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writingstoraes · 1 year

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charles' playlist 🎶

pairing: charles leclerc/fem!reader

type: instagram imagine/social media au

notes: not proofread and not revised so please expect errors hehehe please lmk what u think by replying or messaging and if u wanna be part of my taglist! <3 decided to add fans' reactions through tweets! this is a bit long ig?

about: in celebration of your birthday, charles dedicates a song to you every instagram post.

charles_leclerc

liked by isahernaez, susie_wolff, carlossainz55, and 1,894,341 others

charles_leclerc The happiest of birthdays to the love of my life. Today, the world became an even better place because it gained someone so kind and loving - you. For one of your many gifts, I've picked out a few songs to better encapsulate the way I feel about you and just how thankful I am I got to live in the same life as you.

1. She Chose Me - Bruno Major

"Every night I thank the lucky stars above me, someone as beautiful as she could freely love me and she really loves me. From time to time I ask myself, why was it I and nobody else? The most beautiful girl that I'd ever seen and she chose me."

Eternally grateful I get to call you mine. Despite the highs and lows we have battled together, you chose me - how privileged am I?

tagged: yourusername

yourusername CHARLES????@?@ I LOVE YOU WHAT IS THIS

mercfan WHAT THE HELL U CANT JUST SURPRISE US LIKE THIS

princecarlos I KNOW oh my god hes so fucking sweet 😭😭😭😭😭

lewishamilton No don't do this I think I'm going to cry (by the way, Happy Birthday, Y/N!)

yourusername you and me both, lew 😔 thank you! say hi to roscoe for me please

lilymhe happy birthdayyyy, my favorite girl 🎉 see you soon!

yourusername thank you, my lily :(( we will drop by soon!

charles_leclerc

liked by maxverstappen, danielricciardo, pierregasly, and 1,234,110 others

charles_leclerc 2. Baby I'm Yours - Arctic Monkeys

"Baby, I'm yours and I'll be yours until the sun no longer shines, yours until the poets run out of rhyme. In other words, until the end of time."

Okay this one I admit I just liked the melody but hey, the lyrics are for sure accurate, yes? I remember when we sang this at 3AM because we both couldn't sleep. But it couldn't be more right - I'm yours and I always will be, for as long as you'd have me.

tagged: yourusername

c16c55 oh my god i cannot do this today will i ever find love like this

leclercsainz Gonna go sleep on a highway

pascale_leclerc Happiest Birthday, my dear Y/N! Come over soon when you can ❤️

yourusername we will! i miss you all 🤍

yourusername there's no one else id rather sing karaoke with at 3am 🤍 je táime, amour! also, are you kidding? im keeping you forever 🧘‍♀️

charles_leclerc

liked by pierregasly, arthurleclerc, isahernaez, and 1,459,340 others

charles_leclerc 3. Beyond by Leon Bridges

"I'm scared to death that she might be it, that the love is real, that the shoe might fit. She might just be my everything and beyond, space and time in the afterlife,"

You are everything to me, chérie. When I first realized that I loved you, it shook me to my core. I was terrified of how greatly I felt for you; but here you are, the greatest thing that ever happened to me. You were the leap of faith I will always be thankful for and the only sure thing amongst all uncertainties. Have the happiest of birthdays ❤️

tagged: yourusername

yourusername i am out of words, i love you so so so much, my favorite person 🤍

charles16clerc YEAH WTF charles im gonna need you to pay for my therapy

carlossainz55 Never knew you were such a romantic, mate 😆 happy birthday, Y/N! Isa misses you!

charles_leclerc Only for her actually

yourusername thanks, carlos! tell her to come visit me soon <333

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tagging: @slytherheign <333 mwah

notes: this is my first time trying out putting tweets! how was it so far? hehe lmk ur thoughts!

#charles leclerc insta au #charles leclerc x female reader #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x you #formula 1 #f1 imagine #formula 1 insta au #formula 1 social media au #f1 fluff #f1 fanfic #charles leclerc #f1 x reader #f1 x oc #f1 x you #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc f1 #charles leclerc fluff

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saltyfruitbat · 8 months

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Itoshi Sae imagine

no I wasn’t gone for long 😭 👀

Imagine being the childhood friend of the Itoshi brothers, your the same age as Sae and you’ve known them for so long now. You developed a crush for the older Itoshi but you didn’t bother telling him about your feelings in fear of ruining your friendship with both of them. Somehow Rin found out about your crush on his older brother, he didn’t mind it, in fact he was happy since he saw you as an older sibling.

Eventually he went to Spain, you both still had contact with each other but due to his busy schedule and your school life, you both barely contact each other. He still saw what you would post on your socials. He would also send you gifts and you would send him some as well. This caused you to fall even harder for him, and he started liking you even more than he already did.

Once he had come back from Spain, you could tell he had changed. You didn’t think too much of it, since he probably went through so much pressure to be better than others. One day he had asked you on a date, you agreed only thinking it was a friendly date. You went to the park, bought ice cream, walked around and sat on the swings, where eventually you both watched the sunset, and held hands.

That’s where he had confessed, revealing that he had loved you since you were both kids.

Now being Sae’s love and significant other means…..

Him doing his normal routine, not wanting to wake you up, he works out, and comes back home.

He showers, and lays in bed with you again, kissing your forehead, and just relaxes again.

He waits for you to wake up, snuggling into you as you wake up.

While you did your normal routine, he would make breakfast for the both of you.

After breakfast, you guys would walk around, stare at the ocean, walk on the sand.

It’s domestic, it’s normal, something that he enjoys and he hopes to keep doing it with you.

When he’s training, during his breaks he’ll call you.

He’ll ask about your day, asking if you ate already and if you wanted him to buy you anything.

He gets home, he’s exhausted but he greets you with a small smile and a twinkle in his eyes as he stares at you.

Overall I say you have it pretty good with this redhead beauty, all you have to do now is make him and his brother go to therapy.

I wrote so long ago 😭 sorry if it doesn’t make sense, I’ll be sure to revise it later.

#Blue lock x reader #itoshi sae x reader #sae itoshi x reader

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lucienne-thee-librarian · 8 months

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Sandman fic recs for Underrated Characters and Ships: Lucienne Edition (part 1)

This is a non-exhuastive list of my personal favorite Lucienne-centric and Morphienne fics and series I've found so far. If you can think of any others I've forgotten don't hesitate to add on!

Okay first off: my friend @pratchettfan87 has written a lovely fic I'm helping beta where Lucienne and her comic counterpart meet and bond and you need to go read it rn You Are The Light That Guides the Way. It's also a great exploration of the events of Sandman from the perspective of both librarians. It's not complete but it's rapidly getting put together so pls go give her encouragement and feedback so you can keep seeing more if you want! I'm gonna try to roughly go in order from most to least nsfw as we go down. Part 2 will contain other ships like Gault x Lucienne and Calliope x Lucienne.

Gen fics

And the Darkness Hummed by @navigatorwrongway - one of my all time absolute favorite Lucienne fics in this fandom, period that delves into her backstory before she even met Dream and takes you on a Journey through her life and it's. Mwah. It's art

nosso amor (our love) by marveling_under_an_open_sky is an achingly tender exploration of Lucienne's trauma and her getting comforted for once.

For Morphienne

Literally everything @cosmictapestry (aka cosmicjourney on AO3) has ever written is an instant recommend from me. Seriously. I can't think of one single thing she's written I didn't like. Heed the tags, but if you're old enough to be interacting with the NSFW stuff and it's your thing, do yourself a favor and dive into their delicious Morphienne smut drabbles on tumblr and the longer stuff on AO3. Go do it right now. It can be emotional and painful but all very well written. And his We Divinity series is heartbreaking and beautiful and with all the characters spot-on and the writing poetry like you've never seen.

and take thee up thy nurse's fee by stellerssong, a selkie!Dream au with wonderful atmosphere

It's About Old Friends by JerseyDragons is sweet and funny and a spot on take on a queerplatonic/sort of romantic version of their dynamic.

Wingmanning for Fun and Profit by unseenbox - is an absolutely adorable look at a Morphienne love confession from Matthew's POV.

Jewel by @softest-punk is super lovely and sweet, pure quality fluff.

Stellerssong's red moon series is a really interesting werewolf au of not just Morphienne but also Corintheus. It's on a slow burn but it's definitely worth it imo.

Also stellerssong's OTHER series "through endless revisions" is just a fantastic take on Daniel!Dream adjusting to his new life and everyone who knew and loved him having to do the same, but the specifically Morphienne standouts are as follows: please come back and be (just a little bit), eutropic, a pillar I am upright , room for one more taste , and for just to suffer that hurt. All of these are well worth the read, most but room for one more taste have angst and smut involved as well as sharp writing and characterization. Seriously can't recommend these enough, these are some of the best of the lot and that's saying something.

Dreams Written in Sand by cunticuss very slow burn but lovely and feels very them.

Woolgathering by sunsorbit is ANOTHER slow burn series full of wonderful characterization and pining and includes the library as an observer and character in itself which I'm always a sucker for.

How Vibrant the Color by unnecessary - unfffff. This is peak poetic emotional therapy dream sex. One of my favorites.

Gold by MDWG aka the most tender sex imaginable.

Contrapposto by stuntmuppet - pure smut. My only complaint is how short it is.

#the sandman #lucienne #morphienne #sandman fic recs #lucienne appreciation squad

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ari-kari · 1 month

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hey. gnarly gender stuff below. wouldn’t recommend reading if you are triggered by gender doubt, detransition, sexuality, negative body talk, and surgical malfeasance. oh and also light gore. sorry it’s going to get kind of weird

so I’ve been quietly stepping away from id’ing as trans for a while now. which is a subject that probably needs its own post, all things considered. but there’s one aspect of my (de)transition that is causing an enormous amount of stress in my life, and I’m genuinely not sure how to handle it. so I figured blabbing about it here might help me get some clarity.

anyways. let’s talk titties.

my first top surgery in 2022 was botched. dog ears, massive janky nipples, bizarre incision site choices - it was a whole deal. I got a revision last year (from the same surgeon lmao) that fixed a lot of things, but unfortunately it made other problems significantly worse. So while aesthetically things are much better than they used to be, I still consider myself to be botched. I haven’t taken my top off in public since it happened, and I don’t see myself doing so any time soon.

For a long time, I assumed that this was my only problem; some asshole small town doctor had messed up my results, and now I felt uncomfortable in my body. But it slowly began to dawn on me that things were more complicated than that. Because when I imagined myself being intimate with someone with perfect, stellar top surgery results…I still felt horrible. To the point where, even with nipple prosthetics, I haven’t felt comfortable enough to have sex since my revision 9 months ago.

So now we get into the crux of the problem. Which is this - I do not feel desireable without breasts. Not to myself, and not to others. And to be honest, I knew this would be a problem even before I got the surgery, but I went through with it anyways. Because desireability is small potatoes when it comes to the horrors of gender dysphoria, right? In my mind, I was being vain to put my intimacy concerns over the pursuit of my “true self”. Everyone with dysphoria had to “fix” it eventually - I couldn’t just not get top surgery.

But like…fuck, dude. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten top surgery.

I prefer my body without breasts. It feels much more “me”, especially when I’m alone. But I don’t feel hot. I don’t feel fuckable, or beautiful, or attractive. And I’ve been trying to chip away at it in therapy, but I haven’t really put much of a dent in it, and it’s bringing up some really hard questions that I no longer feel capable of ignoring.

Honestly? My confidence in my sexuality is a big fucking deal to me. I’m someone for whom intimacy of all kinds is really important. And even though I know that there are PLENTY of people who find flat chests attractive, I personally do not. And it’s seriously starting to fuck with my head.

Idk man. Insurance is able to cover reconstruction for me due to a federal loophole, but there’s no way in hell they’re going to fix my jacked-up nipples on their own. And I’m seriously beginning to question if a little gender dysphoria might be worth the relief of finally feeling confident in my own skin again. I have a consultation appointment in June, in either case. So in the mean time, I just have to…figure this out. No biggie.

Anyways, that’s my spiel. I’ve been wearing prosthetics for a while now and tolerating them fairly well, but I recognize that having something physically attached to you is a whole other ball game. So we’re just gonna keep on trucking and see what happens 🫠🫠🫠 either way I have a funny feeling that the “perfect” answer I’ve been seeking to this problem does not exist.

#personal #gender dysphoria #detransition #body horror #body dysmorphia #i need to sleep lmao #also obligatory ‘my detransition story is not meant as an indictment of the trans movement as a whole’ etc #mental health

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aquamoonastrology · 1 year

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Mercury Retrograde In Taurus: April 21st - May 14th, 2023

How will Mercury Retrograde affect your sign? Understand that mercury retrograde is a time to look things over in your life. Possible changes need to be made regarding these areas in your life below:

Aries Rising♈️ : revising Values, finances, what you consider beautiful, possibly selling possessions, relaxing your standards or raising, changing how you care for yourself and others.

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Taurus Rising ♉️ : self-image, rebranding, revising investments (personal and financial), may question how people view you, change in attitude, beware of being impulsive.

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Gemini Rising♊️ : revising your spirituality, realizing self-sabotaging ways, isolation, being open to new spiritual practices, ending a spiritual practice, seeking out spiritual guidance (beware of frauds), avoid substance abuse/alcohol abuse, mental health.

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Cancer Rising ♋️: revising connections, networking, friendships, hopes and dreams, goals, group projects, possible push towards what you want to achieve.

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Leo Rising ♌️ : revising career, money, status/popularity, may be presented with a decision to move forward in your desired career, coming to a realization that a certain career or business venture that isn't for you, public image, watch your actions and words.

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Virgo Rising♍️ : revising your belief systems, schooling, legal systems, pursuing teaching, interest in astrology, contemplating the meaning of life.

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Libra Rising♎️ : revising your intimacy, shared resources, how a transformation can help you, exploring the darkest areas in your mind, shedding those dark areas to be born again, therapy?

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Scorpio Rising♏️ : Revising relationships, hardships in relationships/marriage, divorce, being cautious about business deals, business partners may revel something to you, rocky friendships.

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Sagittarius Rising ♐️: revising, your daily routine, health scares, taking health more seriously, career changes, work ethic, frustration with changes, counseling/therapy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------Capricorn Rising♑️ : revising how you express your creativity, frustrations with children, pregnancy scare, old sex partners showing up, sneaky links, self-expression, finding your true creative spark.

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Aquarius Rising♒️ : revising family life, changes in the home life, moving homes (be careful), creating a quiet space in your home to think, deep cleaning, new appliances/technology, possibly family gatherings - somebody spills a family secret, touchy subjects surrounding family.

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Pisces Rising♓️ : revising how you communicate, possible problems with neighbors/landlord, communication with those you haven't spoken to in your community, beef with your siblings, reconnecting with a sibling you haven't spoken to.

#astro notes #mercury retrograde #astrology #astro observations #mercury in taurus #mercury #rising signs

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sidewalkchemistry · 10 months

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@mosskiss said: I’m thinking about studying herbal medicine do you have any accessible books you recommend?

Ah sure. Herbalism is both a science and an art. No two herbalists practice in just the same way because the thinking processes & healing philosophies differ from person to person. So, I can recommend a few beginner-friendly books (though some are dense) which I personally found very useful in my own journey.

(Normally, I am primarily a book learner. But, as guided by my herbal coursework, I was encouraged to also learn about the herbs through direct experience and studying a variety of traditions & other herbalists. Herbalism is not properly studied when you just experience it on paper, I realized. So, I would recommend a similar thing for beginners: learn botany, plant identification, forgaging, gardening, medicine making, safety precautions, how to research herbs properly, and different traditional medicine systems [such as Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Unani-Tibb, Caribbean Bush Medicine, Western Herbalism, etc. It's especially best to understand how a certain herb was used on the land which it's native to]. Podcasts and articles can be good resources too. Most of all, deeply testing and experiencing herbs one-by-one is crucial in my view).

Here's my list:

Common Herbs for Natural Health by Juliette de Baïrcli Levy

Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide

Making Plant Medicine by Richie Cech

The Herbal Medicine Maker's Handbook: A Home Manual by James Green

The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Intelligence in the Direct Perception of Nature by Stephen Harrod Buhner

Renegade Beauty by Nadine Artemis

Medicinal Herbalism by David Hoffman

Natural Therapy for Your Liver by Christopher Hobbs

Adaptogens: Herbs for Strength, Stamina, and Stress Relief by David Winston & Steven Maimes

Herbal Healing for Women by Rosemary Gladstar

The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism by Matthew Wood

Evolutionary Herbalism by Sajah Popham

The Earthwise Herbal Repertory: The Definitive Practitioner's Guide by Matthew Wood

The Mucusless Diet Healing System by Professor Arnold Ehret (Annotated, Revised, and Edited by Prof. Spira)

Heal Thyself for Health and Longevity by Queen Afua

The Detox Miracle Sourcebook by Dr. Robert Morse

Botany Illustrated: Introduction to Plants, Major Groups, Flowering Plant Families by Janice Glimn-Lacy and Peter B. Kaufman

You won't regret gaining knowledge about the plants 🌼🌱✨ I do wish you great things

#herbalism #herbal medicine #self healing #holistic leveling up #leveling up #book recommendations #books #folk herbalism #energetic herbalism #food centric herbalism #medicinal herbalism #herbs #sidewalkchemistry

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ichirukilover · 6 months

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I closed the door to Bl/each after the tragedy of 6/86 and briefly opened a window to LA, because well that pair is my weakness and it made me laugh how treacherously I/R it was.

So when weeks ago I saw a beautiful I/R fanart on Tik Tok (The anime came back, so the algorithm decided it was a good idea to torture me), and the response to a comment that said "They should have ended up together "was "READ THE MANGA", I was baffled. I mean, what did that mean? had I read a fake manga all those years and the "real manga" appeared Da Vinci Code-style after 2016? Was it all a Jump conspiracy? Have we been duped all this time?

That piqued my curiosity, so I wandered around several sites, reading publications from the "correct/canon/real manga" point of view; and well, you'll see even worse things the bible says.

Here are my favorites:

"The I/H was evident from the beginning, just read chapter 0": yes, because a one-shot that is a sketch of the general idea of a manga, that goes through many revisions and rewrites is absolutely determinant in the development of the main manga, and seriously, what exactly is the evidence?

"HM arc is the ultimate proof of I/H, he went to rescue her and even came back from the dead for her": well, so did her other friends and even R/enji and R/ukia, maybe they were all in love with her too. And about the resurrection...just...never mind.

"I/H are perfect for each other" Here I could do a whole essay from a psychological point of view that proves that it is an absolute fallacy and was more than clear in the FB arc, in real life they wouldn't work and would be a toxic couple. And God knows at least that boy needs therapy.

"O***ime looks like Ma/saki" * Bombastic side eye. Criminal, offensive side eye *

"O***ime deserves I/chigo”: Oh, so he was some kind of trophy for being a good girl, so it wasn't enough to objectify her, they also do the same with the boy.

"Ru/kia was a shinigami and I/chigo was a human, and she's much older than him, their relationship was impossible." *Everything but the rain entered the chat*.

"I/H fought together against Y/wach": And we all know how well they (he) did, right?

"W/D/k/A/L/Y": *sigh* that's what it looks like when you try to fix a mess and fail miserably.

"W/D/k/A/L/Y's scribble": ...

"Anime invented IR": The studio simply pushed something that was already implicit in the original material and they knew it would sell more, it's basic marketing. Most of us knew what was filler and what wasn't (rolls eyes).

And there definitely wasn't a parallel manga that magically made sense of that ending. What a disappointment.

And I/R are the delusional and lacking in compressive reading? It's so much easier to say you just don't like people ship I/R, instead of sending them to read the manga or giving lazy arguments. Pathetic.

This was long, but I just needed to vent or something, because I honestly found the whole situation absolutely hilarious.

My English is broken, so I hope I have been understood.

PS: So in my delusional mind I/R is right now enjoying his honeymoon on the beach *wink**wink*.

Blessings.

As someone that didn't leave after the ending and has seen all these "amazing points" take form and basically became the classic "IH and pro ending dudebro agenda" list, let me tell you, I was and still am baffled too. No matter how many times I read them, I still get shocked at how some really believe that bunch of BS, or better they keep repeating it untill they'll believe it.

You adressed them in a simple but direct and straight to the point way, I don't even need to add anything to what you said, agree to all of it, wait lol well maybe I could add the the pilot chapter lit has In0ue de0d at the end of it but what do we know, that doesn't seem to matter to them lol it doesn't have to make sense smh

In our delusional mind that ichiruki honeymoon on the beach is so vivid and real... I wonder why lmao

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thaticonicgirl · 1 year

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How do I overwrite an old story that was passed down from my mom to me? I grew up hearing constantly my dad was never cared for us, never made enough effort, and my mom was constantly disappointed saying he never put us first. This was drilled into me my entire life. I have literally replayed the same situation in every relationship with men where I feel the man is not making enough effort and I am constantly disappointed. I’m at the age where all my friends are starting to settle down and I am so over feeling this way. It always starts off so beautiful with guys but defaults 90% of the time with this story. I had therapy, I rebuilt my relationship with my dad but this is deep within my subconscious. If you have any advice tips would appreciate, thank you!

Hey there! I understand your situation cause something similar happened to me, I grew up having my mom telling me the same things about my dad and every time I met a man and things started to go downhill I used to think that it was because all of them were the same, but then I understood that what was happening to me was nothing more than a reflection of my inner thoughts about men, because I was constantly saying and even unconsciously thought that they were gonna disappoint me just like my dad. So what I did was revision, it really helped me and I think it's a good option to get rid of these old stories, I could suggest if you want and if you didn't do it yet to go back and change the scenario of your mom telling you all those things about your dad, and if you want you can also do it with the stories of the people you dated and think as if those happened in the way you want and simply stick to the new stories, or you could also (if necessary) start affirming that you are healed from that, that you're no longer dealing with those thoughts, that you don't want them to come back into your reality and that you only want the good things to manifest in your reality. Your sp's behaviours are all what you've been thinking about them, so if you keep affirming that they're not making enough effort and you're constantly disappointed by them then it'll most likely to continue to be that way. Your subconscious is what creates but your conscious thoughts are what feeds the subconscious. So if you're consistently not addressing the negative thought/negative assumption with a good one you'll continue to perpetuate it. Of course I'm not judging you cause I know it's not easy cauae I've been there, but now that you know about the law you can revise it, affirm and make that belief go away. Hope this helps

#law of assumption #neville goddard #revision #answered #loa

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thelittolpinkstudent · 3 months

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hello, hello! today was a beautiful day on campus and i got to do some really fun things today, so let’s get into it!

what i did today:

✅ had my german quiz! i think it went pretty well, as there were only a few parts i wasn’t sure about (i forgot the verb “to drive” so i said “use a car” instead oops) but i think i will still survive 💪

✅ i walked over to therapy, but my session got cancelled last minute since my therapist had an emergency dentist appointment and couldn’t make it back to campus in time, which honestly i didn’t mind because i had some work to do

✅ completed my german homework (we did end up learning a new concept after the quiz, very similar to other german grammar concepts)

✅ revised an opening for one of my short stories and wrote a new one for an assignment

✅ read three chapters of an ethnography for cultural anthropology and answered questions based on the reading

✅ wrote out a really basic idea generation for an upcoming essay due in a couple of weeks

✅ finally was granted access to my campus’ room scheduler!

✅ went on a walk with my friend to scout out potential rooms for club meetings

✅ sent in a room scheduling request! i’m really hoping the optimal room will be given to us

✅ went on another walk with my friend to enjoy the nice weather

✅ had dinner with my friends

✅ made a little design on canva for my club’s instagram page

✅ went to go see a dance concert! it was so good!!!! it’s incredible to see all of the talented choreographers and performers we have on my college campus, and because i participate in dance clubs and classes, i actually knew a lot of the performers too. it was really cool to see their names in the program. the whole thing, lighting, costumes, music, choreography, were all amazing and i’m hoping to audition for dance performances in the fall so i can be a part of that experience :)

plan for tomorrow:

k-pop club meeting (valentine’s themed!)

grocery shopping (i ran out of cereal 😭)

my first d&d session!

i finished a lot of my work today, so i think i’ll give myself a little break and worry about the rest of next week’s work next week. all of my work is completed up until wednesday, so i have plenty of time to get a few more things done during the week.

i hope you all have a great rest of your day and sleep well! do something nice for yourself this weekend :) see you monday!

#studyblr #study aesthetic #study blog #study motivation #studyspo #college #university #productivity #spring 24

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tealenko · 1 year

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WIP -Sleep Cycle

I haven't written anything in a month, I wake up today and boom: a whole chapter.

To be fair, I've been reading a lot (someone help me for I'm in the Queen's Gambit vortex once again T-T) so... I've been inspired to write... But not my usual stuff soooooooo...

Here's a wip of the first chapter of my post-post-ME3 fic lol (it's in that point where calling this a wip is a strech... But I still have to revise it for mistakes so, technically, it's still a work in progress)

I think @sillyliterature tagged me for a wip (among many things, which I'm doing btw... love to do them, I just lack the time sometimes XDDD) And as always, thanks a lot for the tag <3 <3 <3

Okay, I'll shut up now XDDDDDDDDDDDD

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Through Hell and Back series -> [link] A Chance at a Happy Ending - Ch.1 Sleep Cycle (WIP)

All her body aches.

That’s usually a literary sentence used as a hiperbole to get quickly to the point of view that an author wants to convey.

Nevertheless, in this case it’s not only true, but it’s also been true for many years now.

No matter how well they resembled her after Alchera. No No matter how well they resembled her after the Citadel, after the war. The countless hours of doctors, training and therapy are only successful at keeping her alive, for it was their main objective they ever had, to keep her alive. No one stopped to think about the pain.

She turns again in her bed. And again. And again.

Every position hurts a different part of her body.

So she turns one more time.

Carefully, of course. She’s always careful in her moments for, no matter how bad it hurts, it would be worse for her to wake up her bed companion.

Watching his sleep is even therapeutic in itself, which usually marks the position she finally chooses after hours of turning around on the right side of their bed, when the morning sun is starting to rise and there’s enough light in her room to be able to see something.

In desperation, she closes her eyes for a second, sighs and says to herself: if I’m not going to sleep… I should choose at least the better (sight).

So she turns one last time, completely ignoring the jaw dropping Vancouver sunrise that’s always featured through every window in their bedroom, and rests all her weight on the right side of her body, despite being the position that hurts her the most, and just stays there.

Frozen for what seems hours instead of minutes, staring at the man that sleeps next to her and trying her best to control her breathing.

God… He’s stupidly beautiful.

She thinks inside her head.

It’s not always that sentence, but it always conveys the same feeling. A mix of adoration and disbelief that masterfully hits her feelings without a fault.

After keeping the posture for a while, the pain starts to ease. Not because it gets better, but she starts to forget about it.

That’s another literary cliché for you. She mumbles inside her head, but that doesn’t make it less real for her.

Because, despite the fact that it is indeed an overused plot in thousands of novels and dramas, there’s no point denying the truth.

The truth being: she loves him so much everything else disappears.

She laughs in disbelief.

He mumbles something in his sleep, probably about her, but he keeps sleeping nonetheless.

Even after so many years, she still doesn’t believe it.

There’s always people who don't believe in true love, or just in love at all. There’s people who idealize it too much, looking for something that does not exist.

And then, there’s Mio, who always thought it existed, for she had seen it many times, but never expected she’d be able to deserve it, nor to find it.

And yet… Here we are.

She stares at Kaidan while pain fades, replaced little by little by the deep and increasing beats of her heart against her chest, by the intense breathing that fills her lungs every few seconds and by the many memories she treasures of him, flooding her mind and soul to make her forget about anything else.

The travel usually starts at the first time they met, always dedicating a second to laugh at her oblivious past self, who had no idea this is where the road was leading all along.

He blushes when I flirt…

She remembers thinking back on her first days aboard the old Normandy, before Saren and the reapers, before the council and the specters, back when her life, complicated and damaging as it was, still had a resemblance to something she could process and understand.

He’s cute when he blushes like that.

So she kept flirting with him.

And, as her life started more and more convoluted, as the few reasons she had to smile and keep going started to fade, and the weight of the entire galaxy (reacaía) on her shoulders, the flirting became first a distraction, then a routine, and later on, a trap on it own.

She cannot pinpoint exactly when her heart decided to surrender to what initially was only a pastime, but she still remembers the moment she realized her mind was no longer in control of her actions.

She can almost see it, as it was yesterday, and although she can no longer recall after which mission it was, she knows it was after a mission.

Chucked her equipment in record time, showered as fast as able and, still with her hair wet, maid it to the less lit area of the common space of the ship, where Kaidan always was, keeping himself busy with maintenance and repairs to distract himself from the many noises of the Normandy.

She liked when he stopped working right away the moment he noticed her presence, knew he was full with anticipation for the few seconds that he could spend with her outside of work, and that day wasn’t any different.

The focus of their conversation has been lost in the forest of her memories for a while now, but the end of it, she knows, is scorched to her soul in a way that will be impossible to forget.

Kaidan smiled at her, and she lost track of everything. It wasn’t the first time he used that power against her, but it was the first time she noticed. And, just like she does now as he sleeps, he found herself staring at him for a few seconds, before she was able to excuse herself and walk away.

Didn’t make it too far though.

In retrospect, she should have gone to her quarters, but to be fair, she wasn’t able to think that much at the moment. So she just got as far as possible, to the stairs that led to the main deck and, before losing control from her own mind, she made sure that she was alone.

And just like that, she realized. But how couldn’t she.

Her breathing had never been so intense, her heart had never beat so far and, to be honest with herself, the only reason her legs hadn’t failed her is because she was resting all her weight against the wall in order to avoid falling to the ground.

“What the f…”

She never finished that sentence, for she already knew what was happening, despite the fact that her mind was a few seconds behind in the process of being aware of it.

But the truth was that, after many flirts, after many smiles, her meetings with Kaidan had gone from casual to intense little by little and, what was once a routine, now was the only thing she looked up to in her entire day.

It felt good, felt right, to spend time with him. And, by the time she realized she could no longer call it anything as remotely as casual as mere friendship, it was already too late to run away.

That was her M.O. If you cannot kill it, run.

There’s a reason she had survived up to that date, afterall.

Nevertheless, there she was, captured, against all odds, by her own trap.

And here she is now, lying in their bed, still mesmerized by Kaidan, even after so many years later, the same way as she was the first time.

She gets lost in her memories of him for a while.

When they met, when she walk up in the medbay and found him next to her after touching the beacon, when she realized he had fallen for her, that she had fallen for him, the night before Ilos, the way they stared at each other in between missions, when she got to see him again in Vancouver, when he came back to her crew… When he came back to her.

The confessions, the I love you, the i’m the luckiest man alive.

A tear falls as she lands in the moment when she woke up in a hospital, after the end of the war, and found him there, sleeping by her side as he does now.

Always at his side.

Always.

And the always hits her soul, as it always does, and with all the good comes the bad to invade her mind.

The don’t leave me behind, the many moments she thought she’d lose him, the medbay of the Normandy after Mars where, this time around, they switched places so that the universe could torture her with the idea of a life where Kaidan is no longer alive. Alchera, and the look of his eyes when she ordered to leave, mortified by it till the last second as she suffocated alone in space, with the unavoidable force of the planet pulling from her.

She takes a pause, a second to breath, but her mind swifts now to different kind of torture, sinking her even more into the darkness of her memories.

Horizon.

She no longer minds the confrontation with Kaidan, no longer curses him for his words, no longer curses herself for her replies, nor for the way she broke her hand after hitting the wall in anger and anguish.

What still gets her, it’s the before.

An eternity of finding frozen people while desperately searched for him, looking in every single nook and corner not knowing what it would be worse, finding him frozen ot not finding him at all, mortified by the fact that there were her best options, praying to every deity she didn’t believe so that she wouldn’t find him dead in every corner she took and every room she entered.

The fear of losing him in Horizon tortures her to this very day, and brings along with it the pain of everyone else she’s already lost.

She closes her eyes, and begs for it to walk away.

Big mistake.

As if she was Alice, falling through the rabbit hole to Wonderland, she falls into the darkness, surrounded by her well known forest of personal memories and horrors.

The whispers, the voices, the regret. Everything in this hopeless realm joins forces to bring her back to the ground, and the many voices of those she’s lost during her life, fill the air that surrounds her without leaving spare time.

The ones she’s lost under her command at the Normandy are more prominent at the beginning, usually followed by the ones that died by her side, mostly members of her squad back in Akuze, the two friends she had for a few years after she runned away from the orphanage.

There’s a special highlight, now and then, where she hears Anderson talk to her, in a loving tone, as his voice morphs little by little to become her father’s, replaying the few memories she keeps of him before he died.

And when she thinks she can no longer hold any more pain inside of her, that’s when his voice hits her, as loud and clear as when they met on their first day as Alliance trainees, as when got drunk together, as when she surprised him on each one of his birthdays and he used all his forces to pretend he didn’t know when it was hers.

The laughs, the mission… She, explaining to him how to shoot even better, and him teaching her the best ways to get through a written test. The way they celebrated when she finally got her high school degree, and two years later, graduated university.

His neverending yabber and the way she could be silent for days and he wouldn’t mind.

His jokes, her jokes… His kindness. His heart.

His nervousness as they were on their way to Akuze, as if his body already knew what was going to happen.

“Dee, listen… Please… Do not let me become an anchor.”

He told her, once they knew there was nothing she could do to save him, bleeding slowly into his demise as they awaited for the help that would not be there on time.

And then, as she always does, she hears the last thing he whispered before his eyelids started to become too heavy for him to keep his eyes open for much longer.

“How about a song?”

He’d usually teased her, every week when they were on leave, from the moment he heard Anderson say that she had the voice of an angel.

And she always refused.

Except for once.

Except that day.

With his last breath he asked her to sing and smile and, for the first time, and last, she complied and started singing.

He passed as she was mid song, with a smile on his face, and holding onto her hand. And as she noticed his grip losing all its strength, started crying, for the first time since she was little, and kept singing through her tears until the song was over.

Took a minute to breath, planted a kiss on his forehead and, she saw the message of the ship that were coming to aid her she softly said:

“Okay.” As she sealed a promise to his late friend, and to herself, to keep moving forwards, even if it was only for him.

She wakes up abruptly as always, and the time on her clock hasn’t moved too much, which means revisiting all that suffering was for nothing.

“Okay...” She repeats now in the present, with a whisper, before taking the time to calm down. “Okay.”

Kaidan is still sleeping peacefully, as always, and she doesn’t want to disturb him and wake him up, as always. And, as always, she fails to do so.

She lasts around three seconds, before her body and heart, completely ignoring her better judgment, seek for comfort where she always finds it and, as if they have a life of their own, her arms quickly move to find Kaidan and embrace him.

Still half asleep he returns the hug, smiles a little and, as he comes back to reality, his eyes search for her, knowing what this type of waking up means half of the time.

Kaidan is not surprised to find tears on her face, for he’s seen them before and he also knows her past and knows that no one, not even Mio, could live free of pain after enduring so many horrors.

“I’m here…” He tells her, tightening the embrace even more, giving her a soft kiss on the top of her head.

She replies something incoherent and falls asleep in his arms, and now he is the one staring at her.

But Kaidan doesn’t feel pain. Not anymore.

The nightmares and regrets were left behind the moment she walked up in the hospital after the war, completely vanished, once he knew she would be okay.

Every stone in his path, every obstacle… Every loss. Everything he’s had to endure in his life had led him to her, right into her arms, and he’s well aware that he would’ve sacrificed even more without even blinking if he knew the end result was this one.

“Love you…” She whispers in her sleep,and he sighs a little as he feels his heart melting inside his chest.

“Always.” He replies, following her into a deep slumber.

#mass effect #commander shepard #kaidan alenko #shenko #shepard x kaidan #fshenko #femshep x kaidan #fluff #angst #wip tag #fanfic wip #post mass effect 3

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keyofw · 1 year

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CW: Misogyny, incels

Back in 2020, I finished the first draft of a musical, and because the timing could not have been poorer, I've been essentially sitting on it and waiting for places to open submissions while I do minor revisions. So I made a full demo of the show and have decided to actually share the whole thing, piece by piece (it's also available on streaming services because I am that vain).

My snarky elevator pitch is that it's about the first ever incel to go to therapy. Or even better, a harem anime meets A Beautiful Mind.

(Where there are discrepancies between script and audio, script is correct. I also don't speak all the dialogue.)

3. Here Come Chad and the Stacies

(A synth riff sounds in the distance. Only NIKO hears and reacts.)

MAX Your roommate’s name is Chad?

(A second riff, closer this time.)

NIKO Yeah. Wait, no. I mean, he’s a Chad, you know?

(A third riff, full volume.)

MAX Hm. Can’t say I do. Are you two close?

(With a drum fill, the full music begins suddenly as CHAD bursts into the room. He is late-20s to early-30s, the conventionally ideal image of a man. Only NIKO can see or hear him. CHAD poses for the audience before taking his place at a mic up front.)

CHAD HEY YOU, ARE YOU SAD THAT YOUR BED IS TOO COLD? HEY YOU, ARE YOU SCARED THAT YOU’RE GETTING TOO OLD? DON’T BE, LOOK TO ME AND YOU’LL SEE WHO IS THE GREATER MALE.

HEY YOU, DO YOU FEEL YOUR EXPERIENCE IS LACKING? ARE YOU STRESSED ABOUT THE EQUIPMENT YOU’RE PACKING? TOUGH BEANS ON THE GENES, WHAT IT MEANS:

(He goes up to sing directly to NIKO.)

YOU’RE A BETA MALE, GOT YOU DEAD TO RIGHTS. YOU’RE THE BIG BROWN STAIN ON YOUR TIGHTY-WHITES. WITH A FACE LIKE THAT, MAKES THE LADIES CRY, IT’S NO WONDER YOU ALWAYS WANNA DIE. I’M THE ALPHA DOG, WOMEN FALL IN LINE. TAKE THEM AS THEY COME, EVEN TWO AT A TIME.

(The two STACIES enter, dressed as cheerleaders. They are also late-20s to early-30s and conventionally attractive women, dressed to remove as much individuality from them as possible.)

HERE COME CHAD AND THE STACIES. HERE COME THE KING OF THE LADIES.

STACIES HERE COME CHAD AND THE STACIES. HERE COME THE KING OF THE LADIES.

(The STACIES peel off to address NIKO directly.)

HEY YOU, DO YOU YEARN FOR SOME FEMALE AFFECTION? DO YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING WITH THAT ERECTION? DIE MAD, IT’S TOO BAD, WE LIKE CHAD!

(A cheer section begins and the STACIES clap along. CHAD addresses the audience.)

CHAD Now I don’t think this guy (indicating NIKO) even bothered to catch you up on the terminology. There’s a lot, but I’ll give you the basics. Chad and Stacy, they aren’t names. They’re things.

A CHAD IS A BAD BOY WHO SLEEPS WITH A STACY.

STACIES A CHAD IS A BAD BOY WHO SLEEPS WITH A STACY.

CHAD A STACY’S A LADY WHO SLEEPS WITH A CHAD.

STACIES A STACY’S A LADY WHO SLEEPS WITH A CHAD.

CHAD + STACIES THERE, THAT’S NOT SO BAD!

NO ROOM FOR THE NICE GUYS, NO MIDDLE OF THE ROAD.

STACIES STACY IS RACY,

CHAD CHAD’S A CHODE,

CHAD + STACIES BUT WE FOLLOW THE CODE: OUR LOVE ISN’T EARNED, IT’S OWED!

STACIES WHO’S GOING OUT WITH THE BAD BOY? LOOKS LIKE THE STACIES WITH CHAD, BOY.

CHAD HE’S GOT HIS LINEUP OF CHEAP WHORES CRAWLING BEHIND HIM ON ALL FOURS.

(CHAD and STACIES pull NIKO into their routine and dance around him. Suddenly the routine stops and the music calms down)

I INTIMIDATE, I BRING YOU TO SHAME. DO YOU EVEN KNOW, WHAT’S MY REAL NAME? CAN YOU EVEN TELL ALL MY GIRLS APART? HOW ABOUT I GIVE YOU A LITTLE HEAD START?

(Indicating STACY #1.)

THAT ONE’S STACY,

(She dances as the music goes wild. Then CHAD indicates STACY #2.)

AND THAT ONE’S STACY.

(She does a similar dance. Then, all three of them dance progressively wilder as the music goes crazy, while NIKO tries their best to block out the noise.)

MAX Are you two close?

(Music halts briefly. CHAD and the STACIES wait expectantly..)

You and Chad? Would you say he is someone who... looks out for you?

CHAD + STACIES HELL NO!

(A final chord. CHAD and STACIES exit, laughing.)

MAX Okay, how about your parents? Do you still keep in touch with them?

#music #musical theatre #prog #metal #demo #niko no demo #lgbt #trans #outdated incel memes #writing #my writing #Bandcamp

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aioleis · 12 days

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Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton: Functions of Art

In Art as Therapy, philosopher Alain de Botton — who has previously examined such diverse and provocative subjects as why work doesn’t work, what education and the arts can learn from religion, and how to think more about sex — teams up with art historian John Armstrong to examine art’s most intimate purpose: its ability to mediate our psychological shortcomings and assuage our anxieties about imperfection.

"Art, then, is not only what rests in the frame, but is itself a frame for experience"

Their basic proposition is that, far more than mere aesthetic indulgence, art is a tool — a tool that serves a rather complex yet straightforwardly important purpose in our existence.

Like other tools, art has the power to extend our capacities beyond those that nature has originally endowed us with. Art compensates us for certain inborn weaknesses, in this case of the mind rather than the body, weaknesses that we can refer to as psychological frailties.

De Botton and Armstrong go on to outline the seven core psychological functions of art:

1. REMEMBERING

Given the profound flaws of our memory and the unreliability of its self-revision, it’s unsurprising that the fear of forgetting — forgetting specific details about people and places, but also forgetting all the minute, mundane building blocks that fuse together into the general wholeness of who we are — would be an enormous source of distress for us. Since both memory and art are as much about what is being left out as about what is being spotlighted, de Botton and Armstrong argue that art offers an antidote to this unease:

What we’re worried about forgetting … tends to be quite particular. It isn’t just anything about a person or scene that’s at stake; we want to remember what really matters, and the people we call good artists are, in part, the ones who appear to have made the right choices about what to communicate and what to leave out. … We might say that good artwork pins down the core of significance, while its bad counterpart, although undeniably reminding us of something, lets an essence slip away. It is an empty souvenir.

‘We don’t just observe her, we get to know what is important about her.’ Johannes Vermeer, ‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’ (1663).

Art, then, is not only what rests in the frame, but is itself a frame for experience:

Art is a way of preserving experiences, of which there are many transient and beautiful examples, and that we need help containing.

2. HOPE

Our conflicted relationship with beauty presents a peculiar paradox: The most universally admired art is of the “pretty” kind — depictions of cheerful and pleasant scenes, faces, objects, and situations — yet “serious” art critics and connoisseurs see it as a failure of taste and of intelligence. (Per Susan Sontag’s memorable definition, the two are inextricably intertwined anyway: “Intelligence … is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.”) De Botton and Armstrong consider the implications:

The love of prettiness is often deemed a low, even a “bad” response, but because it is so dominant and widespread it deserves attention, and may hold important clues about a key function of art. … The worries about prettiness are twofold. Firstly, pretty pictures are alleged to feed sentimentality. Sentimentality is a symptom of insufficient engagement with complexity, by which one really means problems. The pretty picture seems to suggest that in order to make life nice, one merely has to brighten up the apartment with a depiction of some flowers. If we were to ask the picture what is wrong with the world, it might be taken as saying ‘you don’t have enough Japanese water gardens’ — a response that appears to ignore all the more urgent problems that confront humanity. . . . . The very innocence and simplicity of the picture seems to militate against any attempt to improve life as a whole. Secondly, there is the related fear that prettiness will numb us and leave us insufficiently critical and alert to the injustices surrounding us.

But these worries, they argue, are misguided. Optimism, rather than a failure of intelligence, is a critical cognitive and psychoemotional skill in our quest to live well — something even neuroscience has indicated — and hope, its chariot, is something to cherish, not condemn:

Cheerfulness is an achievement, and hope is something to celebrate. If optimism is important, it’s because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope.

Put simply and poignantly, it pays to “imagine immensities.”

‘What hope might look like.’ Henry Matisse, ‘Dance’ (II), 1909.

They offer an example:

The dancers in Matisse’s painting are not in denial of the troubles of this planet, but from the standpoint of our imperfect and conflicted — but ordinary — relationship with reality, we can look to their attitude for encouragement. They put us in touch with a blithe, carefree part of ourselves that can help us cope with inevitable rejections and humiliations. The picture does not suggest that all is well, any more than it suggests that women always delight in each other’s existence and bond together in mutually supportive networks.

And so we return to why prettiness sings to us:

The more difficult our lives, the more a graceful depiction of a flower might move us. The tears — if they come — are in response not to how sad the image is, but how pretty. […] We should be able to enjoy an ideal image without regarding it as a false picture of how things usually are. A beautiful, though partial, vision can be all the more precious to us because we are so aware of how rarely life satisfies our desires.

3. SORROW

Since we’re creatures of infinite inner contradiction, art can help us be more whole not only by expanding our capacity for positive emotions but also by helping us to fully inhabit and metabolize the negative — and by doing so with dignity and by reminding us “of the legitimate place of sorrow in a good life”:

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer more successfully. … We can see a great deal of artistic achievement as “sublimated” sorrow on the part of the artist, and in turn, in its reception, on the part of the audience. The term sublimation derives from chemistry. It names the process by which a solid substance is directly transformed into a gas, without first becoming liquid. In art, sublimation refers to the psychological processes of transformation, in which base and unimpressive experiences are converted into something noble and fine — exactly what may happen when sorrow meets art.

‘Sublimation: the transformation of suffering into beauty.’ Nan Goldin, ‘Siobhan in My Mirror’ (1992).

Above all, de Botton and Armstrong argue, art helps us feel less alone in our suffering, to which the social expression of our private sorrows lends a kind of affirmative dignity. They offer an example in the work of photographer Nan Goldin, who explored the lives of the queer community with equal parts curiosity and respect long before champions like Andrew Sullivan first pulled the politics of homosexualityinto the limelight of mainstream cultural discourse:

Until far too recently, homosexuality lay largely outside the province of art. In Nan Goldin’s work, it is, redemptively, one of its central themes. Goldin’s art is filled with a generous attentiveness towards the lives of its subjects. Although we might not be conscious of it at first, her photograph of a young and, as we discern, lesbian woman examining herself in the mirror is composed with utmost care. The device of reflection is key. In the room itself the woman is out of focus; we don’t see her directly, just the side of her face an and the blur or a hand. The accent is on the make-up she has just been using. It is in the mirror that we see her as she wants to be seen: striking and stylish, her hand suave and eloquent. The work of art functions like a kindly voice that says, “I see you as you hope to be seen, I see you as worthy of love.” The photograph understands the longing to become a more polished and elegant version of oneself. It sounds, of course, an entirely obvious wish; but for centuries, partly because there were no Goldins, it was anything but.

Therein, they argue, lies one of art’s greatest gifts:

Art can offer a grand and serious vantage point from which to survey the travails of our condition.

4. REBALANCING

With our fluid selves, clusters of tormenting contradictions, and culture of prioritizing productivity over presence, no wonder we find ourselves in need of recentering. That’s precisely what art can offer:

Few of us are entirely well balanced. Our psychological histories, relationships and working routines mean that our emotions can incline grievously in one direction or another. We may, for example, have a tendency to be too complacent, or too insecure; too trusting, or too suspicious; too serious, or too light-hearted. Art can put us in touch with concentrated doses of our missing dispositions, and thereby restore a measure of equilibrium to our listing inner selves.

This function of art also helps explain the vast diversity of our aesthetic preferences — because our individual imbalances differ, so do the artworks we seek out to soothe them:

Why are some people drawn to minimalist architecture and others to Baroque? Why are some people excited by bare concrete walls and others by William Morris’s floral patterns? Our tastes will depend on what spectrum of our emotional make-up lies in shadow and is hence in need of stimulation and emphasis. Every work of art is imbued with a particular psychological and moral atmosphere: a painting may be either serene or restless, courageous or careful, modest or confident, masculine or feminine, bourgeois or aristocratic, and our preferences for one kind over another reflect our varied psychological gaps. We hunger for artworks that will compensate for our inner fragilities and help return us to a viable mean. We call a work beautiful when it supplies the virtues we are missing, and we dismiss as ugly one that forces on us moods or motifs that we feel either threatened or already overwhelmed by. Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

Viewing art from this perspective, de Botton and Armstrong argue, also affords us the necessary self-awareness to understand why we might respond negatively to a piece of art — an insight that might prevent us from reactive disparagement. Being able to recognize what someone lacks in order to find an artwork beautiful allows us to embody that essential practice of prioritizing understanding over self-righteousness. In this respect, art is also a tuning — and atoning — mechanism for our moral virtues. In fact, some of history’s most celebrated art is anchored on moralistic missions — what de Botton and Armstrong call “an attempt to encourage our better selves through coded messages of exhortation and admonition” — to which we often respond with resistance and indignation. But such reactions miss the bigger point:

We might think of works of art that exhort as both bossy and unnecessary, but this would assume an encouragement of virtue would always be contrary to our own desires. However, in reality, when we are calm and not under fire, most of us long to be good and wouldn’t mind the odd reminder to be so; we simply can’t find the motivation day to day. In relation to our aspirations to goodness, we suffer from what Aristotle called akrasia, or weakness of will. We want to behave well in our relationships, but slip up under pressure. We want to make more of ourselves, but lose motivation at a critical juncture. In these circumstances, we can derive enormous benefit from works of art that encourage us to be the best versions of ourselves, something that we would only resent if we had a manic fear of outside intervention, or thought of ourselves as perfect already. The best kind of cautionary art — art that is moral without being “moralistic” — understands how easy it is to be attracted to the wrong things. […] The task for artists, therefore, is to find new ways of prying open our eyes to tiresomely familiar, but critically important, ideas about how to lead a balanced and good life.

‘A reason to say sorry.’ Eve Arnold, ‘Divorce in Moscow’ (1966).

They summarize this function of art beautifully:

Art can save us time — and save our lives — through opportune and visceral reminders of balance and goodness that we should never presume we know enough about already.

5. SELF-UNDERSTANDING

Despite our best efforts at self-awareness, we’re all too often partial or complete mysteries to ourselves. Art, de Botton and Armstrong suggest, can help shed light on those least explored nooks of our psyche and make palpable the hunches of intuitionwe can only sense but not articulate:

We are not transparent to ourselves. We have intuitions, suspicions, hunches, vague musings, and strangely mixed emotions, all of which resist simple definition. We have moods, but we don’t really know them. Then, from time to time, we encounter works of art that seem to latch on to something we have felt but never recognized clearly before. Alexander Pope identified a central function of poetry as taking thoughts we experience half-formed and giving them clear expression: “what was often thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” In other words, a fugitive and elusive part of our own thinking, our own experience, is taken up, edited, and returned to us better than it was before, so that we feel, at last, that we know ourselves more clearly.

More than that, they argue, the self-knowledge art bequeaths gives us a language for communicating that to others — something that explains why we are so particular about the kinds of art with which we surround ourselves publicly, a sort of self-packaging we all practice as much on the walls of our homes as we do on our Facebook walls and art Tumblrs. While the cynic might interpret this as mere showing off, however, de Botton and Armstrong peel away this superficial interpretation to reveal the deeper psychological motive — our desire to communicate to others the subtleties of who we are and what we believe in a way that words might never fully capture.

6. GROWTH

Besides inviting deeper knowledge of our own selves, art also allows us to expand the boundaries of who we are by helping us overcome our chronic fear of the unfamiliarand living more richly by inviting the unknown:

Engagement with art is useful because it presents us with powerful examples of the kind of alien material that provokes defensive boredom and fear, and allows us time and privacy to learn to deal more strategically with it. An important first step in overcoming defensiveness around art is to become more open about the strangeness that we feel in certain contexts.

De Botton and Armstrong propose three critical steps to overcoming our defensiveness around art: First, acknowledging the strangeness we feel and being gentle on ourselves for feeling it, recognizing that it’s completely natural — after all, so much art comes from people with worldviews radically different from, and often contradictory to, our own; second, making ourselves familiar and thus more at home with the very minds who created that alien art; finally, looking for points of connection with the artist, “however fragile and initially tenuous,” so we can relate to the work that sprang from the context of their life with the personal reality of our own context.

7. APPRECIATION

Our attention, as we know, is “an intentional, unapologetic discriminator” that blinds us to so much of what is around us and to the magic in our familiar surroundings. Art, de Botton and Armstrong argue, can lift these blinders so we can truly absorb not only just what we’re expecting to see, but also what we aren’t:

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

While habit can be a remarkable life-centering force, it is also a double-edged sword that can slice off a whole range of experiences as we fall into autopilot mode. Art can decondition our habituation to what is wonderful and worthy of rejoicing:

Art is one resource that can lead us back to a more accurate assessment of what is valuable by working against habit and inviting us to recalibrate what we admire or love.

‘Paying attention to ordinary life.’ Jasper Johns, ‘Painted Bronze’ (1960).

One example they offer comes from Jasper Johns’s famous bronze-cast beer cans, which nudge us to look at a mundane and familiar object with new eyes:

The heavy, costly material they are made of makes us newly aware of their separateness and oddity: we see them as though we had never laid eyes on cans before, acknowledging their intriguing identifies as a child or a Martian, both free of habit in this area, might naturally do. Johns is teaching us a lesson: how to look with kinder and more alert eyes at the world around us.

Such is the power of art: It is both witness to and celebrator of the value of the ordinary, which we so frequently forsake in our quests for artificial greatness, a kind of resensitization tool that awakens us to the richness of our daily lives:

[Art] can teach us to be more just towards ourselves as we endeavor to make the best of our circumstances: a job we do not always love, the imperfections of middle age, our frustrated ambitions and our attempts to stay loyal to irritable but loved spouses. Art can do the opposite of glamorizing the unattainable; it can reawaken us to the genuine merit of life as we’re forced to lead it.

The rest of Art as Therapy goes on to examine such eternal questions as what makes good art, what kind of art one should make, how art should be displayed, studied, bought and sold, and a heartening wealth more. Complement it with 100 ideas that changed art.

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Resources

Maria Popova Art as Therapy: On the 7 Psychological Functions of Art Read Essay >

Art as TherapyQ+A by Alain de Botton Read >

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