#the idea that you are just a facsimile of a person trying to be a person; running scenarios in your head

[notbecauseofvictories]

how are we fellas. how's life. I am currently a little sozzled and writing farewell letters to my coworkers, the boss I love, the team I adore, and it sucks unbelievably. But I have decided to take this other job, because otherwise I think I'll get sucked into liking my team and the people there and that's simply not a long term plan. Today the recruiter told me that I have "growth potential" and I think it was meant as a compliment but I wish she'd just said that I was splendiferous and amazing because otherwise I'm stepping off the edge of the earth because someone thinks they can fix me, and buddy, if I could fix myself I would have by now.

[sokkastyles]

"It's about Ozai's psychological need for control and need to hurt his son to feel powerful."

hmmmm I mean Ozai was pretty straight forward when he said to Zuko "it was to teach you respect" it doesn't make the situation any less fucked up but he's not lying about his motivation. Also Zuko and Azula aren't the only ones who try and act as a mini version of their father. Ozai reacts to Zuko's pragmatism in the war council the same way Azulon reacted to Ozai's suggetion of becoming the heir to the throne after Lu Ten's death.

I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but this is something I'm gonna need everyone to understand real quick.

Whatever Ozai might say, it is not about respect.

In fact, the show has Zuko call this out, when Ozai tells Zuko it was to teach him respect in "The Day of Black Sun," and Zuko says, "It was cruel, and it was wrong!"

I believe that Ozai believes it's about respect, but Ozai is an abuser and abusers are notoriously good at lying to themselves.

Abuse is always, always, always about power.

And actually, Azulon's treatment of Ozai is a big part of why I think Azulon was an abuser, too.

First we need to understand this one rule, that abuse is always about power, and that whatever excuse the abuser gives is always going to be wrong (even if the abuser is able to convince themselves that it's true).

But also, if we really break down the idea that Ozai was trying to teach Zuko respect, does that even hold up?

Did Zuko learn respect by being burned?

Think about Zuko at the beginning of the series. Is this a teenager that has learned how to be respectful? Would you use that adjective to describe Zuko, age sixteen, circa book one, episode one?

Zuko, as we are introduced to him, is angry, rude, hateful, and full of rage. And he became that way through abuse. Abuse did not teach him respect. It never does. It didn't teach Ozai, and it didn't teach Zuko. It's a vicious cycle and if Zuko hadn't learned better, far from learning respect, he would have actually learned how to become just like Ozai, an angry, hateful person doling out cruelty because he never got the "respect" he thought he deserved and not understanding that respect is actually earned through giving it.

Also, consider that Ozai has another child, who he thinks is so much better than Zuko, who he heaps praise upon and thinks very highly of. If you look at the way Ozai interacts with Azula vs how he interacts with Zuko, the idea that his treatment of Zuko was about "respect" becomes the obvious lie that it is, because we see Azula act incredibly rude and disrespectful to basically every person around her, including Ozai, and he continues to praise her for it. Azula isn't any more respectful than Zuko, Ozai just has this idea in his head of what his kids are like and treats them accordingly. That's kinda the thing with the golden child / scapegoat dynamic.

Zuko isn't even respectful to Ozai at the beginning of the series. He fears Ozai, but as Zhao remarks, what Ozai did didn't teach Zuko anything about speaking respectfully, because it had nothing to do with that.

Because you can't teach someone respect by disrespecting them, especially a child. What children learn from this is that the way to be powerful is to disrespect others. They learn to fear others, and they learn that fear will earn them a facsimile of respect, but, like Azula at the end of the series, they are left wondering why their lives still feel empty.

Do you know who actually taught Zuko respect?

Iroh did.

Iroh taught Zuko respect by treating him with respect, even when Zuko was disrespectful to him. Iroh taught Zuko that Zuko deserved respect, and that also meant he didn't deserve what his father did to him.

The irony of Ozai's statement about respect is like, the entire point. Ozai has no authority to talk about respect while he's raising a hand to a terrified child. Someone who knows anything about respect would not need to terrorize children to try to get it.

Abuse is always about power, and always about the abuser, and never about the victim.

[wolfawaycamp]

okayokay,

emma and nick wake up in the woods the morning after turning and sort out what happened the night before, specifically what happened at the campfire

(preferably abi is still alive)

🐼Admittedly, I snagged this one to practice writing Nick's POV, but I'm also so emo for Furblygbank already so we're kind of killing two birds with one stone. Thanks for the ask, anon :)

“Nick?”

The rising sun’s golden hue was almost blinding to Nick’s bleary eyes. He’d just woken up in the middle of the woods in his underwear and needed a second to regain his grip on reality. The last thing he remembered was…red. Like, an entire red room. Before that, he was in the poolhouse, and Abi —

Did he kill Abi?

“Hello? Anyone in there?”

Nick blinked and squinted at the person pestering him. Emma was leaning over him with her hand outstretched, and she was soaked with blood. He refused her hand and scrambled to his feet, attempting to string his words together into a poor facsimile of a sentence. “What…where did…why are you bloody?”

Emma looked him up and down. “I could ask you the same question. Let me guess; you were also attacked by a big scary animal with glowing eyes and massive claws?”

“Yeah…right after you pashed me in front of Abi at the campfire and left to go have fun with Jacob.” Nick didn’t mean to sound bitter, especially since it seemed as though Emma had had an equally shitty night, but he’d admit that he was a bit…jealous. Of what? He didn’t know.

“Oh, come on.” Emma rolled her eyes. “Don’t act like you weren’t at least a little bit into it.”

Were they really doing this? Right now, when he was wrestling with the notion that he very well could have murdered his crush when he was — he didn’t know what had happened to him — transformed? Nick lowered his gaze toward the dew-laden grass embracing his bare feet. He would have thought it beautiful or poetic or something if he wasn’t currently having a mental breakdown. “Emma, I—I think I may have killed Abi.”

She stared at him with a tired expression. “Nick…” her voice trailed off. “...we should go try to find the others. I was with Jacob, but he—he turned into one of those things.” Great. It was spreading. “Do you have any idea where we are?”

Nick assessed their surroundings; they were near where he and Abi had collected sticks and watched the sunset not even a day ago. He could pinpoint the lodge from here. “Um…I think the lodge is this way. Yeah, definitely this way.” Nodding toward their destination, he began to tentatively walk in that direction.

Emma followed. “Hey, for the record, I think Abi might be okay.”

“What?”

“I was sitting in the van trying to hide from these old guys with guns, and then I think I turned into one of whatever these things are, and I saw Abi. She was running away from me.” Emma winced. “And I think Dylan shot me.”

“Dylan? Are you sure it wasn’t a hallucination?” Nick couldn’t believe he was amused by that thought. Perhaps this god-awful night wasn’t as bad for the other counselors as it had been for him.

“You know, Nick, I’m not really sure any of what’s happened tonight was real, including this conversation, so no, I’m not,” Emma sighed. The exhaustion was setting in for both of them. Nick wondered what the chances were that they could take a quick power nap back at the lodge. Probably slim.

They trekked together in silence until Nick couldn’t take it. “Are we bad people?”

Emma shot him an offended glance. “I don’t think kissing someone on a dare makes you a bad person.”

Nick knew it wasn’t that black and white. That kiss was not just a kiss. “No, but choosing to kiss someone you know your best friend likes, and who also likes them back, and bragging about it afterward might.”

“It got you two to go and have a nice, romantic kiss in the moonlight, didn’t it?” Emma replied dismissively.

“N—no. No, Emma. We were attacked. I got bitten by that animal and then I told Abi I only liked her because she was stupid and easy to manipulate. She was nothing but kind to me and I—” Nick inhaled sharply. His eyes stung at the sudden recollection of those last moments. “Easy pickings. Right off the bone,” he’d growled before tossing her across the poolhouse. Who says that? Who does that?

“Hey, come back to me. I’m…I’m sorry.” Emma’s voice was soft. She placed a hand on his arm. “You’re right; kissing you was a dick move. You two were just so scared to make the first move that I thought I could fix it with a little drama. I’d say it backfired pretty spectacularly.”

Nick said nothing. At this rate, he’d be a sobbing mess by the time they reached the lodge.

Emma continued. “I don’t know what happened between you two, but I do know that Abi’s got a big heart and she likes you a lot. She won’t hold a grudge against you for something out of your control. Me, on the other hand…I’m not so sure after all of this. I think I’ve burned that bridge.”

I think we both have, Nick thought as the lodge came into view. Maybe it would have been better for him to have killed Abi. He wasn’t prepared to face her yet. He probably would never be.

Right as they reached the bottom steps, the front door opened. Abi stood in the doorway, blood and sweat matting her already dark red hair and the remnants of a nasty bite still visible on her shoulder. “Oh my god.” She rushed down the stairs toward them.

“Abi…” Nick started, but the air was knocked out of him before he could pull an apology out of his arse. She wrapped him in a tight embrace.

“You’re okay. I thought I’d killed you,” her voice buzzed in his chest.

Nick had no idea how to respond to that. Wasn’t he supposed to be the rabid monster who was killing people? “L—likewise.”

Abi lifted her head and looked at Emma. “You too. Come here.” She reached out her arm and pulled Emma close.

“Abs, we’re not exactly clean right now,” Emma said in a nervous huff of laughter. “You don’t have to—”

“Oh, shut it. I’ll take bloody friends over werewolves any day.”

Werewolves? Was that what he was? Fucking hell.

The three of them held onto each other in silence. They’d survived the night. Maybe there was still hope for their fractured bond to do the same.

[transhawks]

So Toga says she can't get it out (her quirk) and that she tried using, and while she should be able to because she "loves" Tomura and Touya-kun, she just can't. Ochako notices how unhappy all the Twice clones are.

I think the... factor in all this is going to be Toga realizing how broken all of them are...were. That without Twice to hold things up, the League fell apart precisely because of what Compress told us:

"A collection of warped minds who never bothered prying into each other's pasts."

This wasn't a good thing. It was good for acceptance, but it wasn't what they needed all along because most of them were hurting regardless. They didn't feel a need to open up with another, especially outside of Twice and Toga, and that's the problem because so much of this manga is about trusting others, reaching out to others and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. Sako straight up told us that in the end they didn't fully do that. Twice's quirk depends on "knowing" stuff about the other person. Twice would memorize things he measured to have some good spatial idea of the person. But Toga functions differently. To her knowing someone is likely something else entirely and in a space like the League, where outside of Jin and his open humanity, she didn't fully grasp the others.

To put in real life terms, there's friendships where you enjoy things with other people, where you work for similar goals, but you come out from meeting up still not knowing the other people well. You have no idea of their inner life, their inner thoughts. And that's what's happened here. It wasn't deep enough, I think, and that's the tragedy of it all. Where they wanted love and acceptance, in trying to create a facsimile of it, there just wasn't openness to start with.

Sure they wanted a place where they'd be accepted who they are, but that's not the end all be all of friendships and friend groups. The next steps to really get to know each other were not taken as a group. And we're seeing the result here. They're splintering. They should have pried.

It just wasn't enough and now it's gone.

[i-am-church-the-cat]

fresh kill

wc: 1745 summary: "This is your mouse, congratulations." | Or how the boys first meet in my patron deity au

also read on ao3

People at the karting track were leaving quite a berth between them and the two Sargeant brothers. Dalton, almost 17 and more than used to his kind of behavior, doesn’t think anything of it. He came out to Europe to see his brother not people with gods too scared to talk with them. Dalton could tell it was bothering Logan, though. Logan, who was all alone in a foreign continent, who felt distinctly apart from everyone else, and not just because he has a predator god as a patron. 

Most of the other kids are avoiding Logan like the plague. The longer it goes on, the more his brother looks like a kicked puppy. His brother’s a bother at the best of times, but Dalton is still fiercely protective over him. He wants to march around to all the adults and yell at them for ignoring a kid. A kid. Logan’s barely 13!

Before Logan can burst into tears and Dalton can start ripping people to shreds, a boy roughly the same age and size as Logan pops out of nowhere. He still looks wary at approaching the son of a hunter god, but he’s clearly brave enough that it isn’t holding him back. 

“I’m Oscar,” the boy says. There’s something weirdly syrupy in his tone and it takes Dalton a second to place it. Fucking children of sleep, they’re the worst on a race track. They’re a straight up danger if they don’t know how to regulate their energy. Though, if no one’s gonna make a fuss, Dalton isn’t. This is the only kid who’s talked to them all day and Logan’s spirits are finally starting to lift. 

“I’m Logan,” he says, bright and chipper, squeaky and cracking around the edges. “Are you racing today.”

“Yeah,” Oscar says, slowly once again. Dalton’s pretty sure it’s less his personality and more because Logan just asked a ridiculously obvious question. He’s in a race suit and has a yellow, blue, orange helmet under his arm. “You qualified tenth for this race, right?”

Dalton’s honestly surprised Oscar noticed. How long has the kid been building up the courage to come talk to them? Logan’s head flops around on his neck in a facsimile of a nod. 

“Yeah, yeah. You qualified higher, though.”

“Sixth, yeah,” Oscar agrees with a short nod. The difference in demeanor between the two boys is slightly jarring. It’s like being light-headed from elevation at the same time as being buried beneath the earth to sleep. For someone on the outside, like Dalton, it was giving him a headache. Logan and Oscar seemed to not notice at all, attracting more like magnets. 

“I’ll just have to catch up with you, then,” Logan says. He tilts his head and Dalton can recognize the look of interest catching in Logan’s head. Not just for a new friend but for a new target. He sighs internally and hopes this guy doesn’t go running for the hills.

Oscar doesn’t seem to notice Logan’s newfound fascination. He just shrugs. 

“You can try, but I’ll probably be in first before you get to seventh.”

Both Sargeant boys blink, taken aback. Before Logan can respond, a woman who looks a lot like Oscar is calling his name and waving him over. The drowsy boy looks over his shoulder at her before turning back to Logan. 

“See ya, then.”

It’s only when Oscar is walking away that Dalton realize the kid never once addressed him. Kind of rude. Before he can bring up the topic of getting something to eat to his brother, Logan is turning to him with wide eyes. 

Blue-green eyes. Shit. 

“I like him,” Logan tells him, reedy voice going sharp. His brother is bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, like he’s about to take off. “I wanna beat him.”

Dalton sighs for real this time. 

--

Logan chases the blue, yellow, orange helmet all the way up to second place. Dalton figures he would have caught the kid if they’d had another couple of turns. But as fast as Logan was when he was hunting, Oscar was somehow just that bit faster. Dalton wondered if the kid had any idea what he was doing. 

From the dazed expression Oscar had when he got out of the kart, he would say no. 

Speaking of dazed expressions, Logan’s eyes don’t leave Oscar’s once during the podium ceremony. He barely manages to get a word out to the announcer. The boy on the step above him doesn’t once glance his way. 

Dalton can see Logan getting more antsy the longer Oscar ignores him. He wonders if he’s seriously going to have to drag his brother back to their car to keep him from jumping this poor kid. But Logan steps off of the podium without argument, making his way to Dalton’s side without once looking at him. He’s holding his second-place trophy in a loose fist as he watches Oscar head back to his family. 

“Quite a race, dude, you almost had him,” Dalton says, forgoing his usual noogie for the mild apprehension that Logan might bite him. “Want me to take that for you?”

Logan finally tears his eyes away from the son of sleep and looks down at his trophy as if seeing it for the first time. He looks at it for a while, then between it and Oscar, then to Dalton. He gets a sinking feeling in his gut before Logan even opens his mouth. 

“I need to give this to him.”

Before Dalton can explain that that would be crazy and that his hormones are all out of wack right now, Logan is taking off at a brisk walk towards Oscar. The older Sargeant curses and takes off after him. With his brother’s luck, Logan’s gonna end up flat on his ass and banned from any more karting events for being fucking weird. 

Logan pulls up short right in front of Oscar. Oscar doesn’t seem to mind the intrusion of his personal space, just raises one bored eyebrow up at Logan’s appearance. 

“Hey, mate, what’s up?”

Logan opens his mouth. Closes it. Does this a few more times before shoving his trophy forward into Oscar’s chest.

“Here.”

Oscar looks down at the trophy that was unceremoniously shoved into his arms and then back up at Logan. There’s only confusion in his expression before a spark of annoyance appears. 

“I don’t want your second-place trophy, mate. If you didn’t notice, I won. I came in first, not you.”

Oscar tries to shove the trophy back into Logan’s arms but the blond makes a sound not unlike a squawking bird and just tries to give it back. They end up in this weird tug-of-war situation, except instead of tugging, they’re both trying really really hard to push it away. 

“No, it’s yours.”

“I didn’t come in second, it’s yours.”

“But I’m giving it to you.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Dalton finally decides to step in for the lack of any other semi-adult figure. He pulls his dejected-looking brother away from Oscar, who’s still fuming at the assumed insult. Logan looks from the trophy in his hands and then up at Dalton. He looks fucking pitiful, the goof. He sighs and decides to at least try and help his little brother. 

“Look, Oscar,” he starts, baring the thoroughly unimpressed look the other 13-year-old gives him. “You know how a cat sometimes bring mice to their owners?”

“I’m not a cat!” Logan sputters indignantly at the same time Oscar says, “Yeah?”

Dalton snags the trophy from Logan’s hands and holds it out to the Australian. “This is your mouse, congratulations.”

Logan looks like he wants to argue the point but Oscar is looking at the two brothers with much more consideration then before. Just when Dalton is sure his brother’s gonna get rejected again, he gently takes the trophy.

“Okay,” Oscar says, tucking the slightly smaller trophy against his side next to the big trophy. “As long as you’re not taking mine.”

Logan’s head flies from side-to-side like a hummingbird wing. Fucking goof.

“Alright, then,” Oscar finally seems to relax. He offers Logan a tentative smile and Dalton can feel his brother practically droop against his side. Oh, thank god, somehow this kid’s mojo got Logan’s hyperfocus to take a fucking break. That would have taken Dalton forever.

“I have to go now. See you tomorrow.”

“See ya,” Logan says, but Oscar is already gone. For a kid so lethargic, he sure does move fast. The Sargeant boys watch him walk away, one with little hearts flying around his head and one utterly done with this shit.

“Well,” Dalton looks down at his little brother. “I’m never letting you off your leash again.”

Logan turns right around and bites him. The fucking brat.  

--

New day, new race, same track and same opponents. Dalton is sitting on a fold-out chair watching Logan’s mechanic walk him through different parts of his kart. His little brother is nodding along, entirely focused on the car, until the smell of rain at nighttime come through. Then he’s a fucking lost cause.

Oscar is standing at the entrance to their tent, looking at Logan almost as intensely as the blond is looking to him. His little brother bounds over without a second thought in his empty little head.

“Hey! What’s up?” Logan sounds so excited. Dalton’s honestly embarrassed for him.

“I had a dream about you,” Oscar says without preamble. Dalton chokes on the Coke he was drinking but neither boy seems to care that he’s in the throes of a cheap death. 

A sleep god gave their kid a dream about Logan? About his little brother? This can’t be real life. 

Logan, without a clue in the world of the implications of that statement, just says, “Cool, was it a good one?”

Oscar seems to think about it for a second before nodding. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it was a pretty good one.”

That statement must have been some kind of secret code the two made up the second Dalton wasn’t there, because Logan just nods and doesn’t react at all when Oscar grabs his wrist and starts pulling Logan out of the tent. Logan starts yammering away in his usual hyperactivity, and Oscar just nods along as he leads the blond to gods know where. 

And Dalton is left sitting in the kart tent. What the fuck is his life?

[bestworstcase]

hello its irregularly scheduled SONGS TIME once again. have you ever thought about how weird ‘all things must die’ is i have i think about it all the time it’s really weird except no it isn’t it’s about summer

(<- sound of me succumbing to the eldritch vapors i am going to try so hard to be coherent wish me luck)

anyway the confounding the maddening thing about ATMD is it very directly calls back to, inexplicably, ‘this will be the day’ and: why. why! what? summer it’s about summer

specifically.

fourteen years ago raven and summer fought in the vault under haven academy and, listen to me because this is the important part, summer did not die. but raven thinks she should have. this is what ATMD is about. raven is fighting cinder but also no she isn’t, it’s fourteen years ago and she’s back here again and she is so angry. because summer rose is not the one who died that night.

ok? ok. ok ok ok

this will be the day: a story will be told. red like roses ii: this bedtime story ends with misery ever after/the pages are torn and there’s no final chapter. all things must die: all tales conclude.

grabs you by the shoulders. shakes you. DO YOU SEE

this will be the day:

beware that the light is fading beware, as the dark returns this world’s unforgiving even brilliant lights will cease to burn legends scatter day and night will sever hope and peace are lost forever

divide (now we’re cooking with gas!):

legends and fairytales scattered in time maidens and kingdoms wrapped up in a lie

all things must die:

this is the end here’s where you’ll die legends should scatter so just say goodbye no one will miss you when you’re fin’lly gone at your conclusion sing your swan song

folds hands. a bird is known by its song, a man by his words. the truth is that ‘truth’ is hard to come by; a story of victory for one person is a story of defeat for someone else. by now, i’m sure your uncle has told ruby and her friends plenty of stories.

(and which “her” is raven referring to?)

summer was the best of us, qrow says.

raven knows the truth. she’s also the one who told the story—or at least, she told a story. or maybe she didn’t, but silence tells its own kind of story. the point is this: summer rose, the person, chose to walk away and left raven branwen to decide how the story ended.

summer rose, the idea, is dead because raven slit her throat in front of that vault fourteen years ago. this is the end: here’s where you’ll die. legends should scatter, so just say goodbye. no one will miss you, when you’re finally gone; at your conclusion, sing your swan song.

does she regret that choice? letting summer rose die a hero so that summer rose could be free? did she do it for spite? for love? was she afraid? did she just want it to be done?

fourteen years later, she’s back here and there’s blood on the floor again.

murder, unkindness, conspiracy embers extinguished in effigy

to burn something in effigy: to destroy a figure, a facsimile, a symbol of someone hated. cinder fall is not summer rose, but summer rose isn’t here and the past is alive and howling all around them; and whatever raven may have felt then the only thing she feels now is it’s happening again.

(an unkindness of ravens—a conspiracy of ravens—but it’s a murder of crows. or, as it might be, just a murder.)

anyways.

sacrifice:

close your eyes now, time for dreams death is never what it seems […] show them gods and deities blind and keep the people on their knees pierce the sky, escape your fate the more you try, the more you’ll just breed hate and lies truth will rise revealed by mirrored eyes

when it falls:

swallowed by the darkness soon the moon is bathed in black the light of hope is taken and discontent is the contagion the blinding eyes that burn a yellow flame the embers that remain will light the fuse of condemnation mirrors will shatter crushed by the weight of the world

all things must die:

just close your eyes don’t fear demise black out the sky all things must die

ok. ok . can you see it?

this will be the day:

we are lightning straying from the thunder miracles of ancient wonder this will be the day we’ve waited for this will be the day we open up the door i don’t wanna hear your absolution hope you’re ready for a revolution welcome to a world of new solutions welcome to a world of bloody evolution

all things must die:

life is just a journey yours is near its end bloody evolution this world transcend

can you—

all things must die:

all tales conclude all bonds dissolve infinite matter will always evolve just pray for mercy at your time of death be glad you existed enjoy your last breath

rising:

the sky is turning black light is fading fast but we don’t surrender radiant and bright shattering the night armored in splendor shining forever we are paragons of virtue and glory death can’t stop our endless story infinite and unbound

—see it?

just pray for mercy.

don’t wanna hear your absolution (hope you’re ready for a revolution!)

welcome to a world of new solutions: the blinding eyes that burn a yellow flame, the embers that remain will light the fuse of condemnation—mirrors will shatter, crushed by the weight of the world. truth will rise, revealed by mirrored eyes. welcome to a world of bloody evolution.

life is just a journey; yours is near its end. bloody evolution: this world transcend.

black out the sky; all things must die. swallowed by the darkness, soon the moon is bathed in black; the light of hope is taken and discontent is the contagion. the sky is turning black, the light is fading fast, but we don’t surrender. radiant and bright, shattering the night, shining forever. we are paragons of virtue and glory; death can’t bind our endless story, infinite and unbound.

for it is in passing we achieve immortality; through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all, infinite in distance and unbound by death. i release your soul, and by my shoulder protect thee.

all things must die.

our souls transcend death.

it’s—ok. ok! this will be the day? salem. when it falls? salem and cinder. rising? summer and salem. for every life? salem. rising is the only one of these that is remotely ambiguous but trust me. (“farran it seems unlikely that half the opening numbers are secretly—” salem is literally the narrator)

so what is happening here, with ‘all things must die,’ is it’s in dialogue with the whole triumvirate of cinder + summer + salem

(<- maiden mother crone. hi)

—as i said, ATMD fundamentally is about the death of summer rose, the idea, and the not-death of summer rose, the person, and the feelings raven has about both of those things as drawn out by the echo the reflection the effigy that is cinder fall.

banging pots and pans. salem drowns in the fountain of life and reawakens immortal. she drowns in the pool of grimm and creates herself anew. raven kills summer rose, the idea (this is the end, here’s where you’ll die) and summer rose, the person, rips herself free (the pages are torn and there’s no final chapter). cinder gets electrocuted in the face frozen solid dropped hundreds of feet into a subterranean lake and just. Survives That.

like mother, like—

anyway.

grips your shoulders listen to me very carefully. raven branwen turns into a raven. she leads a warlike group of bandits. she is the spring maiden, the maiden of knowledge. her weapon is called omen. her semblance allows her to know when her loved ones are in mortal danger and appear to them to turn the tide of battle. she wears a grimm mask. she “tore her team apart.” thought and memory though she and her brother may be, huginn is only what she was to ozpin.

day by day it’s nearer step by step you go closer to your ruin soon your time to go life is just a journey yours is near its end […] this is the end here’s where you’ll die […] it’s time to accept to abide admit that the hour’s arrived resign, comply it’s time to be one with the sky surrender your pride let death be your guide all things must die

i told you beacon would fall, and it did. i told you ozpin would fail, and he has.

she can’t be stopped, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet.

her weapon is named omen.

her song is spoken in future tense!!! hello!!!

She also prophesied the end of the world, foretelling every evil that would occur then, and every disease and every vengeance; and she chanted the following poem: ‘I shall not see a world Which will be dear to me: Summer without blossoms, Cattle will be without milk, Women without modesty, Men without valour. Conquests without a king […] False judgements of old men…’ ( 167 )

the morrígan.

wheeze ok. all things must die is prophetic but all that is already was; raven sees, in cinder fall, the end and the beginning of summer rose, That Is What The Song Is About. nothing new under the sun. fourteen years ago all of this happened before, differently. here’s where you’ll die. she writes the ending of summer rose. she flings cinder to her (SYMBOLIC SYMBOLIC IT IS A METAPHOR) death and resurrection from the roots of the tree.

she’s the spring maiden. she is death’s herald. she’s stared death in the face over and over again and every time she spat back in its face and survived. she knows people who can come back from the dead. without the spring maiden, we’re all going to die.

death and the maiden.

i only know the raven dad told me about; she was troubled and complicated, but she fought for what she believed in—whether it was her family or her tribe. did you kill her too?

no, but summer rose did.

gleefully voicing this eulogy spawn of the tenets of treachery

cinder’s heard so many stories about raven; that she’s a cunning leader, strong, clever. (it’s a shame they’re wrong.) truth is hard to come by; i’m sure your uncle has told ruby and her friends plenty of stories. summer rose telling lies! she was the best of us. she would have pressed on, if she found out the truth.

burning summer rose in effigy, gleefully voicing this eulogy. no one will miss you when you’re finally gone.

…how did salem know the maidens are vulnerable to silver eyes. much to think about

[nonsubstantial]

APRIL 2024 ART FASCINATION DIARY

This is another post about the art that I've been fascinated with this year. I make these posts monthly, so that I can look back and remember all the things that were keeping me happy and inspired! If you are reading this, then I hope it will be somewhat interesting to hear about. First, a collage of my interests this month, then there are descriptions below.

MUSIC / ALBUM I heard about Everything Harmony by The Lemon Twigs because Vinny Vinesauce liked it enough to feature it on his twitch channel four times within this last month. After checking it out, it quickly became a favorite of mine as well. It's inspired by 60's era rock bands like The Beach Boys and The Beatles, and the two brothers in charge of The Lemon Twigs were basically raised from birth to create this kind of music. They're excellent musicians, but I do have a few complaints, mainly that their band is a four person group that started as a two person group, and it shows. The musicians on their drums and backing guitar are unnoticeable most of the time, or even make their music worse when I really focus on the boring repetitive parts that they play in the mix. I think that it would improve things if we heard the other two members’ creativity shine a little more. On a different note, their lyrics also feel kind of hollow to me, sort of like facsimiles of themes that we heard out of the 60’s pop music that they’re inspired by. Maybe the brothers’ odd upbringing is what makes their lyrics feel like nothing more than dreamy imitations of other lyrics, rather than being something written from their own hearts? In any case, their vibe is really bizarre, but despite all my criticisms I did really enjoy this one album from them. (And actually, their new 2024 album is already out! It’s also fantastic, and I’ll talk about it on my May list.)

FANFIC / CREATIVE WRITING I've been working on a long fanfic for fun since last month, and every time I write a new scene for it I'm filled with a sense of creative euphoria for the rest of the day. It's not always perfect, but there's no real pressure to write something good, so it just ends up being an enjoyable outlet for my passions. Even if I never publish anything, being creative and exploring my own imagination is satisfying in itself, and I wish I had the time to do it every day! (HONESTLY, there could and should be time, if only our society actually prioritized taking breaks for mental health and personal wellbeing over making endless amounts of money and increasingly insubstantial products to be consumed by only the luckiest members of our parasitic upper class. I hate our unsympathetic workaholic capitalist culture with every fiber of my being, and wish that I could fucking end it all, but I digress...) Writing is just so fun. And I'll be working on the same projects for another few months, probably, as long as I can keep on keeping up with them.

REALITY GAME SHOW The finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16 concluded this month, and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Now that it’s over, we’re starting back from season 1 and we’re going to try to eventually watch it all! (We actually did finish season 1, right before posting this. It was interesting and groundbreaking in its own right, and it introduced me to Tammie Brown, who is now one of my favorite queens. Then, we started season 2 and I’m pretty sure that this is where the show’s bad reputation got its start, because I really can’t stand any of the season 2 contestants. Too bad, but we’ll keep on watching and see how it pans out anyway.) In season 16 though, there was just so much unique creativity and talent on display, and so many jaw dropping ‘holy shit’ moments, that I think it was one of the best things I have ever watched. It had the hypest final lip sync battle I ever could have imagined, and I had no idea which way it was going to end. In whole, I feel like the show was a wonderful watch, and I’m glad that our friends convinced us to give it a shot.

LIVE THEATER MUSICAL My partner and I were given a gift card to our local theater last year, so we finally used it to go see a live production of Annie! We don't live in a place where live musicals are very common, and I actually hadn’t seen any since highschool, so we had to make plans very early in the year to go watch it. And after having done so, I can say for certain that there is a unique magic to watching a live theater performance. I’m surprised that it was all performed so perfectly, even with children and a dog on stage, and remarkably, it sounded better than any recording I could find online before or after the event. It was so incredible all around that it totally transported me into a unique creative headspace. There were people of all ages there, some dressed up, some appearing more casual, but the atmosphere was delightful and jovial all around. I’m not going to comment about what was or wasn’t problematic about Annie; it’s not really that deep and you can probably figure that out on your own. But I will say that the magic of a live performance depends entirely on the energy in its room, and I was totally swept away by this experience. Without the discount, it would have been very pricey though, so I’m hoping that we can put away a little money to see a different live musical next year.

BOOK / AUDIOBOOK About a month and a half ago, I started Leo Tolstoy's epic work of historical fiction, War And Peace. I love a book that I can get completely lost in, and War and Peace is one of those books. I made it about 1/4th of the way through it this month, and even though it started slow, I’m now sure that it’s going to be an all time favorite. I read Anna Karenina years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I expected to like this one too, but there was still a sort of learning curve to overcome at the start. After over a month of engaging with it, I feel like I’ve finally gotten over its barrier to entry, and now I’m picking up the pace. Most people have heard of this book before, so let me tell you that its high-sounding title is no false advertisement. It’s a Russian slice of life book set during the Napoleonic Wars, dealing with a huge assemblage of political and philosophical conflicts, and it will have you exasperatedly crying “time is a flat circle!” as you realize that humans today have nearly the same brains and political interests that they had over 200 years ago. It is already a masterpiece, in my opinion, and I’m going to be reading this book for the entire month of May also, so that’s something to look forward to. If you’re interested in checking out an audiobook, I’m also listening to the Maude translation, narrated by Neville Jason, and I think it’s quite good! (That's it for April! But we're already a few weeks into May, so expect more Lemon Twigs and more War And Peace. Thank you for caring about me, and I hope you have a good day! ♡)

[nyxshadowhawk]

The Red Book, Liber Primus: Part One

This is going to be a long series of posts in which I interpret Carl Jung's Red Book! Jung has been a cornerstone of my mystical practice for basically as long as I've been practicing, and a major inspiration for my creative work, so imagine my surprise when I learned that Jung had his own grimoire of mystical experiences! This is maybe the most important book I've ever read.

Introduction

I owe a lot to Carl Jung. I read one page about him in a book about symbols that I received when I was about twelve, and something just clicked. In particular, the idea of the Shadow Complex really stuck with me, and has absolutely defined the last decade of my life in terms of my personal spirituality, my approach to interpreting media, and my creative writing. It’s kind of hard to overstate the impact that Jung has had on me, but despite that, I haven’t actually read that much Jung. You all know how much I care about primary sources, so I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was using Jung’s ideas as the basis of my own work without being intimately familiar with his.

I’ve made some missteps. I originally really loved the idea of interpreting gods as archetypes, and claiming that all of humanity worshipped the same gods under different names. I saw that as a beautiful uniting feature of humankind. But the concept did not hold up under scrutiny, for a long list of reasons; the short version is that I was ignoring nuances that distinguished gods from each other, dismissing some of their defining qualities as cultural quirks, as if entire human cultures were “hats” that gods put on and not the thing that makes them what they are. I didn’t start having real relationships with gods until after I started viewing them as individuals, rather than archetypes. And then there’s Joseph Campbell, and his whole “Hero’s Journey” idea, which seemed extremely profound until I actually read The Hero with a Thousand Faces and realized how flawed the Hero’s Journey framework really is. (Spencer McDaniel has a great article about that over on her site, so I recommend you check that out.) So, that was all another strike against Jungian ideas. The third strike is that people like Jordan Peterson use his ideas a lot. That in particular has made me afraid that I’ve been misinterpreting Jung this whole time.

There’s also the fact that Jung’s ideas are difficult to understand and apply, and frequently misunderstood. Clinical psychology has mostly disregarded Jung’s ideas of the collective unconscious and archetypes as more mystical than empirical, despite Jung’s efforts to prove his ideas empirically. Fans of Jung will sometimes downplay his mystical leanings to try to lend more scientific credibility to his ideas. But to me, Jung’s mysticism is a feature, not a bug. Turns out, Jung was a mystic. Jung had mystical visions and prophetic dreams since he was a young child, and his entire brand of psychoanalysis was developed specifically to explain said mystical experiences (which honestly explains a lot). Not only was Jung a mystic, he was basically the William Blake of his day! He chronicled his mystical experiences in what is basically a personal grimoire, written in the style of an illuminated medieval manuscript, with stunning illustrations.

It’s called The Red Book, or Liber Novus, and it was published in 2009 (translated by Sonu Shamdasani). I got the really expensive version that’s about two feet tall and contains a facsimile of the actual illuminated manuscript. To call it an eye-opener would be an understatement. Reading it is infinitely more valuable to my spirituality and my writing than reading any of Jung’s psychological essays. The Red Book is the real source of most of Jung’s ideas and theories, and the purely mystical nature of them explains why the concepts themselves resonate much more for me than the psychoanalytic application of them does. Reading it is immensely validating, because it proves that I was right all along! Not only were my interpretations of Jung’s ideas spot-on, but my UPG aligns with his — though some of that alignment is undoubtedly a result of his influence on me, I’ve also come to many of the same conclusions entirely on my own.

I hope that the field of modern psychology will eventually do mysticism its due diligence using modern methodology, but until then, Jung’s attempt to ground all of this weirdness in psychology is the best we’ve got. I’m no psychoanalyst, so I’ll interpret Jung as a fellow mystic, because that is what I am most familiar with. I can compare his own experiences against my own, and hopefully get something valuable from my interpretation of them.

Disclaimer: These are mostly my notes and impressions; I’m not responding line-by-line (because that would take forever), I’m responding to what stood out to me. This is my interpretation of The Red Book based on my own mystical experiences and mystical knowledge, not based on Jung’s other writings. I’m using Jung’s name as shorthand for “the person writing this” or “the dreamer” — I don’t mean to suggest that what Jung expresses here is indicative of his personal spiritual beliefs. I know he had a complicated relationship with mysticism, science, and religion, so I won’t even touch that here. I’m going to be looking at this from a strictly mystical angle, and everything that follows is subjective.

The Way of What Is to Come

Jung began by introducing two spirits. One is “the spirit of this time,” a literal translation of zeitgeist (Jung’s manuscript is in German), which represents the conscious mind and conventional thought. It’s a reference to Goethe’s Faust: “What you the Spirit of the Ages call / Is nothing but the spirit of you all, / Wherein the Ages are reflected.” It’s called “the spirit of this time” because the times that we live in influence what and how we think, and form the foundation of our conscious faculties. I might define the Zeitgeist as the set of assumptions we make that defines our base-level interpretation of the world around us. So, when I complain about “latent Christianity,” I’m calling attention to the Zeitgeist. To put it in my own mystical terms, the Zeitgeist is the part of you that thinks like a human, instead of thinking like a god.

The opposite of the Zeitgeist is what Jung calls “the spirit of the depths,” which represents the unconscious mind. The Spirit of the Depths is both a personification of and Jung’s guide to the unconscious. It is something like a collective Shadow combined with a chthonic god, that encompasses all of the hidden and buried parts of humanity (or at least of Jung) that can be accessed through dreams and mystical visions. It operates independently from the Zeitgeist, and therefore can introduce Jung to secret information and concepts that fall outside of the Zeitgeist’s purview. A lot of what it tells Jung is harsh, but he understands that it’s necessary to listen to the Spirit of the Depths and internalize what it tells him.

Only a page in, and we’ve already got a mention of the Shadow concept. Since everything has a Shadow, God also has a Shadow. Jung defines God as “supreme meaning,” so God’s Shadow is lack of meaning — nonsense, void. The Spirit of the Depths tells Jung to notice the small things in life, which is pretty banal spiritual wisdom for most of us nowadays, but it’s very hard for Jung to accept. He writes, “It completely burnt up my innards since it was inglorious and unheroic. It was even ridiculous and revolting.” Everything has their own thing that they’re working through — I have to work through issues related to power and sexuality, and what Jung has to work through is issues relating to meaning vs. meaninglessness, greatness vs. mediocrity, sensibility/respectability vs. foolishness. The Zeitgeist of early-twentieth-century Germany insists that only great deeds, great men, and great ideas are the ones that matter. Jung was taught to think that things must be “glorious” and “heroic,” larger than life, for them to matter. The Zeitgeist encourages Jung to dismiss the little things as part of God’s shadow. The Spirit of the Depths informs him that the small things are still part of God and not God’s Shadow because they are not nonsense. The mundane is still divine, because it is not nonsense.

The Spirit of the Depths tells Jung, “all the last mysteries of becoming and passing away lie in you.” It’s a big deal to be one of the people of this time who can experience the Mystery the way the ancients did, or near enough. Actually, wait — Jung isn’t quite a person of this time. There’s a solid century between Jung and me, which is enough time for the Zeitgeist to have changed considerably, but not that much time. He’s essentially my immediate ancestor, the most recent entry in my mystical tradition. It is absolutely wild to be reading the Mystery filtered through a specific, named person who lived only a century ago, as opposed to ancient mystics of Antiquity who didn’t write everything down so I have to blindly guess at what they might have experienced or how they might have interpreted it. But there’s enough time in there that I keep wondering, am I in the time that is to come? Is Jung receiving this information so that I can be primed to receive it?

Jung says, “It is true, it is true, what I speak is the greatness and intoxication and ugliness of madness.” Yeeeeah! We’ll get back to divine madness, but I love that it’s being brought up this early. However, it’s a lot harder for Jung than it is for me to admit that these words or visions might come from a place of madness, because Jung is a person who really likes for things to make sense. On that note:

I must also speak the ridiculous. You coming men! You will recognize the supreme meaning [God] by the fact that he is laughter and worship, a bloody laughter and a bloody worship. A sacrificial blood binds the poles. Those who know this laugh and worship in the same breath.

Hmm, this doesn’t sound like any god I know at all… I love that phrase “a bloody laughter and a bloody worship.” That’s Dionysian worship in a nutshell, right there.

My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words. I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths.

That checks. Mystical experiences often come as floods of insights and images, but few words, I think because words are literally processed differently by the brain (don’t quote me on that). Putting it into words literally requires a translation, and it can be very difficult to find the right words to do it justice or record every aspect of it. I’m also reading an English translation of Jung’s German, so that’s another degree of separation, but two degrees of separation is relatively little.

Jung has a vision of a sea of blood blanketing Europe, which is obviously a premonition of WWI. He also dreams that he returns to his homeland (Switzerland) from a “remote English land,” to find it covered in frost in summer; he makes wine from iced grapes, which he shares. The first part of this is a premonition — he was in Scotland when WWI broke out, and hurried home. As for the second part, “…I found my barren tree whose leaves the frost had transformed into a remedy. And I plucked the ripe fruit and gave it to you and I do not know what I poured out for you, what bitter-sweet intoxicating drink, which left on your tongues an aftertaste of blood.” Not sure exactly how to interpret this, but it’s a striking image, especially to a Dionysian like me.

Reassuringly, Jung insists that he is relaying his own experiences, not mine or anyone else’s:

It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path, therefore I cannot teach you. The way is within us, but not in Gods, nor in teachings, nor in laws, Within us is the way, the truth, and the life. Woe betide those who live by way of examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves. The signposts have fallen, unblazed trails lie before us. Do not be greedy to gobble up the fruits of foreign fields. Do you not know that you yourselves are the fertile acre which bears everything that avails you? Yet who today knows this? Who knows the way to the eternally fruitful climes of the soul? You seek the way through mere appearances, you study books and give ear to all kinds of opinion. What good is all that? There is only one way and that is your way. You seek the path? I warn you away from my own. It can also be the wrong way for you. May each go his own way.

Thank the gods for this! It’s too common for mystics to assume that their own personal revelations apply to everyone else, because mystical experiences really do make you feel like you have all the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Hearing straight from Jung himself that he is only speaking for himself, and that what he says here need not apply to me or anyone else, ironically makes his words more validating. Also, my biggest criticism of Jungian psychoanalysis is that it seems to apply the same symbols universally (the gender essentialism in the anima/animus concept comes to mind), so I assumed that Jung was extrapolating from his own mystical experiences. It seems as though he actually had the wisdom to admit that these symbols apply only to himself.

Refinding the Soul

Jung feels distanced from his soul, because surprise surprise, 20th century patriarchy is spiritually bankrupt. At the time he had the bloody-flood vision, Jung was forty years old and had accomplished everything that patriarchy says you should want in life — he had honor, power, wealth, knowledge, and happiness. He succeeded. He won the game of life. All he was left with was abject horror and the question of what to do with himself, a midlife crisis. (From a quotation in the footnotes, Jung defines the midlife crisis at the moment at which the Shadow first asserts itself: “A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change, it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of going down to death.” Buddy, I’ve gotten way past that and I’m not even twenty-five!)

Jung thus came to the realization that he had dedicated his life to the wrong things:

I had to accept that what I had previously called my soul was not at all my soul, but a dead system. Hence I had to speak to my soul as to something far off, and unknown, which did not exist through me, but through whom I existed.

“A dead system” is a great way of putting it. It reminds me of the Fight-Club-esque dissatisfaction of having ticked all the boxes within the system and done everything you’re supposed to, and receiving absolutely no real fulfillment from it. (I bet Fight Club also owes a lot to this.) It also reminds me of my new favorite Terry Pratchett quote, from Small Gods, “People start off believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.” A structure by itself is completely hollow — what’s scaffolding for if it doesn’t support anything? I also like that second line. You exist through your soul, by means of your soul, and not the other way around… That suggests that it’s more real than you are.

Jung explains to the reader that if you seek external things – money, success, validation from other people — then you will not find your soul, and will enter midlife crisis. The soul is only found internally. So go inward, and do the work. Pretty self-explanatory at this point, but must have been earth-shattering back then because he spends a lot of time justifying it. It’s the Spirit of the Depths who tells Jung to look internally and reconnect with his soul:

Therefore the spirit of the depths forced me to speak to my soul, to call upon her as a living and self-existing being. I had to become aware that I had lost my soul.

I think it’s interesting that Jung uses feminine pronouns for his soul. That makes sense, since I use masculine pronouns for mine. I’m not sure how this relates to the anima/animus concept, whether it’s the same thing or a slightly different thing. It’s probably the same idea, because “anima” is the Latin word for “soul.” I checked, and Jung uses “seele” and not “anima,” possibly because he hadn’t developed the concept yet.

I interpret Astor as my Shadow and associate him with my repressed personality traits, but Jung would say that he was my animus, because I’m a woman and Astor is the man that exists in my mind. Jung conceived of the Shadow and anima/animus as separate figures — the repressed aspects of the personality and repressed femininity/masculinity, respectively — that need to be integrated separately. For me, they’re the same figure. The anima/animus is one of the concepts that I think hasn’t aged well, not because the concept is inherently bad (internal repressed qualities that one associates with the opposite sex) but because the way it’s presented and describes falls along strictly gender-essentialist lines. This is especially because the anima/animus is less personal and less “universal” than the Shadow, which inevitably means projecting Western gender norms (such as “women are more emotional and men are more logical,” which Jung expressed as Eros and Logos) onto everyone in the world and calling it an inherent psychological feature of humankind.

I think it’s is one of those concepts that was progressive for its time but regressive now with our more nuanced interpretation of gender. For example, the anima appears in men’s minds as a sex symbol, but the animus apparently does not appear as a similar sex symbol in women’s minds: In Man and His Symbols, Marie Louise von Franz says “…the animus does not so often appear in the form of an erotic fantasy or mood [as the anima does for men]; it is more apt to take the form of a hidden “sacred” conviction.” Yeah, that’s bullshit. I’m willing to bet anything that this interpretation is the result of women being sexual objects from men’s perspectives (as the “anima”) but denied any access to or expression of sexuality within their own minds. Women aren’t culturally allowed to desire men, so the animus is the unsexed voice of her father giving her very judgemental advice and rigid solutions, instead of a seductive incubus. That doesn’t check. Astor is basically a sexual fantasy with a mind of his own, and if Lestat, Rhysand, Edward Cullen, and Azhrarn exist, I’m clearly not the only woman who has a relationship with this specific archetypal lover.

Actually, I also have the “nightmare woman,” a separate entity from Astor that is a textbook example of what Jung would call a “negative anima”… if I were a man. Maybe having an opposite-sex Shadow and same-sex anima/animus is another sign of my gender identity being a bit screwy. Or maybe the reason why Jung’s soul is female is because his gender identity isn’t that straightforward, either. Either way, I think the anima/animus concept needs to be redefined to make it less cishet. It’s not universally applicable to say that your Shadow must be the same sex as you or that you have repressed femininity/masculinity. That was probably true back in the early twentieth century when anyone would repress any inclination towards cross-gender expression for fear of social disembowelment, but now? “Hey, turns out men/women have feminine/masculine traits, too” is not an archetype.

I digress. Back to The Red Book.

I came upon an interesting revelation while reading this section — if Jung’s soul is feminine and he has to “refind” her, then that’s why the hero of every fairy tale gets his princess at the end of the story. The princess is his soul, which he is given a right to by having completed the self-actualization process through the events of the story. The “half a kingdom” part of the Standard Hero Reward could represent control over part of the unconscious mind. I got a prince and half a kingdom from this process (maybe it’ll be a whole kingdom if I ever finish a version of the map that I’m happy with). It’ll quickly become apparent that this whole book chronicles Jung’s own Hero’s Journey. That means… in a manner of speaking… the the Hero’s Journey isn’t based on Jung’s ideas – Jung’s ideas are based on the Hero’s Journey. Because the Hero’s Journey is the ancient mystical process of self-actualization.

[Edit: I was getting ahead of myself here. Pretty much all of this will be addressed later when we get to Liber Secundus.

If we possess the image of a thing, we possess half the thing. The image of the world is half the world. He who possesses the world but not its image possesses only half the world, since his soul his poor and has nothing. The wealth of the soul exists in images. […] My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart.

I interpret this as meaning that in order to “possess” the world in full, to have our princess and half-a-kingdom, you have to have both the internal and external aspects of it. To put it in alchemical terms, unite the fixed and volatile. (Unification of opposites is going to be a big theme throughout this book.) If you don’t “nourish the soul,” then it festers like a wound and you start projecting unaddressed Shadow aspects on the external world. (We’ll get back to that, too.) Without your Shadow or your unconscious mind, you’re half gone.

[uldren-sov]

🖊️ + Elora Starwars? 👀

Ms. Elora Starwars, if you're nasty.

Tyty!!!

( art by @artofzofia !! mwah!!)

Some more about the Empire! More Sith culture! Some Sith philosophy!

So have to start this out by saying I don't agree with a lot of the writeups about the Empire not being as bad as it seems, it's worse. Maybe I'm just more sensitive to the subject, but beyond the cartoonishly evil moments, it is smarter and crueler than that as well.

The Empire is a massive machine that has worked thus far because it grew bloated in isolation while the Republic thrived. Even that kind of beginning will show just how the emergence back into the galaxy at whole should frame a lot of perspectives. It was and continues to be an insular society that prides itself on the ubiquitous homogeneity of who is given power. (Apparently both the Mirialan and Cathar home planets are a part of the Empire, you don't see a lot of them in DK do you?)

So, given this frame of mind! And the fact that it is Dromund Kaas is the capital planet of the Empire, not Ziost, I think she does feel ostracized from the start of her exile (around 13 ish years old), by being from Ziost which has more of the cultural heritage of the Sith Empire from ancient times that was then reclaimed. Further, it had New Adasta, which was the gateway to the Empire as well as where you go to trade with the Empire. So as she grows up, she already had more access to cultural history, that does not exist in DK outside of stories and the ability to interact with other people in this very tailored exposure to the rest of the galaxy, that doesn't exist in DK.

She's spent most of her life angry and frustrated at the Empire due to the restraints placed upon her by Sith and Imperial society in Dromund Kaas versus Ziost given, in some way, Ziost had to give the facsimile of being open to the rest of the galaxy, and could not be as earnest in its invidiousness as it is in DK.

So given this emphasis on actual Imperial history and ancient Sith artifacts, teachings, etc. She felt a connection to that aspect of the Empire more than anything. It's why she had her tattoos done in traditional way, scarification, venom, and all!!!

So then with that gone, so too was so much of the history and left her once again kind of listless and apart from DK. Thankfully hatred, rage, and spite are typical of Sith, because one of her biggest complications now is, how can she have a home -- or save her home!!! -- when she feels once more separated from what is forced to be her home again. It's a complicated relationship where she hates what the Emperor did to her home and by extension hates the Empire for essentially letting it happen, hates most of the people in charge of the Empire still, but is loyal enough to it to want to try and make it better. She has no home but her family, her friends, and the amorphous idea of the Empire that will be undone if the Republic wins.

Also I've always liked how she's played with the Sith Code. Ideally it results in freedom and there are understandably many interpretations on how to achieve freedom through power beyond the obvious one. I enjoy an interpretation that is more personal to the Sith, gaining a kind of self assurance and power and confidence in oneself will set them free. And to a point it does! Imagine living without such self doubt! She subscribes to it a bit as well as how it plays into how the Empire is a "meritocracy". She uses assets more than she destroys them, she's converted Jedi rather than killing them, and all of it still add to her power which leads more often than not, to victory. And at least by now she has proof of concept! Through those victories she's broken some of the chains that the most hated parts of the Empire had kept her down with.

But some chains just aren't broken like that :)

Also thought of having her apprentice be a fallen Jedi but honestly what Sith in their right mind wants a teenager (or anyone tbh) around who's planning on killing them?

tiresome!!!!!!!!

so she's trained some of her friends and colleague's apprentices

and her first real apprentice is her dottir Cosima!

[mrfrunky]

Hello all before I absolutely destroy this essay I don’t want to do like a plate of very dry rotisserie chicken, I want to talk about my fallout OC Kurt because I need to FUCKING TALK ABOUT HIM OK

Kurt is my 1st generation super mutant that has essentially lived through fallout 1, 2, and new vegas and is now trying to carve his own name into the apocalypse by journeying into New Mexico. He is super awesome and tough as nails and can kill people super good, he is also a pretty bad person with complex morals (if you couldn’t tell that he was from Unity)

BUT thats besides the point, I have been thinking about how Kurt would act around in the east coast (massachusets mainly) and its interesting

#1: Bro would most certainly be hated and given strange glances at. He is a mutant, but he isn’t an east coast mutant, nor does he look like the institute mutants. I feel like most people in massachusets would just shoot on sight (as I’m sure Kurt is probably used to at this point) but I also feel like he can eventually build some kind of rappor with the ghoul communities and more underground areas. Mainly through the fact that he doesn’t smash humans into little gore bags, but also because he is a pretty good mercenary (but he is definitely brutal, being from the Unity and all, so he wont be *THAT* liked)

#2: Kurt would probably go apeshit when he sees synths (the bodysnatcher kind, not the cool ones like Valentine). I feel like the idea of a bio organism that just replaces people (but isn’t absolutely the same) would just flip some kind of hidden switch in his brain that would make him just kill synths with no feeling or regret. My explanation for this is mainly because he is still uncomfortable with his own origins and the fact that he was once a human but now a mutant (he doesn’t hate the idea that he now is a mutant, he enjoys it, he is just disillusioned from the conditions he’s been in), and the idea that synths can pose as a facsimile of another person exactly, yet they aren’t *truly* the same person (because the other person probably kicked the bucket) feels like a major offense to the ideas and concepts of humanity and someones “soul” that he has been mulling over his head for multiple generations. Unless convinced really well, he might just be ignorant to the idea that synths are also people (even if posing as another) but it’d be very difficult to shake off that idea. He’d also just freak out that body snatchers exist in the first place too.

[cienie-isengardu]

I feel like Titan Shang was actually watching Shang for a while so he could swoop in and recruit him and I wouldn't be surprised if he made Tarkat to cause instability and play the long game.

I feel like that moment in the game Shang is all sad could've actually been a moment of realization but Titan Shang interfered and fucked it all up. Maybe Liu Kang wrote that part in the blueprints of his timeline, ideally hoping that Shang would turn himself around.

I feel like Liu Kang was crossing his fingers hoping Shang would see the error his ways in being an snake oil salesman and that Shang wasn't this inherently evil to the core person but then Titan Shang completely destroyed the foundation of the plan as when it seemed like when Shang was actually at the lowest point and could've reflected, Titan Shang swoops in to undo this as if Shang tries turning his life around, he can't manipulate him for his goals.

It's kind of suspect the moment it looks like Shang could be having a moment of realization, Titan Shang is already on the scene mere seconds later.

We literally see a good version of Shang fighting Titan Shang Tsung so it's likely Liu Kang was hoping for something similar but then Titan Shang ruined the plan and threw everything off course and caused everything to veer into the wrong lane.

My general feeling about Titan Shang Tsung is that he did what he did not solely out of spite for Liu Kang but because after so many eons he was bored out of his mind. As a Titan, Shang Tsung achieved everything he could ever aim at and with no real challenge to keep him busy, I feel like he would jump at the chance to mess and conquer any timeline, just for the thrill of new challenge and proving himself to be superior. The fact it was Liu Kang’s era is just a cherry on top. Like he said himself:

It was eons before I discovered this. Once I did, I knew the path forward.

And really, why else Shang Tsung would discover there is a second timeline happening at the same time as his own, if he didn’t start to probe the time fabric in the first place?  I’m here for Shang Tsung messing everyone’s life because he was simply bored and you all will need to pry that idea out of my cold hands.

That said, I too feel like Titan Shang Tsung prepared himself well before he even reached out to his younger-self rather than jump on the first occasion to recruit him. Thinking about it more, we could even theorize it was Titan Shang Tsung that actually influenced events to push more and more MK1!Shang Tsung’s into misery, desperation and depression, so the man was easier to manipulate, as we know from story mode Titan Shang Tsung considered his counterpart to be “a poor facsimile [...]  made lesser by Liu Kang's meddling” and to be “pawn, no partner” he would sacrifice for his plans without blinking an eye. Frankly, maybe the whole dispute if Liu Kang was responsible for MK1!Shang Tsung’s poverty or not, should really turn into how much Titan Shang Tsung secretly influenced the events around his counterpart to shape him into someone more susceptible to corruption than he would be otherwise?

Personally I don’t think that in the prologue scene, Shang Tsung was even close to changing his ways. If anything, he sounded to me too bitter, depressed and too resigned to try a new, more honest approach to life. He himself described his life as “barely survival.” and I think he was already at the low enough point to be an ideal recruit which is why Titan Shang Tsung decided to act on. I don’t have a reason to not believe Liu Kang wanted this version of Shang Tsung to reform, but he did not have an idea about alternative timelines and the possible outcomes for other characters (and the good Titan Shang Tsung probably was the biggest surprise to anyone involved), so I understand why he still put safeguards around Shang Tsung’s life. Liu Kang may hope as much as he wants for the best, but without any evidence Shang Tsung could be by his own choice good, I too would be wary of his existence and the danger of giving him any magical powers.

As for Tarkat, that is for sure an interesting theory about Titan Shang Tsung’s involvement, however as the intro dialogue says, the sickness preceded MK1!Shang Tsung’s life:

Baraka: How do we know *you* didn't create Tarkat? Shang Tsung: It has been around far longer than I have. 

which in that case would imply Titan Shang Tsung was influencing Liu Kang’s New Era for a much longer period of time. Personally, I like that past timelines affect the current one and it is like a timeline on its own is trying to “fix” itself. Both theories have their strong and weak points, but maybe future tie-in material will explain more from where the sickness came.

[sexy-lil-wizard-freak]

I got rid of HP.

I have been running my home ruleset for some folks, focusing more on travel this time. This ruleset was made within a philosophy of characters being translators for players. Essentially they are the method by which the player interacts with the world. Roleplay, tactics, etc all come second to that first goal of translation. One example of this is removing Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma from a D&D. Players don't need those translated since they can interact with the world with their personal "player stats" OR their own facsimile for those stats if they'd like to roleplay. Having said that, I got rid of HP.

If you think about it, removing HP doesn't exactly align with "characters as translators" or "player-centric characters". Afterall I am not attacking my players every time a goblin does. Weirdly enough I found the idea of HP and the legacy it has in the metatext of RPGs to be limiting, not that it didn't fit.

The game I was running was more focused on travel than your usual dungeon fare, and I think travel gets the short end of the stick from a systemic standpoint a lot of times. It either gets gamified to a point where the act of travel could be anything if you slapped a different coat of paint on it OR it is ignored and essentially only crops up when a random encounter happens in the crawl. Thus I decided to go a bit more simulationist for once, I just needed an impactful "dial to turn". HP is one of if not the most important dial, so I started there.

Stamina

Stamina is one part of the representation of a character's overall well-being. At its basest level, it represents your character's energy levels and how fatigued they are. Unlike HP it does not represent meat, and when a character runs out of it they do not necessarily die.

Determining starting Stamina.

At character creation, roll a number of D6 equal to the character's number of Traits. (We'll talk about Traits another time. For now, think of them something like Levels + Skills.) Do this again any time the character gains a new Trait. If the character's new Stamina total is less than or equal to their original value, add one to their original value and make that their new maximum Stamina.

Using Stamina.

A character must spend 1 Stamina to make any roll.

Any time a character moves from one hex to another they must spend 1 Stamina.

A character may spend 1 Stamina to gain +1 on a roll.

A character may reduce their maximum amount of Stamina by an item's Load to carry it.

Subtract damage dealt to a character from their Stamina.

Running out of Stamina.

If a character ever goes below 1 Stamina they pass out and gain a new Scar Trait.

Recovering Stamina

Eating recovers 1D6 Stamina + the Grade of the meal.

Sleeping recovers 1 Stamina plus the Grade of their resting situation (bedding, shelter, temperature, etc).

Magical means.

The above gives us a ton of flexibility in what we can use this very important mechanical dial for. We can track exertion, time, effort, exhaustion, hunger, etc. Technically we could call it HP and just treat it all like damage but sometimes renaming a metatextual pillar within a community can be more powerful than coming up with a wholly new mechanic.

Since I was focusing on Travel and making it a bit more simulationist, I decided I wanted to wear down characters, make choosing what you bring with you meaningful, and make upgrades to basic travel equipment impactful. Hence Stamina, Load (How much Stamina something costs to carry.), and Grade (How good this thing is at being that thing, eg the +2 in a "+2 Sword".).

Anywho, I got this schpeal out of my system and finally wrote something on here! I'll try to do it more. I have a longer post about "player-centric characters" in the drafts but I don't knkow if it will ever see the light of day. I'm having trouble putting it into words. Thanks for reading folks!

[tunemyart]

like all liv knows is alex "retired"!!!!!!!!! i don't think the explanation of the case that had her leave was just for exposition of even carisi's benefit. like it just wasn't one of liv's cases and munch comes in on no sleep one day then casey mentions having to up he caseload but olivia DOESN'T KNOW. (and god, that "beat her like a leg of lamb in a rocky movie" is such a bad line until you overthink it and come to the conclusion that this is how betty described it, herself: making people as uncomfortable as she is and alex LIKED THAT)

1000000000% agree on all counts!!! OLIVIA DOESN’T KNOW. Can you imagine - the betrayal?? Especially that soon after Elliott just up and disappeared? Alex comes back like a balm on that wound, like some returning constant, only to do the same thing, and Olivia is so tired. Olivia has no more fucks to give. Alex wants to fall off the grid, Alex wants to leave without a word? Fucking fine, let her. Olivia’s busy transforming a new life out of the settling dust of her old one; Alex’s disappearance is just more settling dust, and dust she sets her mouth about bc she knows she should have expected it. The exposition in Sunk Cost Fallacy - 1000% Olivia finally learning what happened.

Also - “making people as uncomfortable as she is” oooooooh bc yeah. Betty Bluestone, otherwise unremarkable SVU case, resonated with Alex to the degree that she left like that again for some reason, right?? It’s so easy to connect the dots with regard to Alex’s (still!) unresolved trauma that she identified with Betty as a victim for some specific reason, that her series of moves into vigilante justice is just as much about trying to heal/obtain justice for herself as it is about the women/children she’s helping, but ahhhhh - the idea that it’s her crying out for someone to see her the way she hasn’t been seen all these years since getting shot outside a bar, since coming back from witness protection, since returning to a version of her old life and trying to make it look like everything was normal? Everything Alex hasn’t done herself bc she’s too busy trying to fit herself back into different old facsimiles of herself and hoping something sticks (please GOD let it stick)?? Yeah.

(Alex making Olivia as uncomfortable as she is - has been all these years - in Sunk Cost Fallacy? Maybe the one person she’s most needed to perceive her in this way? YEAH.)

[sonofshermy]

Me and my fog of ideas, part ad inifinitum Attempting to source/attribute/identify original creators of images or even the subject of an image is an often futile task on this here internet... image search engines routinely fail and it's never been a requirement on social media of whatever stripe to put a name and an origin to an image... it's mostly done out of courtesy, if at all. People can refer to themselves as 'curators' and entirely fail to provide archival sources or even give credit to the original creator of the image or the subject. Some even have a finders keepers mentality. The image becomes 'theirs' because they 'found it'. If we truly do live in a post-truth world then all that works out in a sort of way, I guess, but from my own experience it's also like a 'why bother?' approach, a lot of effort is required and maybe we live in a 'post-effort' world, engaging with something, researching, none of that matters if your priority is getting likes or saving time or just revelling in the 'joy' of posting shit, I get it, I'm as guilty as anyone of that to some degree or other And the other question is 'does any of this really matter?'

The glorious thrill of scrolling and clicking and posting and liking and reblogging is, let's face it, such a heady experience we don't even think about it while we do it which makes us in a sense unaccountable for the oopsies we accidentally drop as we zoom around forcing our personalities and opinions on the rest of these suckers... we're all just goofy for thrills and, yes, spills And in the context of whatever point it is I'm trying to make here, the net results is creators fail to get their due, fail to be identified, fail to be appreciated for the other shit they've done, are overlooked, forgotten, invisible. Ultimately their digital traces of creativity become fodder for AI to facsimilate (is that a word?), replicate and discard. AI seems like that nanobot nightmare from a few years back, a tiny warrior horde gobbling up the world and shitting out grey sticky sludge (if left to rampage unchecked).

I personally think it matters that we know who took time to make that image, whether it's FINE ART (those words carved into the living rock) or a faded near forgotten throwaway design job/snapshot

Fine Art practice deigns that honour for quite a few of it's most celebrated daubers but commercial art not so much, that's been the case since before the internet, before the printing press maybe, even... and found images are by their very nature more often than not anonymous, that's part of their appeal, part of their mystery and romance

So what point am I making here? I guess Google Image Seach fucking sucks but maybe we all need to just try a little more? Or not, I'm not the boss of you, but the unintended consequences seem kind of bleak because identifying a creator doesn't just celebrate the genius but it allows for so much else, it provides a way in for anyone interested to seek out and gain greater appreciation/knowledge rather than a closed door/dead end.

This post is not aimed at any individual at all and if you do not tag or attribute and I follow your blog I am not looking at it quietly seething or holding a grudge. It comes more out of just how poor the internet is at providing a means to source/identify an image and I have no solution, I'm just boring on. I probably need to leave the house and walk around a bit. That's the usual advice in these situations.

Stay lucky!

[unnaturalequilibrium]

Looking for Her (Movie) [5 good things out of 2022]

It might not objectively be the best film I watched this year, but I will take this scrappy little movie with me out of 2022 and I will treasure it as part of my personal lesbian canon. It now sits firmly on the shelf between those other few sanctified lesbian pieces of media I find myself taking down, dusting off and revisiting at least once a year. It's comfort food for the Sapphic soul.

It's a Hallmark type of romance movie. Taylor a repressed perfectionist with benign childhood trauma is asked to bring her girlfriend with her home for Christmas. Home consisting of a set of parents who up until that point seems to have been casually homophobic and dismissive of her homosexuality, to the point that she doesn't have much contact with them at all when the movie starts. Only issue, in the way these things go, is that the girlfriend who once was in the picture no longer is. And from here I feel like you already have a bit of an idea what direction the movie takes. It's not a craigslist one, but she does place an ad for an actress to spend the week pretending to be her girlfriend so she can save face in front of her parents and passive aggressively show them her happy life. Enter Olive who is an easy-going and exuberant extrovert who has no issue charming the pants off any parents, or Taylor either for that matter. Yeah. I'm not really spoiling, you know how these things go. You want to watch this because you know how these things go. It's live action fanfic minus that one super weird kink involving oranges and that very specific trauma point the author seems incapable of not venting at the most inopportune moment.

It's just fucking soft. It just made me fucking soft. And I loved it for that. Life is cold and hard and I'm stuck in the middle of a winter that can't seem to decide if it loves snow or rain more, so it spends every other day trying either thing on like a fickle and indecisive teenager who can't decide what to wear for school. It's testing my patience, so to get something like this, fluff, insulation to go around my cold little heart - it is much appreciated.

And on a more intellectual level beyond "it made me smile - it must be good", it sort of drives home the point of community based versus mainstream. Like don't get me wrong, I am really happy that lesbian and gay characters start to appear in big mainstream productions. I mean, what the hell, even Andor had lesbians. That's not, I mean from where I grew up, that mindset, it is almost so far-fetched that it's pretty much incomprehensible. But we are included in narratives that are not only meant for us. However, you know, often instantly, that what is included comes at a cost. The inclusion is very much made to make a straight audience feel good about themselves and is not there for a gay one to relate to and see themselves in. It might be a facsimile, but you can tell it's not butter. The angle is too sharp, the dialect a little off. It's so close you kind of want to pretend you can't tell, but deep down you know, you can see the cracks. You see the way it's a twisted copy of you, one that is used as an entertainment hook that would have made PT Barnum proud. And to erase the hurt of that, to make you not feel like you're losing the plot, you need things like this movie. You need things that are told in your language and for you. If some straight person likes it too then that's icing on this specific piece of lesbian cake, but those other people not within the community aren't the main audience, you are. You need to experience that role reversal every now and then. It's a little piece of string to tie the pieces of your self-worth together and make you feel less isolated and more connected with the other people the movie was made for. You need that in a world that's usually aggressively heterosexual. So I'll gladly gather this movie up and keep it safely on that shelf of mine so I can get at it whenever I need to feel like I'm not the only gay in the village and that being attracted to other women as a woman is not a sideshow act, it's just rare.

[butterfly-in-progress]

The phrase "be yourself" is pretty overused when giving advice on finding love. It's also pretty easy to counteract with all the harder-to-love and annoying qualities that come with "being yourself." It's a comedy cliche to have the "just be yourself! Actually, no, don't do that."

And honestly? When my goal was just to be liked? Being myself was the worst thing I could do. Because I'm genderqueer, not playing into my agab alienates pretty much all straight men, a large demographic that could theoretically like me. I'm also autistic, and the moment I started actually taking my mask off and showing symptoms such as stimming, into dumping, and sensory issues was the moment most dates stopped talking to me. Being myself meant showing off personality quirks that turn a lot of people away. (It still baffles me that the amount of effort I put into things like planning dates is considered "desperate" and "try hard" apparently.)

However, now that I have real love in my life, I'm starting to understand. "Be yourself" is shit advice to give to a lot of people when they're trying to get others to like them. But... It's the only reasonable advice if you're looking for a love worth having.

I have never felt quite as loved as when I know someone sees me at my core. The whole "rewards of being loved requires mortifying ordeal of being known" and all that jazz.

I'm in a privileged position where I have decent enough looks, and if I just pretended I wasn't genderqueer, if I just masked my autism, I could reasonably get a partner. I've done it in the past, before I learned to love myself, stuffed down those sides of me for acceptance.

It was an excellent strategy for finding a partner. But a shit one for finding love. (And also, it felt like shit to do to myself too and the masking specifically gave me a lot of burnout and anxiety. Cannot recommend)

So yeah, I know how it feels to be on the other side of it, to be single and asking how to find that love and get told "be yourself" and think "wow... You clearly have no idea what I'm working with here."

And... It's no guarantee. That's the scariest thing. There's no guarantee I would have found my person, and there's still no guarantee this will even last, as much as that breaks my heart to think about. But I could not have felt truly loved by my person, I would have never known this love, if I hadn't let him see me, if I hadn't "been myself."

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're looking for advice on finding a partner, or finding love, or making friends, and you get the "be yourself" advice: this is what that means in more explicit and detailed terms. Maybe to other people that was always more obvious but... Well I'm autistic and it wasn't to me.

Go forth and weigh the pros and cons with more knowledge. My ending note, I suppose, is there's no option where you're guaranteed to find love, but there's one option where you're guaranteed not to. It might be acceptance, or affection, or any other facsimiles, but the love I'm talking about requires being seen as who you are. If that's what you want, then the vulnerability is a requirement. I think it's worth it though, and anything worth having requires that sort of bravery.