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cbraxs · 3 years

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Warped [Time Warp Trio Fanfiction] - Chapter 13

Izzy didn’t pay attention to Cleo teaching her friends how to play Senet on the floor in the center of the room. Not that she needed to; her mom taught her years ago. At least she’d have some people to play with now.

She sat on her bed beneath a wide window overlooking the bay. Her eyes gazed at the dark water; the glittery flecks dancing along the surface reflected the gorgeous stars above. She'd seen stars before, but they were always a welcomed view (she loved New York but all the light pollution ruined casual star gazing. She'd tried searching for her constellation; Andromeda. It was hers on account she had a collection of moles on her back that resembled the star formation.

A sigh escaped her lips. Izzy’s mind drifted towards what happened in the boys’ room. She had no clue what she did to upset Jodie. She didn’t say or do anything, at least nothing significant she could remember. Was it because Izzy was an outsider, someone who shouldn’t get to time travel and didn’t belong with the trio?

A flick to her forehead broke her out of her thoughts. “Earth to Izzy. Helloooo? Anyone home?”

Fred stood in front of her with his usual goofy grin. Somehow he made his way to her bed without her noticing.

Izzy scooted over and made a spot for him to sit. “Sorry. I was… thinking.”

“No kidding, you were more spaced out than my brother’s eyes.”

“You don’t wanna learn to play Senet?”

Fred put his hands behind his head leaned back. “Nah, it’s pretty much chess with extra steps.”

Izzy tried to laugh, but it quickly fizzled out.

Fred frowned. “What’s up?”

She hugged her knees to her chest. “I think Jodie hates me.”

“What gave it away?”

Ow. Sometimes Izzy wished Fred wasn’t so blunt. “Y-you think so, too?”

“I mean… she’s kind of a mean girl, but she’s not that bad. I wouldn’t worry about her, she’s still getting used to me, and we’ve been friends for years!”

Izzy smiled. “Thanks, Fred. Still… I’m worried about what her and Joe were talking about.”

Fred shrugged. “Don’t sweat it. They’re just trying to fix The Book.”

“You’re probably right– wait, they found The Book?! When?” At Izzy’s outburst, the others turn to look at the two of them. Cleopatra screamed.

Arms snaked around Izzy’s throat and waist and dragged her towards the window. Izzy yelped. She grabbed the arms of her kidnapper and flipped them will all her weight.

It worked a little too well. The momentum dropped them both on the floor with a thud. The whole room wobbled like a spinning top. Thankfully, Fred was there to help her up.

Her cloaked attacker stood, glaring at them beneath the hood, seemingly unfazed. They didn’t cower, even when outnumbered.

“What’s going on?”

Joe rushed into the room, Jodie right behind him. They stopped in their tracks once they noticed the cloaked figure.

“Some creep tried to yank Izzy through the window,” Sam explained.

Cleo stomped towards the hooded would-be kidnapper, despite Freddi warning her not to. “What is the meaning of this, villain?!”

The figure reached into their sleeve and pulled out something small and wooden. In an instant, Fred tackled the assailant to the ground. The item flew out of their hand and shattered to pieces on the floor.

The hood fell and they all could see the person underneath: tall nose, proud dark eyes, and she looked like–

Cleopatra gasped. “Berenice!”

Izzy’s heart sunk. “What?”

“Crocodile!” Sam shrieked.

Where Berenice’s wooden trinket fell, stood a crocodile, slimy from the Nile. A normal crocodile was bad news enough, but this one must have had a gym membership because it was easily twice as big. It hissed and snapped at them with razor-sharp teeth.

Sam, Freddi, and Samantha, who were the closest to the beast, yelled and scrambled away, almost toppling Joe and Jodie. The crocodile’s eyes glowed with an unnatural human hatred, but despite this it wasn’t going after any of them. It was like a yapping dog on a porch: it insisted you watch your step, but was incapable of making you do so.

Izzy looked at the wooden pieces and the croc, and slapped herself for not putting two and two together sooner. She rushed to her friends. “Guys, it’s not–”

Berenice kicked Fred off her and grabbed Izzy’s ankle, sending her a quick trip to the floor.

Izzy drew ragged breaths, trying to get some air back into her lungs. Berenice pounced on Izzy and dug her knees into Izzy’s back. Izzy clawed at the arm shoved into her neck, but the more she fought, the more Berenice put weight on her.

Berenice held something above her, and Izzy stilled. She thought it may be a weapon… until it glowed gold.

Then suddenly, the weight flew off her. A thud, followed by Berenice spitting curses at Cleopatra. Cleo had lunged past the crocodile and threw herself at Berenice.

“No!” Berenice wailed and reached for Izzy. “He wanted you! He–” The item Berenice held glowed stronger and brighter than before. It enveloped the two of them before dying in a pop! And the royal sisters vanished without a trace.

The others stared where the two once were. The room was deathly silent compared to the chaos before. Joe was the first to speak. “What the–”

The crocodile snapped at him, and he screamed.

Izzy jumped up, “I-it’s okay! Watch.”

She approached the crocodile, ignoring the pleas of her friends to stay back. The animal turned on her, but Izzy simply walked through the crocodile like it was made of mist, kicking it apart like a sandcastle. “It’s an illusion.”

Freddi’s brow furrowed. “So this whole time it couldn’t have bitten one of us?”

“It still could’ve, but it wouldn’t have hurt.”

“There are bigger things to handle,” Jodie said. “Like, I don’t know, how Cleopatra just disappeared!”

“I-I–” Izzy rubbed the back of her bruised neck. “Of course that’s more important, but I had to let you know the crocodile wasn’t serious...”

“It’s fine.” Joe shot Jodie a stern look and stepped towards Izzy. “Thanks, Iz. Are you alright?”

Izzy nodded and slowed her breathing. She hadn’t noticed she was nearly hyperventilating.

A barrage of footsteps thundered down the hall. Two guards burst through the door, one Izzy recognized from earlier, Ahmose.

“We heard screaming!” The other guard said.

“Great reaction time, guys,” Fred muttered. Samantha elbowed him in the ribs.

Ahmose eyes searched around the room. “Where is princess Cleopatra?”

“Berenice took her!” Freddi cried.

His curious looked turned into a glare. “Berenice was here and all seven of you thought to alert no one?”

“It’s not our fault!” Samantha said.

“Yeah, man,” Fred added. “It was all so fast! She had a buff killer crocodile and a glowing piece of wood and then they crossfaded out of here and–”

Sam rubbed his temples. “You’re not helping, you’re not helping!”

Even if Berenice were here,” the other guard said, “how are we to know you weren’t working with her. You foreigners showed up just as she escaped.”

It was fair to be suspicious, Izzy thought, the timing was not in their favor.

“We wouldn't do anything to hurt Cleopatra. You’ve got to believe us,” Izzy pleaded. She looked from Ahmose to the other guard, trying to communicate her honesty through her eyes. The one guard wasn’t convinced, but Ahmose’s glower softened by a fraction.

He shook his head. “It is not up to me to believe you or not. That will be for the Pharaoh to decide.”

~*~

The guards carted the seven of them to the Pharaoh to plead their case. They begged for him to believe them, they tried to reason with him; if they meant Cleopatra harm, then why go about it in this way? But the Pharaoh was incorrigible. He refused to listen to anything they had to say. Fred tried to argue he had diplomatic immunity, but that only served to make the Pharaoh angrier. He had them sentenced to prison until he decided their fates.

Their jail cell was little more than a dank, damp hole in the ground. The air was dusty and hard to breathe, as if they were inhaling 20% dirt. The stone bed against the wall made the floor look like a better sleeping option.

There weren’t any bars covering the hole and obstructing the starry sky above. The view was more haunting than alluring now that they were at least twenty feet below the surface. Despite this, Fred was trying to climb his way out. He’d get about a third of the way up before losing his grip and falling– usually on Sam– scattering prison hole dust every which way.

“Can you stop that!” Jodie said after his third attempt. “It’s not going to work.”

“You got a better plan?” Fred asked.

Apparently not, as Jodie turned troubled eyes on the floor.

“Let’s face it,” Sam said. “We have no way out. If the Pharaoh won’t have us tortured for answers, then we’ll definitely be executed.”

“We could be drowned, impaled, beheaded, burned alive...” Freddi listed off.

Izzy rubbed her arms. “Burned alive?”

“That’s the one that bothers you?” Fred asked.

“The ancient Egyptian’s actually didn’t burn many people as a punishment,” Samantha explained. “They thought that destroying a person’s body would rob them of an afterlife.”

Joe threw up his hands. “Could we not talk about execution methods for a minute and figure a way out of here.”

“Wait a minute.” Fred turned to Izzy. “You can levitate us out of here, right?”

Izzy twisted an earring. “I-I don’t know if I can. I’ve never levitated myself, let alone another person, before. Maybe I could do one at a time, but we’ll get caught doing it that way.”

“Would it be easier with two of us?” Joe asked.

Izzy nodded, considering it. "Jodie, do you think you could help? I think we can do it between the three of us.”

Jodie twisted her hair around a finger. “Magic like that isn’t really my strong suit.”

“So you can’t do it?” Fred said.

“I didn’t say that,” Jodie snapped. “I just don’t do it. Kind of like how you have a brain but don’t like using it.”

“Oh, yeah? Well you don’t like–”

Sam, Samantha, and Freddi stepped between them before they got a chance to really go at it.

“I think you can do it!” Izzy said. “I mean, Anna told me the women in your family are good at magic and you’re Joe’s cousin after all. He picks things up pretty fast so I’m sure you can do it, too.”

Jodie smiled at Izzy, which completely caught her off guard. “I guess I can give it a shot. What do I have to lose?”

“Okay,” Sam said. “So we get out of here. Then what? We need to find The Book and save Cleopatra. Who knows how history will be rewritten if something were to happen to her.”

“At least we know where The Book is,” Jodie said. “I left it in the guy’s room.”

“Good going,” Fred snarked.

“If I had brought it with me, the Pharaoh might have confiscated it. Prisoners don’t usually get to keep their belongings.”

Izzy frowned. “If you had The Book the whole time then why didn’t we warp home earlier?”

“It’s busted,” Joe explained. “Jodie and I were trying to fix it.”

“How–”

“That's not important right now,” Jodie insisted. “Getting out of here and saving Cleo is.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Sam asked. “We have no clue where Berenice took Cleopatra or why.”

Freddi wrung her hands. “Um, isn’t it obvious why she took her? I mean…”

She didn’t have to finish her sentence for the implication to be loud and clear.

Samantha shook her head. “If she wanted to kill Cleo, she would’ve done so when she had the chance or attack her later when we were asleep. Besides, Berenice wasn’t after Cleo. She was... after Izzy.”

Izzy’s fist clenched. She knew Samantha was right even before she confirmed her fears. But why? What would Berenice want with her? How would she even Izzy? No, Berenice said, “He wanted you!” So she was working for someone who wanted Izzy? For a blissful second, she thought it might be her father, but then a nastier possibility hit her.

“It doesn’t matter,” Izzy said. She pushed the thoughts out of her mind. “First thing’s first, we gotta get out of here. It might be easier if we all held hands.”

“Alright.” Joe offered Izzy his hand. Izzy reached to take it but Jodie was giving the two of them a weird look.

Izzy retracted her hand. “I-it's probably better if we spread out in a circle. To disperse the magic.”

“Oh.” Joe rubbed the back of his head. “Makes sense.”

The three of them spread out evenly among the group, with Fred on Izzy’s left and Samantha on her right.

“Now what?” Joe asked.

Izzy smiled a bit, despite their dower situation. “Now, it’s time for boring meditation.”

~*~

As Berenice feared, the man flew into hysterics upon seeing she hadn’t brought the correct girl back to him. He stomped like a petulant child who hadn’t gotten his way, waving his arms as he ranted.

“What is this, you incompetent buffoon? How on Earth did you manage to bring the wrong girl here? Did I not give you specific instructions? You had one job!”

“I had your girl!” Berenice. “But this,” she motioned in disgust at Cleopatra, bound with rope in the corner, “pushed me away once I had her. I can try again–”

“No. By now, the palace will be on high alert. The Pharaoh’s men will be–”

“They all will be looking for me!” Cleopatra yelled, as if she had any power to intimidate them while tied up. “My father will find you and we will have your heads!”

The mad man rolled his eyes and shot a green beam of light at Cleopatra with his cane. She slumped to the ground, limp and still; proof she was still alive was the shallow movements of her chest as she breathed.

“This is not the end,” Berenice said. “We can use her for leverage. My father will easily trade her for a worthless priestess.”

The man opened his mouth to argue but stopped himself. He paced the floor, rubbing his chin. “Those warp runts are foolish enough to try and tell the truth,” he said to himself, “which will no doubt land them in prison. We need to get her before they’re all surely executed”

“What is this girl to you?” Berenice asked. “Is she... your daughter?”

Berenice winced at her impulsive question. But instead of the usual anger and yelling, the man was silent. He gazed at nothing with an amused look on his face.

“My daughter, eh?” His laugh made Berenice's stomach turn on itself and she wished he'd never saved her.

The man pulled an odd object from his cloak: a circle of wood the size of his hand, the decorative strings across it formed a spider web-like pattern. Three ostrich feathers hung from the bottom.

He grinned wickedly. “I can work with this.”

#time warp trio #timewarptrio #fanfiction #fanfic

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nopomegranets · 3 years

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hey, um

i wrote this to myself earlier because i was getting very stuck in a doom-and-gloom situation revolving around Bo Burnham's Inside. writing all of this out helped me relax and reminded me of nice things.

the following is for anyone whose been a little bit Too affected by the special existentially. specifically anyone whose fallen down a scary everything-is-horrible way of thinking that's been brought out by a few songs and Bo Beardman.

i wrote this in two parts. in the first part i let myself say whatever awful shit came to my mind, and i let the hurt and bruised part of me yell and rant (because she really needed to)

in the second, i tried addressing those concerns and speaking to myself directly, to help gain some perspective and offer a bit of kindness (internally).

this feels weird to post but this is a fake account so i can do whatever i want. i hope this helps someone else.

The Sad Part:

I cannot stop thinking about the fucking special. I don’t know if I made this like, awful choice by deciding to watch it or what. Because it so perfectly lays out exactly how I feel about the internet, how its really unhealthy for all of us to be surrounded by human suffering constantly, be told what to think and how to act, dress, etc. Like we all KNOW that we’re being told this, but to have him say it, to have him confirm it in this way that doesn’t feel pander-y or false is…

It’s really fucking confronting.

The puppet song, fucking Funny Feeling - these songs tap very deeply into a sad and disturbed part of my mind that truly hates this world with everything I have in me.

I hate the society we’ve created and I fight like hell every day to not hate the people. And I scour the tumblr tags and reddit comments to find someone who doesn’t just feel the same way I do (as it turns out, that’s a lot - or Bo’s songs wouldn’t resonate so deeply with everyone.) but who has advice, who has words for me, hope, something - anything.

And I cannot fucking find it! We’re all just soaking in how bad everything is and its like the goddamn man of the people whose whole platform is self awareness on a dizzying level that makes you feel self conscious to criticize him or criticize his work (I don’t really want to criticize it, I just wish I had the option). He seems like a good person and he doesn’t SEEM like an asshole whose whole purpose is feeling like he’s figured everything out and everyone else just needs to catch up but that’s how I FEEL so can I be mad at him for it??? No!! I don’t know!! He’s unstoppable, like a fucking god, because you find yourself shaking your head at every single positive or negative comment about him, it’s stupid, it’s dumb, but I don’t actually know if HE’S created this, or if his fanbase has. Maybe its some of both. But I think that’s what causes me to fall down this hole because there is no out there is no alternative there is no out there is no alternative there is no out there is no alternative.

I want to love this world but I can’t. Because Bojangles is fucking right he’s right about everything he has taken exactly how I feel and how i view the world and he’s put it into words and he’s shown it to me and he’s shoved it in my face and he says how do you feel about this being your worldview? Do you feel enlightened? Do you feel lucky? Do you wish you could scrub your mind clean and live in a world of lies and deceit? I do not fucking know, Mister Burnham. I do know that I hate it and I want it to stop.

I hate it and I want it to stop. I hate it and I want it to stop. I hate it and I want it to stop.

THE WORLD IS SHIT AND ITS NOT SHIT IN AN EDGY OR COOL WAY ITS SHIT IN THIS WAY THAT GENUINELY MAKES ME FEEL SICK TO MY STOMACH AND I HAVE BEEN HURT SO MANY TIMES AND I KNOW SO MANY PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN HURT SO MANY TIMES AND HOW DO I GET AWAY FROM IT??? HOW DO I ESCAPE??? HOW DO I FEEL OKAY???

I think the key to life is putting your head down and loving those you can.

I fucking hate to say it, it makes me feel powerless and hopeless, but there is no stopping this goddamn machine from chewing us all up and spitting us all out and killing us again and again and again and again. There is no escape!! There’s no bloody escape!!! I am aware of all the evil in the world, all at the same time, and I have no power to stop it. This world is truly hellish. Just how do I fucking deal, though.

Bo Burnham fucking ripped me open man, I can’t close myself back up.

....

The Nice Part:

There are good things in the world.

It’s not all bad. I know it seems hopeless and horrible, but you cannot let yourself fall down this path because it will really hurt you. I know it seems hard, and counterintuitive, and lazy, and useless, and cowardly, but there is literally nothing you can do about it. Think of it as living in an evil empire. It’s confusing, because you’re told by everyone everywhere that this empire is not evil. That people are doing fine, that they’re happier than you, that this world has given them amazing things. But it is evil. Just never forget that one part.

You know what isn’t evil? Nature. Nature is not evil. It isn’t benevolent or cruel, it just is. It has beauty and chaos and so much to offer, but it just keeps going. Birds fly and squirrels run and animals are for the most part incapable of becoming sociopaths. Think about dogs. Dogs love to lick their owners faces, and get pets, and they will help people when they’re sad.

Cats too. Birds, fucking rats even.

Pets, that’s a good thing. That’s something not really tainted.

You hear an ambulance go by right now? Think about emergency services. They exist to preserve the lives of other people (we will be excluding cops from this exercise). People sign up to save others from burning buildings and from disease, and they live their lives helping. Helping, helping, helping. This exists to preserve lives.

Think of how much cheaper it would be to not have hospitals and emergency services. Think of that. But we insist on them, because humankind is about co-operation. And that’s why we’re all so miserable in this world!!

Think about that too. If people really were intrinsically evil, then they would not be appalled by things. They would not be commenting “This is exactly how I feel” on the Funny Feeling YouTube videos. They would not care that it was hellish.

He was feeding the ducks because he was feeding the ducks because he was feeding the ducks.

There are so many good people in the world. Think of that lady who devoted her life to helping AIDS victims. Think of fuckin, Ms. Neilson. Your English teacher who wrote you a note when you were going through tough times and she got you a cookie from the caf and left it on your desk. What did she have to gain from that?

It is bad. I never want you to forget that. It IS bad. It shouldn’t be happening, it is unfair, it is cruel. Everything is tangled together and everything is burning but remember that there are people who are willing to push head on to make someone’s day better or to save a life. Remember that laughter exists, that we smile for evolutionary reasons. The key is people, not systems. People. Individuals. We as a collective are scared, and easily swayed, and make bad decisions. Those in power have no souls or life in them. Anyone who profits from human suffering is unconscionably hated by billions.

Stuffed animal hospitals. People who (oftentimes for no profit) will fix up a stuffed animal that was loved by someone else. They will spend their time, money, resources, and energy on doing something that does not have any other purpose than making another person feel better. They will fix up a little toy they have no attachment to themselves, because they want to make someone else feel better.

Dude, that’s amazing. That’s fucking amazing and you know it.

Don’t let the Bezos and the Gates and the pedophilic empire sway you away from the fact that there are good people in the world. Bad and amoral people RUN the world, because we’re a young race and we have some things to work out - but there are still really good people!

The Internet is good only in small doses. Stay away from Twitter and TikTok. Don’t allow yourself to consume so many video essays that you start criticizing anything you see. Just fulfil, enjoy, do what makes you smile or what makes those gears turn. Stop doom scrolling and hate-searching. It will do you no good. It will make you a defeatist. You may not be able to save the world but you can save yourself. And you can make the lives of the people around you (however short they may be) better in the time we have. Bo Burnham says things that you agree with, but he is not God. He speaks to the part of you that is hurt and worried, but do not let that be the only piece spoken to. You are still trying to heal from childhood, love. Let yourself relax. Let yourself feel. It will all be okay in the end.

#this feels very silly #but i saw some comments from people who seemed to be really really down #and this helped me so maybe it will help you #bo burnham #inside #inside netflix #funny feeling #how the world works #bo burnham inside #welcome to the internet #hope this helps

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datingadviceonreddit · 7 years

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A primary reason that modern relationships and gender dynamics are so fucked up is because pop culture constantly bombards people with an insane, bizarre, psychotic conception of “love.” Pop culture portrays love as pure emotion, and this conception has become the dominant view in the modern world, leading to almost apocalyptic levels of heartache and unhappiness.Instead of defining what the word love means, pop culture insists that love is undefinable, unexplainable, and “magical,” and furthermore, cannot be rationally understood or logically analyzed. This lack of definition allows love to constantly change form – sometimes it is “strongly liking” (“I love ice cream!”), having sex but not being too rough (“making love”), a zombie-like state you are in (“I’m in love!”), or a selfish, meaningless declaration (“But I love her!!”), etc... The only thing modern views on love have in common is that they all portray love as a wild, passionate emotion, devoid of any obligation or practicality. Nevertheless, pop culture demands that love must “conquer” everything else, including society’s rules, everybody else’s advice, one’s career, one’s interests, and even rationality itself.According to pop culture, love is something you randomly “fall” into and “fall” out of with no forewarning or rational explanation. If you “fall” in love, you should drop everything and run to the person you love, no matter what the facts are. And when you “fall” out of love, well, you are free to leave, no matter what promises you made.The pop culture conception of love is so deeply ingrained in modern people’s consciousness that people think it is totally acceptable to make a ton of commitments and promises to a person, and then leave the moment they’ve decided they’ve “fallen out of love.” Pop culture love is why women feel no shame in going on the Jerry Springer show and proudly proclaiming that their affair with a married man is beautiful because they are “in love.” Pop culture love is also why people allow themselves to endure all kinds of abuse and terrible behavior from their significant other.In this article, I explain what I think love is, and I then briefly describe the historical processes that caused modern man to arrive at this twisted conception of love.What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me)To start with, I believe that love, like everything else on this earth, can be rationally understood. The moment you accept that something is fundamentally irrational or “magic” you allow yourself to be controlled by your emotions or whatever nonsense powerful and charismatic people are selling. Love is beautiful and the fact that it can be rationally and maybe even scientifically understood does not detract from its beauty.True love is a contract between two people where the parties promise to do whatever is best for each other. You should only enter into this contract with people you like and feel attraction to, but once you are in, you must take the contract seriously.Different types of love exist: love between friends, love between a parent and child, love between a man and a woman in a sexual/romantic relationship, etc... Each different type of love imposes obligations on the parties, depending on the nature of the relationship, the individual themselves, and the circumstances of the relationship. Ideally, you determine what is “best” for your beloved by cold, rational calculation, and not your selfish desires. For example, you may want your child to go to college near you, but it may be better for your child to go to Harvard.Under my definition of love, you can love everybody commensurate with your relationship with them. Your love for your neighbor will be different than the love for your child, because your obligations to your neighbor are different than your obligations to your child. One day, ideally, all the world will come to love each other, but all we can do now is love people until they prove that they do not deserve our love.I believe that once two people commit to loving each other, an emotional bond forms that I call the “real love emotion.” The real love emotion is the feeling derived from the knowledge that there is another human being in this cold world that cares about you and will do whatever is best for you. The real love emotion is also the warm, happy feeling you get when you make that commitment to another person. We are wired to both receive love AND give it. When two people commit to doing the best for each other, they create an infinitely positive feedback loop.The real love emotion is the most primal, important, deepest, and strongest human emotion. It defines the difference between a fundamentally emotionally stable and happy person and one who is not. It should underlie all your other emotions like an operating system constantly running in the background and a person without it will feel empty and constantly need cheap pleasures: drugs, narcissism, distractions, etc... People who feel loved also like cheap thrills, but they do not have the same empty void to fill like a person who does not feel loved.Because the real love emotion is completely unrelated to the other person’s looks, personality, status, possessions, family, or any other tangible thing, it can form between any two people, no matter how different they are, so long as they commit to loving each other. Real love does not require physical presence either – you can love somebody from afar as long as you are doing what is right for them. You can get the real love emotion from your friends, family, or even spiritual practices.The constant, primal human desire to feel the real love emotion is best satisfied when we are actually loved. If you feel like your partner will leave when circumstances or feelings change, that bond will feel weaker. We can lie to ourselves that we are loved, but ultimately reality will intervene and crush our soul if it is not true. This desire is why people sometimes form an unhealthy attachment to animals and also why troubled young women, sometimes as young as teenagers, have children just to feel loved.Of course, people can feel a connection to each other through other emotions. I call these emotions the “peripheral attraction emotions.” Examples of peripheral attraction emotions are physical attractiveness, sexually desirability, fun, personality, money, status, etc… There is nothing wrong with peripheral attraction emotions, but I do not consider them part of “love.” In fact, peripheral attraction emotions and love are sometimes directly at odds – love requires you to do what is best for the other person, whereas peripheral attraction emotions are fundamentally selfish. My peripheral attraction emotions may want me to make a woman my fuck buddy but if I “love” her, I may encourage her to settle with a guy who will commit to her. Similarly, my peripheral attraction emotions may prevent me from confronting a drug addict friend because I don’t want to ruin our fun, but real love would require me to do so. The peripheral attraction emotions are temporary, which is why conflating them with love has caused so much heartache in the modern world.My conception of love radically differs from pop culture love. Under my conception, there is no “falling” in and out of love. Love is purely a contract you enter into – after you sign on the dotted line you are in “love” and obligated forever. It is weighty and difficult. Mere pronouncements, promises, and feelings are not enough – love requires daily action. And you cannot love somebody until you have your own life together. Love is not a fun distraction from self-improvement – it is an integral part of it. A drug addicted loser who constantly needs handouts and help from others cannot “love” a woman because he is incapable of doing what is best for her.In some ways, my conception of love is unattainable because you can always become a better person and do a better job of doing what is best for the other person. But that’s ok – I would rather love be an unattainable ideal we struggle to reach than a goal we feel like we’ve accomplished.My version of love does not require self-immolation. If the other person cannot or will not commit to doing what is best for you, you are free to break the contract and stop loving them. In fact, you MUST break the contract. If your beloved is a lazy drug addict, they cannot do what is best for you, so they cannot love you, so you should not love them. My version of love actually requires a form of selfishness, where you focus on optimizing yourself first before you try to help others, because you cannot help others if you are ruining yourself. You cannot give if you have nothing to give. If “loving” somebody is diminishing you as a person, you are progressively becoming more unable to do what is best for your beloved.Some philosophers define love as “doing things for other people and asking for nothing in return,” which sounds nice, but I think that type of love is unrealistic and unsustainable. Also, subsidizing and encouraging bad behavior by somebody is not doing what is “best” for them – it is creating a monster.I do not intend my conception of love to be too harsh or rigid. I understand that people have problems in their life and it is wrong to leave somebody in their time of trouble or weakness. This is especially true with children. Sometimes you must tolerate bad behavior from children because they do not know better.But to determine whether you should break a love contract, you should ask yourself certain questions. Is your beloved is acting badly because of genuine difficulties, or because they are just a shitty person who doesn’t care about you? In other words, is your beloved going to get better if you help them or continue to be shitty? Is your love actually helping them or just enabling and encouraging their bad behavior? Are you doing all this stuff because it is rationally what is best for your beloved, or because you are in the grip of irrational emotions? Is your love for this person destroying you? Remember, their blood is no redder than yours, and their life is no more important than yours.A modern person might criticize my conception of love for ignoring emotion. I respond that the real love emotion is a very strong emotion, and the real love emotion coupled with the knowledge and feeling that the other party will keep their end of the contract will motivate you to keep the contract. Second, although the peripheral attraction emotions are not “part” of love, they are necessary for a healthy relationship, especially in the romantic context. You should not enter into the love contract with somebody you are not attracted to or do not like.The interplay between peripheral attraction emotions and the real love emotionAlthough peripheral attraction emotions are not technically part of love, they are incredibly important because human beings are apes and we have certain emotional and physical wants and needs. We need sex, we need food, we need shelter, and we need affection. If we do not get those things, it will be difficult for us to commit to loving somebody.A healthy conception of love would view peripheral attraction emotions as necessary preconditions that must be fulfilled so that the real love emotion can form. Peripheral attraction emotions are like a bridge connecting two people that allows ivy to grow from one person to another, the ivy being the real love emotion. If the bridge weakens or falls the ivy also usually goes with it, unless the ivy is very strong. The ivy wants to grow no matter what, so if there is no bridge to another person, the ivy will grow on some other structure, often in a twisted or bizarre way.However, the same way a cocaine addict cannot enjoy other parts of life if they are deprived of cocaine, people can become addicted to peripheral attraction emotions and ruin their ability to feel the real love emotion. For example, if a guy feels like he must have the hottest blonde at all times, he is naturally going to hop from woman to woman and never develop the real love emotion with any of them. Similarly, if a woman becomes addicted to rich men who buy her shit all the time, she will not be able to form the real love emotion because she will get bored of guys who stop spending money. Also, men will realize she’s just a gold digger and kick her to the curb when they find a cheaper, hotter hooker.Interestingly, the media and entertainment industry encourages us to become addicted to peripheral attraction emotions by bombarding us with images of beautiful people, huge mansions, celebrities, fabulous lifestyles, crazy porn, etc.... Yet movies and TV shows simultaneously shame people who are attracted to money, appearance, or type A men as “shallow,” while praising people who are attracted to stuff like personality (whatever that means) or shared interest in movies. Both messages are wrong: there is a room for attraction to appearance, financial stability, etc…, but one must not become addicted to those things, lest you constantly chase a stronger high.The mixed messages sent by pop culture creates the worst of all worlds: people become addicted to peripheral attraction emotions, yet simultaneously feel ashamed of their addiction, so they date or marry a person whom they are attracted to for the “right” reasons, and then chase their addictions on the side. For many, a vicious cycle develops - because people are starved of the real love emotion, they chase ever more extreme versions of the peripheral attraction emotions, which cause them to have even more difficulty obtaining and keeping the real love emotion.Ultimately, true love requires controlling the peripheral attraction emotions. Your wife will not be hot forever. Your kid will not be likable all the time. But the goal is to force your rational responsibilities and your real love emotion to overcome your peripheral attraction emotions, which are lower emotions.The scienceThe following is therefore a very rough sketch of the relevant science, with the caveat that I am not a scientist.Scientists have discovered many neurochemicals that are related to attraction and bonding between two humans, including serotonin (a neurotransmitter often associated with spiritual or mystical experiences – what your brain releases when you do psychedelic mushrooms), dopamine (a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure – what your brain releases when do cocaine, have sex, eat chocolate, etc…), adrenaline (a hormone that gives you energy), oxytocin (a powerful hormone released by men and women during orgasm which scientists believe is associated with feelings of attachment), vasopressin (a hormone that works with your kidneys to control thirst and has also been linked to feelings of attachment), testosterone (the male sex hormone), and estrogen (the female sex hormone). Many of these chemicals are associated with human “reward pathways” that are designed to make us feel good when we do something beneficial for our survival and reproduction. Of course, other, undiscovered reward pathway chemicals may exist.These chemicals, as you may have been observed, are mostly related to the peripheral attraction emotions, at least partly because even scientists’ view of love is influenced by pop culture. Most scientists probably do not even know about the concept of the “real love emotion” and even if they have, it would be difficult to link the existence of the aforementioned neurochemicals to this particular conception of love using scientific methods.A brief history of loveI present here a brief history of love. I make crazy overgeneralizations and oversimplifications (i.e., summarizing the entire Enlightenment in a sentence) to stay brief, so a real historian/philosopher would probably rip me a new butthole.When I say “people in traditional societies thought like X” I don’t mean that every single person in those societies thought like X – I mean that X was the general prevailing thought pattern and was enforced by the powerful people in society.I note that traditional societies did not create social rules by analyzing science, but rather by aggregating the life experiences and feelings of many people, observing subtle nuances of human behavior, creating general rules with this information, and then incorporation and synchronizing these rules into the tradition. This complex process allowed traditional rules to capture complex and subtle truths that science often cannot. This complexity, however, made traditional knowledge vulnerable: most members of the society could not rationally articulate why these rules were correct, and the younger generation were expected to unquestioningly accept the tradition without adequate explanation. An inadequately articulated and defined tradition is vulnerable, which is how modern and post-modern thinkers easily destroyed tradition by simply articulating sensible-sounding counter-arguments.In my history, I do what I call “back-conceptualizing” – I describe social phenomena in bygone eras using concepts that the people in those eras may not have used or even been aware of. Historians do this all the time – the Enlightenment, Dark Ages, and Renaissance are just labels that modern people created after the fact to help understand those periods.Love in traditional societiesMost traditional societies viewed love similar to how I view love – as a contract whose terms depended on the nature of the relationship. In a parent-child relationship, for example, the child traditionally had an obligation to obey the parent, and the parent had an obligation to take care of the child. In male-female relationships, the contract was formalized by marriage (most traditional societies did not allow pre-marital sex or even dating), and each party was obliged to remain faithful to the other. Fidelity in traditional societies often had a far stricter definition than in the modern world; in some societies women were not allowed to even speak to another man without the permission of their husband. The man was usually obligated to work and provide for the family, whereas the woman was obligated to take care of the home and the children and to obey the husband.These contracts were enforced by society if a woman was unfaithful to her husband, not only could her husband divorce her or punish her, the entire society would stigmatize her, leaving her a social outcast, sometimes on the verge of death. Sometimes adulterous women were killed. These rules were supposed to apply to men, but were often enforced unequally.Biblical love is the epitome of “love as a contract.” In the Bible, God enters into a covenant with the Israelite people. The word covenant just means contract. Each party to the covenant was bound by certain obligations, including the duty to love the other. God promises to love the Israelites and the Israelites promise to love God. This is clearly not pop culture love. How can one be “obligated” to love God emotionally when one cannot see, feel, or talk to God? And when God loves humanity, he clearly does feel emotional the same way a modern person feels “in love.” God doesn’t love people because they have a pretty smile or because they like Seinfeld. In the New Testament (a better translation of the ancient Greek title is actually “New Covenant”), the Old Testament covenant is replaced with a new, expanded covenant that includes all of humanity, but the “love” aspect is similar. Interestingly, God harshly punishes those he “loves” because he does what is best for them, not necessarily what they want him to do.Emotion was generally less important in traditional societies. Most people were expected to marry somebody that was considered “good” for them according to society’s rules. The match was often made or approved by third parties, and in some arranged marriages the parties had no say it all in choosing their partner. Once married, people were expected to stay in the marriage no matter what, even if feelings or circumstances changed. It was unacceptable to leave because you had “fallen” out of love.Because emotion was less important in traditional societies, people were often prohibited from marrying people in rival castes, tribes, classes, etc... The idea of a “soulmate” that transcended cultural lines did not exist. Poets in traditional societies often churned out poems portraying a more “modern” conception of love, but the elders in those societies prevented people from putting that mindset into action.Problems with traditional loveAlthough the traditional conception of love is similar to mine, love in traditional societies had serious problems. To ensure social stability, people were often matched for stupid reasons unrelated to the parties’ happiness or well-being like family alliances, social segregation, business reasons, etc... Traditional societies aimed for stability, so almost everybody was matched with somebody, even if they were unlikable and unattractive. The peripheral attraction emotions were largely ignored and many marriages were miserable, often from the very beginning.A defender of traditional marriage may argue that by obeying society’s elders, married couples would eventually develop the “right” feelings for each other. This may be true to some extent, but the truth is that some people will never like each other, no matter how “correct” their relationship is on paper.The traditional love contract was also often unclear, oppressive to the weaker party, and unfairly enforced. What happens if one person becomes an abusive, lazy, drug-addicted, asshole? Have they violated the contract or must the other party stay? Traditional societies often did not have answers for these questions, and usually erred on the side of keeping marriages together, implicitly accepting that many people would be miserable.In traditional societies men often abused their position of power by imposing unfair and oppressive contractual terms on women. Finally, because men were in power, they would often not enforce the contracts fairly, so, for example, a woman would be punished for adultery but a man would not. “Love as a contract” only works if the terms of the contract are fair, clearly understood, and enforced fairly, which was often not the case.Similarly, there is no enforcement mechanism for marriage vows, essentially making the institution of marriage an outdated relic of the past, like an old clock that decorates a room but no longer accurately tells the time. A few friends or family may shun a cheater because they see him or her as a bad person, but a cheater otherwise will generally maintain good standing in society and be able to date, find a job, etc... There are no legal consequences to cheating, and in fact, with the rise of “no fault” divorce, a person can cheat and still be legally awarded half of their spouse’s assets.Before you accuse me of being anti-man or anti-woman, I will note that unfair enforcement of relationship contracts is the result of a power imbalance. For example, in traditional societies, parents had disproportionate power in the parent-child relationship, so those contracts were often unfair and enforced arbitrarily. Children in traditional societies were often treated like slaves, and one of the innovations of Judaism and Christianity was to prohibit child sacrifice.The evolution of loveWestern civilization has a unique intellectual history, which led to a conception of “love” radically different from that of most traditional societies. I will briefly and simplistically summarize this evolution.In the Middle Ages, when Christianity had full ideological and political control in the West, a group of philosophers known as the “scholastics” began trying to justify Christianity with logic and rationality, often using ancient Greek philosophy to help their arguments. Most modern philosophers and respected intellectuals agree that the scholastic philosophers failed at “proving” religion rationally. No matter what you think of Christianity, you must admit that certain aspects of Christianity (god, heaven, angels, etc…) cannot be rationally proven because there are no indisputable “reasons” to accept their truth (remember rationality just means “with reason”). Although some scholastic philosophy was brilliant, much of it was absurd speculation, and the purportedly “rational” arguments were anything but. The joke about “arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” began as a knock against scholastic philosophers.The scholastic philosophers created an important legacy, however: by re-introducing and emphasizing logic and rationality in European philosophy, and allowing non-Christian philosophers to join the conversation, the scholastics set the stage for the Enlightenment (around 1715 to 1789). Enlightenment philosophers criticized Christianity and tradition, much of which was based on Christianity, in favor of “reason,” turning the tools of the scholastics against them. Most Enlightenment philosophers were nominally Christian, probably because Christianity still held political control, but their work was subversive and often bucked Christianity and tradition.Much of the Enlightenment, like most Western Philosophy, was a failure from a purely philosophical standpoint. Most of the “rational” arguments philosophers have made throughout history were not actually rational but rather influenced by their feelings, political and religious allegiances, accepted thought patterns of the time, and other unstated and sometimes subconscious assumptions. The Enlightenment was no different. Philosophers of all eras have been pretentious, arrogant snobs, but the Enlightenment philosophers were especially arrogant, anbelieved that they could safely throw any tradition in the trash if they could disprove it with their “rationality.” This Enlightenment tendency still exists in the modern world, and helps explain the horrific conception of love modern people have.The Romantic movementThe Enlightenment produced a lot of great shit like science, theories of democracy, etc… But human beings are emotional animals, so any philosophy that tries to base everything on reason will lose popularity. Just as the Enlightenment was a backlash against the irrationality of Christianity, the Romantic movement (around 1780 to 1850) was a backlash against the “over-rationality” of the Enlightenment. Romanticism started as a “way of feeling” expressed in art and literature, and was only later articulated by philosophers. The Romantics emphasized emotion, imagination, spontaneity and individualism. And not just regular emotion, but deep, powerful, and crazy emotion. One could even say that Romanticism represented human’s search for transcendence in an overly mechanized and rational world.Even though most people nowadays have no idea what the word “Romanticism” even means, the Romantic mindset has penetrated the modern consciousness so deeply that people don’t even realize there are other ways to think. In the “History of Western Philosophy” Bertrand Russell argues that Romanticism is the root of many of modern society’s worst tendencies–fake concern for the poor and oppressed, irrational rejection of tradition and morality, an unrealistic, idealized conception of reality, a rejection of practical things in favor of “beautiful” things, and worst of all, worship of wild emotions. Basically, the Romantic movement represents how far-left hipsters generally think. In art, the Romantics preferred crazy scenes of tall mountains, fearful precipices, sea storms, and according to Russell, “what is useless, destructive, and violent” to mundane, practical stuff like a lush meadow or fields of corn. In literature, Romantics rejected stories that could have happened to real people and instead focused on shit like ghosts, decayed castles, and pirates because they were only interested in shit that was “grand, remote, and terrifying.”The modern conception of loveModernity has combined the Enlightenment’s rejection of tradition and Romanticism’s embrace of wild emotion to create a completely nihilistic, irrational, impulsive conception of love. Movies, television shows, pop songs, popular novels, and even high-minded intellectuals and university professors constantly hammer this view into our heads to the point where people will shame you if you do not accept that the love is nothing more than a wild, uncontrollable emotion. The dominant conception of love is also irrational, based on an idealized conception of the world, and dismissive of any practical considerations – a legacy from the Romantic movement.In love stories in movies and TV, two people that are not right for each other according to practical considerations nevertheless “fall in love.” After they are united, the movie ends. In other words, the movie ends before we can see the parties actually try to love each other.The cycle of heartbreakBecause the modern world conflates “love” with peripheral attraction emotions, and relationships create no obligations, most people at least subconsciously know that the statement “I love you” is a temporary commitment at best and a lie at worst, subject to change when the person’s feelings change or when they find somebody they like more. A collective action problem exists in the modern world – nobody enforces love contracts, so nobody fully commits to anybody else out of fear they will get screwed. This vicious cycle causes people to act more and more selfish and insular.The following story happens to many modern people, unless they live in a religious community that forbids dating:In middle or high school, which are unregulated zoos of young apes acting horribly and frequently inflicting massive and lasting psychological damage on each other, boys and girls form crushes on each other. The low status boys and girls are repeatedly rejected and often form intense feelings of inferiority and resentment against the opposite sex. Unless they fix their issues, these people often become forever alone types, raging woman haters, extreme feminists, and all manner of weirdos. This resentment can develop anytime in life, but it is particularly dangerous when it happens in children, because children do not have the cognitive tools to rationally deal with these thoughts and feelings.The “high status” or attractive boys and girls, on the other hand, get into relationships, often with no adult supervision or even adult knowledge. These relationships are often deep and passionate because teenagers have wild hormones and have never felt these emotions before. They also have not yet built defense mechanisms to getting hurt or rejected. This is why people often say your “first love” is the strongest.However, because middle schoolers and high schoolers are stupid and immature, and not bound by any obligations, one party almost always ends up cheating or breaking the other’s heart. The pain of being rejected by your first love is extremely traumatic, causing most people to consciously or subconsciously decide to not “love” again and to reject anybody who implicitly or explicitly offers love or a deep emotional connection.The real love emotion, however, is subconscious and can develop on its own, even if one does not seek a deep emotional connection. People’s fear of love creates a bizarre paradox: we erect a “love shield” to repel love, but we lower the love shield when people do not claim to love us, and because our shield is down, we subconsciously form both peripheral attraction emotions and the real love emotion for the emotionally distant person. In other words, we are attracted to emotionally distant people because they promise to not create feelings of attachment, but we form feelings of attachment to them anyway. This is partly why so many men and women are obsessed with people who do not care about them at all. Relationships are a selfish exercise for most: we choose somebody we are attracted to but who makes clear they want nothing from us, we project our own feelings of love and attraction on them, and then we run away if they ask for anything in return.Furthermore, even though we try to repress the desire to feel love, the real love emotion cannot be destroyed and will express itself in bizarre and unhealthy ways. The real love emotion is often directed by the “soulmate fantasy,” which is the pop culture myth that every person is entitled to “fall in love” with their “soulmate,” who is “perfect” for them and thrills all of their emotions. Strangely, nobody’s soulmate is ever a fat, lazy, drug addict – don’t those people need soulmates too?The “soulmate fantasy” is a selfish lie. When we feel deep attraction to somebody, the soulmate fantasy, coupled with our desire to feel the real love emotion, convinces us that our newly found “soulmate” must feel the same way about us. Remember, movies never depict a situation where a person’s soulmate doesn’t like them! Despite its absurdity, the soulmate fantasy provides an ecstatic emotional high which causes us to develop insane, bizarre fantasies about our future with somebody we barely know. The pop culture myth of “love at first sight,” provides further justification for projecting our wildest fantasies onto a stranger, even if that person has not invested in us at all.When we feel like somebody is our soulmate, we begin to develop the real love emotion, even when there is no rational reason to. This is why people become stalkers. The person being stalked has not shown adequate interest, yet the stalker has created a fantasy in his or her own head that they “belong” together. As you can imagine, most stalkers are lonely and starved of the real love emotion.The idea of a soulmate is insane nonsense, so people are constantly disappointed, causing them to become depressed and lonely, which causes them to seek their soulmate with even more vigor. Many people are deep in this vicious cycle, causing them to instantly act needy and strange in any kind of relationship or interaction with people they are attracted to.Pop culture portrays love, relationships, sex, and dating as fun, lighthearted recreation, which causes people to not take these subjects seriously or think deeply or rationally about them. This lack of seriousness is extremely dangerous, because these subjects literally touch our deepest and most primal emotions, and can cause massive psychological damage and pain if they go wrong.Go to my website: http://www.woujo.com via /r/dating_advice

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