#then you will realize that there is no One Definable Universal Element of Human Experience | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

commsroom · 2 years

Text

'Beyond This Power of My Nature': Hera’s self-perception and relationship to humanity

Okay, this is something I’ve wanted to make a proper post about for a long time now: what evidence we have for how Hera sees herself in canon, why I think it’s important to acknowledge she is written with an element of physicality, and how I think, keeping the themes of Wolf 359 in mind, Hera as an AI Character comes across very differently from a lot of other AI Characters. The idea that she is fundamentally human has different implications in the context of a show that is so focused on humanity, and specifically on the way that its characters (at various points) navigate, reject, desperately try to hold onto, and are repeatedly denied recognition of their humanity. There’s so much more I could say on the topic, but. This post is already over six thousand words, so it will have to do.

tl;dr: Hera’s identity is not representative of AI Identity in any broader sense, even just within Wolf 359. Hera has a defined internal self image that is singular, and distinct from the Hephaestus or any systems she runs. There is an aspect of physicality to the way she is written, performed, and treated by the text, and she canonically experiences physical loneliness. Her feelings of isolation and the ways she is othered, even by herself at times, are reflective of very real human experiences - in particular, I have to touch on how I feel Hera can be read as a trans character. Hera struggles with the feeling that she is inherently different from everyone around her, and therefore intrinsically doomed, and it is only by letting go of those fatalistic notions, realizing she and her friends are more alike than different, that she can start to move forward and imagine a life for herself.

A couple of disclaimers:

For the purposes of this post, assume that ‘personhood’ (recognition as a full and equal person to any other person) and ‘humanity’ (the quality of Being Human, however nebulously defined) are separate, albeit related, concepts. Assume that ‘personhood’ is a given for all sentient beings as far as the text is concerned, even if other characters within the text may not extend the same courtesy.

I’d also like to say that I know the subject of Humanity as it relates to AI characters can be a touchy one - I’m also coming at this from the perspective of someone who finds it a little distasteful to ascribe a Human Identity to characters who already have their own, complete, distinctly non-human identities, or to place Humanity on a pedestal in a sci-fi context where humans are the peers of other sentient beings. I don’t think these concerns apply to Hera, or to Wolf 359 as a show, but just to be clear: everything I want to say here is about Hera, specifically. It’s not meant to apply to other AI characters, even within Wolf 359, and it definitely isn’t meant to be viewed through the lens of real-world AI development. I believe Wolf 359 is a character drama above anything else, and I believe it is especially concerned with its exploration of humanity - something I’ll talk more about later. With that said:

i. ‘some do. i don’t.’: other examples of AI identity in wolf 359

How much do we know about general concepts of AI identity in the universe of Wolf 359? The short answer… not much. The slightly longer answer:

When Minkowski introduces herself to Hera, there’s this exchange:

(Ep. 61: MINKOWSKI: Yes, they, uh, briefed me about you. I just... Unit 214, I presume? / HERA: Oh, no, no. Hera. Definitely Hera. / MINKOWSKI: Oh, sorry. I'd heard Sensus Units prefer to go by their serial - / HERA: Some do. I don't. If that's all right, Commander?)

Minkowski says she “heard Sensus Units prefer to go by their serial [numbers]” and Hera responds, “Some do. I don’t.” … It’s entirely possible that both Minkowski and Hera are going off of Goddard propaganda here, or that Hera doesn’t know what other Sensus Units might think at all and she’s just trying to defer to Minkowski before making a request of her. But for all we know, maybe that’s true? Maybe some Sensus Units really do prefer that. And whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter. In saying it, Hera acknowledges that all AIs may not feel the way she does, but that this is how she feels about her name.

In Change of Mind, we have this exchange between Eris and Lovelace:

(Suddenly, behind her, there's a soft WOOSH! Lovelace spins around and - finds herself face-to-face with a YOUNG WOMAN. / ERIS: Hi. / Lovelace blinks. Confused. / LOVELACE: Hi? What - who - / ERIS: It's me. Eris. / LOVELACE: But... I thought you were an A.I. / ERIS: I am. This is how I see myself. Well, how I see a version of myself. As long as we're both in a mental state, we can interact this way. Remember, you're not really here either. / LOVELACE: But... look at you. You're - / ERIS: Yeah. I know.)

I’m not going to speculate on exactly how Eris appears in this scene, but: “This is how I see myself. Well, how I see a version of myself.” is interesting to consider, both in the context that Eris has an internal sense of self (presumably human in appearance, as far as the stage notes go) and the suggestion that there are other ways she sees herself that might be equally ‘her’ - does this mean Eris as in the Eris we know in Change of Mind, or does it imply that each iteration of Eris, in each of the training modules Goddard uses her consciousness for, perceives herself differently? Both? Neither?

And I think it’s revealing to show these two lines next to each other:

(LAMBERT: Rhea says... “It’s just the way they programmed her, back off.”)

(Ep. 7: EIFFEL: C’mon, Commander, you can’t really hold that against her. It’s just her programming! / HERA: Oh, stop. Do you have any idea how condescending that is? Just chalking everything I do to my programming? What if I just went around blaming every stupid decision you made on... “biology”? / EIFFEL: Hera... / HERA: “Why are they doing that, isn’t that a bit dangerous?” Oh never mind, that’s just their biology. “That’s a terrible idea, don’t they know any better?” Just that pesky ol’ biology, we really should’ve sprang for the more expensive model.)

… Which. I kinda think the difference in philosophy there speaks for itself. Sure, Rhea’s line is in defense of Eris, while Hera doesn’t appreciate ‘it’s just programming’ being used as a defense of herself, but I find it hard to imagine she’d ever see it as anything but condescension.

It also might be worth noting that none of the other AIs we know (despite how little we know about them) seem to be people Hera would really get along with: Enlil is the exact “willing to roll over for any bozo in a lab coat” type of AI who gets the “cushy job flying jet liners over the Atlantic” she shows such disdain for; if Hera met Eris it would likely be under circumstances where Eris was a threat to her friends + despite Eris’s ‘rogue AI’ aesthetic, she is designed to serve that purpose by Goddard and serves her role (and accepts her fate) without much resistance; and we don’t know much about Rhea, but from her defense of Eris, and what we can interpret from her limited interactions as a sense of professionalism, she and Hera also… likely would not see eye to eye.

All of that to say: we don’t know much about AI identity as it broadly exists within the setting of Wolf 359, but I think we do know enough to fairly assume it’s as varied and individual as identity would be for any other group of people. Which… of course it would be. I think it’s entirely possible that some AIs would have a sense of self-identity that is entirely divorced from human categorization. And all of this presents a ton of questions that I don’t really have answers for, that I don’t think we even have enough information about in canon to properly speculate on, but I think it’s important groundwork to lay out to further emphasize: when I talk about Hera’s identity, I am talking about Hera’s identity. How she sees herself, how she wants to be seen, what she values, etc. as an individual person. So.

ii. ‘you’re remembering this wrong’: what the subjective reality of memory can tell us about hera’s self-perception

If there was only one scene I could call attention to here, one piece of evidence re: Hera’s identity and self-perception, it would be the opening scene from Memoria. If you want to, please just go listen to that scene again, right now. Notice how it’s framed, and what the audio cues might suggest in a visual medium - in her memory, Hera perceives herself at the table with the rest of the crew. Physically present.

So much of Memoria is about subjective reality, memory as the product of the world through your own personal filter, your perspective and biases. “Everything before memory is about the world around you. Everything after it is all in your head.”

So looking at how Hera remembers things, more than anything else, I think can tell us a lot about how she perceives herself. Even when she doesn’t realize it. ‘Minkowski’ in Hera’s memory says… well. We get this scene:

(Ep. 41: MINKOWSKI: You're remembering this wrong. You weren't here with us. / HERA: I... I wasn't? / MINKOWSKI: No, Hera. We were over here, and you... / The soundscape shifts. There's a WOOSH, followed by some DIGITAL PROCESSING. It subsides, and when Minkowski says - / MINKOWSKI (CONT’D): ... you were over there. / - she sounds like her voice is coming through a SPEAKER. And it GLITCHES. We hear her the way we normally hear Hera. / HERA: Oh. Right. I'm here. I'm here.)

But here’s the thing. Minkowski - the real Minkowski - would never say Hera wasn’t there with them, because from Minkowski’s perspective, she was. This is Hera’s perspective - Hera feels as if she wasn’t there. And to quote @the-empty-man, from a similar conversation we had a while back: ‘in the actual reality of that Thanksgiving meal, she was there with them in the sense that she could directly see them and hear them and interact with them in various ways and (if we think of her as being located in the Hephaestus) she was kind of sharing the same physical space as them. In the reality of that memory, she was as "there with them" as she ever has been with anyone (excluding weird mind-space things) but that didn't feel like enough for her. If she doesn't think she was fully there with them then (or at least a part of her doesn't), then she's never felt like she's been fully there with anyone (again maybe excluding mind-space weirdness). It's like she's got this longing for something that she barely even has a frame of reference for.’

I think that’s just it. Hera experiences physical loneliness. The wording of “over there.” The shift in sound design, and the implication that Hera hears the others the way they hear her - that she’s not an equal presence in a different form, from her own perspective, but physically somewhere else on the other side of an impassable barrier that the others don’t even recognize exists. She has an image of herself in her mind that most other people never see.

Still, ‘how does Hera see herself?’ is a difficult question, and not one I’m going to be able to answer all at once. For now, it might be useful to first point out how Hera definitely, canonically does NOT see herself - she does not see herself as the Hephaestus.

In her own memory, she imagines herself as singular, physical, (by all indication) human in appearance. Without the awareness that ‘mind-space weirdness’ is even possible, that appearance is for no one but herself. And the Hephaestus, I think, is an entity in its own right, and one that Hera is bound to for most of the show, but she exists within it, not as an inherent part of it. Her connection to the Hephaestus, the functions she performs, are her job. The further into the show you get, and the more Hera asserts her own autonomy, the more the text distinguishes between Hera, the systems that she runs, and even her hardware. And, of course: “Or end up in other places. Doing things not because you're good at them, but just because of what you are. Has it ever occurred to you that there might be jobs for which the only requirement is having no pulse?”

iii. ‘i know what’s waiting for me back there’: when and why hera rejects humanity

It’s important to note that Hera’s identity absolutely is informed by the fact that she’s an AI, and the way she navigates the world and her relationships because of it. At times, this creates something of a double bind for her - it’s frustrating to have others acknowledge her situation, when it others her and creates or emphasizes a reminder of the distance between them, but it’s also frustrating when they don’t recognize she can’t always do the things that they can do, or that she has other physical/safety/etc. concerns that wouldn’t occur to them.

Consider the part in Theta Scenario where Eiffel has them vote on whether or not to return to Earth and sheepishly has to add, “and, uh… all those without hands?” The progression of this scene is a good illustration re: Hera’s alternating refusal of and embrace of humanity: she blames her loneliness on her programming, her attachments, her humanity - she chooses to separate herself from these things without ever making an affirmative statement as to what part of her would be Her in their place. That’s because it’s coming from a place of hurt. And remember that she’s still dealing with Maxwell’s betrayal. This is an emotional reaction, which I suppose is worth noting in itself: when Hera is hurt, her judgment is clouded, and she can be confidently wrong. Consider how convinced she was that Hilbert was making everything about Decima up, while she was at the height of her anger with him.

When Hera is hurt, when she is feeling betrayed, and frightened, she tends to self-isolate - she leans into the idea that she is fundamentally different and therefore intrinsically doomed. It’s only by letting go of these preconceptions and allowing for real connection that she’s able to heal. It’s true that the only people who have hurt her have been humans - but so are the only people who have ever helped her, who she’s had any meaningful relationships with at all. She has to believe she isn’t fundamentally different from the others, because ultimately that’s what allows her to return home with them - to think maybe there could be something for her on Earth after all. And by choosing to believe in Eiffel’s promise to her, that whatever happens when they get back to Earth, they’ll go through it together… That's a start.

iv. ‘i know where this train goes, i've been on it before. "she'll hurt someone. she can't be trusted. it's okay - she isn't even human.’: hera, lovelace, and real-world alienation

I think it’s also worth noting, however, that while Hera’s identity is informed by being an AI, the implication of Being an AI in the world of Wolf 359 specifically manifests in ways that are directly applicable to real-world human experiences. The double bind that I described, the lack of life experience compared to your peers and the embarrassment associated with that, the feeling of alienation and isolation, even the feeling of being ‘not quite human’ through repeated dehumanization and othering - these are things that real people experience. In the same way that Lovelace is an alien clone, yes, but more importantly just a person with PTSD… Hera is an AI, but she’s also a person with anxiety and chronic pain - and with experiences that I think can be directly drawn to neurodivergent, disabled, and trans experiences in various ways. I’ll try not to get too into that aspect of it here, but I do think it’s worth noting - Wolf 359 is a show about humanity, about people whose humanity has been denied to them in various ways, interpersonally and/or systemically, and I think it’s important to consider Hera’s character arc and the ways she chooses to assert her autonomy and self-identity within that framework.

And of course, speaking of Lovelace, it’s impossible to ignore that Hera is the most staunch and immediate defender of Lovelace’s humanity, following the realization that Lovelace is herself an alien clone, because Hera recognizes the way others react to her perceived differences with fear, distrust, etc. and how they will use those feelings to justify dehumanizing her. Lovelace’s humanity and Hera’s humanity are directly linked in the text.

v. ‘it’s like you’re making a movie’: why i think it does hera’s character arc a disservice to approach it with general biases regarding AI characters

You know that thing about how Wolf 359 leans into sci-fi tropes? How Eiffel is the wisecracking everyman, Minkowski is the by-the-books Commander, Hilbert is… well, you know. And so on. But instead of being subversions of these common archetypes, the characters in Wolf 359 are as intricate and contradictory and dynamic as they are because a central tenet of the show’s character writing is to ask ‘why would a real person behave this way?’

If we extend that logic to Hera and interpret her as an example of the ‘AI who is more human than some humans’ archetype, then the answer to the question is simply… because she is fundamentally human. The failure of that trope, in my opinion, is that it often sets up an AI character in the position of ‘becoming’ human, suggesting humanity is something greater and aspirational, and often directly equating ‘being a person’ with ‘being human’, even in settings where other non-human and equally sentient forms of intelligence exist. There’s something self-aggrandizing and patronizing in that.

But this is NOT the case with Hera; she is just as human at the start of the show as she is by the end of it - her struggle is not in ‘attaining humanity’ but in navigating the biases of others, the way repeated dehumanization has affected her own self-perception - to get others to see her the way she sees herself.

vi. ‘such a big, big universe...’: isolation, the ‘big picture’, and what the contradictions in am i alone now? tell us about hera’s priorities

Here’s a line I think about a lot. Specifically, I think about how often this line is used to represent Hera… “Such a big, big universe, and you only gave yourselves the tools to think about a tiny portion of it.” It’s fascinatingly ironic when you put it back into context: consider the way this monologue is framed. She’s telling all of it to Eiffel, but she isn’t, really. That’s the conflict. She wants to be able to tell him these things in the same way she wants to be able to describe what she sees to him, to get him to understand her experience, because she can think about so many more parts of that big, big universe at once, and what does it get her? She can’t do anything with it. She can’t tell anyone. She ‘tells’ Eiffel anyway - she chooses to talk to him, even when she isn’t actually talking to him. She can’t make that connection, but she wants to, so badly.

She thinks she’ll be left alone up there, sooner or later. It’s a feeling she learns to let go of, little by little, until something else finally seems possible.

There’s a theme throughout Wolf 359: the ‘Big Picture’ as an antagonistic force, whether it’s alien and unknowable, or corporate and uncaring, or some combination, and how its counterpart is Personal Connection. That’s something I’d like to get into in more depth in another post, but it’s worth touching on here because I think keeping that in mind reframes so much of Hera’s monologue in Am I Alone Now?

Think about how much of it is those Big Ideas in contrast with the familiar and immediate - that she wants to tell these things to Eiffel. “Some days I wonder if I’ll miss you, after you go away forever… I doubt it. But you never know.” The subtext is in the contradiction. The lonelier Hera is, the more she denies her humanity, but in her denial, in her loneliness, that humanity becomes all the more apparent.

Sometimes I see people take ‘I doubt it’ at face value, as evidence of eventual character/relationship growth, suggesting she gets more attached to him over time… I don’t think that’s true. She watches a star die 13.7 light years to the left and she thinks of him. She watches the swirling, raging solar winds in colors she has no name for, and wishes she could share that with him. She’s not talking to anyone, but she still chooses to talk to him. Of course she would miss him. Of course she would.

vii. ‘even hilbert never sunk that low’: how hera is treated by the show’s antagonists

It might be interesting to note that almost all of the antagonists do acknowledge Hera’s personhood, and that the way they treat her is almost always a reflection of how they treat other, flesh-and-blood people. The only antagonist who seems to honestly see her as less than a person is Hilbert, and even in his “tell me you’re not mourning that appliance” levels of cruelty towards her, there’s a way that it’s not so different from his general disregard for human life and ability to see people less as individuals, and more as expendable assets to be used in pursuit of a Greater Cause.

With that said, he’s not particularly relevant to the discussion of Hera’s self-image. The characters who are: Maxwell and Pryce.

viii. ‘i can totally rewrite a memory’: hera and maxwell

I think this is where the distinction between personhood and humanity becomes most relevant. Because I think Maxwell believes very strongly in AI Personhood, and I believe she generally prefers the company of AIs to human people, and I think… those facts allow her to help Hera in a way no one else could have, but they work against her understanding of Hera as an individual. Let me try to explain.

From the moment Maxwell gets on board the Hephaestus, she starts altering things in Hera’s programming - little things, like Minkowski’s title, that Hera can ignore because the larger things that Maxwell is able to fix for her genuinely improve her quality of life. And Maxwell, despite showing compassion for Hera, uses more mechanical terminology to refer to her than almost anyone else. But the thing is… while the SI-5 certainly have no qualms about blatant and intentional cruelty when they deem it necessary, I don’t know if Maxwell realizes what a violation some of these things are. She helps Hera, sure, unquestionably. But she also betrays her in what might be the worst possible way.

Think about the way Cutter threatens to delete and alter Hera’s memories - in Decommissioned, and in the live show. It isn’t fundamentally all that different from what Maxwell wants to do in Memoria, but Maxwell seems incapable of understanding why the concept is so upsetting to Hera. I don’t think we have enough information to make any claim for certain, but I do think it’s possible that other AIs may not perceive themselves in the same way Hera does, or value the same things. There’s a chance this is not malicious at all, but just a failure to recognize Hera’s priorities as an individual do not align with Maxwell’s previous experiences. With that acknowledged, Hera defends Maxwell against the idea she might turn her against the others, saying, “Doctor Maxwell understands better than anyone how much of a violation that would be. She would hate herself.” … but does she? Would she? Does it matter, when she does it anyway?

Hera is distraught over her realization that she never really knew Maxwell, but I guess I like the idea that maybe Maxwell didn’t understand Hera as well as she thought she did either. That maybe Hera’s unpredictability is something beyond programming, something closer to the same messy, complicated human quality that the rest of the crew survives on - that Hera was able to catch Maxwell off guard and win against her for the same reason they all triumph over Pryce and Cutter in the end. Because human unpredictability is the one thing that Goddard’s Big Picture can never factor for.

ix. ‘you don’t look like me’: hera and pryce

And if there’s any relationship that can tell us about Hera’s self-image, it’s this one. Pryce is fully aware of Hera’s humanity. Pryce’s collar program (and Maxwell’s, for that matter - another link between them) serves a similar function to Pryce’s restraining bolts, but as far as Pryce is concerned, I think it’s actually preferable to her that Hera is aware of it. “They could be whatever she wanted them to be - and as real as she wanted them to be - and they never left her behind... and they never talked back... and they were never afraid of her. Except when she wanted them to be.” …

Likewise, Hera’s attachment to her own identity is necessary for Pryce’s methods of control to be effective. Pryce is able to hurt Hera by dehumanizing her, by degendering her, by taking away her name and her autonomy, by reminding her that even her own voice isn’t her own - because those things matter to Hera.

So then you have that line in the finale, where Pryce sees Hera in Eiffel’s mind and she says, “You don’t look like me.” I think there are a few different ways you could read that.

One, the more common interpretation: that Pryce expects Hera should look like her because she is functionally ‘designed in her image’ and that Hera, over time, intentionally shifted her internal sense of self away from that. And I like this, I think there’s a power in it, especially alongside headcanons where Hera adopts some features of the people she loves to incorporate into her own - but I think it might be the less likely option. While I think it’s entirely believable that Pryce would give Hera her appearance in the same way she gave her her voice, and while I think there is an intentional cruelty (and given that Pryce herself was probably isolated for much of her life, perhaps a kind of awful retribution in her mind) to Hera having human desires without human physicality, I don’t think all of that is just Pryce’s design. I think that’s giving her too much credit.

The other possible interpretation: canonically, Hera is able to be in Eiffel’s mind by interfacing with Pryce’s neural imaging processor, which is presumably configured for Pryce. She is intentionally running a whole bunch of extra code to appear as herself instead. I don’t know. There’s something about that idea, to me. That by default, more easily, she could choose to appear the way Pryce does, but that it matters to her that she doesn’t.

(I also kind of like the idea - given the transhumanist nature of Pryce and Cutter - that the way Hera appears in the finale is distinctly human. I think it works well with the themes of the show - that where Pryce rejects her innate humanity, considers it weakness, considers herself above it, tries to transcend it… Hera recognizes the strength in her own humanity, for all the ways it fails her, embracing it has allowed her connection to others that she would’ve thought impossible, has made her more free, has made her more herself.)

And again, if there’s anything that tells us about Hera’s self-image, it’s this: we know from later events in the finale that there are ways she could’ve interfaced with the machine without appearing in Eiffel’s mind, but she wanted to. She wanted to be there, as herself, as ‘physically’ as possible, and be seen. If you don’t count her punching Pryce in the face (which… I guess it counts as a type of interaction), the only direct physical interaction Hera ever has with another character in the entire show is the stage note that says: Hera and Eiffel stand together, his arm around her shoulder.

x. ‘[gritted digital teeth]’: physicality in the way hera is written and performed, and how that informs her as a character

A bit of a tangent, but speaking of physicality. One thing I always like to point out is how, in the live show, they chose to have Hera on stage with the others, but just… far enough away from them, physically. And the only person who ever crosses the stage to interact with her directly is Eiffel. Of course, you can’t take any of that as a literal expression of… anything, but I do think it’s worth considering in the context of Hera’s physical loneliness expressed in Memoria, the way Eiffel consistently tries to bridge the gap between them via emotional connection, and, finally, Hera’s lone physical interaction in the show being with Eiffel in the finale.

There’s also the (albeit mostly circumstantial) detail that Michaela Swee recorded a lot of the show remotely, with the notable exceptions of Memoria and Brave New World - the two episodes where Hera has ‘physical’ appearances.

And if we’re going to talk about the way choices in the writing/acting impact the way Hera’s character comes across, there’s this screenshot I managed to dig up from Gabriel Urbina’s now-defunct blog. I think it’s worth noting that, as well as expressing physicality within the text of the show, she is also admittedly written with, performed with, and informed by those aspects of physicality, even when it’s not visible to us - in that sense, from a metatextual perspective, you could even argue she has just as much physical presence as any other character in the show.

(Someone says, “Okay so I was a little wary of watching the live show, mostly because of Hera. I didn’t want her personified. But the way Mikaela [sic] Swee portrays her character, puts Hera on that stage, is perfect.” to which Gabriel responds, “A perfectly understandable concern, but hopefully one that’s not too prevalent after you watch the show. There is so much of Michaela’s mannerisms and physicality in how we write Hera and the vocal performance that hopefully seeing her perform it will amplify the character that she’s created rather than narrowing it down.”)

xi. ‘i know plenty’: challenges to hera’s identity, self perception, and connection to humanity

So, why am I so caught up on the humanity part of this? Because I think Wolf 359 is, before anything else, a show that is concerned with humanity. I think it is a show about very human people (in some very flawed and tragic ways) trying very hard to retain their humanity in inhumane circumstances, and often with people actively trying to dehumanize them, whether interpersonally or through corporate alienation, human experimentation, the treatment of prisoners, etc. But that leads into a whole other topic, so instead I’ll share these three things:

This exchange from Out of the Loop, where Hera’s argument with Jacobi hinges on humanity - her accusation that he “works so hard at being inhuman” and her anger and offense at his retort that she wouldn’t know what that means:

(Ep. 49: HERA: You are despicable, Jacobi. I have never met someone who worked so hard at being inhuman. / JACOBI: What do you know about being human? / HERA: I know plenty.)

This line, from Quiet, Please, where Minkowski defends Hera’s autonomy directly and refers to her as a woman, which I promise will be relevant:

(Ep. 58: Minkowski SLOWLY, maintaining her VICE-LIKE GRIP, PULLS HIS EAR DOWN, bringing Jacobi's face down to her eye-level. / MINKOWSKI (low, deadly): Shut. The Hell. Up. That woman? For the last two weeks, she was the only person who even tried to resist what Pryce and Cutter were doing to us. So you are going to show her some goddammed respect, am I clear?)

And because I’m incapable of writing lengthy meta about Hera without bringing up this quote from Sarah Shachat in some capacity:

“What I can tell you is that the fact Hera that clearly has a human gender in her speech and conscious perspective, yet lacks human physicality, is something she definitely does think about. She isn’t removed from it, or taking the view of some sort of Hyper Advanced Future Machine for whom human binary constructions are funny, if a bit quaint. She’s been placed on a spectrum the same way she was placed aboard the Hephaestus. Her journey so far has very much been about dealing with that, about trying to assert her unique sense of self given the limitations placed on her and to communicate with these other idiots who don’t share her experience.”

While this is about Hera’s relationship to her gender in particular, I think the fact that she sees herself as a woman specifically is relevant. The fact that she has a human gender and she cares about that, and that human concepts of identity in general do apply to her. She doesn’t consider herself separate from or above them.

And that leads, perhaps, to one more question. Is it possible that Hera sees herself as human not because of an innate desire for the attributes of humanity, but because all of the people she knows are human - because once you conflate personhood and humanity on a societal level, is it possible she feels that she will only be seen as a complete person if she is also human? And, I mean… Maybe? It’s possible. But I don’t think it changes the outcome.

I’m asking this here because I think this is also analogous to a trans experience. If you have social expectations of what a woman is, and you feel that you are a woman, and so you choose to conform to those social expectations (to whatever degree) because it allows your womanhood to be recognized… as long as the desire for those attributes comes from a genuine place, can you really tell if you would feel differently about it if society viewed womanhood differently? At some point socialization, societal expectation, and personal preference do get muddled up to a certain degree, and while it’s worth examining to make sure you’re doing what makes you most comfortable, whatever that may be… I think at a certain point ‘I feel better presenting this way than not’ is the only real answer you can find.

I think this also applies to Hera, in her connection to humanity and her expressions of/desires for a kind of physicality. We have a sense of how she canonically perceives herself, and how she struggles to be perceived by others, and with that in mind it’s largely irrelevant to me how she might feel about her identity with social pressures removed. Identity is shaped by connection, and while I waver on how much I want to say that Hera is human, full stop, no qualifiers… She is a person with human desires who wants to be close with and share experiences with her human friends. She is an AI, and that informs her identity and the way she navigates the world, but I don’t believe those things are mutually exclusive.

(I’ve written a little more about why I think Hera’s character arc reads as a trans narrative here.)

More than anything, I have a hard time believing that Hera would want to be seen as fundamentally different from the people she loves, when struggling to overcome that difference both within her own self-perception and in her interactions with others, is such a significant part of her character development. There are times where Hera being an AI does mean she has to consider things that the others might not, and it’s important that the people in her life are aware of and respectful of that. But to emphasize her differences in circumstances where it’s not relevant only serves to other her.

Or, let me put it this way. Whether or not Hera would want a body, if she could have one, is a whole other set of questions, but if Wolf 359 is a show about humanity, about connection, about the value of small, personal things over the Big Picture, then I think if Hera was able to hug her friends, if she was able to go somewhere by herself, entirely by herself, and put her hands in the water, and feel it… even the fact alone that she might have the desire for those things… Well, maybe there’s a way that Wolf 359 is about that, too.

xii. ‘if this is it? i’d rather go as me, thank you very much.’: conclusions

I often see people say that we have ‘no way of knowing’ how Hera might want to be seen, or even that she definitely wouldn’t want to be seen as human, or that it wouldn’t occur to her to want [whatever thing] because she’s ‘not human’ and I just… I don't think any of those things are true. I think there’s plenty to go off of in canon, and I think it all points more in this particular direction than not.

I once saw someone say - as a criticism - that Hera was less of an AI character and more of just “a person in the walls” and that stuck with me because… well, because it was such a funny way of phrasing it, but also because. That’s not a weakness of the writing or a failure of imagination. That’s the point of her character! There are so many other sci-fi stories that are interested in more speculative questions re: how AI characters might be different from us and prioritize different things. That’s not Wolf 359! Hera is not meaningfully different from the others, she just thinks she must be because she has different life circumstances and has been treated differently.

And I understand why people are wary about ascribing ‘human’ qualities to AI characters, given the track record of a lot of science fiction, and the reasons a lot of people might relate to AI characters in particular. I really do. I just believe that in this particular case, with this particular character, and the themes in this particular show, it would be doing Hera a disservice to ignore these aspects of her self-identity that she so clearly canonically struggles to come to terms with, when her physicality in the finale in particular is so much a culmination of this fight to be seen - in both a literal and metaphorical sense.

I believe the tragedy of Hera as a character is that she is written to be fundamentally human, with physical desires, physical loneliness, an internal self-image that - except under extreme circumstances - she can never show to anyone else. But one that matters to her, and that she holds onto, nonetheless.

And there’s so much more I could say. I could talk more about Hera’s connection to water, her apparent draw to the natural and tangible. I could talk about how she reads, the way she processes things through emotion and into memory. I could talk about how she phrases things in terms like “now I’m going to have a headache” and only rephrases if someone challenges her on her wording. I could talk about how, while, yes, she is technically always everywhere, it’s also established that she can be more present in one place if she wants to be (and how this connects to her learning mindfulness in canon.) I could talk about how Hera sleeps, how she dreams, how Pryce has intentionally given her nightmares and threatens her with more.

But all of those are just details. If there’s anything I’d want people to take away from this, it would be that, one, over the course of the show, I believe it becomes more and more apparent that Hera is fundamentally just an average, more-or-less human person navigating extremely abnormal and inhumane circumstances, and, two, she experiences physical loneliness. She starts off the show embittered by, and in part in denial of, these facts, and by the ways she’s been mistreated, isolated, and othered. Accepting that she’s not fundamentally different from the people around her, and therefore not intrinsically doomed, is what ultimately allows her to leave the Hephaestus with the others, and allows her to believe that building a life on Earth is possible for her.

#wolf 359 #w359 #hera wolf 359 #hera w359 #okay. it's done. it's done.#it's impossible for this to ever be as thorough and clear as i want it to be. but it's done.#thank you so much to beth for helping my organize my thoughts #it's just like. i don't know.#so many people seem to read the way hera sometimes distances herself from humanity #as a desire to be seen (and respected) as something different #but it's always in moments of loneliness and hurt. to me it reads like an expression of pain #like distancing herself before anyone else can other her #but that's just one part of it too. i can't separate my feelings about hera and humanity from my feelings about hera being trans.#anyway. honestly i'm really nervous about posting this because it's a topic that's so close to my heart #but i hope other people understand what i'm saying and find it resonates with them

250 notes · View notes

askvectorprime · 2 years

Note

Dear Vector Prime, Galvatron told us about a Mini-Con named Whirl who was unable to powerlink with Roadbuster. Was he telling the truth? If so, why was this the case?

Dear Powerlinx Perjury,

While in the Realm of the Primes, Galvatron had nothing to gain from deceit, and indeed he was correct about Whirl’s condition—though his words on the subject were as biased as ever.

Imbued with tremendous potential energy by their progenitor, Unicron, the Mini-Cons were designed to seek out and bond with larger Transformers—but this connection was realized through an element of physical hardware: the Powerlinx port. Rarely, this connector could be permanently damaged in battle, as was the case with Whirl.

But some of the most independently-minded Mini-Cons personally chose to render their port inoperable. There have been long-standing philosophical quandaries over self-determination and Powerlinxing, which were only complicated further by the revelations regarding the origin of the Mini-Cons. Is it truly their nature to be subservient to larger Transformers? Galvatron believed it to be so, and this was his justification—or at least, his rationalization—for his mistreatment and enslavement of their kind, and his professed view of Whirl.

In my view, the Mini-Cons’ connection to humanity gifted them with self-determination, the ability—and desire—to define themselves as individuals, not merely as conduits. They still form strong bonds with their partners and teammates (how Unicron must have hated to see them forge such useless friendships!), but they have their own unique preferences and personal goals. And for some Mini-Cons, the very thought of giving oneself over to another so completely is simply unconscionable: thus, this precommitment to independence, never to combine, never to be used as a weapon or servant. From the top of my head, just to name a few of the individuals in question: Menasor, Onslaught, Hot Zone, Blades, Hun-Gurrr, Razorclaw, Silverbolt, Air Raid, Skydive, Fireflight… many more I’m forgetting, I’m sure. Meanwhile there are some bots, such as Trypticon, who are often confused for Mini-Cons—when in fact, they are simply unusually-small Autobots or Decepticons! Or consider Dirge, and his diminutive clones, or- oh dear, I’m getting away from your question, aren’t I?

Well, what I have described to you is merely a gross generalization of the experiences of ‘bots in one particular reality. In some universes, the ability to Powerlinx was introduced to the Mini-Cons by the Decepticons’ abhorrent experiments, or gradually lost in the course of evolution, or otherwise complicated by any number of the vagaries and contradictions that define this bizarre miracle we call life.

19 notes · View notes

mystic-mutation-archive · 2 years

Text

Yet another lore post!

In Blackwood's world, the word 'humanity' doesn't exist. Asterian is based off DnD's Celestial, and while the latter does have a word for humanity, it doesn't really apply to the former. That's because they have another world entirely! Well, multiple words.

As a name for their species they are simply Asterians, which means belonging to Asterium. Asterium, in itself, can have a lot of meanings. "Surrounded by stars", "The mundane astral", "Space is home". That's because Asterians have this grander acknowledgement of the universe, in the sense that they realize how small they actually are, but not because of some nihilistic belief. Rather, it's from the belief that they wouldn't be there if the world didn't want them there.

It's firmly believed in Asterian culture that they exist for a reason, even if that reason is just to live. They don't believe they have a destiny or fate or any sort of path set for them, but hat everyting has a purpose. This is an attempt to understand why something is happening and to not blindly hate or fear a creature or event for following its nature.

However, their word for 'humanity', in the same sense that we define it 'to be humane', is "Thelshioum" (Tell-she-oh-m). It's a Frankenstein's Monster of a word, formed from 'Pthwel' ('I am me'), "Thep si oo" ('Part of Me'), Hwel ('World') and 'Ca Shiape' ('To understand') .

Thelshioum could be translated in Humanity without much fuss, but it would have the same effect as translated one of the five Greek words for 'love' into just 'love'. It's supposed to be a homonym, as the word is an acknowledgement of all of these elements far beyond one's perspective that make up an entire species that isn't as defined by their biology as humans are. I do hope that makes sense.

Pthwel is also a homonym, because those of you with eyes can see that it is very close to Hwel. That's deliberate. A lowercase 'me', in this context, doesn't refer to the concept of 'I' as an individual, but rather an a result of experience, knowlege and living in the world around one's self, and only an uppercase 'Me' refers to 'I' as an individual. In a sense, it is an weaker, more casual version of the quality of being humane.

#the rift hunter rides: ic #written in the heart: lore #I heard that worldbuilding is another way of procrastination #qnd I feel like it's true #but I try not to write lore that isn't important to Blackwood as a character #and also I've been thinking on doin somethin' somethin' ;)#also yes I am making a lot of this up #on the spot #If I keep going like this I might as well create a whole world from scratch #but I swear this is important #it will be long as FUCK till Blackwood will have a good context to bring this up #but in the end I'm having fun writing this #Yeah I've been thinking about the 'Send this to have my muse tell yours something in their native language' dash game

5 notes · View notes

samwisethewitch · 3 years

Text

Pagan Paths: Feri

Feri (sometimes spelled Faery) is an American neopagan tradition. Like Traditional Wicca, Feri is an initiatory tradition but does not place any limitations on who can be initiated. Although the requirement for initiation makes this religion less easily accessible, Feri has had a huge influence on modern neopaganism, including influencing other (non-initiatory) traditions like Reclaiming. For that reason, I think it’s important that we discuss Feri as part of our ongoing exploration of modern paganism.

This post is not meant to be a complete introduction to Feri. Instead, my goal here is to give you a taste of what Feri practitioners believe and do, so you can decide for yourself if further research would be worth your time. In that spirit, I provide book recommendations at the end of this post.

History and Background

Feri was founded by Victor Anderson and his wife, Cora, in the United States in the 1960s. Like Gerald Gardner, Victor Anderson claimed not to have created his tradition, but to have been initiated into it and then later added to it. In Anderson’s case, he claimed to have been initiated into witchcraft by a faery when he was nine years old.

The Andersons called Feri “the Pictish Tradition” and claimed that it was originally the Craft of the “Little People” in Ireland and Scotland. Victor Anderson was also influenced by Vodou and Hawaiian indigenous spirituality, although his connections to these traditions (both of which are closed) is unclear. Some modern Feri practitioners have made efforts to distance their practice from these elements appropriated from closed cultures, but Feri remains a very eclectic tradition that encourages initiates to “use what works.” Because of this, no two Feri practices are exactly alike.

There is another, more mythologized account of the birth of Feri, shared by author and Feri warlock Storm Faerywolf in his book Betwixt & Between. (In this book, Faerywolf uses the spelling “Faery,” but he is a member of the tradition founded by the Andersons.) In this myth, a group of powerful spiritual beings known as the Watchers rebelled against a false god millennia ago and taught magic to mankind. These Watchers are the fae, and they intermarried with humans and are the origin of all magic traditions. As the story goes, it was one of these Watchers who initiated Victor Anderson into what would later become known as Feri.

Because Feri traces its origin back to these spiritual ancestors, initiation is an important part of the tradition. When someone is initiated, they are said to be made a part of this Feri lineage, similar to how newly baptized Christians are said to be made a part of Christ’s family. This means that, in order to truly practice Feri, you must find a Feri teacher to train and initiate you.

Over the decades since the Andersons founded their tradition, many different lineages of Feri have formed, each with their own unique approach. Some are more visible and more involved with the public, while others practice under strict secrecy. Many of the practices and beliefs that are common in modern Feri come from the Bloodrose lineage.

Core Beliefs and Values

In the words of Cora Anderson, “the Craft is about doing right by one another and loving everyone you see.” However, Feri does not have a universal moral code — there is no Feri equivalent to the Wiccan Rede. While love and kindness are highly valued, the Andersons did not differentiate between light and dark magic and encouraged their followers to use magic to defend themselves when necessary. (You may have noticed that, like in Wicca, magic is an integral part of Feri.)

The Feri Tradition teaches that every person has three souls, each with its own characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. These souls have different names in different lineages, but Faerywolf identifies them as the talker (the “mental soul” associated with the ego/personality), the fetch (the “animal soul” associated with the subconscious and the primal mind), and the holy daemon or god soul (the part of the self that comes directly from God Herself and is able to commune with gods and spirits as equals). Much of the work of Feri revolves around aligning these three souls into a fully realized whole.

Another important part of Feri philosophy is embodied by the symbols of the Iron and Pearl Pentacles.

Iron is a grounding metal, and contemplating the Iron Pentacle keeps practitioners grounded in their astral travel. Feri initiates not only invoke the Iron Pentacle, but seek to embody it by moving through each point on the pentacle and addressing any blocks or hangups in the associated area of their lives. The five points are sex, pride, self, power, and passion. When all five of these points are in balance, we are able to confidently and effectively work our magic in the world. For example, we should not be afraid of sex, but we shouldn’t be obsessed with it either; we should take pride in our accomplishments, but shouldn’t be too full of ourselves; you get the idea. An initiate who fully embodies the Iron Pentacle is fully centered in their own divine power, as well as their physical body.

The Pearl Pentacle is the compliment to the Iron Pentacle. While the Iron Pentacle is personal, the Pearl Pentacle is transpersonal — it represents the qualities needed to form healthy relationships with others. Some Feri practitioners believe that each point on the Pearl Pentacle represents the “higher form” of one of the points of the Iron Pentacle. In the words of Victor Anderson, “when taken together, the Iron and the Pearl embody the divine union that is necessary to fully awaken the awareness of our divine natures.”

The points of the Pearl Pentacle are: love (defined as a genuine desire for union; can be said to be the higher form of sex), law (as in, the natural laws that govern our universe and our actions; can be said to be the higher form of pride), knowledge (learning from lived experience; can be said to be the higher form of self), power (also a point on the Iron Pentacle — here, it refers to our ability to share power with others), and wisdom (the balance between logic and emotion, head and heart; can be said to be the higher form of passion). The way these points are taught, and their relationship to the Iron Pentacle, may be different in different Feri lineages.

Feri practitioners believe that, by embodying the Iron and Pearl Pentacles, they can achieve a state known as the Black Heart of Innocence, which is defined as “sexual innocence.” It can also be thought of as the innocent, untainted state of small children and animals. This is the natural state of human beings, before we are conditioned to be ashamed or afraid of our sexual impulses.

This brings us to a final point of Feri philosophy: in Feri sex is sacred, as it was through a sexual act that God Herself created the universe. As Faerywolf puts it, “sex is a sacrament in our tradition.” That doesn’t mean that all Feri rituals have a sexual component, but some of them might. Mostly, the sacredness of sex requires Feri practitioners to live in a healthy relationship with their nature as sexual beings.

Important Deities and Spirits

The central deity in Feri is called Star Goddess or simply God Herself. She is the androgynous source of all life, “having within Her all principles, powers, and potencies of Nature.” (Quote from The Heart of the Initiate by Victor and Cora Andersons.) Star Goddess is not only the source of the others Gods, but the source of all life, including humans.

According to the Feri creation myth, in the beginning, Star Goddess was alone in the cosmic void, until she came upon a reflection of her own light. She was so enamored that she made love to her own reflection, and from this act of self-pleasure gave birth to all things.

Star Goddess often appears as a black-skinned woman whose skin is dotted with stars. In ritual, she is often represented with a large black candle.

Nimüe is an aspect of Star Goddess, a maiden who represents the Black Heart of Innocence. She rules over new life, growth, and potential.

Nimüe may appear as a child or a young woman. She can be represented in ritual with flowers (especially pink or white flowers) or with a waxing crescent moon.

Mari is the Great Mother, Star Goddess as the embodiment of pure manifestation. She is associated with the earth, moon, sea, and sky — it is she who gives life and form to all things. The earth is said to be her body, and she is said to be “the spirit of every woman.”

Mari may appear a a pregnant woman. She can be represented in ritual with images of the earth, the moon, or of mothers.

The Hag, also known as the Crone, is the primal Dark Goddess and Queen of the Dead. She is the archetypal witch, but also a grandmother and wise woman. Some believe that it is to her we return when we die.

The Hag often appears as a wizened old woman. She can be represented in ritual with images of ravens and/or vultures, or with a silver sickle.

Star Goddess has two children and consorts, the Divine Twins. They are the personification of duality — light and dark, good and evil, spirit and matter, united in a balanced pair. They may appear as brother and sister, as two lovers of any combination of genders, or as mortal enemies.

The Twins may appear as the Scarlet Serpent and the Azure Dove, who represent the duality of fire/water and earth/air. In ritual, they are often represented with a matching set of candles, one red and one blue.

The Blue God, sometimes called the Peacock God, is born from the union of the Divine Twins — he contains within himself all duality and appears with a combination of male and female features. He is associated with the divine spark within all living things, including one of the three human souls, which Faerywolf calls the holy daemon. He is the god of opposites, and exists in a permanent liminal state. He contains within him both good and evil, beauty and darkness.

The Blue God may appear as a young, androgynous or hermaphroditic person with blue skin. In ritual, he is often represented with peacock feathers.

Krom, also known as the Horned God, is the god of fertility, light, and heat. He is sometimes described as the consort of the Goddess as Mari. He is God as father and lover and is overtly sexual in nature. He has solar associations, but is also the lord of the harvest.

Krom may appear as a man with the head of a stag, glowing with the sun’s warmth. He can be represented in ritual with images of stags, bulls, phalluses, or the sun.

The Arddu (pronounced “ar-THEE”) or the Dark God is described as the “crone aspect of the God.” He is the god of witches, the king of the dead, and the spirit of winter. It is said that when we die, we must confront the Arddu before we can return to the Hag.

The Arddu often appears as an old, androgynous man, with the head and legs of a goat and the wings of a bat. He can be represented in ritual with images of skulls and bones.

Deity in Feri is complex and fluid. All of the goddesses can be said to be different aspects of one Goddess, and all of the gods can be said to be different aspects of one God. Furthermore, all of the deities, both gods and goddesses, can be said to be extensions of Star Goddess. Victor Anderson believed that everything is connected and that the Gods exist within the Universe and the individual. As he said, “God is self, and self is God, and God is a person like myself.”

In addition to the deities, there are also spirits called Watchers and Guardians who play an important role in Feri. The Watchers are mysterious celestial entities, said to be the fathers of magic. Guardians are spirits associated with the elements, who are called on to guard the circle during ritual. Some Feri practitioners believe that the Guardians are Watchers, while others see them as two distinct groups of spirits.

Feri Practice

As stated earlier, much of the work of Feri involves embodying the Iron and Pearl Pentacle in order to return to the Black Heart of Innocence. This is done through ritual, meditation, ecstatic trance, art, energy work, and/or magic.

Feri is an ecstatic tradition, which means many of its rituals and practices revolve around achieving an ecstatic state. Ecstasy is sometimes defined as the state of being completely absorbed in the focus of your attention, and other times as the removal of the consciousness from normal functioning. In Feri, ecstasy is used as a tool for spiritual growth.

Astral travel also plays a role in Feri practice. A Feri practitioner may use trance states to leave their body and enter the spirit realm, where they can encounter the gods, Watchers, faeries, and other spirits firsthand. In some traditions, this travel forms the backbone of the practice.

Art and creative expression are other tools used for spiritual growth in Feri. Visual art and poetry in particular are often used to express spiritual concepts or to help the initiate process what they have learned. Victor Anderson was a known poet and published a collection of devotional poetry called Thorns of the Blood Rose — many later Feri practitioners have followed in his footsteps.

Feri is considered a magic tradition as well as a religion, and many Feri practitioners consider themselves witches or warlocks. Magic is seen as a way of directing the universal life energy that makes up all things, and is a natural extension of our divine power as each of us is a part of Star Goddess.

Like Wiccan rituals, Feri rituals sometimes begin with casting a circle and calling the quarters. However, Feri uses different language and gestures for the circle casting, with a greater focus on the earth and the circle as an extension of the Goddess’s body. While in Wicca, the circle is used for every ritual, in Feri it may only be used for some rites.

Further Reading

If you are interested in Feri, I recommend reading the book Betwixt & Between by Storm Faerywolf. This is an excellent introduction to the tradition, written by the founder of the BlueRose lineage. You may also be interested in reading the works of Victor and Cora Anderson — though Feri has changed a lot since it was founded, the Andersons’ teachings still lie at the core of the tradition.

Because Feri is an initiatory tradition, you can only go so far on study alone. Eventually, you will have to find a teacher to train and initiate you. Without this initiation, what you are doing is not, and cannot be, Feri. Thankfully, it is becoming ever easier to find online training, so you can walk the Feri path no matter where you live. The BlueRose lineage, which was founded by Storm Faerywolf, offers online training and initiation through The Mystic Dream Academy. Some other Feri teachers also have online offerings — look around on social media to see who is currently accepting students.

If you choose not to pursue initiation, you can still incorporate elements of Feri lore and philosophy into your practice, as long as you acknowledge that what you are doing is no longer Feri. In fact, many elements of Feri survive in other, related traditions such as Reclaiming, which we’ll discuss in the next installment of this series.

Resources:

The Heart of the Initiate by Victor and Cora Anderson

The Spiral Dance by Starhawk

Betwixt & Between by Storm Faerywolf

The official Feri Tradition website (feritradition.com)

146 notes · View notes

callistolivia · 4 years

Text

Interpreting Jupiter

“The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the power of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness“

–– Albert Einstein; Jupiter in Aquarius in the 8th house, Pisces Sun, Sagittarius Moon

Each of the planets represent principle dimensions of the human psyche. Mercury is our logical mind, Venus our heart, Mars our aggression, the Moon our soul and emotional mind, the Sun our ego, Saturn our inhibitions, and then of course, there is Jupiter which demonstrates how we feel mystical, religiousness, and larger than life. Jupiter in the birth chart illustrates our belief system, worldviews, and how those two concepts work for us in receiving opportunities, grace, and well-being in life. We can explore the sensations of overwhelming wonder the unknown; our ability to accept or reject higher order, the trust we have in something greater working in our favour. Jupiter shows us our qualities that require little effort and we often take for granted because they are so aligned within us. Even the most Mercurial, cynical, or rigid types can look to Jupiter to get a sense of their optimism, well-being, and what awakens that feeling of the mystical. In Jupiter’s positive expression, it entails a powerful relationship with higher power and the universe’s plan. It grants the individual with optimism and active aim to improve oneself. In Jupiter’s negative expression, we see blind confidence and belief, gullibility, irresponsibility, and indulgence.

Jupiter transits all twelve signs over the course of twelve years which means it only moves into a new sign year. This also means everyone born in the same year as you will likely share the same Jupiter placement and it also suggests a tendency for your peers to share a similar inner belief system.

Jupiter in the Elements

Fire Connection with higher self and higher order comes from ability to relate to the divine; control over will, creation, and relationship with God or universe. Tendency towards grace with these concepts because of confidence and innate optimism. Opportunities for personal growth come from generosity, creativity, positive attitude, and taking initiative.

Earth Connection with higher self and higher order comes from experiences with the sense; touch, taste, sight, etc. and their relationship with the physical world; physical miracles of the earth, nature, nutrition, physical connection with others. Opportunities for personal growth come from hard work, practicality, patience, and demonstrating their dependability.

Air Connection with higher self and higher order comes from sharing ideas, knowledge, and communicating among their social circles; feelings of religiousness comes from collective consciousness and unity. Opportunities for personal growth come from group effort towards one common goal, sharing philosophies, and maintaining important relationships.

Water Connection with higher self and higher order comes from listening within, sensitivity, and intuition. Actualizes spiritual and religious world through creativity and clairvoyance. Opportunities for personal growth emerges from their compassion, making peace within their inner world, their imagination, and their keen understanding of spirituality.

Jupiter becomes more defined and personal as we explore its expression in each individual sign. Since Jupiter transits a new sign only once a year, acknowledging the aspects that may be made to other signs with the other planets can further enrich it’s interpretation. Jupiter expands planets it touches, so every aspect made with Jupiter is important.

Jupiter in the Signs

Aries

Grace of courage. Jupiter in Aries elevates self esteem and confidence in oneself. Those who struggle with self esteem can look to this Jupiter placement as the most effective counsel. This individual can improve themselves through assertion, confidence, and leadership skills. Opportunities make their way when they take initiative and risks in life. Falling in line with the Fire description, this individual has exceptional control over their will, therefore they are the creator of the opportunities they receive. This is important to keep in mind because Jupiter has a tendency to go easy on us when we choose to be lazy. Jupiter requires this individual to really grasp onto bursts of motivation and try to prolong it long enough to finish one project before starting another. In its negative expression and contacts, Jupiter in Aries can express blind confidence and irresponsibility. This individual needs to be careful not to shoot themselves in the foot.

Taurus

Grace of patience. Jupiter in Taurus finds itself aligned in the material world, thus they need to seek evidence of the divine to connect with their higher self and faith. Luckily, Jupiter here grants the individual with the patience and natural connectivity to the earth required to gather this evidence. As mentioned in the Earth description, they experience the mystical through nature, sensuality, beauty, and appreciating the tangible. Proof of their existence aids their emotional health and sense of purpose. Opportunities come through their usefulness, steadiness, and productivity, as well as the actualization of their ideas, faith, and goals. Jupiter in Taurus is extremely tolerant, so the individual should caution those who may take that for granted. In its negative expression and contacts, Jupiter here has a tendency to be over indulgent, materialistic, and to associate their worth with what they own or possess. This must be balanced through humble actions and generosity.

Gemini

Grace of perception. Jupiter here gives the individual a broad, multi-perceptive understanding of the world. With that said, this is Jupiter’s detrimental placement and there can be a tendency towards being overly skeptical and cynical; there is no solid faith or belief to fall back on. This can be a heavy weight on their well-being, especially when placed in houses that deal with the bigger picture in life. Jupiter in Gemini needs a faith system that compliments reality, rational, and logic. As suggested in the Air description, a strong social circle that promotes sharing ideas and knowledge can help secure a belief system. Jupiter in Gemini improves themselves through Mercurial activities such as writing, teaching, and learning in general. Opportunities come their way when they ask difficult questions and embrace their curiosity.

Cancer

Exalted grace. Jupiter in Cancer elevates emotional maturity. Even with the most debilitated and ill-aspected Moon placements can reap benefit from Jupiter when it is in Cancer. Those who need to grow or wish to continue to grow their emotional world can channel this placement and the house it’s located in. Those who have harnessed Jupiter’s grace here can seek opportunities through helping others with their emotional world, tapping into their instincts, and building security. As mentioned in the Water description, they have a keen understanding for their spirituality. Jupiter here generally has a strong relationship with their higher self and the grandiose of the universe. With this said, they can have a tendency to rely too much on their gut and it can lead them to evade uncomfortable situations that could have been opportunities. They need to trust themselves in these uncomfortable situations. Jupiter in Cancer individuals should also practice caution with fear-mongering faiths as there is a tendency to fall victim.

Leo

Grace of heart. Jupiter here makes an individual who will benefit from actions pure of heart. The self improves and expands when the individual demonstrates generosity and humbleness, and utilizes their creativity. Alternatively, Leo’s lens can take advantage of Jupiter’s abundance; this can create arrogant and greedy tendencies in individuals. These individuals need to acknowledge these tendencies to cleanse and humble their heart. They can have an immense capacity to share abundance of love, faith, and resource to those in need once they realize the elevated expression of Jupiter here. Jupiter here generally has a robust and stable belief system, same as described in the Fire description. This position for Jupiter makes individuals at awe with the world; they can feel empowered by the complexity and beauty of life. Inner faith becomes stronger when they feel entangled in the universe’s plan. Those who become victim to the negative tendencies this placement can experience the contrary of this beautiful belief system; become self-absorbed, indulgent, and egotistical.

Virgo

Grace of clarity. Jupiter here can make an individual see the world quite clearly and humbly. This individual is not too hung up on the abundance Jupiter marvels hungry eyes about, but rather just wants simply what they need and nothing more. Virgo can see the exact results they want through their utility to the world and improves themselves through service. Leaning towards the more negative expression of this placement, there can be a perfectionist schema or overly critical view of oneself and the world. This can be resolved when the individual feels comfortable asking Jupiter for more when they are doing more (like asking life for a raise, so to speak); the petty resentment begins to dissolve and they have a better sense of self and placement in this world. Virgo’s belief system is often quite passive. These individuals are quite neutral to karmic energies coming their way; e.g. “everything happens for a reason.” They can feel more in touch with their higher self through the physical modes as mentioned in the Earth description; specifically in areas dealing with nutrition (the body) and helping the earth.

Libra

Grace of fairness. Jupiter in Libra elevates the most pleasant Libra qualities; patience, artistic nature, fairness, selflessness, ability to see both sides of one coin, etc. There is equally though, negative Libra qualities emphasized as well, such as over-indulgence and laziness. Libra improves themselves through approaching life moderately, objectively, and seeing both sides of every situation. Opportunities find the individual’s way when they help others and the world in a differentiated manner. Libra’s belief system carries the perspective that life, religiousness, and spirituality carries an inter-connective quality. Life revolve around the balance of nature. These individuals express their spirituality best through art and expressions of beauty, especially if Jupiter is placed in a creative house. These individuals can solidify their beliefs through social modes of expression as mentioned in the Air description. Jupiter in Libra leads the world to liberty.

Scorpio

Grace of perception. Jupiter here is an exceptionally spiritually connected placement, especially if Jupiter is also in one of the soul houses. Jupiter here very much falls in line with everything said in the Water description. They understand themselves, the world, the spirituality better when in touch with intense or difficult feelings. Conflict with inner faith emerges through fear and inability to connect to deeper feelings. The inability to connect to deeper concepts comes from the fixed attitudes of Scorpio. Scorpios can exhibit a certain stubbornness over their morals and ideas; there is a resistance to accept new concepts at times, especially in dealing with the world and spirituality. Experiences where they are confronted by their fixed attitude tend to be the most expansive and transformative. These individuals improve themselves through thorough emotional and mental perceptiveness. They generally have an acute sense for opportunity coming their way.

Sagittarius

Grace of faith. Jupiter is in its natural expression in Sagittarius, so it brings out the natural good and not-so-good of Jupiter. These individuals tend to be generous, adventurous, hungry for knowledge, and spiritually inclined; they will often find opportunities through these qualities as well as improve themselves by following a faith-inclined or broadly academic path. Their absorbent nature for life can make them overly optimistic or gullible at times, so these individuals should practice caution with what they believe in, trust, and take risks with. Individuals with this placement and a weak Saturn influence may need to work on bringing themselves back to reality. Sagittarius has an exceptional strong belief system and relationship with higher self, as mentioned in the Fire description. Their ability to relate to a higher order through the spread of knowledge and control over will is what really solidifies their belief system.

Capricorn

Grace of reality. Capricorn is considered to be Jupiter’s fallen position which implies it manifests a very unnatural expression for this planet. Through the lens of Capricorn, things become a lot more serious and the individual is not relying on any sort of Jupiter’s luck. Capricorn approaches life and opportunities with caution and hard work. While this can obviously reap bountiful rewards, there is a tendency to aim quite low in terms of expectations for life. While the reality of life is completely there for these individuals, there is a cynicalness towards life which can really take a toll on an individual’s well being. Jupiter here suggests that the individual needs to work towards grasping the optimistic energy it has to offer. This can be done by getting in touch with their higher self and solidifying a belief system. Capricorn is the most resistant to having faith and will need to experience the physical miracles of this world, as mentioned in the Earth description, to open themselves up to a greater order. Miracles in general really aid the feeling of mystique Capricorn tends to miss out on.

Aquarius

Grace of the mind. When Jupiter is in Aquarius, we may observe a paradoxical energy as Jupiter expands the higher mind in a fixed sign. What this can look like is an individual who is open-minded in a lot of areas, but closed-minded in others. Their beliefs can be rather radical as the Aquarian energy typically is (this can be also true with aspects to Uranus and planets in Aquarius aspecting Jupiter because Jupiter expands all that it touches). This individual’s progressive thoughts and ideas can present opportunities as long as they lean towards being more open-minded than stubborn. Their belief system heavily relies on what is mentioned in the Air description; collective consciousness and social groups give them that feeling of religiousness rather than looking inside oneself for faith or universal truth. Continued studies are often of great value to these individuals and they are well suited for academia (unless afflicted otherwise). In terms of being “spiritual,” Jupiter here is quite divided; some of these individuals are not spiritual at all and others explore the idea of being a spiritual teacher or leader themselves. More often than not though, they approach life with objectiveness and humanity in mind.

Pisces

Grace of the spirit. As Jupiter sits in its naturally ruled sign, it is like gigantic watermelon ready to burst. This is the most spiritually potent position for Jupiter. In Pisces, Jupiter freely runs with every idea, inspiration, and fantasy the individual has. The positive expression to this is that the individual may feel limitless in their spiritual and creative endeavours (and the endeavours of the house its in, of course). On the flip side, these individuals are easily susceptible to scams, wishful thinking, and dangerous beliefs; a strong Saturn placement would be helpful in diminishing the negative. Opportunities present itself to this individual when they are able to actualize their inner vision boards and when they get in touch with their innate spiritual nature. As mentioned in the Water description, spiritual connection comes from listening within and embracing sensitivity. Pisces tends to have a very strong (and sometimes far too accepting) belief system and relationship with their higher self.

Jupiter in the Houses (Notes)

-Jupiter is its most spiritual in the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, and 12th house

-Jupiter is its most ambitious (or containing themes around life ambitions) in the 1st, 2nd, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 11th house.

-Jupiter is its most creative in the 1st, 2nd, and 5th house.

-Jupiter in the 7th house can indicate marrying abroad, more than one marriage, or a partner of a different background (culturally, in social status, etc.)

-Jupiter in the 1st and 2nd house are generally viewed as beneficial health-wise.

-Jupiter in the 5th house can indicate fertility or having many children.

-Jupiter in the 11th house makes for a great leader in social movements.

-Jupiter in the 1st or 10th house can sometimes be an indicator for fame as it enlarges the personality and public view.

-Jupiter in the 10th house indicates a career dealing with the public on a larger scale. These individuals would do well in politics, business, religion, or teaching.

-Jupiter in the 3rd house can indicate a jack-of-all-trades type individual. This placement can also manifest as someone having many siblings or having peers that replaced the role of family.

-Individuals with Jupiter in the 1st, 5th, or 9th house’s well-being is very reliant on Jupiterian activities. New experiences and travel especially.

-Whichever house Jupiter is placed in will put emphasis on what that house represents. There will be lifetime goals or significant turning points strongly associated with that house (for example, 7th house = marriage/partnership, 4th house = family, domestic security, 10th house = business/career, and so on)

#astrology #jupiter

608 notes · View notes

rottenappleusach · 3 years

Text

'Surviving: Life in the Middle of the Pandemic', by Francisca Alejandra Mosqueira

The pandemic caught us off guard in the most broader sense of the word. Some of us were thriving, living our best lives, engaging in new work-wise horizons, decisively building towards our future. Unexpectedly, the world came to a halt. The certainty of not being the only one noticing how it affected every nook and cranny of people's day by day, assisted our mental health during the first months. Nonetheless, the feeling dissipates when the scenery remains identical or even worse to what it was in the beginning, while news pass and the head of state and its associates display openly their desperation on broadcast networks. Then you realize that there are people dying, losing their monthly income, their loved ones, and some other their soundness. Suddenly, you are not living, you are surviving.

The system has been contributing for years to the survival experience, and now shows its worst side, confronting the government leadership, defying their competence. As a chilean person this is not a new feeling, is a ceasless headache in a political representative crisis, in which a pandemic only enhanced the usual predicaments, and the current social crisis shared with the rest of southamerica.

Chile, as other third world countries, does not have egalitarian policies in matters of health, economy, education, and so on, which added an element of difficulty in the dystopian experience we are trapped in. If it was challenging before, the pandemic manages to complicate things more, especially for those who are less fortunate. The new normal implies wearing masks, lockdown for months, health cordons, and hand sanitizer to minimize the risk of contagion among citizens. However, regardless of the latter mentioned features we have incorporated into our lives, the surviving feeling is triggered by the current trials and tribulations stacking inside our minds.

Surviving means existing in spite of hardships, but it also means continuing to function, enduring, and live through a situation. The pandemic prompted a feeling of weariness and numbness, hijacking the pleasant experience of life, making difficult to even survive. Working from home has become a burn out ordeal, often forcing people to work after hours to achieve the perfomance of a day; regarding schools and universities the situation replicates. According to psychologists, the lack of time to adapt to the situation causes stress, anxiety and distress but nothing seems to stop for the ones in charge, disregarding personal tragedies. Protocols and formalities continuing to apply in what the youth have defined as “the end of the world”. In addition to this, the usual burdens of life like paying bills, housework, and buying groceries represent a new level of diffculty, alongside the fear of becoming a biozahard danger. Weekends, designated to unwind and relax, no longer serves its purpose cornered in your home.

The survivor in ourselves comes to play when our parents’ uneasy attitude warns us that not everything is right, when you are feeling the stress soring your body, when the blue light filter no longer helps your sight, when the walls around you overwhelm the senses and the buzzing of the nonsensical news in the tv are feckless. Subsisting now means trying to not lose control, overcome panicking over what is already been piling up, clutching your stomach with an anxiety knot, and nervous perspiration in your hands, while studying, working, or even just breathing. Salvaging your mental health at the same time as your physical.

Survivor mode, as I have been calling it, does not imply solely negative outcomes, notwithstanding the feeling can be tiredsome. Discovering talents, spending time with your pet, creating a new bussiness, watching the tv show you could not watch before, can create positives experiences that were postponed before the lockdown. Grounding people, make them stop to observe what is really of importance, conducting them to comprehend where they want to be. I personally believe that the instinct of protect and survive along with our loved ones, drive us towards surmounting challenges that might hinder enjoyment. Hence, it is important to gather collective strenght, supporting each other, staying close even in the distance, finding a light within your people.

To finalize, the flaws in the system are now full on display, we have to resist a little longer, and compromising individually to make this world a better place, a place worth living by any means necessary, we owe that to ourselves, and to the future generations. Otherwise, the survival experience, the isolation, and the corpses of our loved ones, will be fruitless. To err is human, to persist on the mistakes leads to cyclical errors that can affect everyone’s life. Be resilient.

#the rotten apple #literary magazine #essay #literature #chile #awardwinning #pandemic #covid 19 #survivor #surviving #coronavirus #contest #usach #universidad de santiago de chile #universidad católica de la santísima concepción

20 notes · View notes

makeste · 4 years

Note

I was originally going to send this message declaring my undying love for your metas and chapter reviews aND THEN - AND THEN MAKESTE - I READ THE ANSWER WHERE YOU SAID YOU WERE ARO AND THAT MAKES ME SOOOOO HAPPY. I'm aroace and it is SO FRUSTRATING to want to consume platonic or familial interaction between people and CONSTANTLY only get romantic or sexual. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EVERYTHING YOU CONTRIBUTE

woooo up top! solidarity lol.

for me it’s like... I don’t know if “frustrating” is the word I would use, but I do wish there was more gen out there. and that’s also something I’ve felt awkward about wanting in the past, because my early fandom years took place in a time where slash was much less of an everyday commonplace thing than it is now, and liking it was still a fairly controversial thing. the internet was a much more openly homophobic place than it is now. like, picture the purity police of modern day tumblr, but if they attacked any kind of non-heterosexual relationship as being sick and perverted and wrong. that was pretty much the general vibe. this was before AO3, and people who wrote slash often didn’t post it on ff.net and only posted it to their own private blogs and/or locked and moderated communities instead just so they wouldn’t be harassed. and there was absolutely no canon representation out there at all, or next to none. it was very much a “[rolls eyes] oh the yaoi fangirls are at it again” sort of thing where non-cishet relationships in fiction and fanfiction were at best not taken seriously at all, and at worst were treated with outright scorn and disgust.

and so like, with this being a common attitude at the time, I felt guilty for not always wanting to read slash myself. like, I don’t mind reading about romantic relationships at all, but for me there also has to be some other kind of element in play as well, or else it’s just not going to click for me. if a fic is just romance, just a lot of pining and slow burn stuff without anything else really going on in the plot, I just get bored and disinterested. I almost want to use the word tired, even though I’m not sure that makes much sense. I just can’t connect to the emotions, and so I disengage pretty quickly. and so I tend to steer clear of time-honored fandom staples like coffee shop AUs or And They Were Roommates, just because for me there’s rarely anything there for me to latch onto. I like angst, but I can’t relate to “so and so doesn’t feel the same way about me”, or “I want to be with them so bad but I don’t know how to confess”, or “they’re with someone else and it hurts like crazy every time I see them and know we can’t be together”, because none of those are emotions that I have ever personally felt, and I just can’t make myself feel them. what I can relate to are things like “this person makes me feel safe”, or “I feel a strong connection to this person”, or “I trust this person more than anyone else” because those feelings aren’t exclusively romantic in nature. I can relate to closeness and caring and love and affection and trust, but what I can’t relate to is the feeling of having a single person occupy all of your thoughts all the time, and very badly wanting to be the most important thing in their life as well, and feeling incomplete otherwise.

but anyway I spiraled away from the point I was trying to get to, which is that for a long time I actually felt guilty about feeling this way. because even though it’s rare to find fanworks where gen/platonic relationships are at the center, actual canon is chock full of said relationships. and so it’s like, what right do I even have to complain when I get to read all the time about so and so being friends, but the people who actually want them to be in a relationship in the actual canon so rarely get to see that actually happen. because that much has not changed in the past 20 years, even though society has become far more accepting of LGBTQ+ relationships. most canons are still far more likely to tease a non-hetero ship -- on purpose, even, hence why queerbaiting is a thing -- than actually commit to it. and so I often feel like I have no right to voice my desire for more genfic, because genfic has never faced the same kind of scrutiny as slashfic. gen has always been acceptable, and there is plenty of canon representation of platonic and non-romantic relationships, and so it’s not something I have any business whining about.

and even now I feel fairly uncomfortable voicing this lol. I write almost exclusively genfic myself, and up until very recently, I’ve always defined gen in my head as being just a lack of romantic or sexual content, rather than being its own distinct category. I think that’s one of the reasons it took me so long to realize I was aro (that, and I’d honestly never even come across the term until just a few years ago). for me, my lack of interest in romantic affection always felt more like a lack of identity rather than an identity in and of itself. I always felt like I was missing something. and for a very long time it never occurred to me that this might be a permanent thing; I just figured, okay, I just haven’t had this feeling yet. it just hasn’t happened for me yet. but eventually it would, and I just hadn’t met the right person, or whatever. but it was never anything I particularly wanted, and I never felt like I was missing out on anything by not having it. I never felt any kind of longing for it or felt incomplete without it. I was actually perfectly content!

but because society treats romantic orientation as the norm and places such a huge emphasis on it, I still had the uncomfortable feeling in the back of my head that if I never fell in love with someone and never wound up having a relationship with someone, my life would somehow be less meaningful and whole. like, we’re raised to think that romantic love is basically the pinnacle of the human experience, the purest and truest emotion that anyone can feel. and at the same time, there’s this idea that a life without that kind of love is just sad and unfulfilling and tragic. and so for a very long time my experience with my own aromanticism was characterized by me thinking of it as a lack of something that everyone else said was very important. and it took a long time to realize that that wasn’t the case, and that it was a valid orientation all its own and not just a matter of me being deficient in some way. and that was actually such a relief to finally come to terms with. I can be whole and complete on my own and still have a rich and fulfilling human experience even if I never experience romantic love, and that’s fine. I’m not missing anything. I’m not wrong for feeling like I’m not missing anything. it’s fine to be content with just me as I am. like, holy shit. and that was such a weight off my shoulders to finally get that.

I once wrote a fic which I was and still am very proud of. it was a genfic, and it had a really intricate plot with a big twist at the very end. and there was a ton of emotion in it, and it got very intense at times, because these were two characters who cared a lot about each other and would literally die for each other if they had to, and I’d put them in a situation where that possibility was very much looming over their heads at every turn. and I really put everything I had into trying to convey that kind of bond as strongly as possible. like I poured a ton of my heart and soul into that fic. and the responses were almost universally positive and kind and made me really happy.

there was one response though, that still sticks with me to this day. it was by and large very positive, just like the others. but it ended with a single sentence that, at the time, kind of just lowkey gutted me. Not gonna lie though, would have loved some slash in there.

like, that just cut me. way more than this person actually intended, I think. I’m pretty sure they just meant it as an offhanded comment, not even a concrit or anything. just “haha would have loved it if they’d kissed though lol.” but it stung. because this was something I’d put every ounce of emotion that I could conjure up into. and even though it wasn’t mean to be hurtful in any way, to me that comment read as “this is still missing something.” because there was no romance, the fic was incomplete. the characters’ feelings were incomplete. even though I’d struggled so much to convey all of these complex emotions which to me were so real and powerful, and even though the comment even acknowledged that I had by and large done so effectively, to me the single takeaway that stuck was that the feelings were less meaningful because there was no romance.

and that felt like a failing on my part. I even apologized for it. and here we are, ten years later, and that comment still pops up in my head any time I feel the urge to talk about a popular ship which I support but which I also enjoy as just a friendship. “just” a friendship. I still feel guilt over that. I still feel this urge to overexplain that I’m not trying to invalidate the actual romantic ship. I worry that I’d be perceived as ungrateful and/or a bad ally if I ever just came out and said “I wish there was more gen” like you were able to say so freely, anon. I worry about people getting offended if I were to say “I headcanon so and so as being aroace” because it might be viewed as an attack on their ships, or as latent homophobia, or something. like I have this paranoid fear that people might take it as me being puritanical and all “oh no, icky sex” or whatever, and so I end up just never bringing it up at all.

and that’s the thing about aromanticism, though; it’s so easy to just never talk about it at all, because for so many people it is just defined as a lack of something, rather than a something all on its own. it’s so easy for it to be something you just never bring up, and which just kind of quietly exists as the boring, bland, inoffensive yet uninteresting lack of a relationship; the default blank slate that most everyone is dying to fill in as soon as possible, except for you. and I’ve gone on thinking about it that way myself for so long that I’m still struggling now to sort out how to embrace it as an actual identity. it’s something I still have a lot of work to do on I guess.

anyway! so that all got very long and rambling and personal, far more so than I intended; clearly I have a lot of pent up thoughts and feelings about this lol. I guess I probably could stand to talk about it more, since the evidence would indicate that I clearly want to. but eh, baby steps. but anyways you are super valid anon and thank you so much for the love and comments. <3

#aromanticism #meta #aromanticism in fandom #personal #long post #ask #anon ask #hey um just an addendum this is a pro aroace post NOT an anti-shipping post #just to make that clear #like you can be for one thing without bashing the other #so if you want to reblog this that is awesome and I'm grateful #but please don't use it as a launching pad for any weird toxic 'shipping is bad' takes please and thanks

136 notes · View notes

terresdebrume · 4 years

Text

The Witcher - Favorite Reads Masterpost

So, the previous one was getting really super long and Tumblr refused to save the latest update three times, which I’m taking to mean I’ve reached some kind of length limit. In view of that, and with a poke to @nyliekeo who asked to be tagged, here’s the second volume of my Witcher fic-reading adventures!

(Pretty much all Geraskier, because I’m only a multishipper in the sense that I have many ships across many fandoms.)

Volume 1

Last updated: April 10th, 2020.

Non geraskier fic

Her Current Is Pulling You Closer - TheMarvellousMadMadamMim

Specs: 1 900 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Eist/Calanthe - Swimming, shameless flirting

Summary: After nearly three years of marriage, Eist Tuirseach realizes there are still things to learn about his wife.

Becoming Water - Orockthro

Specs: 3 456 words - Mature - Trans woman!Geralt, curses, happy ending

Summary: When Geralt was a child his mother kissed his forehead, wove flowers in his hair, and let him dance around the campsite they shared with the other druids. He loved dancing, the way his body moved and flowed; he was like water.

And then she left him in the road, spilled water on his feet, and a faint trail of dust where she and the cart were no longer. And a man came and took Geralt and made him into something new.

“Were you short? Waifish? Did those witcher mutagens turn you into, you know, the hulking sexy man that you are? At least they gave you such male perfection, what with the stubble and the jaw and the--”

“Shut up, Jaskier.”

(Or, Geralt is cursed with a female body during their travels. Only it's not so much a curse as a gift she didn't know she so desperately desired until now.)

of cockroaches and men - Potrix

Specs: 1 442 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Yennefer & Jaskier, Getting to know each other, BAMF Jaskier

Summary: As if being stuck waiting for her supplier in this sorry excuse for a town full of narrow-minded, superstitious simpletons isn't already frustrating enough, the first familiar face Yennefer spots when she walks into the grubby tavern is that of her least favourite bard.

Or, alternatively; sometimes you misjudge people, but there's nothing some badassery and booze won't fix.

all cooped up - alittlebitmaybe

Specs: 4 205 words - Mature - Polyamory, Pandemic 2020, Non-explicit sex, instigator Yen

Summary: Geralt's old university roommate, Jaskier, needs a place to ride out the pandemic. Geralt and Yennefer conveniently have a couch and Geralt, inconveniently, has a crush.

Cover it over and write it out - TheArcheologist

Specs: 3 214 words - Mature - Dyslexia, implied child abuse, Dandelion is a noble

Summary: There is something Geralt has noticed, after traveling so long with Jaskier. It is nothing major, nothing world ending or even warranting bringing up, but it is there, nonetheless, a funny little habit he can’t unsee.

“You’re better at this stuff than me, Geralt, you read it.”

Geraskier fics

pride - Besully (Briar_Elwood)

Specs: 737 words - Teen & Up - Trans Jaskier

Summary: Geraskier Week Dealer's Choice

He only manages to get the shirt untucked from the bard’s trousers when Jaskier’s smile disappears, and he scrambles backwards, holding the edges of his shirt down.

Do It Again - thisgirlsays22

Specs: 6 771 words - Explicit - Time Loop

Summary: By the twentieth time Geralt has gone through the loop, he decides to just throw himself off the cliff’s edge after Borch.

He wakes up to his twenty-first attempt.

“Fuck.”

Interlude; The End of All Things - TabbyCat33098

Specs: 3 496 words - General Audiences - Growing Old Together

Summary: Geralt realizes Jaskier is growing old and tries his best to return the rest of Jaskier's life to him. If only Jaskier would cooperate and take it.

How much longer will Jaskier be content with weathering the elements and contending with the uncertainty of mercenary work? How long until Jaskier realizes that in devoting himself to crafting a legacy for Geralt, he has forgotten to create a legacy of his own?

After all, he does not have a wife or children, for their nomadic lifestyle is conducive to neither. He has no home to return to between stints with Geralt, whether a sprawling mansion vaunting his wealth or a comfortable cottage replete with souvenirs from his varied exploits. How many experiences has Jaskier sacrificed because some contract or irate nobleman drew them elsewhere? How many untouched fields of snow has Jaskier never seen; how many harvests at Novigrad has he yearned to celebrate from halfway across the Continent—

“You’re staring,” Jaskier points out.

“You wanted to go to the Kovirian coast,” Geralt responds.

a tapestry of scars - splendidlyimperfect

Specs: 7 688 words - Mature - Modern AU, Birpolar disorder, self harm, references to previous suicide attempt and car accident.

Summary: Jaskier comes into Geralt's life on a sunny afternoon in May - wide smiles and baby blue eyes; breathtaking stories and half-written song lyrics. He's mesmerizing and full of life, and Geralt can't look away. But sunshine doesn't last forever, and when Jaskier disappears, Geralt learns that beautiful things have dark and broken pieces, and even damaged people can help fix them.

Summer Mornings - The UnamazingTrashKing

Specs: 3 241 words - Mature - Fluff

Summary: Geralt and Jaskier are sort of a couple. They definitely wake up together and talk about spending the rest of their lives together.

An Incomplete Happiness - BlossomsintheMist

Specs: 22 497 words - Mature - Serious injuries, injuries recovery, unresolved sexual tension, unresolved romantic tension

Summary: Jaskier is traveling with Geralt when a hunt goes badly wrong and Geralt ends up injured. Geralt soon realizes that the bard can take care of Geralt better than he'd realized, in his own way.

Hide Behind The Mound of Dead Bards - Bones (Doctorbones)

Specs: 17 296 words - Explicit - Temporary character death, Graphic depiction of violence

Summary: Jaskier is really bad at two things: shutting up and staying dead. Luckily, he can do both at the same time...for a while.

faith in transience - unconscious

Specs: 12 532 words - Explicit - Monster of the week, Service top Jaskier, attempted mind control.

Summary: “I learn stuff about you to enrich my songs, thanks very much.” Geralt starts.

“Like what?”

Jaskier strums a chord. “Plenty of things. You always ask the contractor if they want the head or not instead of just showing up with it, because you don’t want to shock people. You eat normal amounts of food when eating in public, instead of your usual awe-inducing giant amount. You sleep more when you’re hurt, but that’s the only way I’d ever know. You’re a bit weird about your potions and you count them a lot.” He glances up and grins. “Shall I continue?”

A handful of contracts go sideways. Recovering is easier with Jaskier there.

when midnight breaks their sleep - SummerFrost

Specs: 16 736 words - Mature - Modern setting, polyamory, polyamory negociation

Summary: The first Snapchat that anyone ever sends Geralt is a picture of his own irritated face.

shrike_princess: can u believe this dumbass finally got a snapchat bc a cute boy asked him nicely

"It wasn't even that nicely," Geralt says flatly.

AKA: The one where Geralt is a bartender and Jaskier sings karaoke.

he, who i love - kinneyb

Specs: 1 279 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Established relationship

Summary: Jaskier looked forward to these nights the most; he was playing in a rundown tavern in a small town near the coast, coins gathered at his feet, knowing that at any moment Geralt would come bursting through the door.

He spun on his heels, strumming his lute with nimble fingers, the mark of a practiced player.

Jaskier had thought he’d reached his peak when he was younger. He had been proven wrong, of course, practice truly did make perfect. He was getting more attention than ever, and only half of it probably had to do with his new songs, all depicting the Witcher’s love story with a bard of the human variety.

He never directly mentioned himself, but the people had made the connection fairly easily, anyway.

Near the Coast - IantoPace

Specs: 2 164 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Dresses

Summary: Geralt finds out some of the feminine things Jaskier likes. This is inspired by the images of Joey Batey & Madeleine Hyland in the woods wearing each other's clothes.

Shoot First, Ask Questions Later - Ladivviniatravestia

Specs: 3 427 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Defining the relationship

Summary: Geralt and Jaskier fuck, then try to define their relationship. Too bad Geralt has no idea what he really wants and Jaskier has been hiding something.

parry, riposte - plutoandpersephone

Specs: 5 230 words - Explicit - Established relationship, competence kink, power dynamics

Summary: "How about it?"

Geralt looks at Jaskier like he’s just started to speak in some long lost, foreign tongue.

"You want to take me on in the sword ring?"

Jaskier challenges Geralt to a bout in the fencing ring. They both get more than they bargained for.

The Coast - NinjaSniperKitty

Specs: 1 856 words - General Audiences - Established relationship, overly protective boyfriend!Geralt

Summary: Geralt takes Jaskier up on his offer to get away and go to the coast for a while. While Geralt sees danger hiding everywhere along the coast, Jaskier hasn't been to the sea in years and only sees a good time!

Sweet, Silky, Soft, and Shiny - Girl_in_Red_Crossing

Specs: 3 251 words - Mature - Inappropriate use of candy

Summary: Just a couple of bros, sucking on sweet things... sharing silky things... lying in soft beds together... (kissing)...

The Witcher Wolf 2: Geralt’s POV - im_fairly_witty.

Specs: 15 338 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Animal transformation

Summary: It's been two weeks since Geralt drove Jaskier away from him on that mountain top and Geralt's been doing his best not to think about it by accepting every contract he comes across. But when a job goes badly he find himself cursed into the form of an injured wolf and is then saved by none other than Jaskier himself, who has no idea that the animal he's taken under his wing is his own witcher. Geralt must now try to alert Jaskier to his real situation and adjust to his new life traveling with the bard, learning several hard but very much needed lessons along the way.

Shadowplay - sospes

Specs: 26 539 words - Mature - BAMF!Jaskier, Espionnage

Summary: Geralt returns to Oxenfurt on a bright May morning to find flowers laid outside Jaskier's rooms and a fresh grave in the cemetery.

Except, as Geralt is about to learn, in Jaskier's world things are never quite what they seem.

An Old Man’s Tale - NotebooksandLaptops

Specs: 1 448 words - General Audiences - External POV, Old age

Summary: At the edge of the village, in a house surrounded by wild-flowers and weeds - re-built from its former crumbling foundations – there lived the Old Man. He’d earnt the rights for the capital O, capital M off of the rest of the villagers barely a week after he’d moved into their humble world. For he had not grown up here, like everyone else did. Yet he settled and settled as if he had always been there. He wandered the cliffsides, the beaches, the streets. He strung shells together and gifted them to the ladies of the village with a wink that betrayed the charming young man he once must have been. He bought the little ceramic pots Alicja sold on the market, and he filled them with weeds as if the weeds were flowers worth showcasing. And – most importantly – he sang.

-///-

Or, Jaskier settles in a costal village towards the end of his life.

For The Joy Of It - vvitchering (Witchering)

Specs: 848 words - Teen & Up Audiences - self esteem issues, body image

Summary: After spending years on The Path together, Jaskier and Geralt finally settle down. Jaskier notices one day that his new sedentary lifestyle has changed him in ways he fears Geralt won't accept.

The Silence Between Heartbeats - anarchycox

Specs: 7 969 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Jskier knows Geralt better than anyone

Summary: Geralt faced off with a sorceress, only instead of her magic killing him, it stole his voice. But this should be an easy fix, he knew many women who could heal this. But that would mean anyone noticing something wrong. He knew he was quiet, but seriously, did no one wonder why he wasn't saying a single thing? Months he traveled silent, no one noticing and it was driving him mad.

Until he runs into Jaskier, who notices immediately that something is wrong.Because of course it is Jaskier.

Who else in the end would it be, who properly saw the White Wolf?

tailored - jeannie_tangerine

Specs: 4 874 words - Explicit - Geralt has a kink and Jaskier is absolutely into it.

Summary: in which Jaskier finds out that Geralt has a kink and is more than glad to indulge it.

oh darling please be mine - kickassfu

Specs: 749 words - General Audiences - Introspective, fluff

Summary: Geralt’s head turns to him just as he’s jumping into his arms. Obviously, he catches Jaskier, in his very strong, very big arms. Still probably processing what’s happening, Geralt’s body is tense, unmoving. Jaskier doesn’t care.

New Monsters Stories - Kathkin

Specs: 20 209 words - Explicit - Urban fantasy, mutual pining

Summary: “So do you have a name?”

“Yeah.” The man who had saved his life less than an hour ago – the white-haired, absurdly buff, weirdly sexy man Jaskier might have called taciturn if he was feeling charitable and surly if he was feeling less so – dug into his second burger.

Jaskier waited. “Are… you going to tell me what it is?”

The man paused mid-bite, and looked at him reproachfully as if to say how dare you. How dare you interrupt me. Can’t you see I’m enjoying my cheeseburger. Can’t you see this cheeseburger is the most important thing in my life right at the moment. He swallowed, and said, “Geralt.”

It turns out almost getting eaten by a werewolf can make your whole life go careening off in a new, terrifying, wondrous, artistically flourishing direction. Who knew?

Professor Pankratz - martistarfighter

Specs: 1 147 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Established relationship

Sumary: “Come teach my class with me tomorrow.” He whispers in the witcher’s ear. He’s sporting a neatly trimmed beard these days, and it tickles Geralt’s neck in the most tempting way.

Geralt chuckles dryly, but the lack of an immediate quip tells him that Jaskier is serious. It’s a little scary how often they can read their minds by now.

“Don’t think so. You’re the teacher, Jask. I’ve got nothing to tell them.”

“But you’re the reason I’m still alive and teaching in the first place. Besides, you can just sit there, look pretty and answer some questions. My students have heard a lot about you, they’ll adore you.”

As someone pointed out, there's too much 'witcher watching out for his idiot' and not enough 'the witcher is a himbo who loves his college educated bard husband, who is qualified to teach' content out there. So I'm fixing it with a self-indulgent ficlet!

and i plan to be forgotten when i’m gone (yes, i’ll be leaving in the fall) - Stockholm_Syndrome

Specs: 18 083 words - Mature - Discussion of assisted suicide, discussion of suicide, depression, curse, no MCD

Summary: “That was more emotional than I expected.” He finally said “I didn’t think I’d have time to share this with you, and I.” Jaskier interrupted himself, as if unsure if he should continue. “I suppose I didn’t think it would upset you so.”

“Jaskier” Geralt growled, not able to express how ludicrous that idea was.

“Yes, I suppose I was wrong there.” Jaskier replied with a helpless shrug.

---- Or, Jaskier is cursed to turn into a monster. He doesn't think this is important information to mention.

Chopsticks - thisgirlsays22

Specs: 12 175 words - Explicit - Piano teacher!Jaskier, friends to lovers, modern setting

Summary: “Yennefer sent me a check for eight lessons for you,” Jaskier said the following weekend, wearing a beige button-down with--

“Does your shirt have owls on it?” Geralt asked, caught somewhere between amusement and horror.

Jaskier looked down and tugged on the front of his shirt as if he had to remind himself what was on it. He beamed at Geralt. “Yeah! Do you like it?”

“Not particularly.”

The smile swiftly disappeared.

“It’s not terrible,” he amended, stepping back to let Jaskier inside the apartment. Then Jaskier’s initial words sank in. “Wait. Yen did what?”

Hanging up on Yennefer was always a mistake.

what’s in a (pet) name? - janie_tangerine

Specs: 1 415 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Fluff, pet names

Summary: "So," he clears his throat one evening, having just rinsed Geralt's now clean, soft white hair, and damn how he wishes the man would just take care of it somewhat decently, "I was wondering."

"What?" Geralt says after he doesn't go on for a bit. It didn't sound particularly annoyed. Right on.

"This is a very broad question, but I was just curious, no need to answer if you don't want to -" Jaskier starts, having learned that giving the man a way out is always a good bet.

"Just get on with it, won't you?"

Jaskier clears his throat, leans down, puts his elbows on the rim of the tub. "How do you feel about pet names?"

Or: in which Jaskier has a question for Geralt. It doesn't get answered the way he had assumed.

As Long As You Were Mine For A Little While - whisperedstories

Specs: 12 815 words - Explicit - Friends with benefits, mutual pining

Summary: It starts with Jaskier offering a helping hand when Geralt needs to let off some steam. The thing is, Jaskier likes taking care of Geralt—however he can—and Geralt lets him, so he just keeps doing it.

And as long as they never talk about how he's in love with Geralt, they're both happy with the arrangement, right? Right.

Of Debt and Debtors - sp_oops

Specs: 5 136 words - Explicit - Semi-public sex

Summary: Two bros, chillin' in a ta-vern, five feet apart ‘cause they—fuck, they really missed each other, not that Geralt will ever admit it—and anyway, in a minute here, they're gonna have to get closer than they ever thought possible. (Or, sometime after Episode 6, they meet again, Jaskier’s in trouble again, and Geralt saves them. Again.)

This One I Shall Choose - DorkMagician

Specs: 3 751 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Quiet pining, the exact moment Geralt falls in love

Summary: Geralt falls in the river fishing for a djinn and winds up soaked. Jaskier sees the opportunity to do as his mother told him a long time ago and takes the first step when he offers Geralt his handkerchief.

Skin Deep - Sospes

Specs: 8 935 words- Teen & Up Audiences - Fluff, getting together, non consensual tattooing, implied/referenced rape, implied/referenced childhood abuse

Summary: “What’s that?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier blinks. “It’s a tattoo,” he says. “Have you never seen a tattoo before, Geralt?”

Geralt fights the urge to roll his eyes. “I know it’s a tattoo,” he says. “What’s it a tattoo of?”

They say there are 5 ways to show your love (and I don’t know any of them) - Mayathelittlebee

Specs: 5 989 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Fluff, humor

Summary: May be if Geralt stopped being so dramatic for a moment he'd finally realize that loving Jaskier is not as hard as he thinks.

I don’t mind if I’m with you - janie_tangerine

Specs: 11 152 words - Explicit - In which Jaskier has to quelle his murder instincts concerning how much Geralt’s life sucks

Summary: or: five times plus one in which Jaskier finds out that Geralt is missing on good life experiences and promptly sees to fix it.

Fill Me Up - Mysticmajestic

Specs: 402 words - Teen & Up Audiences - Romance

Summary: Geralt only knows how to give, and give, until he's empty. What is he to do with Jaskier, who only wants to give back to him?

Little Things - QueenForADay

Specs: 3 315 words - General Audiences - Domestic fluff, Ciri ships it

Summary: In the first few months of knowing the Witcher, he experienced first-hand how shut-off Geralt could be with the world around him and those within it.

At some point, and he can’t pinpoint where, that shroud started to slip away. He saw how much Geralt could, and does, actually care. It’s as fierce as the way he fights.

They spend a great deal of time watching each other; when they finally fell into a bed together, they spent most of their nights learning what the other liked, mapping the plains of skin and muscle underneath the other.

But it’s the other things, the little things, that Jaskier thinks about the most.

O, Empathy - almostnectarine

Specs: 32 624 words - Mature - Body swap, friends to lovers, questfic

Summary: “How did you manage,” asked Geralt, with infinite patience and only a desire to know the facts, and not at all a little meanhearted glee, “to insult a sorcerer while his tongue was down your throat?”

“Don’t make me recount the entire sordid affair, Geralt,” said Jaskier, with a surprising note of desperation breaking through his gruff monotone. “I’m already having a rather shit day and all I’ve done so far is wake up.”

“In my body,” said Geralt.

“Yes,” said Jaskier, with the insolent cadence that was unmistakably Jaskier’s, but in Geralt’s voice, emerging from Geralt’s face and frame.

“And I’ve got yours,” said Geralt, from Jaskier’s.

and for that love to be with men - sebviathan

Specs: 6 734 words -Mature - Emotional constipation, self discovery, self acceptance, geralt is a whole ass gay man who doesn’t know what being gay is

Summary: Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it—living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling.

The enormity of Geralt's desire disgusts him.

at last, at last, at last, oh I thought you’d never ask - elegantwings

Specs: 15 040 words - Explicit - Arranged marriage, slow burn, trans!Jaskier, in this house we love Yennefer of Vengerberg

Summary: Geralt is given firm instructions from Vesemir: He is to get married to a Redanian noblewoman in the hopes of improving relations between witchers and the rest of the world. Once the ceremony is over, he plans to drop his new spouse off at their new home and carry on with his life as he always has. Little does he know, his future wife is not a woman, and not so easily left behind. He's not really sure he'd like to get rid of Jaskier, either. Over the next several years, they learn to navigate their new relationship, first while Jaskier completes his degree, and then when Jaskier insists on accompanying him on the road. And no matter what anyone else has to say about it, Geralt is absolutely not in love with his husband.

it’s what my heart just yearns to say - chasing_the_sterek

Specs: 1 071 words - Teen & Up - Slice of life, Jaskier: what if I found a way to make Geralt admit when he needs things

Summary: "If you could have one blessing," Jaskier says, eyes lit green by the fire between them, "What would it be?"

Geralt looks at him. The whetstone is smooth and friction-warm in his palm, edges rounded from use. It's been with him for a long time: almost four years.

Jaskier has been with him for even longer, but he's never done this. Geralt squints at him, but only thing different to this morning is the yellow firelight changing the colour his eyes appear.

"What," he says.

not a goodbye, a thank you - Potrix

Specs: 2 915 words - Mature - Graphic depiction of illness, near death experience, talk about death, found family

Summary: Somewhere further in the courtyard, Lambert yells out a colourful curse while Ciri cackles maniacally. Eskel is taunting the former through his laughter, and Vesemir’s voice joins in with barked commands and corrections once the clang of steel against steel continues. Somewhere above them, on one of the balconies overlooking the yard, Geralt can hear the scratch of quill against parchment as Yennefer works on her correspondence, interrupted every now and again by the tapping of nails against an inkpot.

He realises what’s wrong an instant before everyone else grows suddenly, eerily still; Jaskier is quiet.

After Summers of Fasting (I Feel Hunger At Last) - Artemis_Unbound

Specs: 3 793 words - Teen & Up Audiences - A six pack you can see is not a good thing, Jaskier tricks Geralt into Not Being Starving anymore, Love confessions

Summary: Defined six-pack abs are a sign that someone has been starving and dehydrating themselves, not a sign of incredible strength. It's just not healthy.

Jaskier sees Geralt shirtless for the first time, sees all that defined musculature, and is Horrified. He's slept with enough warriors and soldiers to know what that means. And he decides, this stops now.

Tunes Without Words - foxy_mulder

Specs: 22 021 words - Mature - Self-esteem issues, past abuse, miscommunications, misunderstandings

Summary: The plan is this:

He will note all the things that annoy Geralt, and he will stop doing them, and then Geralt will want him around. It will work.

It has to work, because Jaskier cannot be left behind.

The Path Not Taken - sospes

Specs: 40 149 words - Mature - Extraordinarily bad misunderstanding, Idiots in love, Explicit sexual content

Summary: Jaskier comes across an injured witcher in a backwoods town, months after the events of the dragon hunt. It all just sort of escalates from there.

#The Witcher #Geraskier #Geralt of Rivia #Jaskier #My Posts #Witcher Fic #Fic Rec #Masterpost #100n #150n #200n

253 notes · View notes

hennyjolzen · 3 years

Quote

Smell Your Way Home A razzle of citrus. Cut grass. Spike of bergamot crushed between dogteeth. Star-scent. Shiver-musk. Your antennae quiver with sparkling electrons. You hum and skim through oak trees, singing with your whole body until you reach it: the hollowed out oak trunk. The place your brothers and sister have been covering with a perfume called 'home'. "Swarming bees locate a new hive and attract the rest of the colony through the use of a pheromone called Nasanov that includes such familiar terpenoids as geraniol, nerolic acid, and citral acid. Produced by glands placed parenthetically around a worker bee’s stinger, beekeepers have noted that the Nasanov pheromone can be detected by a naked human nose and smells of lemongrass. This is a fact that beekeepers take advantage of when they use lemongrass essential oil to trap bees or introduce them to a new 'hive'. In fact, bees' lives are intimately orchestrated by smells. The smells of flowers and, most importantly, the pheromones secreted by their queen. The queen coordinates behavior, hive-building, defensive techniques, and nectar-collecting strategies via her pheromones. Interestingly enough, if you remove a queen and wait for her 'smell' to blow away, you insert in another queen and drastically alter the collective behavior of the hive. The bees live in the Queen’s smell, her atmospheric aroma, like we live inside culture, unwittingly letting it orchestrate and organize our tasks and lives. Beekeepers have observed that when dealing with an aggressive hive, if you remove the queen and let her pheromones fade before adding in a 'gentle' queen substitute, you can create the conditions for a 'calm' colony. "Smell is vital across species. Dogs are the most popular example, smelling oncoming seizures in human owners, unearthing Iron Age corpses, and locating prized truffles blooming darkly below the duff. In Texas, cadaver compound was injected into oil pipes, and the pipes were observed for vulture activity to locate where the pipes had sprung a leak. The vultures honed in on the smell of corpse emanating from the broken pipes. Elephants choose the most nutritious, highest sugar-content fruit, by way of a scent evaluation. Recent studies at Oxford University’s Department of Zoology demonstrated that Scopoli shearwater birds navigate great distances across water by way of 'olfactory maps'. The study shows that many other birds find their way home by smell. The ocean is an odoriferous landscape. It is a series of perfumed songlines. "The idea of songlines might not be that much of a stretch. The Vibration Theory of Smell posits that just as smell is, in a manner, touch – an interaction between scent molecules 'touching' into the olfactory cleft of our nose and setting off a domino-chain of electrons – so smell might also be sound. First formulated by Malcom Dyson in 1928, it suggests that a molecule’s smell is due to its vibration frequency. The theory has received pushback from the 'shape' theory, which posits that molecular shape is more important than vibration, but as a poet, I am drawn to the lyrical nature of smell as song. Perhaps that’s why, faced by impoverished smell vocabulary, we rely on phrases like 'chord' or 'note' or 'symphony' when describing perfumes and complex aromas. "Humans, although we live in a culture biased towards visual and auditory stimuli, receive a remarkable amount of information via smell. Recent research has upended the myth that humans are smell deficient. The human nose is capable of distinguishing over a trillion distinct odors. A Scottish woman named Joy Milne can accurately make a diagnosis of Parkinson with her nose. In fact, her nose is a finer diagnostic tool than any technology, picking up the disease years before it even registers on traditional tests. It may be that this skill isn’t just her superpower. We are all making subconscious decisions based on smell all the time, like the worker bees inside the pheromonal ocean of the queen’s influence. In a famous study nicknamed the 'sweaty T-shirt' experiment, a Swiss scientist Claus Wedekind showed that people exposed to T-shirts soaked in different people’s body odor, unknowingly and consistently picked the T-shirt from the person with the histocompatibility gene (MHC) that was most different from their own. The MHC gene is responsible for the growth of a healthy immune system and it has been shown that mates that represent a diverse combination of MHC genes produce healthier, more immunologically robust children. Studies aside, most people have had the experience, at least once in their life, of smelling a lover’s body odor and knowing deeply, somatically, that there is chemistry. What if we didn’t date via visual cues, but dated via smell? Would we make better partner choices? "We smell events before they happen. Cut grass blows downwind. Bad smells shepherd us away from fire, from pollutants, from eating rotten food. We smell events that have happened. And memory is intimately entangled with smell. A perfect blend of lily and gardenia summons my grandmother with such vivacity that the rest of her easily materializes: I see her powder blue dress, her dove broach, her mischievous eyes. Long dead, I open her old perfume jar and suddenly I can touch her again, speak to her. Smell is often the doorway into other sensory experiences. The Song of Songs, one of the most popular parts of the Jewish Bible, is a glossary of erotic smells. The smell of spikenard and aloes and myrrh leads us through the Gospels. Jesus is constantly anointed, washed, articulated by smell. As a writer, I have observed in the writing I love and the writing that I create, that smell is one of the most effective ways to build an embodied world. We know that most of taste is really smell. The first mouthful of wine on a summer night. The dark cherry of black coffee sipped as the sun spills into your living room. "The artist Kate McLean, interested in biosemiotics defined as the exchange of sensory signals between animals and their environments, has created a project called Sensory Maps. She gets people to 'map' their cities by smell and creates complex 'smellscape' maps with the aggregate information she receives from participants. Mostly focusing on urban environments, McLean has suggested these maps can be utilized by Urban planners and developments. Where should smells be preserved? Where should we not develop, due to a bad odor? Diving into her work, I was immediately reminded of Bernie Krause and his Acoustic Niche Hypothesis in relationship to Soundscape Ecology. The theory is that animals in a shared ecosystem develop different tones and rhythms that collaborate like an orchestra. Each sound finds its perfect channel so that it doesn’t 'interrupt' anyone else’s song. "Poetically thinking with the Vibration theory of smell as being related to sound, I wonder what an Aroma Niche Hypothesis would look like? Do ecosystems evolve complex symphonies of smell – fungal, vegetal, animal, elemental – that all cooperate and combine into a polyphony? And if this is true, what of anthropogenic smell? What about smell pollution that is so pervasive it almost, especially in the smell maps of Kate Mclean, overwhelms any other biological, environmentally excreted perfumes? What if birds can’t find their song/smell lines across the ocean? What if we are wearing so much synthetic perfume that we can’t make a correct olfactory assessment of a potential mate? "I’m not trying to answer any questions. I’m trying to smell them. I’ve always had a problematically sensitive nose. I can smell when someone is sick before they know it. There are certain mycelium I know by a taste as I walk over their hidden underground bodies, not their visible fruiting mushrooms. I have often thought I will know I have found my partner when my nose tells me. My nose will know, better than my mind ever will. In fact, I harbor a deep, mushy belief that my nose is my most direct connection to my heart. "What if, taking our inspiration from Kate McLean, and bringing it out of human-dominated environments, we tried to retrain our noses to detect subtle cues. What if you mapped your neighborhood? A nearby trail? Keep a notebook of smell observations. Don’t worry about using smell words. Make something up. Use a color. A sound. A feeling. The English language needs to be composted. It needs neologisms and kennings that properly reflect our ability to detect over a trillion different 'smell songs'. Smell is haptic. It reflects our intimacy with the world every time we breathe in volatile molecules and let them cascade into our brain chemistry. Smell is song, vibrating with melodic messages about behavior and mates and environmental hazards. And smell is deeply erotic. It connects us with our deep somatic appetites. Maybe it even guides us toward our ecological olfactory niche. Just like the bees follow the lemongrass pheromone to their new hive, maybe smell can show us how to get 'home': home, for me, being a state of mind. A state of mind where I realize everything is alive. Everything is funky. Musty. Lusting. Loving. Everything, even without a voice, without a sound, is talking.

Sophie Strand

5 notes · View notes

chiseler · 3 years

Text

Ballard’s Abandoned Landscapes

If you set reality at noon on an analog clock, most science fiction would range from about 4:30 to 6. Philip K. Dick might ring in at 7:30. J.G. Ballard? 9 pm or your personal bedtime.

I’m talking about early, ‘60s Ballard, simply because that’s what hit me first and still hits me hardest. I recently bought (downloaded to my Kindle – interesting to think where that might fit into the Ballard world) his complete stories, but I’ve stopped dead, for now, at “Terminal Beach,” one of the finest short stories in the English language. So that’s the era I’m going to talk about. I’m an old fart and entitled.

It’s hard to pin down what defines any writer, what sets him apart from any other writer. In Ballard’s case, beyond the bizarre settings and sprung mental framework, I think it’s the unique uniting of personal isolation and claustrophobia with a sense of unbordered physical and internal space.

Many of the stories are set in deserts or uninhabited/disinhabited, windswept nowheres. He seldom introduces more than two or three characters, who often interact like cyborgs hurling dogturds at a target close to each others’ heads. Things happen without explanation and often without resolution.

Several of the stories deal with Vermillion Sands, an artistic community of the future where the world of art has run aesthetically and conceptually amok. Statues move and crawl, poetry drifts on the winds, ideas (and ideals) that were set up to evolve across the landscape peter out like grandpa in his dotage. But if you look at the impetus behind the individual elements, most of them have been realized, in one form or another, in the half century since Ballard wrote these stories.

At the uber-level, he knew. He saw. He envisioned. Many writers of SF’s “Golden Age” pictured isolated developments surprisingly well. They understood how technology would (or might) unfold. What Ballard saw was the human drive and how, in a technological society, it could be revealed. He was like Bradbury that way, and it may be the universe’s quiet salute that they died so temporally near each other.

I might have made it sound like Ballard was dreary or empty, a drum beaten in a deserted warehouse. Sometimes he was. Not every story is a resonant gem. But at his (often) best, he brought together characters, or a character and an environment, with such understated intensity that they caught fire without oxygen. People you would never want to know, never want to meet, never want to think about sizzle and sparkle in their own personal skies. I don’t know if that gives any kind of useful image, but it’s as close as I can come to pinning them against Ballard’s backdrop.

So let’s look at a few of those stories from the late '50s, early '60s.

Along with the sense of abandonment, there is often a dissolution of personal experience. In “The Last World of Mr. Goddard,” an unexceptional man living in a closely locked house keeps a miniature world alive in crate. How real is this tiny world and how connected to his? We find out to his and our chagrin. (It might make you think of Theodore Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God,” but it goes in an entirely different direction.)

“The Watch-Towers” presents the landscape overseen by an evenly-spaced grid of floating towers, obviously peopled, but no one knows by whom, from where or why. Nor, like the inhabitants below, are we allowed to find out. The towers simply are. But there are repercussions for ignoring or disdaining them.

The completely isolated characters of “Manhole 69” are subjects of an experiment that has removed the need for sleep. They live and interact without mental pause 24 hours a day. What happens to their unrelieved minds? And can they tell how much of the crushing claustrophobia is outside, how much in?

“Mr. F. is Mr. F.” merges two of Ballard’s obsessions: isolation/dissolution, and time as an inexorable enemy. Mr. F., confined to his bed and managed by his overbearing wife, is becoming younger by the day but not internally stronger. The cycle he goes through is especially terrifying for being, in that confined bedroom, absurdly mundane.

The battle with time in “The Garden of Time” is even more isolated, as a couple keep the depredations of an advancing war rabble at bay by picking a time flower each evening – while the flowers, which refuse to bud anew, ever dwindle in number: Time can be held at bay, but it will be the victor at ages’ end.

“Chronopolis” is a deserted city, the result of an edict which forbid clocks, watches and all observance of time’s passage. We follow the underground progress of renegade isolates driven by the need to know when.

Again, from these descriptions it may seem that Ballard ignores character for theme and textured absurdity. Actually, almost all of Ballard’s early stories are driven by character, fully realized human beings set in skewed or inverted situations and let go to wend their way, accepting the impossible even while battling against it.

Mangon, “The Sound-Sweep,” operates a sonovac. Like your Hoover or Electrolux, it ingests the unwanted and untidy, but in this case the refuse is sound, suctioned with exquisite care. Mangon can remove the harsh overlays of a cathedral’s yattering tourists while leaving intact the chant-soak of the stones. But what most defines him is his love for the over-the-hill opera singer, Madame Gioconda, and his sad, resigned response to her gift of derision.

Ballard for the most part ignores humor. It simply doesn’t fit into his dense, choking worlds. But he lets loose a volley of exuberant howlers in “Passport to Eternity.” A couple with all the solar system at their disposal for a vacation attempt to plan the perfect getaway. This leads them to investigate a scattering of underground firms offering … what they outline in half a dozen pages would fill an entire Philip K. Dick novel. Ballard slaps one bizarre and tortured idea after another onto the page, held in place by Laurel and Hardy glue.

And, of course, there’s “The Terminal Beach.” Wandering alone among the concrete ruins of Eniwetok, the island staging grounds for atomic and hydrogen bomb tests, Traven (B. Traven?) loses himself inside the maze of pseudo-buildings erected to examine the effects of mankind’s most unrestrained energy on its most vulnerable structures.

He talks with his lost family and to the skeletal remains of a Japanese flier tied to a porch chair. He is visited by a scientific team who cannot coax him to leave his vigil, because he is trying to find – what? Justification? The past? A sense of why he has no future? Afterwards, you might think Borges, or in some sense Nabokov. But while you’re reading it, you won’t think of anything else.

by Derek Davis

3 notes · View notes

helenas-reads · 3 years

Text

Where The Crawdads Sing Review

Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

I’ll admit, I don’t usually read contemporary fiction; fantasy is my niche. But this book is undeniably amazing and impactful no matter what genres you enjoy.

It took me about three to four chapters to get into Owens’s writing style and form connections with the characters, but once I did, I latched onto Kya and her story.

The beginning of Kya’s story forced me to acknowledge my own privilege, and how I genuinely couldn’t fathom how she survived everything she endured. Yet, at the same time, I was also inspired that Kya rose to the challenge and did survive, and I can only hope that I would have done the same.

One thing I noticed was the immense hypocrisy in the novel. There are several esteemed white pastors and “productive” members of society, all whom are revered and admired. Yet the only people who helped Kya were Jumpin’ and Mabel, a middle-aged black couple who both endured so much unfairness and hate from the prejudiced whites. This theme struck me because in today’s world, there are so many people who claim to be inherently good, and act all holier than though, but yet, they are the ones perpetuating so much discord, and instilling hatred and evil in the world. And the ones who are good, who truly care for others, aren’t the ones doing it for social status or praise, but instead, out of the goodness of their hearts. We need more people like Jumpin’ and Mabel in our world.

As a young woman, Kya’s experience with men resonated with me. At times, I was cringing, wishing I could tell her Chase was no good, but yet, I realized I had been in her position before. Sometimes, you fail to see that something right in front of you isn’t good for you; other times, you just don’t care.

Tate was the second-largest cause of internal conflict for me. I adored him in Part 1. I was so happy that Kya finally had someone who understood and accepted her, and who cared for her in the way she deserved. But when he left, and even more so, when he came back just to decide “he couldn’t do this anymore,” I hated him. He knew that Kya couldn’t handle being abandoned once more, after she already opened herself up to him. But he left anyways. Now, I understand why he did what he did: Kya would have been miserable in the busy world of society that Tate was living in at college. But he absolutely had no right to decide that for her, and to abandon her without warning. That was, in a sense, worse than her family leaving her. It just felt like the final nail on the coffin for me. However, I felt that Tate was Kya’s soulmate and vice versa. I think that everything that happened matured them both, and taught them things. While it wasn’t specifically about Tate, when she landed on the sandbar after mourning “a life defined by rejections,” she realized:

“As she pushed off, she knew no one would ever see this sandbar again. The elements had created a brief and shifting smile of sand, angles just so. The next time, the next current would design another sandbar, and another, but never this one. Not the one who caught her. The one who told her a thing or two.” (page 214)

I particularly love this quote because it talks about the randomness and uniqueness of every moment in the universe. While lots of things might be universal, there only is one you, and you’re the only one that experiences things the way you do. I feel as though that moment was a turning point for Kya, one of strength.

I don’t think Kya was every truly okay with being alone; there was always a part of her that seemed to long for acceptance and belonging. This makes sense, as humans are social creatures. But I do think she learned to live with it, and learned to find fulfillment in the best ways she could: nature, small conversations with Jumpin, reading, and poetry.

The ending was a bit of a cliffhanger. I genuinely never considered that she could have been guilty at all, but in retrospect, she never denied it. It made my heart ache for her that she did such a thing and was able to compartmentalize it for so many years, and a part of it ached for Tate, that he never had considered she could have been guilty, but loved her and protected her all the same. And to be quite honest, I felt absolutely no sympathy for Chase. I don’t know if that makes me a bad person, but from someone who loves and feels for Kya, I honestly resent him for what he did to Kya and what he attempted to do. I don’t think he ever would have been satiated, honestly. And with the way Kya grew up, and who she is, I don’t know if she really had a strong sense of empathy or guilt. From a natural and survival perspective, she was protecting herself, in a sense.

I loved this book. From the bottom of my heart, I loved this story and I loved Kya; this book will be one that has forever changed me. It’s taught me that as humans, we are stronger and more resilient than we think, and we are not so different from the rest of nature. It’s taught me that there’s beauty in loving, and giving yourself to another person, but there’s also always a risk. People leave, but sometimes people come back. It’s far too dark and hopeless to allow yourself to get swallowed up by the magnitude of accepting you’re alone in your experiences in this world, so it’s better to choose to be optimistic, to believe that you’re not alone. I believe the latter is true, of course. Whether it’s your blood family or your chosen family or the person you greet on the street every morning, humanity is made up of little connections that tie us to each other. You can’t do something to one person without harming another, and I think this novel shows us the interconnectedness of it all. I loved this novel because it was raw, honest, and inspiring. Kya’s story is one that everyone should read, and hopefully, one from which they can learn.

#book review #review #books #book #reading #bookworm #booklover #where the crawdads sing #delia owens #delia owens author #booknerd #book reviewer #reviews #contemporary fiction #novel #inspiring #philosophical #book vibes

13 notes · View notes

age-of-shadows · 4 years

Text

yet another Avantasia theory by yours truly on how all the albums are connected

*ahem* OKAY, fellow avantasian brothers, sisters, siblings... We’re all reunited here in this post because I had a big brain moment about a couple of hours ago and somehow managed to connect all of the Avantasia albums as well as uncover what the actual Avantasia world is apart from Tobi’s definition of it.

This post is probably going to be really long and I already would like to apologise if there’s anything you don’t understand because I didn’t phrase it right (english ain’t my first language so... there might be a lot of mistakes), plus, I’m not Tobias so I can be completely wrong about this but HEY, THEORIES. I don’t even know if anyone’s even thought about this but I’ve literlaly never read about it and trust me, I’ve done a lot of Avantasia research in this year. And I’m aware it’s very, VERY hard to get the album plots right (man... I’ve spent months trying to figure out The Wicked Trilogy and Mystery of Time/Ghostlights, and even if I now think I have a clearer idea of what they’re about, whenever I listen to them I discover new things about them); but I do know reading other theories help people understand the lore and I hope this helps in some way.

Here we go: what is Avantasia? Apart from it obviously being the name of the project, Tobias describes it as a “world beyond human imagination”. At first, this definition is actually very clear and direct, isn’t it? Specially in The Metal Opera since all the story is well written down, and besides, the lyrics are clearer. Anyway, I have just finished reading the story from the booklets (I have to look up the one from part one because I only own part two for now... whoops) and I can do a summary of it:

"Many ways lead to Rome. Seven times one way for all that leads to a world beyond our inagination."

This is said in one of the seven books that is part of the seven books and seven seals. What are these seals and books even? Well, if you’re only able to listen to the music and don’t have access to the booklets like I did just now, you for sure have noticed the seals do have a big part in the plot. These seven seals were made to be able to enter the spiritual world in flesh and blood. And yes, you guessed it: the spiritual world is Avantasia. They were made by three magicians of the universe thousands of years ago because they knew mankind would be born and they would need this spiritual world for themselves to find peace, and they should also take care of it.

Now: the famous Avantasia Tower, what even is it? Well, some higher entity that can be concieved as a God, maybe not much of a good one, though, is sealed in this Tower. If the seven seals were brought to the Tower, Avantasia would be locked and this God would break free, bringing chaos to mankind. And what would happen if Avantasia is locked? Humans would lose this spiritual world, and when things get tough, they wouldn’t be able to turn anywhere to save themselves, and who knows if that would lead to their destruction.

So, Avantasia has to be kept alive and passed on to the newer generations.

Also, one is also able to reach Avantasia with their spirit only (this is what Gabriel does), but it’s dangerous since it’s as if their soul trascends and so their body is left in our flesh and blood world. Could this also mean that, if a soul dies in Avantasia, it will never return to its material body? Who knows? Definitely not me, but anyway! Let’s keep going!

Now that we know what Avantasia is, how is it connected to the other three stories if it’s never really mentioned at all? How could we know? Again, this is just a theory and I’m probably wrong.

Let’s go into The Wicked Trilogy then, which is probably the most abstract album and also the hardest to understand, maybe. I already talked about my headcanons about Scarecrow in a post, but I definitely think he’s got some sort of mental illness and that’s why he does the things he does. Anyway... the setting is kind of confusing, but to get a clear starting point: Roy Khan’s character is named Psychiatrist, and he’s the first one that appears in the album along with Scarecrow. There’s a theory going around that this story happens in a hospital, or maybe a psychiatric, so we can guess Scarecrow is hospitalised because of this illness. However... does the rest of the story happen in the hospital physically? This is when Avantasia comes in:

I don’t believe Scarecrow’s journey takes place in the hospital... but in Avantasia. Taking into account almost all of the characters are his own feelings or just parts of him (aka, Bob Catley being Conscience, Jorn Lande being Mephistopheles as a form of temptation...) except for Amanda Somerville’s character, who definitely exists in real life as Scarecrow’s real love interest; it makes a lot of sense. But, oh, how can that world be Avantasia if none of the elements described in The Metal Opera aren’t there? Well, I won’t write the conclusion just yet, but the Avantasia world in The Wicked Trilogy really looks like how we can perceive Scarecrow himself: empty, cold, fucked up... Can you see where this is going?

And now, getting into The Mystery of Time and Ghostlights, there is a very, VERY clear reference to the Avantasia world we see in The Metal Opera, in Savior in the Clockwork. Our protagonist Aaron Blackwell is working non stop in a mantlepiece clock whose hands don’t move for some reason, he overworks himself to the point he loses conscience... or as he says in the booklet notes, he loses the conscience “he had been used to”; in anyway, he passes out on the table. This is kind of similar to how Gabriel gets into Avantasia, isn’t it? Plus, the lyrics of this song are very, very interesting...

“Now am I half asleep or half unconscious, Half 'adream'? I can't move as I am stuck in bright lucidity I can feel and hear and see But I won't comprehend I see fire that I won't decipher I see giant evil tower to a blackened sky I feel blessed with evidence of what I can't define Swinging blade of the lowering perpendicular I see clarity I won't remember Do I dream Is it only fantasy and matter just a thought I see And time is all they need to seal away eternity”

“Giant evil tower”, “seal away eternity”... Yes, that is definitely Avantasia, a version that’s more close to the The Metal Opera’s Avantasia than the one in The Wicked Trilogy. Aaron accidentally gets into Avantasia... the real Avantasia... and this, my friends, is why the Scientists and Magician go to Aaron and ask him for help: they somehow know he has seen the real thing.

This mystery of time... it has something to do with Avantasia, this is why they’re keeping it as a secret, just like the three clerics in The Metal Opera.

Now... Ghostlights, which is more symbolic than this previous album... and I think you can now guess why: it mainly takes part in Avantasia, during Let The Storm Descend Upon you is when it happens, precisely. I have no idea if the Mystery of a Blood Red Rose video can serve as a clue, but Aaron falls unconscious in the end so... perhaps he entered the Avantasia world in the spiritual form, however... that’s not the same Avantasia world he had been to previously, this is more like Scarecrow’s Avantasia in a way.

In this Avantasia world, it’s where Aaron finds these Ghostlights, as well as some of his Scientists mates, did they get in all together? Perhaps it was the Magician who let them into this sort of spiritual world. This whole album really does seem to happen in another dimension, I already talked about the final tracks in my Aaron-Entity theory post, but they make it seem as if Aaron trascends to another plane completely. And the voices calling Aaron? Very much similar to Gabriel’s inner voices in The Metal Opera.

Last but not least, my favorite: Moonglow. We’ve got this Misplaced Entity, who’s thrown into a world they have no place in. They seek shelter in the night, the only place they’re comfortable in, until, when we reach the time the album is set in, they run to never come back to that one place, hiding from the dawn.

Now... How does Entity enter Avantasia? Easy: They enter in Ghost in the Moon, pretty quickly I must say. Let’s say... the glow of the moon is they gateway to Avantasia. Realized how they start talking about turning into a different being? That happens when you enter the spiritual world through your actual spirit, just like what happened to Gabriel (his appearance changes to fit the world). All the night, mysterious, eerie world in Moonglow is Avantasia.

I think all of this is enough to reach a conclusion:

There’s not only one Avantasia... there’s thousands, millions, even. Though, there is one real Avantasia, which is the core: that’s the Avantasia that appears in The Metal Opera, and the one Aaron sees when he passes out. Then, what are the other Avantasias? Easy: the connection each human has to the core, which means each human has a unique way of experiencing that connection; that is how the core of Avantasia is kept alive, even without letting every human into this core (let’s remember, it could be dangerous if the core of Avantasia was locked by humans).

This way, we can deduce how each of the protagonists experiences Avantasia: Gabriel goes to the core; Scarecrow and Entity experience Avantasia as a gateaway from their real, tormented lives and try to find happiness there instead of in the flesh and blood world; Aaron gets into the core by accident but, later on in Ghostlights, he explores his own connection, related to his thirst for knowledge... Remember?

"Many ways lead to Rome. Seven times one way for all that leads to a world beyond our inagination."

I think this is it for now... It is now 1am and trust me, I’ve tried my best to explain myself, so I hope you can understand this!

#avantasia #god this is LONG #anyway i'm off to sleep now #was fun to spend like... 3 hours writing this down

32 notes · View notes

doomedandstoned · 3 years

Text

Gangrened Conjure Dizzying Atmosphere in ‘Deadly Algorithm’

~Review by Billy Goate~

Before us lies an enigma called 'Deadly Algorithm' (2021) by Finnish band GANGRENED, whom we've introduced you to before, when they dropped that wonderfully dreary doomer 'We Are Nothing' (2014). Let me share with you the diary of my thoughts as I immersed myself in their recently released full-length.

Deadly Algorithm by Gangrened

Deadly Algorithm starts with gentle, quiet picking that echoes faintly, but already surrounds us with a strange, if inviting, airspace. A melodic line develops as "Harrbåda" gains volume, building it seems towards a crescendo -- then suddenly stopping as a drumroll interrupts. The atmosphere returns to quirks and quarks, increasingly distorted notes, spikes of reverberating rhythm. All the while, the same short impermanent melodic motif makes its statement, until it flitters away into the void.

Deadly Algorithm by Gangrened

"Triptaani" makes a strong entrance, this time with galled vocal attack and a slow, but strong, guitar lead girded by the fuzz-sparked gears of bass and drum languidly moving this machine along. A hail of shredding follows, with cymbals crashing to a throbbing beat, leading to one ardent chord laid upon another. Eventually the pace slows to a crawl, with dissonant harmonies, and a wild solo from Jon Imbernon that's almost overcome by the industrial crunch of Lassi Männikkö's dumming, Joakim Udd's vile spew of noise, Mikko Mannistö's declamatory singing.

Deadly Algorithm by Gangrened

"Hologrammi" features more familiar doom pacing with a searing riffage, a slow burn flow of bass and drums, and clean (but pissed off) crooning. It's surrounded by a mesmerizing jumble of pedal effects, noise, downtuned instrumental buzz, and crackling amps -- of which make its climactic moment of vocal delivery emphatic and powerful.

Deadly Algorithm by Gangrened

Intricate guitar trilling action introduces “Kuningatar” and it sounds almost like temelos dancing upon its appointed harmonic scale in those opening moments. By the time the rest of the crew sounds off, it turns into a frightening ensemble, indeed. I imagine this would be quite chilling to experience in a live setting. While the vocals feel swallowed up in the great reverberating wall of sound, it seems to add to the mystique of the whole dim sound environment. Psychedelic noodling returns six minutes and if you listen carefully you can hear a seething malediction pronounced sternly beneath the fray of scattered noise, synth, and pedal effects. Great doom returns to ground us to reality and the band improvises a swirl of activity that makes me think of the wandering spirits released from the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Deadly Algorithm by Gangrened

”Triangeli” grabs hold of us with a rumbling bass line that establishes the song’s basic theme, soon to be reinforced by guitar. Meanwhile, words are spoken with accented cymbals and hypnotic drumming. The song ends with whispered lyrics uttered over a soundgarden of riffage, soft cymbals, omnipotent bass rumble, and the cycling sounds of amp feedback. I don't know the words, and the singer refuses to share them, so that means what he's singing is left up to your fertile imagination. Or you can just enjoy the vocal aesthetic and what it contributes to this dense, dark atmosphere.

A cathartic journey, indeed, which I ventured on while I was in an especially discouraged and pissed off mood. Even though I understood not its words, I felt its sentiment and it was in some way cleansing. Available digitally, on vinyl and compact disc as an independent release (order here).

Interviewing Gangrened Guitarist Jon Imbernon

By Billy Goate

You've been a band for quite a while. I understand you are one of the founding members, too. How did Gangrened form to begin with?

Well, we were a bunch of guys living in the same area around ostrobotnia, between kokkola and new karleby, here in the center west coast of finland. so few of us had the idea to do the band so we asked the others, but none of those guys except me are still in the band. high level of mobility because studies in this area of small towns, to bigger cities of Finland.

It sounds like there are challenges keeping a band together in Ostrobotnia? I imagine it makes it ver5y challenging to get new band members to replace the old. Is there much of a music scene to speak of?

Yeah, actually I'm not from here myself. I'm Basque/Spanish and in the specific area I live, like around 110 kilometers or so, there's no real bands or scene, but if you go forward you reach Oulu in the north or Seinajoki, bigger cities with more bands and such. And yes, from the exact spot I live now, I have needed to look more than 100 kms to find new members. I'm moving in a near future to Tampere, so that should help in strengthening the line-up.

So how long has the most recent crew of Gangrened been together?

Since May of 2015, just after some dates we played with Bongzilla in Finland, the entire line-up shifted.

Gangrened basically means "gangrene" right?

It's like "corrupted," you know? Yes, the name comes from the illness.

My grandfather's big toe got infected from a cut because he didn't treat it properly. When he finally went to a doctor, they told him he would have to amputate his foot to live. He refused, stating he wanted to die with both of his feet on. So he officially died of gangrene!

Ouch! Okay...

Did you pick Gangrened for any special reason, like the corruption of society or something like that?

Yeah, that kind of reason. I wanted some grimmy name, but actually now it's getting a bit inappropriate, as we are not so typically doom sludge anymore.

How would you describe/characterize your sound now?

Well, I would say it is deep and varied. Actually, I think this record is like transitional, just because, for example, one song "Hologrammi" is an old song we included. But newer stuff goes beyond what has been previously recorded, take songs like "Triangeli" or "Kuningatar."

Deadly Algorithm by Gangrened

We reviewed 'We Are Nothing' back in 2014, and at the time we described your sound in terms of: "Slow, behemoth sized riffs. Excessive feedback. Fuzz worship." What would you say has changed or is different now, as your sound, style, and general musical approach has evolved?

Well, at some point, just as an exercise of abstraction to what we were doing, how it was turning out with songs like "Triangeli" or "Kuningatar" I decided to look into my whole musical background, and keep on adding elements from it. Also I got bored of the regular sludge-doom thing. So I considered it more interesting, and more comfortable to me, to keep an essence of slow and heavy music, and atmospheric at times, but not so defined inside the regular sludge-doom thing. The atmosphere feels very trippy, even psychedelic at times.

Let's talk about the new album. Why is it called 'Deadly Algorithm'? I think about 10 years ago, I never used the word "algorithm," but now it's a common word that most people at least understand in concept.

Well, I'm studying now in the university again, engineering in information technology, and at same time i'm a person a lot with strong progressive values, so through my studies and also digging on related topics like online privacy or the evolution and development of the new technologies I found alarming how the new technologies are going and its implications.

There are several key things that many people do not think about: smart phones have like six sensors on average to spot your location, plus no company gives services for free. If so, it's because the product is the user of the service. There's no other reason for that. So beginning with these facts, there are a lot of things going on that everyone should be aware of, and the album theme is all about that. Nowadays, data algorithms are making more and more decisions in our lives that no more take into account true needs as humans.

It seems like we have created our own virtual prison, without even realizing it.

Yes, but the thing is who runs the prison? not ourselves at all.

Getting into the songs themselves, are they all sung in Finnish?

Yes. At first some were in english but then the singer decided to sing all songs in Finnish.

Starting with the first song, can you tell us what each title means and what themes you explore?

The first song ("Harrbåda") is simply the name of a coastal area around here. The second ("Triptaani") is a medicine for headaches. The third song ("Hologrammi") is named obviously after a hologram. The fourth ("Kuningatar") means "Queen" and the last ("Triangeli") is "triangle."

Is there any conceptual, thematic, or spiritual relationship between these tracks?

It's quite a personal thing to the singer, he wrote the lyrics and I can't exactly tell you their meaning because Mikko Mannistö is a bit secretive about it. But personal things, yes. Personal matters to him.

Tell us a little bit about the recording process. Where did you record, with whom, and are there any memories that stand out from that time?

Well, we started recording the record in june 2018, with a friend of the singer, at some big rooms in a youth center house. We did most of the recordings with him until February of 2019. At that time, we asked a few people to mix, master, and finish the process. but nothing worked and there was some time wasted waiting for answers.

I decided moving forward we would go with someone who is recording records all the time and known by us, so we asked Tom Brooke, an English guy who lives close to Jyväskylä, runs a studio, and is the live sound technician for Oranssi Pazuzu. So we finished the record, a few more guitar tracks, mixing, and mastering with him.

I remember there was a long time between sessions, so new ideas were constantly coming to us to add to the songs for the next session. That’s why some guitar tracks were added for mixing just the day before starting to mix.

I'm sure you were relieved once all the recording, mixing, and mastering was finally done!

Yeah ! like this is the record and now its totally defined and wrapped up. As a guitarist, what can you tell us about the guitar writing on the new album? Anything that you are especially proud of or that you think the listener should pay special attention to?

The intro is all played by me, and then the weirdest stuff, noisy guitar here and there, and the first half of riffs of triptaani , i'm quite proud of the first two or three riffs, and I used to be proud about some riffs in the middle of "hologrammi." The noisiest and more psyched out guitars of kuningatar.

Tell us about what you, as a guitarist, used in the studio while recording 'Deadly Algorithm'

Well, so I used three guitars to record the album: one Gibson SG Standard from the late '90s, another SG Standard from 1980, and a Gibson Les Paul Classic from around 1991. The SG from the late '90s was ultra-modded -- I changed the finish, pickups, electronics, tuners, but in the end sold it and now it's owned by David from Slomatics. The 1980 I just bought for the recording, so it was all stock. Later, I changed the pickups. The Gibson Les Paul also had all replaced tuners, circuit pickups, and so. It's my main guitar and I used it in most of the songs. The SGs I just used for "Triangeli," the last song.

About effects, I use a Big Muff Fuzz mainly, but also a custom Dunwich Amps FuzzThrone for the ultra heavy parts, like at the end of "Kuningatar." Other effects I used were the Dunlop Echoplex pedal and the Strymon Capistan. I love tape echo sounds and these pedals emulate it. Also, another effect I really like and couldn't live without is the Earthquaker Devices Transmisser. I used it in three of the songs.

Amps used included an '80s Laney AOR Pro Tube and Orange OR120 from 1975 and a late '70s Matamp GT120. Every rhythm guitar track was recorded with two of them at same time, mainly the Matamp and the Laney. That probably is the main sound of the album, but I think "Hologrami" I recorded with the Orange and the Matamp. About cabs, I used two Orange cabs -- one with Eminence speakers the other with WGS speakers.

Have you had a chance to play live at all since the pandemic?

Nope, we haven't been rehearsing either.

If you had your choice to tour with any five bands and play in any five places, what would they be and why?

We are keeping it for when there's no risk of cancellations, we have some date plans and so on, but it sucks to cancel things so we are just waiting. I would play with Unsane in New York for example then some bands I have liked recently, even if some are inactive at this moment. Belzebong, Nightslug, Domkraft, Follakzoid, and the body also.

That would be a sick line-up!

What parts of the world would you like to travel to?

Well, I've never been to America or Asia. I have been to Europe, the UK, and Russia only.

Okay, yeah it would be cool to have you come over here and play for us sometime.

Yeah, would be nice

Lastly, did you all wear your heart on the opposite sides of your head for this photo to give the illusion that your heads are on backwards? Or was it digitally manipulated to make it look like your heads were on the wrong way? I love the concept!

I made that pic myself. I took two photographs, one of us in front and another in the backs. So then I took the heads of the back picture and put on our front bodies pic, with Photoshop. David lynch-ish vibes!

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Interviews #D&S Reviews #Gangrened #Finland #doom metal #noise #sludge #metal #Doomed and Stoned

2 notes · View notes

kronecker-delta · 3 years

Text

Farscape Nier crossover and ideas

Snippet (from 2017) Farscape/Nier: Automata --- Her room was a mess. Scattered parts of her uniform and other clothes piled along along the sides, kicked there when she came and went. Her personal books disarrayed, off the shelf and toppled over by her bed. She'd been putting off cleaning again and with the recent arrivals none of the operators could be spared to make up for her bad habits. None of that mattered at the moment. White sat in her chair, staring out into the void. A souvenir of her old days in the ground based resistance held in her hands. The framed picture of pair of androids seated on the still smoldering bulk of the ruined machine behemoth a memory of a simpler, happier time. A knock on her door brought her attention away from melancholy remembrance. Before she could compose herself and more sternly tell whoever had interrupted her what she had meant by 'Only bother me if there's an emergency' another knock issued forth. Followed by a voice. "Hey White? You in there?" She froze. She had so desperately hoped that it wouldn't be him. *** "I've never been here before," White said apologetically as their transport ship came down beside the small lunar outpost. A tiny thing, compared to the bunker. Even given the greater volume underground for secured data storage and backup generators. "No problem. First time I've been on the moon," he said, giving her a reassuring smile that didn't quite manage to look entirely honest. His frown returning as they stepped out of the transport, the boots of his pressured suit crunching into the light dusting of lunar sand that had covered part of the landing pad. "Feels like I should say something... 'Great leap for mankind and all that' you know. Hey, is the Apollo site still around?" "It is. If you want we could visit there Commander Crichton." "Just John... or Crichton. Being called Commander all the time feels weird," John Crichton said. "I know I'm the last human but..." "I-I understand," White answered. Keeping her own emotions deeply locked down as they passed into the fortified complex of the moon server. Past the scant few technicians and guards and into a dark room, nearly empty save for a single console located in the center. A black void engulfed the walls, impenetrable shadows, as the terminals and screens had long laid dormant. "So now what?" His voice echoed in the room, which must have been far larger than they had at first thought. Low clicks and whirs came from the bulk of the machine, the long slumbering physical access port awakening. Lights flashed along the walls and beyond them, racks upon racks of computer systems networked together awakening. A great screen before them coming on and displaying a stylized picture of a tree, long dark roots stretching out from its base. OVERSIGHT AND RECORDING SYSTEM VER. 2.01 SLEEPING BEAUTY ONLINE. CONFIRM USER PERMISSIONS NOW. "Commander White, YoRHa access S-Class security," White said. Looking to her side and adding, "As well as a guest." CONFIRM GUEST'S IDENTITY. "John Crichton, Commander in the IASA," John said. "Born... 1969. June 6th. If that helps any." The computer sat in silence for a long moment, not responding, the screen frozen as the loading bar seemed stuck in time. They shared a look of confusion, both android and human wondering if the ancient archive might have crashed and who was going to have to go out and ask the few technicians to help reboot it. Then the room came alight, a dozen more monitors online, the totality of it awake for the first time in forever. HUMAN IDENTITY CONFIRMED BASED ON HISTORICAL RECORDS. YoRHA S-CLASS SECURITY CLEARANCE SUBSTITUTED FOR UNRESTRICTED SYSTEM ACCESS. S-CLASS, SS-CLASS, AND HAMELIN ORGANIZATION FILES NOW UNLOCKED. GREETINGS COMMANDER JOHN CRICHTON. HOW MAY THIS SYSTEM AID YOU TODAY? "What... what's 'SS-Class?' There shouldn't be a level of security above mine." NEGATIVE. THERE ARE TWO. SS-CLASS, CONTAINING SENSITIVE FILES DEEMED TOO DANGEROUS TO BE KNOWN OUTSIDE OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL. AS WELL AS FILES REGARDING THE HAMELIN ORGANIZATION, WHICH WERE TO BE SEALED UNTIL SUCH A TIME AS A HUMAN USER ACCESSED THIS SYSTEM. "We do this so that the future generations will have the opportunity to judge us for our sins." "Who the hell was that?" John asked, shocked by the computer suddenly vocalizing. Producing the sound of some long dead man. Old and ill, his voice straining to make the words clear into the recording. DR. EUGENE ADLER, HAMELIN RESEARCHER IN DEMONIC ELEMENT MANIPULATION EXPERIMENTS. BY HIS RECOMMENDATION AND THE UN SPECIAL SECURITY COUNCIL'S AUTHORITY IT WAS FELT THAT KNOWLEDGE OF THE HAMELIN ORGANIZATION'S INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE DEMONIC ELEMENT AND THE 6-12 INCIDENT COULD NOT BE PUBLICLY REVEALED UNTIL THE CRISIS HAD PASSED. John looked to White, hoping she might be able to explain something, anything of what the computer had just told them. But she looked just as confused as he did. "Ah... Computer?" YES JOHN CRICHTON? "Define 'demonic element' please." DEMONIC ELEMENT: QUANTUM OBSERVATION REACTING PARTICLES BROUGHT OVER BY THE ENTITIES INVOLVED IN THE 6-12 INCIDENT. TWO VARIETIES WERE DETERMINED UPON FURTHER RESEARCH. TYPE I, WHICH CAME FROM THE ENTITY CLASSIFIED 'QUEEN OF THE GROTESQUE' AMONG NUMEROUS OTHER NAMES ACQUIRED FROM OBSERVATION DATA OF LEGION FORCES AND PRE-SUBLIMATION MEMETIC CORRUPTION OF WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME PATIENTS. TYPE I MATERIAL HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THIS UNIVERSE FOR THE LAST EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS FOLLOWING THE COMPLETE PURGING OF IT FROM THE EARTH'S ENVIRONMENT. TYPE II CAME FROM THE OTHER ENTITY, CLASSIFIED AS 'A DRAGON' NO OTHER NAME OR IDENTITY DETERMINED. WHILE HIGHLY REACTIVE AND DANGEROUS IN LARGE DOSES IT WAS FOUND TO BE STABLE IN SMALL AMOUNTS AND TO LACK THE MALEVOLENT EFFECT ON INTELLIGENT LIFE THAT TYPE I MATERIAL EXHIBITED. EVENTUAL CONTROLLED EXPOSURE AND SYNTHESIS EXPERIMENTS LED TO THE CREATION OF FOCUSED MAGIC ENERGY EFFECTS AND SUBSEQUENT DEVELOPMENTS IN FIELDS OF NEUROLOGY AND META-COGNITION AS WELL AS NUMEROUS OTHERS. PROJECT GESTALT AND ANDROID CONSCIOUSNESS ARE BOTH LONG TERM SUCCESSES OF THIS RESEARCH. HIGH ENERGY MAGIC WEAPONS WERE ALSO ATTEMPTED BUT LATER SHELVED FOR BEING UNRELIABLE. AS OF THIS DATE THE AMOUNT OF TYPE II MATERIAL PRESENT IN THIS UNIVERSE IS ESTIMATED TO BE 63 METRIC TONS, OVER A HUNDRED FOLD INCREASE IN MASS FROM THAT OF THE ORIGINAL ENTITY BROUGHT ABOUT BY CONTINUAL SYNTHESIS AND ITS NECESSITY IN THE CREATION OF NEW ANDROIDS AND ALL CURRENT GENERATION MAGICAL DEVICES. THE ANDROID WHITE HAS 6 GRAMS OF IT AS PART OF THEIR INTERNAL SYSTEMS, MOSTLY RELEGATED TO META-COGNITIVE PROCESSES. "Wait... wait!" John yelled out, grabbing onto the unused console as he stared at the enormous amount of text that had just been displayed. More and more appearing on other monitors, going into greater detail about all sorts of absurd things. "What do you mean by magic? And dragons? What the hell happened to Earth?" THE 6-12 INCIDENT. PLAYING ARCHIVED DATA NOW... *** Crichton sat on the edge of her bed. Looking down at his hands, fingers intertwined. He hadn't spoken since White had stepped aside and ushered him in. Neither had she. She had wanted to be alone, and had hoped that Crichton would choose to spend some time with his alien friends. Or his semi-human lover... "You know, it's kind of funny," he said at last, a low chuckle that surprised White. He truly did sound amused by the dark comedy of his situation. "What?" "Well, when I first realized you were lying about something... after I got over the whole 'android' deal anyway," Crichton said, looking up from his hands to look into White's eyes. "I was so certain that the deep dark secret you were keeping from me was that you all went Terminator on the humans and than got ashamed about it." White found herself smiling despite it all. "I guess I can imagine why you would think that. Even if we don't all look like Central European bodybuilders from the Old World." His expression collapsed, going from amusement to a shock so profound it looked like a stiff breeze would have knocked him over. White found herself confused and then very worried. Had she said something wrong? Then he started to laugh, slow at first, but building into something that bordered on mania. Rolling onto his back and shaking in the hysterics. "Haha... oh god... you have no idea, no goddamn idea how long I've wanted someone to get one of my dumb references," Crichton sat up looking far happier than he had a moment ago, the levity of their absurd connection dispelling the melancholy cloud that had hung over them since their return from the lunar server. "Like I love those idiots on Moya, but being around aliens on the other side of the galaxy for a few years really makes you long for some normal human conversation." "I... I think I can understand. Somewhat. It must have been very lonely out there." "Lonely, terrifying, insane... beautiful too. Space is crazy like that. Full of contrasts so sharp it's stunning. I-I wanted to bring that back you know? Not just to get home, but to show what I had found out there," he said, pointing to the stars outside White's window. "I guess it's too late for that now." "I'm sorry," White said. Noting the strange look that Crichton was giving her now she hesitated before continuing. "I'm sorry we failed." "Failed? Failed at what? Stopping a magic apocalypse that had already started before the first androids came online? Which reminds me, we're going to need to do something about them later. Those twin models that someone had the bright idea to shoulder with some fucked up version of android collective punishment." Crichton leaned forward, massaging his forehead as he did so. "That's probably only the tip of the bullshit you're dealing with and here I come with a whole new mess of problems. Maybe it would have been better if I had never found Earth." "No! Crichton you-we can fix things. I know we can. Not just your presence here or for getting access to sealed archives in the server. The technology you brought with you. It very well might represent a turning point in the war with the machines." "And what about the Sebaceans... the Peacekeepers? The Scarren Empire? Or hell, even the Nebari Establishment? Better gravity control systems and two hundred year old ship scale energy shields won't stop a fleet if it comes knocking at our door." "We'll do what we always have. Try and protect Earth and mankind's legacy from any aggressor. Whether distant cousins that no longer remember their home-world like the Sebaceans... or these Scarrens you've mentioned so much. We won't- we cannot retreat from this fight. Not now." White clenched her fist tightly, the glove creaking as she set a firm expression on her face. "I promise you Crichton, even if the past is lost, we will make a future worth fighting for." Ideas: I've been thinking over the ideas of a Farscape/Nier crossover some more, coming up with elements, themes, and specific scenes that would be fun to explore and write. These are some of the ideas I've had in no particular order. 1. Androids in relation to the Last Human (Crichton). Crichton is a self-admitted sci-fi geek, not surprising for a second generation astronaut that grew up wanting to explore the stars. He straight up makes comparisons to how he attempts to handle alien encounters to be inspired from watching Star Trek. Given that I think his relation to the androids would develop in a certain direction. Once the initial shock of a) the amount of time passed and b) that these people he thought were human aren't passes, he wouldn't feel comfortable having an intelligent race acting subordinate to him. I can see multiple incidents where some variety of complex philosophical quandary or just plain relationship question from 6O results in him telling them that humans really didn't have a better answer. Long term this would likely take the form of a very serious conversation where he points out that Earth, and what of its culture and history still lives, isn't in just human, whether the dead ones or genetically altered human descended Sebaceans. Or even in any hypothetical offspring that he might have. Basically, 'Mankind' includes them, as they're what's keeping the memory of it all alive. Aside from some bonding scenes between various androids and Crichton as they go over bits of alien tech, one idea I have in particular is that he takes a tour of moon landing sites, including the one his father visited. Effectively the only place he will ever see any lasting evidence of that man in particular. And the reaction of his android guide (White perhaps?) as well as the Apollo 11 plaque cements his decision to change the way the androids view their relation with humans, at least in so much as he can. 2. 2B and 9S (and others perhaps). I think there's a lot of fun to be had in placing the androids into weird situations with the aliens, and even more so if for some reason they have to head off away from Earth for a period of time. Since I can easily see the plan being for them to lie constantly. Lie about being human, lie about the 'Glorious Terran Federation' which is totally a military power that we didn't just make up, lie about what they're capable of, lies upon lies as they try and deceive the Scarrens and the Peacekeepers and keep Earth safe from either side those aggressive powers. In general I think 'Androids pretend to be human to deceive aliens' is a good plot for lots of stories, and could easily be turned into a rather long plot. Since the androids wouldn't want to let Crichton head off to parley with these alien aggressors on his own. And he could really use all the help he can get for whatever crazy ass plot he comes up with next. 3. Aliens would want Android tech. Probably just Scorpius, but others too if they find out more about Earth. I hadn't realized it at the time, but there was a period of the show where the hybrid Scarren-Sebacean was working with Crichton, and that would be the perfect opportunity for him to learn something about the androids and Earth history. And being him, he would look at all this extra-dimensional BS and android super soldiers and see potential weapons. He'd probably be disappointed that the Queen's Maso wasn't around anymore and that Hamelin Organization stopped human testing after Emil, since it would mean he'd be working from scratch if he could just get back into the good graces of the Peacekeepers and do so with enough of the demonic element to set up another research base. Hell, he'd probably try to directly convince Crichton get the androids to agree to serve the Peacekeepers, since that would technically put them back into contact with 'humans' if genetically engineered ones. Arguing that he could get the entire remaining population of Earth a ticket off world (to a nice Peacekeeper controlled colony where the can serve their new military overlords) if destroying the machine lifefroms proved to difficult even with a few starships to blast them from orbit. 4. The Terminals. The central intelligence of the machine lifeforms would likely reconsider its direction of evolution far earlier with a living human to observe, especially one that tries so hard to avoid aggressive resolutions. Even if that doesn't work, Crichton's crew and allies proves that he has managed to connect and form lasting bonds with entirely alien beings over and over. A direct repudiation of what the machine network had thus far found to be the fastest way to accelerate its own growth. Whether this would lead to a quicker conclusion that it needs to escape Earth and find its own destiny, likely expedited by FTL tech it took from the androids once Crichton revealed it to them, or an attempt at some kind of allegiance against the various hostile powers of the greater galaxy is unknown. While I can easily see Pascal and various pacifistic or non-hostile machine lifeforms being taken into account as potential allies the actions of the terminals past and potentially present would form a barrier to attempted cooperation. 5. Allying with the Worm Hole Ancients. The aliens that gave John Crichton knowledge about worm holes in the first place did so because they were running from an unstated catastrophe that had destroyed their home world. They originally decided against direct contact with Earth because it was likely to be divided and hostile. 21st century Earth that doesn't exist outside of Crichton's memories. It would be very interesting to see how they might react to finding out the new status quo. I've got a couple ideas that might be fun with them. One being that their dimension/time traveling tech lead to them accidentally creating their own personal Watcher related incident and the subsequent self-inflicted annihilation of their home world to stop it from spreading to the greater portion of the galaxy. Creating a situation where despite their far greater technological adeptness they find a reason to deeply respect humans/androids for facing down and defeating what they truthfully could not, reclaiming their world instead of burning it and running. (Though I'm iffy on that alteration/crossover expansion as it sort of makes them more like the Stargate's Asgard.)

#farscape #nier automata #fanfic idea

1 note · View note