bend slightly before straightening again. “You just made me the happiest man alive, princess. How does tomorrow night, 7 pm sound? I’ll pick you up here?” He looks down at me, and his eyes are sparkling.

“That sounds perfect, I’m counting down the seconds.” He nods at this, and I take it as my cue to head inside.

As I go to walk past him, he catches my hand in his. I look at him, surprised by the prolonged presence of his skin on mine. His eyes lock onto mine, and he pulls my hand up to the mouth of his mask, pressing the hard material into my knuckles. I can hear the soft kiss behind his mask. “Goodnight, Sadie.”

My breath shudders a little, and my response comes out as a whisper. “Goodnight, IV.”

[seoftbear]

TW

discussing the taeil situation

As I’m sure many of you have seen that Taeil was removed/left NCT due to Sexual Offense Allegations.

“On August 29, the Seoul Bangbae Police Station revealed that the police booked Taeil after a report was filed in June for alleged sexual offense.

According to the police, Taeil is being investigated after being reported by legal adult woman “A.”

source

First off I’d like to say that obviously Im absolutely disgusted with Taeil and this entire thing makes me feel sick. I know they won’t see this but my thoughts are with those effected by this and I’m glad she had the courage to speak out and I hope she gets the support and justice that she wants during this time.

Now I’d like to talk about what has been weighing on me personally about this situation? I tend to stay off of twitter but I’ve seen a lot of links and post being circulated in the last 24 hours about this and it’s been really killing me.

As of now the police have booked Taeil back in June and he is being investigated by police for sexual offense, currently that’s all of the information that’s been confirmed by authorities. (I linked the article above and that has a link to the Naver article too.)

I’m sure some of you guys may be younger and haven’t truly grasped the full gravity of this, but misinformation can really damage cases like this especially as a woman.

Unfortunately the internet spread fake news fast and screenshots and stories have been circulating on twt/tiktok social media in general being translated and mistranslated from numerous different languages and people are just adding to the narrative for the drama it seems like… (please understand that even if something is in a different language and “translated” it does not make it facts.) I’ve seen others ask people where the source was for the information they got and then get called “Taeil defenders” when they just wanted to know where the information came from in the first place. I also read comments where people were saying that it didn’t matter if it was misinformation?

This is someone’s life we are talking about and seeing people say “they can’t wait for certain youtube channels to make videos about this because they need all of the details” or “they’ve been searching for more information all day and have come up with etc etc.” is really disheartening to see it be made into a spectacle. There’s only been one statement from the police as I’m aware of and in under 24 hours twt has finalized and circulated a story that has no source.

Unfortunately this stuff will happen because it’s the internet regardless and people are curious and in shock so wanting details on something is understandable but please understand that this is someone’s life not just backlash and justice against Taeil.

Speaking out isn’t easy and speaking out against a celebrity under big company? I can’t imagine, so please please please think about what you are posting and reposting. It’s not you supporting the victim, it’s just spreading gossip, theories/speculations, and can really tamper with the case guys. This is already a traumatizing experience and now it’s public and people are prying to know details about something so horrible and invasive??? At the end of the day if no statements are released about details or information and you are upset please take a step back and really think what for.

With this Ive seen a lot of people talk about parasocial relationships, how you don’t know these men, all men are men at the end of the day, don’t trust your favs etc etc. Though I definitely agree with you don’t know the people you like at the end of the day, I think that everyone knows that to some extent. However I don’t think parasocial relationship or not knowing someone is to blame when this kind of stuff happens, rather it’s normal to believe that someone you admire/like is cool person especially if portrayed that way. The thing about abusers/assaulters is that they can be anyone, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t trust anyone and that all people/idols are secretly awful but it’s more about that it’s not anyone’s fault for believing that they were a good person. So if anyone is going through that “ I can’t believe I liked someone like that” feeling that’s okay. It’s not your fault and you’re allowed to work through them.

that’s all

sorry if this is too long and makes no sense or comes off wrong or disrespectful please let me know kindly

[psychic-refugee]

Not only do I think the novel ISN’T canon Wenclair, I don’t think it’s canon Wednesday, to be honest.

It’s not enough that the book was approved and published. It should actually be accurate to the source material, the TV show.

If the Powers that Be approved the novel, then they approved errors and emphatically different narrative concepts that are in direct conflict with the TV show.

What exactly does that say about how much they cared about the content of the novel?

Overall, the TV show and the writers, Gough & Millar, are the controlling narrative. IMO. If the book is in conflict with the TV show and what the writers themselves have stated, then I can dismiss the novel.

Tehlor Kay Meija was hired to write the book, and it was approved for publishing. I cannot infer more than that on anyone’s motivations. Certainly not if they approve of ship.

I disagree with Meija’s interpretation of certain scenes, and I can point to obvious and glaring mistakes.

“In the baby-blue-wallpapered room, I open my bag.” p. 32

Here, we clearly see that not only is the bathroom not blue, she does not open her bag. Full scene:

It stays on her back. She taps the bag and orders Thing to give her a nail file. The bag flips open on its own and he gives her the file.

The book has a lot of these unnecessary and should have been easy to fix mistakes. I’ve seen some rude replies where they ask “Did you watch the show?” Interpreting certain thoughts and actions as sapphic or not is a matter of opinion. This is just flat out wrong.  

There are provable errors not only in description but dialogue.

The tone and characterization of Enid and Wednesday’s interaction is different with the incorrect dialogue and descriptions.

The entire book is like this. It has wrong or dropped dialogue and deviates from the original narrative concepts of the TV show.

Every character has been done a disservice by this book.

It seems the people you should ask if they watched the show are Meija and whomever approved publishing the book, errors and all.  

The book with its lack of details I think misses a lot of nuances that we see from facial expressions and body language on the show. Details on the possibility of what others are thinking via facial expressions and body language are inconsistent throughout the book.

There is an annoying plethora of exclamation marks that makes it seem people are yelling or excited when I think they’re actually trying to portray emphasis. That’s just a pet peeve of mine and I fully admit it’s petty, but it does make some, like Kinbott, seem more manic than the show intended.

“Well Wednesday, I hope you don’t think of me as your adversary,” [Kinbott] says. “I hope we can forge a relationship built on trust! And mutual respect!” p 30

Kinbott does not have this kind of excited inflection when speaking to Wednesday, ever. She always remains calm and uses a soothing voice, like she’s trying to talk to an unwilling cat. lol

I think it was a mistake to hire Meija, who specializes in children’s books. The TV show is aimed at teens, but also has a strong nostalgia factor for those who grew up in the 90’s and the movies. I think Netflix is aiming for a wide audience of older teens and adults. With the violence and “edgy” aesthetic and leanings, I think a writer for an older audience would have been more appropriate.

This book was clearly made JUST for children. The bigger print, low word count, and very simplistic narration make it for an elementary grade reading level. It feels very dumbed down.

Wednesday the TV show is not meant to be for that young of an audience.

I think if Gough and Millar had written the novelization, it would be much different not only in style but accuracy.

At bottom, Meija is an outsider to this fandom and did not do a good job.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Just want to say: a, I admire very much that you've figured out a healthy way to work on your fics that allows you to have fun with it. And also b, am very excited to hear that you are getting there with pez! It has fully given me brain rot ever since I read it last year, there is just such a lack of content for the highly specific trope of using time travel as a device to explore extremely unhealthy levels of self loathing.

I just adore everything you're doing in it. Neither midoriya is anywhere approaching okay for any portion of the fic and I love rereading and mining into all the subtle characterization pointing to that. It's a bit like nhtycth in that some really goofy funny stuff is often hiding some really fucking worrying things, but the fact that characters DO do that stuff—that todoroki uses his teaspoon's worth of extremely stunted social skills to bludgeon his friend's door open and help him, that a rpf shipping war is an actual source of drama despite how goofy the sentiment seems on the surface, that about half of what jon says is deeply worrying and the other half is extremely funny and there's a lot of overlap between the two—really lifts the tension and brightens the universe. It's sort of similar to what you did with gerry, in that endless misery isn't nearly as painful as the ups and downs of a life that, when you step back and zoom out, has something deeply and horribly wrong with it.

(jon sort of reminds me of spider-man in that he uses human to deal with trauma and stress, except I don't think he at any point realizes how fucking funny he is. He's just there, in a home depot, gnashing his teeth because he's got so many bodies to dispose of and this cashier sure is taking her time.)

I really, really, really have had trouble finding fics that take everything midoriya has dealt with to task. It's a hell of a thing to live 14 years as a disabled minority, have it heavily shape your existence, and then one day you wake up and you realize you're...not that, or at least, nobody will ever acknowledge you as that again. You've lost all claim to it. Those experiences that shaped who you are? Dust in the wind. 14 years of pain and life might as well be buried in the ground for all the good they do you. Nobody's going to cut you any slack or quarter, you've gotta simply work harder, be better. And now when you do that you get the results you wanted, so that's fine, then. That's good. There was something wrong with the you before, and there's something right with the you now, and if the transition is a little rough, well that doesn't matter, you're the same as everyone else now, so it's your own job to fill in whatever gaps you need to.

I really can't get over how mentally fucked it must be for midoriya to run into quirkless people, run across quirkless issues, and be silently caught between, incapable of speaking his mind and too scared to do so anyway around those he can trust.

Also I should mention, I'm just very excited for bakugou to get back from the gym. He's been there like a year I hope he's getting a good workout in.

Me realizing that it’s been a year since pez dispenser debris:

I feel like there’s just this very specific type of grief that Izuku has to grapple with in the span of pez dispenser debris that I’m just obsessed with. He’s sort of silently mourning who he could have been, when 1) he has to present like there’s nothing lost to maintain his secret and 2) the entire world is constantly inundating him with the message that there was nothing lost.

Like. I don’t want to get too deep into it because it risks spoiling things and I do have major plans to continue it (I’ve loved this story for so many years before I ever even hit publish), but the emotion that Izuku’s feeling right now is so much more complex than “I hate who I used to be and want him to stop existing” or “I just want to keep my secrets.” And I think the way he interacts with Mirio is the biggest evidence of that.

Izuku’s placed himself at the very center of the Quirklessness debate with his support of Mirio. He fights for Quirkless heroes, very publicly, to the point where he’s not even graduated yet but considered to be one of the most prominent voices on the matter. If you took a poll of Quirkless people as to which hero would be most supportive of them pursing their own career in heroics, Izuku would be right at the top of the list. When it comes to Quirklessness itself, he’s nothing but supportive.

But he didn’t tell Mirio the truth of his own Quirklessness.

Out of everyone, Mirio’s the one everyone expects to know, despite him being a relatively newer relationship compared to someone like Iida or Uraraka or Todoroki. And I tried to imply that he’s sort of the one who knows the most about Izuku out of everyone save All Might.

Like, we’ll get into how much exactly Mirio knows soon, so I won’t divulge what, if anything, Izuku has told him. But we know that Mirio knows, weirdly enough, that Izuku is deeply fucking haunted. He knows that boy has many violent ghosts in his bones. He finds it hilarious and will tell their realtor about it. Izuku told him about the discontent spirits who died in a violent passion and live on inside of him before he told him about his Quirklessness.

And I just feel like one of those things is a little bit easier to discuss than the other.

Izuku has decided to keep his own Quirklessness quiet in a way that surpasses secrecy about One for All. If it was just about OfA, he could tell people he didn’t get his quirk until the entrance exam, and it wouldn’t even be a lie. He’s purposefully obscuring his own past as Quirkless even as he takes a forefront of the Quirkless hero debate with his open support of Mirio.

And the fact that he’s at the forefront of this debate in and of itself requires a difficult dichotomy. He is the world’s most vocal proponent for the first Quirkless hero. He is a known figure in the Quirkless community now.

He isn’t considered one of them anymore. He’s an outsider coming in.

It must be such a strange, odd sort of grief to come to the people you were home amongst for most of your life and be greeted as a stranger. To return home, and to be welcomed in for the first time, and to not even be able to tell people that you’ve lived here all your life and don’t need a tour.

It’s a sort of death of self, I think. And I think Izuku never expected to have to grapple with his own ghost.

[jeannereames]

Do you think alexander considered hephaistion his alter-ego?

"He, too, is Alexander"

Did Alexander think of Hephaistion as his alter-ego? Quite possibly—but not by that term. For one thing, “alter-ego” is Latin, and we find it first used in writing by Cicero, although it may have been (quite possibly was) in common parlance prior.

The concept did appear to exist in Greek, but the tendency to apply it to Alexander and Hephaistion owes chiefly to two attestations. The first is the recorded meeting between Alexander, Hephaistion, and Sisygambus, wherein he supposedly said, of Hephaistion, "He, too, is Alexander." The other concerns a quip attributed to Aristotle, mentioned in Diogenes Laertus that friendship is one soul in two bodies—but this not found Aristotle's surviving works, despite a longish passage on friendship in his Nikomachian Ethics.

Without being unduly cynical, we must always take exact phrasing with a grain of salt. I think there's very little we can be certain Alexander said. Same problem with Aristotle, unless you're reading his actual writings, and even some of those are dubious, such as the infamous Ath Pol, or Constitution of the Athenians. We typically distinguish these as “pseudo-Aristotle.” (So if you see “pseudo-”some-name, that means the work is attributed to that person but almost certainly not actually written by him/her.)

So, as part of my usual ‘Let me ‘splain you why you can’t trust that story/saying…,’ let’s play some dating games here.

First, Cicero is our initial attested use of “alter ego,” in a letter to his friend Atticus, that dates the phrase to somewhere between 68-44, or middle of the first century BCE. Maybe we can push it back a little earlier to the early first century, but I’d be uncomfortable pushing it further without solid evidence. Popular terms change. Anybody call a fashionable (male) person, “That cool cat…” these days—except as a bit of a joke? I didn’t think so. 😉 But “cool” itself is otherwise still in common use. So we have to be careful about when terms are popular.

Now, the story of Alexander before Sysigamgus is best known from Curtius (3.12.16-17), but Diodoros also relates it (17.37.5-6), and so does Arrian (2.12.3-8)—although with a caveat. He says it doesn’t appear in his trusted sources (Aristoboulos or Ptolemy) but he tells it anyway, apparently because he approves of the actions in it.

We don’t know where it comes from. Maybe Kleitarchos? Possibly Kallisthenes? It does not appear in either Plutarch’s bio of Alexander or his Moralia, although normally he loved these sorts of anecdotes. There’s a good reason, however, that Plutarch doesn’t tell it (see below). Justin is just too short. (It also appears in abbreviated form in a couple of later Roman sources, Valerius Maximus and Dio Chrysostom. So it was clearly popular in the rhetorician crowd.)

So, what are the words attributed to Alexander? Diodoros’ Greek is kai gar kai outos Alexandros estin: “and for also this [man] Alexander is” (6). Arrian renders it kai gar ekeinon einai Alexandron: “and for that man is Alexander” (7). Curtius puts it, albeit in Latin, nam et hic Alexander est: “for he also Alexander is” (17). Yes, I rendered those into English pretty exactly, even if it sounds a bit funny. First, it helps show how every translation is an interpretation, but also allows us to watch the parsing itself.

None of them is exactly the same, even if the meaning is the same. That’s a good reminder we don’t have his exact phrasing!

Assuming the event even happened.

Why should we doubt it? Aside from Arrian’s skepticism?

This story feels a LOT like a classic lesson in proper clemency. I’ve talked about the importance of clemency before. The bulk of this tale is meant to show a chivalrous Alexander early in his career, before he fell victim to divine aspirations and the lure of that nasty Oriental Luxury <tm>. See what a good guy he was?! Plutarch, in his take, insists not only did Alexander not rape the royal women, he wouldn’t even look at the women. That’s probably why he doesn’t tell this story, because going to their tent absolutely IS looking at them, donchaknow. It’s even funnier because it’s Plutarch who tells us Statiera died in childbirth well, well after that baby could have been Darius’s. (Consistency? What consistency? Pfff.)

My point here is that the story may very well have been fabricated to make a MORAL point of how to be an honorable victor—whether in the era of the Successors (which grew increasingly bloody and vicious), or in the later Roman period. It would also provide a perfect example for Curtius to contrast with Alexander’s later Asian debauchery.

You may be wondering, But why would they make up an entire story like that? Wouldn’t people know?

Um, to prove my point I give you…Twitter, QAnon, and whatever quote is being attributed (wrongly) to Samuel L. Jackson this week. The more often people hear something, even a lie, the more likely they are to believe it’s true. Arrian’s other stories of after-Issos events has Leonnatos going to talk to the women, not Alexander (and Hephaistion). Of course, it’s entirely possible Leonnatos went the first evening, while Alexander and Hephaistion went the next morning. It even makes a certain amount of sense that he’d visit the royal women. So, the bare-bones of the encounter may be true, but mistaken identities and all those speeches were likely put in people’s mouths later.

Incidentally, there’s a pun in the line, as alex-andros translates to “protector of men.” So Hephaistion is also a protector of men. Romans and Greeks ate up that sort of word-play.

As for the Aristotle titbit…Diogenes Laertus reports a list of “sayings” (aphorisms) attributed to various philosophers. For Aristotle, one is: “To the query, ‘What is a friend?’ his reply was, ‘A single soul dwelling in two bodies’” (5.20). I’ve seen people claim he was referencing Alexander and Hephaistion. There’s absolutely no reason to assume that except romanticism and an Alexander-centric view. In our surviving writings by Aristotle, he barely mentions Alexander.* Shock, I know. 😂 But Alexander wasn’t at the forefront of his mind.

Additionally, as I said above, we have a longish bit on friendship in the Nikomachian Ethics, where that definition doesn’t appear, although nothing he says about true friendship in it contradicts the quote, either. But “Sayings of…” were a popular form of literature in antiquity, and sometimes a clever quip got attributed to more than one person! Maybe Aristotle did say that, but it’s not in actual writings about friendship by Aristotle. Aristotle’s writings on friendship are rather more complex; he lists three types of friendship in Book VIII.

Anyway, this little in-depth study is meant to help folks see how complicated it can be, to get back to what ALEXANDER himself said, thought, or even did.

Yet one thing ALL the sources agree upon: Hephaistion was Alexander’s favorite, not just (or even primarily) as a commander, but as a person. I’ve never read any claim to the contrary, and I have (quite literally) read everything in the ancient sources that concerns Hephaistion (and most everything that concerns Alexander too).

So, while it’s impossible to say that Alexander considered Hephaistion an “alter-ego,” or ever called him “Alexander too,” you can rest assured that every ancient source agrees that Hephaistion was dearer to Alexander than anybody else, maybe even including his own mother.

—————-

* 391a2: his “On the Universe” treatise opens with a reference to “Alexander,” who I think it’s safe to assume is the king. And 1420a5, is “Rhetoric to Alexander”--except that treatise is widely understood (even in the medieval world) to be bogus: e.g., a "pseudo-Aristotle" text. Plus Alexander is mentioned in a couple fragments.

[mhmery]

I think I have an unpopular opinion that I’m willing to explore more. Throughout the Law of Assumption forums and/or community, I’ve seen “repetition is key” and “persistence is key”. Which, in a sense, are true statements. However, I think there needs to be more context for beginners. I wasted SO much time trying to understand the lingo and the little phrases that were being tossed around, and it left me so confused.

Until I took a step back and read the work work of Goddard, Neville and a few other people. All of the forums and YouTubers have honestly over complicated things. So, maybe, I can break it down a bit.

- “Repetition is key”: The repetition of your affirmations is not going to produce your manifestations. It’s not. Point blank. Why? Because you’re not saying these affirmations to an external source in hopes that they give you what you want.

The repetition of your affirmations are for YOU and your subconscious mind. Your beliefs are what create— not your thoughts, your beliefs. Anything that you consistently say or even consume is what becomes a belief. Therefore, your affirmations and the repetition of them are what creates a belief— that is key.

- “persistence is key”: this one is controversial lol.

Persistence technically doesn’t mean that you have to spend every single day and second of your life scripting, affirming, visualizing. Persistence is a way of life. You are supposed to persist in the knowing and peace of mind that your desires are already created. No one can take it from you.

You can persist and that knowing. Even if you have a low moment or have moments of doubt— it’s okay. Have faith the size of a mustard seed; that faith alone can move mountains. When you have old thoughts spin the block, use your techniques— affirm, script, visualize the new belief; eventually they will subside.

- “Live in the end”: this one kicked my ass lol

This doesn’t mean pretend like what you want is already here. It means to make daily efforts to transform yourself ‘mentally’ into the version of yourself that already has what you desire. How? Maybe create habits, work through those trauma points in your life, analyze your current relationships with self and others and work to improve your beliefs and actions towards them.

Doing so prepares you for the “end” which is just when your desire comes into fruition.

-“ God, universe, higher self, etc.” : I fought with this a lot because of my religious upbringing. Moms a pastor— crazy story lol. Anyway, I didn’t want anything to do with the church because it’s just a big ass scandal.

Anyway, it wasn’t until I did hours of research and soul searching that I understood that God is just energy. Literally— just a very conscious and intelligent energy. What does that mean? Well, in the Bible (which is great manifestation tool btw), it tells us that human beings were the only creating made in his likeness. Meaning, we are conscious, we have subconscious, we can create.

The Bible also talks about God and man being one. This is mainly in relation to Jesus, but I think Jesus was kinda like the Neville Goddard of his time. Conspiracy— but hey. I tell you this so that you can understand that you are not absent from God (universe); you’re actually one in the same, but God is like the extended version of you.

This helped soooo much because I felt like I was holding everything inside of my head and that I was responsible for finding a solution. I also felt like I had no one to talk to my desires about. Then I learned about affirmative prayer. (I’ll talk about this more eventually.) knowing that I’m not praying to something outside of me, but to a part of me that has access to the outside brought me so much relief. And I literally trust that the shit will be done.

- “everyone is you pushed out”: giiiiirl this shit is IRKING

I’m gonna get sciencey because this didn’t make any damn sense until I brought science into the mix.

At the foundation of human existence is energy (yeah we have atoms and molecules and stuff, but it’s all just energy). The earth is just made up of energy. The UNIVERSE is just a big bundle of energy.

It’s not different types or species of energy; it’s the same type of energy in different shapes (or bundles) with different responsibilities. Hell, even a table is made up of energy. I’m a big bundle of energy and you are a big bundle of energy. Our SPs are a big bundle of energy— the same energy as everything in all of existence.

What does this mean? It means that we are all connected through the energy. So, yeah. When you think of someone and they text you soon after— that thought was literally energy being transmitted from you to them.

Don’t over complicated it lol. I swear it makes sense.

EIYPO literally means that because we are all energy, we are connected— so what happens to me happens to those around me. Which is why our self concept change is felt by those around us.

- “Birds Before Land”: honey— not everyone gets them, so don’t spend all of your time focusing on looking for them. BBL come after the manifestation, not before. However, there are moments when shit is just SO obviously meant for you to see. In those cases— give it good meaning.

I will say that when you invest all of your time looking for movement and signs, you’ll keep manifesting signs.

Uhhh— yeah lol there’s more but my thumbs hurt.

[my-mt-heart]

Where's Daryl?

This was very difficult to write. It opened up a lot of old wounds for me, so if you read this, thank you. If my thoughts on this show haven’t been your cup of tea, that’ll most definitely be the case here as well, so maybe just move along. ***Trigger warning for discussion of childhood abuse***

For about a year and a half, Caryl fans asked Where's Carol? as a pointed reminder that the spinoff was always meant to be hers just as much as it was Daryl’s. Even though she's back now, her fans didn't always know she would be (nor did the EP's 🙄) so her absence during filming and promotion of the first season was a heavy burden to bear. The irony is, though “Daryl Dixon” sticks out like a sore thumb in that ridiculous font, he's the one who feels absent sometimes, as if important parts of his character development were lost when he washed ashore while other parts come and go as the plot demands.

Zabel talks about swapping Daryl's iconic vest for "old man" suspenders as a matter of pragmaticism i.e. they were the only clean clothes available. Norman says it was a choice he wanted for some unclear reason, but neither of them seem to consider the intelligence of their audience, particularly Carylers, to see it more symbolically. The costume change is our visual reminder that Daryl isn't himself. In some scenes he's chattier than he should be, far more trusting of strangers with personal details, and far more theatrical. Then in others, the differences are even more alarming. He calls a child cruel names, puts his hands on him, and feels conflicted about returning home to his family, to the woman he said he loved.

I mentally prepared myself for retcons, but the one I'm struggling with a lot right now, which I haven't seen anyone bring up yet, is the retcon of Daryl’s childhood abuse. Daryl tells Isabelle that he and Merle had to take apart engines and if they couldn't put them back together, their dad wouldn't let them have dinner. It's a milder version of the stories the scars on his back tell us, though I can buy Daryl omitting the worst of it like he did in the pilot. What I can't buy is Daryl saying his dad was "hardly ever" around and emphasizing it as the main source of his pain growing up. It feels contradictory for one thing. When we see Daryl's scars for the first time in S3 of the flagship show, it's implied Daryl was trapped in an environment that enabled his dad to physically hurt him often. Presumably that's why Merle felt guilty about leaving him behind. The revelation also seems like it's only intended to highlight the consequences of an absent father figure, explaining Daryl's fear of not making it home, but also justifying his "close" bond with Laurent. The best stories allow a character's emotions to drive the plot, but this just does the opposite, twisting Daryl's backstory to fit the current narrative.

Daryl's backstory made so many people root for him in the first place. It allowed Carol to see him when nobody else in the group could. It helped me process my own childhood trauma. The ways I got to watch him overcome his violent past gave me hope that masculinity could mean more than what I grew up around—more than anger, shouting, and swinging fists. Daryl taught me that men could still be tender, kind, and loving even if those closest to them in their childhood never showed them how. I imagine Daryl's representation has been important to boys and men too, specifically to those who were afraid to speak up about their abuse because of the stigma around it. The implications of this scene may not be easily noticeable to some, but they are to me, and I'm deeply offended by it.

I’ve talked at length on this blog about how it takes a village to make or break a show, though it’s usually the showrunner who has to answer for it. I've already mentioned that I do blame Zabel. His knowledge of French history has no value when he obviously didn’t bother to study Daryl’s history aside from reading old scripts and (maybe) watching the first couple seasons. That's incredibly irresponsible and terrifying for S2. I also blame AMC for their short-sightedness and their determination to save face no matter how much it costs them. I blame Gimple for his pettiness. I blame Greg Nicotero for his insensitivity to Melissa and her fans.

As for Norman, he's hinted very loudly that he wants credit for the show being "different," so in theory he should be prepared to take some of the blame too. I can't name all of the decisions he specifically made, but no matter what they were, I can blame him for not speaking up about the shipbaiting, Daryl's wavering loyalty, and the childhood abuse retcon, all things that hurt his character and hurt the fans. I genuinely don't know what else to think other than Norman didn't give either the consideration they deserve. The show has been treated like nothing more than a vanity project, and it’s unfortunate when you think about what he and AMC had to gain from the original Caryl spinoff.

I love the version of Daryl I knew before this whole mess, I love Carol, and I love the relationship between them. I want them to have the story they deserve in S2. At the moment, I don’t know how to reconcile that with the agony I feel over the damages to half of my two favorite characters. If Carol is going to cross the Atlantic ocean to find Daryl, I want him to be the man who threatened to punch holes in all the boats so she couldn’t leave and the man who told her he loved her before—ironically—leaving himself. I need to hear Daryl admit he hasn't been completely honest with the French characters, not because he was afraid of getting too close to them, but because he didn't want to face the pain of potentially living without Carol and TF. I need to hear him say that he can't be Laurent's father, which is okay because the kid has plenty of other family to take care of him. I need to hear him say, out loud, that he could never love another woman romantically because he's already in love with Carol. That's what I need to feel better about this story. That's where my investment is. I feel like Carol is safe in Melissa's hands, but I don't feel like I have anyone to rely on for Daryl. That’s a big problem because their stories are so intertwined. There’s no Daryl without Carol nor Carol without Daryl. If you ruin one of them, you risk ruining both of them, and that’s a possibility I really can’t bear.

[can-of-w0rmz]

idk about you but I love getting my opinions on one of the titans of English literature from a barely post-pubescent 20-something child on tumblr, a website famous for having users with great reading comprehension, critical thinking and no impulse whatsoever to fall into purity culture nonsense at the drop of a hat. I also love the English courts of law, and anti-sodomy laws, and I immediately and uncritically trust them when they accuse a gay man of being a pedophile. There is nothing wrong, childish or immature about this and I don't need to grow up

PURITY CULTURE??? PURITY CULTURE?????? Oh my bad folks I didn’t realise grooming 16 year old boys as a 30-something year old man was just rebelling against purity culture. And for your information, I’ve done plenty of research into anti-sodomy laws at the time of Wilde’s trials, and I’ve also read multiple sources of shorthand translations of the proceedings of the trials themselves, and anyone with two brain cells could tell that the way Wilde spoke wasn’t the way an innocent man would speak, and the evidence compiled against him was overwhelming, regardless of any bias the court may have had. True, the bias in question is fair to bring up and discuss, but it doesn’t negate his extremely likely guilt. It’s extremely unlikely that the man was innocent, from the evidence itself to Wilde’s tone during his “defence”.

Some sources:

The Trial of Oscar Wilde: From the Shorthand Reports (1906)

“In 1895, the playwright and wit Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was prosecuted for 'acts of gross indecency' with other men. Parts of his trial were covered in newspapers of the day, but because of British censorship laws, this fuller account was not published in English until 1906.”

–The British Library official website (bl.uk)

famous-trials.com, compiled by Professor Douglas O’Linder from UMKC School of Law, mostly aligning with the shorthand translations of the testimonies from the prior source referenced yet with a few details not included in the 1906 publication to my knowledge.

https://www.famous-trials.com/wilde/327-home

Of course, everything has drawbacks, everything has a grain of salt, not everything is fullproof, there’s room for argument everywhere and of course the two sources I linked there aren’t fully enough for a big picture, and context of the time, surrounding impact, further accounts etc should all be looked into — however, in weighing up the evidence and legitimacy of sources and conflating information on all sides, personally I’m ridiculously extremely confident that Wilde was guilty, and I think the fact that this isn’t really widespread historical information is ridiculous.

You’re right, you shouldn’t take things you see on Tumblr as full proof undisputed fact. You’re right, Tumblr is a hellhole a lot of the time for misinformation and bad literary comprehension and analysis. But that doesn’t mean anything you see anywhere is objectively wrong, and you should do a small molecule of proper research and critical thinking from seeing those posts before spouting bullshit.

And for your information, I’m both queer and Irish myself and shockingly the fact that one of the major idealised queer figures for my country is a rich 19th-century-Narcissus pedophile creep, and nobody says jack shit about it, makes me pretty fucking pissed! Surprisingly!

“Purity culture” catch yourself on lad what in the fresh fuck are you on about. I’m in the age range for the wee boys Wilde fucked, surprisingly if I heard one of my friends was meeting with and having sex with some rich fuck old enough to be their da I’d be pretty fucking concerned I’d be calling cps bro 💀🙏

[theegreenmuse]

⋆˚✿˖° 𝐂𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐜 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐎𝐟𝐟: 𝐀 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 ⋆˚✿˖°

———————————————————————————

Family is often considered a source of love, support, and stability. However, when family dynamics are toxic, they can be detrimental to our mental and emotional well-being. Today, I want to share my experience of cutting ties with toxic family members on my mom’s side, where I found no cousins I could trust and no uncles or aunts I could count on.

☞ Recognizing the Toxicity

🍵 For a long time, I struggled with the idea that family should always come first, no matter what. However, the constant negativity, manipulation, and lack of support from my relatives on my mom’s side began to take a toll on me. It became clear that these relationships were more harmful than beneficial.

☞ Making the Difficult Decision

🍵 Deciding to cut ties with toxic family members was not easy. It involved a lot of self-reflection and the painful realization that some people, even family, do not have my best interests at heart. Here are some of the steps I took:

1. Acknowledging the Problem:

🍵 Recognizing that the relationships were toxic was the first step. This meant admitting to myself that these family members were causing more harm than good.

2. Setting Boundaries:

🍵 I started by setting clear boundaries. This involved limiting contact and not engaging in conversations or situations that would lead to stress or conflict.

3. Seeking Support:

🍵 I reached out to friends and other loved ones who supported my decision. Having a support system in place was crucial for my emotional well-being.

4. Prioritizing My Mental Health:

🍵 I focused on self-care and activities that brought me joy and peace. This included therapy, which helped me process my feelings and develop coping strategies.

5. Letting Go of Guilt:

🍵 One of the hardest parts was letting go of the guilt associated with cutting off family. I had to remind myself that my mental health and happiness were more important than maintaining toxic relationships.

Life After Cutting Ties

Since making the decision to cut off toxic family members, I have experienced a sense of relief and freedom. Here are some of the positive changes I’ve noticed:

1. Increased Peace:

🍵 Without the constant negativity and drama, I feel more at peace and able to focus on my own growth and happiness.

2. Stronger Relationships:

🍵 I have been able to strengthen relationships with people who genuinely care about me and support me unconditionally.

3. Personal Growth:

🍵 Letting go of toxic relationships has allowed me to invest more time in myself and my passions. I’ve grown emotionally and mentally stronger.

4. Healthy Boundaries:

🍵 I’ve learned to set healthy boundaries in all areas of my life, ensuring that I maintain relationships that are positive and supportive.

Moving Forward

🍵 Cutting off toxic family members is a deeply personal decision and not one that should be taken lightly. It’s important to prioritize your own well-being and surround yourself with people who uplift and support you. Remember, it’s okay to distance yourself from those who bring you down, even if they are family.

If you’re considering cutting ties with toxic family members, here are a few things to keep in mind:

- Trust Your Instincts: If a relationship feels harmful, trust your gut feeling.

- Seek Professional Help: A therapist can provide guidance and support through the process.

- Don’t Feel Obligated: You are not obligated to maintain relationships that are detrimental to your health.

- Focus on Healing: Invest time in activities and relationships that promote your well-being.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. If you have similar experiences or thoughts you'd like to share, please feel free to leave a comment or reach out. Let’s support each other on this journey to healing and self-love. 🪷

- 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐞

[abubblingcandle]

Augusnippets Day 18 - Protective Caretaker - Ted Lasso

Jamie finds himself in hospital yet again and Keeley and Roy find out through a secondary source. Neither of them were called as Jamie's emergency contacts. So if it wasn't them ... then who was it?

Here on AO3 @augusnippets

Jamie was in hospital. Again. According to Jamie he had been helping out a neighbour and had fallen off a stepladder rescuing a kitten. Roy had no reason to not believe that tale of events but he just didn’t. Also according to Jamie, he was fine and didn’t need the ambulance that Shannon had called. Now that he absolutely didn't believe. "Why were we not called?" Keeley growled in a great Roy Kent impression at the poor doctor that choose that moment to come check on Jamie. 

"Keeley come off," Jamie groaned, arm drapped over his eyes. 

"No! I am his emergency contact and I should have been called as soon as he was admitted," Keeley continued to vent. 

"There's nothing wrong with me they didn't need to call," Jamie's groans turning more and more into whines. 

"Well there if it isn't our little bruised banana," Ted announced himself bursting into the room with Beard on his heels. 

"What are you fuckers doing here?" Roy frowned. 

"That's what I was trying to tell you. Mr Tartt here is at risk of a concussion from his fall and so needs to leave with someone to supervise him," the doctor interrupted the posturing contest. 

"Oo I'm very good at those. I have different voices to keep it fresh," Ted pointed at the doctor then Jamie who looked like he was in his own personal hell. 

"Which is why we called Jamie's emergency contact ..."

"Which is me." Everyone slowly turned to look at Beard with a varied tableau of surprise. “Imagine how I felt.”

The doctor fled with the promise of a prescription and discharge forms leaving them to try and work all this out.

“Jamie? What’s going on?” Keeley was immediately there, squatting down at Jamie’s bedside with a comforting hand on his hip rubbing little circles.

“Just tired,” Jamie groaned. “Can I go home?”

“We need to wait for the doctors with your prescription. So we can have this conversation now. Why the fuck were none of us called and Beard was?” Roy growled.

“Roy,” Keeley scolded, but Roy could tell her heart wasn’t in it and she wanted to know as well.

“I’m fine it’s just some bruising,” Jamie muttered.

“That wasn’t the question Tartt!”

“This is why,” Jamie shouted, wincing as he jostled the bruises on his cheek. “I knew that even the most minor of injuries you lot would be all up in my business and making it a problem and a big deal. I ain’t that badly hurt. I’ve been hurt way fucking worse. I just need to go home and sleep,” he vented, pointing between Roy, Keeley and Ted.

“So why Beard?” Ted asked quietly, the only one out of the three that did look somewhat scolded.

“I needed someone in Richmond that I could trust would come but wouldn’t care that I was hurt and would sign the discharge papers. None of you lot would have done that,” that one moment of heat seemed to be rapidly fading out of Jamie. Roy didn’t know if it was the pain of his injuries taking over or regret at this bullshit scheme.

“Of course we fucking wouldn’t you idiot,” Roy shouted back.

“Really not the time Roy,” Keeley sighed.

“And you thought I would,” Beard’s calm steady voice dragged them all back on track as he stepped forward to be at the foot of Jamie’s bed. He reached out and grabbed onto the plastic hand holds. It was near impossible to read Beard’s emotions on the best of days but now he was locked down tighter than Fort Knox.

“You’ve never been my biggest fan have you?” Jamie muttered, eyes locked onto Beard almost challenging him to disagree. “When I’m hurt it’s always an inconvenience, a problem you know. I didn’t want to be a hassle to people who actually care about me. I know I’m a lot so I put down someone who wouldn’t make this a big fuss about it. But now we’re all making this big fuss about it,” he sighed, resigned to his fate. Good, because they were not letting him slip away to go lick his wounds in private. That was never going to happen again.

“I’m sorry I’ve made you feel that way,” Beard broke the silence, causing all the eyes in the room to lock onto him in varying degrees of surprise. “I didn’t like you at first but I don’t think anyone did …”

“I mean …”

“Don’t lie Ted he was a fucking prick.”

“Thanks grandad, really smashing the making me feel better bit.”

“As I was saying,” Beard continued through the veiled threats, “however I did think that our relationship was improving and so am sorry you didn’t also see that.”

The surprised eyes then turned to Jamie like they were watching emotional tennis. All Jamie did was shrug, curling up into himself as much as he could despite being all one big bruise.

The doctor saved them from these emotional reveals going on for much longer. “His prescription can be filled at any pharmacy but I recommend the one downstairs on your way out. He needs to be regularly checked to make sure cognitive function doesn’t deteriorate …”

“I don’t think there’ll be anything left if his brain withers any further,” Roy mutters and grins when Jamie flips him off.

“… and rest is the best mediciene for the bruises,” he finished holding out the discharge forms to the room in general. Roy went to grab them but Beard snatched them out of the doctor’s hand before he could.

“I’m his emergency contact,” Beard stated, already signing it.

“Coach you really don’t …”

“I’m your emergency contact, you’re coming home with me,” Beard’s tone left no room for argument. And Jamie didn’t, he just looked bashfully down at the bedsheets. Roy and Keeley looked at each other and shrugged. Looks like Jamie was going home with Beard … that was not going to end well.

[dearweirdme]

hi! first of all, i hope you're doing ok, it was really interesting reading some of your posts / analysis. since most of the questions regarding other ships are about jkk, i wanted to ask you about vmin and what do you think about their relationship. there's this account (@btsandvmin) that has some really interesting posts as well, if you have time maybe you should check them out! i dont take the ships seriously tho. i honestly dont care about their private / love life, i just hope they are happy and well, no matter what. have a good day / night ♡

Hi anon!

I normally don’t tag blogs I don’t have permission from to do so, so if the blog you mentioned wants me to remove their name.. please let me know!

I think Jm and Tae being same age has been both a blessing and a struggle to them at times. A blessing in the way they had a person with whom they could just be without having to hold back because of age, but a struggle because their characters (especially early on) can clash easily. I think these days they don’t clash as much.. or at all, but when they were younger.. I can totally see it. I think Jm’s seriousness and Tae’s freespiritedness didn’t match. Being as young as they were and especially under mountains of stress.. at times they probably just took their pent up anger out on each other… just because with each other they could. I think there was a huge lack of misunderstanding, with Jm being able to set aside his physical needs better than Tae and with Tae being more prone to be mischievous (none of this is meant to say either one was wrong).

I think a lot of what they told us is actually true. I think they fought a lot. I think for Jm it might’ve been hard to have been the last to be in the group, the others had already bonded, Tae and Jk were probably already very close, elimination still hang over his head before debut. We’ve heard how Jm hardly slept, and I think Tae just probably got to him a lot. I think Tae (and Jk combined) could be very annoying 😂. When Tae and Jk say they got scolded a lot.. I think that’s true. I recently said that I feel that Jm also has a tendency to hang with the hyungs, and I think he was part of the ‘scolding Taekook’ brigade. We just heard Jm and Jk talk about this a bit, and how Jk had to meditate between Tae and Jm often. I think that’s probably very true. From how I understand Jm’s words.. he thinks of Tae and him early on as complicated.

Things got better ofcourse. Who knows exactly why? I think they just got to know each other better, and perhaps through conversation with others they built an understanding. It could just be as simpler as admitting that perhaps you see the differences between you and the other, but you can accept those differences and still feel the other is a good and nice person.

It’s possible they got to understand that they were also similar in certain ways.. and that they both went through some of the same things and just reacted differently. I believe that Jm and Tae shared intimate stuff and became a source of comfort to each other. Jm comforting Tae isn’t fake and I think Tae really needed someone who was able to give him that physical comfort. Of just being held and being listened to.. and I think Jm is really good at that in general.

I don’t think there’s romantic feelings there (obviously 😊) I think Tae really liked Jm’s body 😅. But I’ve not seen them look at each other in amazement or something. I think they’re just really close and are connected through having gone through a lot together. Theirs is a basis of trust, of that I’m sure.

[mswyrr]

@werecats2

"Deep honesty about women's sexuality that's really hard to see in fiction." Yes! It's so potent and visceral.

re: Handmaiden. I think the Neo Noir plots probably do something to heighten the intensity because they're about how easily these women could be fatal to each other? Whereas I think sometimes there's an assumption of safety in how canon F/F is written, an assumption that women aren't as much a threat to each other as men and women can be. But they're not automatically safe together! These couples come thisclose to destroying each other - bringing the emphasis to *who* they are and their growing, hard won intimacy and trust and personal struggles over doing right by each other rather than what generic category of person (women) they are.

"layer of raw violence that makes the romance feel more visceral too" - OH!! I love this. Yes. The raw violence sensitizes viewers to the body as a vulnerable and needy thing -- a source of intense pain only because it can know pleasure; and all pleasure comes at the cost of risking pain-- now that I think about it, this is most clear with the threat to cut off Corky's finger, when the narrative has shown us how much passion and connection Vi and Corky experience through their hands and fingers.

@isagrimorie pointed out that they're so clearly (and kudos to the actresses and directing on this) thirsty right away, but it's allowed to simmer. It just builds and builds. And the narrative gets that thirst and intimacy and trust are not the same thing; their dynamic is building on all of those levels in a way that feels on the precipice of danger, that feels like it could so easily go wrong.

I think the whole scene in the truck encapsulates a lot of these interweaving factors, especially this quote:

Corky: For me, stealing has always been a lot like sex. Two people who want the same thing. They get in a room, they talk about it. They start to plan. It's like flirting. It's kind of like foreplay. Because the more they talk about it, the wetter they get. The only difference is, I can fuck someone I've just met. But to steal, I need to know someone like I know myself. Violet: You think you know me like that?

The lovers have to prove themselves and "work for it." It's similar to the raw violence too in that way: the pleasure is so visceral because the pain is too. The trust is so raw because the danger is too. There's weight to it.

These women do not, simply by being women, have any reason to trust the other or any special knowledge of each other. They represent a real danger to each other; they genuinely are different people and (especially for Corky) they have real temptations to demean and dismiss each other. And Violet IS a femme fatale; she does prove fatal to Caesar but not to Corky, because they work at it.

One can read it as a Film Noir where the femme fatale is gay and not fatal to another woman because she's a woman (and I've read it that way before) but Violet isn't fatal to Corky because of who Corky is and who she chooses to be with Vi. Any of the women who would look down on Vi for her sex work, for her "impure" queerness? I think Vi might just be fatal to them too.

[salvatwh0re]

https://www.tumblr.com/salvatwh0re/751798302584012800/showing-where-u-went-for-vacation-doesnt-proves-u?source=share

I didn't meant to come off as rude at alllllll 😭????!!!!!!

U said u don't want to share your personal life, I understand, neither would I. But any of the things I asked u to do couldn't reveal your personal life....!!??

And u said u don't share those pic to prove that u entered void but then why when an anon asked for prove u showed the pics of u in Morocco ( if I remember correct ) I'm talking abt the post in which u showed your backyard

Any ans now?

Hi! I understand that, if you read the post in its entirety you would see that I was just using your ask as an example, and not directly calling you rude. What you were asking is a part of what I’ve explicitly state many times that I am not willing to share. Like I’ve said before, even sharing pictures of myself is uncomfortable for me, but I understand that it makes most of you feel closer to me to know who is actually behind the blog. The pictures from Morocco were not at all proof of the void, it’s just “proof” of why i was gone for a few days. It wasn’t even an answer to an ask, it was its own separate post. The only time I’ve ever used pictures as “proof”was the very first time I did a face reveal. I didn’t really intend for it to be proof, I just used it as a way for you guys to understand that I’m a living, breathing, human being that makes mistakes just the same as all of you. Just because I’ve tapped into the void state and manifested my desires doesn’t mean I’m some magical all powerful being that transcends reality and saves the universe. It may sound cringe but I’m literally just a girl from California that wanted to travel the world, be confident in her body, and make her mom proud. There’s nothing special about it, I have absolutely no desire to make things float with my mind, or make myself levitate or something, I just wanted to improve my life so i could live it the way I wanted to without as much stress and hardship, as I’m sure most of you want too.

A lot of people are satisfied with my “proof” and if you’re not, then that’s definitely something you should work on! I have plenty of posts and subliminals that can help you fix your mindset and achieve your desired outcomes. I used to be in your position once before craving some sort of hard core proof that would suddenly make me fully believe in the void, remove all my doubt, and teleport me to the void. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work that way. As long as you give power to your doubts, they will always win, no matter what kind of proof you’re given, your limiting beliefs, blockages and doubts will always find a way to convince you that you cannot achieve what you desire, and until you work on that, it’s going to be very difficult for you get where you want to be.

P.S: sorry for the tough love, I really don’t like being so “aggressive” in my responses, but I get so many like this and I just want to be able to get through to you guys. Love you all, thank you for trusting me and sticking along with me through this:)

[styrofauxm]

So……has anyone else seen those compilations of Twitter posts that “prove” Israel is going to lose by praising literal terror groups? No? Just me and some people I’ve unfollowed and blocked? Okay. I’m still going to talk about it because they piss me off.

But before I start please be aware that I am not a political scientist, nor do I have any expertise in geopolitics. I am simply a person with a computer and a passion for research. The things I say here could be wrong. I am also trying to get you to agree with me, so there will be bias. Furthermore, I am doing my best to just share the most relevant information, so a lot is left out. I will source everything, and link proof that my sources are trustworthy, but I still strongly encourage you to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

Also, TL;DR: the Middle East is really complicated and ascribing "right" or "wrong" to any one group is irresponsible

Starting with the Houthi Rebels (because I know the most about them and thus have noticed the blatant misrepresentations of their actions and beliefs the most).

The Houthi Rebels are a repressive (forcing people to abide by strict religious practices) group seeking control of Yemen. Their rallying cry is "God is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam." So just explicit genocidal ideation and antisemitism. (Council for Foreign Relations, MediaBias/FactCheck Rating)

In Yemen, they are committing war crimes and have been for years (Reuters, MediaBias/FactCheck Rating). (The government of Yemen, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with military support from the US have been doing the same. But this isn't about the war itself).

They are also aligned with Iran (Council for Foreign Relations) and Russia (Atlantic Council, MediaBias/FactCheck Rating). Both of whom are repressive governments (World Population Review, MediaBias/FactCheck Rating) seeking control in the region (Center for Strategic and International Studies, MediaBias/Fact Check Rating. Note: this is an interview, but given that the interviewee has genuine expertise in the subject and has written for other credible sources about this exact topic, I feel comfortable with it).

Next, I also keep hearing about Hezbollah. I didn't know much about them before doing this, so please be on extra high alert for any mistakes I may make.

Hezbollah is a terror organization that has regularly committed atrocities against civilians, often specifically targeting Jewish groups (Council for Foreign Relations).

In the Israel-Hamas war, Hezbollah has launched rockets at civilian centers (Human Rights Watch, MediaBias/FactCheck. Note: this source is far more biased than I'd like, and it comes off even in that article. However, it is the most detailed explainer of Hezbollah's recent actions that I could find. Proceed with caution when you read it).

They are also backed by Iran (Reuters).

And finally, Hamas.

Hamas has, since it's founding, espoused explicit genocidal and antisemitic intentions (The Atlantic (accessible via 12ft.io), MediaBias/FactCheck Rating).

They have also committed war crimes in the Israel-Hamas war (UN News, this does not have a MediaBias/FactCheck rating, but other branches of the UN do. It's also just a recount of an independent report. Use your best judgement on whether you want to trust this).

They are also aligned with Iran (Reuters).

I'm not say that any of this lessens the atrocities that the government of Israel has committed against Palestinians. It doesn't. This post should not lessen your support for civilians.

But the reality of the situation is that there are no good military groups in this situation. It's complicated and messy. You need to be aware of the full implications of what you share, as it could very easily be misinformation, disinformation, or propaganda.

You can't take any social media posts at face value. Even if they are from a journalist, they don't get fact checked or reviewed by peers normally, allowing opinions and mistakes to slip through.

(Side note: if you want some more information about the Yemen Civil War, let me know. It's really complicated but I have done a lot of research on it)

[thekpopgossip]

HYBE and Min Hee Jin Round 3...

Things are getting really messy between HYBE and ADOR CEO Min Hee Jin, who is getting sued by her employer. She did a press conference today, playing the victim and showing her bruised ego (which seems to be the main cause of this whole fiasco). It was embarrassing to the point of me feeling bad for her lawyer, who tried to stop her from talking nonsense and hurling insults at everyone.

Apparanetley her trying to go independent and backstabbing HYBE, while simultaneously accusing all the sub-labels of copying her ideas, wasn't bad enough, we now know she really is dumb trusting shamans to advise her on business deals. She was crying during the press-con saying: “I feel like they all want me to die. If I suddenly die, will everyone be happy? That’s honestly what I think. I don’t read all the articles and comments. If I do, I can’t live. I wonder if anyone can handle this much distress in a short period of time.” She added, “I am also human, and it’s not confirmed that I’m guilty. I think I’m innocent.” Mind you, she caused all this mess herself and is now getting sued by HYBE who will likely destroy her.

To this point, HYBE is not innocent in this debacle either, they gave her a label, gave her 20 % company shares, gave her Source Music trainees, gave her free control over NewJeans and are now also acting like victims. Those guys enabled her behavior and are now surprised she would try to go independent. Min Hee Jin also addressed some HYBE accusations, like her saying BTS copied her ideas. “Everything that HYBE is saying is a lie. I’ve never said BTS copied me. I want to ask HYBE why they made everything like this and try to ruin me”. Because you tried to go against the company?

I believe that part though, HYBE is playing dirty games here trying to get every fandom to attack her, but again, she caused this herself, when she publicly stated that ILLIT was a copy of NewJeans (which is true, but you don't say that ish out loud).

She also said, she had nothing to do with Source Music disbanding G-Friend, which I also believe. That was a money decision, they wanted a new group that could become a million seller, so LE SSERAFIM was born, and since BTS was going on army hiatus, they needed new groups quick to fill the void. However, pedo Min Hee Jin wouldn't be herself without also mentioning that NJ Minji was the only Source Music trainee she liked (the others were too old), and that she was even prettier when she was younger. She makes it so easy to hate her. MHJ was also majorly pissed that LE SSERAFIM debuted before NewJeans, which became a huge issue internally in the company.

In the press-con she also repeatedly called herself the mother of NewJeans, and that she gave birth to the group. “NewJeans and I have something more than what you would know. They always tell me that they thank me and love me. Hanni told me that she’d come over to me. Haerin is usually like a cat and doesn’t speak a lot, but she called me and told me that she couldn’t come up with the words to text me. She said that she just wanted to hear my voice. Haerin cried for 20 whole minutes” Min bursts into tears. “She told me that she thanks me so much because I helped her through hard times. She said that she wants to tell everyone what happened. The members’ mothers are so worried that I’m going to kill myself. But why would I? I’m going to say everything that I have in my heart. Do you know what Park Ji-won said to the mothers? He said that he’s not going to talk to them, just to ADOR. And they say that they care about NewJeans? I don’t care whether they sue me for libel.” - She's so fucking creepy, as if she didn't make the girls sing "Cookie".

She also went full egomaniac, saying: “It’s not me that turned my back on HYBE, it’s HYBE that betrayed me. It used me to the fullest and now wants to take me down because I don’t listen to them. No one has done what I have done during the 30 years in K-pop. But HYBE is trying to kill someone who’s done what I have as the head of a subsidiary. I’m the only one in the history of the entertainment industry to have reached such results in 2 years, my only crime is being good at my own job.”

At this point, I just feel bad for the idols and staff caught in between all this. HYBE is greedy and wanted their own NewJeans and MHJ tried to backstab her own bosses - now things are falling apart. NJ has a comeback in May too, no idea how this will end for them and whether they will stay at HYBE or go with "mom" MHJ.