#while some atheists are nihilists too

[dreamyhunterr]

I hate when people think that because you're an atheist it directly means you are incapable of seeing beauty in nature or that you are a nihilist, what I mean is, you don't need to believe a higher being created the world to admire it, and while I know it's all because our brains are wired to perceive things around us a beutiful and it's evolution, etc, it doesn't mean it just suddenly loses the meaning or we lose the capacity to enjoy it. Like actually the oposite, it's also beautiful to be able to see the why.

The understanding of how things work and how we are here and why we see things the way we do, I think it also gives you a sense of grounding, and the same time a feeling of wonder, like we are very conscious beings and how amazing is that, and that's the feeling of "divine" for me.

[dailyadventureprompts]

I was thinking about Duergar after listening to Critical Role S1. I don’t care too much for the blatantly evil brush they used but I still want them to be antagonistic. Reading the Explore D&D article on them I took that and looked for inspiration. I thought a blend of the paranoid police state of Stalinist Russia with the political intrigue and back stabbing of imperial Rome. Vast underground cities of brutalist architecture. A culture of conformity, order and a nihilistic outlook. Atheist philosophy cults of the forge or other practical oriented ideologies. Power by any means is a virtue in this society so mages and warlocks are also prevalent. Holidays and celebrations are scheduled well choreographed events. Individuality is scorned. Even hair styles and clothing are limited and enforced by literal fashion police. Gulags are kept well stocked with routine purges of dissidents and a thriving slave trade. All this keeps their cities nearly impenetrable but also undercuts their expansion. Trade with the outside does exist but it’s extremely bureaucratic. They make FANTASTIC concrete.

Footnotes on Foes: Duergar

The problem with the grey dwarves is that they're a little too close to their surface world counterparts compared to the other underdark Wario fantasy races. There's a literal night and day difference between elves and drow , humans and grimlocks, and to a lesser extent gnomes and svirfneblin, but if you looked at surface dwarves (traditionalist, work in metal and stone, warriror culture) there's really nothing all that different about the Duergar other than a grabbag of magic powers and the Duergar being SUPER assholes all the time, while surface dwarves are only assholes some of the time.

I’ve tried a few different versions of the duergar in my writing including mercenary legions of migratory exiles hunting through the underdark looking to conquer territory, and willing collaborators and footsoldiers for illithid colonies, but I think this ask specifically gave me something cool to work with: A focus on Psionics is what ahould seperate the duergar from regular dwarves, with the totalitarian state described above ramped up to its fantasy world extreme by the fact that the secret police can read your mind, and if they can’t find evidence of thoughtcrime they can use mindfuckery to put it there.  The social conformity is seen as a way of detecting rebellious thoughts as if they were social contagion.

This also gives the grey dwarves a distinct aesthetic that is separate from vanilla dwarves: Crystals, be they shaped into weapons or architecture or floating about the heads of psionic casters, which goes to supplement their already textual psychic powers. As an added means of differentiating them, talk about how duergar metalwork is shit, soldiers wearing slave-foundry pig iron while their commanders wield elegantly carved sceptres of nightmare infused rock.

Also, just to have a bit of fun, have the duergar low-key anxious about the existence of the sky, to the point where many of them believe it's a myth made up to scare them as children.

Hooks:

Despite the draconian control they keep over their own populace, the rigors of living in a realm of ever shifting stone require the Duergar to utilize numerous means to secure the territories around their grim cities: Fortress outposts built to control passage in and out of their cavernous realms, psionicly propelled vessels of iron plate that prowl great tunnels like levitating battleships, treaties and client-state contracts with rival and subjugated creatures set up as buffers. Travelling through underdark controlled by duergar is a different sort of dangerous then normal travel in the below.

Escaping from prison before she could be lobotomized, a powerful psion has made it to the surface world with a gang of fellow thought-criminals, working as mercenaries using their unusual skills and eventually forming a rivalry with the party.

The earth writhes. A series of violent quakes cause damage in several cities across the kingdom, setting off numerous small disasters and the appearance of subterranean monsters that'll keep the party and the powers that be busy for weeks. When the cause is eventually determined, it's discovered that in a hunger for more pisonically charged crystals, a duergar warlord has awoken a primordial which now thrashes against its restraints and shakes the world as its pained excavation continues.

Art

[holden-norgorov]

Some more small details from "Restless" I really like

I know I've already talked at length about this episode in the analysis linked above, but there's just so much about Restless that's worth exploring and pointing out, and upon my latest rewatch of it I couldn't refrain myself from highlighting all the small details about it that I find most amusing and interesting, and that somehow I don't remotely see talked about enough.

So here it is:

1) Harmony trying to bite Giles while he uncaringly and deliberately ignores her, in Willow's dream. It foreshadows Giles's staunch and glaring inability to recognize the kind of path Willow is gradually embarking on and her (somewhat latent) capability for evil until it's already too late to prevent or properly tackle. It also recalls Something Blue, when Willow's misuse of magic literally renders Giles blind. I think there's a leitmotif spread through S4 to S6 about Giles failing to meet what can be properly framed as his responsibility, as the only expert and adult member of the group and the one who has already experienced first-hand the addictive component of dark magic usage in his youth ("It was an extraordinary high!", The Dark Age), when it comes to making sure Willow doesn't develop an unhealthy relationship with her reliance on magic that in turn might make her vulnerable to the idea of abusing it for morally questionable ends. Giles completely underestimating Harmony's evil nature and its potentiality of killing him here, to the point of framing the moment as comical, is a reflection of his underestimation of the way magic abuse is substantially molding Willow's nature into something potentially lethal for herself and others.

2) Another detail that I find amusing in Willow's dream is the subtle parallelism between the Harmony/Giles scene I just mentioned, and the moment of the play shown here in the picture.

In both occasions, Giles and Buffy blatantly ignore Harmony and focus on Riley. Giles explicitly tells Harmony to cut her annoyance off and disregards Harmony's "props?" in favour of Riley's "props?". As already said, I think that's a commentary on Giles' lack of involvement in Willow's growing practice of magic and the possibly dangerous consequences such negligence might entail. On the other hand, though, Buffy also has her back turned on Harmony and completely ignores her crying next to the corpse of an unidentified man a couple of scenes later. She's too busy ranting to Riley against men's behavior, possibly foreshadowing their future break-up, whose first signals can be seen right from the following episode. But if we take Harmony as a stand-in for undetected Dark Willow in the rise also in this moment, then this scene aptly foreshadows S6's finale by having Willow, filled with nihilistic dread and pain, melting down after killing Warren (the result of her unchecked immersion in dark magic). As a consequence, Buffy being too distracted by an ossessive and unhealthy focus on a man while Willow gradually loses herself inside the dark magic to the point of committing murder can be framed as a parallelism to her Spike addiction in S6, and the role that addiction plays in making Buffy unable to prevent Willow from becoming Dark Willow. In a way, the scene seems to imply that Buffy's partly at fault, along with Giles, for ignoring Willow.

3) The final scene of Willow's dream, when Welcome To The Hellmouth is directly referenced. The multiple levels of interpretation of that moment fascinate me. I've already talked about this in my aforementioned analysis, but basically you can draw a specific meaning of that scene depending on whether you consider current Willow, S1!Willow or Willow as the Spirit of Buffy The Entity. It's beautifully complex. From S4!Willow's perspective, she is afraid her newly gained confidence, stemming from her improved experience, social connections and emotional maturity acquired in U.C. Sunnydale compared to her high school days, is actually a facade she is wearing to hide what she really is and feels she will always be: "just some girl" (Wrecked), "a loser" (Two To Go) or a life-long victim of bullying and domestic neglect that will never be anything else. I think this greatly foreshadows basically the core issues that will be at the center of her unhealthy dependance on Tara as a source of an inflated self-perception of amazingness, and of her resulting unhealthy dependance on magic as a compensatory source of that same self-perception as soon as Tara is no longer available to her. It's indeed worthwhile to note, and very telling, that the two occasions where Willow most vehemently dives into unhealthy magic abuse in S6 (respectively, Smashed/Wrecked and Villains/Two To Go/Grave) come right after Tara abandones her (respectively, Tabula Rasa and Seeing Red). On the other hand, from S1!Willow's perspective, she is afraid that the people she loves (Oz and Tara) are actually conspiring against her behind her back, thus reinforcing the idea that all she really deserves to be is bullied; that her life-long best friend and fellow bullying victim (Xander) doesn't actually like her and is as tired of her as everyone else ("Who cares?!"), and that Buffy, the new girl, is going to leave her to die a gruesome death (at the hands of the Order of Aurelius in Welcome To The Hellmouth and of the First Slayer here) instead of embracing back her Call and coming to her rescue. In fact, as opposed to what actually happened in the pilot, the Buffy we see here is uninterested in saving S1!Willow, reinforcing the idea in S1!Willow that she is not worth saving. From the Spirit's perspective, instead, S1!Willow is trying to present an analysis of a book, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis), centered around a Christ-like figure whose role is to sacrifice himself on behalf of others (comparable to the Slayer) in order to motivate Buffy The Entity to embrace her destiny, but Buffy's Heart is still reluctant to accept that destiny (Xander makes his annoyance loudly known) and Buffy's Body is completely uninterested and just stares motionless back at her Spirit's vitalizing call, leading to its demise. Overall, a fantastic, deeply-layered scene.

4) Xander's "I'm a comfortador, also", directly followed by his performance of masculinity being analyzed by the Initiative. A great moment that summarizes his character's function and arc perfectly; his constant strive towards a kind of heroic, traditional masculinity that is capable of providing him with a sense of purpose and nobility, that he intimately craves as a result of the feeling of shame he attaches to his parents, his background and himself; and his comparably strong strive towards the acceptance of a double nature fighting inside him (Assertive Xander and Fearful Xander, The Replacement) and the need to integrate both of these sides of himself in his own identity, thereby coming to terms with not only his narrative place as The Hero's Nerd Pal as opposed to The Hero Full Stop (something S1 and S2 spent a lot of time on with relation to his character's function), but also with the existence of some kind of willingless inside him to be at ease with that role, and to own it. He's both looking for a conquest and for comfort. That's one of my absolute favourite character moments for him, in that it highlights his contradictions so well in such a simple way.

5) Xander calling his parents "vampires". I can't even begin to unravel what this says about him, and how with one very simple line the viewers are forced to basically rewind Xander's character altogether and put into question where the true motivations of a huge part of his choices, actions and behaviors in S1-3 actually come from, right from the get-go with Jesse's double-death (first as a human, and then as a vampire at the hands of Xander himself). This creates an incredibly interesting conundrum as well: does Xander call his parents "vampires" simply because he hates vampires and thinks of his parents as subhuman like them as a consequence of their toxic parenting, or does he call them "vampires" because his deep hatred of vampires actually originates from a correlation he made between them and their parents, based on how they both intimately victimized him (even physically, not just psychologically) and made him feel ashamed, worthless and without purpose for his entire life? "I'm inadequate. It's fine. I'm less than man" he says in The Harvest as if he's accostumed to hear such a thing about himself, right before following Buffy anyway to rescue Jesse from those vampires, in an attempt to prove to himself that he can stand up against his father them, if needed be. What if Xander viscerally hates vampires because they remind him of his father's violence and monstrous behavior towards both him and his mother for years? What if his deep-seated mistrust and callousness towards Soulful Angel and Spike, especially when they find themselves having direct influence on Buffy (or Willow), actually originates from his traumatic response to his domestically violent childhood that cemented in him the idea that real-life monsters can have a soul and still be evil and never change, and from his desire to protect his female friends from experiencing the same kind of abuse he was subjected to from those very monsters? What if part of his judgmental tendencies towards Buffy's emotional attachment to vampires (knowing full well they are vampires) is a defence mechanism he activates to protect himself from the idea that this might mean that his father (whom he sees as a vampire as well) could be also worthy of love and redemption, in spite of what he did to him? Or even worse, that his father may deserve to be loved more than him, despite being an abuser? ("Nah, forget it. I'm not him. I mean, I guess a guy's gotta be undead to make time with you", Prohecy Girl). I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say that that simple line where he compares his parents to vampires completely redefined my understanding of Xander's character from head to toe. It gives him an additional astounding level of complexity that in my opinion is incredibly undervalued.

6) Xander subconsciously harboring the idea that Giles failed him as a father figure as well, by having Giles express paternal affection to Spike in his dream. This always makes me think about Giles never even showing up at the hospital in Empty Places, after Xander has lost an eye in the first battle against Caleb. As opposed to the deeply layered father-daughter dynamic he shares with Buffy, and the reciprocally fruitful relationship based on mutual respect, common expertise and a similarity in temperament and experience he has with Willow, Giles’s attitude towards Xander has always been one of obligated tolerance at best, straight-up annoyance at worst. Despite Xander’s relationship with his father being arguably the most problematic and traumatizing among the group, and despite Xander being the one who would have arguably benefited the most from gaining a surrogate father figure that could offer him guidance and set up a strong example, we’ve never seen anything other than irritation, dismissiveness or mockery coming from Giles towards him – and here we are being shown that Xander knows it to an extent, and suffers from it. It's a sad realization nonetheless, but I have to say that it particularly punches me because it comes right after the parents-as-vampires bit. I incredibly feel for Xander through this episode, ad through the entire show because of this episode. The way Xander averts his eyes from his father when he finally opens the basement door, full of fear and shame, his body responsive through traumatic signs... it really gets me.

7) Giles hypnotizing Buffy. A very evocative scene about the nature of relationships between Watchers and Slayers and, to an extent, men and women in the past, with Buffy's laugh and disregard foreshadowing her subversion of that system in Chosen.

8) Olivia crying in heavy make-up with a stroller turned upside down while Giles turns his attention on Spike. Another instance where multiple layers of interpretation are provided. On one hand, this qualifies as foreshadowing for Giles, who's definitely going to come to terms with his middle-life crisis by reinstating his position as Buffy's Watcher and turning his back from the opportunity to build a personal life in England, in the final scene of Buffy vs. Dracula. On the other hand, this is also Buffy's Mind coming to terms with the fact that her supernatural destiny is bound to force her to prematurely cut ties with her innocence (stroller turned upside down), and that she has to quickly take her mind out of mourning it (Olivia crying) and focus on the purpose of sacrificing herself for others (Spike's crucifix pose as the crowd ecstatically sighs with praise and relief). The closing moment of Giles's dream is also incredibly haunting, with his blood covering his eyes as he stares right towards the camera, and the viewers are finally able to connect the dots on what's happening.

9) I don't know exactly why, but there's something about the section of Buffy's dream where she's talking to Riley and Adam that particularly fascinates me. Buffy seems to react to Riley's stereotypical masculine presentation (he's at a corporate boardroom, dressed as a CEO, has just got a promotion, has a Freudian phallic-like gun pointed right at her, exudes confidence, etc.) with an uncharacteristically remissive feminine role (she's basically barefoot, in a cute dress, with a highly-pitched tone and an overtly agreeable demeanor towards him, is welcoming and smiling to him almost dutifully, proposes they celebrate together his promotion, etc.). The scene also makes a point to portray Buffy as unusually dumb, almost bimbo-like ("It-it's that a good?" she asks about the coffee-makers that think). Riley and Adam are also portrayed as basically engaging in "mansplaining" (a term I don't really like as I often think it gets misused, but that I think perfectly applies here). Riley paternalistically says "Baby, we're the government. It's what we do" and Adam adds "She's uncomfortable with certain concepts" talking about Buffy's ignorance of the true nature of her own powers. It seems to me that there's a specific tone about this whole interaction that I can't quite wrap my head around to this day, but at the same time it can be nothing but deliberate and purposeful, as I don't think it's something that I'm imagining. I'm sure part of the commentary is about the facadeness and ineffectuality of military structures as soon as real threats are to be handled with (as shown by Riley's suggestion to create a fort with pillows when the demons escape), but I have a sense that something else is being said here. Maybe a commentary on the Watcher's Council? On how they are as much institutionally powerful as they are only ornamentally useful in the fight against Evil? And maybe about how Slayers are asked to remissively accept that contradiction and never put it into question, resigning themselves to their instrument status? I don't know. But there's definitely something going on there.

10) Obviously the entire sequence between Sineya and Buffy is noteworthy, but I already tackled that in my analysis as well.

[whatyourusherthinks]

Let's Start With Context.

Before we get into actual reviews and opinions, let's start with why this blog exists, who I am, and why I decided to see almost every movies that comes out this year.

Why does this blog exist?

This blog exists to help excise opinions from my mind. I'll be honest, I don't expect anyone read these reviews much less actually care about my opinions. But screaming into the void is a fun past time.

Who am I?

My name is Roan, I work as a server in a local theater chain. It's like a theater where you can order food at your seat. (Yeah yeah, the blog title says usher but let's be real What Your Server Thinks doesn't let you know I work at a theater as well.) The rest of this section is just gonna be me describing myself in order to establish my perspective so if you don't care move on to the next section.

I am white. I am nonbinary, born male. I am pansexual. I was born into and maintain living as a middle class American. And I've never been anywhere outside of America. I live in the Midwest. I am a member of Generation Z according to the first university that popped up on Google. I am a self-described punk. I am politically liberal. (Like intensely so, don't get me started.) I hate Capitalism but also can't live anywhere else in the world. I support the troops but hate the military industrial complex. I am an atheist, but work hard to not make that my entire personality. I like rock and punk music. I have a good relationship with both my parents. I was not popular in school. My dad introduced me to most my hobbies. My favorite types of movies are superhero, monster, and sci-fi movies. My favorite movie is Shazam! from 2018. I am a self-described nerd. I read comics and play tabletop games. I am an amateur game designer. Uhhhh.... I'm scared of dogs...

Why did I decide to see every* movie that comes out in 2024?

Basically because I can. As a benefit for my job, I am allowed to see one movie a week. But my managers do not care if people break the "once a week" rule, so as an anarchist corporate drone I feel it is my duty to exploit this lack of caring. Also my social life outside of work kinda imploded in 2023, so I don't really have anything better to do.

Finally, let's disabuse some notions.

For starters, I am not a professional film critic. I have not studied film beyond watching YouTube videos. I do not know the first thing about making film and don't really have an interest in learning. I mostly look at films from the perspective of the layman, because I am a layman. Additionally, I swear a lot. I make some inappropriate jokes. I make nihilistic jokes. I occasionally make jokes about committing suicide. I do not intend offend and work to avoid such, but I also do not take steps to remove my politics from my reviews, and use my beliefs and opinions to inform them. If this will be a problem for you, do not engage with my reviews. You will not enjoy them and I do not care if you get upset. As a final note, I do not plan to have any consistent upload schedule. I will post my reviews when I write them. As I cannot see movies for free the weekend they open, I will not be able to get any reviews out before the majority of people see the movie, so don't come looking for purchase advice unless you are okay with seeing movies weeks after they come out.

One last note: Spoiler policy!

Like pretty much everything else, I am not going to stress too much about spoilers. I don't like spoiling movies if I feel like the experience is worth while, so I wouldn't spoil a plot twist in a good movie. But other times I need to make a point and I will not hesitate to spoil. Basically if I am going to recommend the movie, I'm less likely to spoil the movie.

[scholar-of-yemdresh]

Get To Know Me

Call me Odunayo/Ayo or if you're feeling pretentious The Scholar. I won't always remember to update my age so I'll just say i was Born in 1999. If you couldn't guess by my name I am West African aka BLACK.

I'm Asexual I don't use the SAM so by asexual I mean no sexual & romantic attraction.

My blog is mostly talking about books, Podcasts/audio dramas, queer issues & representation, occasional salty posting and miscellaneous interests.

My blog is pretty sfw I do talk occasionally about mature topics but nothing too graphic. So while minors can interact I will prioritise interaction with other adults.

Some of My greatest hits:

My Ongoing list of Adult transmascs & NBs in adult oriented science fiction and fantasy

My Dirty Bag Aces post, bc we need more Morally dubious asexuals idc if it's "bad rep" lol

My Psy-op to get Silt Verses fans to read my faves

I'm passionate about diverse interesting and unique adult Science fiction and Fantasy. By diverse I mainly mean poc and/or queer but tbh if I had to choose between a well written interesting sff book that was majority white and (implied)cishet and a tropey bland ya-lite queer/poc book?...I'm choosing the white guy 😂

My fave (sub)genres include;

Secondary World Ubran Fantasy: basically Fantasy worlds with modern technology eg The Craft Sequence and Green Bone Saga

Cosmic Horror/Lovecraftian minus the extreme racism of course lol; I can tolerate a smidgen of racism just a sprinkle though 🤭

Villainous Asexuals: others cry bad rep I say give me more dirt bag aces, my fave of faves is Ymir by Rich Larson

Funky Standalone books

In addition to dirt bag aces give me dirty bag transmascs and NBs. Weirdly I've found a niche of authors who consistently write women that are real evil n1ggas but the same energy isn't put into TMs &NBs 😔

Expect to see the occasional propaganda/subliminal hypnosis beams for the following;

The Black Iron Legacy by Gareth Hanrahan, Twenty Palaces by Harry Connolly, Craft Sequence, Ymir by Rich Larson, Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston, The Crimson Empire by Alex Marshall, The Divine Cities by Robert Jackson Bennett,The Graven by Essa Hansen, Starmetal Symphony by Alex White, The Protectorate by Megan E O'keefe, The Winnowing Flame by Jen Williams etc

My tastes are wide and technically very strict; I'm only interested in Adult stories with adult casts ● I like a dark/grimdark(not nihilistic) tone but I'm uncomfortable with sex crimes(rape, incest, pedo shit, necro etc) nuh uh can't deal with it at all and depending on how graphic or if a major POV character is involved with that shit will straight up skip a book so most dark fantsy is off the table ● I'm chill with gore & body horror but I despise torture porn/extreme horror/splatterpunk yall need Jesus 😂 that terrifier art the clown type shit I can't deal! I'm an Edgelord but not that 2edgy4u ● I don't care much for mantasy (the faux medieval euro crap with angsty cis white sword dudes bleh now make the grizzled sword dude transmasc and now we're cooking with GAS) ● the asexual™ in me acts up too much so romance and sex makes me roll my eyes & skip ● I do have a recency bias I'm hesitant to touch books made pre-2010s on account of the racism,sexism,homophobia and weird creepy consent issues or staright up pedophilia yikes ● Also I don't like things that are two long, as I said I'm a slow reader so investing too much time in really long sprawling epic is err not for me.

Also as a (queer) Christian anti-theists dni, normal atheists are fine just don't be an asshole who calls religious people mentally ill or other edgelord shit.

[supercasey]

character head canon thing with uhhhh heisenberg and or ethan? 🥺

I don't know who you are, Anon, but I love you with all my heart <3 it's time to be self-indulgent!

Karl Heisenberg What they smell like: Gonna be honest even though I adore him; he probably doesn't smell all that great, seeing as he's around so much metal and machinery all day. His scent is a mix of oil, sweat, and whatever body spray he can get ahold of to mask those first two things. How they sleep (sleeping position, schedule, etc): Just kinda sleeps whenever/wherever he can, considering how much time he spends working on his soldats. Prefers being able to sleep on a mattress under his workbench, curled up on his left side and cocooned in as many blankets as he can get his hands on. What music they enjoy: Has really weird taste that fluctuates on a daily basis. Can go from listening to nothing but David Bowie on loop to blasting Avril Lavigne so loud that the walls vibrate. How much time they spend getting ready every morning: Not a lot. Every day he wakes up, gets some water, uses the bathroom, and then it's right back to whatever he was doing the night before. Their favorite thing to collect: Vinyl records! Since he was young (after he got some more freedom and time away from Miranda, of course), he's been keeping a stash of records from outside the village in his factory, and he frequently listens to them while working, hence his weird and varied music tastes. Left or right-handed: Left-handed! I actually think this might be canon, seeing as he primarily wields his hammer with that arm (at least from the game footage I've seen). Religion (if any): At most he's agnostic, but he has a severely nihilistic view of g-d/religion in general, so it might be safer to call him an atheist. Favorite sport: If he ever got the chance to watch live TV, I don't think he'd be too into modern day sports. That is, until he sees an episode of Battlebots; after that, he'd be begging Ethan to help him sign up to compete with his own bot! Favorite touristy thing to do when traveling (museums, local food, sightseeing, etc): He's gonna be doing fucking everything once he has a chance to leave the village. Catch him going to every restaurant he can, taking a billion pictures, and just oo-ing and ah-ing at everything he sees. Would probably like museums the most! Favorite kind of weather: Loves it when it rains, especially when there's thunder to go along with it! Hates getting wet, though. A weird/obscure fear they have: Nyctophobia, the fear of the dark/nighttime. I HC that he was locked in dark rooms by Miranda a lot as a kid- both as punishment and to "help" calm him down while he was trying to cope with his powers- and unfortunately the trauma of that experience has followed him into adulthood. He can sleep with the lights off sometimes, but he'd much rather sleep with at least a few candles lit. The carnival/arcade game they always win without fail: Kicks ass at any game that he can get away with using his powers for. Other than that, he's pretty good at guessing games.

Ethan What they smell like: Smells like a mix of cedar scented cologne and fresh lavender; the dude takes good care of his hygiene, and likes to look/smell nice whenever he can. How they sleep (sleeping position, schedule, etc): Before the Baker incident, he used to sleep all sprawled out on his bed, but afterwards he started clutching to Mia in his sleep, as if he's scared that she'll be taken away from him again if he doesn't protect her. What music they enjoy: Listens to a lot of indie and country, his favorite artists being Modest Mouse, Lil Nas X, and CHVRCHES. How much time they spend getting ready every morning: Quite a bit of time, especially if he has to go to work. Likes to get up extremely early, do a quick workout, shower, eat a full and hearty breakfast, get dressed, comb his hair, brush his teeth, and then put on some cologne as he's heading out the door. He more or less has his mornings down to a science at this point. Their favorite thing to collect: He has a few collections, his main ones being stamps, books, and paintings that he finds at thrift stores. He's weird, okay!? Left or right-handed: Right handed! If he was left, I feel like the games would be so much harder for the poor dude 😅 Religion (if any): Grew up in a fairly devoted Catholic household, but he's since come to identify as an atheist, especially after the Baker incident. ((Ethan, pointing at Jack Baker mid-fight: You look in a mirror and tell me there's a g-d.)) Favorite sport: Somehow finds cricket, of all things, entertaining. Besides that, he often watches baseball and football when games for his home/current state are on. Favorite touristy thing to do when traveling (museums, local food, sightseeing, etc): He's the kind of person that takes one million photos of his wife and daughter but none of himself, save for when he's posing in a dumb way in front of a famous monument. Favorite kind of weather: Snow! He grew up in Texas, so whenever it snows, he's immediately outside and trying to build a snowman, even if there's next to nothing on the ground yet. A weird/obscure fear they have: Ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes. Thankfully he hasn't had to deal with them very often, but the centipedes on the Baker plantation nearly made him faint a few times. The carnival/arcade game they always win without fail: He sucks so bad at most of them, but since he got some military training, he's gotten much better at any games that involve hitting a target. Still loses a lot, though 😔

Thanks so much for the ask, Anon, this was so much fun to do!

[xorobyn]

The End

Just was able to put a date on my depression. It’s been five years since I remember getting really low. Idk I feel like it had always been there, but 5 years ago it started taking over my life. I’m 23 now. I am an atheist, nihilist, pessimist, and antinatalist. So, I guess it only makes sense for me to be depressed. To be fair though, I was depressed when I was religious too. I really like who I am now. More than ever. That’s the thing. This is the best my life has been. I was feeling very content for a while, but of course this shit is up and down. My anxiety is worse than ever. Today at work I almost had a panic attack. I used to think that I could never actually go through with suicide, even though I have wanted to die. Forever, I have wished I was never born. I mean even since high school. However, as the years go by, I can see myself doing it. I’m not afraid to die. Life is net negative. I have been hurt by so many people. Of course, dumb ass men, but also friends. Friends that I would’ve done anything for. My family is outrageously terrible. My mom is a lunatic. Everyone is my family comes to me for help. They have forever. I really don’t share my true feelings with anyone. Not even my sisters or my one best friend. I mean they know I’m depressed and some about me wanting to die. I’ve never truly laid out exactly how I feel though. I don’t even think I have to myself. I think I’ll do that now…

I wish I was never born. Why the fuck did my parents decide to bring a child into this shitty ass world and then proceed to give me so much trauma to only make it worse? I resent both my parents a lot for having me. I have since at least high school. I recently discovered what an antinatalist is, and it explains how I feel so so perfectly. It puts how I have always felt perfect. I wish I wasn’t born. I don’t want kids. I don’t think anyone should be out here having kids. No one treats their children right. Everyone ends up fucked up.

I also don’t believe in a god. I’m proud to say I’m an atheist. I used to be so brainwashed. It is actually crazy. I’m so so proud of how far I’ve come. Religion has done so much harm to the world. It’s heart wrenching. I don’t have too much to say on this except there is absolutely no proof of a god and that religion is the core of a lot of hate in the world. Life is net negative bc of all this hate.

Stemming from that I am also a nihilist. I try to be an optimistic nihilist, but it gets quite hard to do so. Life has no meaning. I’m here for no reason but to suffer. That is all I get in life. It is all everyone gets whether they want to believe it or not. I mean look at the shit that happens in the world. More on this when I talk about my pessimism. Anyway, the more depressed I get the more I keep thinking my life doesn’t matter and when I die I cease to exist (just like before I was born). I mean how much more peaceful can you get? Life means nothing, so why am I here. I have all these thoughts and emotions that try to trick me into being scared and shit, but really who the fuck am I? No one.

Good old fashioned pessimism. It’s funny bc I used to be an optimist. This was in high school. It’s funny earlier when I mentioned that I knew when I started getting really depressed it was from another post I made on tumblr. I remember making it bc it was the first time I started to allow myself to feel pain and sadness without trying to talk myself out of it bc “others have it way worse”. I think that’s the day I also lost my optimism. It’s true a lot of people have it worse, but my philosophy isn’t that I cannot also have it bad and feel great sadness. Maybe I am a bit spoiled to be whining, but it’s my perspective I have bc of the life I was given. Also, I think everyone’s life is bad overall, so stemming from that I think everyone is allowed to hate their life just as much as the next person. People are cursed on this earth. Most things are bad. We suffer majority of our life.

So here we are. I wrote out how I’ve been feeling for a while. Times like rn I really want to die. Then I have good times and enjoy life. But we always get back here. In bed writing an essay to myself about my depression. I mean seriously I’ve been doing this for years and years. Right now I think my way of choice would be to take enough xan to stop my heart. Bc then I will just die in my sleep. I don’t want to be harmed when it happens. That would just be tragic. I wonder how ppl will feel. I’m sure my mom will have a mental breakdown. Might even drive her to suicide. Of course my sisters would be sad. Fuck it would kill Chloe. How could I ever leave her here. I’m all she has. This fact might make me put it off for longer. Lynsey will be fine eventually. I mean I’m also like her only friend, but she will get over it sooner. I’m sure Robert will feel like dog shit and tbh he should.

My meds don’t let me cry like I used to. I feel immense sadness rn, but can’t cry. Are they just making me more numb? I don’t fucking know. I’m fucking tired tho. Good night. Sleep with the angles.

[hopeshoodie]

Part 7 of my Pros and Cons of dating the different islanders (yes I’m finally coming back to this :P) 

Gary

Cons

He doesn’t have a whole lot of thoughts about things that he’s not actively excited or annoyed by, and he doesn’t really feign interest. If MC buys a new top, or is invested in a new show, or anything that Gary doesn’t really care about, he’ll really disinterestedly say “that’s cool babe,” and make her feel like it’s unimportant. He’s not patronizing/embarrassing her on purpose, he just doesn’t have a lot of tact. You would have to really talk to him and work with him to get him out of this habit, because he doesn’t see how it’s hurtful or care that much to change.

He gets really defensive. If you call him out on his behavior or point out how he’s really stubborn, he’ll argue with you without really considering if his behavior is bad. Arguments with Gary suck because it gets to a point where he’s not hearing you and will just say “whatever” and refuse to engage. The best way to change Gary’s behavior is some pavlovian shit- you need to offer positive reinforcement without him really noticing. When he communicates really well, shower him with affection. When he picks up after himself, tell him how much you appreciate it. 

He’s very willing to walk away from things that challenge him instead of trying to grow as a person. We saw that with him and Lottie- whenever she or MC offered valid criticism of his behavior he would just walk away. That applies to most areas of his life- if he tries a new hobby and isn’t good at it immediately he’ll drop it. He doesn’t really like trying new things or going to new places, and if something challenges his worldview he’s more likely to ignore it than engage.

I’ve said this already but he buys MC heart shaped jewelry and pandora charm bracelets...

Gary’s a lad. While he doesn’t intend to hurt anyone’s feelings, he never really engaged with social justice issues and he hasn’t done the work needed to be anti-racist. He’ll laugh along to sexist, racist, homophobic, and ableist jokes without really thinking about the implication. He’s loath to call anyone out. If MC points out ‘hey that thing you/your friend said is hurtful,” he’ll get defensive and say “why are you ruining a good time? It was just a joke” If MC sits down and explains to him how the things he says are actively hurting her, he’ll internalize that and not do it. But he’s really hesitant to say the same to other people- he doesn’t want to ‘ruin the mood’ and get made fun of for being ‘PC’. 

Gary’s super dense. He doesn’t really pick up hints very well, so MC needs to explicitly tell him “I need you to compliment this dress” or “we haven’t gone on a proper date in awhile and I’m feeling undesired, can we go out for dinner tomorrow?” I firmly believe that the reason Gary tolerated all of Lottie’s passive aggressiveness was because he didn’t pick up on it, so MC needs to be direct. 

He doesn’t appreciate all the effort it takes to get all dolled up, even though he loves it when MC goes all out. I know he SAYS he doesn’t like high maintenance women, but in canon when given the choice between Hannah (seemingly low maintenance) and Marisol (very outgoing and done up), he chooses the higher-maintenance option. Every woman he dated on the show was a glam kind of girl- MC, Lottie, Marisol. So while he loves when MC has a full face and outfit done, he complains about how long it takes her and how she always sneaks away for touch ups during the night. He’s one of those dudes who is like “wow you’re so pretty without makeup” but you’re literally wearing foundation, contour, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, blush- he thinks the difference between makeup and not wearing any makeup is red lipstick. This is super annoying because MC puts a lot of effort into her look only for him to downplay that effort but still enjoy the results. 

Building off of the above, Gary severely underestimates how much effort it takes to do “domestic work” like cooking, cleaning, and administrating for the household (I imagine pre-MC he forgets to do the basics like renew licenses, register to vote, schedule appointments, etc). So if MC points out how she spent the whole day cleaning, he’ll be like “that seems a bit much? You just cleaned the kitchen?” and doesn’t really get it until MC breaks down “I swept and washed the floor, I disinfected the dishwasher, I ran cleaners through the sink link, I cleaned out and organized the fridge, I dusted and sanitized the chandelier, I organized the spice drawer,  I wiped out the cabinets…” He’s not really motivated to learn how to clean or do laundry or cook.

He doesn’t communicate. This is canon- he doesn’t tell Lottie where his head is at in the game, he strings Lottie and Hannah along, and he doesn’t reassure MC when other girls are clearly cracking on with him. So most of the problems in a relationship with Gary come from MC not knowing what he wants and him never initiating emotionally vulnerable conversations. 

He’s not going to do well if MC needs to travel a lot for work, and he’s not going to move to live with her. Even after his nan dies, I don’t see him leaving Chatham. So if moving to a new place is important to you, this is a dealbreaker.

Pros

If something goes really wrong, he’ll never do the same thing twice. This applies to physical mistakes as well as emotional- if he forgets to wear eye protection and gets sawdust in his eyes, he’ll be religious about wearing glasses from them on. If he forgets a birthday or anniversary and makes MC cry, he will be SO diligent from then on about remembering dates. On that thought, he HATES seeing MC cry. He will move heavens and earth to stop whatever’s upsetting her or fix it. 

Hugs and cuddling from Gary? So comforting. He just has that vibe, like he’s a really good cuddler. Not to mention that he’s really good at the nasty in canon, so it would stand to reason………

All of that internalized masculinity has an upside- he wants to take care of his family. He’s on top of all the ‘masculine’ caretaking stuff like buying a home, maintaining the landscaping, fixing the tires on the vehicles, shoveling, fixing stuff up around the house, managing the cable/internet/tech. Which is nice because I hate doing those things, but also I’m absolutely teaching him how to do laundry and pick up after himself. 

Gary is SO calm in emergency situations. I have this headcanon for Rahim too, but the more panicked those around them get, the calmer they are. Especially in situations where they’ve prepared/considered before like tornadoes or floods. They’re not the kind of guys who take the lead normally, but in these super dire situations they find it in them to take over and calm everyone else down. I can see him having a lowkey stockpile of food, an emergency first aid kit, and a go-bag. 

I know people don’t like this headcanon, but too bad. Gary is catholic. That’s the law. Sorry I don’t make the rules. That’s not so much of a pro for me, an atheist nihilist lesbian, but I can recognize a religious man has a certain amount of charm. He has a close knit community, is super consistent about attending services, and has a certain level of taking morals really seriously. He definitely donates a fair bit to charity and is always the one saying “love thy neighbor” when people are being shitty. 

Gary’s spontaneous, but in a controlled way. He very much likes his routine and respects MC’s need for consistency. But periodically he’ll just be like “we have nothing planned for today- want to go rent a paddleboat?” or he’ll pick up flowers “just because”. If MC and he are going on a vacation, he much prefers to only plan 1 or 2 things to do a day and then once they’re in the place see interesting things and suggest ‘let’s do that’. He’ll do really thoughtful stuff like text MC if she has anything planned for dinner then randomly bring her favorite restaurant food home. Thursday nights are date nights!! Doing formal ‘dress up nice and go to a proper dinner date without the kids and movie’ is really important to him.

Gary’s a really good dad. Like yeah he has a lot to learn about not telling his son to ‘stop crying’ and not telling his daughter ‘no boys until you’re married’, but he genuinely wants the best for them. He’s really supportive of their hobbies/sports/interests, and will happily pay for summer camp/field trips/conventions. He might not ‘get it’ all the time, but he’ll smile and nod. 

He gets a lot of delight out of really little things. If his kid draws something for him, he’ll pin it to the fridge and smile at it every time he sees it without fail. If MC says she likes a certain shirt on him, he’ll triple the amount of times he wears it. He keeps the bird feeders outside their dining room window full, because he can happily sit with a cup of coffee and watch the birds for hours. It truly is the little things.

He’s really good at remembering MC’s favorite things, or even things she mentioned liking once. This is to the point where it’s a bit confusing. MC will compliment Gary’s nan on her christmas poinsettias one year, then two years later Gary buys a ton of poinsettias and is like “I thought you loved poinsettias” and not be able to remember why he thought that. So MC has to be careful with fake compliments, because Gary cannot tell the difference. But that’s still, like, super endearing and nice of him. 

There’s a few LIs that I feel like could get bored in a long-term relationship. I can see Lucas, Felix, and Rahim feeling like they’re ‘falling out of love’ when the intensity of a new relationship fades and they struggle to settle into domesticity. Gary is NOT one of them. He’s one of those “I fall in love with you more every single day” kind of guys. As MC gains weight/ages, he’ll insist “you age like a fine wine” and “I like you more with meat on your bones”. He’ll insist to their kids that “your mom is the most beautiful woman on earth”. Gary was built for long-term relationships.

[grandhotelabyss]

Now that the “dunk” cycle has passed, I do have something to say about this viral Tweet. First, like all sublimely stupid remarks, it passes into brilliance. “Allegory of what” is a reasonable and even eloquent characterization—it would be a good title for an essay—putting in the vernacular Walter Benjamin’s famous description of Kafka’s works as Haggadah without Halachah—i.e., Talmudic illustrations of the law sans the law itself. What kind of sensibility does this offend? Well, let’s not defang the modernists—it honestly might irritate anyone. I myself have a somewhat checkered relationship with Kafka; I like him short, in aphorisms and prose-poems, and I think his masterpiece might be “A Hunger Artist,” an absolutely perfect story, which I don’t quite understand, except that it’s about me and my experiences, which I don’t understand either. The longer pieces, especially the novels, don’t have the same power, because the oneiric style feels forced and willful when extended. (I should say I’ve read a lot of Kafka but not all and never systematically, just in fits and starts between my teen years and today; my major omission is The Castle.)

Still, Dawkins’s remark also illuminates a larger phenomenon. I saw the other day a social-media inquiry, with what agenda I don’t know, about whether there was some continuity between Dawkins’s New Atheist movement and today’s wokeness. The answer is the opposite: official anti-wokeness, the Intellectual Dark Web, descends from New Atheism. But they share a sensibility, since both New Atheism and wokeness can be described, maybe unfairly but not simply in jest, as puritan sects. And what does the puritan want from a text? Governor Winthrop explains:

At Watertown there was (in the view of divers witnesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake; and after a long fight, the mouse prevailed and killed the snake. The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sincere, holy man, hearing of it, gave this interpretation: That the snake was the devil; the mouse was a poor contemptible people, which God had brought hither, which should overcome Satan here, and dispossess him of his Kingdom.

The interpretation is so insistent and indisputable that the allegorical surface, here nature itself, is wholly dispensable. The New Atheist and the woke want a text the opposite of Kafka’s, one whose narrative, drama, style, and imagery are so morally legible that no “wrong” interpretation is even imaginable. Hence to the New Atheist, anything that calls for interpretation is irrational, while to the woke it’s elitist or crypto-fascist. American literature is the struggle of the puritan interpretive impulse toward complex artistic expression. This often results in amputated allegories, which is why Hawthorne and Melville often sound like Kafka.

Yet I’m sure I go too far. “Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann?” Georg Lukács rhetorically wondered—for the communist critic, the right answer was Mann, since he was (supposedly) a realist. David Mikics, reviewing a re-release of Mann’s Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (which I’ve never read), reminds us of how Mann caught the character of the totalizing puritan by semi-caricaturing Lukács himself as Naphta in The Magic Mountain. Mann showed Naphta as a Jewish-turned-Jesuit Hegelian nihilist, which is to say that all traditions harbor their own oversimplifications. They always beckon us into the purity spiral. For nonpolitical Mann, that stolid German burgher and paterfamilias always about to melt into the Mediterranean, purity’s opposite is art:

Mann knew in Reflections that individual freedom, which he identified with the writer’s talent for playing with ideas, must stand against all political demands. It is on behalf of that life-giving freedom that Mann celebrates “art’s lively ambiguity, its deep lack of commitment, its intellectual freedom ... someone who is used to creating art, never takes spiritual and intellectual things completely seriously, for his job has always been rather to treat them as material and as playthings, to represent points of view, to deal in dialectics, always letting the one who is speaking at the time be right.”

The higher playfulness that Mann espouses in these sentences from Reflections perfectly suits his dazzling, many-faceted Magic Mountain, so different from today’s prizewinning novels, which present uplifting lessons endorsed by the socially conscious author and his or her tenure committee. In Mann, each character is right when he or she speaks, and the whole revolves in crystal.

A serious way of not taking things seriously—all those italics!—but still heartening. Mikics argues for a continuity between the early Mann and the later, though the author’s career is more customarily seen as a consistent drift from right to left. Considering Mann’s middle-period novella, Mario and the Magician, which exposes fascism in a wholly fascist way, and his almost unbearably excellent late masterpiece Doctor Faustus, a novel that criticizes the daemonic work of a genius while also being the daemonic work of a genius, he may be right. 

I am more interested in the irony that everything I’ve written above would have been considered looney-left academic gibberish at the peak of neoconservative hegemony and New Atheist ascendancy about 15 years ago, whereas now it is considered reactionary obscurantism. It’s no sign of virtue alone to be attacked by both the left and the right—three people can be wrong at once—but to be scorned by the puritans of all creeds for not writing stories with obvious morals probably means an author is onto something. To quote Lukács from before he joined the Party, “Art always says ‘And yet!’ to life.”

[dontletthishappentoyou]

Dr. Strange

Okay, so a few things.  So this is kind of representing ‘Eastern Philosophy’ or something kinda vaguely, and I can only speak about the basics of one of those philosophies that I know about, but the movie seemed to acutally dig into it a bit in one of the main themes in a more subtle than expected way. Person wants X, wise people help him think about stuff, person accepts not having X. Nice. The first stuff you learn about Buddhism is that life is suffering and the cause of suffering is wanting, craving, hunger, or some other translation. Basically, you can either get what you want and soon want something else, or you can learn to overcome wanting through seeking or working toward some form of enlightenment. Iron Man entered this film wanting his hands to work again so that he could be a surgeon again. Being a surgeon gave his life meaning, and the wise people thought about why it gave him meaning, figured out that it was kind of okay, but very not anatta, so they guided him, mostly indirectly to grow. Some of the world-building reminded me a little of my time with Korean Zen masters in a way that isn’t complete nonsense to the audience. Or it’s acceptable nonsense. The Ancient One at one point said something like “not everything makes sense” and it was kind of an excuse to keep the magic system soft and to tell the protagonist and audience to accept that it’s not something you should bother trying to understand, but seeking to understand is not always part of Zen. I’m assuming most people have heard questions like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” and stuff like that, and part of the point of meditating on these mantras and coans is to “sit in the don’t know” as I’ve heard it put. Embrace the human incapacity to understand. I’m curious if knowing more about Buddhism would make me appreciate the Zen influences in this movie more or less, but it was more satisfying than I was expecting. Philosophically, it came across as though it was legitimately making an effort to represent the ideas of another Zen influenced cultures. It’s also extremely possible that what I’m recognizing as zen specific are acutally generalizable to Hinduism and other Eastern religions and philosophies, but I have no idea.  It also was genearlly more satisfying than most other Marvel films I’ve seen in terms of character growth. I don’t remember Iron Man well enough to attest to that, but it seemed like this Strange guy was basically the same character with the same flaws as the initial Iron Man character. They seem pretty interchangeable. But I think the arrogant, smart, know-it-all archetype was kind of perfect for the message of accepting human limits for understanding, although there were many points where Strange’s understanding of the magic system as hard is what got him out of situations.  I forget where, but I heard somewhere that character arcs can be seen as focusing on disputing a lie the character believes at the beginning. “I am awesome because I succeed at what I do” seems to be the lie that was most addressed. Thor was close with this, where he clearly went from beliving his lie to not, but the path was slightly muddly and seemed to be built on more generic inspiration, but in this, the events and challenges seemed to directly address the lie. The climax was quite blatant with it, forcing him to create a time loop where he died in a hopeless fight with some sort of god over and over again. He had been told the truth version of the lie pretty directly, and had been coming to it gradually himself by practicing things he’s not good at and being proven wrong about things many times throughout the film. Admitting he was wrong was an element of most rising actions in various levels of subtelty. He also learned that things aren’t about him, fighting this general arrogance through a bunch of humbling experiences that make sense, and ended up making decisions that aligned with that lesson, which was presented relatively simply at the beginning but made more meaningful through the events of the story, as is often the case in and beyond Marvel.  The Iron Man know it all archetype also made me think a bit about whether the film was misinterpreting what a scientist should ideally be, or if Dr. Strange himself was kind of misinterpreting the ideals of science. I think a lot of people imagine some specific kind of close-minded, atheistic, nihilistic character when they think of smart science people. I would say smart science people are primarily curious, open-minded, and seek truth even if it goes against what they previously believed. If you’re a neuroscientist who believes that X procedue is the best way to reach Y result, and you read a study showing that Z procedure is more efficient at achieving Y, you now have a new belief, provided the study was well-done, even if Z comes from a cult, Eastern or African medical traditions, or anything. The stereotype would be Nietszche’s science as religion kind of scientist, where Science is a sacred thing that can’t be challenged, rather than a method of looking for truth.  Regardless of what the ideal scientist is, I know I strive to be the good one, and some of my worst mistakes in attempting to achieve that resulted from trusting that everyone who speaks sciencely were alike in that thinking. Citing studies and statistics for the Bad Scientist is a cherry picking process used to defend X, rather than a way to look for the best way to Y. The Good and Bad Scientists seem to generally have the same aesthetic and take a bit of inspection to differentiate. So Dr. Strange was sort of one of the Bad Scientists at the beginning, dismissing many things as impossible, but happened to be faced repeatedly with undeniable proof. If he was a Good Scientist, it would be nothing but exciting for him. If he was a Bad Scientist, it would be loads of cognitive dissonance. He seemed somewhere in the middle, but ended up open to this weird area of science beyond typical nature, and ended up rolling with it really well. It left it a little bit ambiguous as to to what extent he was a Bad Scientist at the beginning, but he did seem to become a better one, partly through embracing the unknown.  Basically, I think this may be my favorite so far, but will keep thinking about it for a while and maybe rethink some bits, but I really enjoyed the character growth and felt that the themes were well thought out, well portrayed, and aligned with the plot, the general aesthetic, and the world-building extremely well. It just felt like an extremely cohesive movie in most of the things I care about at the moment. I’d definitely have complaints, mostly in terms of who gains power how fast. It felt like it was plot-driven convinience and didn’t necessarily align with who had the most motivation or access to power, but that kind of thing bothers me less than it used to. I’m fine with plots that pretty blatantly serve character development. Some action was meh, some supporting characters were uninteresting, the music was appropriate but generic, world-building didn’t feel like it was entirely thought through, but those don’t feel all that important to make the film work as a whole. Some of it even felt kind of necessary to make it work. A more structured magic system would have defeated the point of embracing unknowns, spreading the focus across too many characters would have been great for a series, but would have detracted from how concise the movie felt in the portrayal of its themes and thrown off the pacing. I also don’t have much insight into the action. Maybe they consulted people who had studied Kung Fu and other martial arts that were born from the philosophies that inspired the themes and that’s just what it looked like and I don’t personally recognize that because I don’t know anything about them. I’d actually really appreciate if they had done that. Maybe I’ll actually look into their choreographer or something. Maybe the music would be less generic if I had been paying more attention to it. 

[incarnateirony]

I think the issue with death as a happy ending (to a story, I should point out - death can be many things in many places, but I’m specifically talking about it in fiction) is that it’s usually written so badly that it doesn’t feel like a happy ending and it just feels like shit. There’s a very limited number of fictional works that I’ve seen actually manage it well - though in saying that, I have a very limited range, and I don’t really enjoy new things because (reasons). The ones I do recall, it’s because they were just that good and bittersweet is exactly the way I would describe them as a happy ending.

Firebringer was a novel I read when I was 12 or 13, and I still recall it. It was about a deer and it was his entire life - birth to death - and it was a happy ending. I cried through the last few chapters. Then I reread it and cried some more. It was good.

There’s also a fic I want to mention, because it’s on the topic. It’s called The white whale. and it’s by an author named orange_crushed. The entire premise of the fic is that Dean (and Sam, but it’s a destiel fic) is already dead. He died years ago. The title itself should say a lot, and the fic itself is about finding peace. It’s brilliant and beautiful, and I love it.

My perspective on death is a bit. Odd, maybe? I grew up somewhere between Christian (mum and dad and church, a mix of Baptist and Anglican) and animist (local indigenous spirituality), and while bit of both inform my interpretation, I’m very nearly atheist.

I don’t really believe in an afterlife, or rebirth, or anything like that. I believe that this is it. We get one shot at being who we want to be and acting as we choose with what we’re given. (“And isn’t it so wonderful, that we were alive at the same time?”)

I first heard the Freedom From vs Freedom To argument when reading the handmaid’s tale in my English class at school. It wasn’t even presented as an argument, everyone just seemed to agree that freedom to is better. I believe that, too. But freedom from has structure. It’s not “peaceful” and it can’t be when it is enforced, but it is informed by rules, and there it has expectations and is reliable (where reliable means we know what the consequences are, even if they’re awful). Freedom to is anarchy (which I have come to appreciate more). But neither freedom is peace.

There’s a quote I really love, and I can never recall it properly and it goes something like this: “War is an ugly thing, but it is not the ugliest. The decayed and degraded state of moral feeling which thinks nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing more important than his own personal fucking safety, is [the worst thing]” clearly I don’t recall it very well. It’s from an old bit of hp fanfic, of all things, a very violent and disgusting version of civil war - as war is. It was the beginning of why I’m not a pacifist.

I dunno. I guess I really feel like peace - true, genuine peace - can’t be done. It’s certainly worth striving for, worth trying, but peace is either isolation and loneliness or death. Peace is knowing you’ve done everything you can, that it was enough, and being able to let it go.

Any way I think I had a point somewhere in this, maybe something about being unable to put down a fight while you’re living, maybe something about how death can be kind, maybe something about how good writing can make sad things happy, maybe that bittersweet is still sweet. Idk.

Feel free to reply to this mess of ideas or not - or pick and choose what you want to reply to, if you’d like to reply to specific parts. I mostly just wanted to share (I can do discussion, but idk if I’m still gunna have any focus later to do so, or if I’ll even see a response) some thoughts and you’re usually the only person I see on my dash with this sort of ~vague philosophy things~.

Woah when did anons get to let someone submit something so long.

Either way, a few points on this.

1. a thoughtful piece, this is a philosophy piece I will gladly entertain. However, if we are entertaining philosophy we must

2. acknowledge this is a nihilistic piece contingent on your personal world views, that while valid, and I will not take any effort to undermine on a personal belief system level

3. do not have much to do with (dependent on fringe atheism or, perhaps, agnosticism) a piece that is far from secular and atheistic while also

4. relying on the idea that “I really feel like peace - true, genuine peace - can’t be done. It’s certainly worth striving for, worth trying, but peace is either isolation and loneliness or death.”, which is itself the very nihilistic idea imparted by Chuck’s matrix but, whether you believe it in the real world, is the active target of subversion within this fantasy world, (eg, a heaven revolution where the doors are opened just like they were in hell.)

5. Finally, presumptuous that it would not be ‘well written’ and predesignating a potential discontent with the delivery that would sour it, especially with the previous points.

That said, while I’m not going to argue directly with your real life belief system -- even if they clearly disagree with my own -- I do remind you--falling back to your point that you do not believe in an afterlife: we know this fictional story does not hold this belief, ergo using that as a judgment for how it would deliver the concept of eternity is itself already wounding oneself to receiving the moral of the canon. One can not suddenly expect SPN to become a secular show just because a viewer has secular and atheistic beliefs. It is inherently asecular, theistic, and gnostic in its bones and the story will thus tell itself within that structure, which then begs if one is willing to suspend a personal belief system for a fictional canon setting they are digesting the story of.

Similarly-and-so, this is contingent on believing that the heroes’ journey will end with them maintaining the current status quo, rather than making a world where--in this fictional world in which an afterlife exists--death does not itself mean loneliness, but rather reunion.

If we can suspend our beliefs in some shows with fighting dragons or farting lightning bolts (after all, nonnie references HP fanfic), I would hope people could suspend them in regards to a moral telling of found family and the sovereignty of man in a divine and moral play.

If one were to demand SPN have entirely atheistic storytelling, the only real way to handle an ending would be to have one of the characters wake up from a 15 year coma where none of it was real and it was all a dream or something to that affect which--lol, we’re not doing, I promise. I’m sorry, but we’re not.  We’re not taking the “none of it mattered because none of it happened” angle. We’re not going to a world where angels and the afterlife don’t exist, we’re not going to collapse it where suddenly death IS the true end and life sucks and then you die, it’s just not going to happen.

So the point then is an active choice on the part of the viewer: is this suddenly the line you draw after watching a theistic show for 15 years, doubling down that this specific theistic point is the one thing we can’t accept (despite it existing in the past already), or do we continue to watch a theistic show and interpret its theistic points as the story is trying to depict? And if it’s the “drawing the sudden line,” that is, quite frankly, a personal choice to have spontaneous discontent with a critical part of a canon story’s telling at a very sudden drawn line in the sand. 

The point to exit would have been pilot 1.01 if we were going to have fundamental problems with spirits and an afterlife as crucial elements of a story. And if not then, 4.01 with angels. And if not then-- you see where this goes on. There were multiple exit ramps if the idea of an afterlife, which became more and more directly explored, was going to be an issue in reception of or enjoyment of a text. So now we’re 15 years later, and we can’t expect the highway to reroute just because we didn’t take the other 100 ramps.

SPN will tell the full spread of its moral and divine play within the full spread of its moral and divine sandbox, which someone has--to reach the ending--accepted for fifteen years at this point. If one has a fundamental problem with the entire premise of the show, it is not an obligation to any writer to cater to someone who intrinsically disagrees with the entire structure of the body of work to fulfill something within a completely different paradigm. It’s not.

Am I lucky in that it matches my beliefs? Maybe. Also cursed. Very very cursed. Because it’s led to being Through The Looking Glass for two years to the point there’s a segment of fandom that treats me as a magic 8 ball--and sometimes rightfully so, not to sound like I’m tooting my own horn or whatever. It just knows I get the structure in play to a fault. But cursed knowledge aside -- and trust me, it’s cursed as FUCK most of the time -- in the end, even when I watch shows that don’t match my personal theology, I don’t sit here and suddenly expect them to do so. There’s plenty of shows I completely suspend my beliefs in to enjoy within the sandbox they were designed in the constraints of so I find it very weird to project a discontent with a body of fictional canon presenting ideas within its own rule set based on personal beliefs in a real life lens. I mean, I don’t believe dragons exist, but if I watch the Dragon Prince for many seasons, I can’t suddenly expect the ending to have nothing to do with Dragons?

I mean, the show is literally called Supernatural. It's right there in the name. There are going to be supernatural elements about the show. My banner image is literally a reborn soul floating down the aisle. This isn't gonna suddenly be irrelevant at the end.

[irandrura]

More detailed, spoiler-full thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles 2:

One of the things that always fascinates me, when I compare JRPGs and WRPGs, is the sorts of conflicts they’re interested in, or the sorts of questions they ask. XC2 is yet another example of a JRPG that asks a question that simply never seems to arise in Western games. That question is: is there an ethical basis for the world’s existence? Is there a justification for the world continuing to be? Is existence, being, even a good thing at all?

XC2 is fascinated by this question, and even by the more narrow questions of “is it a good thing for humans to exist?” or “is it a good thing for people in general to exist?” It takes these questions very seriously, to the extent that characters who firmly conclude “no” are treated as sympathetic antagonists, rather than madmen.

Western games only rarely raise similar questions. Every now and then you get a madman in Fallout who thinks humanity is a scourge and should be replaced by some other race, or the likes of Archaon in Warhammer, who seeks to destroy the world because the gods demand it – but these characters are generally not treated sympathetically, and very little time is spent refuting them. Of course you stop the guy who wants to destroy the human race. What, you need a reason? Here’s one: you’re human, so are people you care about, end of story. There’s not much to engage with there. In the likes of Skyrim, when Arngeir suggests that maybe the right thing to do is to allow the world to be destroyed, the player’s response is incredibly perfunctory. “I like the world. All my stuff is here.” What more could you possibly need?

But justifying existence seems like a more central question to JRPGs. Not only XC2, but if I think back to, say, Final Fantasy X, or Final Fantasy VII, or Final Fantasy VI, or, well, half the games in that entire series, a frankly bizarre amount of time is spent arguing with nihilists who believe that the world and/or the human race should be destroyed, because... um, suffering exists, or the world is meaningless, or people are awful, take your pick.

My usual approach is to just attribute these differences to religion. The West is deeply influenced by the Abrahamic tradition, in which God creates the world and pronounces it good. There can be no real question of whether existence is good or not. To even ask the question is blasphemy. This instinct now seems so deeply-rooted that even atheists, who outwardly reject all religion, just take it as read that existence is a good thing. By contrast, Japan still has a historical Buddhist influence, and Buddhism is much more skeptical of the value of being. If you could destroy samsara... would you? Is the goal of the spiritual life to escape, to obtain release from the shackles of the world? The Buddhist tradition contains significantly greater ambivalence towards the world.

In XC2’s case, I think it’s a little more complicated, because XC2, like XC1, is heavily influenced by Gnosticism. I am far from the first person to suggest a similarity between Christian Gnosticism and Buddhism, of course, but here I think the Christian imagery comes to the fore. Klaus is a demiourgos, the Architect of this world, standing in the place of God despite not being truly divine himself. This flawed creator goes on to let loose his own trinity – Ontos, Logos, and Pneuma; Being, Word, and Spirit – but nonetheless is full of regret, unsure as to the value of the world he has tried to build. God himself is not visible; only this broken man trying to fill in for God. Even he is not convinced of the world’s goodness!

(And while we’re on the topic of Christian imagery, yes, I know, Pyra and Mythra’s core crystal is cross-shaped, and Pyra is symbolically crucified like four times in the plot, it’s not subtle.)

But to step away from religion for a moment and look back at specific characters...

  What drives most of the central characters of XC2 is, initially at least, the desire to cease. Amalthus believes that the world is nothing but a vale of tears, and regards the world with little but hate and disgust. Malos is corrupted by Amalthus’ hate and believes that justice requires the world be destroyed. Jin is driven mad by the cruelty of the world, comes to hate the Architect and seek to destroy him. Even Pyra, our ostensible heroine, wants to reach Elysium in order to beg the Architect for permission to commit suicide and cease to be.

As such, the heart of the story of XC2 is responding to all this with, “No! Life is worth living!”

It seems like such a banal message. If anything, it’s doubly so because the game’s protagonist, Rex, is the most relentlessly optimistic and upbeat person in the world. Rex is the sort of person who’ll respond to all the above with an innocent, “Well, that’s how life is, you know? You’ve gotta take the good with the bad.” He has no darkness in him at all. Even Shulk, who was a total sweetie-pie, was willing to go on a quest to flat-out kill someone for revenge. Rex is truly a beautiful cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure. Heck, one of his lines in battle is a completely unironic “We’ll beat them with the power of friendship!”

That’s one of the odd things, for me. Rex himself does not struggle with inner darkness, or with anything I’d recognise as suicidal tendencies or depression. He searches for an answer to justify the world to Malos, but ultimately doesn’t come up with anything more coherent than, “There are wonderful, valuable things in this world, and I believe people can change, and I know that you once believed that too!” This isn’t a story where Rex finds a substantive answer to the question, or one that would satisfy a philosopher. Rather, he ‘solves’ the puzzle through sheer force of will. He ends up convincing the Architect that the world has merit not through anything he says, but through what he does – through his selfless optimism and belief in other people.

Just as Amalthus and Jin concluded the world needs to die not because of philosophy, but because of traumatic personal experience, Rex concludes the world needs to live because of positive, uplifting personal experience. The answer to the dark impulse that would destroy the world is to point to positive relationships within it, even in the lives of the people trying to destroy it: Mikhail and Patroka, or even Jin and Malos, have genuine friendships. (The moment where Malos stops to hug Jin, even as he heads off to destroy the world, is surprisingly touching.)

On one level this really works. It fits surprisingly well with the overall Christian themes: the answer to “why should the world exist?” is “loving relationships”. Pyra’s answer, in fact, is “I love this world because you’re in it.”

On another level, it feels a touch disappointing, if only because it means the climax of the game is just a reiteration of what the player’s been hearing for the past fifty hours: yes, love and friendship and bonds are good things!

Where Xenoblade 2 works, I think for me, is where the specifics of the relationships feel powerful enough to make those clichés feel fresh. The game’s world sets up a number of reasons to despair (the world is slowly dying, the titans are dying, people are warring over the declining and limited resources, etc.) and then sets up a lot of obstacles to relationship (the Blades, immortal, but having their memories wiped every time their closest friends die, feel quite tragic), and then shows love and friendship perpetually overcoming them. The game’s strongest moments are those where, at a point of despair, somehow love saves the day again. Chapter seven stands out here: both the moment where Nia reveals her true identity, and where Rex practically raises Pyra from the dead by standing over her body and talking about how much he believes in her. Naturally, then, the game ends on the emotional high of the entire playable cast flying off into the sunset, looking fond of each other, Pyra and Mythra’s miraculous return, and the closing line: And thus, boy met girl. Like any good love story, it works only if you buy into the characters’ emotions.

 Xenoblade Chronicles 2, summarised: “Should you commit suicide? No, because love.”

Now that said, two other random observations:

In the first Xenoblade, I really disliked the Klaus twist at the end. It felt like it came out of nowhere, required a large exposition dump, and didn’t add much to the plot. For me, the first Xenoblade felt pretty much entirely downhill after the defeat of Metal Face. Xenoblade 2 still has more-or-less the same backstory with Klaus, but here I thought it was contextualised much better and was more effective. The revelation that the Architect is the torn remains of an ancient scientist, trying to rebuild the world from scraps but now half-given up on the whole project as a waste, feels like it fits much better with the world that we explored.

Xenoblade 2’s world always felt somewhat artificial, and from the very start of the game it was evident that there was a previous world before this one. There’s something beneath the Cloud Sea, and whatever it might be, it was evidently once technologically advanced. Making Rex a salvager was a good move to emphasise that, and the way that so much of the world’s economy depends on salvaging the ruins beneath the sea reinforces the sense of the world as being in decay. The Architect is mentioned at the start of the game, so you know that the world was made or at least modified by someone for an unclear purpose, and the World Tree is mysterious enough. So when later in the game you do go below the Cloud Sea and discover the remains of ancient cities, and then find that within the World Tree is an advanced scientific installation, it doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. Indeed, the final revelation – that ages ago a scientist accidentally destroyed the world in an experiment, and this is his imperfect attempt to fix it – feels both like a genuine discovery, but also something that, well, makes sense. Of course it was that. Of course! That explains so much about why Alrest is the way it is.

  The second observation is... okay, so, XC1 and XC2 are in continuity, that’s all good. How does XCX fit in, if it does at all? I was a bit disappointed when Klaus’ flashback mentioned ‘Saviorites’ attacking the experimental station. Who are they? I wanted to assume that Klaus’ experiment was some sort of cutting-edge secret research immediately before the Ganglion attacked at the start of XCX. That way the aliens attack and start to destroy the Earth, in a panic Klaus tries to accelerate his experiment, hoping he can use the power of the Conduit to save the world, he screws up and ends up splitting the Earth off into two parallel dimensions, creating the worlds of XC1 and XC2, and meanwhile the survivors of Earth in the home dimension escape on their Ark Ships and go and do XCX. That would fit all three games together pretty elegantly, and Conduit-related weirdness might also help explain what the heck is up with Mira in XCX.

But there doesn’t seem to have been any room left for that, so I guess XCX is a completely different continuity? That just... also contains Nopon, who for some reason have heard of Shulk and the Monado? Who knows?

[fauxeuphoricfae]

Candle for the emoji thing

My spiritual beliefs.. Damn so how to start?

I was raised atheist, almost nihilistic. Since leaving home and going off to college I have began to discover my own spirituality.

In high school, Albert Camus introduced me to Absurdism (which is a philosophical belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe), which while not too spriritual in and of itself, I had felt like I was screaming into a void wondering why I am here amongst all this chaos. Camus made me understand it’s silly to just expect the universe to respond and tell me my purpose. Without inherent purpose, I could create it for myself.

On a trip to New Orleans, I felt a pull to the occult shops and found myself discovering witchcraft. I bought my first tarot cards and spent a summer alone in the forest with my thoughts. As I studied, I began to think of the world as full of symbols and archetypes with subtle influences(think Carl Jung). Energies, vibes, those intuitive feelings began coming to light in my mind.

Unfortunately I did not come out of this experience as happy as I expected or wanted. I went directly into a abusive relationship. I once again felt shattered and wanted to give up as I felt I was being abandoned by the universe. However, since leaving this dark place, I realized that there were certain energies that were always there.

So essentially what I feel now has been shaped by these experiences. Subtlety, I’ve always lived amongst these energies. We give names to these energies to feel more at home with them. Some call them chakras, some worship dieties, some worship an all encompassing God. Now my personal beliefs worship Mother Gaia. She nutures us and I believe that she loves us even though we as a human species take advantage of her all too often. There are other lesser energies that are almost like her children that circle around us as well, like the ocean or the wind or the soil and grass. We give them names too like Poseidon and Demeter. Everything is one and works together to create the physical world in which we inhabit.

Honestly I don’t even know how to fully describe it but I hope this maybe gave some background. Maybe I’ll make a Gaia worship post idk. Please feel free to ask any questions 💚

[morningstarlucemon]

((So, this is a super personal thing that relates to my beliefs. So if you don’t wanna read cause you’re not interested, that’s totally cool. This is gonna be OOC and stuff. I just wanna post this here cause I don’t feel that I can openly say this anywhere else just yet. It’s not really safe for me in case bio family sees it. But I’m just... really excited and wanna talk about it. So if you’re interested, read more is below. There’s a TL;DR at the bottom if you want.))

So, anyone who knows me personally in any intimate manner might know that I’ve struggled with my beliefs for a really long time. I was raised super, super Christian, and even though my family was non-denominational, and we didn’t have a lot of religious “rules” like in mainstream Catholicism or anything similar, it was still really oppressive to me. Parts of my mental illnesses were blamed on demons and went untreated, and actually aggravated with the methods used to “help,” namely my OCD. To this day I have ticks that were programmed into my thought patters based in prayers I was taught that became compulsive habits rather than soothing mantras. And since I was very young I’ve been in a really precarious place with my faith.

I wanna say first and foremost, I don’t think Christianity is bad. I DO think the way people carry it out is harmful. But I don’t believe the faith as a whole is bad. I think that any religion practiced by someone for the want of peace and personal fulfillment without harming others is good so long as it makes them happy. I’m only saying that Christianity as I was taught it hurt me, and the people who taught it to me hurt me. And I now have a very uneasy relationship with the faith as a whole.

For probably around ten years or so, I’ve been a very... nihilistic person, not out of choice, but out of a compulsively logical mindset. If I didn’t have proof of it, my brain didn’t wanna believe it. It still doesn’t. I don’t claim to have ever experienced any proof of the supernatural. But I didn’t wanna call myself an atheist. I WANT to believe in something, anything. But any time I try, the logic part of my brain steps in and demands proof. And it’s been slowly killing me for several years, choking off my spirituality and adding to my depression. It didn’t help that, although I was too logical to believe in anything, I still had the fear and guilt that came with believing I was gonna be sent to hell. I had all of the guilt of religion, and none of the personal peace or fulfillment.

I have spent the last few years of my life talking to people of other faiths and lack there ofs-- atheists, agnostics, Lokean, Wiccan, Catholic, Voodoo practitioners, Heathens, Jews, Muslims, Hedonists, Multi-Theists, Hellenists, and a lot more, as well as several variations of Christians. But no matter what I tried, nothing seemed to fit. I couldn’t settle back into Christianity, no matter how much I tried to fit myself into more secular and relaxed sections of the faith, it never felt welcoming or comfortable. I could never get away from the guilt. But I also never felt attached to any other faith I dabbled in, either. Nothing clicked. I felt present and welcomed, but I didn’t feel at home.

I’ve been working in therapy to really explore myself, and doing a lot of self-reflecting. And part of that has been looking back on what I’ve identified with through the years. And something I have always gone back to was Dark Angels and things associated with Death. When I was very little and my Mom would watch Touched by an Angel, I’d ask her about the Angel of Death, and she would explain that he was not a bad person, but that he was someone who would come take us to Heaven when we died. And that stuck with me. I’ve always been drawn to characters who were outcasts, logical thinkers, people who thought of things with raw data and not pre-conceived ideas, and, of course, those associated with Darkness. Duo Maxwell, Treize Khushrenada, Lucemon, Violet Parr, Levi Ackerman, Rorschach, Raven Roth, Laura Kinney, Vaal Hazak, Sephiroth, Howl Jenkins Pendragon, Adrian Tepes, Black Shucks, Damien Bloodmarch... I never could put my finger on what they had in common until now. All of them are outcasts who think differently than society as a whole, many of them with dark or complex morality or emotionally injured themes about them. I have always been drawn to the darkness, even since I was a little kid. And I think, because of the fear I was taught, I denied and lied to myself something that I’m fairly sure I’ve known for years.

After really learning what other beliefs are, that they’re not all goat sacrifice and child rape, and learning the actual principals behind them, I think I might finally be ready to choose a title for myself and my belief set. After years of introspection, and debate, and self-exploration, I, for now, when it is safe to do so, will align myself with  Luciferian Satanism.

I have chosen this faith for many reasons. Lucifer expects nothing from me, not even for me to truly believe in them. Do no harm, and take no shit. This faith allows me to still be a kind human being, but also to not let myself be hurt and abused as I’ve been in the past. It is the first thing to slightly allay my fear of death in years. It recognizes that life is sometimes shit, but that we don’t have to live in existential dread all the time because of it. Sure, this life is piss sometimes-- but what the fuck is sulking about it gonna do? I might not be able to change the world, but I can make a few people feel better for a little while. I don’t need to search for the meaning in life-- it doesn’t matter if life is inherently meaningless, cause I am here, so I’m gonna have fun. And I’m gonna help others have fun, too. I’m gonna be kind to people because it makes me feel better to know I’ve made someone else feel better. Yeah, it’s a selfish motivation, but that’s what all acts are motivated by-- the want to feel better. And that’s very much okay. There’s nothing wrong with helping people because it makes you feel good, knowing that someone else’s day was improved by you. I don’t need an entity threatening me to make me do good things, and I don’t need praise from humans. I can worship myself, I can love and care for myself, and that’s not only okay but expected. Things aren’t good or bad just because society says they are. Things are good or bad because of the effect they put out into the world. It’s okay to be weird as long as you’re not hurting anyone else. I don’t have to always speak as others do or move like they do. It’s okay that I’m on the spectrum. I don’t have to pretend to be normal. Whatever comes for me, I’m gonna embrace it with open arms, and will take control and improve what I can, and ask for help when I need it, because I’m alive and I chose to try and be happy. I don’t need the promise of heaven or any afterlife to make me happy. If one comes, that’s wonderful. I hope I’m surrounded by people I love and who love me.

I’m not going to lie and say Lucemon didn’t have a part in me realizing I’m a Satanist, because they definitely did. I don’t think I would have ever been willing to even truly consider it if not for this angel. But I want to clarify one thing, as some of my friends seem to be a bit confused. I do believe I am kin with Lucemon. I do not believe myself to be kin with Lucifer, Satan, or the Devil. I may have a shard of them in me, but I lay no claim to their power except what I’ve been allotted in this life. I will absolutely claim myself and my power and title as Lucemon, Demon Lord of Pride in the Digital World. But I at no time want to claim to speak for Lucifer or have any right to his power.

On a similar note, I am not in this belief for the power. I don’t expect Satan to bestow me with a silver tongue or armies of demons. I do wish to become stronger in magic and charisma and use of my natural abilities to get what I want, but I intend to work for these things, not have them handed to me. I recognize that I have nothing Lucifer could ever potentially want, except possibly, maybe my understanding. I have nothing I could offer that would be of use to them. So I won’t try to barter for something I know damn well I’m not entitled to. I intend to work, study, practice, listen, and learn to grow my power. Lucifer expects nothing from me, I expect nothing from him. I only wish to devote to them my heart and respect because I feel a kindred spirit within them.

I believe Lucifer to be an enlightener, a symbol of progress, logic, exploration, love of knowledge and acceptance, and seeing things without bias. They may exist as a concept, or as an actual entity, or something in-between, or something totally outside my comprehension. Regardless of the nature of their existence, they bring me peace, and I find speaking of and to them to be soothing and helpful to me. I also do not feel that my devotion to them will interfere with my offerings to other gods. Lucifer is not tyrannical. Lucifer is not Jealous. They want only for me to be kind, and be myself. And that’s all I want.

I’m getting super tired, and I’m really rambling at this point. But I really wanted to state all this somewhere. I’m so grateful to finally begin to have something to take solace in. And I intend to accept this and further growth, regardless of where it takes me, openly and thankfully, as holding back has only hurt me. I intend to further research my stance, and potentially am looking into calling myself a Warlock. I understand that term is typically given to you by others as a derogatory term, and is used for those who have been expelled from their covens. But with that said, I HAVE been ejected from everything I knew before. I’ve thrown much of it out in favor of healthier beliefs and practices, and I seem myself as not fitting in with where I was and as something of an “other.” So I feel this term resonates with me and what I am and want to be.

So, yes. TL;DR: I consider myself a agnostic Luciferian Satanist, and am hoping to study and grow fully into a Warlock. This has given me peace I haven’t had in many years, and I am happier with this than I’ve been with anything else since I was a child.

Thank you all so much for listening to me. I love you.

[catsnuggler]

S, why? After years, I still don't understand why. Was it my fault? Was I not there for you when you needed me most? Did I not support you well enough? Was our friendship too one-sided? Did I never give enough?

S, I met you in elementary school. I had just moved here, a year after my mother had died of cancer. I didn't have any friends, at first, because they were all back in my hometown, and we didn't share contact information before I left.

We were so different, at first. You were a conservative, I was a liberal, and we didn't yet see how similar those positions were, nor did we realize how silly and wrong we were. You were an atheist, while I was a Mormon, with some "Mormon royal" blood in me on my mom's side. I learned not to be pushy with you, although I still wanted to convert you for years. I'm sorry about that. I'd bought it hook, line, and sinker, and was afraid for the status of your soul. You already knew, though, that I've cast such nonsense away.

As the years passed, we became closer friends, in friendly as well as philosophical terms. I learned to distrust the government, to stop being a "big government" liberal, to stop being a liberal altogether, and embraced anarchist communism. You went from right-libertarian/conservative to nihilist, egoist anarchism. I wasn't an egoist, but we were still pretty close. I had also went from mormonism to paganism, and you more or less met me halfway, from atheism to theistic Satanism with neopagan influences. Not my cup of tea, but you do you.

We were both lonely at one point, you especially. I was afraid for you, S. I introduced you to my friends, one of whom you took an interest in... then, you were together. I didn't behave... the best... with regard to that, given your partner at the time was my ex. Still, I didn't envy you, mock you, show you any anger, and I valued our friendship. Well, there was that hiccup in the middle, that lasted for... about 8 months, come to think of it. More of an episode than a hiccup. Still, we got past that, I apologized, and we renewed our friendship.

I don't understand, though. We'd gotten over that, I didn't outright betray you, and we had been so close growing up. I looked up to you! Metaphorically, of course. Yet... yet you hurt my friend; our mutual ex, that is; abused them, were just awful to them in ways I won't describe, but I was appalled. You'd also ghosted me for a while. It was I who blocked you to end our friendship, but I only did so out of guilt, blaming myself for your breakup and the abuse you committed, because it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't introduced you two. I didn't know it would, though. Anyway, I ended our friendship because I felt I was dishonest and a traitor for continuing to leave our friendship status unchanged, despite my alleged guilt. I later learned I was wrong, but all the same, I have to take my friend's side, not yours. Gods, S, how I wish I could still call you a friend, but I can't anymore. Not with the disdain with which you treated me, nor the malice toward my friend. It hurts, S. It hurts really badly.

I don't know if I failed you, but if I have, I'm sorry. I wish this wasn't a weak, non-apology, but I'm in the dark as to what I have to apologize for. I'm sorry, I wish I knew. Still, while I miss you, I hate you, and I always will from now on. I hate that I hate you, but I hate that I miss you. If we'd never met, I wouldn't know this pain. It hurts. You hurt me, S. And you hurt B (not the B in my post addressed to K, this is a completely different B). I'll never know why you did, but you did. Make it stop. Please, make it stop. No. Don't. No. I wish I could ask you, but I can't. I can't trust you, but I wish I could. Damnit, S, I miss who you were, but I hate who you are. I'm sorry, but part of me wants to see you burn in Hellfire. I don't want it to be this way. Why did it have to be this way?

[dogopower]

Satan, Prince of This World

After his initiation, which is said to have been conducted personally by Pike, his attitude and activities suddenly changed. While he outwardly remained anti-clerical and anti-Vatican, he no longer advocated the violent overthrow of the Vatican by force. Pike did with Lemmi what Karl Rothschild had had to do little more than a decade earlier with other Satanists when they stirred up so much anti-Vatican hatred that the governments of France and Italy were on the verge of destroying it. Karl Rothschild, an initiate of the Full Secret, stepped in to act as “Peacemaker” between the Vatican and her enemies. History relates how his intervention ‘saved’ the Vatican and made Karl Rothschild the ‘friend’ and ‘trusted adviser’ of the Pope. He reorganized the affairs of the Treasury and State Departments.

But history has proved that Karl Rothschild was no true friend of the Vatican. Two World Wars, instigated by his family of moneylenders, and their international affiliates who direct the W.R.M.., have seen Christians of all denominations divided into opposing camps, been made to fight and kill each other off by the tens of millions. This has been done to bring Pike’s plan for the final social cataclysm nearer to fruition. Communism grew stronger as Christianity was weakened, until today, as Pike’s plan required, Communism has darkened the entire earth.

While it would be inaccurate to deny that there have been ‘bad’ Popes, as there have been ‘bad’ Kings, it is only proper to point out that the ‘bad’ Popes and Kings were no worse than some of the other leaders of Christianity, when they became presidents of republics. Luciferianism demands that ALL temporal and spiritual authority be destroyed because of their alleged badness. Because the struggle in which we are involved, is against the spiritual forces of darkness, it stands to reason that there must be good and bad people in all walks of life; in all levels of government and in all religions. It is typical of all who serve the Devil’s cause that they always use destructive criticism aimed at those in authority, to undermine the confidence and loyalty of the individual in the remaining governmental and religious institutions. This policy helps those who direct the W.R.M. to at first weaken, and then destroy ALL remaining governments and religions. Let us never forget that there is nothing wrong with Christianity. Many things done in the name of Christianity were done by men who, knowingly or unknowingly, furthered the secret plans of the Luciferian conspiracy. What we need to do is clean upon and strengthen Christianity as God would wish.

The above remarks are published to explain how it is that Satanists have always attacked the Popes and the Vatican, and advocated their destruction, while the High Priests of the Luciferian Creed have, to-date, always stepped in and prevented their doing so. The intervention of those who control the Synagogue of Satan AT THE TOP was not out of love or respect for the Pope of the Vatican. They intervened because, being initiated into the FULL SECRET, they knew that when their conspiracy reaches its final stage; after all temporal powers have been reduced in strength until they no longer remain World Powers; when a tired and weary people have been reduced to such a physical and mental condition that they became convinced that ONLY a One World Gov- ernment can put an end to revolutions and wars, and give them peace, they must use the clash between Communism and Christianity to destroy ALL remaining religious institutions also.

Gen. Albert Pike revealed how this was to be done in the letter he wrote Mazzini August 15,1871. That part which deals with this particular phase of the conspiracy reads as follows, “We shall unleash the Nihilists and Atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations (people of different nationalities), the effects of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the citizens obliged to defend themselves against the world minority or revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will be from that moment without compass (direction), anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the TRUE LIGHT, through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view, a manifestation which will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time.”

We ask the reader to study every word of this diabolically inspired document. According to Pike’s military blueprint, drawn up between 1859 and 1871, three global wars and three major revolutions were to place the High Priests of the Luciferian Creed in position to usurp world powers. Two World Wars have been fought according to schedule. The Russian and Chinese revolutions have achieved success. Communism has been built up in strength and Christendom weakened. World War Three is now in the making. If it is allowed to break out, all remaining nations will be further weakened, and Islam and political Zionism will be destroyed as world powers. The reader must not forget that the Arab world is made up of millions of people, many of whom are Christians; many are of the Jewish faith; many are Mohammedans, but all subscribe to belief in the same God Christians worship as the Creator of the Universe. The Koran of the Mohammedan faith is practically identical with the Bible, excepting only that the Mohammedan religion, while accepting Jesus Christ as the GREATEST of God’s prophets before Mohammed, does not permit its members to believe in the Divinity of Christ.

The point we wish to make is this: Those who direct the Luciferian conspiracy AT THE TOP realize only too well that before they can provoke the final social cataclysm, they must first of all bring about the destruction of Islam as a world power, because if Islam were not destroyed, it would undoubtedly line up with Christianity