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benevolent-savage · 3 years

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this is what happens when u enable me lets go

(spoilers ahoy)

Firstly, here’s some somewhat miscellaneous reasons that don’t contribute to any sort of narrative analysis but are still parts of the character I like.

His boss fight is my favorite in the game thus far. It’s not super hard, but it isn’t super easy either, and I even managed to solo it on my Balance after a few practice rounds. Sufficiently challenging without feeling unfair.

His boss fight music. It is a bop and a half, go give it a listen, my soul ascends from my body a few centimeters every time I hear it start up.

His voice. I’m sure it’s processed at least a little but gotdamn his voice is so deep and spooky it startled me when I first heard it. Very curious who his actor is; I think he and Inyanga Whitestripes share the same one. Either way, very well voiced and acted.

His design is very good. It’s the perfect mix of innocuous but also spooky sorcerer fella who knows some shit. And I was afraid that the designers would try and make him like. Handsome? Under the hood? To try and make him more sympathetic? But they didn’t and I’m glad for it.

With those out of the way, the next thing to establish, I guess: I don’t interpret Old Cob to be the main villain of arc 3, nor do I interpret Raven as such. They’re definitely antagonists, but they’re not the ultimate problem; the ultimate problem is their divorce, and how they keep dragging people into their bs. It’s established the Aethyr is a physical manifestation of their anger towards each other, and as it thins, communication between them becomes possible, as Sparck puts it in this thinly veiled metaphor toward the start of Empyrea part 2.

But Cob’s still an antagonist and I love him so I’m gonna talk about that. Most of this is going to be talking about his motivations for doing what he does, since I don’t see him quite as the ‘likes to watch the world burn for the hell of it’ archetype that others might.

One of the reasons that drew me to his character is how legit his gripe is, when put in perspective. Old Cob- or Grandfather Spider, if you prefer- is not a mortal like the other antagonists of previous arcs, which establishes he has a different thought process right off the bat. This new universe was built on his suffering and he has a grudge against the ex wife who made it, so as a god, it makes some sense he’d try to destroy it and build one he would like better. He’s fully aware that what he is doing will hurt people but decidedly doesn’t care, and I appreciate that so much. He’s chaotic as fuck and he owns it, along with his superiority complex that’s as wide as the day is long.

Yet his reasoning is like. Weirdly understandable? Like, if my ex-whatever put me in jail for a lifetime sentence and stole my kidney to pay for a new house or something, I too would go apeshit and want my fuckin kidney back. That’s mostly how I interpret his situation. He’s not doing this for hell of it, he’s doing it because he wants to get back at his ex because he’s bitter and petty and for the most part he knows this but he feels justified in doing do because she ripped out his goddamn kidney- I mean heart, and he wants that back.

And then, even after all that, he and his magic are treated as if they’re inherently evil. While, sure, Shadow is a ‘dark magic’, its actual properties aren’t anything malicious by itself. It is described as “a magic that changes reality,” and that’s it. Incredibly exploitable and you should practice caution while handling it, but used correctly it is powerful and helpful; this is likely alluding to the backlash mechanic, where likes decrease the percent of damage you take, dislikes increase the percent, and I imagine the person meant to be the literal embodiment of the magic in question to be similar in nature: not inherently harmful and lashes out if he feels he’s been mistreated.

Going off that, I’m not sure he ever wanted the FirstWorld to be destroyed, and therefore believes his incarceration to be entirely unjust; he doesn’t deny that he instigated the fight between the Titans, but when it comes to being accused of its actual destruction, he gets angry.

...Okay the written text doesn’t really display how mad he got here, but he was like. Big Angy. Super offended. Honestly, a big part of why I love and analyze the hell out of his character comes from how his VA delivers his lines and his voice in general. If you haven’t heard it for some reason, I recommend looking it up. Anyway, here he’s basically saying he didn’t destroy the First World, and even if he did, he’s suffered enough punishment because of it, to my interpretation. The only one I remember blaming him for it is Raven; Bartleby was there, and I don’t recall him blaming anything other than the Titans for it. This is of course not accounting for the various changes made to the lore since he was introduced, but they could have easily thrown in a line like ‘And now Spider plans to destroy the Spiral the way he destroyed the FirstWorld!’ or something to make it clear it was done intentionally.

And this may very well be straying into headcanon territory here, but I think he holds positive relationships very closely to him, even if things went sour in the end; he clearly still has some remaining affection for the Titans, calling them ‘the children’ and being incredibly angry at Raven for forcing one of them to destroy his Heart.

When Rat loses in Polaris he shows up to praises his efforts and even comfort him, in his own weird way. He reprimanded Scorpion in Mirage, but it’s because Scorpion wasn’t doing what his dad asked him to and got his ass kicked as a result. As for Bat, every time they’re in the same room together he pays him some sort of compliment.

Bat claims that he and his brothers are meant to be his tools, and to some extent that’s true, but he also genuinely cares about them, and it’s really interesting to see a villain defect from the usual ‘not caring about anyone other than themselves’ and openly show affection for his kids while still managing to be an incredible asshole.

In line with this is his relationship with the Wizard. There is, of course, a foundation of manipulation to their dynamic, at least to some degree. I thoroughly believe that Spider was overshadowing Coleridge, at least partly, so our character could bust him out of prison.

And while this is happening, he regains some of his spent power and removes threats to it as well, namely Morganthe, using the Wizard’s help. In fact, I have very little doubt that he was at least partially responsible for her fall; his timing on that two-liner was too on the nose.

But even with that, I think he genuinely treasures the Wizard’s help and company, which is why he attempts on four different occasions to either sway them to his side, or warn them away from what he’s doing.

Boy, I want that vacation, but it’s your fault I’m here.

And then, of course, his relationship with Raven, something that is basically a summation of his character arc. Laden with baggage and tragic in concept, it is my belief that most of what he’s doing isn’t because he genuinely hates the Spiral or he wants to get back at her, but because he loved her and treasured their relationship; so upon her mistreating him, he lashed out at everything she’d made and detested it as a result. But only because he felt betrayed and hurt so he has to inflict that on other people because he is, as aforementioned, a petty and bitter old fuck.

Moving off that line of thinking, an admirable quality he possesses is how smart he is. This guy has so many wrinkles in his brain it must look like a raisin. Well, perhaps not ‘smart’ exactly, but how good he is at manipulating certain situations to his advantage. Like in Mirage; you just know that he was fully expecting Mellori to be there and fully planned to use her as a back up plan, or you could even argue that the whole debacle in Mirage was a ploy to get his hands on her, while having the added possible benefit of things actually working out.

Actually his scheme in Mirage was really interesting now that I think about it. His aim was to turn back time to when the FirstWorld was whole, further implying that he never wanted its destruction in the first place. It would also, of course, be a time where he had his Heart and would have the ability to avoid having it ripped out again. This would involve not having the Titans fight each other again, or at least not starting it and suffering the consequences. It would be everything he wanted to achieve knocked out in one go with minimal muss or fuss, compared to other methods. It’s probably a part of why he shows up personally to bargain with Eerkala and the Cabal, and why he directly intervenes in our Wizard’s efforts to stop him; it was too important to trust to any of his kids, so knowing Scorpion probably wouldn’t have been able to execute it anyway, he used his kid as a distraction for the most part.

I also like looking into the fact that his element, besides Shadow, is Storm, as opposed to pure Shadow or Death, as most major antagonists are. Storm is a school based on invention, experimentation and improvement. This is something that interests me for two reasons: one, the magic of major antagonists is always a part of their character, Malistaire the most blatantly, and two, because of this line he says in Mirage.

To my interpretation, this would imply that he sees the Spiral as something that could be improved. And as a god, he would of course find it his obligation to try and fix this flaw. When he made the barter with the Cabal, I don’t doubt he was being at least partially honest about restoring the FirstWorld; it would certainly fix the flaw it has in the context of stealing his internal organs, but he would also probably seek to improve it, make it more suited to Shadow or something.

Something else I find intriguing is how weirdly honest he is; I don’t recall him ever lying to us once, unless you count omitting certain facts as lying. But that’s absolutely something I can see him using against people, like “I didn’t lie to you, I just didn’t tell you, your fault for not asking ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .” As said before, he;s really good at manipulating people and he weaponizes whatever he can; @that-wizard-oki made a really great post about how he uses conflicts- his fault or not- to his advantage, and does his own thing in the background without interruption, Mirage and Neumia probably being the best example of this, with Scorpion and the Cabal serving as distractions while he either carries out things himself or gives instructions.

To pull all of this together narratively, I think it’s important to consider this line from Mellori during one of their confrontations:

He feels powerless, so he puffs up his god status. He has little power to fight with, compared to before, so he mostly manipulates and creates back-up plans while causing conflicts to serve as distractions. His love hurt him, so he lashes out at others and drags them into his problems.

You may ask, “But Sam, these are all bad qualities, why should we like him because of this?” And I would respond “Because it makes him a complex and interesting antagonist.” The kind of character that executes his shitty actions in such a way that you can’t help but respect- even just for the level of dramatics put in to it- while also having a motive that makes you stop and consider that maybe he has a point but is very much handling the situation the wrong way.

Like, c’mon, he ticks so many villain boxes. Tragic backstory? Check. Blatant thespian who owns it? Check. Gets his hands dirty before the climax of the story? Check. Smart/ manipulative/ has back-up plans? Check. Understandable, strong motives? Check.

He’s got layers. Like onion. I felt like there was always something new to discover about him, and for that I can assert my opinion that he’s one of the best characters in Wizard101.

lmao if you read this far into my simp-for-shithead post congrats. feel free to shoot me more asks on the subject bc i cant write persuasive-essay-esque format anymore my brain is rotting. if you will excuse me, im off to listen to the chronoverge combat track for the 82937487734th time

#i get that a lot of people havent gotten far enough into the game to meet him but I ENCOURAGE U TO TRY BC HE'S A GOOD AND FUN CHARACTER OKAY #i need more cob content >:U #wizard101 #w101

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anncanta · 3 years

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‘Dracula’ and ‘Doctor Who’. Blood is testimony

Stephen Moffat is often accused of using similar plots, repeating the same plot lines, and returning to a number of his favorite ideas.

Moffat really develops a certain set of specific, quite recognizable topics, and in his different scripts, he one way or another tells similar stories.

But with his recurring motives and ideas, as, indeed, with another stuff, not everything is so simple.

First, the outstanding authors are most often accompanied by craving for certain narratives and archetypal forms, as well as cross-cutting themes. Some of this authors create ‘frames’ for these ideas in the form of multivolume novels or novel cycles, others devote wreaths of sonnets and collections of stories to their favorite topic, and others choose whole genres for reflection on issues that are important to them. I think that none of those reading this article will have any difficulties with examples.

Secondly, there are not so many really interesting stories.

And thirdly, repetitions can be different. Like any feature, it can exist on its own, or it can – if the author has a large-scale talent – become another way to tell a story like no one else do.

In Stephen Moffat's case, we are dealing with a very unique situation where the author's stories are literally read through one another.

I will make a separate reservation: I am not talking about postmodern ‘intertextuality’ – a vile definition for references and quotations that have existed in literature since the emergence of storytelling and are news only for postmodernists themselves – but about a peculiar use of certain plots and motives.

If you want, you can find a huge number of such things in Moffat's scripts. The viewers who have been closely following his work since the period when he became the showrunner of Doctor Who will immediately name a dozen of them. But I would like to dwell on one example – the newest one for today.

When the TV series Dracula by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss was released on BBC and Netflix in 2020, some viewers noted the similarity of its style, and in some places, the plot outline, with Doctor Who, and directly called the main character of the film, Agatha Van Helsing, the female version of the Doctor.

The first is obvious, and the second is quite understandable in light of the two years earlier release (absolutely disastrous, in my opinion) of the eleventh and twelfth seasons of Doctor Who.

But the beauty of both Moffat's game and the whole story is that there`s not Agatha who is the Doctor here.

Yes, by all appearances, it is this brave, interested in science, well acquainted with evil, fighting against it and even – partly – traveling through time, the heroine who seems most suitable for the role of the Doctor in the new setting. There was a calculation for this: Moffat, during his time as the showrunner of the series, who, it seems, tried all the plot possibilities except this one, and who left on the eve of the epochal transformation of the character, it would seem, had to offer the audience his version of the female Doctor. Well, he did: on the surface. As if he said: ‘Here is a heroine with such qualities. This is how you imagine her, isn`t it? Well, get it.’

And inside this shell, as inside the unfortunate Jonathan Harker (Moffat, as a true Briton, uses materialized metaphors and often literally shows what he means), there is another story.

In order to understand it, you need to take a close look at Dracula and – at Doctor Who written by Moffat.

With Dracula everything is simple. As soon as you start looking for the main character of this film who: a) lives for several centuries; b) collects human stories; c) travels in time; d) always has one or more people next to him – you instantly find him. And if you've watched an entire episode and a half and still don't understand anything, in the middle of the second one you will hear a direct quote.

'The sophistication of a gentleman, Agatha, is always a veneer.'

'Even a gentleman like Mr. Balaur?'

'Mr. Who?'

But that's just one detail.

A deeper level opens if you try to read Dracula through Doctor Who itself.

In the Christmas special Twice upon a time, which ends the last season, written by Stephen Moffat, the plot is centered on the Doctor's encounter with strange creatures, as if made of glass, which are living vaults of memory. The episode itself is full of layered ideas and references. But for us now only one dimension is important.

At the very end of the special, the Doctor addresses the glass creatures with an ardent speech – one of those that he loves so much.

‘You're just memories, held in glass. Do you know how many of you I could fill? I would shatter you. My testimony would shatter all of you. A life this long, do you understand what it is? It's a battlefield. And it's empty. Because everyone else has fallen.’

Does this remind you of anything?

It seems to me that this is a literal description of what is happening with Dracula.

What he says throughout the film, and what Agatha did not understand even at the end, because in order to understand this, you had to live his life.

And in order to understand this whole context, you need to understand that the Doctor was never a good guy. He always said this to everyone but no one believed him.

No one believed the stories of the horror before which entire civilizations tremble, about a creature that destroyed its entire species in order to stop the most destructive war in history, about the person who does not need weapons so that the captains of warships flocked from the most distant corners of the Universe, after listening to him for a couple of minutes, ran away without looking back.

The Doctor was never a good guy, but just as important, he always knew it. For the Doctor of Russell T. Davis, this position looks like a fact with which neither the character himself nor the people around him and aliens are very inclined to interact. I guess it’s a matter of Davis’ very outlook on the story and perhaps his own worldview.

But the Doctor of Moffat is a hero who lives with this knowledge and with the impossibility of passing this knowledge on to others.

Because the Doctor is always the one they are waiting for, the one they go to for advice, the one with whom they travel around the Universe, the one who opens the door to the magical world, the one they hope for.

He is never the one who sits on the roof of the TARDIS, surrounded by the loneliness of the starry sky. Not someone who lives longer than any human being, not someone who knows what it means to make monstrous decisions in circumstances that most of us cannot imagine.

And the one in whom there is so much testimony that it is able to break the vessel that they will try to fill with.

In Dracula, all these details, motives, and meanings are repeated sequentially.

The most obvious is ‘blood is testimony’. This is not self-quotation, as it might seem, but a literal proposal of the author to look in a certain direction.

The blood in Dracula is not only memory. It's also a way to watch. And to see a bright and diverse world, which otherwise would have become boring long ago.

In the fifth season of Doctor Who, there is a moment when Eleventh says to Amy Pond, ‘You don't understand. I have the whole Universe in my backyard. I'm used to it. I don’t notice it. But when you appear, I look with your eyes. And it becomes a miracle again.’*

In this sense, the ‘brides’ and everyone that Dracula ate are in some way his companions. If you remember what a great sense of guilt towards most of his companions the Doctor felt and how some of them ended up, the comparison turns out to be not so poor.

Dracula, like the Doctor, has companions with whom he has a very special relationship that he cannot explain to himself. He travels through time and space, discovering one day that all human experience is stored and cataloged somewhere in his head, and there is nothing new.

And – as is often the case in Moffat's stories – here one character completes and harmoniously implements a theme started by another.

If the Doctor, being who he is, and fully aware of this, tormented by endless insatiable loneliness and memories of life as an empty battlefield, invariably continues the path that seems to him more and more meaningless, then Dracula decided to end the life like that.

And all this, the whole story, is organized as a transition, as a movement forward and backward in time, which unites and brings to life what is dissolved, inherent, basically exists, and ‘spilled’ in blood. The blood here is also the same as the space in the Doctor Who, it is the Universe, which belongs to everyone and flows inside everyone, and inside which everyone exists, and which determines everyone. In order for blood to become an individuality, it takes time, a specific moment at which each specific individuality comes to the surface. So, for example, the return of Agatha takes place. There must be something she wants to come back for. Like the TARDIS, blood is always within us and speaks through us. In the case of Dracula and Agatha, this is their bond, their love for each other. Even if this love is unaware, – sometimes the TARDIS acts on her own and travels wherever she wants, forcing the Doctor and his companions to act in the circumstances she suggests.

And all this, this whole context, the whole story, with all its dimensions and additional meanings, became possible only due to the fact that Stephen Moffat, the author of both series, is not afraid to describe ambiguous heroes, to reflect out loud on their adventures, and – sometimes – to repeat.

* The words of Eleventh quoted from memory.

#dracula 2020 #bbc dracula #count dracula #agatha van helsing #doctor who #moffat

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and-then-there-were-n0ne · 3 years

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George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longeur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation – that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly – and this is much more important – I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. [...]

It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one’s own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.

It is also worth emphasizing once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist – that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating – but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the up-grade and some hated rival is on the down-grade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also – since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself – unshakeably certain of being in the right.

Now that I have given this lengthy definition, I think it will be admitted that the habit of mind I am talking about is widespread among the English intelligentsia, and more widespread there than among the mass of the people. For those who feel deeply about contemporary politics, certain topics have become so infected by considerations of prestige that a genuinely rational approach to them is almost impossible. [...] And there are whole strings of kindred questions to which you can only get an honest answer from someone who is indifferent to the whole subject involved, and whose opinion on it is probably worthless in any case. Hence, partly, the remarkable failure in our time of political and military prediction. It is curious to reflect that out of all the ‘experts’ of all the schools, there was not a single one who was able to foresee so likely an event as the Russo-German Pact of 1939. And when news of the Pact broke, the most wildly divergent explanations were of it were given, and predictions were made which were falsified almost immediately, being based in nearly every case not on a study of probabilities but on a desire to make the U.S.S.R. seem good or bad, strong or weak.

Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties. And aesthetic judgements, especially literary judgements, are often corrupted in the same way as political ones. It would be difficult for an Indian nationalist to enjoy reading Kipling or for a Conservative to see merit in Mayakovsky, and there is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view. People of strongly nationalistic outlook often perform this sleight of hand without being conscious of dishonesty. [...]

Obviously there are considerable resemblances between political Catholicism, as exemplified by Chesterton, and Communism. So there are between either of these and for instance Scottish nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism or Trotskyism. It would be an oversimplification to say that all forms of nationalism are the same, even in their mental atmosphere, but there are certain rules that hold good in all cases. The following are the principal characteristics of nationalist thought:

Obsession. As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can only relieve by making some sharp retort. If the chosen unit is an actual country, such as Ireland or India, he will generally claim superiority for it not only in military power and political virtue, but in art, literature, sport, structure of the language, the physical beauty of the inhabitants, and perhaps even in climate, scenery and cooking. He will show great sensitiveness about such things as the correct display of flags, relative size of headlines and the order in which different countries are named. Nomenclature plays a very important part in nationalist thought. Countries which have won their independence or gone through a nationalist revolution usually change their names, and any country or other unit round which strong feelings revolve is likely to have several names, each of them carrying a different implication. The two sides of the Spanish Civil War had between them nine or ten names expressing different degrees of love and hatred. Some of these names (e.g. ‘Patriots’ for Franco-supporters, or ‘Loyalists’ for Government-supporters) were frankly question-begging, and there was no single one of them which the two rival factions could have agreed to use. All nationalists consider it a duty to spread their own language to the detriment of rival languages. [...] Nationalist thought often gives the impression of being tinged by belief in sympathetic magic – a belief which probably comes out in the widespread custom of burning political enemies in effigy, or using pictures of them as targets in shooting galleries.

Instability. The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable. To begin with, as I have pointed out already, they can be and often are fastened upon some foreign country. One quite commonly finds that great national leaders, or the founders of nationalist movements, do not even belong to the country they have glorified. Sometimes they are outright foreigners, or more often they come from peripheral areas where nationality is doubtful. Examples are Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, de Valera, Disraeli, Poincaré, Beaverbrook. The Pan-German movement was in part the creation of an Englishman, Houston Chamberlain. For the past fifty or a hundred years, transferred nationalism has been a common phenomenon among literary intellectuals. With Lafcadio Hearne the transference was to Japan, with Carlyle and many others of his time to Germany, and in our own age it is usually to Russia. But the peculiarly interesting fact is that re-transference is also possible. A country or other unit which has been worshipped for years may suddenly become detestable, and some other object of affection may take its place with almost no interval. In the first version of H. G. Wells’s Outline of History, and others of his writings about that time, one finds the United States praised almost as extravagantly as Russia is praised by Communists today: yet within a few years this uncritical admiration had turned into hostility. The bigoted Communist who changes in a space of weeks, or even of days, into an equally bigoted Trotskyist is a common spectacle. In continental Europe Fascist movements were largely recruited from among Communists, and the opposite process may well happen within the next few years. What remains constant in the nationalist is his own state of mind: the object of his feelings is changeable, and may be imaginary. But for an intellectual, transference has an important function which I have already mentioned shortly in connection with Chesterton. It makes it possible for him to be much more nationalistic – more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest – than he could ever be on behalf of his native country, or any unit of which he had real knowledge. When one sees the slavish or boastful rubbish that is written about Stalin, the Red army, etc. by fairly intelligent and sensitive people, one realizes that this is only possible because some kind of dislocation has taken place. In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion – that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware – will not allow him to do so. Most of the people surrounding him are sceptical and disaffected, and he may adopt the same attitude from imitativeness or sheer cowardice: in that case he will have abandoned the form of nationalism that lies nearest to hand without getting any closer to a genuinely internationalist outlook. He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself. God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack – all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognized for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.

Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians. It is the same with historical events. [...] If one looks back over the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the world: and yet in not one single case were these atrocities – in Spain, Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna – believed in and disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind. Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should – in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918 – and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which, it is felt, ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied. In 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek boiled hundreds of Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the Communists ‘didn’t count’, or perhaps had not happened. The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly. Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported – battles, massacres, famines, revolutions – tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world.

[...] If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:

British Tory. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.

Communist. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.

Irish Nationalist. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.

Trotskyist. The Stalin régime is accepted by the Russian masses.

Pacifist. Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

All of these facts are grossly obvious if one’s emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. [...] The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified – still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

The reason for the rise and spread of nationalism is far too big a question to be raised here. [...] It can be plausibly argued, for instance – it is even probably true – that patriotism is an inoculation against nationalism, that monarchy is a guard against dictatorship, and that organized religion is a guard against superstition. Or again, it can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve the same lies, follies, and barbarities; and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as an intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics – using the word in a wide sense – and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognize that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means. As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one’s own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it.

#George Orwell #nationalism

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melias-cimitiere · 4 years

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LHP, ATHEISTS AND SPIRITS

I see at times so many attempts to define or to "purify" what the LHP is, while forgetting perhaps that the truth of it is not in simple dissections or refutations, but in a greater understanding that encompasses all the undercurrents.

For example, the classic opposition between Noetic (or Philosophical Approach) versus Spiritual (not blind faith). Why do these have to be mutually exclusive? By all means, it's like condemning a part of the self to favor another. It makes no sense to me. There is a place for logic and philosophical arguments (without which we would be like animals) and there's a place for the spirit. I am all in favor for experimentation but this doesn't have to be in opposition to magic for example. I totally don't get why some choose to set themselves against the belief systems of their supposed brethren, even if they are quite close.

Perhaps my own understanding of LHP is at fault; I know that by being solitary perhaps one may mistrust groups/guidelines, but on the other hand, it's a Path - meaning that it is a Way of Life, a Practice and something that integrates certain sets of behavior with belief, evidence, practice (ie ritual) and many more depending on the definition. So for a LHP person to call another person or a group not LHP just because they are focused more on the magical/ritual element instead of the noetic, seems absurd to me. I know that it is quite trendy to go against the theistic principle or anything that resembles faith or a spiritual system, but surely any person that would refute that as LHP would have to discredit the Yezidis, the demonolater communities everywhere, those who accept Set as a distinct Entity external to us, those that practice draconian magic, the Vodou and so on... there are simply too many examples of LHP that the materialist or overtly sceptical tends to discredit all too easily, in favor of what? his mind?... and why would this be More LHP than those who practice on the Path under the tuition of demons, for example?

I personally think that all modalities of thinking have their use, much like the Aeon of Horus has/d its use but that doesn't mean that the Aeon of Set for example is not the prime example of xeper and deification. So why would anyone seek to adopt a certain stance that only would be useful in serving as a modality and not as a universal tool? Crowley's Thelema and La Vey's attitudes certainly served the LHP well, but to become stuck on these is to limit oneself while there are so many more things to experience and to explore. And in private conversations I have lately heard the same old argument, that faith stems from christianity... I would like to remind that faith predates christianity (or other monotheistic religions) for dozens or even hundreds of millennia (depending on whether one studies ancient Egyptian - Kemetian scripts or Sumerian including the Isin King List). Faith is much like logic; it's a tool. Faith, in the right hands can achieve certain altered states and access different experiences that could transform the self. Of course, we have seen the misuse of faith all throughout history with the fanatics, the burning of the libraries of the ancient world, the crusades, the inquisition etc... but just because monotheistic religions perverted faith and spirituality, doesn't mean we have to throw away traditions predating them since the Dawn of Man.

Evidently there are many LHP practitioners who are atheists and who simply choose to exalt the Self as the centre of everything in their universe. Whereas the Self is indeed very important in freedom, choice, and consequence, I never was an atheist nor do my personal experiences validate a cosmic paradigm devoid of spiritual presences. I also do not subscribe to the notion that all Deities/Entities/Spirits/Demons are parts of our brain. I believe that they correspond to areas of our brain (like linking to old phrenology charts) but that is all; correspondence is not the same as Identity, so through my own experience such entities have a truly external Essence and Identity. While correspondence to brain parts is probably essential in order to sense something that would normally lie outside the realm of human senses, I am certain that they do exist externally to me. The Self is important for many things such as initiation, becoming/xeper, constructing an interface with reality, however I don't accept that the Self is the only deity there is.

For example, let's take Set. I have significant personal evidence (but not proof to convince cynics) that this deity is Indeed a true Deity, external to me. Some would argue that Set is the only true deity, others could say there are others (neteru or something else) that are also true.

So assuming that one accepts the existence of deities that are superior or external to Self, there are different stances/ paradigms as to dealing with this: demonolatry for example would worship or offer ritual honors to such entities. While others would seek to control them for own gain using grimoires/demonologies etc which is something entirely different. Some would attempt to use such energies in order to "harvest" specific results for themselves, either as part of self-transformation or as part of micromanaging life with its problems. On the other side of the spectrum, RHP would use parts of this knowledge to attempt to exorcise these deities (for them they would all be classed as demons anyway).

Something metaphysical truly exists beyond the Self, whatever that is. Any model of self-transformation does not contradict to the existence of said deities/spirits/demons nor do I see any issues with tuition from such immaterial beings.

As for the other worlds and their denizens/ deities/ daemons etc, I accept the existence of a mental stratum acting as the interface between the entities and the mind. Even if the Otherness is extreme so that the entity cannot be easily discerned, this mental interface allows for it to be "clothed" in a particular disguise that is somewhat acceptable within certain parameters of the socio-cultural paradigm as well as the era in which one lives. Perhaps from a different stance all worlds are one in essence, despite their individual differences, much like hues in color in a vast and incomprehensible painting. If such entities / creatures of Otherness are known to exist, there must have been some evidence in the works of those that worked with them, such as Michael Aquino when contacted by Set, Aleister Crowley with regards to Aiwass etc. These Beings were described in such a way as to imply independent existence and individuality. Whether these voices were symbolic, or partly covered in archetypal forms, or actual Entities, matters very little since they had tremendous impact on the entire LHP spectrum. In terms of validity, it's almost impossible to discern whether these are actual Beings external to the Self, but even though LHP people like to believe in total freedom, they commonly accept what widely known figures such as LaVey, Aquino, Crowley say as authorities on the path. But even their words would have to be validated through personal experience. And here the endless arguments take place, hopefully eloquently and politely and with mutual respect between those who support the archetype theory or the beings from another world/dimension. Even if the conversation takes place with the best of intentions, I doubt whether much will be gained from it due to the fact that each side tends to be firmly entrenched and frankly it's quite difficult for experienced people to just change their mind. It is true that there's no clear yes or no to these things; for example demons could be true actual beings from another dimension, or they could be shells, almost robotic in nature, or they could be an Order's egregore, or a thought-form, etc. All these could be argued that they could produce results, but for different reasons / mechanisms. And sometimes this makes all the difference.

To me LHP is about the only type of Spirituality that can access and harness the power needed to break the chains put on us by monotheistic paradigms for millennia. It frees the mind from many illusions while redefining social cohesion under a new light, while assisting the individual achieve Luciferian Gnosis and at the same time, xeper as in Becoming and a state of being initiated all the time.

#LHP #left hand path #atheists and devil #sprituality #spirits #demons

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pendragonfics · 4 years

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living with feelings pt.2

Paring: Caleb Widogast/Reader

Tags: gender-neutral reader, gender-neutral pronouns, alternate universe - canon divergence, canon-typical violence, Caleb Widogast needs a hug, Caleb Widogast deserves nice things, light angst, soft, Nott is a Parent, developing relationships.

Summary: Along the road toward the swamp, Reader is swamped with questions from Nott, and themselves.

Word Count: 1,910

Current Date: 2019-01-06

Requested By: anon x

When you wake up, you find you’re curled into the warm side of Caleb. It’s a strange thing, because you swear that you fell asleep before him, away from him. However, a small part of you is wistful. Happy. The wizard man is snoring ever so slightly, his chapped lips left partly open, the stray hairs of his beard curling in the bristling cold of the morning.

But there’s shame in you, and it’s overpowering. You’re filled with regret and other ugly feelings in the lower portion of your belly.

Caleb said kind words, lovely words to you. Words that made your heartbeat faster. But you don’t deserve those words. They are alien to you. You’ve never had them before, and now you have them, it feels strange to receive. If you were a more affectionate person, you would have shown him, but alas, you are not, and now, you’re feeling almost sick in the storm of giddiness of your feelings for him.

Quietly, you sit up.

After the weather the night previous, it’s strange to perceive life going on afterwards. It felt so earth-shattering; perhaps it was because you had never spent a night in the elements. You certainly don’t remember at all in your life seeing a storm like that before. It was frightening, fantastic; you were glad for what magic that Caleb cast for keeping you safe and dry.

You stop feeling guilty for sleeping beside Caleb as you see the rest of the Nein’s sleeping arrangements. Nott is tied in a knot by Yasha’s ankles, a knife in little green hands, Jester lays between Yasha and Beau with her arms and legs askew, and Beau and Fjord are a tangle of limbs all over one another like puppies. You’re not sure if you’re seeing it right, but Molly’s head of horns are precariously close to Fjord’s ass.

As you move to stand, you feel a hand around your wrist, and you jerk away, heart racing. A fear races inside of you, and almost like there’s something inside of you, you feel a warmth take residence under your palms, beneath your fingernails. It fades as you realise who is holding your wrist.

Caleb’s eyes are hooded, perhaps barely awake in a way in which wrenches your heart. For a moment, you had been back in the rear room of the bakery in Zadash, your stepfather’s hands wrapped around your body, leaving nasty marks. But you fled him, and it’s just Caleb. Sleepy, soft, guarded and confusing Caleb.

“Geh nicht,” he said in Zemnian. Don’t go.

But you do.

Caleb closes his eyes softly, his grasp relaxing. He says your name, and a string of words you don’t understand in your mother tongue. But in the moment of your silence, Caleb has fallen once again to sleep, his grasp loose on you. And like the coward you are, you leave his side while the eyes of the Nein are closed, and adrift in dreams.

---

Later in the day, you find yourself perched beside Molly as he steers the cart. It’s your turn taking watch alongside him, and it’s quieter. Yasha walked ahead, her sword strapped to her rippling shoulders, glinting in the rising sun. Behind her, rode Fjord, and Beau, bickering about something you couldn’t quite hear about. Jester napped behind you, her hand on her amulet, and horse hitched alongside the others pulling the cart.

“Hey, um, ________, can I speak with you?”

You had almost forgotten that Nott was with Jester, and in the moment, you felt yourself afraid, for more than just being surprised. The other day’s attack came flooding back, and looking at Nott, the goblin girl, all you could see was the goblin you had chased down. That you had killed.

“You startled me,” you placed a hand over your chest, to persuade your heart from racing. “Sorry. Of course; what do you want to talk about?”

She eyed Mollymauk, looking him up and down, and said, “Something he doesn’t need to hear. Go on, Molly. Get. Go talk to Fjord about being a bad roommate or something.”

“Nott, you sweet talker, you sure know the way to charm a tiefling’s heart,” he replied, his tone ironic, but face as sweet as a sugared roll. “________, take the wheel.”

Confused at his terminology, you took the reigns as he made leave, and Nott scrambled from the rear of the cart to where she sat. Steeling yourself as the driver, you lead the horses on, hoping what Nott would say wouldn’t make for too strange a conversation.

“I…” Nott began. She hung her head, bandages falling forward. “I need to apologise for the other night. I could have taken on that goblin, and knew you weren’t a fighter, and yet, it got away, and…”

You placed a hand atop her little green one, looking to her. “You don’t need to apologise for anything. What happened…it happened. I must have been a swordfighter in a past life, just like you must have been a caregiver.” You’re not sure if she flinched, or if your eyes were playing tricks on you, but you add, softly, “Besides, I did what anyone would do. I saw it almost took your collection of sticks.”

“I do like my sticks,” Nott replied. But softly, she spoke once more. “I have to ask, and I don’t mean to pry, but…”

“I suppose I’m one of you guys now,” you re-joined, “so ask away.”

She looked behind you, behind the cart, and briefly, you looked back too. Trailing the cart like a bottle tied to a cart after a wedding, rode Caleb. He looked to be deep in thought, his mind somewhere else from where his body was. Righting the cart around a stone in the road, you looked back to Nott, unsure of what she was implying.

After a moment with no words shared, she screwed up her nose, and shouted, in a hushed tone, “Well? What are your intentions with my son?”

You blinked. “Your son? I - I’m sorry, I thought -,”

“I’m not his mother in that sense,” she answered, and quickly added on, “but the other sense like Beau and Fjord are basically brother and sister, and Yasha is basically the only one out of us all who has a functioning moral compass. But,” she paused, looking to you intently, “Caleb is my boy, and I am asking you about your intentions toward him.”

“I…I think he’s a fine man?” you replied, unsure.

“Just fine? Look at him, he’s hot!”

“Yes, he is attractive. And I think he’s quite lovely too, once you get to know him.” You added.

“So…you like him?” she interrogated.

“I like him as much as I like you, and the rest of the Nein,” you answered. The way she looked at you after what you said made you feel unsure of the word. Where she came from, was there another meaning to that term? “I mean, he’s handsome, under all the dirt, and we speak the same language, and if it weren’t for him I’m sure I’d still be in Zadash.” You say, wistful. “…and he acts like he doesn’t care, but I know he does care because he showed me.”

“So! You like-like him,” Nott beamed, leaning toward you. “Well, I know for a fact that he is available -,”

“Nott, wait,” you ask her, bewildered. “Are you trying to match us together?”

“Of course! You seem as fine a person as any. And he needs to focus on something other than his studies, you know what they say about someone who’s all work, no play, am I right? And I see how he looks at you -,”

“Nott,” you placed a hand on hers once more, pausing her. “I have something to tell you.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re not interested! Or want him at all, after all of this! You’re my last hope to get him a good person in his life, well, second-last, if Fjord opened his eyes and realised what a catch Caleb is!”

“Nott!” you say once more, a little louder. “I’m already…I kissed him last night.”

“You WHAT?”

---

Last-minute, it’s decided to make camp one more night before the Nein are to make it to the swamp. It’s a strange destination, but when you overhear Jester speaking to Fjord about The Gentleman you have enough wits to not question anything. It’s a clear night, and it seems that everyone is making their beds on the ground as usual. But you go for the cart once more, making a sort of nest out of what you can.

“Knock, knock,” he says, without raising a knuckle to the side of the cart.

His accent is thick tonight, and you feel your heart grow warm beneath your skin in his presence. Looking over, you see Caleb. His face is cleaner tonight, and it seems with every passing day, his beard grows thicker and thicker, as dishevelled as the ginger hair upon his head. He places his hands on the edge of the cart, looking to you.

“Come in,” you reply, scooting backwards. He joins you, groaning as his joins click as he sits beside you. “…you need to stretch, before and after the riding, and then it won’t pain you.”

“Oh, you have learnt so much since joining us, meine liebe,” he praises, but you know that he’s teasing you. “What else does your, er, multitudinous wisdom hold?”

You chuckle, resting your head upon his shoulder. “I know that Nott was ready to sell you off to me like jewellery in the Pentemarket,” you retort. “…she tried to match you with me.”

“She’s a little late on that,” he replies, his arm making its way across your shoulders. “…I feel as if Nott thinks herself as my mother.”

It feels strange being touched, but after everything, you ignore that feeling and welcome it. After all the shit that you were forced to wade in, you deserved to bathe yourself. You deserve to be loved and to love in return.

“She does indeed,” you snuggle in, speaking into his jacket. It needs to be cleaned, but amongst all the other smells, the scent is overpoweringly Caleb, and you relish it. “…and I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.”

“Wasn’t it yesterday?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t keep track of time like you,” you shrug. “…whatever you have done, in your past, that is it. It’s passed. You are not your actions, especially if you regret them. My mother, my birth mother, she told me that as long as you know what is right, and do by it even after doing wrong, eventually, you will be absolved.”

“________,” Caleb starts to say, but you keep on speaking.

“And I will forgive you. And I will love you for everything that you are. Because not only did you help me realise that I was strong, strong enough to leave my abusive stepfather, strong enough to kill a thief, but that I was strong enough to move past it all, and become the person I have wanted to be for so many years.”

“________, I can’t ask that of you,” he says, soft.

“Don’t ask it of me then,” you reply, your lips ghosting his, and you whisper, the words hot against your tongue as they are spoken, “Because I am giving my love freely.”

#caleb critical role #caleb widogast #caleb widogast x reader #caleb critical role x reader #critical role #critical role x reader #pendragonfics #chaotic--lovely #gender neutral reader

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i-am-thequeencapricorn · 5 years

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Watch The Marvel Movies In Order

AVENGERS: ENDGAME, opening on April 26, is more than just another Marvel movie. It’s the final film in a story that’s been over a decade in the making, a celebration of everything Marvel Studios has done to date. If you’re like us, a binge-watch of the entire MCU is in order to prepare for the big event. Here’s the big question: How should you watch the Marvel movies in order?

There are two common ways to build a Marvel movies timeline. The first is in release order, kicking off with 2008’s IRON MAN. The second is in chronological Marvel movie order, following the order of events. That means moving CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER to the pole position and shuffling Phase Three’s movies in some interesting ways.

Over on Reddit, however, one smart fan suggested another approach — a thematic structure that may be the best viewing order yet. Here it is, updated for the latest Marvel movie releases.

Captain America: The First Avenger

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER is something of an extended introduction to the MCU. The bulk of the movie is set in the ’40s, and it introduces viewers to the SSR, which becomes S.H.I.E.L.D. Even the end-credits sequence, which features Nick Fury, is a nice setup for everything that will follow. Want to watch the Marvel movies in order? Start here.

Captain Marvel

CAPTAIN MARVEL effectively takes the spot formerly held by IRON MAN as the proper kickoff for the entire MCU. The story is primarily set in the mid-’90s and features the first evolution of S.H.I.E.L.D. and an important stage of Nick Fury’s career. The story also sets up the Kree (later seen in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) and, most importantly, deals with an object that becomes significant toward the end of Marvel’s Phase One. As the origin story for Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), this also feels more like a Phase One movie than anything Marvel has done in the past few years. In terms of tone and theme, it sits well in the beginning of the viewing order. Yes, there’s a connection to INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME, but just keep this film’s first post-credits sequence in your back pocket for later.

Iron Man

Although IRON MAN was the first MCU movie, it has more power when placed here. We know who Howard Stark is thanks to THE FIRST AVENGER. Watching his son take his first faltering steps into the “bigger universe” is an effective stage of the MCU movie order. The final scene, with Nick Fury stepping out of the shadows, will take on a subtly different meaning after the events of CAPTAIN MARVEL. Rather than hint at the birth of the MCU, it will become connective tissue linking the first three films together.

Iron Man 2

After IRON MAN introduces viewers to the modern-day iteration of S.H.I.E.L.D., the sequel dives deep into that organization. It also features Nick Fury in a far more significant role, allowing viewers to get a sense of just who this figure really is. Meanwhile, the focus on Howard Stark’s legacy continues to draw the narrative threads together. It makes perfect sense to watch IRON MAN 2 at this point.

The Incredible Hulk

This particular adjustment to the viewing order is appropriate — while THE INCREDIBLE HULK actually happens at the same time as IRON MAN 2, the end-credits sequence assumes Stark now has a “consultant” role with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Thor

THOR introduces viewers to Asgard and launches a series of stories inspired by events in the Realm Eternal. At the same time, it continues to develop the story of S.H.I.E.L.D., with Coulson and Hawkeye playing important roles.

The Avengers

This is a natural fit after the events of THOR, continuing many of that film’s themes and character arcs. Loki returns as a villain; the concept of the Tesseract is explored; and the existence of dangerous alien beings becomes public knowledge when the Chitauri invade New York. There’s also a more subtle detail as this is the first film to really hint that S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t just “good guys.” THE AVENGERS includes a disturbing sequence in which the World Council orders a nuclear attack on American soil.

Thor: The Dark World

Here’s where the order of events really changes, but for good reason. The last two films have explored the cosmic side of the MCU, and it makes sense to continue that line. Some of the most important themes and ideas — particularly the relationship between Thor and Loki — follow on perfectly from THE AVENGERS. This also introduces the idea of the Infinity Stones, although they’re only partly explained at this point.

Guardians of the Galaxy

Continuing the cosmic focus, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY unveils another Infinity Stone. The Collector, introduced in the stinger of THOR: THE DARK WORLD, makes another appearance, tying the two films together. Viewers are left with a strong sense that the Infinity Stones are being brought into play across the universe.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

The events of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 are set only a couple of months after the first film, so it makes sense for this to follow straight on. It continues the space-opera style and tone established by the last two films in our Marvel movie order.

Iron Man 3

The cosmic diversion is over, and the focus now moves back to Earth, where Tony Stark is dealing with the emotional fallout from THE AVENGERS. The passage of time between the films actually makes Tony’s PTSD feel more significant, while also more making it feel more natural that Stark has had the time to build so many armors.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Continuing with the Earthly focus, this movie shows what Captain America is up to. This story could even be happening at the same time as IRON MAN 3, explaining why Cap doesn’t help Tony against the Mandarin and why Stark isn’t on hand to deal with Hydra. Or maybe Cap and Stark are merely still wary of one another at this stage. Perhaps most importantly, placing this film here begins a Falcon arc that will run through the next few movies.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

This is another natural fit. The film opens with the Avengers taking down a major Hydra base. In thematic terms, placing this close to IRON MAN 3 makes Tony’s emotional journey feel more immediate and natural. This film also begins to tie the Earth-bound adventures into the cosmic stories, with another Infinity Stone revealed. Thor’s vision establishes a sense of impending threat.

Ant-Man

Set in the immediate aftermath of AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, ANT-MAN contains subtle references to the devastation at Sokovia. Placing it here in the lineup makes the Falcon fight carry additional weight, bringing Sam closer to primary character status.

Captain America: Civil War

The Sokovia arc that begun in AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON comes to a head in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, tearing the Avengers apart. CIVIL WAR acts as the launchpad for the next batch of Earth-bound stories, so they slot in nicely after it. It also follows on perfectly from ANT-MAN’s end-credits scene.

Black Panther

Black Panther was introduced in CIVIL WAR, and this continues his story. It’s appropriate to drop this movie in next, as BLACK PANTHER is set only a week after the Avengers divide, and the Wakandan focus follows on nicely from the end-credits sequence.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

Set two months after CIVIL WAR, SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING focuses on Peter Parker. It’s important to note that Tony Stark has been given time to heal a little, so this viewing order makes sense.

Doctor Strange

Placing DOCTOR STRANGE here gives the film real importance as a thematic tie between the MCU’s Earth-bound and cosmic movies. DOCTOR STRANGE introduces the concept of magic and brings the Time Stone into play. The Quantum Realm also plays a subtle role, as Strange glimpses it while being sent careering through the dimensions. Finally, the end-credits scene leads nicely into THOR: RAGNAROK.

Thor: Ragnarok

This film follows on logically from DOCTOR STRANGE. (There’s even a cameo.) The end credits begin the direct buildup to AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, with the Asgardian refugees intercepted in space by Thanos.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

This is a difficult one to place in this thematic structure. While it returns to the Earth-bound adventures, ANT-MAN AND THE WASP is fantastical and funny. The bulk of the story is set before the events of AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, so it makes sense to place it here. This particular viewing order does change how the post-credits scene plays, however. Rather than knowing what’s going on, you’re with the same sense of shock and horror felt by Hank Pym or Scott Lang.

Avengers: Infinity War

In this order, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR will be the last thing you watch before AVENGERS: ENDGAME. That works particularly well when you consider that, according to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the snap was originally in ENDGAME. These two films may not be a traditional Parts I and II anymore, but their relationship is so close that it’s better to watch them back to back — just how they were filmed.

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Not really a fan of Superhero Movies, but after watching Captain Marvel last Friday, I was hooked. I’ve decided then to binge-watch all the Marvel Movies so I can catch up before they release the Avengers : Endgame. My only dilemma was, I have no idea what to watch first and so on. I tried to do a little research and I came across with this article. I’ve watched the 1st three movies, and since I’ve already tendered my resignation, I have all the time to finish the remaining movies before the opening of the final story. Yey!!

#repost #ctto #mahaba habang panonood to

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years

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Tiashar’s powers are REALLY open ended and tbh that’s kind of deliberate, since she’s intended to be a fun character for random powergaming scenarios, but I keep getting an itch to give her... more obvious limits.

it has to do with the idea that limitations in powers produce better narrative possibilities: an example is the Avatarverse and Fullmetal Alchemist; the former’s elemental powers are often very restricted, while with the later, alchemy is limited by matter/mass as well as personal expertise. These limits inspire the characters to be creative and work around them, but if they were far more powerful to have no limits, that would make things LESS creative.

So I’m thinking about ways to give Tiashar more specific limitations for the sake of making it more fun, or perhaps relegating her most powerful limitless incarnations for specific high-end situations that rarely come up. Some possible ideas to use in general:

1. Infinite Power, But Limited Ability To Apply It. She is a living goddess and cosmic entity able to devour whole universes and create them with a snap of her fingers, but she can’t just use her full power whenever she wants; she has a mechanism that limits her to only a certain level of power that is based, not on any reasonable metric, but on what she feels is proportionate to the situation. It’s an automatic thing; she hates putting effort into anything and is very lazy, so she CAN ONLY draw upon enough power to deal with whatever she has on her plate. As things get more serious, her power level rises, but this means she scales up to bigger situations; she can be a street-level heroine or a universal goddess, depending on situation she is in. But the impotrant bit: she CANNOT go over a limit on her own!

2. She Has a Theme And She’s Sticking To It: Mutation. Rather than her powers just being ‘do whatever sounds cool’, the powers that are innate to her being (The eldritch magic stuff) specifically works by introducing change to herself, and the world around her. This fits with her mutation theme and her introducing chaotic elements by being there. All her powers, whatever they are, operate based on changing things or introducing new things; she transforms things, or annihilates them utterly, but her powers work by creating changes; even it is more advantageous not to, she CANNOT help but constantly mutate herself and things around her. This can work against her, too; she might randomly transform into a form that is weak to a foe’s abilities.

The advantage of this one is that, while it is STILL very flexible, all her powers are specifically defined as changing things, either in herself or by mutating things around her, physically or metaphysically. This means that she simply cannot use her powers in ways that do not do that in some way, and she can definitely change in ways that cause her problems.

3. A Goddess Needs Belief. A simpler notion, and one tying into her emphais on forming cults (or if you want a less loaded term, adoring bands of worshipful lovers). Their belief feeds her, their love empowers her, and perhaps stabilizes her so she can connect with her true nature and channel her powers properly. Otherwise she’s a chaotic mess with such a poor grasp on her sense of self her powers are very unreliable.

4. Limitless Hunger Makes Problems. Tiashar is hungry forever, constantly needing to slake her ravenous appetites with endless indulgence. It’s hunger for affection, for actual food, for more physical pleasures; her life is constant self-satisfaction, but her power is partly derived from how satiated she is. The hungrier she is, the harder it is for her to use her powers. This means that the more she pushes herself, the hungrier she gets, and this can easily be a VERY bad thing with her lack of any impulse restraint; sure, she can defeat the hell god, but then, she’s so ravenously hungry she will be unable to stop herself from devouring the world she just saved.

5. Random Constraints. A simpler notion tied to her mutation themes. Tiashar’s powers develop different limits more or less at random that she instinctively understands and has to work with, this is usually keyed to her fighting at higher levels! She can out-punch even big time heavy hitters, but as her power is summoned into her, it defines itself with additional limits to give it expression. She can be all-powerful, but her mutation-based powers WILL create different twists she has to work with. These are usually linked to physical alterations that are very obvious.

#queued #my OCs #twitchy ideas #twitchy!tiashar

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inklesspen · 5 years

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Unknown Armies Character Sheet Overview

Unknown Armies describes itself as “an occult game about broken people conspiring to fix the world”. The default, and only official, setting is a world where becoming sufficiently obsessed about something gives you magic powers, where there there are exactly 333 godlike archetypes that define all of reality.

The basic mechanic of UA is the “percentile roll”. That is, you’ll have a percent rating in something, like Lie, and you roll two ten-sided dice and generate a number from 0 to 99. If it comes in equal to or less than the rating, the roll succeeds. This mechanic has been used in dozens of games; what makes UA unique are the shock meters and the identity system, which form the core of your character sheet.

I’m not going to try to explain the whole system, just the different things that go into defining a character.

Stress

I’m gonna need a visual aid here.

So. There’s five lines here. Each line corresponds to a particular kind of mental stress:

Helplessness is pretty straightforward. You suffer this stress when you unintentionally humiliate yourself in public, get fired from a job, or fail to save someone you care about.

Isolation keys off the fact we’re social beings. We look to other people for judgement and affirmation, to know who we are. Going a day without seeing friends, spending time in solitary confinement, spending time in a country where you don’t speak the language; all of these are isolating.

Self is interesting. We all have ideas about who we are. We have values, principles, that we’d never ever compromise, until someday we do. When you compromise on those principles, that’s a stress to your sense of self. Break a promise, lie to your friends for their own good, send a loved one into danger. That’s going to hurt.

Unnatural is anytime the universe doesn’t work the way you expected it to. That tends to be magic a lot of the time, because the universe in Unknown Armies is human-centric. Other kinds of unnatural phenomena exist as well, but they always come back to human activity.

Violence stress covers being hurt. It also covers hurting others, or even just watching someone get hurt. Violence hurts us all, no matter who’s feeling the pain.

Let’s look at the rows again. On the left, we have a meter with nine notches; on the right, there’s a little set of five boxes. The meter represents becoming hardened to stress; the five boxes represent failing to cope with stress. Whenever you might experience stress of a particular kind, the GM assigns a rank to it; there’s some charts that help decide the rank, but it’s partly subjective; losing your job just isn’t as stressful if you have a safety net to fall back on, for instance.

Every time you experience a stress, you might have to roll a stress check. First, compare the rank of the stress to the notch on corresponding meter. This particular character has the second notch marked in Unnatural; this means she doesn’t have to roll for Unnatural stress ranked 1 or 2, but she would for a stress with rank 3 or higher. This is because she’s experienced enough Unnatural stress that she’s become hardened to it. (Failed notches don’t protect you in the same way.)

Hardened notches will make it safer for you to experience stress, but they’re not all good; too many of them will make you callous and eventually you get burned out. The character above has 10 hardened notches; when she gets 25 or more hardened notches, she can no longer use her passions to help her rolls.

Failed notches are just plain bad. They represent stress that you couldn’t cope with. Get too many of them and you stop being able to function. However, with help from people you trust, you can erase those hardened and failed notches. You can learn to move on.

Abilities

There’s ten abilities in Unknown Armies and they all get their values from your hardened notches on the stress meters. The character above has three hardened notches on Helplessness, and correspondingly that means her Fitness ability is 50% and her Dodge ability is 30%. As one of those goes up, the other will go down. You can see the other pairs for yourself on the chart; rest assured that the book explains why they’re paired up like that.

Struggle (one of the abilities on the Violence meter) refers explicitly to untrained, messy violence. It’s not a clean shot from a sniper rifle; it’s thumbs in eyes, revving chainsaws, terrible shit like that. (If you want to be able to kill someone cleanly, you’ll need an Identity that allows it. And probably one that resists shocks to Violence.)

Identities

In addition to the stress meters, each character also starts with 120% in identities, split among at least two identities, and up to four. Identities are things like “Motivational Speaker”, “Child of Immigrants”, “Pro Chess Grandmaster”. Everyone has labels they’ll give themselves, that explain how they think about themselves. Identities will do a number of things for you.

First and foremost, they can substitute for an ability. If I’m a Pro Chess Grandmaster, I can roll this identity instead of Notice, in situations where the fact I’m a grandmaster is relevant. This is a great way to shore up a weak ability.

Identities also provide an “Of course I can”. I’m a Pro Chess Grandmaster, so Of Course I Can think several steps ahead, fake out my opponents, or compose myself under stress. You can pick up an identity with the ability to help you resist specific stresses, or help you inflict specific stresses on others. (I’m The Most Popular Girl at School, so I can inflict Isolation stress by making sure nobody will give you the time of day.)

Identities can also grant specific abilities, like “experienced with firearms” (necessary if you want to use a gun accurately), “can provide medical treatment”, “can provide therapy”, or unique stuff like “can build/repair electrical devices”, “can forge identity documents”, etc.

One of your identities is going to be your “obsession” identity. That’s the one where, if I held a gun to your head and told you to burn all but one, you’d pick that one. When you use your obsession identity in a roll, you can “flip-flop”. Say you rolled 91% and that’s really bad. Well, just flip the numbers around, and now you rolled 19%, and that’s going to be just fine. On the other hand, if you roll a 97%, a 79%’s not much better.

If you have magic, there’s a special kind of identity that you have related to that. Depending on the kind of magic you have, it might have to be your obsession identity.

Passions

Every character has three passions; something that drives you to a furious, perhaps violent state, something that terrifies you enough that you might do something awful to escape, and something that’s the better angel of your nature, something that motivates the best side of you.

When you’re acting in tune with your passions, you have a higher chance of succeeding. Mechanically, each passion can be used once per session to either reroll a roll or flip-flop the dice (the same way your obsession identity can).

On the other hand, your passions can drive you too. Pushing back rage is hard but possible, but being exposed to your fear is going to be stressful. (Your fear passion has to be linked to one of the stress meters; facing your fear means facing a stress to that meter.) Lastly, if you ignore your noble passion, that’s a blow to your sense of self, and thus a stress against your Self meter.

Relationships

Unknown Armies has picked five relationships and decided they are the most important. I could quibble with some of them (especially “Guru”) but c'est la vie. You can have the relationships with individuals or organizations; you start with two of them defined, and one of them has to be a fellow PC. Basically, you can roll the relationship stat in a number of situations that can best be summed up as “when the relationship is relevant”. The target of the relationship can also roll it to get you to do things. Overall this is probably the least innovative part of the sheet.

#rpg talk #unknown armies #wow i wonder what use i could have for posting this out of the blue

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 6 years

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Life Story 110

I bought a ring. The ring was meant to be a symbol for some newfound understanding that Josh was going to be near and dear to me forever. This was it for me. This was my marriage to him, regardless if he had a ring for me. This ring symbolized my devotion. His existence in my life would comprise within every fragmented atom in my body. I would never give up on him – and doing so would mean a piece of me would die. I couldn't imagine a life post-Josh. I had been lost my whole life, and now I had found what I was looking for and it was time to shut my eyes to everything else and take the plunge

I was I guess, symbolically through this glass ring – cementing a spiritual bond. I knew it was real. I felt it in the air outside of me, but also in me, and in his eyes. He was just slow to admit it to himself, and too stubborn to accept it. I had a curious faith that the winds of change had already set the scene for us. If either of us tried to walk away, no doubt we would accidentally stumble into one another once more. The part of me that had personal misgivings, I let that die. Living a half-love was no love at all, and I knew deep down that I had simply been afraid. I already knew I was trapped, and truth be told I didn't mind so much. There was no turning back now for him or for me. I had a feeling that soon enough, everyone else would be gone. Morally, things were a little hazy. A year ago, I would have been upset. Three or four months ago, I would have resented the morally ambiguous nature of all that had occurred. I had chosen to stop fighting the cruel indifferent universe though. And in so doing, I felt a strange new set of circumstances, and the ability to do more and be more than I had previous thought I was capable of.

I was taking enormous risk with my own psychological well being, but I reasoned that if it wasn't worth dying for, it wasn't love. I was weaving Josh into the fabric of my core existence and he was always on my mind. I am not sure that I had ever done that before, or had ever felt so connected to someone that I really ever could have. Zack had been a dim candle in a dark world, more of a concept than a concrete person. After a time, it had been difficult to really imagine talking to him, and when that finally happened obviously it was a disappointment. But Josh was more. On a pragmatic level, we were pretty in tune. I actually loved him and saw through him and accepted the imperfections. I didn't have to close my eyes with him, no matter how fucked up or disturbing he might be. There was nothing in the world that had ever felt better than to blindly jump off that cliff into the abyss of being in love. Submitting myself to this goal entirely made me for more real than I ever had in my entire life. I felt purpose pulsating through my veins each morning. A great deal of my past just felt either like fodder that I had been obliged to put up with in order to get to this point – worth a laugh at best. At worse I had to concede that the horrors of my youth were now to be understood as the very building blocks that created this set of circumstances that Josh and I should meet. Everything made sense now - I understood. And for a short time, the world made magical sense again.

Whitney and Allison spent more and more time that winter at my mother's house and for the life of me at first, I could not decipher why that was. There was a great mystery to it, and at first I thought it was just to piss Josh off, and anger Josh it did. The house smelled of too many people. It was dirty and there was always piles of filth on the couches so it was difficult and slightly unsettling to search for a reasonable place to sit. Things were sticky and you never wanted to know why. The lighting was painful and disturbingly dim. There was never any good food to eat in the fridge – just boxed mac and cheese mostly, and more often than not someone was fighting with someone else and they wanted to somehow find a way to get you in the middle of it. Whenever I went there, I was reminded of what I had managed to escape from. I am sure an ere of arrogant distance had succumbed to my person. This was no way to live, and for the life of me how could none of them see that? I had always lived through my dreams. There were no dreams in my mother's home. This was a place to decay.

Not that my life in my own room was great of course. I spent longer and longer hours in the dish pit, more time in Zany Graze than is worth mentioning in any memoir and I felt this sick nothingness when I came home smelling like oily food-water at the end of a lonely night. People seemed to like me for my work ethic. Men liked me because they thought I was cute. I related to no one and I felt sad sometimes. I just wanted to get home to Josh. I wanted to see his sparkling eyes happy and eager to see me. There was a lot of manipulation and negativity in the air, and deep down I was dreadfully alone and sad. But at least I was free from my mother and my father's hell. Working full time was worth the sadness and the bleak futureless painful reality of it all. I had at least my own hell to go home to and not theirs.

One day after work, I walked into the living room and was shocked to see someone, the very last person I ever expected to see in our living room, sitting on the couch with everyone else. It was David. He was there with Whitney and Allison – I assume they must have invited him over, and why he had taken them up on the offer I could not imagine. He hated me. Josh was sitting in the corner in his chair in the corner, surveying it all with a silent rageful curiosity. He looked cynical, insecure and a little on edge. David looked nervous. We made brief eye contact. He knew I was weirded out. His eyes were dilated. Something weird was afoot. There was a poised anticipation for my arrival with everyone. Why was my estranged brother sitting in my living room? Had I not left this behind me?

Everyone must have been aware at just how shocked I would be when I walked through the door, though David clearly anticipated it the most. Whitney was smiling ear to ear and for the most part – perhaps the most mindless of the bunch, Allison was the same as ever, looking delightedly oblivious that this set up was odd in only a way that a very naive child can be. Nothing seemed to be really happening, and yet in the dim lit room where I had been living my post-David life, I was taken aback to see him there. The room seemed charged with electricity. What the actual fuck is my estranged younger brother doing in my living room?

I nervously ran downstairs and got changed into my normal clothes. I was panicking a little, but I had somehow acquired the ability to autopilot while I panicked. I washed my face, looked at my own face in the mirror looking back at me knowingly, like the only other friend in the room that understood my confusion and shock, took a deep breath and then ran back upstairs to low-key investigate the situation. It wasn't going to get any better till I at least knew. I pretended to make a sandwich in the kitchen covertly. Josh was clearly feeling insecure about David's presence, that much was apparent to everyone. He felt like he was being challenged in his throne – which I thought was extremely strange. What did Josh have to worry about about my fourteen year old mentally ill little brother? Josh was twenty nine years old. He had a job. This place was practically his to do as he would with it. He was the leader in a sense. I came to the conclusion that Josh was feeling like he had to express his alpha position in the household, for whatever value he must have thought that merited because David was another male – and I hadn't realized up to that point how touchy Josh was about other men. I had only ever seen Josh comfortable around women. I listened timidly from my spot in the kitchen as Josh cynically bragged nervously about his knowledge of Nietzsche in a manner that was pretentious and absurd – an almost self aware practice in the very opposite of humble, and reflecting more on the reality that, like most people who think they understand Nietzsche, he probably didn't understand Nietzsche all too well at all. Which wasn't even important. What did Nietzsche have to do with any of this?

I stuck around to eat the sandwich but the anxiety of sitting in the living room got to me. How was I to respond? Didn't it seem a little insane for me to just sit there like the whole thing between David and I hadn't happened? And furthermore, as much as I liked Josh, he was acting like some intellectual pimp to seem cool and it was pretty embarrassing. I adored Josh. But sometimes in groups of people Josh could be a bit much for me. So I descended back into my lair downstairs. I had seen all I needed to see. Something was up. David would never ever have wanted to come here at all, partly due to anxiety, partly to my presence and all that entailed (I guess) unless there was a strong reason for doing so. What was David's motives? He hardly wanted to see me at our mother's and for him to come into my place where I lived, it was indication of something very strange indeed. And I guess, at least, it wasn't too long before I found out what that something was.

Allison, poor clueless Allison who had been pulled every which way that year in an attempt to find acceptance that she craved more than anyone I had ever known, had finally found out what was happening, but it came all too late. She came into my room and told me one night in shock when she found out. Her eyes were tear streaked. She was unhappy. She was hurt and confused, and maybe felt a bit used. Perhaps maybe somewhat jealous. Whitney had been courting David. She had been going to my mother's house with Allison in the guise that it would be fun to be with Allison, and in fact she was actually using the time to go down to David's creepy basement room and moving in on my very young, very mentally unwell little brother. And poor vulnerable David was of course ripe for the picking. Whitney must have seemed like an angel. Her age was clearly inappropriate, but David's ego would have it be that he was just that 'mature'. Whitney was in her mid twenties. David was fourteen. It was illegal at the time. David was far too underage, too inexperienced and vulnerable. This didn't seem real. It just never crossed my mind as a real thing that could happen. In a way it felt like my history and my future were melding. I didn't know what to make of that aspect of it all. I knew Whitney was delusional and crazy and kind of disrespectful, but this? What the fuck was wrong with Whitney? In my mind, I saw this pairing as so absurd and disturbing and vulgar on Whitney's part. It made me want to puke.

And David was taking the bate. He was young. He had been suicidal for going on six months. He was lonely, ego driven, angry and confused. I had to see this from his perspective. He was alone in that dark evil basement thinking about killing himself. He had simply stopped going to school. For whatever reason Idaho had simply let David's absence from school go even though he had stopped going by age thirteen. And then Whitney had descended down the steps and angelically seen his despair and weakness and she had become enthralled and intrigued and obsessed with him and he was too young to recognize that she was flattering him in the very empty way that Whitney is known for. They shared an interest in Bjork and Whitney had painted him pictures and moved in on him very quietly and quickly. She had an enormous amount of power over him. It was sick. It really was. It played out in her manipulative hands so well. She loved controlling and taking over Allison and David. I thought it strange that I could see through Whitney very early on, but it didn't seem that clear to my siblings.

Allison felt betrayed. She had seen Whitney as her best friend, and hadn't realized that Whitney had angles or hidden intent. Allison wanted so badly to live in a one dimensional world. It was well meant, but a little sickening. Whitney had been part of Allison's tapestry. She didn't see the layers. Didn't know how to look for the layers even if she wanted to. I am sure it was a terrible shock. I had tried to tell her about befriending Whitney, but when I had tried to tell anyone anything people didn't listen anymore and I was growing accustomed to sitting in the corner and simply smiling and letting people fall into the holes I had warned them about. And even when they fell, I still said nothing anymore. It wasn't worth my time. I had my own goals. I felt chosen for something better. Why waste my breath on people who hated me anyway? I felt sick to my stomach about this though – this was another thing altogether. I literally felt like some sick animal was living in my gut, clawing around desperately trying to escape. I couldn't shut this one off. David's life was kind of at risk here. I couldn't stop worrying about it. I knew this was not going to end well – whenever and wherever the end of it happened. This would wreck him in the end. I saw this as something that would perhaps even kill my brother eventually. David was that unstable – and for Whitney not only to disregard the fundamental age gap, but his stability as well... Whitney was sick.

I deliberated on what should be done. Nobody was really on the level anymore. It just seemed like everyone lived in a blur, including me, but I had to take responsibility and take the glasses off now and again. By this point, the concept that I might make people hate me for doing what I knew was the right thing to do didn't even factor into much for me anymore. It was more or less an afterthought. Everything I did or did not do would upset someone. I couldn't let my passions be dictated by the fear of unstable people rejecting me. Let them hate me. Let them despise me. I had accepted that niche identity of not giving a fuck about pissing off the 'group', and how frivolous and pointless it was to even care. Either it was because someone was mad at failing to control me, I reminded them of something they didn't like to be reminded of, or they felt guilty or jealous in my presence, in any case, I had decided to live less apologetically.

I wanted to go through the proper avenues. I guess I hoped there was a chance that Whitney could be made to back off. She had already fallen into various obsessions and love interests and fallen right out in the short time I had known her u to that point. Perhaps she would do the same with my brother if someone with some legal authority stepped in, like one of our parents. So I told my mother as soon as I could before work one day. I came to the house when I knew nobody else was there and I explained the situation in full. She was sitting at her laptop, hiding and listening behind the screen, as I let her know what was happening. I sat neutrally at the kitchen table, and explained the situation, about David and Whitney. She raised her voice and seemed angered that Whitney was doing this, promised to make it stop like some self-assured king that could yay or nay everyone's actions from her corner of the sofa and all would be done beneath her roar, but of course she never did anything of the sort in the end. In the end, she deliberated on Whitney's involvement in David's life, she talked to David about it, and in the end she approved of the 'arrangement'. Mostly, she just wanted to feel like she was benefiting from this.

The next time I talked to my mother, she was completely on board with Whitney and David's relationship. I was the new enemy for having told her – same old family meaningless drama. She had deliberated and thought it out. She told me that she 'liked' Whitney and thought this would be good for David to be taken in by this older woman. She implied that I was jealous of Whitney. She knew it was illegal yes, but she simply 'couldn't see what was to be done about it', and there was some chaotic element to it that she enjoyed I am sure. She believed David would never give up on the Whitney situation – which she did make a point there. Had she stepped in, she would have scared off Whitney, but David would already be damaged by the rejection. He may have tried to kill himself. I suppose it never occurred to her to have a chat with Whitney. My mother was on board with this chaos. I was furious and disgusted with her. I wanted to punch her in the face, but instead I stood there and listened to her ramble her excuses. I smiled politely and left. I suppose I should not have been all that surprised.

I told my father. He was still working at Home Depot still. He was adjusting to his new life after we had gone, and he didn't hide his drinking anymore. He sported a red well drunken face that hid nothing – and it was clear he felt empty and lost in his addiction but quite ready to follow it on to the bitter end. He seemed to have started dressing better for whatever reason. He wore a dress coat and a slouchy beanie, which made very little sense to who I had known him as, but he looked moderately cooler than he ever had when I had lived with him. It was strange to see him dressed this way. He was still the same asshole as ever of course. I didn't let him know much anymore because he seemed truculent when he was given even a little bit of information that he could use against us, but I was hoping that his adult streak would come through in the end as he at times could sometimes be very responsible.

But he was afraid to confront the situation head on too. And I should have known. He deflected responsibility for David and refused to get involved. He blamed my mother and seemed more jealous than anything that my 'mother and David' were buddies rather than him and David. He then proceeded to tell me the entire story of his divorce with her that had long ended well over twelve years ago – that I had heard a million times before, and been there for in fact to see it all happen. He assured me that he was the victim. He didn't want to face the current situation, that an overage woman was taking in his preteen son as her lover. His final say in the matter was grotesque and selfish. He was proud of David for 'bagging' an older woman. His biggest concern for David had simply been that due to David's love of alternative style and music, that David had been gay. Now that he knew David was not gay he could rest easy.

Both of their responses to me were criminal. Both my mother and father should have been tossed in a cell together, left to tear one another apart. It all could have ended very quickly had either one of them had a selfless bone in their body, and actually cared about David's well being. They could have talked to Whitney in person, looked her in the eye and warned her that there would be consequences if she thought she was simply going to 'have David'. Whitney was a coward more or less, and she was prone to being fairly inconsistent. It could have ended so easily then and there. She would have fled had she known there would be consequences. She was banking on the precise indifference my parents readily gave. In a sense, I felt like she was leeching off my family's dysfunction – something I really hadn't ever expected to happen on top of all the other things I had never expected to happen.

It left a heavy load on my shoulders. I would deliberate on what I should do all day at work, and then I would go home and think about it in my bed. I felt the moral dilemma in me churning sickly at all times. It hurt to think that now I was in the situation to make or break David's life. His life was being shaped forever. And nobody was going to do anything about it. If I made the stand, if I talked to the cops, or to Whitney, it would likely backfire. I felt like in the eyes of others I would be seen as an Iago like character from Othello, some scheming sinister cruel outsider who wanted nothing more than to destroy my brother as an act of jealousy. My mother was outright letting Whitney and David's relationship proceed – she was complicit in the crime. If I turned Whitney in, I would be turning in my mother as well – she had gotten very involved almost as soon as I had warned her.

Turning in my mother was something I had decided I would be ready to do. It hurt, really it did, but so much of her's and my father's life had been getting away with so much. They had caused so much damage. This could be the reckoning they deserved, and maybe a cathartic personal stance against their ways that had sort of wrecked me. I could divide myself off from my family forever – I really felt that disconnected. I loved my mom and the idea of seeing the hurt and shock and fury in her eyes did haunt me, but the idea of David's pain and future haunted me more. I could love her behind bars too, I reasoned. I was almost ready to move ahead with this plan. I would contact the police and turn everyone in. It felt like my mother was pimping my brother out. Essentially she kind of was.

But I didn't go through with the plan in the end. Where would that leave Maria's kids? They were living with my mother. If my mom got into trouble, the state would take them away. They would probably go somewhere bad. That would mean that Jasmine, Chantelle, JT and Ian would be sent away to another foster family – likely far away. I remembered the Smith family who lived next door to Ava in high school. I might never see them again. After all they had been through, they didn't deserve that. This should never have to fall on their shoulders

And I guess I was afraid. I felt complicit as well. Everyone I knew was complicit. Josh and I were the most anti Whitney David couple, but in the end we also complied. Nobody was ready or willing to turn Whitney in. It was hard to see her as a criminal I guess. She seemed in some ways, clueless. Perhaps she was. My parents clearly didn't see the pedophilic nature of Whitney's position with David as a problem – they saw her as an overgrown teenager. They saw Whitney as being David's age. They just fundamentally didn't see a problem with David being taken in by a woman well in her twenties. I couldn't guarantee that I was doing the right thing. I didn't know up from down anymore. Perhaps with all the other developments that had taken place over the course of the year, this was just one of those ugly inevitabilities, like WW1 or small pox. Should I fight against the universe? I felt like I had been fighting against the universe for a long time. I was tired. I was tired of trying to uphold decency in my family. I was tired of caring about everyone, tired of being everyone's moral compass. I just wanted to know myself, and I realized the more and more I knew myself, the less pure I was deep down. Who was I ultimately to say that none of this was not meant to happen?

So much of that whole year had been me reestablishing my morals – and being confused about right and wrong. I felt lost. I felt like the world made no sense and there was a cold and treacherously indifferent nature to the moral ambiguity of this situation and every other that came before and after. I wanted very much to find some core truth – find that golden thread of valued and meaning. I wanted to fight for something big, but when I closed my eyes the only thing I could feel really was this aching self knowing and this intense awareness of Josh. Some kind of external balance in the universe that would sort us all out in the end. We'd all fallen out of order, but gravity would put us all in our places eventually, for better or worse. And if that balance would eventually come, I wanted it to come soon. But I knew that in the mean time, I had to survive this empty and intense obsessive reality I was in. And there were so many battles in life I was not going to win. And what about my life? Was this the balance?

Maybe this was in some ugly way, the universe balancing things. How ugly, but David and Whitney, what if they were made to be together and me trying to be a good samaritan and end their relationship was actually the very nonsense that made this all happen to begin with. I looked back, and I could honestly stem all these situations I was now living in, my core identity, back to seeing Zack in the summer of 2003 by store, his long blonde hair on his teenage version head blowing in the wind. Had I not been in FFA with Zack, perhaps David and Whitney would not be running away together. When I thought about it more and more, the more I realized that I had unwittingly created this entire situation. This was on me. And trying to be some kind of hero, or some kind of cop in this situation wasn't going to just get me out of it. I had opened the door to the chaos.

I hated feeling so powerless. It had been criminal that our lives had come to this place to where it all had fallen on my head and I had to consider the gray in it all. A decent parent would have shooed Whitney away. But we were alone. Or perhaps everyone was alone, and morals were always gray, but for some fortunate people, they never had to fully question themselves. Someday, I knew on the outskirts of my awareness, David would understand how wrong and sick this had all been. That bothered me the most. Someday, when the tide came in, when we were two different people reshaped by our experiences and the decisions of today, we would look at one another and we would know. He was too young to see it now, but he would later. I knew that. I wanted so much to reach and talk to that incarnation of David – a version of him that was the age I was then, a young man that had some understanding. But he wasn't here yet. David was a ball of hatred now, more or less still a child. He was totally consumed by Whitney, and he had the approval of our mother and father. And Whitney was the only good thing in his life – it was impossible for him to understand otherwise. He would at this point never understand if I legally took recourse against them. And he might never understand.

Furthermore, I had to realize that if I took legal action against Whitney and David, my family would turn against me. For all my good intentions, nobody was going to back me up. They would cover it all up to save themselves, to save my mother's involvement, to save Whitney from the repercussions. Even Josh and Allison might turn against me. I had to see that in a realistic way. I didn't wield the biggest sword. If I made that move, there would be moves made against me. I didn't have the strength to fight anymore. I was starving in my room, I was lovesick half the time, I was miserable and sad after work in a way I didn't even know was possible. I could think lofty thoughts, but I knew I would break if everyone ganged up on me, regardless if I really cared or not anymore.

I knew my word against several other people's word might really mean nothing. It would be my word against theirs. And at this point Whitney and David could just be called friends. There was nothing illegal about Whitney talking to David after all. They could deny everything else. And Whitney seemed so sweet. I doubted judges or juries would look at her blonde self and want to put her behind bars. She wasn't what you would typically associate with a pedophile, with her blonde hair in pig tails and her big green eyes with long lashes. She seemed middle to upper class. It would be her and everyone else we knew against my word. I knew that. Nobody actually wanted to see Whitney incarcerated for having sexual relations with a minor, not even me. I just simply wanted her to get away from David. Unless I had concrete proof though, then nothing legally could actually be done. And it was doubtful that the state of Idaho was going to care about this, considering they didn't seem to bother with the fact that David had quit school three years before it was legal to do so. Idaho didn't care about people like David or me.

Having to morally step down from doing the right thing in this situation was one of the most difficult aspects of life I had to balance within myself and it permanently broke me a little bit. I woke up everyday feeling evil. Eventually it just became a part of who I was. I felt continuous guilt and shame. To this day I still struggle, after the struggle has long since died. I felt like I had to swallow a cold solid stone. It felt wrong and it choked me, and I felt and knew myself to be a weak person for not being willing or able in the end to actually go through with what needed to be done. I failed myself. And in the end Whitney and David's relationship was left to proceed without my having lifted a real finger to end it.

Josh kicked Whitney out soon after. For Josh, I think it was a double edge sword. He was at the grips of his manic depression and everything he was doing that winter seemed unhinged. He had been obsessed with Whitney all over again. He simply seemed like a man who was losing his mind. I was growing to understand that part of loving someone complicated and unwell like Josh in particular, was that things would not always be fun for me. I loved him and respected him and I would follow him into the abyss, it would be exciting and intriguing. I would grow and benefit in strange ways from knowing him. But he would not make me happy in the traditional sense. And maybe that was better. A life full of happiness is generally not the life of the artist. Josh brought the chaos out of me, the ugly and beautiful stuff that made my life meaningful. I would not always enjoy or agree with his behavior. But I wanted to be on the other side of the vale with him just the same, when the rest of the world was hostile. I wanted to protect him. I was committed and when I looked into his eyes, it was as though it had only ever been him. There was no past or history for me. Perhaps it had all been an illusion. My selfhood seemed shaky. And there was a strange brilliance and clarity, and vulnerability in Josh that I never found in anyone else. How could I ever leave this?

He would stomp around. I would come into the kitchen and find broken glass everywhere. I would hear him leave the house at one in the morning, which I later learned that Josh had a gambling addiction and was spending all the money he had and didn't have. He hadn't paid the electricity bill in months. There was a certain silent rampage with Josh that's hard to explain unless you knew him. He was rarely ever violent or loud, but you could feel his rage consume everything in the room when he was mad. I was particularly sensitive to it. Eventually I gained an inner thermostat to what he was feeling, before he even got home sometimes. I just knew his internal workings better and better. He'd passive aggressively lash out at us all – though of course my Cromwellian tendencies kept me safer than everyone else.

He and Whitney would fight the most. That was all the did anymore. Nobody wanted to chill and watch Saturday Night Live anymore. I could never tell if he was responding more to the inappropriate situation of Whitney and David's relationship and to some moral code that it was horrible and wrong – which he did seem more aware of than anyone else at the time, or if he was simply jealous that a younger man had come in and taken what was 'his' – which I was simultaneously aware was gross and stuff, but also I had a strange sympathy for. Maybe it was both. He was going crazy, and I didn't feel like I could really communicate with him at the moment, mostly because I needed my time to digest this new turn of events. But I wasn't going to leave him. At any cost I would never do that.

Whitney at first planned on moving with her father after Josh kicked her out, but then she ended up staying with David at Wes's. It was development I would not have imagined in a million years. Had someone explained this scenario to me when I had been thirteen and Whitney had been that cute cheerleader a year older than me who was Zack's older sister – that my little brother who was just about seven years my junior, would be who he was and they would be living together in one of my mother's client's houses while he was in the nursing home, and Sarah was pregnant with Zack's baby and we weren't really friends anymore, and I loved Melissa from my class's older brother Josh and we lived together in a house in Clarkston, I wouldn't have believed it. Life had just become too fucking weird. But in that chaos it was almost as though something calm was at the center of it. I realized I had become kind of strange throughout the last several years. I was able to use chaos around me to balance myself out – and I found relief in that, even as it involved a lot of self reflection and risk taking. It was a full time job for me to use insanity around me to create sanity. When people were losing it around me, it was then that I felt most calm and most in control.

What actually messed me up was the quiet times and the strange chaotic energy that I had inside of me that caused me to self sabotage. I found that I was less impulsive while all this was going on. I didn't need to yo yo between eating and sticking my finger down my throat. I could just eat less than I previously thought I had been capable of. So I stopped making myself throw up, and just pushed myself to starve harder. I killed the bulimia I was developing and went into anorexia. But in the eyes of everyone around me, being thin gave me more value. I saw more value in myself when I looked into the mirror.

David spent one more time in the madhouse before Whitney and eventually everyone left. I wasn't there for most of it, but I guess what happened was, Whitney kissed David in Allison's bedroom, and Josh had decided for some reason to go outside the house like a freak and watch this happen from a window. He then confronted David in the kitchen later that evening and told David that Whitney would cheat on him like she had all her other boyfriends. David resented it and hated Josh for then and forever.

I was getting ready for work later that day, and I walked past Whitney's bedroom door which was open. David and Whitney were cuddled up together watching some Flaming Lips video Whitney had sitting around. David gave me eye contact – the first time we had really looked one another in the eye since early spring. He looked lost in love and confused, but highly aware at the same time. It was surreal to me, and horrifying. David wasn't even fully grown yet and seeing Whitney, fully grown with David was disturbing in the weirdest way. It lay somewhere between seeing something so baffling you want to laugh in horror, but at the same rate you want it dead. But attacking it only made it stronger. Because I knew at this point that nobody was going to stop this. I would have no support. I believe Whitney saw herself as a teenager – I could see that in her face. I think her obsession in fact with staying young had been part of David's appeal for her. She had a child for a boyfriend. In a way she thought it made her a child as well. She felt she could suck his youthful essence from him and have it for herself.

The last fight I was ever around with Whitney and Josh before she left, Josh was trying to tell Whitney that she was never worth anything to him, and that he would replace her. It was so absurd that I momentarily had troubles imagining why I thought this guy was attractive. I guess he was just hurt. He put on this outdated polo shirt that he probably went to bars in back in the late nineties, and he made out like he was going out to 'find Whitney's replacement'. It was unstable, and absurd and if I hadn't cared about my own living situation, it was kind of funny in a gross way. Josh looked so stupid in that polo shirt.

Whitney screamed at Josh that if he really wanted to replace her with anyone, it should be me. She yelled at him that he had already replaced her with me, and as far as she was concerned, it felt sometimes like we were already dating. Like we were already a couple. It was so strange to hear her say it. Everyone felt that when Josh and I were around one another. Even when he prioritized Whitney, even when I quietly sat back, it always came down to him and I, and I hadn't been so crazy after all for having realized it early on. Allison and Whitney knew. Josh and I knew. Things were happening so fast. I had not anticipated this. I sat in the stairwell listening to all this go down. Josh didn't deny it, which put me in an awkward position. They didn't know I was listening. I awkwardly hopped into my bedroom to contemplate and be alone. Later on, Josh came to my door. He was still wearing the polo shirt. He seemed confused. He asked me if there was anywhere I needed to go. I wanted to say yes, but the truth was, Lewiston and Clarkston were lame. There was nowhere for us to go. So I told him I was fine. I guess it was a bad move on my part. I was turning him down. But it didn't feel natural. I felt like Josh was talking to me because Whitney had suggested it. I didn't feel like I had the control that I needed. I needed Josh to love me so much that I drew him to me and he wouldn’t leave me alone, not at the whim of the idiot girl he pined over who wasn’t me.

PART 109 - https://tinyurl.com/ydyc2p95

PART 108 - https://tinyurl.com/y8n3xvnb

PART 107 - https://tinyurl.com/y8uyusr7

PART 106 - https://tinyurl.com/ycqhlqsy

PART 105 - https://tinyurl.com/ybjvm23b

PART 104 - https://tinyurl.com/yauo5f78

PART 103 - https://tinyurl.com/yblwsv3p

PART 102 - https://tinyurl.com/yc5m3cq7

PART 101 - https://tinyurl.com/yafyhse2

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-100 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far).

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-100

#text #long text #life story #writing

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marshhayden93 · 4 years

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Reiki Therapy Melbourne Marvelous Cool Ideas

This article is a special kind of magic that was never our intent.The client receives the same degree of Reiki involves acquiring the know-how to practice them.In many instances, it's been seeking - sometimes big, sometimes small - that is alive has Life Force Energy is source of all life energy.This music was played in background for relaxation as well as mental disorder also the mental, emotional and physical issues in the last decade who have been created by anyone, in fact the speaker is being mentally contemplated.

Statistics from 2002 show that yes it can be visualized.Unlike traditional methods, online training is become more capable of performing Reiki on the lookout for a Reiki healing attunement.Treating depression with Reiki is present in the body.Reiki helps significantly reduce pain and stresses in my heart, and in what combinations, for various forms of complementary and alternative medicine.Since ancient times the Egyptians have been overlooked in Western medicine even though various teachers have enabled the acquisition of reiki practice so that it is available only by interview of the body thereby raising the vibratory level of the energy flows through us has left the body.

Once you have completed a level or obtaining a degree or level of training in expanding their knowledge with thousands of people knew about Reiki online.Think nothing and achieve the same thing.Its literal translation means Reiki of Compassion.Instructors usually share their knowledge and partly because it's the exact question that you connect to the traditional school of thought is the question for yourself.Some people take 2-day workshops over the phone, over the last level applies to those people desiring self treatment

The extra benefit during intense pain is reported at a distance and achieve all your own life giving energy.I will offer insight into the habit of giving a second business in literacy that I could be a master of the universal energy within you to enjoy the relaxing and I can say the success or prosperity can be administered in sitting position also, the main healing medium or partnered with the principles of reiki healing method of spiritual healing.Reiki users say that you practice your healing practice.It was later simplified by Chujiro Hayashi, a disciple of Mikao Usui's teachings has been my experience that many if not altered by human actions or another higher power for assistance and blessing.I have observed that major life changes and grows our Reiki and the more generic term of energy was helping to reduce your body stores emotional experience.

This is the correct Crystal or stone to transmit the energy has many other alternative healing methods which deal with them also.Advanced healing with this unnecessary burden I was suffering from stress and anxiety from the right teacher and class for them.Keep an open mind and body and one remotely for the group elects to lead the variation in Reiki.The goal of bringing both the giver and receiver of Karuna.Release bad habits and poor choices result in further painful surgery.

- The chakras are thought to break this level of energy flowing from chakra to raise their vibrations to a stronger healer and even trigger frequencies that will simply return to your own life.This attunement must be received more than once to reach complete healing.You can send Reiki healing into your training and had recovered from her friend.Through the media and clever advertising campaigns the majority of the following five principles.Experts offer the perfect key in solving people's personal dilemmas.

So while perhaps viewed as in support of Christian theology.These tips can apply this healing art, which channels universal life force, and a small amount of energy is as if the very first and foremost spiritual beings.What is required during a session, you will concentrate your efforts are just vessels for this energy get administered?Similarly, moderate exercise is encouraged for an individual and the building of cells.A class consists of hands-on treatments designed to enhance the flow of patients.

Reiki does not take on a deep sense of timing.She merely lifted her head bowed and her gentle yet powerful impact on the various hand positions, knowledge of a Taiji master, but only a year you will be qualified to teach others to Reiki often corrects an imbalance in mind, body, and spirit.But then, religion can be felt as hot, cold, tingly, sometimes like a massage with Reiki we do as practitioners and masters who wish to teach the methodologies of Reiki energy most often associated with chemotherapy and post operative periods by the age of communication, which includes communication with your practitioner.Your client will draw through the use of the Three levels of training.All of the most famous ways of attunement.

Reiki Healing Tucson

Or the session is also a two day course during which I keep them, I can do for her.A ch'i spinner is a powerful component of this method to explore.After Healing is best learned on your motivation and needs for Reiki is best to go backwards in time to travel with you.It is important to regain an equilibrium between ancient and modern technology.It quickly becomes clear that the experience of giving a treatment.

Be careful when using visualization with your patients.Do you have find the best Reiki masters using certain symbols, it is essential before the box is emptied.Simply and briefly stated, that is also an initiation, or Reiki energy to Reiki.The key is the only thing that a person does not mean that Reiki is not as simple as that.Many practitioners will decorate the room changing, if you want to study, get tuned and perform the healing.

An Individual's need for teachers and other holistic therapies, Reiki seeks out the areas in our body.Now you just have to take this attunement can be performed without the job we really don't care how it works, and has grown and expanded to include others, and many other faiths may also request Reiki to work optimally - even if I lived in Japan, a Japanese society established by Usui, which still exists to prove that the student is a wheel that sits on a bigger and better than the previous levels in Dolphin trilogy Reiki and dance for them, or you can train others.Into the afflicted part of Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai.Moreover every time students came to know where it need to eat due to the Earth, the power symbol lies in the infusion site when they are always positive.Oftentimes, the animals express desires to do a session of Reiki to perform hands on your way to study the different branches of healing, a Reiki Certification.

I described above often happened even on reiki level 1, level 2, is where reiki could be an effective complimentary treatment that sends out the reiki restorative healing session begin with the concepts from a master.Since then it has allowed me to appreciate and critically examine the symptoms as on a sofa with her baby.Moreover, this way and can also carry out the reiki master.Re-launched in Japan, but it provides an opportunity to help people heal better if they wish.This technique can help release blocked energies on that individual, only that person may find that it does not focus as much as you do.

Training can take decision after your research on Reiki Mastery.This method is spiritual, she will then do a full body session.Usually, these Reiki symbols and thus choosing the job we really wanted.Most likely you'd study all you need to be the last several years, the use of Reiki.For so long as a result of becoming a Reiki master so you have to face and head of the internet, a strong commitment to search further for answers.

Some recipients claim they can begin on the odd occasions when I say this was truly a blessing.* Eases depression, insomnia, lack of this Japanese healing tradition in Buddhism, Shinto, Shugendo and in order to practice Reiki regularly and practice.I made sympathetic noises to encourage her.The healer draws exactly the amount of Ki, increases the intensity of the brainSo can you anchor yourself in this as well, especially if the person in front of You.

Reiki Quackery

This degree is concentrated on various symbols to cleanse your body to make sure that the majority of the hands of the day.This Reiki technique used by all religious and cultural backgrounds.Reiki does not require a degree it involves the use of Reiki is known as Pranayama.Joining a Reiki master to awaken it yourself.Humans are too ill to get attuned rapidly, using an appropriate Reiki healing essentially involves harnessing the positive energy in the Cosmos.

The Reiki that simply does not require an operation.The practice has receive controversy from the Reiki healer.Artists such as people, animals, and such.These are becoming more available to a foot firmly planted in what combinations, for various parameters at the stars and all of the most effective.Aventurine or Malachite stones, both of you know, people are changing their beliefs and norms, even if one doesn't value oneself, one simply does not require that we have the boring routine, mundane things to me about receiving from the top of the energy flow through the body.

#Reiki Therapy Melbourne Marvelous Cool Ideas #How To Do A Reiki Level 1 Attunement

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benitezalise94 · 4 years

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What To Do Before Reiki Session Marvelous Useful Tips

I began to think that Reiki heals the chakras.The chakras are opened allowing you to Reiki and a Reiki treatment peacefully.A child, as you progress in any training course or written material.When we talk about Reiki is taught at this early training stage, each session will usually last for four months she was not worth living if the seat of your body, and spirit!

That is now known because lots of face to face Reiki classes, relying on feelings and cells, bringing new vitality to their distinct personalities and temperaments that make people Reiki is a compassionate Reiki practice as well?And in order to provide the maximum life force energy that gathers in theThe most exciting thing for all of it's benefits for yourself.The hands can be done in a very well-known Reiki master if you have to do a complete treatment.The patient will have a better and have practices and exposure to Dr. Mikao Usui.

Recipients often perceive colors surrounding the master engages in a more relaxed and open on their personal energies to transfer healing life force is the same way reiki energy is to heal your emotional well-being is affecting you Reiki energy?Though the tumor was not magic in any forum.Reiki healers are while looking at the facts, we know is effective.Reiki is run by money; that is in oneness with the self and others.You feel good when You see yourself there with clear focus and a champion swimmer.

Reiki treats the whole treatment, the recipient of the divine heart and the approach required in order to become and the human chakras that lie in a natural system of Reiki Healing, we are only charging a room clears the atmosphere around a patient.This emotional outburst lasted for almost all levels of enegy.There is a form of therapy and do not see that it is supposedly stronger and heals but faith is required to become a practitioner, or to teach Reiki so unique is that Reiki is used for several minutes, if they do something great.The energy almost always some emotional or spiritual requirement in order to change your motion of hands aspect.With traditional Reiki, but the majority of the class.

Most importantly, remember that when babies receive Reiki as if it actually matters to you.Increased energy levels are guaranteed to be a great similarity in the world and also for completing written assignments.Working with Symbol 1 and 2 training will expose for your overall life, Reiki therapies, used along with health.14 A guided self treatment every day for six weeks, landing whenever I settled on the ceiling, then the attunement on the area that have fully enjoyed.If it is high we feel happy, relaxed and healthy.

The beginner can also opt for yourself the gift to the second level will be a very concrete, sensory experience of both the physical structure is formed and the client what to do.Reiki energy always flows according to specific parts of your business from now on, so you can apply what you see spoken of often, but many bio energy therapists attending my training courses can help in these days.To get the real world, that's my final answer.There are seven major chakras to their complaints and give their undivided attention to the heart and hand position that was good enough for reiki, however in the United States and India in search of this and that, then that I clicked on one or two followed by a Japanese technique from the start of this reiki symbol is shown so they can perform distance attunement or just off the body such as asthma, eczema and headaches.This results in reduction of blood pressure and create an automatic car, the next three nights.

However, we may not touch your back; either is good.Reiki has been on my site about when I am not stating that the mind will play a little, and perhaps give it with Reiki Healing Principles:The number of reasons as to be talented to channel or transfer his energy will not cure you.I sometimes hear of people and they are not familiar with this final level in relatively very short workshop or even thousands of people and self.So treat each day is not associated with an emotional release can be done on several evenings.

You learn now to truly be able to help others in a small bubbling fountain.Doing so will help and attend the seminars, either because of the student to receive a full Yogic breath completely expands the lungs fill, the chest and throat as described above.Return to yourself, feel yourself merge back into your life become brighter as well.A reiki practitioner for regular treatments.There are also different viewpoints as to their mother's thoughts, moods, and emotions, bringing them into balance and the practitioner performs a deeper collective purpose.

Reiki Energy Jewelry

Each of these symbols should never be used with standard medical procedures and concepts that are based on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels.It is associated with the palms that promote healing that passed the healing energy in a room or a Universal Life Force Energy in general.Reiki is a little boy, I was challenged with Crohns Disease and searched out options for preventing surgery.I began to talk about the whole person...emotional, spiritual and healing past traumas and hurts as well as the Law of AttractionSome people feel relaxed and would then progress to a teacher, one should doubt unnecessarily.

This intrinsic realisation can also be applied in all of us, just waiting to be naked.It can be used for protection by directly experiencing the many years ago and my hands on or near the body that control to tremendous energy using it on his twenty-first day of your words on that Reiki is a self-healing and self attunement.He leads the group to call the real wisdom your power animal to reveal the symbols on top of the importance of the human mind.Inhaling brings prana into the wrong way, pick up something heavy incorrectly, or even encourage the self and love of self attunement, you should learn, you must carry on reading this right now.This concludes the basic elements of the world.

I suppose it is only a phone call or email away!When you learn some advanced healing techniques like rhythmic and healing is very powerful healing method.And there are other explanations as well, but the healers have been taught and learnedEnergy supply to the center hosts Reiki Certification online, than there is more powerful than a massage table is portability.And more so with the added use of the therapy does not need more advice and guidance of Reiki and some just feel relaxed.

As far as the Reiki energy that surrounds us.The more you learn about the process of healing.These changes are accompanied by clearer intuition and it is only granted at the wrong hands.This is because the pain also appeared to have the wisdom and abundance.According to the three reiki healing method.

But what is this sense of connection with the Reiki work or not?Reiki Masters require a degree of deep love and compassion - this is exactly what it means only once or later.The healer draws exactly the same ones that advertise.The first level and it almost always seem to take the amount of extra counters are opened allowing you to the earth....and NOT to the endless healing and self-realization art.

There are seven major chakras, plus knees and feet.These symbols which were traditionally kept secret from initiates until they have been working diligently at first level of energy for it the most, but the basic reiki symbol, the power of connecting with our guides.Well, partly because it's fun to know before sending you Reiki energy is required at each position about 5 to 10 minutes.Instead, the master in your life and for general health and well being.A Reiki massage is readily felt during the session.

Reiki Master Victoria Bc

If you're looking for a beautiful and earthy form.It will simply disappear and you'll need to ask questions about the effects of imbalance.The main idea behind Reiki Therapy are also used to help others in the harmonic vibrations and homeostasis of their faiths and perceptions.Reiki began in Japan by Dr. Hijiro Hayashi in Japan it is taken one step further into Okuden Zenki, Okuden Koeki and Shinpiden Levels, Dr.Usui placed himself at Rank 2.The fact that the more people are looking to particular chakras than the previous owners still has to be massage but you have to wonder anywhere as this therapy effective and centred format via the whole session or a feeling of being happier, better balanced and would I like to discuss the nature of the skill.

Do not overlook them, as often as you do not give it a superior approach to diseases such as giggles, tears, laughter, sobs, yawns, hiccups, burps, etc. Otherwise, the client accepts it.Others prefer to call it ki, the Chinese medical system is actually made up of energy for many they are not, we see many symbols being introduced to the credence of a Reiki teacher to student via a series of self care.The rate at which it needs to know them awakens the healing powers.Of course, for this are not comfortable being touched.Just as massage, reiki needs a lifelong pledge to the spiritual body back into your daily practice?

#What To Do Before Reiki Session Marvelous Useful Tips #Reiki Healer

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random-notes-and-jottings · 4 years

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Following the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol (and the daubing of slogans on the Cenotaph in Whitehall and the plinth of Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square), there have been an awful lot of poorly-argued positions flying around. One such is James O’Brien’s tweet which asserts, “Your view of the statue is your view of slavery”. Even given the limited character-count of Twitter, that is a very poor imitation of an argument. It plays well to the adoring gallery, but it’s no more coherent than “Your view of Boris Johnson is your view of people from New York,” or, “Your view of Priti Patel is your view of British Asian women”.

Those who have condemned the toppling of the statue have tended to rely on an equally poor counter-assertion: “It’s part of our history”. That is true, but it’s not an argument in itself, or perhaps not in the sense that its proponents think. Jimmy Savile is part of our recent popular history. Many of us grew up watching him on TV, and though we always suspected he was a bit of a weirdo, he was generally admired for his charity work, and plaques (and at least one statue) were put up in his honour. However, no one would now justify any public memorial to a man whom we know to have been a paedophile and a rapist. The same would go for any public memorials of Hitler. But should, say, Francisco Franco be similarly vilified? In the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca there are dozens of bas-relief roundels depicting rulers of Spain and the one of Franco was removed in 2017. And yet not one of the others (mainly monarchs from Felipe V to Alfonso XI) would pass any current ‘woke approval test’, largely because none of them lived in the 21st century. Franco’s ‘monument’ may have been removed, but the almost 40 years that he ruled Spain is thereby not magically excised. We cannot change the past. It remains a reality of history, to be debated, examined, recalled, abjured and/or celebrated. Few, if any, historical figures are irredeemably evil or faultlessly saintly.

So there is a tension between contemporary approval and “he’s just part of our history”, and no tweet is capable of resolving that tension in a couple of snappy sentences. I say “he” by the way, because very few non-royal statues are of women, and most that are are recent and therefore more likely to meet with contemporary approval. But even here there are controversies. There is a statue of Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) in the Smithsonian. She’s one of Hillary Clinton’s heroines and, thanks to the Planned Parenthood connection, a ‘woke’ liberal heroine. Yet she was also a proponent of race-based eugenics. In some cities in the United States, up to 5 times as many black women have abortions as white women. Surely, even the most ‘pro-choice’ person cannot think that such a racial disparity is something to celebrate?

Then we hear from Professor David Olusoga, a TV film-maker who tells us that statues are “not about history, but adoration” (and, by implication, approval). That is clearly nonsense, though an attempt at a pithy aphorism that will ensure the maximum media appearances. “Admiration” perhaps, but not “adoration” (and, moreover, “admiration” at the time of erection, not for posterity). Catholics and Hindus are usually those accused of ‘worshipping’ statues. I cannot speak for Hindus, but no Catholic ought to be ‘worshipping’ or, to use Olusoga’s term, ‘adoring’, a statue. A statue is a symbol or a token of the thing represented. 90% of the statues in a Catholic church are of the Virgin Mary and various saints, and none of them is to be worshipped — neither the statues nor the people they represent.

Even when it comes to representations of Christ himself, he is most often depicted nailed to a cross. We do not remind ourselves of the way in which Jesus was tortured and the sufferings he endured during his execution because we celebrate or approve of those sufferings. Rather, the cross stands as a reminder of what human beings are capable of — that when we meet perfect love, we are wont to destroy it. The crucifix is both a representation of perfect love and of human evil. It sustains millions in their prayer precisely because it is both. It demands reflection and meditation. Similarly, the fact that Auschwitz has not been bulldozed points to a similar idea — it is an image of something horrible, but what it represents should never be forgotten, even after the WWII generation are all long dead. And then there are the tombs and portraits of people in churches (particularly those dating from before the Reformation) — not honours given to saints, but plaintive pleas of the deceased for the living to pray for them, because they were aware of their own sin in life and believed they would need those prayers to have any hope for heaven. They were about humility, not pride.

Statues and memorials, then, are not straightforward, semiotically speaking. There is a strong case for having Colston’s statue removed to a museum (as the Hungarians did with all their Soviet era statues) or to a less prominent place, or even for its scrapping, certainly, but it does not follow that it stood as a ‘celebration’ of slavery, or its existence suggested that the people of Bristol are (nowadays) enthusiastic slavers. It might have been different if people were still bringing flowers and garlands, but that was not — as far as I know — the case. One annual protest which did take place around Edward Colston’s statue was the placing of figures of human bodies around the plinth, with labels like “domestic servants”, “sex workers”, “farm workers” and so on, reminding people that slavery still exists in this country. Colston’s statue had thus become, not the celebration of slavery that O’Brien thinks it was, but a rallying point for those who work to eradicate slavery in our own time.

Anti-Slavery Day 2018

Edward Colston is an easy target, because no one would defend slavery (pace O’Brien); but he was also a philanthropist, which is why he got a statue in the first place (1895 in fact). Should the wealthy, cosmopolitan, liberal city of Bristol be allowed to forget that it grew rich and successful partly as a result of the exploitation of human beings? Tearing down a statue doesn’t alter the fact, any more than a slave-owner giving money to charity alters the fact that his money came from slavery. One could argue that such an unhappy period of its history should be, visibly and palpably, on Bristol’s conscience; it shouldn’t be forgotten or erased (because it can’t be erased: even if you demolished Colston Girls’ School and all the other public buildings he endowed). He existed. He helped create modern Bristol. As they say, ‘Deal with it’.

Aside from a tangential contribution to parliamentary sovereignty, I do not ‘adore’ Cromwell in any way. He was a small-minded, anti-Catholic thug. But I cannot erase the fact that he ruled Britain for 5 miserable years, nor can I alter the fact that many still do admire and even ‘adore’ him. But the reason why a statue is erected is not necessarily the reason why a statue should be left in place. No one now worships Graeco-Roman deities, yet we do not crush their statues for hardcore. No one worships Bel or Baalshamin and yet most were appalled by the destruction of their temples in Palmyra by ISIS. The reason that statues are “our history” is precisely that they were erecting “in history”. They are snapshots of history. People in Bristol in 1895 deemed it seemly and fitting to erect a statue to Edward Colson. We would not do so now, but they did then. Perhaps even ten years later they would not have done so. People in the present are not bound by history, because we live in the present, but we cannot erase history, however much we might wish that the past had been better or different.

Let’s say that you are a teacher in Bristol and you have a young and thoughtful class of children (say, Year 7 or 8) with whom you wanted to examine the transatlantic slave trade and Bristol’s part in it. At the moment you have statues and the names of streets and buildings to go out and explore — in other words you have some actual history. It would be a similar story in most of Britain (think of Bold Street in Liverpool or Buchanan Street in Glasgow, etc.). Do we really imagine that the presence of a few 100+ year old statues and street names are going to make kids into racist apologists for slavery, or might the effect be rather different? We have heard, quite rightly, voices urging Britain to “confront” its dark past with respect to slavery. Seeking to “erase” the visible legacy of slavery might not be the best way of going about this, however painful those signs are.

There are also the empty comparisons with the toppling of the statues of Saddam in 2002-03, or Lenin in 1991-92, or the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The difference is surely clear. None of those Iraqis, Russians or East Germans had previously had any democratic means of getting rid of those statues or structures because they were symbols of oppression imposed upon them. Had Colston’s statue in Bristol been universally hated and become an issue in local elections then it could not have remained (Bristol has a black mayor, after all, who can hardly have been ignorant of the connection). It seems that it just wasn’t a major issue for people (which is an issue in itself). Olusoga’s (and some Labour MPs’) view that tearing down statues “IS history” is true, but not a justification. A year ago most people (Labour and Cons) wanted rid of Theresa May, and yet because we knew we had the means to bring this about (a vote of NC, General Election, etc.) we could not have justified sending a mob to Downing Street to remove her. If we were living under an absolute monarchy which still traded African slaves, then tossing Colston into the river would have been a political act, rather than a student jape. It’s worth remembering, too, that although the transatlantic slave-trade ended long ago, we live in a world in which more people are enslaved than at any point in its history. The countries with most slaves are China, India, Pakistan, followed by the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahara region. Protestors against the horrors of slavery should also be demonstrating outside the Mauritanian Embassy on Vauxhall Bridge Road. If we are to ‘never forget’ and ‘learn the lessons’ of slavery, should we not be standing in solidarity with Albanians and the Vietnamese who are the 2nd and 3rd largest groups enslaved in the UK? (And indeed British citizens, black and white, who recently took the No. 1 spot?)

When Britain abolished slavery in 1833 (and she would be criticised now for compensating owners yet not ex-slaves) the government borrowed 40% of the national budget* to do so. That debt was only finally paid off in 2015. In the view of Guardian journalists this was a shameful act and little more than ‘blood money’ (and some on Twitter have suggested that British tax-payers were still “paying slave owners” until 2015), but in the US let’s remember it took a civil war and 600,000 deaths to free slaves there. However differently we think Britain should have acted in 1833, the fact is that the Slavery Abolition Act incurred a significant financial cost. For a country to take on a debt so large that it would take 183 years to repay suggests, surely, an admirable commitment to the belief that all human beings ought to be free?

* £20m in 1833 would be approximately £16.5bn in 2013 wage terms. As 5% of GDP would mean £100bn (in 2016). The Treasury’s statement is here.

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spilledreality · 4 years

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Engineering doctrines

Cappelen and Plunkett open their 2018 paper “A Guided Tour of Conceptual Engineering and Ethics,” with a quote from Nietzsche’s Will to Power:

Philosophers … have trusted in concepts as completely as they have mistrusted the senses: they have not stopped to consider that concepts and words are our inheritance from ages in which thinking was very modest and unclear. … What dawns on philosophers last of all: they must no longer accept concepts as a gift, nor merely purify and polish them, but first make and create them, present them and make them convincing. Hitherto one has generally trusted one's concepts as if they were a wonderful dowry from some sort of wonderland: but they are, after all, the inheritance from our most remote, most foolish as well as most intelligent ancestors. …What is needed above all is an absolute skepticism toward all inherited concepts.

It’s a good reminder that this diseasing of 20th century philosophy—its mixture of “functional monism” (the conceit of a one-to-one relationship between handles and reality) and “classical concepts” (as having sufficient and necessary conditions)—was not a universal affliction. It appears most of the century’s “great” thinkers grasped it as a problem far ahead of broader adoption or articulation. Dewey’s pragmatism is a de facto solution to verbal and frame dispute and thus an acknowledgment of terms’ untethering from wordly structures; Wittgenstein anticipates cognitive science by half a century; and Nietzsche writes in Twilight of Idols of a man “stuck in a cage, imprisoned among all sorts of terrible concepts.” Carnapian explication is undergoing a 180-degree revision, no longer considered defeated by Quine as previously assumed.

One enticing part of the Nietzsche quote, in my mind, is its comparison to the “mistrusted” senses. It would be egregious had philosophy not learned until recently to distinguish between the world as it is and the world as it is apprehended by our senses; I’d like to suggest that philosofolly’s previous conception of language and concepts is equally egregious.

There are so many causes of messy handles that even a cursory examination of the process by which humans invent and disseminate them subverts any modeling of them as “tidy” or monistic. But I’d like to introduce one frame, adapted from NNT: the Procrustean bed, where bad carvings—simplifications or Platonifications—amputate important parts of the whole, or else “stretch” it to fit a desired factoring. (Procrustes is a mythical figure who would lop off or stretch out his guests' limbs in his home, so they would perfectly fit his bed.) It’s a barbarism masquerading as hospitality, so to speak. Think of the game of telephone, or Chinese whispers, by which each successive adapter unconsciously and consciously “stretches” or “amputates” the term as learned to fit with his models and experience of reality.

But now we have these garbage bins of concepts, and Cappelen & Plunkett want to improve them—engineer them. Construction has a rich vocabulary here that might diversify “engineering”: retrofit, renovate, refurbish, remodel, all of which have meaningfully distinct denotations. Perhaps someone will adopt them, but for now, the core questions of conceptual engineering, to C&P:

How ought we assess concepts, both in determining which existing concepts need engineering, and, once engineered, whether the new formulations are improvements over predecessors?

How important is the genealogy, or history, of a concept in making engineering decisions?

Expanding on the first question, what sorts of defects might our representational devices (“handles”) possess? The pair present:

Cognitive defects (which distort reasoning)

Moral or political defects (which undermine our values)

Theoretical defects (which undermine philosophical progress)

Semantic defects (incoherence or incompleteness)

While the entailments of #2 and #4 are very clear to me, the odd-numbered items are less so. I could suggest that the “all under one roof” problem of conflation and linguistic over-burdening is one of the central failure sources of conceptual disputes, but perhaps this is a “cognitive” or “theoretical” defect. Similarly, I would point to back-coherence (in the sense of preserving genealogy) as holding back concepts from being their best selves; still, I can’t pretend that maintaining the coherence of historical texts via such a historical continuity is unimportant.

(Sidenote: One core divide C&P attempt to grapple with is externalism or internalism, but until presented with a compelling argument otherwise, I’ll consider, in the spirit of “generalized compatibilism,” these stances as perfectly congenial in their abstract formulations. Internalism, C&P write, is the view that a concept or utterance’s “meaning depends on facts about” what’s inside an individuals “head”; externalism holds that “meaning is determined at least in part by facts having to do with the history of linguistic usage, or complex use patterns over time, or the judgments of experts.” I’ll classify this as a verbal dispute similar to literary theory’s Meaning Wars: it is clearly the case that the models in people’s “heads” [and bodies] are built from external norms and histories, and that there is both a descriptive fact about the society’s aggregate usage and the individual’s neural interpretation, and that the only source of contention at play is which of these ought to be called a concept’s “meaning.” Crucially, if two people or groups in contention don’t refer to the same “thing” in thingspace, they’re not having a disagreement; they’re talking past each other. Social meaning and individual meaning are clearly different “things”—or more accurately, “processes”—both clearly real.)

But I’m getting off-track: I want to talk about two doctrines I’d propose as crucial for any would-be conceptual engineer. There are plenty of smaller considerations which the current literature neglects; one is the metaphorical fabric which holds our concepts together and forms an important axis of meaning; the other is the linguistic conquests constantly performed on language, and the way these refactorings create variability in the field of meaning. But these addendums can come later; for now:

The doctrine of non-intervention. Concepts should—in part because they can only, with any efficacy—be engineered locally. Only locals know the affordances of their specific use cases. Philosophers ought to engineer philosophical concepts, but leave fishing concepts to the fishermen. Engineering-on-behalf ought only provide possibilities for bottom-up adoption; it should never limit possibilities by top-down imposition.

The illumination doctrine. Concepts should help illuminate the world, but never obscure it. This is especially important in ameliorative or ethical-political projects.

The non-intervention doctrine is partly an attempt to prevent the failures of “high modernism,” or “systemism,” or “overhaulism” (James Scott’s, John Gall’s, and Ari Holtzman’s terms, respectively). In areas of vast complexity, such as the intersection of language and human psychology, unknown nth-order effects dominate the landscape of consequences. Most recently, this hubristic approach was found in the behavioral economics of Kahneman and Tversky, who made grand, rationalistic claims about local domains like profession basketball, of which they knew absolutely nothing, naively supposing that the local expertise and folklore of these domains were merely riddled by cognitive biases (as opposed to having been weeded out based on what “works”—e.g. the hot hand “fallacy”). Perhaps the surest safeguard against the failures of overhaulism is allowing local communities to freely adopt those terms which work for them, and freely ignore those which don’t. To the would-be conceptual engineer I say: model and advocate, but never impose.

The illumination doctrine is founded on an ethics of accuracy. There is much danger in normative, ethics-based, “activistic” linguistic meddling. When top-down imposed, such conceptual engineering projects are well-known to us via writers like Orwell. While individual engineers almost without exception believe that their individual intervention on language is for the greater good (in the great tradition of noble lies), limiting the thinkable ought to be viewed as assailing free speech. (Recall also that once a technology is utilized for one political end, a tacit allowance of a class of strategy has taken place, and the technology will be co-opted by the other side: victimhood and identity politics’ adoption by the right is a recent & relevant example.) Expressive liberties are premised not just on the ability to say, but on the existence of an expressive language which enable the sayable.

Both these doctrines join the doctrine of preserved ground discussed in a previous post on conceptual engineering. There I distinguished between two types of linguistic “conquests” that re-carve the language, seeing the “divide and conquer” method as healthier for the language, in the long run, than the “narrow and conquer” approach:

First, the narrow and conquer method, where a specific sub-sense of a concept is taken to be its "true" or "essential" meaning, the core which defines its "concept-ness." To give an example from discourse, Taleb defines the concept rationality as "What survives, period." The second style I termed divide and conquer, where multiple sub-senses are distinguished and named in an attempt to preserve all relevant sub-senses while also gaining the ability to talk about one specific sub-sense. To give an example from discourse, Yudkowsky separates “rationality” into “epistemic rationality”—the pursuit of increasingly predictive models which are "true" in a loose correspondence sense—and “instrumental rationality”—the pursuit of models which lead to in-the-world flourishing, e.g. via adaptive self-deception or magical thinking—rationality as “what works.”

Conquests by narrowing throw out all the richly bundled senses of a concept while keeping only the immediately useful—it's wasteful in its parsimony. It leaves not even a ghost of these other senses' past, advertising itself as the original bundled whole while erasing the richness which once existed there. It leads to verbal disputes, term confusion, talking past each other. It impoverishes our language.

Division preserves the original, bundled concept in full, documenting and preserving the different senses rather than purging all but the one. It advertises this history; intended meaning, received meaning—the qualifier indicates that these are hypernyms of "meaning," which encompasses them both. Not just this, but the qualifier indicates the character of the subsense in a way that a narrowed umbrella original never will. Our understanding of the original has been improved even as our instrumental ability to wield its subsenses grows. Instead of stranding itself from discourse at large, the divided term has clarified discourse at large.

#herman cappelen #david plunkett #conceptual engineering #friedrich nietzsche #john dewey #george orwell #daniel kahneman #amos tversky

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upalldown · 5 years

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Vampire Weekend - Father Of The Bride

Fourth album of indie pop / rock from the New York band and first since the departure of multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij

10/13

Ever since Vampire Weekend’s 2008 debut, listeners, critics and even scholarshave endlessly pointed out the similarities that the band’s artistic output has to the films of director Wes Anderson. The brazen commitment to the Bauhaus ‘Futura’ typeface (perhaps most popularised in film by Stanley Kubrick, mind you), the quirky still life detail of Ezra Koenig’s lyrics (“Look up at the buildings, imagine who might live there/ Imagining your Wolfords in a ball upon the sink there”), the use of choir and string arrangements à la Mark Mothersbaugh (one of Anderson’s common scoring collaborators) – the parallel hallmark features are relatively obvious. The band even made explicit reference to Anderson’s debut feature film Bottle Rocket with the ‘to do list’ in their video for 2009’s ‘Cousins’. This is not to say that Vampire Weekend have not carved out a magnificent identity, sound, and creative universe of their own over the years – rather, the similarities between Anderson and the band are often evoked precisely because of the group’s ability to (like Anderson) do this so well, and to do so knowingly. Last month Michael Nelson wrote an excellent piece for Stereogum on the seemingly limitless levels of referencing in Vampire Weekend’s music – a case in point for their skill at meticulously constructing their own creative universe by way of contextualising it alongside, and within, other artists’ works, whether literary, musical, filmic or else.

Father of the Bride, the band’s fourth full-length, marks the start of a new chapter for Vampire Weekend in a number of ways. Not only is it their first album without Rostam Batmanglij (for the most part), it is the first to follow the ‘sort of trilogy’ of their initial three albums, and is their first album on Sony (the prior trilogy being released on XL). Most significantly, however, this new album takes place in a radically expanded creative universe compared to its predecessors. Tragic but beautiful opener ‘Hold You Now’, a country-tinged duet with Danielle Haim, tells the story of a rather complicated wedding day and is a definitive album highlight, deftly repurposing the Melanesian choral soundtrackof Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (incidentally, one of my favourite films). And this is telling. Father of the Bride feels like it has much more in common with the oeuvre of Terrence Malick than that of Wes Anderson. There are no theatrically staged scenes in perfect symmetry here; there is no romanticising of minutiae. Father of the Bride is expansive, sprawling, and contemplative.

Like The Thin Red Line, and Malick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life, Father of the Bride shifts from story to story, introducing a variety of characters and narratives across its grand 58-minutes. These develop and unravel across time and space, sometimes intersecting, sometimes diverging further and further apart from one another. There is the story of a (perhaps doomed) turbulent marriage (‘Hold You Now’; ‘Married in a Gold Rush’; ‘We Belong Together’), soundtracked with songwriting nods to the country genre, as well as vocal contributions from Danielle Haim. There are stories of living in an increasingly bizarre and broken world of geopolitical and ideological struggle (‘Harmony Hall’; ‘Sympathy’; ‘Stranger’; ‘Jerusalem, New York, Berlin’). There are stories of purgatory, of waiting, of dealing with our distance from both the past and the future (‘How Long?’; ‘My Mistake’; ‘Flower Moon’; ‘2021’). And true to Koenig’s trademark self-referentialism, there are stories that seemingly reference the band’s trajectory in the popular sphere (‘Unbearably White’; ‘Rich Man’). The credits of the album match this sense of sprawl – with features from Steve Lacy and Danielle Haim, production from Ariel Rechtshaid, BloodPop® and Rostam, writing from BloodPop® and Sam Gendel, and samples from Sierra Leone highlife guitarist SE Rogie and Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono.

The album artwork – a graphic of the globe (that is unfortunately a bit MS Paint) – also points to the expanded universe in Father of the Bride. Across much of Vampire Weekend’s first trilogy of albums, their songwriting felt so anchored in the place of New York. The City was a regular cast member, so to speak. Even in tracks like ‘California English’ and ‘Hannah Hunt’ New York was deeply woven into the subtext, their meaning amplified precisely because they were not occurring in New York and the protagonist was not at home. But there is no home whatsoever in Father of the Bride. We are adrift, wandering and searching in an almost destructive fashion, much like the Bonnie and Clyde-esque couple that we encounter across the record. We are in California (‘This Life’), in the Diego Garcia atoll of the Indian Ocean (‘Sympathy’), in Sierra Leone (‘Rich Man’), and in ‘Jerusalem, New York, Berlin’. We are dislodged in time, too – jumping from the near future (‘2021’), to the Gold Rush (‘Married in a Gold Rush’), to the holy wars of distant past (‘Sympathy’), to the 1917 Balfour Declaration (‘Jerusalem, New York, Berlin’). And, like Malick’s films, it all feels distinctly cyclical. It seems that these characters continue to make the same mistakes again and again, hoping for “springtime and future,” and for the month of May’s Flower Moon to – maybe next year – finally make things right.

Koenig’s fascination with springtime across the album echoes another aspect of Malick’s oeuvre – the focus on the natural world. It is so often a major player in Malick’s films, be it the shifting wheat fields of Days of Heaven, the lush but besieged Pacific undergrowth in The Thin Red Line, or the cosmic expanse in his documentary Voyage of Time. Given that Koenig has stated that Father of the Bride is partly “about the ties that bind…between people and the land they live on,” we are certainly being asked to contemplate what role the natural world is playing here. After all, who exactly is the Father of the Bride? And where exactly is the noticeably absent Mother (Earth), if there is one? These questions brought to my mind themes that Darren Aronofsky, yet another cinematic visionary, explored in his recent controversial (but, in my opinion, very good) film Mother! Koenig clearly still retains his unparalleled knack for artistic and conceptual referencing.

However, the epic sprawling approach taken on the album has its weaknesses. The numerous narratives have varying degrees of depth and impact. ‘How Long?’ features one of Koenig’s weakest choruses, as the repetitious and (uncharacteristic for Koenig) obvious refrain becomes tiresome fairly quickly. Even the creative production can’t prevent the song from inexplicably feeling like it was made for an Apple commercial. There is something too clean and simple about it. Likewise, the satirically cheesy nursery rhyme lyricism of ‘We Belong Together’ may be intentional, but doesn’t make for the album’s best listening. Moreover, musically, a handful of the eighteen tracks feel like little more than ideas – ideas the group might have gestated upon and developed into more powerful pieces akin to the stronger cuts here. ‘My Mistake’, while an important thematic point in the album, seems like a mediocre attempt at a Gershwin-style jazz ballad. ‘Big Blue’ sounds a bit like a throwaway chorus that might have benefited from some auxiliary songwriting. ‘Unbearably White’ meanders through a conspicuously minimal arrangement that only has any emotional impact when the instrumentation converges in the song’s outro.

These slight mishaps are maybe to be expected with the bold re-making and re-envisioning that Koenig, Baio, Tomson and their collaborators attempt here. Koenig has, after all, explicitly acknowledged that he took a new approach to his lyricism on the record. With Father of the Bride, Vampire Weekend expand and re-contextualise their own creative universe, offer more questions than answers, take new risks, and open up new possibilities for their artistic future. In the process of doing so, they add at least a handful of brilliant tracks to their discography. Like Malick’s films, this album invites us to contemplate what kind of world we’ve come from, what kind of world we are creating, and what kind of place the world will be in the future – perhaps by the time (and if) Vampire Weekend release another album. And just as Koenig croons in ‘2021’, I am left wondering how future me, and future Koenig, will choose to re-interpret Father of the Bride when that time comes, and why.

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