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contentment-of-cats · 10 months

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I take a deep breath because I can.

Edited: They have found a debris field near the Titanic.

Mortality is never far from a cancer patient's mind. We all die, cancer or no cancer, fairly or unfairly. The universe is the universe and keeps on going whatever the big, beautiful, horrifying, and deadly universe keeps on doing. It's not my mortality that I've been thinking about the past few days, though it's never far from my mind. It's about five people I didn't know.

People hate death. It gets in the way of the happy endings that we've been spoon-fed over decades. We want to see happy endings, see absolute miracles, so much that we won't agree that there is a line where Happy Ending Land stops and reality begins. The media is complicit and people dwell in denial to the point where it's psychosis.

CNN is my case in point this morning.

If that submarine did not have a catastrophic hull failure on Sunday morning, there are now five bodies on a garage-built unclassed, uninspected, 'experimental' submarine on the floor of the ocean. The iar is gone, the battery power is gone, they are breathing in each other's carbon dioxide, hungry, thirsty, hypothermic,in the absolute dark. Billionaire hatred aside, I cannot think of a more horrible way to die nor anyone I would ever wish it on - the same way I would never wish cancer on anyone. I am walking the measured mile, these folks were locked in and dropped down. The fact that people signed an extensive multi-page waiver to board this thing makes me scream in horror.

One thing nobody wants to talk about on TV is the very real probability that one hour and forty-five minutes into it's dive, the sub experienced catastrophic hull failure and crushed down to something the size of a Weber kettle grill. All the air would have been pushed out of every component, including the humans inside. It would have taken a couple of seconds at that depth, just fifteen minutes from the bottom and the wreck of the Titanic. Apparently losing contact with the sub happened often enough that it was not reported until eight hours later. That is the best case scenario. A better case would be that they find it, bring it up to the surface, and show people the actual real consequences of hubris and stupidity.

Worst case is that they hung on in the dark, in the cold, hearing rescuers above them as they died this morning.

Their friends are saying that they could still be alive. These men were experienced adventurers, they would know how to conserve oxygen. The FFS section of this post begins below with OceanGate's co-founder talking to CNN.

While life support supplies are now believed to be running low, a co-founder of the company that operates the missing Titanic submersible says he believes the crew's expertise will extend the "window available" for rescue. Guillermo Söhnlein made the comments in a statement to CNN. He specified her was speaking on behalf of himself and not the company, OceanGate. He said OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush — who is aboard the sub — and the rest of the crew would have "realized days ago that the best thing they can do to ensure their rescue is to extend the limits of those supplies by relaxing as much as possible." Based on the crew members' expertise, the "window available" for rescue is longer than "what most people think," Söhnlein said. Thursday will be a "critical day in this search and rescue mission," he added. "I continue to hold out hope for my friend and the rest of the crew," Söhnlein said. "I would encourage everyone to remain hopeful for getting the crew back safely."

This is fucking nutty. This is denial. Nobody wants to think that corporate hubris killed five people including the co-founder, engineers deal in reality. These people are dead. You can't spin dead. You can't wish away dead. Dead is the hardest, coldest fact of all and one of the hardest to live with, whether it's yours or someone else's.

Side note. On Monday it will have been a month since my mom's death. I knew it was coming either from dementia or COPD. The stroke moved it up. Nobody, including her doctors, saw it coming. There was no high blood pressure, her vascular health was excellent. With directives in place, she was as comfortable as possible. I remind myself that hemipaleigic, with dementia, and COPD would have been the ultimate cruelty. I still get the urge to pick up the phone and call her. I can't. Death is the hardest reality.

Next is a friend of two of the men in the sub.

“I know that the adventurers on board are experienced, very experienced,” said Per Wimmer, an adventurer who was previously signed up for two canceled trips on the Titan. Wimmer is an acquaintance of Hamish Harding and Stockton Rush, two of the five people on the missing vessel. He said Harding, a British businessman and trained jet pilot, and Rush, the CEO and founder of the company leading the voyage, are both very experienced adventurers who would know to conserve oxygen. “They would no doubt know what it means to slow down, take it easy, and use as little oxygen as possible, and therefore extend the potential timeline as much as possible," he added. Wimmer said that the presence of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush on board the vessel is helpful, as he knows “the ins and outs of how this submersible works.”

Again, the Bulletproof Fallacy is at work. "I have never been shot, therefore I am bulletproof."

They've deployed a medical team with a specialty in dive medicine and equipped with hyperbaric oxygen chambers. There is hope, yes, and then there is acceptance that the ocean is as merciless as space. It is hostile to our life form in that if our artificial environment is breached, we can't continue to live.

They've found a debris field. It may or may not be part of the 1912 wreck.

#titanic #oceangate #there is no reality tv #happy ending psychosis

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angel-zophiel · 1 year

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We Prideful Few - Azrael imagine

Azrael x angel!reader

Content:

-You get jumped lmao, gun wounds, briefly mentioned medical help

-1,000+ words

Summary: -After being jumped, Azrael finds you on his building roof, and you have definitely seen better days.

-------------------

You were not weak, but there was a distinct disconnect between what your mortal body could handle versus what the angel residing within your mind believed that it could do.

And right now, the gang that lured you into a trap was something your self could not agree on how to handle, as you found yourself becoming overwhelmingly outnumbered

Batman would have to forgive you later for what you were doing, numerous men fell to your blade and would never rise again, but you couldn't care, you were just trying to get out of there alive

And that was when the gunshot rang out, a mistake that normally would have been unheard of whenever the system was in control

As though someone had kicked you in the side, the bullet buried into your flesh tearing through and straight out of the other side

The opening in the fight let the remaining men start to gain the upper hand, but not for long as all your focus drifted to escape rather than standing your ground

You dashed up to the roof, gunshots firing right behind you, barely grazing by

You booked it the second your feet landed on the flat ground, running and scaling across buildings as quickly as you could. They had no chance, you lost them in moments.

But you kept running, going on autopilot. Before your foot gave and sent you toppling, skidding across the roof of what you believed was an apartment complex

Your entire body ached, your ankle stinging as you were sure it had to be at least fractured with the way you fell. That all combined with the blood loss was making it harder to keep your strength

You crawled up to your hands and knees, one of your hands applying as much pressure as you could against the bullet wound

You wanted to live. You didnt want to die.

And you also didn't have the guidance of the angel to help you. Because as soon as it had its thrill of the fight, you were left to deal with the consequences of its hubris. All that was left was you. And all you could do was press the button on the locator, alerting anyone else in Batman Inc that was nearby of your dire situation

You dragged yourself up, planting your back against the wall of the building as you sat against the cold concrete, supporting much of your weight with the sword you had just used to kill your assailants. Its pristine sheen, dull with blood and grime

A prayer left your lips, a solemn chant reminding god to remember his favor in you, before your consciousness faded

-------------

Jean-Paul had been sleeping when the alert buzzed on the device next to him, the buzz scaring him awake, as that sound had only ever been followed by awful things in the past

As soon as he saw that it was you who sent out the call however, he toppled out of bed, any hesitation completely dismissed

He was out of the window scaling to the roof by the time the alert subsided, the sweats and t-shirt not doing much to shield the cold wiping air from slicing him, He just had to get to you

How you ended up literally above him wasnt important, he was just thankful that you managed to be so incredibly close, making it easier for him to get to you quicker

Your alert sent him to into a panic he wasnt really aware he could reach, leaping up onto the fire escape above him and scaling up the stairs, a much faster route than what he was doing before

When he first realized how deeply he felt for you, years ago at this point, he was still so wrapped around Sister Lilhy's finger that whenever you came along, it was as though life itself had shifted. Colors were brighter, the air was crisper, and most importantly, he understood how deeply wrong his 'relationship' with Lilhy was

As soon as his feet touched the roof and he saw your limp body, he dashed to your side, checking for a pulse. Your bloody and battered form searing into his mind

Weakness does not deserve to live, Azrael chimed within his head, Azrael does not save, he avenges

"Y/N!" He called ignoring utterly unwanted words that the angel spoke, hands raising to cup your face, "Y/n, hey, come on-" you slumped forward, out cold

He wasted no time, and picked you up, racing back down to his apartment via the fire escape, thanking his lord again that you were as close as you were

He quickly placed you on his bed and went to retrieve the trauma bag, tending to every wound he could find. Cleaning and stitching wherever he need to stitch, it was a little harder to check for broken bones when he couldnt gauge a reaction out of you. Mentally reminding himself to double check for them in the morning once he had handled this completely

"Next time please call me" He whispered under his breath. Cuts and bruises shaped your body, but once he got to your side, he felt his throat constrict

You'd been shot?

He did everything he could for the wound, but ultimately, this was going to be a lengthy recovery even with your improved healing, that is if you allowed him to nurse you once you came back around

----

Hours past and finally, after hours of him checking on you every time you stirred, you finally woke up. The first thing you noticed was how most of your body was bandaged, pieces of your armor missing and the blond man seated next to the bed you were on, sleeping in the chair. Dizziness blurred your vision and your whole existence was aching at the countless wounds on you, but the utter relief you felt once you saw Jean-Paul across from you, knowing that you were safe, completely and utterly, the pain didn't even matter

"Alley.." You whispered, not wanting to wake him if he was sleeping already, your hoarse voice aiding in keeping you quiet. But you were no match, Jean-Paul sat up, and seeing you fully conscious and responsive the tension melted from his eyes and posture

"Y/n-" He reached for your hand, "I didn't know if you were going to wake up, I- God I thought you were gone." He shook his head, rubbing his thumb on the back of your hand. Easing the nerves that had been shot throughout the night.

You placed your free hand over his and cradled it between your two, allowing a moment of calm to pass before you asked him, "Are you tired?" You felt bad enough for running from the fight earlier, even if in the end it saved you your life, and knowing that Jean-Paul had stayed up throughout the rest of the night tending to the consequences of your own pride, so for now, you just wanted to curl up and allow the peace of sleep to wash the pain that the hours previous had brought for you

He didn't waste time in standing from the seat and making his way to the other side of the bed

He was sure to be gentle in his movements as he pulled you closer to him, trying not to jostle you around as he would do other nights that you both shared the bed, loving to hear your giggles as he would dramatically flop beside you, acting as though whatever minor inconvenience he just went through was the worst thing he could have imagined

His arms found their way around you, dragging out a groan from you as the warmth and security of his hold bringing a violent wave of exhaustion over you

You knew all would be well, and closed your eyes

Oh sweet sweet man, pls give me your babies

#dc comics #dc imagine #azrael #jeanpaul valley #jean paul valley #jean-paul valley #batman imagine #azrael x reader #azrael imagine #no beta we die like jason todd

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xasha777 · 3 days

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In the year 2424, the divide between art and science had become a faded line, a remnant of the past. The world was a canvas, painted with the colors of innovation and creativity, brought to life by those who dared to dream. It was in this vibrant era that the legend of Liora Zephyr began, entwined with the enigmatic Humphrey de Vieilles—a name synonymous with the revolution that had reshaped society.

Liora, a prodigious bio-engineer and artist, had mastered the art of genetic canvasing—a process by which the human genome was treated as a malleable form, able to be sculpted as one would clay. With the skill of a master artist and the mind of a scientist, Liora had transformed herself into a living masterpiece, her hair a cascading rainbow of genetic craftsmanship that bloomed with actual flowers, their DNA artfully interwoven with her own.

The fame of Liora's self-crafted beauty reached the stars, but it was her genius that caught the attention of Humphrey de Vieilles. A descendant of the ancient line of visionaries, Humphrey was the steward of an enigmatic artifact known simply as the 'Prism of Vieilles.' This crystalline device, of unknown origin, was said to hold the secrets of the cosmos within its faceted depths.

When Liora was invited to Humphrey's hovering estate above the megalopolis of Neo-Paris, she found the Prism suspended in a chamber of light and shadow. Humphrey, an elderly man with eyes like twin nebulas, proposed an unprecedented collaboration. The Prism, he revealed, was not just a relic; it was a gateway—a bridge to alternate dimensions, and he believed that Liora's mastery over genetic canvasing could unlock its full potential.

Together, they embarked on a cosmic symphony of creation. Liora's hair became a spectrum of bioluminescent colors, each strand tuned to the frequencies of the Prism. As she danced around the artifact, her movements like strokes of a brush, the air around them began to shimmer with the hues of otherworldly skies.

The Prism activated, emitting a symphony of light that resonated with Liora's genetic tapestry. A portal opened, revealing a vista of impossible beauty—a dimension where the very atmosphere was alive with vibrant colors, a place where nature and artifice were indistinguishable.

But as the portal stabilized, a warning from the past echoed through Humphrey's mind. The ancient Vieilles texts spoke of the Prism's power but also its cost—the potential to unravel the fabric of reality if misused. With a heavy heart, Humphrey prepared to shut down the portal, fearing the consequences of their artistic hubris.

Liora, however, saw something else in the beyond: a chance to share this beauty with the world, to prove that humanity could rise to the responsibility of such power. With the elegance of a poet, she argued for the potential of unity and understanding across dimensions, of the shared language of beauty and art that could bridge even the vastest of divides.

The debate between them lasted for days, a dialogue of fear and hope, risk and reward. In the end, it was the unexpected arrival of a being from the portal—a creature of light and color, speaking in harmonies—that made the decision for them. It reached out to Liora, touching her rainbow hair, and in that moment, knowledge flowed between them.

The creature came with a message of peace, an invitation to join a cosmic community where art was the foundation of society, and where beings like Liora were the norm, not the exception. The Prism, it seemed, was a test as much as it was a gift—a test of a civilization's readiness to join the greater chorus of the universe.

With a newfound resolve, Liora and Humphrey accepted the invitation. The portal remained open, but as a bridge for dialogue and exchange, not exploitation. And so, Liora Zephyr became not just an icon of human innovation but a diplomat of the stars, with Humphrey de Vieilles at her side, both custodians of the gateway to a vibrant future. Together, they stood at the precipice of a new age, where science and art wove together the tapestry of the universe, in endless, resplendent color.

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notsoheadless · 3 years

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Remember Longcat, Jane? I remember Longcat. Fuck the picture on this page, I want to talk about Longcat. Memes were simpler back then, in 2006. They stood for something. And that something was nothing. Memes just were. “Longcat is long.” An undeniably true, self-reflexive statement. Water is wet, fire is hot, Longcat is long. Memes were floating signifiers without signifieds, meaningful in their meaninglessness. Nobody made memes, they just arose through spontaneous generation; Athena being birthed, fully formed, from her own skull. You could talk about them around the proverbial water cooler, taking comfort in their absurdity. “Hey, Johnston, have you seen the picture of that cat? They call it Longcat because it’s long!” “Ha ha, sounds like good fun, Stevenson! That reminds me, I need to show you this webpage I found the other day; it contains numerous animated dancing hamsters. It’s called — you’ll never believe this — hamsterdance!” And then Johnston and Stevenson went on to have a wonderful friendship based on the comfortable banality of self-evident digitized animals. But then 2007 came, and along with it came I Can Has, and everything was forever ruined. It was hubris, Jane. We did it to ourselves. The minute we added written language beyond the reflexive, it all went to shit. Suddenly memes had an excess of information to be parsed. It wasn’t just a picture of a cat, perhaps with a simple description appended to it; now the cat spoke to us via a written caption on the picture itself. It referred to an item of food that existed in our world but not in the world of the meme, rupturing the boundary between the two. The cat wanted something. Which forced us to recognize that what it wanted was us, was our attention. WE are the cheezburger, Jane, and we always were. But by the time we realized this, it was too late. We were slaves to the very memes that we had created. We toiled to earn the privilege of being distracted by them. They fiddled while Rome burned, and we threw ourselves into the fire so that we might listen to the music. The memes had us. Or, rather, they could has us. And it just got worse from there. Soon the cats had invisible bicycles and played keyboards. They gained complex identities, and so we hollowed out our own identities to accommodate them. We prayed to return to the simple days when we would admire a cat for its exceptional length alone, the days when the cat itself was the meme and not merely a vehicle for the complex memetic text. And the fact that this text was so sparse, informal, and broken ironically made it even more demanding. The intentional grammatical and syntactical flaws drew attention to themselves, making the meme even more about the captioning words and less about the pictures. Words, words, words. Wurds werds wordz. Stumbling through a crooked, dead-end hallway of a mangled clause describing a simple feline sentiment was a torture that we inflicted on ourselves daily. Let’s not forget where the word “caption” itself comes from: capio, Latin for both “I understand” and “I capture.” We thought that by captioning the memes, we were understanding them. Instead, our captions allowed them to capture us. The memes that had once been a cure for our cultural ills were now the illness itself. It goes right back to the Phaedrus, really. Think about it. Back in the innocent days of 2006, we naïvely thought that the grapheme had subjugated the phoneme, that the belief in the primacy of the spoken word was an ancient and backwards folly on par with burning witches or practicing phrenology or thinking that Smash Mouth was good. Fucking Smash Mouth. But we were wrong. About the phoneme, I mean. Theuth came to us again, this time in the guise of a grinning grey cat. The cat hungered, and so did Theuth. He offered us an updated choice, and we greedily took it, oblivious to the consequences. To borrow the parlance of a contemporary meme, he baked us a pharmakon, and we eated it. Pharmakon, φάρμακον, the Greek word that means both “poison” and “cure,” but, because of the

limitations of the English language, can only be translated one way or the other depending on the context and the translator’s whims. No possible translation can capture the full implications of a Greek text including this word. In the Phaedrus, writing is the pharmakon that the trickster god Theuth offers, the toxin and remedy in one. With writing, man will no longer forget; but he will also no longer think. A double-edged (s)word, if you will. But the new iteration of the pharmakon is the meme. Specifically, the post-I-Can-Has memescape of 2007 onward. And it was the language that did it, Jane. The addition of written language twisted the remedy into a poison, flipped the pharmakon on its invisible axis. In retrospect, it was in front of our eyes all along. Meme. The noxious word was given to us by who else but those wily ancient Greeks themselves. μίμημα, or mīmēma. Defined as an imitation, a copy. The exact thing Plato warned us against in the Republic. Remember? The simulacrum that is two steps removed from the perfection of the original by the process of — note the root of the word — mimesis. The Platonic ideal of an object is the source: the father, the sun, the ghostly whole. The corporeal manifestation of the object is one step removed from perfection. The image of the object (be it in letters or in pigments) is two steps removed. The author is inferior to the craftsman is inferior to God. Fuck, out of space. Okay, the illustration on page 46 is fucking useless; I’ll see you there. (21) But we’ll go farther than Plato. Longcat, a photograph, is a textbook example of a second-degree mimesis. (We might promote it to the third degree since the image on the internet is a digital copy of the original photograph of the physical cat which is itself a copy of Platonic ideal of a cat (the Godcat, if you will); but this line of thought doesn’t change anything in the argument.) The text-supplemented meme, on the other hand, the captioned cat, is at an infinite remove from the Godcat, the ultimate mimesis, copying the copy of itself eternally, the written language and the image echoing off each other, until it finally loops back around to the truth by virtue of being so far from it. It becomes its own truth, the fidelity of the eternal copy. It becomes a God. Writing itself is the archetypical pharmakon and the archetypical copy, if you’ll come back with me to the Phaedrus (if we ever really left it). Speech is the real deal, Socrates says, with a smug little wink to his (written) dialogic buddy. Speech is alive, it can defend itself, it can adapt and change. Writing is its bastard son, the mimic, the dead, rigid simulacrum. Writing is a copy, a mīmēma, of truth in speech. To return to our analogous issue: the image of the cheezburger cat, the copy of the picture-copy-copy, is so much closer to the original Platonic ideal than the written language that accompanies it. (“Pharmakon” can also mean “paint.” Think about it, Jane. Just think about it.) The image is still fake, but it’s the caption on the cat that is the downfall of the republic, the real fakeness, which is both realer and faker than whatever original it is that it represents. Men and gods abhor the lie, Plato says in sections 382 a and b of the Republic. οὐκ οἶσθα, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τό γε ὡς ἀληθῶς ψεῦδος, εἰ οἷόν τε τοῦτο εἰπεῖν, πάντες θεοί τε καὶ ἄνθρωποι μισοῦσιν; πῶς, ἔφη, λέγεις; οὕτως, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τῷ κυριωτάτῳ που ἑαυτῶν ψεύδεσθαι καὶ περὶ τὰ κυριώτατα οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν ἐθέλει, ἀλλὰ πάντων μάλιστα φοβεῖται ἐκεῖ αὐτὸ κεκτῆσθαι. “Don’t you know,” said I, “that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a thing that all gods and men abhor?” “What do you mean?” he said. “This,” said I, “that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there above all that everyone fears it.” Man’s worst fear is that he will hold existential falsehood within himself. And the verbal lies that he tells are a copy of this feared dishonesty in the soul.

Plato goes on to elaborate: “the falsehood in words is a copy of the affection in the soul, an after-rising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood.” A copy of man’s false internal copy of truth. And what word does Plato use for “copy” in this sentence? That’s fucking right, μίμημα. Mīmēma. Mimesis. Meme. The new meme is a lie, manifested in (written) words, that reflects the lack of truth, the emptiness, within the very soul of a human. The meme is now not only an inferior copy, it is a deceptive copy. But just wait, it gets better. Plato continues in the very next section of the Republic, 382 c. Sometimes, he says, the lie, the meme, is appropriate, even moral. It is not abhorrent to lie to your enemy, or to your friend in order to keep him from harm. “Does it [the lie] not then become useful to avert the evil—as a medicine?” You get one fucking guess for what Greek word is being translated as “medicine” in this passage. Ding ding motherfucking ding, you got it, φάρμακον, pharmakon. The μίμημα is a φάρμακον, the lie is a medicine/poison, the meme is a pharmakon. But I’m sure that by now you’ve realized the (intentional) mistake in my argument that brought us to this point. I said earlier that the addition of written language to the meme flipped the pharmakon on its axis. But the pharmakon didn’t flip, it doesn’t have an axis. It was always both remedy and poison. The fact that this isn’t obvious to us from the very beginning of the discussion is the fault of, you guessed it, language. The initial lie (writing) clouds our vision and keeps us from realizing how false the second-order lie (the meme) is. The very structure of the lying meme mirrors the structure of the written word that defines and corrupts it. Once you try to identify an “outside” in order to reveal the lie, the whole framework turns itself inside-out so that you can never escape it. The cat wants the cheezburger that exists outside the meme, but only through the meme do we become aware of the presumed existence of the cheezburger — we can’t point out the absurdity of the world of the meme without also indicting our own world. We can’t talk about language without language, we can’t meme without mimesis. Memes didn’t change between ‘06 and ‘07, it was us who changed. Or rather, our understanding of what we had always been changed. The lie became truth, the remedy became the poison, the outside became the inside. Which is to say that the truth became lie, the pharmakon was always the remedy and the poison, and the inside retreated further inside. It all came full circle. Because here’s the secret, Jane. Language ruined the meme, yes. But language itself had already been ruined. By that initial poisonous, lying copy. Writing. The First Meme. Language didn’t attack the meme in 2007 out of spite. It attacked it to get revenge. Longcat is long. Language is language. Pharmakon is pharmakon. The phoneme topples the grapheme, witches ride through the night, our skulls hide secret messages on their surfaces, Smash Mouth is good after all. Hey now, you’re an all-star. Get your game on. Go play.

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chilligyu · 2 years

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cursebound | wip, 30.3.23 | lee jihoon/reader | UPDATED

In this world everything has a history, even things as simple as words. A word can have a past, a present, and, if they’re lucky, a future. Words like curse were drenched in a bloody past that had long since been forgotten. They had become hollow threats wrapped up in a harmless facade. Now they were simply fairy tales meant to scare naughty children, ghost stories told by drunken sailors, they were not something to believe in or to be afraid of.

But words like curse will kindly remind you why they are meant to be remembered, to be feared.

Back when curses were more—more than empty words, blank pages, and forgotten nightmares—they were absolutely formidable. They brought kingdoms to their knees with little more than hushed whispers, sideways glances, and a crook of a finger. Women lost their youth overnight, men turned into gruesome beasts with the setting sun, and children were unknowingly replaced by demons under the shroud of darkness. Such horrors should not have been so easily forgotten, and yet they were.

She wasn’t given the luxury.

She wasn’t allowed to forget.

Had her parents been more mindful in their youth, perhaps she never would’ve known the pain of being cursed, of being punished for their selfishness and for things she never did. They were punished for their hubris, for crossing the wrong witch, and their fair daughter would be the one to pay for their crimes. This witch didn’t fear the consequences of such an archaic punishment, she valued retribution and revenge above all else. Even her own wellbeing.

“Your daughter will grow to be the most beautiful maiden in all the land.” The witch began that fateful day, pointing a crooked finger at the young infant. "She will be kind, compassionate, and virtuous. Wherever she goes, people will be drawn to her beauty. Men will throw themselves at her feet, women will yearn for her looks. She will be more desirable than any princess or queen before her. She will openly offer her heart to those who seek her hand, bleeding on a platter. But so long as she lives, she will break every heart that dares to love her, and she can never tell them why. Nor can her loving parents. She will only know loneliness, same as I. Because of you.”

From the moment she was born, that was her curse. To forever be surrounded by love and to relentlessly, maliciously, spurn the lovers that were compelled to fancy her. A gift of ethereal beauty wrapped up tight in an embrace of anguish and despair. She was granted a lifetime of suffering before she ever opened her eyes. Her parents refused to believe it, they were still under the delusion that curses were nothing to be feared.

How foolish and naive they were.

When she was young, she didn’t fully comprehend what was in store for her. Her parents had told her about the curse, but they had always played it off as some silly joke and never told her the whole truth. It was an old wives’ tale to them, one that no reasonable person would ever take seriously. However, their tone started to change when their precious, perfect, daughter constantly came home from school in tears, unable to understand what was wrong with her. Because no matter what she did, or how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop herself from hurting the people she cared about.

“You’re cursed, my darling.” Her mother said softly, wiping away her tears. “This is your life now.”

“But… but…” The little girl blubbered. “Only bad people get cursed! What did I do? What am I being punished for?”

Her parents looked at each other with sorrow in their eyes. They couldn’t bear to tell their wonderful daughter that they were the cause for all her suffering. She was being punished because her father was a shallow man who only cared about looks, and her mother was a heartless woman who would step on anyone in her way. If she knew the truth, she would resent them forever.

“That old witch was jealous of your beauty.” Her father lied easily. “She knew that you would grow up to be the most beautiful maiden in the kingdom and that ugly woman hated you for it.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Her mother chimed in, stroking her hair gently. “But don’t worry, we’ll find a way to break the curse.”

#lex has big wips and she cannot lie #it's a wip but i'mma whip it into shape #woozi scenarios #jihoon scenarios #lex wips #chilligyu

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faggotri · 3 years

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But we’ll go farther than Plato. Longcat, a photograph, is a textbook example of a second-degree mimesis. (We might promote it to the third degree since the image on the internet is a digital copy of the original photograph of the physical cat which is itself a copy of Platonic ideal of a cat (the Godcat, if you will); but this line of thought doesn’t change anything in the argument.) The text-supplemented meme, on the other hand, the captioned cat, is at an infinite remove from the Godcat, the ultimate mimesis, copying the copy of itself eternally, the written language and the image echoing off each other, until it finally loops back around to the truth by virtue of being so far from it. It becomes its own truth, the fidelity of the eternal copy. It becomes a God. Writing itself is the archetypical pharmakon and the archetypical copy, if you’ll come back with me to the Phaedrus (if we ever really left it). Speech is the real deal, Socrates says, with a smug little wink to his (written) dialogic buddy. Speech is alive, it can defend itself, it can adapt and change. Writing is its bastard son, the mimic, the dead, rigid simulacrum. Writing is a copy, a mīmēma, of truth in speech. To return to our analogous issue: the image of the cheezburger cat, the copy of the picture-copy-copy, is so much closer to the original Platonic ideal than the written language that accompanies it. (“Pharmakon” can also mean “paint.” Think about it, Jane. Just think about it.) The image is still fake, but it’s the caption on the cat that is the downfall of the republic, the real fakeness, which is both realer and faker than whatever original it is that it represents. Men and gods abhor the lie, Plato says in sections 382 a and b of the Republic. οὐκ οἶσθα, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τό γε ὡς ἀληθῶς ψεῦδος, εἰ οἷόν τε τοῦτο εἰπεῖν, πάντες θεοί τε καὶ ἄνθρωποι μισοῦσιν; πῶς, ἔφη, λέγεις; οὕτως, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τῷ κυριωτάτῳ που ἑαυτῶν ψεύδεσθαι καὶ περὶ τὰ κυριώτατα οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν ἐθέλει, ἀλλὰ πάντων μάλιστα φοβεῖται ἐκεῖ αὐτὸ κεκτῆσθαι. “Don’t you know,” said I, “that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a thing that all gods and men abhor?” “What do you mean?” he said. “This,” said I, “that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there above all that everyone fears it.” Man’s worst fear is that he will hold existential falsehood within himself. And the verbal lies that he tells are a copy of this feared dishonesty in the soul. Plato goes on to elaborate: “the falsehood in words is a copy of the affection in the soul, an after-rising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood.” A copy of man’s false internal copy of truth. And what word does Plato use for “copy” in this sentence? That’s fucking right, μίμημα. Mīmēma. Mimesis. Meme. The new meme is a lie, manifested in (written) words, that reflects the lack of truth, the emptiness, within the very soul of a human. The meme is now not only an inferior copy, it is a deceptive copy. But just wait, it gets better. Plato continues in the very next section of the Republic, 382 c. Sometimes, he says, the lie, the meme, is appropriate, even moral. It is not abhorrent to lie to your enemy, or to your friend in order to keep him from harm. “Does it [the lie] not then become useful to avert the evil—as a medicine?” You get one fucking guess for what Greek word is being translated as “medicine” in this passage. Ding ding motherfucking ding, you got it, φάρμακον, pharmakon. The μίμημα is a φάρμακον, the lie is a medicine/poison, the meme is a pharmakon. But I’m sure that by now you’ve realized the (intentional) mistake in my argument that brought us to this point. I said earlier that the addition of written language to the meme flipped the pharmakon on its axis. But the pharmakon didn’t flip, it doesn’t have an axis. It was always both remedy and poison. The fact that this isn’t obvious to us from the very beginning of the discussion is the fault of, you guessed it, language. The initial lie (writing) clouds our vision and keeps us from realizing how false the second-order lie (the meme) is. The very structure of the lying meme mirrors the structure of the written word that defines and corrupts it. Once you try to identify an “outside” in order to reveal the lie, the whole framework turns itself inside-out so that you can never escape it. The cat wants the cheezburger that exists outside the meme, but only through the meme do we become aware of the presumed existence of the cheezburger — we can’t point out the absurdity of the world of the meme without also indicting our own world. We can’t talk about language without language, we can’t meme without mimesis. Memes didn’t change between ‘06 and ‘07, it was us who changed. Or rather, our understanding of what we had always been changed. The lie became truth, the remedy became the poison, the outside became the inside. Which is to say that the truth became lie, the pharmakon was always the remedy and the poison, and the inside retreated further inside. It all came full circle. Because here’s the secret, Jane. Language ruined the meme, yes. But language itself had already been ruined. By that initial poisonous, lying copy. Writing. The First Meme. Language didn’t attack the meme in 2007 out of spite. It attacked it to get revenge. Longcat is long. Language is language. Pharmakon is pharmakon. The phoneme topples the grapheme, witches ride through the night, our skulls hide secret messages on their surfaces, Smash Mouth is good after all. Hey now, you’re an all-star. Get your game on. Go play.

#love it here #just a regular post :)#aaron shouts

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daydreamed-snippets · 3 years

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“Sorry,” the anti-hero said simply, slender hands slipping from the white and black piano keys like they hadn’t wanted their guest to rouse that very moment. “Did my playing wake you?”

They looked to the top of the stairs, where the vigilante had padded over from the anti-hero’s bedroom to overlook the loft’s balcony. “I told you not to bring me here,” the vigilante said, a hint of annoyance crossing their voice. But they were careful about it. It was only a hint. They didn’t let too much frustration cloud their tone even while fidgeting at the leather cords wrapped around both wrists. A ten-foot-long cord, drawn tight, anchored them to the anti-hero’s bedpost.

“And leave you for dead?” the anti-hero quipped, getting up and closing the fallboard. They then took the stairs two, three steps at a time, stopping promptly to peer into the vigilante’s upturned face. Hovering just at their elbow. “Not a chance.”

“I can’t be here, you know that,” they spat. “This is an unsecured location in the heart of the city. You’re practically in the warden’s backyard. Bluecoats will be canvassing the neighborhood looking for me after what happened. It’s a death sentence if I’m caught.”

“You’re safe here.”

“Am I?” they asked raising their bound hands. The anti-hero smiled. They had done it as a precautionary, really. Restraining, but innocuously so, they made sure of it. After all, they didn’t want to hurt their deft little vigilante. They just wanted to keep them grounded for the moment.

They shrugged, “If you behave yourself.”

“And if I don’t.”

The anti-hero blinked, looking them over, taking in their seedy, disheveled features. The mess of their hair, the flush of their cheeks, the splash of freckles and chapped lips which they’d whittled at with their teeth in nervous anticipation. They’d predicted that response, dreamed of it really. It was the reason why they liked this particular vigilante. All spitfire and hell to pay. Damn the consequences. Damn the rules that were always tipped in the politician's favor. Damn their safety if it meant government reform, and citizens no longer under their oppressive thumb. They were a means to an end kind of fighter, within reason of course. The vigilante had morals. Standards. But, oh, with the anti-hero’s help, they could be so more.

The anti-hero could draw them out. Make them forget for once the ethical boundaries they set for themselves. Make them forget to play fair.

The anti-hero reached out, skimming fingers over the hollow of their cheek, relishing the tiniest hint of a shiver before running their thumb over the torn flesh of their lips. They tsked.

The vigilante’s frown deepened at the touch. Looking apprehensive. Shaken. The veneer of a warrior for the people began chipping away, and the anti-hero was starting to see through those cracks, to the soft core beneath. “You will,” the anti-hero replied decisively, after a pause.

“Don’t touch me,” the vigilante muttered, breaking eye contact, pulling away. They scampered backward, unknowingly towards the bed that had left a short time before. They were still disoriented. Fatigued from the fight, and from the wound in their side that the anti-hero had treated. “This is serious. I’m not going to be toyed with for your amusement.”

The anti-hero wasn’t sure if they knew that the loft was all one room, and that it was where the stairs they had just come from led to. There was nowhere to go really. Not when the vigilante was tethered to their bed. Still, the anti-hero followed, nonchalantly, with hands in their pockets, like a curious carnivore stalking a stranger in their territory.

“I’m not just doing this for my amusement,” they said, hubris pulling at the corners of their mouth. They flashed another smile, shining teeth, and subtle dimples. It was dimmer in the bedroom. The curtains drawn on the lone window. The light from the main living area was becoming faint. “You’re hurt, for one. And I do believe I mentioned saving your life for another. Isn’t there a code or something that says that you owe me?”

“I guess,” the vigilante replied stiffly, as they took one step after another in retreat. Determined to keep a wide distance between the two, yet still with the appearance of indifference. Biting their lip was a tell. “I do owe you a thank you. So…thank you.”

“I was thinking of something more than that.”

They lifted their chin, “Then you shouldn’t have rescued me. You should have respected my wishes and left me to die when I told you to get out. That’s your fault, not mine. I didn’t ask for you to step in. I didn’t ask for you to bring me here. You can’t just ignore people’s requests—their boundaries—when it doesn’t suit you.”

“Can I at least know your name for my troubles?”

“No.”

“I’ve seen your face. What’s in a name?”

“Fine then. It’s Noneya,” the vigilante gritted out, leveling them with a look. “As in noneya business.”

The anti-hero chuckled at their childishness. It was unexpected from their serious disposition earlier. “Cute.”

Another step and the back of the vigilante’s knees hit the edge of the bed. They tipped backward with a grunt of alarm, landing gingerly but prone. The vigilante struggled to get up, trying to push themselves up on their elbow and rollover. But anti-hero was on them, up on the bed, settling both knees on either side of the vigilante’s thighs, leaning over them, grabbing those bound wrists and stretching their arms above their head. They could see the panic that lit up their features, their eyes widening exponentially.

“While I admire your bravado,” the anti-hero said, slowly, capturing the vigilante’s chin. “We both know ‘thank you’s don’t make the world go round. And that your little war on injustice desperately needs an… inspirational awakening.”

“Don’t do this,” they said in warning with stilled, shortened breathes. “You’re not a villain. I’ve seen you in fights. I’ve seen you go up against the warden just as I have. You act like you don’t have a moral code, but I know you do. Remember,” they licked their lips. “Remember my boundaries.”

“Funny,” they said, as if the thought just dawned on them. “I was always really bad with boundaries.”

#story prompt #promt #antihero #vigilante #writing #short story #antiheroxvigilante #snippet

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vital-information · 3 years

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Zadie Smith, from “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction” “’Re-examine all you have been told,’ Whitman tells us, ‘and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.’ Full disclosure: what insults my soul is the idea—popular in the culture just now, and presented in widely variant degrees of complexity—that we can and should write only about people who are fundamentally “like” us: racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, personally. That only an intimate authorial autobiographical connection with a character can be the rightful basis of a fiction. I do not believe that. I could not have written a single one of my books if I did. But I feel no sense of triumph in my apostasy. It might well be that we simply don’t want or need novels like mine anymore, or any of the kinds of fictions that, in order to exist, must fundamentally disagree with the new theory of “likeness.” It may be that the whole category of what we used to call fiction is becoming lost to us. And if enough people turn from the concept of fiction as it was once understood, then fighting this transformation will be like going to war against the neologism “impactful” or mourning the loss of the modal verb “shall.” As it is with language, so it goes with culture: what is not used or wanted dies. What is needed blooms and spreads.

Consequently, my interest here is not so much prescriptive as descriptive. For me the question is not: Should we abandon fiction? (Readers will decide that—are in the process of already deciding. Many decided some time ago.) The question is: Do we know what fiction was? We think we know. In the process of turning from it, we’ve accused it of appropriation, colonization, delusion, vanity, naiveté, political and moral irresponsibility. We have found fiction wanting in myriad ways but rarely paused to wonder, or recall, what we once wanted from it—what theories of self-and-other it offered us, or why, for so long, those theories felt meaningful to so many. Embarrassed by the novel—and its mortifying habit of putting words into the mouths of others—many have moved swiftly on to what they perceive to be safer ground, namely, the supposedly unquestionable authenticity of personal experience.

The old—and never especially helpful—adage write what you know has morphed into something more like a threat: Stay in your lane. This principle permits the category of fiction, but really only to the extent that we acknowledge and confess that personal experience is inviolate and nontransferable. It concedes that personal experience may be displayed, very carefully, to the unlike-us, to the stranger, even to the enemy—but insists it can never truly be shared by them. This rule also pertains in the opposite direction: the experience of the unlike-us can never be co-opted, ventriloquized, or otherwise “stolen” by us. (As the philosopher Anthony Appiah has noted, these ideas of cultural ownership share some DNA with the late-capitalist concept of brand integrity.) Only those who are like us are like us. Only those who are like us can understand us—or should even try. Which entire philosophical edifice depends on visibility and legibility, that is, on the sense that we can be certain of who is and isn’t “like us” simply by looking at them and/or listening to what they have to say.

Fiction didn’t believe any of that. Fiction suspected that there is far more to people than what they choose to make manifest. Fiction wondered what likeness between selves might even mean, given the profound mystery of consciousness itself, which so many other disciplines—most notably philosophy—have probed for millennia without reaching any definitive conclusions. Fiction was suspicious of any theory of the self that appeared to be largely founded on what can be seen with the human eye, that is, those parts of our selves that are material, manifest, and clearly visible in a crowd. Fiction—at least the kind that was any good—was full of doubt, self-doubt above all. It had grave doubts about the nature of the self.

Like a lot of writers I want to believe in fiction. But I’m simultaneously full of doubt, as is my professional habit. I know that the old Whitmanesque defense needs an overhaul. Containment—as a metaphor for the act of writing about others—is unequal to the times we live in. These times in which so many of us feel a collective, desperate, and justified desire to be once and for all free of the limited—and limiting—fantasies and projections of other people. With all due respect to Whitman, then, I’m going to relegate him to the bench, and call up, in defense of fiction, another nineteenth-century poet, Emily Dickinson:

I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes— I wonder if It weighs like Mine— Or has an Easier size.

This gets close to the experience of making up fictional people. It starts as a consciousness out in the world: looking, listening, noticing. A kind of awareness, attended by questions. What is it like to be that person? To feel what they feel? I wonder. Can I use what I feel to imagine what the other feels? A little later in the poem, Dickinson moves from the abstract to the precise: There’s Grief of Want—and grief of Cold— A sort they call “Despair”— There’s Banishment from native Eyes— In sight of Native Air—

She makes a map in her mind of possibilities. But later, as the poem concludes, she concedes that no mental map can ever be perfect, although this does not mean that such maps have no purpose:

And though I may not guess the kind— Correctly—yet to me A piercing Comfort it affords In passing Calvary— To note the fashions—of the Cross— And how they’re mostly worn— Still fascinated to presume That Some—are like my own—

In place of the potential hubris of containment, then, Dickinson offers us something else: the fascination of presumption. This presumption does not assume it is “correct,” no more than I assumed, when I depicted the lives of a diverse collection of people in my first novel, that I was “correct.” But I was fascinated to presume that some of the feelings of these imaginary people—feelings of loss of homeland, the anxiety of assimilation, battles with faith and its opposite—had some passing relation to feelings I have had or could imagine. That our griefs were not entirely unrelated. The joy of writing that book—and the risk of it—was in the uncertainty. I’d never been to war, Bangladesh, or early-twentieth-century Jamaica. I was not, myself, an immigrant. Could I make the reader believe in the imaginary people I placed in these fictional situations? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the reader. “I don’t believe it,” the reader is always free to say, when confronted with this emotion or that, one action or another. Novels are machines for falsely generating belief and they succeed or fail on that basis.”

#zadie smith #literature #writeblr

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amagpiedance · 4 years

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Far Cry 5 characters as Tarot Cards

0 - The Junior Deputy - The Fool

Despite the name the Fool isn't stupid; maybe naïve. You are a blank slate. A person at the beginning of their journey brimming with infinite potential.

1 - Sharky Boshaw - The Magician

The Magician is a skilled individual with all the tools he needs to bring his ambitions to fruition. Even if that ambition is to party hard and set fires.

2 - Faith Seed - The High Priestess

The Priestess represents serenity and esoteric knowledge. Succumb to the Bliss and you too can know peace and understand the mysteries of the universe.

3 - Adelaide Drubman - The Empress

The Empress represents beauty, motherhood, and femininity. Her ability to lead comes as naturally as breathing. Her identity as a sexual being is not one imposed upon her, but rather the crown she chooses to wear with pride.

4 - Cameron Burke - The Emperor

The Emperor is a figure of authority but also arrogance. His belief in his own ability to control chaos has blinded him and it will be his downfall.

5 - Dutch - The Hierophant

The Hierophant is a true believer. A mentor and traditionalist. Through you he will bring law and order to a lawless land.

6 - Tracey Lader - The Lovers

The Lovers card represents innocent love, purity and trust. When that trust is broken the Lovers reversed may indicate a breakup between friends.

7 - Nick Rye - The Chariot

The Chariot represents willpower and determination, as well as travel. With the Chariot on your side you can overcome any obstacle and victory is all but assured.

8 - Grace Armstrong - Justice

The Justice card represents fairness and consequences and above all doing the right thing. Those who tip the balance will get what they deserve whether they are ready or not.

9 - Larry Parker - The Hermit

Why does that smoking shoe leave the impression he knew something we don't?

10 - Hurk Jr. - The Wheel of Fortune

Sometimes luck is on your side. It doesn't have to make sense.

11 - Jess Black - Strength

This card doesn't represent physical prowess but rather inner strength. Strength of character. In this case the power to control her rage, to temper it like steel, and harnessing all her determination wield it with precision against her enemies.

12 - Eli Palmer - The Hanged Man

The Hanged Man is standing at a cross-roads. Trapped by circumstance, he must accept his fate. Ultimately his sacrifice was for the greater good.

13 - Jacob Seed - Death

Despite the name Death in fact represents transformation and rebirth. Embrace change. Let go of who you were before; you can never go back.

14 - Sheriff Whitehorse - Temperence

Balance, peace, calm, and patience. These are all qualities embodied by Temperence. When everything is out of control he will bide his time.

15 - John Seed - The Devil

Lust, addiction, temptation. The Devil is a master of illusion. If you enjoy life's simple pleasures he will find you guilty, and even if not he will wheedle something to brand you with. If you let him get into your head you may lose control of your own destiny.

16 - Staci Pratt - The Tower

When mankind built the Tower of Babel they were punished for their hubris by the gods. The Tower has the strength to stand up to an authority greater than his own. No fallout can deter him; given the chance he'd do it again.

17 - Boomer - The Star

A very good boy. The Star is a shining light that will show you the way.

18 - Joey Hudson - The Moon

The Moon represents our subconscious mind; our fears and insecurities. The path to freedom is unclear. Follow your instincts. Watch out for the lobster.

19 - Kim Rye - The Sun

Positivity, joy, and good health. The Sun brings light and warmth to all around. It may also indicate a pregnancy.

20 - Joseph Seed - Judgement

It's too late to change your mind now; you are committed to your choices and your mistakes. There's nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. The end is now and you will get what is coming to you, whatever that may be.

21 - Carmina Rye - The World

Time for a new beginning. The story has come full circle and now we get to start anew. Make sure to learn from the mistakes of the past and do better than those who came before.

#Far Cry 5

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theredhairedmonkey · 4 years

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Viren and Callum—Defining Heroism

Callum is a foil for each of the three antagonists, and each season focuses on a different pairing.

During Season 2, Callum’s arc was a foil to Claudia’s. I break down some of the similarities between them here. Callum and Claudia both exhibit a curiosity to learn more about magic (particularly at the Moon Nexus), and both are fiercely protective of those closest to them. To the extent they will use Dark Magic to protect them.

But whereas Callum tries it once and decides to reject it for good, Claudia continues to succumb to this temptation, time and time again.

During Season 3, Callum’s development is contrasted with Aaravos. At this point, Callum is, like Aaravos, a magical prodigy; each had mastered at least one Primal Source they weren’t born connected to.

Additionally, both demonstrate great influence over the lives of those around them. But they are diametrically opposed in terms of their goals. Whereas Aaravos cares primarily about advancing his own interests, Callum wants to genuinely help people, and empower them to make their own choices (as opposed to manipulating them like Aaravos).

This foil can be summed up simply—Callum is motivated by the Narrative of Love. Aaravos is motivated by the Narrative of Fear.

Harrow: “I ask you and your brother to reject history as a narrative of strength and instead have faith that it can be a narrative of love.”

Aaravos: “You tried to win over the other humans with loyalty and friendship, but they ignored you. Those who fail tests of love are simple animals. They deserve to be motivated by fear.”

But the focus here is on Viren and Callum, and starting in Season 1 and throughout the first three seasons, Viren and Callum have very deep, narratively important parallels with one another.

Both are the mages who advise their respective Kings.

Callum: “When you grow up, sometimes you have to face things you’re not ready for.”

Viren: “He insisted I stand next to him in the painting, because he knew I would stand by him through anything.”

Both are curious and want to explore the depths of magic to the greatest extent possible.

Viren and Callum are also both insecure in their place in the world, relying (at least initially) on magic to help give them a sense of belonging

But their differences not only define their dynamic, they also define many elements and themes to the Saga, in particular as to what it means to be a hero.

To begin, Viren is great, though not necessarily good. That is to say, even though he may be capable of great deeds that save countless lives (such as in saving the people of Duren with the heart of a Titan), these deeds don’t actually make him a heroic person.

This is because every great deed he did stemmed not from altruism or compassion (no matter how well he convinced himself that it did), but from his tragic flaws: his arrogance, his vanity, and importantly, his hubris—his belief that he can subvert the natural order in his favor without consequence.

From what we can gather, Viren is a force to be reckoned with. His skills with magic have made him so powerful, he can cast a spell that would save two kingdoms from starvation.

They are also such that he’s considered by Amaya, a talented warrior herself, perhaps “the most dangerous human in the world.”

His martial prowess is quite exceptional as well, as he’s able to go toe to toe with two Dragonguards for a time. Even though they’re elite fighters and they’re flanking him, he’s able to hold his own for a while before having to resort to magic.

However, Viren is a tragic character. I don’t mean this in the sense that we should feel sorry for the power-hungry man who attempted to murder two boys and steal the throne. Rather, his “greatness” is undermined by his personal flaws, which he can’t quite shake and prevent him from being good.

Part of Viren sincerely wants to improve life for his people. When talking to Aaravos, to whom he has no motivation to lie, he states his aim is to help mankind flourish “without a knife to its throat”

He’s even willing to consider sacrificing himself, either for King Harrow or, in Lux Aurea, for his army.

Aaravos: “We’ll risk as few lives as possible. One.”

Viren: “Ah. Mine.”

But as per his hubris, he exhibits great pride in how his abilities can help mankind flourish or save his people. While he wants mankind to prosper, he wants this to be his achievement and wants people to know that he is the one who saved them.

In his story to Queen Aanya, he places a bit of undue emphasis on the fact that he was the one who up with a solution that saved Katolis and Duren. Whether or not this is what happened, it’s clear that he wants Aanya to know that he personally saved her kingdom.

A little less unclear is how necessary he ultimately was. Sarai goes back to save Viren because “without him to perform the spell, the heart is worthless, and this was all for nothing.”

I’m...skeptical as to whether this is what Sarai says, or if it’s Viren intentionally or unintentionally reading in what he wants her to say. Truth be told, Viren has no idea if this is what Sarai said because he wasn’t there when she said it. And why is the heart worthless? Viren wasn’t the only Dark Mage in the world, and probably not the only one between Duren and Katolis. There’s no reason why another mage couldn’t perform the spell.

But for Viren, the heart of the Titan might as well have been worthless because, in his mind, he’s the only capable of accomplishing these great feats.

Even when he was potentially willing to sacrifice his life for Harrow, he botched it with his speech to Harrow.

Viren: “Right now I do not come to you as my King. I think of you as my brother.”

Truth is, none of this throat-clearing is necessary. But, Viren’s not quite so humble, even when he’s attempting to do the right thing. He still wants to be seen as someone special, even when laying his life down for another.

Turns out, this was entirely the wrong thing to say to Harrow, who is put off by Viren’s self-righteousness.

Harrow: “I see the problem now. It’s that you believe you are special. Better than everyone else, above the laws of this kingdom.”

When he’s forced to kneel and Harrow calls him a servant, this infuriates Viren and he sets aside any plans he had to sacrifice himself for his King.

Harrow: “You are a servant of Katolis. You are a servant.”

Because if Viren is going to sacrifice himself, he needs people to know what a great thing it is that he’s doing. He’s not a mere servant, he’s their savior.

It’s interesting that Viren’s pride is so hurt of being called a servant of Katolis, since that’s exactly how Harrow sees himself, according to Viren.

Viren: “King Harrow worked tirelessly. He told me he thought of himself as a servant of all the people of Katolis. A servant King.”

But Viren doesn’t see himself in this way. When his potential sacrifice is treated with the same level of significance as though he were anybody else, it offends him that he has to share that importance with others.

And thus, his pride leads to his downfall, casting aside his desire to protect his King, and replaces it with a desire to be the King himself.

Viren: “Today, we must mourn sevenfold. For tonight, there will be a coronation.”

Callum, on the other hand, begins his journey on the opposite side of the spectrum from Viren. Whereas Viren can accomplish great feats without being good, Callum is a good person, though not great.

At least, not yet.

According to the main site, “Callum has a big heart, and always tries to do the right thing.”

He can be super proud of himself and his accomplishments, but he usually has enough perspective to avoid letting this get in the way of what he knows is important. For instance, he connects to the Sky Primal, something thought of as impossible for humans, he immediately shifts his attention to Ezran, never once bragging or reminding people of his accomplishments.

Corvus: That’s incredible, Prince Callum.

Callum: Thanks…uh, who are you?

And, when it comes time to laying his life on the line for others, he never hesitates. Notably, around the same time as Viren was thinking about sacrificing his life for Harrow, Callum was preparing to sacrifice himself for his actual brother, but with none of the bravado or self-righteous congratulating of himself.

Just a solemn, quiet attempt to save his brother, even at the cost of his own life, and even without anyone finding out about his sacrifice.

For Rayla, he performs Dark Magic, knowing how much she could possibly hate him for it, but deciding that her life is worth more than how she sees him.

Callum may start out with a big heart, but when it comes to his skills, well…

But if Viren begins as both powerful and amoral, it makes perfect sense to have Callum’s arc to begin as his opposite--someone without any special abilities but with a strong moral compass.

Because of this, we get to see him go from good to great. And his story walks this fine line, where he develops these magical abilities to perform heroic feats walking hand in hand with the realization that he doesn’t need magic to be heroic.

Callum: “It’s up to us now. We have to return this egg. We have to keep it safe and carry it to Xadia.”

Callum has the same temptation as Viren—this need to be someone important, which is a big part of his arc in S1 and S2.

In S1, he initially places a high premium on his sense of self-worth, willing to put their mission in jeopardy just so he can obtain an object that might help him become a better mage.

He assigns great importance to objects (such as the Primal Stone and the Key of Aaravos) rather than focusing on people or lives. Much in line with the way a Dark Mage would attach significance to magical components that are needed for spells.

Callum: “The truth is, its not me. It’s this. All the magic, all the power, all the confidence. It's just because of this amazing thing. A Primal Stone.”

Ellis: “That Primal Stone needs you to do all that amazing stuff. Without you, it's just a neat, glowy ball.”

Callum: “I guess so. But without this, I'm nothing. Just a guy who can draw and make wry comments from time to time. And they're not even that wry.”

Much like how Viren assigns great value to the mirror or the Dragon Egg, even above his own children’s lives.

Viren: “The egg. If you have to choose [between Soren and the egg], choose the egg.”

But by the end of S1, he realizes just how much more important the lives of his friends and the Dragon Prince are over his own sense of pride or self-worth. Unlike Viren, who places a great degree of importance to his sacrifice (honestly, Harrow should be honored that Viren would consider throwing himself on the sword for a mere king), Callum simply makes the realization of what he needs to do…and then does it.

S2 follows the aftermath of his decision, and Callum has to deal with no longer having his mage abilities. Again, he latches his entire sense of self-worth to be able to do magic.

As @raayllum points out here, he also aligns his ability to do magic to agency. Without magic, he’s paralyzed by indecision and an inability to do the right thing. He believes himself imprisoned by his inadequacy.

Callum: “If we're really going to change things, we can't just watch while humans and Xadia keep hurting each other. But how do I take a stand? Believe me, I want to go down there with you, and be the heroes who stop all the fighting and save the day, but I can't do that. I can't do anything!”

And he follows this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion:

Dark Magic

Dark Magic gives him all the power he needs. If Callum wants to be special (like Viren), if he wants to have agency and freedom for himself, this is the path he can take.

Dark!Callum: “You can have unlimited power, and you can choose what to do with that power.

And in that moment, he’s tempted. Truly, he’s tempted, to commit to this path, set himself free from his past limitations and feelings of worthlessness.

He can become like Viren, and make himself great…but in a moment of clarity, he sees Dark Magic for what it truly is.

This isn’t freedom. It’s not the power he wants.

It’s just another prison.

And unlike Viren, who succumbs to this temptation, Callum sees through it.

What’s noteworthy is that Callum doesn’t press on the point that it’s possible for him to learn an Arcanum and do magic some other. He doesn’t insist he can make this choice easy on himself; he chooses that, Arcanum or no Arcanum, this is not the kind of magic he will choose to do.

Callum: “Destiny is a book you write yourself!”

Instead of attaching his sense of self-worth and agency to magic, he breaks free of this toxic cycle and seizes the ability to direct his own fate.

This is a lesson that he then passes on to others.

Rayla: “What does this mean? What should I do?

Callum: “I don’t know. But it’s your choice. No one else’s.”

He finds his agency and self-worth independent of his ability to do magic, and realizes that his potential is actually in his complete control. Fittingly, it’s this realization that completes his journey to finally understand the Sky Arcanum.

In the end, Viren and Callum are quite similar, but the former lets his flaws get the better of him, his pride sinking him until he becomes malicious, grasping, and power-hungry. Eyes set on stealing the power to make him important.

The latter ascends past his prior limitations, refusing to yield to his own worst impulses.

Moreover, Callum holds on to his ideals in the face of adversity, even at his own expense, while Viren constantly tries to find “pragmatic” and expedient solutions to problems that always happen to end up with him on top of everyone else. Viren continues his dramatic decline, eagerly crossing one moral horizon after another, until by the end, he admits to Aaravos what he is really after is conquest; he’s willing to steal Zym’s life force just to become more powerful, sacrificing the entirety of his army to do it.

Callum, on the other hand, begins to truly understand what can make a good-natured person into a hero.

He expresses it in a speech about Rayla…

Callum: “It's because Rayla is a hero…Rayla saves people. She's brave. She does what's right, even if it puts her own life in danger, and even when the odds seem impossible. Even when it means her own people might misunderstand and turn against her. Rayla is selfless, strong and caring. That's what makes her a hero. That's what makes her Rayla.”

…and then proceeds to do each and every one of those things on the pinnacle. He bravely leaps after Rayla--even though it put his own life in danger--because it’s the right thing to do. Even though the odds of quickly mastering a complex spell on the way down seemed impossible.

Viren thinks his great feats are a substitute for a good character. Callum’s journey, on the other hand, is learning those character traits that make one heroic. He realizes, not only that Rayla is “selfless, strong, and caring,” but also why and more importantly, why he can be those things too.

And this dynamic between Viren and Callum culminates in the finale, where one falls…

…and the other rises.

#callum #viren #rayla #ezran #harrow #tdp #the dragon prince #s2 #s3 #s1 #aaravos #primal magic #dark magic #soren #claudia

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 6x05 The Gospel of Josephine

While we’re still on the hiatus, waiting two weeks for the next episode, at least I have more time to finally put my thoughts on episode 6x05 in one place and post the belated review.

I appreciated this episode better on my second watch, because, the first time, I found it a bit hard to believe that no one besides Bellamy was suspicious of „Clarke“’s new, decidedly non-Clarke-like behavior, even though they all noticed at least some of it, and that they didn’t put two and two together after they had already found out about bodysnatching. However, putting it into perspective, it all happened over a very short period of time – and besides, it is such a huge thing to accept. Most people wouldn’t even want to believe it.

Still, while everyone seems to have caught the small blunders, like calling Murphy „John“, I do wonder if anyone except Bellamy was alerted by the fact that „Clarke“ was OK with bodysnatching and arguing that it’s OK because it doesn’t affect them. Could it be that their idea of her is a bit skewed? The funny thing is how much others (well, mostly Raven and Murphy) were bashing Clarke this season as the Worst Person Ever, and now her body is possessed by an actual villain, who is the polar opposite of Clarke: selfish, egotistical, immoral, arrogant, devoid of compassion and caring, allergic to children, and convinced that she is better than everyone and that she can just walk over the lesser, disposable people. There are even some people in the fandom who somehow imagine Clarke to be the Bad Guy, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, which is a really incredible misunderstanding of the story and characters. Well, if people wanted to see a real villain in Clarke’s body? They got her now.

I expected the reveal about Clarke not being dead (surprise, surprise) but dormant, to happen at the end of this episode. It turns out it will probably happen in the next one.. Even though I can’t wait to see real Clarke again, watching JosephineClarke (JC) try and fail to pretend to be her was a lot of fun. To be fair, JC knows very little about Clarke, so of course she wouldn’t be able to guess how she’s supposed to act, but her hubris also got in the way. Thinking that, just because she was once in a famous play, she would be able to pretend to be a person she’s never met, is perfectly in character for JC, with her dismissive attitude towards „disposable“ people, which made her blunders so much more enjoyable to watch. Eliza Taylor did a great job giving JC completely different voice inflections and mannerisms from Clarke, at times just as playful and carefree as Sara Thompson’s original Josephine we saw in 6x02, but also more evil and scheming. Her „Clarke“ act went from basically just being JC herself in new situations, to doing something of a caricature of Clarke, in her „These people are happy, their world works“ speech in her final scene with Bellamy. But, she’s certainly smart, so she ended up deciding there’s no point of pretending with some people, namely Bellamy, and that she needs a better ’coach“ to teach her how to play Clarke and manipulate the one person who, as it turns out, matters to the Primes’ plan, Abby, so it will be interesting to see her doing her best after getting some pointers on how Clarke would act.

We also learned about something called Offering Grove – apparently, the Sanctum community doesn’t just sacrifice people to their ’gods“, the Primes, so they could live forever – they also do the classic human sacrifice, in this case – to the meat-eating trees. Lovely. And we see another weird thing specific to this planet – the strange green storm that seems to destroy or age or suck the life out of living beings. I’m hoping for more info on that in the following episodes.

One of the great things about this season is the amazing cinematography. Metaphorically, season 6 has been dark AF, but, fortunately, it’s not literally dark, as so many shows are these days when they try to be „dark and gritty“, so everyone wears black and grey and you can’t see a damn thing on screen due to poor lighting. No – The 100 season 6 has incredibly bright colors, with a planet that looks beautiful, with Sanctum looking like Renaissance Fair and with people in all sorts of rich, colorful clothes – and it’s all incredibly weird and disturbing.

Josephine’s first actions after waking up in a new body? Kill her „best friend“ Kaylee, after calling her out on the fact that Kaylee killed her in her previous body; paint a portrait of herself, while dancing and singing along to „Alors on dance“; take a shower and change clothes.

So, Josephine thinks that Kaylee and her family were running away because they were scared Russell would find out that Kaylee killed Josephine VII. But how were they supposed to find out? The only new ’naming’ was Priya. The next one was to be in 14 years, when Rose turns 21, and that was supposed to be Jasmine (someone Miranda loved, but we don’t get info what she was to her). There wouldn’t be a new Josephine for a long time. This doesn’t really make sense, unless there was another reason why they were eager to get away from Sanctum.

It’s been fun piecing the info about the identities and relationships of the Primes. So far, we know for sure that there were 13 people in the Eligius 3 mission = four families, plus Dr Gabriel Santiago, the geneticist. Those were:

Russell, Simone and Josephine Lightbourne;

Priya Desai and her teenage son Ryker (we learn her last name from her plaque in this episode)

Kaylee („Leelee“ as Josephine calls her), her mother (Faye), father and brother (I currently think the father was called Victor and the brother Daniel).

Miranda and her family, which consisted of Jasmine and a man we saw on the portraits of the Primes on the walls of Sanctum in 6x02 (some say that his name on the plaque in high resolution reads as Caleb Mason). We still don’t know for sure what the relations within that family are. I initially assumed Jasmine was her daughter, but from the way the portraits were lined up (parents above, kids below – and only Caleb was above, with two portraits below), it seems more likely they were sisters. (Or, who knows,, maybe one is his daughter and another is her wife.)

Although Josephine and Kaylee were apparently ’best friends“ (weird friendship, that one), that relationship had to develop that way only after their first lifetime, because the age difference between them seemed to be at least 10 years. Josie doesn’t seem to have much use for children, and Kaylee and her brother were pre-adolescent children during the original mission – the same ones that Josie used to test the unknown plants that, for all she knew, could have killed them. „I didn’t try it. I gave it to the kids. Leelee loved it. If it was poisonous, they’d be dead by now!“

The backstory is that Kaylee killed Josie, after Josie killed someone called Isaac, and non-Prime that Kaylee loved, possibly a boyfriend, though Josie claimed he volunteered to be sacrificed in the Offering Grove. I guess murder is a bit less seriously taken if it just means you get to wait for a few decades to be put in another body. So, basically, Josie decommissioned Kaylee, so, right now, there are just 6 active Primes: Russell, Simone, Miranda, Priya, Ryker, and Josie, but the other Primes don’t know about her yet. They wouldn’t be happy to know Russell and Simone skipped the line for their daughter – Miranda, in particular, would be pissed. They also don’t want the others to know about the whole killing thing, which is why all the sneaking had to happen. The Primes need the Earth people because they hope several of them are Nightbloods. It’s a reasonable assumption, but an incorrect one – but that’s not going to be important after what JC learns later about Abby’s ability to make Nightblood in the lab.

JC and Russell are kind of like Cage and Dante: Russell really likes to think of himself as a moral, noble guy, in spite of the horrible things he’s been doing for 236 years, so he has moral boundaries, such as, no bodyshatching without the hosts’ consent (it’s OK if you first brainwash people into worshipping you so that they will willingly sacrifice themselves and believe they’re becoming „one“ with the deity and that it’s a great honor), though he broke that rule for Josie; and no eugenics, which Josephine has been arguing for, even to the point that she wrote a book about it. From the immoral sociopathic POV, selective breeding really is the best and most obvious way to ensure the birth of new Nightbloods, but Russell insists he won’t treat human beings as cattle. (Even though he already does in many other ways?) As in season 2, you find yourself wondering: should I be more on the side of the immoral sociopath, or the huge hypocrite? Answer: f*ck both of them.

I really hope Josephine’s science books contain the driest, most straightforward prose possible, because, while she’s brilliant in many ways, literary talent is certainly not one of her strength. „This Ferrari I’m wearing“? Fun line, but what a mixed metaphor.

So, yeah, as we all know Josephine finds Murphy cute rather than Bellamy, which was obviously thrown there to subvert viewer expectations, and stress once more how completely different she is from Clarke etc.… but „he’s cute“?! She’s 200 years old and she talks like a pre-teen? There’s been some discussion over whether the Primes ever really emotionally mature over their many lifetimes. Josephine doesn’t sound any more mature than she was in the flashback in 6x02, and come to think of it, Ryker kind of has an attitude that could fit a teenager. But I don’t think it has anything to do with brain maturity, they are in adult brains, and they certainly have experiences of multiple lifetimes and centuries. I think it’s a consequence of they way of life (similar to how people who, due to circumstances, still live with their parents and are supported by them way into adulthood tend to act younger than people who have adult responsibilities early in life): all the Primes are locked into the past (even with the way JC can’t stop using 21st century slang and references), and even new relationships they develop cannot last beyond one lifetime, while their relationships with each other can go on indefinitely. Kaylee acts like an adult, not a little girl, but her primary relationships are always going to be with her parents and brother, and, as we saw in 6x02, those familial relationships didn’t change at all: during the hijacking, the dad („younger man“) seemed to be telling the son/brother („handsome older gentleman“) what to do, and Momma Faye (the „younger woman“) was definitely in charge and ordering Kaylee around („Just push the damn buttons, Kaylee!“) and telling her with her dying breath that she has to save the heads, though Kaylee already knew that.

Speaking of all the time in the world that the Primes have had – couldn’t Russell and Simone have made an effort to learn Mandarin in all that time? You live so long and you never care to learn new skills and expand knowledge? What do they even do with their time? At least Josephine has been writing books.

I wonder when Gabriel decided to leave and became the enemy of the Primes. He must have had an attack of conscience, after having done such awful things. Of course, people who were developed by Gabriel from embryos they brought from Earth were the ones used as hosts for the Primes, and are also obviously where the entire human population of Sanctum came from. We also learned that 45 or 46 of little embryo girls (I don’t remember the exact number) died in his experiments before he managed to successfully implant Josephine’s mind into one of them, after realizing that the host has to have a fully developed, adult brain. (Was this also the case with the minds of Prime children – if Kaylee, her brother and Ryker were also killed during Russell’s killing spree?) And „consent is key“ wasn’t something Russell cared at the time, since he had no problem with Josie’s mind being implanted in the body of the obviously unwilling and horrified Brooke, who was fighting and screaming until Gabriel injected her with the paralyzing serum (now we know why it was initially developed). Apart from the effect of loneliness and isolation after so many (all?) of the other people in the mission were killed, Russell’s guilt over it, Gabriel’s obsession with Josephine, finding out at some point that Earth was no more (7 years after they came to the planet), another factor could have been that they had the same attitude towards clones as many people seem to have in real life – that they are somehow not „real people“ because they didn’t get conceived and born the regular way (what’s with all the talk of cloning as a way to harvest organs?!).

How did the Primes choose Jade to be the bodyguard of the hosts (and now JC, who doesn’t seem to need someone to protect her anyway)? Did they go „Let’s find the smallest person in this compound!“ But I have a feeling that „bodyguard“ is not exactly the best description of Jade’s job. It’s just what Diyoza called her, and it seemed like the closest term.

In spite of all the new info about the Primes, this was an episode with strong character moments for Murphy, Abby (with important character revelations about both, about things that make them potentially most vulnerable to Josie’s manipulation), Octavia, Diyoza, Gaia, even some for Jackson, certainly for Jordan (it’s his best episode so far), and Bellamy had some good scenes, but in his case, this episode was a calm before the storm, leading up to the moment when realizes the horrible truth about JC.

Bellamy also deserves points for making plans to explore the planet (and pointing out how weird it is that the Sanctum people haven’t explored much of the planet for 236 years… really, what have they been doing? They’re content to stay locked in their small, narrow space and old habits), and go and found their own community somewhere, away from Sanctum, after learning the important things from them. Someone had to finally mention all these things, and those 400 people still on the ship. To be fair, they’ve only been in Sanctum for a few days and were mostly distracted by other things, including trying to get Sanctum people to accept them and teach them to survive.

Jordan has been fleshed out a lot in the last couple of episodes. We knew him as a sweet, optimistic manboy, and we learned of his brilliant scientific knowledge in the premiere, and sure, he could be naive and trusting, but in 6x04, we saw his sadness and feelings of guilt as he talked about his upbringing and his parents, and now we’ve seen him make the right conclusions and be the first person to pay attention to the suspicious things in Sanctum (which, I think, the others would have also noticed earlier if they hadn’t been so eager to see the Sanctum people as good and to find peace), and determined to investigate what’s going on, after realizing that his girlfriend really isn’t the same person anymore, literally. He had to face obstacles such as, others not taking him seriously (and dismissing him as just a naive guy who’s dealing with being dumped) and the extremely brainwashed Sanctum citizens, including even Delilah’s mother. Priya VII even tried to pacify him by claiming Delilah was happy, which sounds like BS, since we know that the Primes believe that the hosts are ’dead’, which means they have no clue what, if anything, the host is feeling.

However, I didn’t like Jordan’s line about „Heart Bellamy“ – that was too much like breaking the fourth wall, like Jordan was the stand-in for the fandom and the things they say about Bellamy pre- and post-Praimfaya (which I’ve been pretty fed up with, to the point I’m almost starting to hate all the „Head“ and „Heart“ mentions, since they’re used to ridiculously oversimplify the characters of both Bellamy and Clarke). I guess I can imagine Monty and Harper telling them that Bellamy told them on the ring he had to use his head more, to honor Clarke’s memory, because she told him to do that – but it’s still jarring.

When Jordan, Gaia, Bellamy and Murphy broke into the lab and found the videos, it may seem like it was way too easy and that all the info was just lying there waiting, but the fact that the Primes didn’t think they needed anyone to guard it shows how complacent they are, how much they’re used to everyone in Sanctum supporting them, except for a rare Child of Gabriel – and everyone including CoG knows what and who they are, so there’s no reason to guard the information, only to guard the Nightbloods/future hosts.

It was satisfying to see Gaia go from her attitude that every religion should be respected (which is, on one hand, nice in general in terms of tolerance, but also absurd if taken too far, like including cults, created by people who made themselves gods so they can oppress others), to being horrified by bodysnatching and the way the Primes have brainwashed an entire community to worship them and sacrifice people to them. She made the same points about the difference between the Flame and the mind drives that I talked about in my review of 6x04, including the fact that the former was created to help future generations with accumulated knowledge and advice (as it does not take over the host, who is still in control of their body), rather than to let people live forever. (Which was presumably Becca’s intention and the initial purpose for the mind drives, too – before Gabriel modified them so they could store the entire consciousness of a Prime, allowing them to live as the same person in a new body.)

But I also enjoyed Murphy’s snarky but truthful comments about the Grounder religion – the fact that they made children fight to the death for the right to become Commanders is incredibly messed up, too. And Becca was also not a god but a scientist who made herself Nightblood in the lab – although that would have been more relevant to the plot of 4x09 (where the Grounders were shocked by the „blasphemy“ of Clarke trying to pass her scientifically created Nightblood as the same thing as the Nightblood of the Commanders… which also came from a lab).

The reactions were interesting - Jordan was the voice of morality and humanity, but I think almost everyone agreed with him, except for Murphy. He was the only one – other than Josephine – to defend the Primes and their way of life – and it kind of feels realistic that at least someone would be tempted by immortality as an option. It makes sense it’s Murphy, especially after his recent brush with death that made him think he saw what hell was like, and it also makes sense he would say that openly.

While Bellamy didn’t speak much during those scenes where the group was discussing their shocking discovery, he was, of course, agreeing with Jordan (as confirmed with his later comments to „Clarke“) – but he was, instead, focused on watching „Clarke’s“ surprising reactions. I think he was getting more and more suspicious of her throughout the episode, and since finding out about bodysnatching, he was starting to realize the horrible truth.

Let’s see how many times JC screwed up while playing Clarke:

She was uncomfortable when hugged by Madi, and then told her she can go to school, contrary to what Clarke told Madi in the previous episode. But Madi was just being a child and was happy to get what she wanted.

JC also, naturally, didn’t understand a word of what Gaia said in Trig (to make it impossible for Jade to understand what she was saying), but she covered it reasonably well.

Saying „Chill out“ (21st century slang is not something people from the Ark are familiar with) was what caught Bellamy’s attention.

Then he asked her about her happy demeanour and the „fun“ she had with the doctor, referring to seeing her dance with Cillian at the club. Bellamy asking about these things isn’t exactly typical of him, either, but it’s interesting. He may not have even been fully aware where it came from, but to me, it sounded like he needed to know more: „So, uh, I’m glad you look happy, but is it because of the doc? Are you really into him? It’s not serious, is it? Please tell me it’s not? I’m just curious for… reasons“. But JC immediately assumed it was about sex, confirmed Clarke had sex with Cillian and was basically like „I banged him and I’m an animal in bed“. Which was one of the most non-Clarke things imaginable: talking openly about her sex life, and bragging about it, and to Bellamy of all people (the two of them have always avoided any talk about each other’s love life or sex life or each other’s love interests). But JC walked out thinking „Nailed it“!“ Bellamy seemed too busy being surprised, confused and dealing with all sorts of feelings and images in his head caused by her comment, so he probably didn’t suspect anything at this point.

JC made more blunders with Abby – including writing with her right hand, which Abby noticed; making a comment that Josephine was a „visionary“ when Abby calls her a monster, and having new knowledge that Clarke didn’t have. A lot of people are harsh on Abby because she didn’t figure it out. However, I think that’s unfair – she didn’t know about the bodysnatching, so she couldn’t put two and two together. The human mind tends to rationalize things it can’t make sense of. She was also very tired, after not having gotten any sleep (reading books from the library instead), and distracted.

Bellamy was getting suspicious when „Clarke“ argued that bodysnatching is „not murder if they go willingly“ and that the Sanctum people are not a danger to them (in spite of herself and Madi being Nightbloods). JC was at that point worried about being found out, so she made sure to take a vial of the paralyzing serum if she is found out. After she left, everyone focused on stopping Jordan from making trouble publicly, as he went to openly confront Priya.

The group talk in the bar was when I think Bellamy definitely had clear suspicions about „Clarke“. First she called Murphy „John“, which weirded out everyone, including Murphy and Jordan. But I think it was her arguments that they should just be OK with what the Primes were doing, and look away – that from „I want to save everyone“ Clarke – that sealed the deal. That and the „Eureka“ look on her face when she heard about Abby being able to make Nightbloods in the lab.

It would have been safer if Bellamy hadn’t confronted „Clarke“ on his own, but I think he desparately wanted his suspicion to not be true. He tested her with Trig – which is a good test, as it’s the one language no Sanctum person could know – and she guessed some of the meaning from the context the first time, but the second time, it was too specific even for her to figure it out (no matter how good with picking up languages she is). So JC was like, my cover is blown, why even pretend anymore, and started taunting him instead. Bellamy’s reaction, the shock and horror on his face, especially as JC confirmed her identity after paralyzing him, was heartbreaking, and made this the best scene in the episode. I cannot even imagine what reactions we’ll see from him in the following episodes. He already went through losing Clarke and believing her dead once before – but that was her heroic sacrifice. This was awful and done against her will. He is going to raise hell, and do everything to fight the Primes and get Clarke back – once he realizes that she is not completely gone.

Murphy naturally had to go along with Josephine for the time being, but is he really going to be on Josie’s side, or play a double agent and help his friends? I believe he will do the latter – he does care about Clarke, and the group, he wants to be a part of the family, and we’ve seen how much he’s changed and that he was willing to die and let the others save themselves in the season 5 finale. I think that he will be tempted for a while to accept the offer, because of his fear of death and hell, but will eventually choose his friends over immortality.

Another character who may be tempted in the next episode is Abby – as JC, pretending to be Clarke, will no doubt play on her desire to save Kane. However, that won’t work when Abby realizes that JC took Clarke’s body – and I doubt JC can keep up the ruse too long.

Many fans tend to talk about and judge Abby only in terms of her role as Clarke’s mother, but she is a character by herself, with her own trauma and issues that are not about being a mom. For the last two seasons, she has been struggling with the trauma and guilt from the Dark Year and her role in Blodreina’s rule. Her comment to Jackson, where she compared both him and herself to war criminals, made a good point: „I was just doing my job“/“I was just listening to orders“ is a poor excuse when you participate in crimes. And her desire to save Kane isn’t just because of romantic love, but also a reaction to that guilt, and on top of that, the guilt of failing Kane multiple times due to her addiction, and indirectly causing his injuries by indulging Vinson (a symbolic embodiment of her addiction and guilt over cannibalism). Kane and Abby have switched roles since season 1, and he has become her moral center. It’s because Kane’s response to feeling guilty was a healthy one: he decided to change his worldview completely and to start doing better. He tried to redeem himself through sacrifice in season 1, but he was never suicidal for the sake of it. But Abby doesn’t know how to deal with guilt, and gets crushed by it. When she feels she’s failed her own moral standards, she starts hating herself. Her death wish at the time of Praimfaya was a result of guilt over the things she did trying to find a solution to save everyone, and her addiction in season 5 was also response to guilt. Now she’s come to the point where she thinks that she doesn’t deserve to survive, but Kane does. She’s made him a symbol of all that’s good in the world.

I’m really enjoying the scenes with Diyoza and Octavia. The two main enemies/villain leaders of season 5 are now on a rogue buddy trip. Diyoza has been amazing this season, but now I’m starting to be afraid she’s doing to die, after we get her backstory and she gives birth. And we really need to get her full backstory. She’s almost playing a mentor to Octavia now, because she had gone through similar things and understands where Octavia’s behavior comes from, maybe better than anyone else, but she’s rational and pragmatic where Octavia is impulsive and self-destructive. The different ways Diyoza and Octavia dealt with the live sand is the best example of the contrast between them. It was funny when Octavia said „At least I’m trying“ – she really didn’t get how the whole ’The harder you fight, the faster you die“ thing works! But Octavia has shown some of her old humanity, again – this time, by telling Diyoza to save herself and her baby – and, for the first time in a while, a desire to live, since she saved herself from the wave. Nothing like the danger of death to make you realize you don’t really want to die.

Interesting: the Children of Gabriel calling that live sand thing „The Crucible“ – another reference to Miller’s play (Gabriel’s favorite play! Banned by the Primes!). Do CoG identify with the unfairly accused people from that play?

Xavier’s motivations are becoming clearer – he is a rational, no-nonsense guy, just like Diyoza, and wants to get info from them rather than kill them.

I don’t know what the weird green wave is. A lot of people seem to think it has something to do with the Anomaly, but it could just be another phenomenon. I couldn’t even make out what exactly messed up thing it did to Octavia’s hand – did it age it up, suck out some of its life, or what.

Raven, Emori, Echo and Miller were MIA this episode since they were away – Ryker is showing Raven how to build a radiation shield, and the others are protecting them. Next episode, I hope to see more Emori (and Memori interaction). We know from the promo there will be Echo and Jade interaction (they could bond and compare notes on being the follower/servant who follows orders and doesn’t question them) there will also probably be more Raven and Ryker interaction; JC will try to manipulate Abby with Murphy’s help, but I doubt she’ll be able to fool her for a long time, and everyone should find out that she is not Clarke. And I’m sure we’ll learn that Clarke’s mind is really dormant rather than destroyed, and it will be interesting to see how she fights back inside her own mind and her friends and family try to save her, and hopefully kick JC’s and the Primes’ asses.

Rating: 8.5/10

#the 100 #the 100 6x05 #the gospel of josephine #the 100 season 6 #clarke griffin #josephine lightbourne #bellamy blake #john murphy #abby griffin #gaia kom trikru #russell lightbourne #octavia blake #charmaine diyoza #xavier #marcus kane #jordan green #gabriel santiago #the children of gabriel #the primes

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reverseopossum · 4 years

Text

Why Sci-Fi Isn’t Broken (but can still be fixed)

I feel like I’ve seen a lot of commentary on science fiction now versus “golden age” sci-fi from the mid-20th century that goes along the lines of “back then, people were optimistic, they thought science was inherently good, and the space race had captured the public’s imagination. Now postmodernism, pessimism, and the small and personal nature of technological innovation has left us with drab dystopias and preachy allegories about being on our phones too much.”

Okay, I see where you’re coming from. As a side note, the kind of sci-fi with big gleaming interplanetary rocket ships is still alive and well, it just doesn’t occupy the same cultural real estate as before. Mainly, though, my problem with that analysis is that it conflates types of stories that were never meant to serve the same purpose.

Science fiction (especially the “hard sci-fi” variety) revolves around scientific ideas or imagined technology as a key part of the world building or plot. A perfect example would be I, Robot, where we’re literally following the progression of a technology across centuries: the robots’ philosophical problem solving with the famous three rules of robotics, how humans interact with the robots, and how the robots ultimately influence and save civilization.

A story set in the future that revolves around politics or personal events and doesn’t have a science or tech idea relevant to the plot lands in the realm of speculative fiction. Probably the cleanest example of the difference would be The Handmaid’s Tale. Margaret Atwood specifically said that she chose not to introduce any distracting gadgets, and that everything that happens in the world of the story is intentionally based on something that has really happened. (She had really compelling and interesting reasons for doing this, by the way.) Obviously there’s a whole lot of overlap, sci-fi and speculative fiction are like a Venn diagram that’s mostly middle.

Anyway, years ago I read a lot of the teen dystopia books everyone complains about (why doesn’t matter). And I noticed a common trend across almost all of them: YA-geared dystopias ask the audience to believe that the world in the future will be simpler than the world now. Worse, sure, but simpler. And that’s where I think speculative fiction can go off the rails. The problem isn’t that the authors think the story needs to be dumbed down for kids to like it, it’s that the world building is shaped around the plot and not the other way around. These stories follow a formula, right? Big Bad is an evil government of unspecified ideology but more or less coded as fascist. Ordinary Teenage Girl is politically apathetic and just wants to live her life, but some personal attribute makes this impossible. Once this becomes clear, Ordinary Teenage Girl goes through an inner and then outer rebellion, singlehandedly reinvents the concept of freedom, inspires her people to rise up, and the ensuing conflict resolves within a binge-able trilogy.

To be clear, the fact that there’s a formula with a predictable ending isn’t a problem in itself. The Hero’s Journey archetype is a formula with a predictable ending. Shakespeare's audiences knew the ending before the play started. The problem is that this particular formula is dishonest. Ordinary Teenage Girl lives in a world pared down to one city (or twelve). She has no cultural background, religion, or knowledge of history. She can count the people she loves on one hand, and within a timely arc they all agree with her. She can easily avoid government surveillance. There is no internet.

(All of this is blamed on a nuclear cataclysm that wiped out civilization as we know it, which is ludicrous. If people survive at all, they’ll carry pretty major parts of their culture along with them. And if civilization has recovered enough that Big Bad is a powerful, centralized government, homegirl is probably going to have some kind of access to something resembling the internet.) My point is that the simplistic world the story depends on is inorganic, made for the story. Things never get simpler. High quality sci-fi goes the other way around: use an exciting idea as a world building premise, and let the story grow from there.

As an aside, imagine trying to set a YA dystopia novel’s plot outside of its simplified world. What if Protagonist Girl read George Orwell and Hannah Arendt and had theories about what the hell happened in the 21st century? What if, instead of a solemnly saluting crowd, she had to deal with an internet comments section? What if the government counter-propaganda was actually effective, meant to confuse, divide, and distract via trolls and clickbait? What if the conflict dragged on for a decade and the rest of the world treated Americans the way it treats Syrians? What if the climate hadn’t calmed down yet? (Oh look, it’s the sarcastic, fourth-wall breaking 800+ page monstrosity I’ve been intermittently working feverishly on and trying to abandon for eight years)

So, I’ll probably finish the above-mentioned speculative project, partly because it's been such a formative experience. But right now is a really exciting time to write actual sci-fi? The fact that our technology has gone small and personal instead of big doesn’t have to be creatively stifling. If anything it should make it easier to write emotionally and psychologically complex stories around hard sci-fi concepts.

The truth is that science is moving faster than ever. I want to be a neuro PT, right? On a given day, I’m a lot more excited about small-scale technology that lets people control a computer with their brain than I am about space travel. I personally see more stories in neural lace than in plans for a Mars colony. Like, we’re just starting to figure out how brains do the braining. Give me some tragic heroes with otherworldly mental powers born of hubris. What are the consequences when we share too much of ourselves, or start to lean on technology controlled by someone else to inform our own inner monologue? Good old-fashioned warnings about unchecked surveillance? If you uploaded every synapse in your brain into a computer, would it be you? And if it turned out to be horribly otherwise, what rights would that entity have? If we could peer inside someone else’s consciousness, would enhanced empathy necessarily lead to enhanced compassion? Small-scale technology sci-fi is going to be so much more interesting than “our phones are turning us into zombies and Mark Zuckerburg owns your toaster”

Long post. If a potato became sentient, what would happen?

#scifi #neuroscience #novel writing #writing #speculative fiction #science fiction #genre #ya novels #isaac asimov #Margaret Atwood #the hunger games #long post #dystopia #apocalypse #metacognition

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cdpdoodler · 5 years

Text

What she says: I'm fine

What she means: Remember Longcat, Jane? I remember Longcat. Fuck the picture on this page, I want to talk about Longcat. Memes were simpler back then, in 2006. They stood for something. And that something was nothing. Memes just were. “Longcat is long.” An undeniably true, self-reflexive statement. Water is wet, fire is hot, Longcat is long. Memes were floating signifiers without signifieds, meaningful in their meaninglessness. Nobody made memes, they just arose through spontaneous generation; Athena being birthed, fully formed, from her own skull.

You could talk about them around the proverbial water cooler, taking comfort in their absurdity. “Hey, Johnston, have you seen the picture of that cat? They call it Longcat because it’s long!” “Ha ha, sounds like good fun, Stevenson! That reminds me, I need to show you this webpage I found the other day; it contains numerous animated dancing hamsters. It’s called — you’ll never believe this — hamsterdance!” And then Johnston and Stevenson went on to have a wonderful friendship based on the comfortable banality of self-evident digitized animals.

But then 2007 came, and along with it came I Can Has, and everything was forever ruined. It was hubris, Jane. We did it to ourselves. The minute we added written language, it all went to shit. Suddenly memes had an excess of information to be parsed. It wasn’t just a picture of a cat, perhaps with a simple description appended to it; now the cat spoke to us via a written caption on the picture itself. It referred to an item of food that existed in our world but not in the world of the meme, rupturing the boundary between the two. The cat wanted something. Which forced us to recognize that what it wanted was us, was our attention. WE are the cheezburger, Jane, and we always were. But by the time we realized this, it was too late. We were slaves to the very memes that we had created. We toiled to earn the privilege of being distracted by them. They fiddled while Rome burned, and we threw ourselves into the fire so that we might listen to the music. The memes had us. Or, rather, they could has us.

And it just got worse from there. Soon the cats had invisible bicycles and played keyboards. They gained complex identities, and so we hollowed out our own identities to accommodate them. We prayed to return to the simple days when we would admire a cat for its exceptional length alone, the days when the cat itself was the meme and not merely a vehicle for the complex memetic text. And the fact that this text was so sparse, informal, and broken ironically made it even more demanding. The intentional grammatical and syntactical flaws drew attention to themselves, making the meme even more about the captioning words and less about the pictures. Words, words, words. Wurds werds wordz. Stumbling through a crooked, dead-end hallway of a mangled clause describing a simple feline sentiment was a torture that we inflicted on ourselves daily. Let’s not forget where the word “caption” itself comes from: capio, Latin for both “I understand” and “I capture.” We thought that by captioning the memes, we were understanding them. Instead, our captions allowed them to capture us. The memes that had once been a cure for our cultural ills were now the illness itself.

It goes right back to Phaedrus, really. The Plato dialogue. (You read that, right?) Back in the innocent days of 2006, we naïvely thought that the grapheme had subjugated the phoneme, that the belief in the primacy of the spoken word was an ancient and backwards folly on par with burning witches or practicing phrenology or thinking that Smash Mouth was good. Fucking Smash Mouth. But we were wrong. About the phoneme, I mean. The trickster god Theuth came to us again, this time in the guise of a grinning grey cat. The cat hungered, and so did Theuth. We’d already taken writing from him, so this time he offered us a new choice disguised as a gift. And we greedily took it, again oblivious to the consequences. To borrow the parlance of a contemporary meme, he made us a pharmakon, and we eated it.

Pharmakon, φάρμακον, the Greek word that means both “poison” and “cure,” but, because of the limitations of the English language, can only be translated one way or the other depending on the context and the translator’s whims. No possible translation can capture the full implications of a Greek text including this word. In the Phaedrus, writing is the pharmakon that the trickster god Theuth offers, the toxin and remedy in one. With writing, man will no longer forget; but he will also no longer think. A double-edged (s)word, if you will. But the new iteration of the pharmakon is the meme. Specifically, the post-I-Can-Has memescape of 2007 onward. And it was the language that did it, Jane. The addition of written language twisted the remedy into a poison, flipped the pharmakon on its invisible axis.

In retrospect, it was in front of our eyes all along. Meme. The noxious word was given to us by who else but those wily ancient Greeks themselves. μίμημα, or mīmēma. Defined as an imitation, a copy. The exact thing Plato warned us against in the Republic. Remember? The simulacrum that is two steps removed from the perfection of the original by the process of — note the root of the word — mimesis. The Platonic ideal of an object is the source: the father, the sun, the ghostly whole. The corporeal manifestation of the object is one step removed from perfection. The image of the object (be it in letters or in pigments) is two steps removed. The author is inferior to the craftsman is inferior to God.

Writing itself is the archetypical pharmakon and the archetypical copy, if you’ll come back with me to the Phaedrus (if we ever really left it). Speech is the real deal, Socrates says, with a smug little wink to his (written) dialogic buddy. Speech is alive, it can defend itself, it can adapt and change. Writing is its bastard son, the mimic, the dead, rigid simulacrum. Writing is a copy, a mīmēma, of truth in speech. To return to our analogous issue: the image of the cat that wants the cheezburger, the copy of the picture-copy-copy, is so much closer to its original Platonic ideal (Godcat) than the written language that accompanies it is to its own (speech). (“Pharmakon” can also mean “paint.” Think about it, Jane. Just think about it.) The image is still fake, but it’s the caption on the cat that is the downfall of the republic, the real fakeness, which is both realer and faker than whatever original it is that it represents.

Men and gods abhor the lie, Plato says in sections 382 a and b of the Republic.

οὐκ οἶσθα, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τό γε ὡς ἀληθῶς ψεῦδος, εἰ οἷόν τε τοῦτο εἰπεῖν, πάντες θεοί τε καὶ ἄνθρωποι μισοῦσιν; πῶς, ἔφη, λέγεις; οὕτως, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τῷ κυριωτάτῳ που ἑαυτῶν ψεύδεσθαι καὶ περὶ τὰ κυριώτατα οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν ἐθέλει, ἀλλὰ πάντων μάλιστα φοβεῖται ἐκεῖ αὐτὸ κεκτῆσθαι.

“Don't you know,” said I, “that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a thing that all gods and men abhor?” “What do you mean?” he said. “This,” said I, “that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there above all that everyone fears it.” Man’s worst fear is that he will hold existential falsehood within himself. And the verbal lies that he tells are an incarnation of this fear; Plato elaborates: “the falsehood in words is a copy of the affection in the soul, an after-rising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood.” A copy of man’s flawed internal copy of truth. And what word does Plato use for “copy” in this sentence? That’s fucking right, μίμημα. Mīmēma. Mimesis. Meme. The new meme is a lie, manifested in (written) words, that reflects the lack of truth, the emptiness, within the very soul of a human. The meme is now not only an inferior copy, it is a deceptive copy.

But just wait, it gets better. Plato continues in the very next section of the Republic, 382 c. Sometimes, he says, the lie, the meme, is appropriate, even moral. It is not abhorrent to lie to your enemy, or to your friend in order to keep him from harm. “Does it [the lie] not then become useful to avert the evil—as a medicine?” You get one fucking guess for what Greek word is being translated as “medicine” here. Ding ding goddamn ding, you got it, φάρμακον, pharmakon. The μίμημα is a φάρμακον, the lie is a medicine/poison, the meme is a pharmakon.

But I’m sure that by now you’ve realized the (intentional) mistake in my argument that brought us to this point. I said earlier that the addition of written language to the meme flipped the pharmakon on its axis. But the pharmakon didn’t flip, it doesn’t have an axis. It was always both remedy and poison. The fact that this isn’t obvious to us from the very beginning of the discussion is the fault of, you guessed it, language. The initial lie (writing) clouds our vision and keeps us from realizing how false the second-order lie (the meme) is.

The very structure of the lying meme mirrors the structure of the written word that defines and corrupts it. Once you try to identify an “outside” in order to reveal the lie, the whole framework turns itself inside-out so that you can never escape it. The cat wants the cheezburger that exists outside the meme, but only through the meme do we become aware of the presumed existence of the cheezburger — we can’t point out the absurdity of the world of the meme without also indicting our own world. We can’t talk about language without language, we can’t interpret memes without mimesis. Memes didn’t change between ’06 and ’07, it was us who changed. Or rather, our understanding of what we had always been changed. The lie became truth, the remedy became the poison, the outside became the inside. Which is to say that the truth became lie, the pharmakon was always the remedy and the poison, and the inside retreated further inside. It all came full circle. Because here’s the secret, Jane. Language ruined the meme, yes. But language itself had already been ruined. By that initial poisonous, lying copy. Writing. The First Pharmakon. The First Meme.

Language didn’t attack the meme in 2007 out of spite. It attacked it to get revenge.

Longcat is long. Language is language. Pharmakon is pharmakon. The phoneme topples the grapheme, witches ride through the night, our skulls hide secret messages on their surfaces, Smash Mouth is good after all. Hey now, you’re an all-star. Get your game on.

Go play.

#blab #homestuck #hs #dirk strider #detective pony #jane crocker #long post #100

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thiscrimsonsoul · 4 years

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Not to mix up lores, but what would Wanda do if she could visit Stephen King's "Pet Sematary" and she still had Pietro's/Vision's bodies nearby? (Although I don't think it would work with Vision because... He's a super complex being! And I'm assuming you know what happens because you write so well, I'm sure you read a lot) Would Wanda try to bring them back despite the warnings? Or would she let them rest?

{out of paprikash} Oh, this is such a cool question! Lots to discuss here. I’m a big horror book and movie buff and I love both for “Pet Sematary.” So... I think it would depend on Wanda’s mental state at the time, and exactly how much she was told about the results of burying someone at the “Pet Sematary.” Let’s do a best case/worst case scenario thing, shall we?

Best case scenario, Wanda is of relatively sound mind and is shown or told pretty compelling stories to make her think twice. Maybe she was shown a news article of what happened to the Creeds or some other family affected by the place, or she had someone explain to her in gory detail what happened. Hmm... I guess for the benefit of my followers who may not know the story, I should explain a bit so that everyone understands. You know what? Under the cut because I ended up rambling on FOREVER with this ask, haha...

“Pet Sematary,” spelled incorrectly because it was supposed to have been written on a sign by young children, was a place where you could bury the dead and have them come back to life. Sort of, heh. Started as a graveyard where kids buried their pets, it was an evil place that twisted whatever was buried there. It was located on an Indian burial ground (very trope-ish, I know), and basically the premise was that the ground had “gone sour.” Whatever you buried there would come back to you, so I mean it did work, but there were consequences. There was one iconic line in the original movie, I forget whether it was in the book too, I read it so many years ago, but it was, “Sometimes, dead is better.” In other words, as painful as it is to lose someone, it’s even more so to have their memory twisted or overwritten by some perversion or obscene likeness of them. It’s also even more painful to deal with all the other associated consequences, of which there were many...

The first initial moments of the animal or person coming back to you might be nice, only because it takes a while for the full evil to set in, and of course you wanted your loved one back, so seeing them again makes you happy. But pretty soon you would notice them having some weird behaviors. They might stare at you creepily, might want to eat raw meat, might be angrier or crueler than you remember them, might be obsessed with weapons or sharp objects. And the more you either question the behavior or try to correct it, the angrier and more frustrated the person or animal becomes.

The next stage is them trying to harm or even kill random people and animals around you or even people in your family or your friends. The resurrected person or animal becomes more and more violent and murderous, and less like the loved one you buried. Their actions become more impulsive, less rational, and more instinctual, like a crazed animal more than a healthy one or a sane person. They might drool, growl, hit their head against the wall... just really strange things, even as they harm or kill everyone around you.

The last stage is them hunting and killing you, the person who buried them. In fact, there was a rule for this. “You bury your own.” It’s kindof like well... if you want this done, if you want this person or animal to come back and are basically willing to spit in the face of the laws of nature to make it happen, then you have to take responsibility for the associated consequences. And it becomes really cruel and heartbreaking because they will try to lure you to them with false kindness and love.

So... at the point at which they’re trying to kill you, you’re probably on to them by now and wanting to re-kill them to get them to stop killing your family and friends. But they’re a loved one too, and they know it, and they’ll use it. So if it’s a cat, it’ll mew softly or purr at your leg before jumping at your throat. If it’s a spouse, they’ll try to hug you or kiss you as they’re raising a knife to your back. if it’s a child, they’ll cry for mommy or daddy as they conceal a scalpel or some other weapon to harm you with as soon as you pick them up. They might ask you, “Why are you doing this to me?” while looking super sad, and the second you start to break down and regret things, they’ll move in for the kill. So they really use your love for them as a weakness to get to you, which is a very sad concept.

The premise is a lot like, for those of you who love the horror genre, the second story of Trilogy of Terror II (1996). A woman whose son drowned in the ocean near their home performs an occult ritual to bring him back. The boy does come back, and he seems confused, disoriented, cold, but otherwise fine. Very quickly, however, he becomes mouthy, demanding, disobedient, destructive... and eventually he ends up trying to kill his mom. The punch line of the story is that the boy didn’t drown accidentally, but rather he jumped off the cliffs and into the water to get away from his controlling and abusive mother. The boy’s soul didn’t want to come back, so something else came back instead. Something evil. Well Pet Sematary is the same kind of deal. It’s almost like Celtic stories of changelings, how it looks exactly like the person you know, but doesn’t act like them at all.

The upshot is that anything buried at the Pet Sematary would come back in the body you buried (which had it’s own downsides if the body was badly destroyed during the person’s death, and the person/animal would smell really bad, because they are in fact still dead) but the soul of the person you loved wouldn’t be inside. Instead, there was something else, soulless, evil, demonic, whatever you wanted to infer it was. And it was always just... utterly remorseless, entirely without empathy, and would always just tear apart the life of the person who buried the body before actually killing them too. I think there was a lesson here, or maybe a few lessons, something to the effect of, death is permanent and there’s not coming back from it. But also... there are consequences for imagining yourself above the laws of nature. And also... shame on you for disturbing the rest of a person who may not want to come back. Whether they wanted to die or prefer to remain dead now that they are, it’s seen as total selfish hubris on the part of the person burying their dead loved one because it’s about easing your pain instead of letting your loved one rest in peace.

Okay so now that I’ve blabbed on and on about that... the best case scenario for Wanda is if she’s fairly mentally stable, maybe just grieving but has not lost touch with reality yet, and that she is swayed by the stories she reads/hears. Wanda does believe in demons, she is superstitious, and she is very fearful of things like damning souls for eternity. It’s why she is so disturbed by what she feels when Pietro dies and interprets it partially from what she actually feels but partially out of fear and grief as him ending up in some sort of hell or place where his soul is being tortured in some way. So she does believe in such things and Pietro and Vision both are two people she loved so fiercely that if she is in her right mind, she would not play around with anything that might damn them, punish them, torture them, or twist their natures at all.

With Pietro and his love of running and athletics and with Vision and his unique body, Wanda would not be attracted to the idea of bringing them back in bodies that are falling apart, rotting, or otherwise continuing to die even though they are animated. That’s... perverted to her. It’s a perversion of nature and of their bodies which she values because they were important to them, so she would never want to bring them back in any condition that would upset them or be anything less than the ideal they would want to live in.

But I think the real kicker that would really drive home for her that this is a bad idea and something she wouldn’t mess with is if someone explained to her that it wouldn’t be the soul of the person she actually loves being brought back. It’d be their body, but something dark inside them. That would really both scare her and turn her off to the whole idea.

Also, something I just thought of... is that if Wanda actually went to the Pet Sematary - and this is my own headcanons to some extent - she might be able to read the land? Wanda reads minds, yes, but she is also attuned to certain energies and very empathetic. She might either sense the evil of the land, the “sourness,” as it were... or she might maybe pick up on residual emotions from people who had been victimized by the land. That would also be a huge deterrent to her actually going through with anything.

NOW... heh... WORST case scenario. So let’s say this is a post-Endgame Wanda who did not adjust well and is now grieving Vision along with Pietro and her parents and Natasha and Tony and anybody else she’s lost. Maybe she tries to use her own powers to bring Vision back and it doesn’t work. She’s getting exhausted, run down, frustrated, more grief-stricken, and now she’s losing touch with reality. She’s seeing things. She’s sleep-deprived. She’s not eating well. And all of that is making her so desperate to just have somebody come back to her. That version of Wanda might actually go through with it. Although at that point, she’d have to do Vision because there wouldn’t be enough of a body left from Pietro to try it with him. I don’t see Wanda doing it with Pietro after Ultron, I just don’t see her being that mentally unstable yet at that point in her life to make such an unwise decision. But after Endgame? Yeah. Maybe. But for now we’ll assume she buries Vision there.

So... this is actually gonna get real sad, real fast, heh, because there’s no happy ending here at all. One outcome is that Vision goes on a rampage and starts killing people and other Avengers have to find some way to kill him, in which case Wanda would seriously lose her shit to see Vision killed a third time. I think if she’s mentally unstable enough to bury him in the sour land after all those warnings, then she might actually be able to look past whatever evil he was doing and just be utterly delusional about it and insist that he’s fine. So... seeing him killed again would really unhinge her and she might start trying to kill people... at which point... the remaining Avengers would have to either kill or subdue her.

Another outcome is that Vision stays around Wanda for a most part or at least doesn’t draw too much attention to himself and goes right for her, of course with the intent to kill her. But I think at this point Wanda would be so happy to see him in any form that her reaction would be similar to that of Louis Creed when he buried his wife Rachel. For those who haven’t seen the movie (the 1989 version, anyway, I haven’t seen the 2019 one yet), Louis by this time had lost the family cat, his toddler son, his neighbor, and then his wife. Well... the toddler son killed the wife, heh, because he was buried first. But yeah. By the time his wife is killed and he’s forced to re-kill his toddler son, Louis is pretty freakin’ unhinged mentally, heh. He’s just broken by his pain and when Rachel comes back dripping with goo and just her face is falling apart and it’s just nasty, haha... he doesn’t even see it. He only sees his wife, and he’s happy, and he hugs her and kisses her, and she stabs him in the back, heh. It’s gross but it’s also really just heartbreaking to me because he’s so broken by that point. I think a similar situation would happen with Wanda, where she would just be so far gone mentally that she would just be happy to see Vision and would go to him, not knowing or caring that he is pretty much just going to kill her. And that.... gosh, that thought just breaks my heart to pieces.

Thank you so much for sending this in, this was a really fun hypothetical, fictional exercise for my brain, haha. Like... I really had a lot of fun writing this and imagining all the possibilities. If there’s anything I didn’t cover or you think of other related questions, feel free to send them in, because this was a really interesting rabbit hole to go down! =)

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nnegan13 · 5 years

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anon with basorexia and mamihlapinatapei, here is the mamihlapinatapei drabble lmao its 2k words drabble whom? for you! ao3 here and it will also be under the cut!

put it in the 3.01 canon divergence AU bc I felt it fit better in that universe than in canon, I hope you don’t mind and I hope you all realize that I apparently have no control over what I will and won’t come back to lmao

anywho

WEDNESDAY

17 APRIL 20:14 VERANDA, SAVA’S APARTMENT 20:14, Silvia to Le Matte [screenshot] Edoardo’s this weekend? 20:14, Federica to Le Matte 🤠 20:14, Eva to Le Matte 🥂🥂 20:14, Sana to Le Matte 💯 👅 20:15, Eva to Le Matte Wait Isn’t he still gonna be in the hospital 20:15, Silvia to Le Matte Chicco said he would be fine by Saturday I’ll ask tho 20:16, Eleonora to Le Matte Sure 20:24, message to Edoardo Incanti 20:24, message from Edoardo Incanti Yes Are you coming? 20:24, message to Edoardo Incanti Unfortunately But if you’re trying to kill yourself, I don’t want to be there as an accomplice 20:24, message from Edoardo Incanti I’m not trying to kill myself 20:25, message to Edoardo Incanti Throwing a rager right after you were in a fight so bad you wound up in the hospital? Sure, not trying to kill yourself at all 20:25, message from Edoardo Incanti Are you worried or something? 20:25, message to Edoardo Incanti No 20:25, message from Edoardo Incanti Bullshit Today goes down in the history books as the day Eleonora Sava admits she’s worried about me 20:25, message to Edoardo Incanti Fuck off 20:25, message from Edoardo Incanti It’s gonna be chill this weekend, I promise Swear on my life If it’s not, you can send me straight back to the hospital 20:25, message to Edoardo Incanti Having a hard time believing you 20:26, message from Edoardo Incanti Just say you’ll come?

She’s never known Edoardo Incanti to shy away from a party, so when Silvia texts in the group chat that they’re invited to Edoardo’s this weekend, Eleonora’s not even a little surprised.

Ele?

For a moment, Eleonora stares at her screen and considers the question. Does she want to go? Does she want to find herself in Edoardo’s house for a countless time over, does she want to watch him stumble around drunk with his friends egging him into stupid decision after stupid decision, does she want to sit there worrying over him and then worrying over whether or not Silvia will catch her worrying? Does she want to sink into the cushions of his couch until everyone has disappeared and pull him on top of her—push him over, rather—and do all sorts of things to him that are most definitely not allowed given that he was beat to a pulp and should be resting instead of doing something like throwing a party?

Honestly, yes, and Eleonora wishes she isn’t such a masochist.

When are we going?

Ignoring her phone as it starts buzzing again, she shifts her eyes back to the screen of her laptop, her next radio episode laid out in its little boxes, planned to the last second, and taps her fingertips on top of her keyboard, trying to get words to come out of her brain. Nothing comes for several long minutes, she types ffffff a hundred times over, probably, in the box where she should be writing about the next clothing drive, and slumps back in her chair. The apartment is quiet, Filippo gone with Dario somewhere depraved, she’s sure, and there’s nothing to distract her from the idea of Edoardo and his party.

She pulls her phone off the table and swipes away from Le Matte into the rest of her messages, annoyed that somehow she let her thread with Edoardo become her fourth most recent message string rather than the last, and sends the text without thinking.

Are you really throwing a party this weekend?

Eleonora stares, hard, at her phone until the two little checkmarks show up, and beats down the anticipation in her stomach.

You can find out then

Today goes down in the history books as the day Eleonora Sava admits she’s worried about me. It’s more true than she wants to admit, levels upon levels of more true than Edoardo must think, but she’s got the promise of I’m interested in you, and once we’re done, we’re done, and him doing almost anything and everything she’s ever asked of him, so there’s more than enough half-admittances of feelings to stew between the two of them.

Swiping out of her messages and into her photos, Eleonora pulls up the ones from Fiumincino last Wednesday when Edoardo showed up at her building, Thai food, cookies, and car in hand, and drove her out to the beach after she told him her assignments were pushing her to the brink. They drank sanpellegrinos and chai he made himself and ate sweet yellow curry until she thought she was going to burst, and it was warm enough that this time, when they sat on the dock watching the sun set, that she pulled off her boots and rolled up her jeans and swung her feet over the edge to trace through the water.

She looks at the pictures of him, face bruise free for the first time since March, grinning out at the water and hair wild, some pictures with his coat pulled up to his chin and other’s where he’s stripped to just his white t-shirt, turned into the wind and laughing. It’s an afternoon she keeps tucked away in her heart, one that she hasn’t told anyone about, not Eva, not Filippo and most definitely not Silvia, no matter how well their talk went over.

So, he’s not a good guy because he’s using me to get to someone else? Yes.

And that someone else is you? Yes.

Did it work?

Eleonora sets aside her phone and pulls her laptop back in front of her.

—

SATURDAY 20 APRIL 21:41 BACK PORCH, EDOARDO’S HOUSE

True to his word, the party is the most mellow event she thinks she’s ever seen Edoardo at. No DJ, just a low rumble of R&B in the background, some people are dancing but it’s mostly couples grinding and making out in the middle of the living room, no large collection of hard liquor, just several tubs full of ice and beer bottles—unless Edoardo points out where the fancy stuff for mixing and cocktails is, like he has to Eva—and most people are just chilling, talking, playing quiet but joyful games of pool and sprawling on the sofas inside and out. And, for once, his house doesn’t feel like it’s overflowing with bodies.

The exclusive invite actually seems exclusive, tonight.

Eva leaves Eleonora on the porch to sneak back inside to the liquor cabinet and make herself something that will leave her liver wrecked, and Eleonora can’t find it in herself to follow after her, make sure she really doesn’t hurt herself. She leans into the cushion of the sofa Eva abandoned her on, pulling out her phone to text Sana or Silvia or Federica to keep an eye out when Edoardo makes his way out of the house and onto the porch.

She spots him, a shy smile blooming on his bruised face as he starts meandering across the porch to where she sits, and she represses the urge to look around, make sure no one will see them together. Silvia knows they’re friendly—what a terrible, magnificent concept, being friends with Edoardo Incanti—and friends can talk to one another, right?

He drops onto the cushion next to her, leaving barely any room between them, and gives her a smile as he turns to the side, bending his knee and tucking his foot under his other leg. “Believe me now?”

She’s leaning sideways into the couch, one arm propped up on the back cushion and her face leaned into her fist. Of its own volition, her hand drifts from its position of holding up her head to play with the curls on the back of his. She winds her fingers through them without thinking, the backyard and the porch are all but empty now that the sun’s gone down, and seeing his face as bad as it is—those Giocchi Square guys do not fuck around—makes her chest smart. It’s just them, she can give herself this little tiny thing, playing with his hair, to help her feel better. He smiles a little wider as she tugs on one, tilting her head to the side and studying him. “Maybe.”

“What? Still think this thing will go sideways?”

“Anything’s possible,” she says, shrugging, catching the way he winces as he bites his split lip, the consequences of his hubris—fake or real, she still isn’t quite sure—effective his habits. Her eyes are drawn to his mouth, split in the corner but the rest of his lips still pink and smooth. The hand in his hair drifts again, this time tracing one finger down his face, passing lightly over the bruise on his jaw, the one below the corner of his mouth, the split in his lip, and his eyes dart over her face.

Once her finger brushes over to his cheek, the purpling skin around his eye, the butterfly bandage above his eyebrow, he speaks, his voice is a low rumble that slips into her body, down her spine, and pools in her stomach. “Anything?”

They’re not talking about the party, anymore. Her lips part as she thinks, finger nail drawing a half circle over and over to the side of his eye, and she watches his expression shift. Want—want stays ever present—but behind it is uncertainty, confusion, hurt, pleasure, resignation, all overshadowed and hidden, almost, by the black and blue and purple splotches on his skin,. Somehow the evidence of his beating brings them to the forefront even as it acts as a mask.

Eleonora brushes her thumb over the split in his lip again, and then lets it move farther until she’s felt the entire, soft surface of his mouth against her skin. His mouth he uses to eat and kiss and speak and compliment her and argue with her and tease her and say, in not so many words, that he’s a little in love with her.

Her heart breaks because she’s a little in love with him back.

It’s highlighted in his eyes, the way his pupils dilate, how they flick, sometimes, down to her mouth like he’s thinking about kissing her, but always, always focused hers when she’s talking to him, telling him something important, and now, in the soft light of his porch, the black melts into the dark brown of his irises until she can see her reflection in his eyes.

Can he see his in hers?

With her thumb resting on his mouth, her fingers gentle against his face, Edoardo shifts toward her until his knee presses into her leg, his hand slips over her knee, the corners of his eyes squint with the echo of a smile, and his lip quivers under her touch like it wants to follow suit. He leans—

Mind flooding with the little, tiny, hopeful smile Silvia gave her when she said she wasn’t going to do anything with Edoardo, Eleonora’s blood cools. “We shouldn’t.”

Even so, she doesn’t pull her hand from his face, but lets it slip down to curl around the corner of his jaw, barely around the back of his neck, so her thumb rests against his pulse point. He swallows and she can feel the muscles in his throat move underneath his skin.

“Why?” He murmurs, watching her carefully, his thumb ghosting over her tight-clad knee, large palm warm against her skin even through her clothes, and her mind has returned from whatever place it went to that allowed her to let him this close.

She drops her hand to his chest and pushes just enough that he leans back, lips pressing together and eyes shuttering into a blank mask. There’s a difference, now, between the shades of his pupils and his irises, and she thinks it’s because he found something in her eyes that’s the opposite of what she’s doing, now.

Wondering if he’ll ever tire of her pushing him away, accepting her own emotions but putting the feelings of others above them, Eleonora shifts and stands. After a moment, she turns to him, face drawn in resignation and disappointment. He holds her gaze for only a second before turning his head to the side. “You know.”

He whispers, “Okay,” and lets her stalk back into the house.

#skam italia #incantava #incantava fic #eleonora sava #edoardo incanti #my stuff #this was fun to write! these prompts are all so good!!

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