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rjalker · 5 months

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it's just so fucking funny. Oh my gods.

A Square explaining how allowing disabled people* to exist in public would bring about the downfall of civilization

[ID: The meme of someone standing in front of a wall covered in red string connecting dots in a conspiracy theory, with the person replaced with A Square, a Flatlander seen from above. He has a grey exoskeleton, and insides of various shades of pink and purple. End ID.]

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For context, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, is satire of Victorian England's bigotry, written in 1884. It's also about math and the theory of other dimensions. ("Romance" back then meant "adventure")

Read and download it for free from Project Gutenberg.

An amazing and hilarious audiobook on the Web Archive.

10/10 highly recommend. In the process of "translating" it into casual 2023 English so more people can read it easier.

This is the original text below. I keep getting distracted from "translating" it because it's so funny.

The entire thing is written to show you how absolutely absurd and ridiculous bigotry is.

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Section 7. Concerning Irregular Figures

Throughout the previous pages I have been assuming—what perhaps should have been laid down at the beginning as a distinct and fundamental proposition—that every human being in Flatland is a Regular Figure, that is to say of regular construction. By this I mean that a Woman must not only be a line, but a straight line; that an Artisan or Soldier must have two of his sides equal; that Tradesmen must have three sides equal; Lawyers (of which class I am a humble member), four sides equal, and generally, that in every Polygon, all the sides must be equal.

The size of the sides would of course depend upon the age of the individual. A Female at birth would be about an inch long, while a tall adult Woman might extend to a foot. As to the Males of every class, it may be roughly said that the length of an adult's sides, when added together, is two feet or a little more. But the size of our sides is not under consideration. I am speaking of the EQUALITY of sides, and it does not need much reflection to see that the whole of the social life in Flatland rests upon the fundamental fact that Nature wills all Figures to have their sides equal.

If our sides were unequal our angles might be unequal. Instead of its being sufficient to feel, or estimate by sight, a single angle in order to determine the form of an individual, it would be necessary to ascertain each angle by the experiment of Feeling. But life would be too short for such a tedious grouping. The whole science and art of Sight Recognition would at once perish; Feeling, so far as it is an art, would not long survive; intercourse would become perilous or impossible; there would be an end to all confidence, all forethought; no one would be safe in making the most simple social arrangements; in a word, civilization would relapse into barbarism.

Am I going too fast to carry my Readers with me to these obvious conclusions? Surely a moment's reflection, and a single instance from common life, must convince every one that our whole social system is based upon Regularity, or Equality of Angles. You meet, for example, two or three Tradesmen in the street, whom you recognize at once to be Tradesmen by a glance at their angles and rapidly bedimmed sides, and you ask them to step into your house to lunch. This you do at present with perfect confidence, because everyone knows to an inch or two the area occupied by an adult Triangle: but imagine that your Tradesman drags behind his regular and respectable vertex, a parallelogram of twelve or thirteen inches in diagonal:—what are you to do with such a monster sticking fast in your house door?

But I am insulting the intelligence of my Readers by accumulating details which must be patent to everyone who enjoys the advantages of a Residence in Spaceland. Obviously the measurements of a single angle would no longer be sufficient under such portentous circumstances; one's whole life would be taken up in feeling or surveying the perimeter of one's acquaintances. Already the difficulties of avoiding a collision in a crowd are enough to tax the sagacity of even a well-educated Square; but if no one could calculate the Regularity of a single figure in the company, all would be chaos and confusion, and the slightest panic would cause serious injuries, or—if there happened to be any Women or Soldiers present—perhaps considerable loss of life.

Expediency therefore concurs with Nature in stamping the seal of its approval upon Regularity of conformation: nor has the Law been backward in seconding their efforts. "Irregularity of Figure" means with us the same as, or more than, a combination of moral obliquity and criminality with you, and is treated accordingly. There are not wanting, it is true, some promulgators of paradoxes who maintain that there is no necessary connection between geometrical and moral Irregularity. "The Irregular", they say, "is from his birth scouted by his own parents, derided by his brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics, scorned and suspected by society, and excluded from all posts of responsibility, trust, and useful activity. His every movement is jealously watched by the police till he comes of age and presents himself for inspection; then he is either destroyed, if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation, or else immured in a Government Office as a clerk of the seventh class; prevented from marriage; forced to drudge at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend; obliged to live and board at the office, and to take even his vacation under close supervision; what wonder that human nature, even in the best and purest, is embittered and perverted by such surroundings!"

All this very plausible reasoning does not convince me, as it has not convinced the wisest of our Statesmen, that our ancestors erred in laying it down as an axiom of policy that the toleration of Irregularity is incompatible with the safety of the State. Doubtless, the life of an Irregular is hard; but the interests of the Greater Number require that it shall be hard. If a man with a triangular front and a polygonal back were allowed to exist and to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life? Are the houses and doors and churches in Flatland to be altered in order to accommodate such monsters? Are our ticket-collectors to be required to measure every man's perimeter before they allow him to enter a theatre or to take his place in a lecture room? Is an Irregular to be exempted from the militia? And if not, how is he to be prevented from carrying desolation into the ranks of his comrades? Again, what irresistible temptations to fraudulent impostures must needs beset such a creature! How easy for him to enter a shop with his polygonal front foremost, and to order goods to any extent from a confiding tradesman! Let the advocates of a falsely called Philanthropy plead as they may for the abrogation of the Irregular Penal Laws, I for my part have never known an Irregular who was not also what Nature evidently intended him to be—a hypocrite, a misanthropist, and, up to the limits of his power, a perpetrator of all manner of mischief.

Not that I should be disposed to recommend (at present) the extreme measures adopted by some States, where an infant whose angle deviates by half a degree from the correct angularity is summarily destroyed at birth. Some of our highest and ablest men, men of real genius, have during their earliest days laboured under deviations as great as, or even greater than, forty-five minutes: and the loss of their precious lives would have been an irreparable injury to the State. The art of healing also has achieved some of its most glorious triumphs in the compressions, extensions, trepannings, colligations, and other surgical or diaetetic operations by which Irregularity has been partly or wholly cured. Advocating therefore a VIA MEDIA, I would lay down no fixed or absolute line of demarcation; but at the period when the frame is just beginning to set, and when the Medical Board has reported that recovery is improbable, I would suggest that the Irregular offspring be painlessly and mercifully consumed.

#Flatland #Rjalker writes Flatland a 2023 Translation #Rjalker reads Flatland a Romance of Many Dimensions #A Square #Fashist Shapes in Space #Fascist shapes in space

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mdhwrites · 1 year

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Subtext vs Plain Text: Multi-Tracking in TOH

So a disclaimer first: I am someone who DRASTICALLY prefers your basic story functions before you try to tell me what the deeper meanings of it are because, you know... If I don’t like your base story, why should I care about your subtext? If I’m questioning how this functions, claiming you’re smart for breaking your own rules isn’t going to make me turn around. And this is kind of the entire vibe I get from Hexide’s allowance of people to study multiple tracks. I’ll actually talk about the metatext first as I’ve seen others point out: It’s a commentary against modern school systems where kids are forced to learn a curriculum set by others specifically for a specific subset of jobs, commonly office or factory jobs. There is a lack of self expression and even self identity in these curriculums and it’s always justified with you needing it for the sake of your future. Even Willow plainly states she’s in abominations because of the job prospects which any Humanities or History major will feel in their soul. TOH presents instead the idea that self expression and experimentation are good and help advance kids more than simply trying to slot them into a one size fits all curriculum. That they need to be allowed to experiment and have a wide variety of experiences or to follow that which they are passionate about doing as an adult. For a kid’s show, it’s not terrible and it will resonate with many kids who feel abandoned by traditional school systems. The outcasts. The target demographic of the show in theory. And it’s not so radical as to seem completely dumb about these things. Until, you know, you spend five seconds thinking about the context of the show itself. In universe, there is a VERY basic explanation for why kids would focus on one track of magic. It’s literally illegal for them to do otherwise as grown ups. That’s not an over exaggeration or the like even. Because every coven in the world only allows one type of magic, and being outside of a coven is illegal, every multi-tracking student has two options: Join the Emperor’s Coven, which is depicted as difficult (at least until Sport in a Storm but that’s another blog), or becoming a wild witch which ranges from imprisonment, being forced into a random coven or just straight up execution. Quite literally the change to allow multi-tracking is setting up the kids for failure and death. If they can’t make it into the EC and compromise by going into a single track coven, they’ll be weaker than anyone else there because they aren’t as focused in their discipline. If they don’t compromise, they literally become outlaws. And Bump theoretically knows this. He was raised under Belos’ rule and likely would have been in school as the whole system changed to be based around the covens. Around what the new world order was. And as a pragmatist, the single tracks would have been befitting for that new order but allowing people the ability to swap if they showed an aptitude for another track is a good compromise. And the fact that all of these kids are setup for failure kind of undermines the subtext, doesn’t it? But if you ask why it was done besides to comment on the subtext, there isn’t really an answer. Hexide is never a major part of rebelling against Belos, never much of a driver for Luz to decide covens are inherently bad, especially since this subtext and plain text is mostly in her first day at the school so she can have a special, rainbow outfit when at school, so... Why just blatantly ignore your world building like that? Unless it’s just to get on a soapbox and preach about your ideas? Because even if I agree with your assessment, screeching it incoherently in the middle of Disneyland while I’m trying to enjoy it is only going to sour me on your message, if I hear it at all.

#TOH #Hexide

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perpetual-help · 1 year

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Hello, I am someone who has not considered themselves a Christian for quite some time, but as an adult I decided to do an actual deep dive (study scripture, read theory) to see what I think and whether I feel anything. I agree with almost all of Jesus' teachings, in fact I think Jesus is an incredible person and I have no problems with him at all. It's God I take issue with.

As a practicing Christian, how do you feel about all the objectively terrible things God has done? Like killing all the first born sons of the Egyptians. Like even if everyone adult in Egypt were terrible people, what did the children and babies do that could justify God just killing them? Especially since they wouldn't go to heaven since they weren't believers. Like I get that a lot of what God thinks and does would be totally beyond our comprehension, like ants trying to understand the human mind. I just can't in good conscience worship a god that is supposed to be perfect but is clearly not. This is in good faith and I genuinely want to know how you feel about this.

Before I answer the Exodus question specifically, I’d just like to clarify that even if God did kill any of us for any reason, it would not be considered evil. It IS evil for any one of us to murder another, but this is because, when we as humans engage in killing, we rob a person of their God-given life. God-given is the keyword here. All life is created by and consequently belongs entirely to God. As such, it is His right to deem when and how any of us might perish. On that note, it would be well within God’s capabilities and right to say “none of you are worth it” and eradicate all of us, but He doesn’t. That simple fact, in and of itself, stands witness to the long-suffering Love Our Creator extends to us every single day we sin against Him. Not only that, but He loved us to the point of suffering and death on a cross.

God’s Nature is such that no evil can exist within it. This has always been the case. He did not suddenly change from one God into another. He has always been and always will be a Loving, Merciful, and Just God. Everything that happens to us in this world is according to His hidden Justice. This is true and evident in the Old Testament (where He promised us a Savior despite our disobedience towards Him) and the New Testament (where He has given us His only begotten Son.)

As for how I feel about what took place in the Old Testament, the answer is confident in the Goodness and Justice of God. I’ve learned that the Old Testament is a compilation of historical literature written so that the people of the time would understand. There are many parts that weren’t meant to be taken literally. If we look at passages that talk about God “hardening the heart” of the pharaoh, etc, given what has been revealed to us since this was written, it makes more sense that God actually withdrew His graces from pharaoh and the Egyptian people so that they would feel the consequences of their disobedience and sin. I feel this is a startling, but much-needed reminder that every sin we commit is felt by the whole; and there is no action we commit, be it virtuous or sinful, that does not ultimately effect the entire body.

I’m glad to know you’re reading scripture and I hope you continue to do so! You may find it helpful to use a Bible study guide, especially with the passages in the Old Testament. I’m sorry for the lateness of my response, but I hope this satisfied the question. God bless you. I’ll be praying for you on your journey. ❤️

#asks

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moonstone27ls · 11 months

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Saw Spiderman Across the Spiderverse

It was good, REALLY good. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. I loved it so much I wish we could have part 2 out already. I loved Pavitr Prabhakar / Spider-Man India and Hobie/ SpiderPunk the most (am I allowed to say he’s sexy... it was that voice.)

I only have a few things I wanna ask to fellow fans. Not so much a critique just thoughts. So spoiler warning before I speak...

Spoiler warning....

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I’m REALLY WARNING YOU........

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Last spoiler warning people....

.... As much as I loved Jess( Issa Rae was a wonderful actress)... for a person who was pregnant she was doing a lot of motorcycling. I mean yes I know its comics and one could argue its “spider baby” whatever but... Jess took an awful lot of risks. I mean again yes you could argue “Well Peter took risks with baby may”. But I think May was obviously able to show it. But that doesn’t mean every universe is the same. For all Jess knows that baby’s gonna get shock, could be born human.

Andddd I admit as much as I loved her and I did... I find it surprising she seemed to cut herself off from being maternal to Miles/Gwen. I say that cause a common trope with pregnant characters it effects how they interact with kid characters. Yes again I get it, they are technically teens. But as much heck as everyone was giving Miles... I’m just kinda surprised not one of them thought “would I really put my own kid through this trauma? “

Then again... a part of me still can’t get over how from last movie and this one, they act like Miles should have his shit together oO. Now I don’t read the comics, I can only guess from the movies/tv shows. But as far as I know with the exception of maybe Miguel? and what I wanna say Jessica Drew. A lot of these spiders forget they were literally teenagers when they started this spiderman business. Depending on the version Peter (Peters in this case) was either fresh out of highschool or still IN highschool. And none of these characters gave themselves the third degree or went “am I mature enough for this? Maybe I need to work on my resume”. Literally every spider character acts like they were born into this work/and never made mistake. And believe me Peter, you made lots before XD. I think that one scene with Gwen/Jess was the ONLY time I actually heard someone acknowledge they aren’t born perfect

I also can not understand why Miles is being blamed for the incidents. You know the holes, multiverse crap etc. The only thing I can say watching is that he is to a degree to blame for making the Spot but that was actions he wasn’t fully of aware of. You know like events he couldn’t forsee stuff.

The whole holes whatever.... uhh Miguel does know that technically it was Kingpin’s fault oO (i mean he should since he has freakin’ cameras EVERYWHERE). I mean if we’re gonna blame anyone Kingpin was the one who used his money to do all that crap. The spot worked for him, I’m not entirely blaming him I’m just saying... its just a risk he took with that job. Now if the portals were a response from when he(Miles) did it at the end of the movie. Then fine... but even then Miles couldn’t avoid it. He literally had to open the portals to send the first Spiderverse crew back. They would have died or the events would have gotten worse.

As for the betrayal... I get why Gwen, Penni, and Margo Kess didn’t really fight it. They are kids. This is something over their heads so they trust the adults. My problem.. is we didn’t really get much of a reason as to why Jess and Peter were okay with this twist on Miles. Now Miguel’s “cannon” theory... (will get to that later) okay thats HIS reason. But I feel Peter should have argued more before caving into that. I wish we could have seen the characters argue and see a more argument as to WHY Miguel was so easily believed.

In addition... I’m not gonna lie the finally battle with Miguel and Miles... a LOT of hostility. I dunno even if he was to say he was “an anomaly”. Felt like a lot of that was just to tear down him as a person/and character. I’m like “Dude where’s all this hate?”. Is it trauma? Is this suppose to be a metaphor for what his mom said that some people in the world will hurt him? (I don’t wanna say racism because one I’m not black. Feel thats something out of my league discuss). And again why blame him? He LITERALLY is a kid who didn’t ask for this. Why isn’t he blaming Kingpin? Kingpin ACTUALLY started this. To blame Miles for his world’s Peter’s death is a HUGE stretch for several reasons.

1) Miles is a kid/teenager. He was just as traumatized by the rest of the so called canon events. He saw a hero murdered, trying to save him.And again the spider incident was out of his hands. 2) sorry to for once bring up technically.... but if Miguel knows all these canon events then he knows that in one of those universes Peter dies regardless if Miles is there. (I say that because there were several cartoon cameos so technically that disney cartoon one is there) Heck even in the comics.. I don’t think Miles was around when Peter died. 3) He literally gave a lecture about how there different universes, including one where he isn’t even Spiderman.... so again he brought that into subject. Is it Gwen’s fault then that Peter isn’t spiderman? No. There are several universes were Peter isn’t even the hero. Its a stretch to blame the kid.

Then I’m gonna touch on Miguel’s “cannon theory”. I’m gonna call it a theory because thats all it is for the moment. Now I could almost understand this fight if it was like DC’s Flashpoint were Miles used their technology to go to the PAST and prevent events. But... Miles wasn’t doing that. They were literally holding him hostage to stop him from protecting his father. Now from what I understood they argued that Miles had to let these happen for reasons Spiderman has a history with tragedy/ They can’t save everyone/ Its literally just part of their character building/ Got over it. (to quote Jess). Now they can’t save everyone fine, thats true. Its even true that Spiderman is often linked to tragedy.

But their arguments were moot to me for two reasons. One, Miles has already had tragedy twice in his story. He saw Peter get murdered, he watched his Uncle get murdered. Second, there was no 100% guarantee that the Spot was right that its destiny. It was a probability to my opinion. Miles is literally a kid being told by everyone and friends that he just has to be okay with his dad dying because just because. Thats literally the dumbest excuse. Miles isn’t going to the past. Its a probability not destiny. He’s seen enough death, being told to sacrifice his own father shouldn’t be one of them.

The argument is also mooted by the fact that previously every good action, the other Spiders. How does Miguel know that none of those people in the last movie was suppose to die? Or in the Mumbattan just because they aren’t central characters to the Spiders doesn’t mean it wasn’t suppose to happen. In addition again the Spot is making portals and not closing them, Miles is being pushed for something that is another villain's doing.

A villain that Miguel himself, if he was so concerned, should have acted earlier and gotten the Spot. And Miguel is technically in my opinion breaking his own rules by having so many of the Spider characters there. And the cannon theory is still just a theory because in my opinion there’s a difference between Miles’ situation and his. Miguel purposely went into another reality and took that identity. Miles never did that.

And its still not full proof this canon thing is solid. Because its not been tested in controlled conditions. Miguel’s one instance isn’t really proof. And we can’t really say “Well what about Mumbattan “... again the SPOT is literally screwing around. And Gwen herself is technically also walking proof, since Gwen technically dies in several universes apparently (or to quote it doesn’t work out with her and Spiderman)

A part of me is also tempted to say they’re comics. Nobody stays dead long. But nooooo gonna skip that a moment 8B.

#spiderverse thoughts #gonna delete later

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bugbyte · 1 year

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I keep thinking about the whole AI art scenario, and I keep returning to the same metaphors in my mind, because apparently my brain just works in a Darmok and Jalad fashion most of the time. Anyway.

What gets me is that it’s a neat computer trick, it feels magical, which is when technology is often at its best, in my opinion. There’s a sense of wonder in watching a thing a happen.

However, it also makes me think of other experiences in my life. Even if all the popular AI art-generating platforms weren’t based on theft and scraping real artists’ efforts from all over the web, how can it possibly be fulfilling?

Like this:

I am a former half-marathonner. I enjoyed running because it was fun and it felt good, but I was far from able to run well. I was very slow. I never really got good, but I had fun trying anyway. But! There are a lot of races that accept runners who are more beginner, as well as those of higher skill levels. You just need to be able to do the thing, you don’t have to be a professional. So I did, and it was fun. I ran in the same races that some former Olympians ran in! That feels neat to know! But I, myself, am not, nor do I aspire to be, an Olympian. And that’s ok!

But about that “former” part from above; I can no longer run half-marathons due to some health issues. I could, in theory, get in a car and drive the race course from start to finish, moving my body from the beginning point to the end, which “technically” is the same thing, and I’d finish in minutes, with an incredible time. But I wouldn’t, obviously, because there would be absolutely no sense of accomplishment. I would feel nothing, because I did nothing, and what would the point even be? Just because you technically finished the task doesn’t mean it has the same value when taken out of its proper context.

I can see toying around with an AI in various ways as a learning tool, or something, but I simply do not understand the arguments pro-AI folks make about how they are artists now, too. A driver is not a marathon runner just because they went fast. Artmaking is a very human experience. You don’t have to be “good” at it if you like doing it. And like anything else, you can continue to practice and your improvement will be measurable! Look at the archives of practically any webcomic. I mean, look at the entire human history of art. We all started by drawing on cave walls and rocks, and the entire process was refined slowly as we learned, together, how to draw babies that weren’t just miniature adults, and stuff like that. (Like, for real, learning a bit of art history will change your thinking about both art and history.)

If you want to make art, just do it. The learning is part of the making. It’s ok to be imperfect.

Temba, his arms wide.

#blog #artist things #ai art hate blog #ai art #bug thoughts #darmok

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floccinaucinihilipilificationa · 2 years

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#selfie bee #hello friends!! happy halloween!! C:#I drew this instead of changing my gross bed sheets #how are you doing!#I am very excited about today being halloween even though I am not doing anything really #but I have bought a lot of Ritter Sports Minis in case children come and want candy #it's such a fun day I hope that one day it will be big in Germany too c:#but to celebrate a little we made one of those cool american pies today #I don't know what they are called it's one of those you always see in cartoons with the little criss cross pattern on top #it mostly tastes like butter it was a great sucess C:#also I am having a real job interview in a month!! it is the second round of that job thing I told you about #I am already very scared #I know that in theory I am a whole entire human adult who has a degree #but I also know that I have never finished a Sims 100 baby challenge #I hope they'll understand that my limit is usually at 20 babys #have a nice spooky evening friends!! :)#I think I will eat more cake now #it's filled with cherries!! ٩( ᐛ )و #the cherry tree in my parents garden has been dieing for years since my father chopped it in half #this always ends up happening when he tries to 'trim the plants'#but my mom also never stops him #I think it's because she hopes that he ends up killing the ginkgo she secretly hates #but the tree is just so strong

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smolcobie · 3 years

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Hyunjae | Butterfly Effect

↪ Summary: After a dangerous fire, Hyunjae is unable to hide his feelings for you.

Word Count: 3,5k

Warnings: Suggestive | Fire | Friends To Lovers | Heavy Making Out

Genre: Hyunjae x Reader | HYUNJAE FIREFIGHTER AU | Female Reader

Dedicated to my fav deobi friend @santacruz-sand <3

Human beings are known for their daily mistakes. We used to say that every day we make a mistake, some don't make that much difference, others can change the course of your life, better known as the butterfly effect. Each action has its reaction, gradually shaping the path you will take in life.

Some say that this is fate, that no matter how much you try to escape, it will happen. Others prefer to believe that you create your own destiny. I didn't believe in any of these theories, in fact, I always preferred to think that it is easier to do your best every day than to be disappointed by the path you took because you thought that this was your destiny after all.

The greatest example that my theory was real, was seeing how my best friend lived. Every single day he left early, before the sun came up, and came back when it was night. Being a firefighter required perfection in his form, discipline, punctuality, courage to face his fears, and a lot of willingness to risk his own life for the benefit of society.

I watched him cautiously, analyzing his ways and manners. The way he slammed the gate hard to make sure it was locked, or how he sighed and gave a silly smile when he managed to do something he liked, but what I liked most was the way he struggled every day to cheer people's lives.

- ▪︎ -

"[NAME], do your best every day and no one will have the courage to speak ill of the way you live." He said with his red cheeks and heavy eyes from the soju he drank.

"What are you talking about? I live very well, you're the one who lives next to my house and keeps risking your life." I laughed, fixing up his fringe that was messy "You're already starting to get drunk, let's go home." I got up pulling on his shirt and he made a weeping face.

"[NAME], why are you so mean to me?" He said slyly and I lifted him up with all my strength hugging him around the waist "Hyunjae, come on, you need to rest." He sighed and started walking making a pout on his lips.

"Stop pouting, you know you need to rest. You work a lot and when you take a break you want to drink soju and philosophize about life with me." I commented while walking down the dark street.

"But you are my best friend, you have to listen to me." I laughed at his comment "If you paid me I could even quit my job, after all, listening to you is all I do." "That's why I love you." He chuckled and put his head on my shoulder as I opened the door to his house, after entering the password.

"I love you too, so go to sleep." I tossed him on the bed and he smiled happily hugging his soft pillow.

- ▪︎ -

It was almost always like this. Hyunjae coming to my house to vent about life, I laugh while making some cards to post on my Instagram and the company. Being a calligraphy artist was a happy part of my life, being able to decorate bookstores, houses, gifts was something that gave me the strength to live.

Hyunjae was such an essential part of my life, that I only realized when our mutual friend asked why we lived so close to each other. My first thought was to think that it would be easier to go out, have fun and talk. My second thought was that I was completely in love with him, and I didn't want to admit it.

It was complicated, an old love that I knew had no way out, but nothing was going to change because I couldn't find any nice guys. I lived with Hyunjae and I had already accepted my condition. Romance went from something I dreamed of as a teenager, to something I value as an adult, but not as much as my sanity.

It was easier to live with Hyunjae than having to go on blind dates with bizarre guys that our friend Sunwoo arranged (probably from the deep web). And I keep ignoring my feelings, being inspired by its way of life.

That day was more beautiful than usual. The sun was shining brightly, the sky was clear and blue, the traffic seemed calm and the weather was perfect for an outdoor meeting, perhaps a date in the park. The subway was surprisingly empty, although it was very early, and I was completely rested.

It seemed like the perfect working day. I had made many cards at the company, sent some orders by mail, and placed new orders for a major literature event that would take place at the company. Lunch was great and our boss was in a good mood telling stories from when she was in college.

The day had gone well, my colleagues finished their jobs earlier than expected so we were able to go out early and eat fried chicken in a new restaurant near the company. I returned home happy and completely shocked at how perfect my day had been.

I got home and changed my shoes. I took a relaxing bath while listening to the news of the day through my radio hanging from the bathroom sink.

"URGENT NEWS! THERE IS A FIRE IN A BUSINESS BUILDING LOCATED IN THE GANGNAM REGION, MANY ARE THREATENING TO JUMP THROUGH THE WINDOWS. SOURCES CONFIRM THAT THE FIRE STARTED BY THE BAD WIRING THAT HAS NOT BEEN CORRECTLY REPLACED. THE FIREFIGHTERS HAVE JUST ARRIVED AND ARE PREPARING TO RELEASE THE PLACE AND REMOVE SURVIVORS. ”

I immediately turned off the shower, drying myself quickly, putting on any clothes, and going to the living room to turn on the TV and see the news.

All the channels were talking about the fire. It even seemed ironic, as I had a great day, and now a building near my company was on fire, and I had to see desperate people on the TV screen.

My heart stopped and my eyes lit up when I recognized Hyunjae running away with a long sheet and other men helping him from afar. This was apparently what he was supposed to do, try to stay calm and help people in a tragedy that could cost their lives.

“FIREFIGHTERS MOBILIZED QUICKLY AND SURVIVORS ARE GETTING TO THE GROUND SAFELY. THE FIRE HAS BEEN CONTROLLED AND WE HAVE NO NEWS FROM ANY VICTIMS IN SERIOUS STATE UNTIL THE MOMENT-” The woman turned and the cameraman filmed Hyunjae leaving the scene with a woman unconscious in his arms “THIS YOUNG BRAVE MAN REMOVED THE LAST VICTIM FROM THE LOCATION. AMBULANCE HAS ARRIVED AND WILL TREAT EVERYONE IMMEDIATELY. ”

I closed my fists tightly, my mouth dried and my heart sped up. Hyunjae had entered that burning building, risking his life, to save another one.

The fire subsided until it was extinguished. Reporters were still talking about how the police were already investigating everything and how fortunately no lives were lost and the victims had only minor injuries. I sighed with relief and sent a message to Hyunjae, congratulating him, but mostly asking how he was doing.

Me:

[Are you okay? I just saw it all on TV, I'm so worried!]

[I am proud of you, you were amazing.]

[I hope you're all right, send a message when you see this.]

Received.

I sighed and laid down on my bed covering my eyes trying to remember that he was fine.

"Nothing happened."

"Hyunjae is fine. No need to worry."

I was trying to convince myself that he was fine, alive, and doing his job, but my heart couldn't calm down. I decided to take a light tranquilizer and lie down again.

Maybe he would answer me in the morning, I would wait patiently and everything would be fine.

I turned on some drama on TV while I was busy watching cute animals on Youtube to pass the time. After a few hours and having a quick nap, I was surprised by the ringing of my cell phone and saw that it was Hyunjae.

I got up and answered quickly.

“Hyunjae ?! Are you okay? Where are you?" I hurried over and felt him give a tired laugh on the other end of the phone.

“I'm outside your house, please open it for me. It's a little cold here. ” He made a little joke like he always does, maybe, trying to calm my worried mood.

"Okay, I'll be right back." I hung up the phone and ran out to the door.

I opened the door feeling my heart racing, my joints tingling from suddenly getting up and automatically everything calmed down when I saw his face.

He had his bangs glued to his forehead, his face was dirty with some ash. He still had his work uniform on and was holding some bandages probably bought from the pharmacy near our homes.

"I came for you to heal me." He gave a sarcastic smile as I felt relief wash over my entire body.

"Come on, staying in this serene is bad." I pulled him inside, locking the door and putting his usual shoe in the doorway.

"Unfortunately I bought anything I saw at the pharmacy, so I hope you help me, I'm deadly tired." He started talking quietly trying to hide how he was shaken by that night.

"Hyunjae... are you okay?" I asked seeing him sitting on a chair in the kitchen taking off his uniform, leaving only the standard white blouse and pants.

"Yeah." He said dryly biting his lip and looking away. The habit he made when he lied.

"Stop lying to me." I walked towards him crossing my arms “If you were really well, you would have gone home, answered on your cell phone, and slept in peace."

He sighed and looked at me with a look that made my whole body tremble. He looked scared, anxious, but mostly nervous about something.

"What is it?" I touched his cheek and he sighed, closing his eyes and leaning into my hand.

"I almost lost my mind today." He stood up scratching the back of his neck with a choked voice as if he were about to cry.

"What do you mean?" He looked at me so sincerely that I felt my heart soften.

"We were on the traffic patrol when we heard the call." He laughed, but it was sad. "When they said the address, and I realized it was on the same street as your job, I despaired."

My eyes flew open and he sat on the edge of the couch burying his fingers in his dirty, messy hair.

“I thought you could be there and I lost it. When I got there, all I could think about was you.” I approached and realized that in fact, his eyes were watery "I know I should be concerned with other people, but I could only think ‘What if it is her building? What if she is there? What if she is in danger? What if I can't save her?’ And I went into eternal despair.”

I felt my heart racing so fast it could come out of my mouth.

"I-I didn't care if other people were hurt, as long as you were fine..." He looked at me and I felt a huge urge to hold his face "And it scares me. The way I was afraid of losing you and I couldn't think rationally, on the professional side.”

I sat next to him listening to everything he had to say.

"Hyunjae, anyone would feel the same way, you don't have to feel guilty about it." I wiped away his tears and held his cheeks in the palm of my hands "I would have done the same, thinking about you all the time."

He gave a smile sniffing before holding my hands.

"But it's different this time." He said before looking into my eyes with an invisible force that made me nervous "I thought nothing would make sense if I didn't have you by my side."

I took a deep breath trying to follow his argument.

"I don't want to lose you." He whispered as if it were a forbidden confession "You are the most important person in the whole world to me." He touched my cheek with the palm of his hand "You know that, don't you?" He swallowed hard, leaning his forehead against mine.

I took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair.

"I know Hyunjae, you are also the most special person for me." I said seeing how he had relaxed a little more "Now get up, you need to take a shower and put bandages on these cuts."

I stood up first, but I felt his hand close to my fist. He was taller than me, not so much, but his body was so strong that it made me feel small around him.

"What? Come on, you're very tired. ” I took the lead before I felt him pulling me again.

"[NAME]." He said hoarsely as I studied his face curiously.

Hyunjae was too different that night.

“What is it Hyunjae? Your face is dirty, you need to take a shower. ” I touched my hips trying to understand what he wanted.

Hyunjae approached pulling my wrist towards him before giving a kiss there.

"Come with me." He said making me petrified on the spot.

"W-WHAT?!" I asked nervously as I felt my heart pound so loudly that I was afraid he might hear "I-That's not funny, Hyunjae."

He released my fist and pulled me by the hip, staring deep into my eyes.

"I'm not kidding." I felt a shiver down my back when he admitted it wasn't a joke or a friend flirt "I got tired of pretending I don't feel anything for you."

I couldn't say anything, I was too shocked to reply.

“[NAME], you are the most important person to me and I don't want to live any longer having to treat you just like a best friend.” He touched my chin and raised my gaze to his “Please, be honest with me. Am I just a best friend to you? ”

I felt his gaze enter my soul and I knew I had no way to lie anymore, this was the only chance I would have to admit what I feel.

"No." I swallowed and stared at his mouth, which formed a small smile of satisfaction.

It was amazing the effect that Hyunjae had on me. Even if I wanted to run away, I wouldn't be able to lie because it was already obvious from the way I act.

"Great." I felt my stomach churn when I felt his left hand hold me tighter as his right landed on my cheek, making his thumb touch my chin, caressing it. "I hope you don't mind this."

"Mind wha—" I could barely finish the question and I felt his lips on mine.

I pulled away unintentionally from the shock and looked into his eyes that seemed to be staring at me with an indescribable fire. I swallowed and felt my heart racing as he just smirked sideways, as if he knew what I was thinking.

He approached me slowly, touching our noses and I closed my eyes feeling his breath warm my face. I felt my face heat up and my palms sweat when his lips brushed against mine again. I held on to his white blouse with the rest of my strength and waited for Hyunjae to close the distance that bothered me so much.

I felt his hand move and his fingers pulled my chin down, opening my mouth that was closed by shock. I let out the breath I didn't know I was holding and felt him laugh through his nose before wetting my bottom lip with his tongue lightly, kissing me gently.

I lifted my hands to his hair where I pulled slightly, feeling my back against the bathroom door. Hyunjae took a quick breath, trying desperately to open the bathroom door, trying not to break the kiss.

I opened my eyes after Hyunjae got rid of me, feeling my heart stop at the sight of him focused on trying to open the bathroom door. His face was flushed, but his ears seemed to burn at how red they were. His dark eyebrows were furrowed and his mouth was pink and inviting.

"Aish." Hyunjae said finally opening the bathroom making me smile slightly.

I held on to his blouse when I almost tripped over my own rug and Hyunjae grabbed my waist with his arm. He gave me a shy smile before leaning his body against mine, making me even more nervous.

His fingers played with the old buttons on my wool blouse. I held his neck intoxicating myself by his smell invading my senses. I felt a shiver down my spine when his fingers touched my skin gently, as if it were the most expensive porcelain that should be handled with care.

Hyunjae started the shower making me more and more nervous. He pushed me with some force making my back touch the tile on the cold wall of the bathroom. I felt his wet abdomen touching mine and tried to take his shirt off awkwardly making him laugh with amusement.

I looked into his eyes feeling my cheeks flush hard as I held his necklace in my hand. I smirked when I realized it was the gift I had given them for his last birthday. It was a sun necklace that was completed with another necklace, which was mine and was shaped like a moon.

I used to say that he was the sun that lit up my life and that reflected in me. I didn't expect him to wear it every day, because he is so critical of his clothes and his style, so I was surprised when I saw the jewel on his soft, wide collarbone.

"I-I like that necklace." He justified himself by making me smile as I felt my hair gradually get wet from the shower water.

I caressed his cheeks, removing all the dust and ashes from his face. He closed his eyes as I carefully wiped his face by raising my hands to his hair. My stomach churned when I kissed the corner of his jaw and he let out a long breath squeezing my waist.

"I like you." I confessed by kissing his neck, stroking his hair "Really."

"N-Noona." He said slyly in my ear making me smile. He only called me Noona when he was embarrassed "Don't do this to me."

"What?" I asked, acting like I didn't get his thoughts while looking at his beautiful body in front of me. I moved my hands down his chest feeling my whole body softening and looked him in the eyes hoping he understood the message I wanted to convey.

"You know." He responded by pinning me to the wall as he fiddled with the buttons on his pants, leaning his forehead against mine, chuckling through his nose.

I hugged him feeling slightly embarrassed when I felt him take off my bra and toss it on any floor in the bathroom. I closed my eyes tightly as I felt his lips kiss my neck slowly and lovingly.

"[NAME] ..." He sighed and kissed my collarbone "I-I know you like romantic guys, but the last thing I want to do now is to be patient and romantic with you."

I felt my whole body tremble and my thoughts were confused.

"I-Is this okay with you?" He asked suspiciously and I nodded, unable to speak, "Are you sure?"

I just answered him by kissing him again. He returned it immediately, deepening the kiss, holding me in his strong arms.

So, I closed my eyes and just let all those feelings accumulated from so long being satisfied without thinking about anything else.

- ▪︎ -

The truth was that love could come from anywhere, from a friendship for years, from a complete stranger, from a colleague at work or college. There are no limits to define where love should be born.

For Hyunjae and you, it was born out of years of extreme care. An affection that could not be limited by friendship, and by the undeniable attraction you felt for each other. There are people who spend years like this without the courage to declare themselves.

At that moment, a questioning is born within you. What if you hadn't declared yourself that night? What if you had run away? Hyunjae would probably walk away and leave your house feeling his heart broken. You weren't going to have the happy ending you wanted, and you could probably lose a precious friendship.

Ultimately, the butterfly effect has been proven and you should admit that your best 'mistake' was to have overcome your fear and admitted your senses. His best 'mistake' was sleeping with his best friend.

The question that remains is: Was that your destiny, or just the butterfly effect?

Ultimately, none of that mattered, because you both loved each other deeply.

▪︎

MASTERLIST

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

Note

Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all).

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

#politics for ts #long post #anonymous #ask

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whentherewerebicycles · 3 years

Text

wow okay i am skipping the lingerie party lol and am instead going to just briefly jot down some thoughts before i go to sleep and wake up at 5 for my flight tomorrow morning. jesus christ i have ONE MILLION thoughts and feelings about this weekend. i want to preface this by saying that on the whole, it was a fine social experience! it was nowhere near as awkward or painful as i was expecting. or like, parts of it were painful, but it was 100% to do with my own complicated feelings about literally every part of this tradition and the wedding industry in general lol, and not anything to do with the people themselves. the other women were friendly and very welcoming, i made an event best friend who was wonderful company, and it was really fun to get to spend time with both my sister-in-law and her older sister, who was so charming and wonderful. i’m glad i came even though thinking about the $$ i spent on this trip makes me physically gag.

but okay i want to just record some THOUGHTS that maybe i will continue unpacking with some distance. i feel likeeeee okay here are my thoughts.

the social norms around femininity are just a fucking minefield and i feel like i really just gotta keep walking back the impulse to judge other women for the choices they make as they navigate around the manifold traps and snares and half-buried landmines that constitute the landscape of being a woman. like jesus christ. it’s so fucked up, it’s so fucked up, the received and socially enforced norms of femininity are just so fucked up. I think ALL THE FUCKING TIME of this margaret atwood poem i love so much, which was REALLY on my mind this weekend:

How can I teach her some way of being human that won’t destroy her?

I would like to tell her, Love is enough, I would like to say, Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance and be happy. Instead I will say in my crone’s voice, Be ruthless when you have to, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it.

I feel like the first bit was very much on my mind throughout the weekend, but those last three lines have come to the forefront over the course of this last day, as i have tried to do some Thinking about what i observed/experienced/felt this weekend. whether or not this is what it means in the context of the poem, tell the truth when you can, when you can see it, expresses something of my complex feelings: I don’t know that I can tell the truth about femininity because I don’t know that I can see it. i am both too close to it/still emotionally entangled in it and too far from it to know which parts of it are ‘real’ and which parts are just performance.

i feel like one thing that struck me this weekend, in ways that i don’t know if i’ve noticed as much before, was that so much of the things women say to each other or do in these social contexts is performative, and they know on some level it’s a performance, but we are all going through the motions of doing and saying the expected things anyway. that has not always been clear to me. i have spent so much of my own life as a woman thinking that other women perfectly, seamlessly, naturally embodied the norms of femininity, and i was the only one (or part of a group of only ones) who couldn’t remember my lines, or kept fumbling my cues, or felt so painfully, self-consciously aware that i was playing a role that i could never deliver a convincing performance. but this weekend, after the initial social panic had passed, i started trying to get out of my own head a little bit and look for things that disproved the very strong theory i had brought into the weekend. and of course then i started seeing more and more of the little moments where women say one thing and do another, or profess one belief/conviction but then the whole corpus of their lived experiences and choices contradicts that stated belief, or whatever. and also just like, moments of pathos, where someone i had judged harshly at the beginning of the weekend offhandedly revealed something about her past that really changed my perception of her, or at least made me think like, ah god, i have to have empathy for and with this person, because i think she might be a complex person just like me, with an intricate inner life that her performance partially reveals and partially occludes from view, and agh, it sucks to have to think of people as complicated instead of as safely two-dimensional & easy to dismiss, and the reason it sucks is because then it forces you to realize that you share more with this person than you’d like to admit, and that some of your wounds are the same, even if you dealt with those wounds (the wounds of girlhood, or rather the emotional wounds that our culture inflicts upon girls, which then become tangled up in complex and painful ways with the lived experience of girlhood itself) in really different ways.

but also ugh. we are all performing gender norms but there is just something that does not feel playful at all about embodying conventional femininity. i can’t think of a better way to phrase that right now but it’s like.. the performance isn’t fun. it doesn’t seem to be fun. i don’t know that anyone here was having fun doing it, even if they were having fun being with each other. but it was like doing the intensely gendered social rituals was like, the price of admission? like it was the toll we had to pay to be together spending time in the company of other women? i don’t know man but it fucking exhausts me. like i can push myself to stretch my genuine empathy and sense of solidarity with other women much further than my knee-jerk judgmental reaction, but i can’t ever get to a place where i find any of those social rituals anything other than fucking exhausting. they feel so fucking joyless. they feel like things that many women have internalized as ‘things we must do in order to have relationships with other women.’ (please do not even get me started on how exhausting heteronormativity is i think i could write an entire other essay on how women use these bachelorette party-type rituals to spend time with their closest female friends, but the whole event is still implicitly organized around men, and these women’s male partners are still positioned as the priority in their lives, and the whole event is framed as like, a last burst of intense closeness between women before the bride is delivered over to her husband. like i KNOW that this is not how women think of it but all the RHETORIC of the bachelorette party, the little events and rituals and games, the little comments everyone makes all fucking weekend, good fucking lord, my jaw is so TENSE.)

anyway god i just AGHHHH. idk sorry this is definitely not coherent at ALL because i’m tired and still need a bit more distance/time to process some of this. i guess here is one last thing i want to register before i sleep. i am in my 30s now and i am living a life that is so, so far removed from the social world i grew up in. marriage is not a norm among my friend group, almost all of my female friends are queer women, many women i know are not partnered and have no interest in being partnered, and the friends who are in heterosexual relationships tend to be in very gender-balanced relationships or slightly nontraditional relationships where it feels like both partners have engaged in conscious reflection about what they want their relationship to look/feel like. also i now date women, am out as a lesbian, and spend most of my time teaching/working with queer- and trans/nonbinary-identified kids.

so like, the world i live in now is just so different from the world i grew up in. and sometimes it is easy for me to kind of downplay the intensity of my own gender distress as a teen and young adult, or to sort of - act like it was a phase in my life that had much more to do with me than with the social environment i lived in. i don’t mean ‘phase’ in a dismissive ‘those feelings weren’t real’ kind way, but more like, ‘oh that was just part of the normal growing pains of figuring out who you are and what kind of person you want to be as an adult - everybody pretty much goes through some version of that.’ it’s true that everyone DOES go through some version of that, as just like, part of the process of individuation in that age range. but also like. idk man. being back in this environment - straight white women from the midwest and south, all engaging in the rituals of heterosexual white femininity - was just so intense and so MUCH, and it brought back a flood of feelings and visceral memories that i feel like i will need to spend some time sorting through over the next few weeks. like, what i experienced back then really WAS gender distress, and it was so, so distressing. i spent the years from age 11ish to 24ish existing with this constant lowgrade baseline feeling of wanting to claw my own fucking skin off because my own gendered body felt like such a prison, and i sometimes felt like i literally wanted to destroy my own body because i could not yet conceive of an alternative to inhabiting that body or playing the role that had been handed down to me. until i started reading queer memoirs and inhaling lesbian media and (especially) reading about queer femme identities, i literally did not have an image or any kind of felt sense of what another way of inhabiting my own body might look/feel like. i literally could not imagine it!!!

and that is why the distress feels so distressing, and becomes internalized in such violent ways, i think. because it’s the blind, mindless panic of a trapped and wounded animal. except that you lack any real understanding of the larger social forces at work, or any language with which to describe or conceptualize what social norms are or how they’re enforced. so in your mind, the only thing you can see wounding you is your own gendered body, or the way that gendered body is socially 'read’ by others. and that is why you want to claw your own fucking skin off, just literally dig your nails into your own flesh and claw it the fuck off. because you can’t see a norm, but you can see your gendered body, and you can see the ways that it causes other people to react to you, or treat you, or hold you to a certain set of expectations, and so in your mind you are like: this must be destroyed. in your mind you are like, the only way out is to get out of this fucking body, but that’s impossible, surely, you can’t get out of your own body, so you have to settle for starving it and self-harming it and ruthlessly punishing it in a thousand terrible ways, because you might not be able to leave your girl’s body behind, but you can make it suffer and pay for what it’s done to you.

i am old enough now, and have spent enough time thinking and writing about those feelings, to identify them when they arise again, and to get the necessary distance from them so that i can say, what i want to destroy are the norms themselves, and the distress they cause, and not the body that has done nothing to me but be me. so i am not quite as sucked under as i used to be. but i think that there is something about the violence and intensity of those feelings that i forget sometimes, or misremember with age and distance. it’s easy to be a little bit patronizing to my younger self (or by extension to my younger students sometimes), because i now live in a social world that is largely arranged in ways that minimize rather than intensify or amplify gender distress. but when you have no choice in how to arrange your life, and no language with which to understand what is happening to you or what you are experiencing, and no frame of reference to help you understand that this is a period in your life and not forever, and no models you can look to in order to discover alternative ways of inhabiting your body or arranging your life... my god, that’s quite different from being an adult with a wide range of experiences and with much greater autonomy over your own body and life. anyway idk i need to keep thinking but now i must go to bed and try to sleep five hours before the plane.

#how can i teach her some way of being human #that won't destroy her!!!#gender #mw #to think further #girls I have been

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artistic-mathematics · 3 years

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sentience in animatronics, particularly in sister location?

Major FNAF lore spoilers ahead. Also, this is a very long theory post. Consider yourself warned.

This is a list of the main animatronics that are possessed, or have sentience in some way or another. (This list might be a little shady, so bear with me):

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Golden Freddy (First Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 1)

Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica (Second Missing Children’s incident, FNAF 2)

Mangle (from the fruit maze minigame)

Puppet/Marionette/Lefty (for... obvious reasons)

Springtrap (also for obvious reasons)

Looking to each of their behaviors, it’s shown that the person who possess said animatronic (aside from Puppet) were stuffed into their respectful suit, which is how said animatronic gains sentience. For the Puppet, Charlie’s spirit kind of merged with the Puppet’s because the puppet wanted to protect Charlie, even after death (or something like that. That’s basically how MatPat explained it in one of his videos.) For this, we’ll kind of just... ignore the Puppet, because that’s clearly an exception and isn’t really useful here.

Now, if we look into everyone else’s behavior, we see the following. The main animatronics and the toy animatronics are weary of adults (including Mangle, btw!), especially night guard, because they look the most similar to William Afton (or their murderer). Springtrap is, well, William Afton, and he always comes back because he has the plot armor of every Disney princess ever. They all have a proper motive -- the children and the dog looking to avenge their own deaths, while William Afton murders more people and does more of his twisted experiments with souls and wreaks more havoc overall.

Sister Location is different. We know for a fact that Elizabeth Afton possesses Circus Baby, but even then, it’s an extremely fuzzy grey line. What was her motive in killing her own brother? Michael mentions that the Funtimes thought he was William, so actually, what was her motive in killing her own father?

For my fic (which is why I... started overanalyzing this to begin with...), I’ve written this off as the fact that maybe Elizabeth’s soul wasn’t fully merged with Baby’s yet. There seems to be a bit of a consensus on there needing to be time before a spirit fully merges with the animatronic, so maybe that is the case. Maybe Baby just had sentience and decided to do whatever it took to leave, despite knowing that he was Elizabeth’s father and her own creator.

We know that in FNAF 6, Elizabeth has some control or some say over Scrap Baby. I get that an animatronic literally made by William could call him “daddy”, but realistically, Elizabeth would be more likely to do so.

For the sake of this post, let’s just assume that Elizabeth had no say over Baby in Sister Location, but in part gave Baby sentience (because she obviously is sentient by then). The true motive that Elizabeth has, while actually possessing Baby, is to make her father proud, considering that the very last thing she did while alive was disrespect orders and disappoint him. She wants to make amends and make him happy.

We have all of these possessed animatronics with a clear end motive, one that relates directly to their death in some way. So what on earth is going on with the other Funtimes?

Let’s start with Ballora. The most commonly accepted theory is the theory MatPat proposed, that Ballora is actually Mrs. Afton (whose name has not been confirmed yet). The biggest issue I see with this theory, though, is the fact that not once does she actually display true sentience throughout all of Sister Location. Sure, she has a few lines that were definitely not coded in, but that doesn’t really determine anything. There is one major difference between Baby (who we’ve already determined to be sentient) and Ballora,

Ballora doesn’t learn. I don’t think Baby only meant that Ballora couldn’t learn to pretend in order to avoid getting scooped. When Baby first mentions Ballora, she simply tells you how to get past her. Ballora is predictable, and Baby knows that. She knows exactly what Ballora will do, because she doesn’t learn from her failures. You’d think, after being in an underground facility for so long, that any human (even a child!) would be willing to change their tactics. And yet now we’re talking about a fully-grown adult who’s possessing this animatronic? It just doesn’t seem likely.

I do believe that she is at least partially sentient, though, due to her voice lines and the ability to at least listen to Baby. She also has a less than fun reaction to the controlled shocks and is very, very hostile to you after that, showing that she has at least some capacity to understand that Michael hurt them. Also, if Ennard’s inner dialogue is to be believed in night 5, then I can see Ballora bringing up the fact that he had hurt them. (I do believe that Baby planned this whole thing out and told the other Funtimes to act hostile towards Michael, but uh, Ballora may have just held a grudge regardless.)

Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that it’s been generally confirmed that Circus Baby’s Pizza World opened after the first missing children’s incident. If this is to be believed, then William Afton would have already done experiments with remnant and whatnot. In this case, I think it’s actually quite likely that Ballora may have had Mrs. Afton’s remnant, but not her spirit. This would explain why she’s not as sentient as Baby, but is at least somewhat sentient. I think this was extremely deliberate -- I do agree with the part of the theory in which Ballora was modeled after Mrs. Afton in some way. He must’ve done this to honor her memory or something along those lines.

Now onto Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy. We know that the both of them are also sentient in their own way, considering the fact that they were also able to listen to Baby (while Funtime Foxy does have the same motives as Ballora when it comes to attacking Michael, Funtime Freddy does not. so I do believe that Baby must’ve talked to him beforehand to some extent in acting hostile.) My theory is that both Funtime Freddy and Funtime Foxy must’ve had remnants of other people, since they both also seem to have at least partial sentience like Ballora. But who, and why? It makes sense for Ballora to have Mrs. Afton’s if she’s modeled after her. But what’s the point of making these other two sentient?

The best solution I can come up with is to enhance the AI in them, so they do a better job of kidnapping and killing children... or whatever. I have absolutely no proof to back this up, though.

Then, well, Ennard happens. And the three of them vote to kick Baby out. While the three of them kinda just... let things happen in Sister Location, I think the reason for their rebellious behavior was actually due to Elizabeth being merged with them. I think that maybe she passed on some of that sentience to the other three, giving them just enough willpower to boot Baby. Do I have evidence for this? No. Is this entirely based off of headcanons? Yup. Honestly, I’m just spitballing at this point. I am so, so very tired of trying to figure out how sentience even works in FNAF at this point.

(Don’t even get me started on Bon Bon, the Bidybabs, and Minireenas. I have no goddamn clue how any of them even fit. The Bidybabs saying “She’s watching us!” or something along those lines just... my one braincell is crying.)

Anyway, please let me know what you think. This was long and convoluted and I want some opinions from other people, because I really am just overthinking all of this now.

PS. I have no idea how this remnant stuff even works. Couldn’t you tell? I probably should’ve researched it but I’m too braindead for that now. Literally putting this out there before anyone flames me.

#fnaf sister location #fnaf pizzeria simulator #circus baby #elizabeth afton #scrap baby #funtime freddy #funtime foxy #ballora #fnaf theory #my theory #william afton #ennard #mrs afton #fnaf lore

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silvanable · 3 years

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Overblot Theory (pt1?)

okay okay all my twst darlings, i bring forward a theory. and please bear with me because this is written in the middle of the night-morning & i am thriving on sleep drugs that aren’t doing their job, so there’s likely a million typos and half of it or more might sound like drunk rambling the irony of never being drunk lol.

also i’m tagging now that this contains spoilers i guess? i haven’t finished chapter 5 ( i’m still fairly early in ) yet but i’m literally going to be talking about everything i’ve seen thus far regarding overblot and those effected by it.

aNYWAYS—

so we all know how overblot works right? nasty emotional build up, using too much magic, and then sNAP!

that’s great and dandy, it seems like a build up that gets to a tipping point and suddenly that last drop cracks the glass and everything comes flooding out— right?

but what if overblot isn’t actually that flood point where they turn? what if the overblot is the whole process, not when they are consumed by the negative energies and black magic that force such a violent change on them?

so in every chapter thus far, there is always a few scenes were were see the ink dripping. gradually as we progress through the chapters, we watch as the character begins to spiral and is consumed by negative emotions. each time we see the ink, it splotches more and more, growing and forming a larger puddle each time.

BUT— each case is slightly different from the others, despite having the same trends with each dorm and the inevitable overblot, each character has a different way of reaching that.

so we have the general order everyone overblots for plot purposes, but in my opinion the fact riddle didn’t overblot sooner was fucking astounding. we’re shown how liberally he used his magic and the super strict and toxic mindset he had which was forced on him since childhood. then after each scene we saw of the ink pooling, riddle would gradually become worse in the chapter, until the moment he snapped and became a homicidal maniac.

leona was similar, except instead of him using his magic, he was consumed by his own emotions more and more. it was his hatred from his brother, his family, and his home that started it. then the issue of being second still in nrc to someone like malleus. many reasons to why leona is a lazy ass but i love him still oof but because he kept these things contained, letting it boil and seep into him, it made these things so much worse than they should have been. so ultimately when his plan fails, after trying so hard and becoming so desperate, there’s a surge and he transforms.

azul goes down a combined path, he uses his magic constantly, even with a buffer like a contract and his crystal, and is consumed by his own self loathing and emotions that send him spiraling. the final straw is the moment when his contracts are stolen and disintegrated by leona. but it was already shown throughout chapter 3 that azul has a moment of breaking, despite his composure, was spiraling the moment yuu started poking around. and being outsmarted did nothing for his barely existing pride to begin with.

jamil, out of all of them, but far hurt me the most because all of his sly tactics and underhanded tricks were really because he was trying to fight so he could be himself. fully heartedly believe if grim and yuu never showed up, he would have never overblotted. granted what jamil does is a big dick move but his entire life he’s been repressed and he has no freedom to himself what so ever— essentially he was forced to be an adult since he was a child and lemme tell you that ain’t fun. the one thing i consider a key part here is not the fact his emotions got the better of him in the end, but the fact he used his unique magic on the entire fucking scarabia dorm.

as for vil, granted i don’t know much, but pride and especially vanity will no doubt play a lot into his overblot all because of his rival neige. he’s already a very strict and disciplined character who holds himself very high and strives for nothing less than perfection... so we all know how that ends.

each one of them showed similar tendencies. all of them have some sort of inferiority complex, repressed emotions, and magic is always involved in small or excessive quantities. what i think is going on is not that suddenly they are overwhelmed— no, the overblot starts before anyone notices. that’s what the ink represents.

let’s assume that everyone, no matter what, always has blot, regardless if their magic crystals are ‘clean’ and ‘clear’. after all, the crystals are supposed to be an extra barrier between the user and magical backlash, but emotions have to play a part in this too. so while the crystals protect from magic blot, emotional is different... they just kind of soak that disgusting ink right up and channels all their magic right through it and the crystals only soak up so much of it.

so everyone has some blot? great. but what’s the point of this? i’ll tell you! it’s that each person handles it differently. our boys here all swallow their complaints, the crap they deal with, disagree with, or have been served, and try to shove it into some deep, dark, forgotten pit to never see again. except it doesn’t work, because the more they use magic the more it warps those feelings, feeding off of it. it uses emotions as a sort of super charge for the magic, which creates more negative magic and amplifies the emotions.

so the overblot had already started by the time yuu and grim show up, just some of the boys had decent wraps of it all and didn’t have a nosy human ruining their fucking plans.

okay, kidding, i don’t believe that yuu and grim play a super major part, as eventually the overblots would happen with our without them. either way, i don’t think there would have been a way to stop it without knowing and solving the problem before the transformed and needing anyone in the near vicinity with ability to beat the shit out of the monster controlled student & knock some sense back into them.

i think that by the time yuu shows up, it’s already too late. that first moment we see the ink drip and gather? that’s the start and there’s no stopping it. why? because that was the overblot, the end of filling up and the beginning of tipping without a way to reverse it.

instead of having their emotions all tucked away, the magic has morphed into something nasty, too strong, and they might not even know it. at this point, it’s less about them actually accumulating blot and more that every negative emotion and burst of magic they let out begins to accelerate the build up attracting every little bit of negativity and magic whether or not they actually feel or do anything. the transformation is not the overblot finally happening, it’s the completion, when all that black magic, blot, and emotions burst free from its cage and utter consumes the host.

now i’m not going into the theory i have about the overblot forms and the shadows, because that’s an entirely different topic for me about possession and the great 7, but what i’m trying to say here is—

the overblot is the whole process, not just the transformation and monstrous shadow lurking behind the newest asshole victim.

the ink forming, the unstable spiral each character falls into, and finally the explosion that transforms them. it’s the magic and emotions that muddled together taking on an intent of its own, a will of nothing but chaos and destruction, taints their magic crystals, and uses the host as a means of executing it by clouding their minds and giving them the power they always wanted and needed.

after all, when you’re drunk on power and fed by trauma, are you really going to listen to reason or do what you want because you finally have the ability to do so? of course you’re going to listen to the little voice that says to destroy and take it all for yourself!

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silverandsoulbonded · 3 years

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A Life of Stories - Soulbonding and My Story

It’s the late 90’s. A tiny child sits in the grip of wonder on the carpet two feet from the old, analog television screen. The volume is turned way down on a Saturday morning, so as not to wake the parents. And Digimon: Adventure is playing.

That kid was me.

I spent the next several days telling anyone and everyone I knew about the trials and bravery of my favorite new friends on the TV. Taichi and his Digi-pals.

Every Saturday morning I tuned in with wrapped attention to check in on my friends. Because that is what they were. I could not explain it at the time, and looking back I see that I did not understand just how powerful my love for them was, but over the years I began to notice the disparity between my experience and that of others. The glazed looks I received when I tried to communicate just how much the “stories” around me meant to my heart and spirit.

As I grew, so too did my well of worlds. When it was not Digimon, it turned to Batman and the DC Animated Universe. Over the years, as things became harder and harder for me in an unsafe household, I would reach out to those stories for safety and comfort. In the dead of night, listening to shouts, I would silently pray for Batman to come in and save me. I would think about Static, from Static Shock, and his bravery. I would long for the Justice League to show me hope.

I grew up in a conservative Protestant Christian household, and I was quickly taught from the moment I could understand stories that they were not real. It seemed a strange double-standard to me, as we read of Jesus and his amazing feats, recorded centuries ago by the hands of men but somehow “different” than the other stories I consumed, which also taught me and affected me just as emotionally.

It would not be until adulthood that I could finally articulate this incongruity I felt, much less possess the bravery and personal freedom to think about it on my own terms. To set aside the pre-packaged “truth” I had been fed growing up in order to find my own fresh fruits of wisdom and meaning.

Stories. Stories are what sustain humanity. All we have are stories. Even the perceptions we store in our brains are only that. Perceptions. Stories. We can never truly know what an orange is, or who a person is. We only can know our perception of them, and the story of them that lives on within us.

And, sometimes, those stories speak to us in the most fantastic and magical of ways.

Fast forward to 2021.

I am an adult. A practicing witch and pagan. An artist and writer. I am functional and thriving. And I have an unusual family.

Some of the most important people in my life do not exist on the physical plane of this Earth quite the same as other friends of mine. They exist in the subtle realms of Dream and thought and wonder. Over time I have come to find many names for them. Spirits, guides, and “soulbonds”.

I began my foray into the community of “soulbonding” when I began to sense, or rather, acknowledge the living quality of some of the “characters” I was writing about. One character in particular, a being who introduced himself to me in a dream, had me particularly flummoxed. I called him Asura, and from the moment he entered my life through that dream, my entire world changed. It was akin to stepping onto a roller coaster car while it was still moving—except this roller coaster had no track and no limits. His entire presence permeated my life, my thoughts, my daydreams. I wrote about him, and it was my writing about him that led me to thoughts, questions, and explorations I would have never dared otherwise. By finding him, he led me to find myself, and for that I shall be forever grateful.

At some point, I, and even my closest friends, became aware of a “spookiness” about my dogged pursuit of this mysterious character. I started to know things about him and his world, and make connections in his story, that seemed to come out of nowhere but which all cohered together perfectly. Without a fault, I would learn tidbits about him that would suddenly fit with another thing I learned later, though I never had to strain to achieve such things. It was not so much that I was “creating” the story so much as “recording” it. There were elements of his story that overlapped with our world’s history and it was spooky as all get out when I learned about historical facts through his story and later found them to also be reflected in my own world, which has a similar timeline to his. A sort of “sibling world” to his.

We also noticed the tremendous power of my emotional connection to him and his friends. My boyfriend at the time even became jealous of Asura, though I assured him that was absurd. “Asura is just a story,” I would say. And my boyfriend thought the same yet he, and others, seemed unable to ignore the fact that there seemed to be something weird going on.

And, one day, with horror, I realized I was in love with Asura—fortunately, by that time I had since broken up with my boyfriend—but the idea terrified me. Unsurprisingly, this sent a conservative Christian “good kid” such as myself down into a spiral of questions and disbelief.

I felt the imposter syndrome. I thought, “I must be insane.” Yet, no one, myself included, could deny the reality of this connection I felt.

Over time, Asura and his friends began to speak to me. They guided me and provided loving support to me. I, at the time, figured I was either crazy or eccentric.

“Maybe this is a writer thing,” I thought.

And it was that thought that led me to soulbonding. I learned of other writers who also had their “characters” come alive to them. Alice Walker, author of the famed American work, The Color Purple, allegedly purported that she had received her story straight from the characters’ mouths one afternoon, during which she sat down to tea with them and learned their tale. And that is when I found a forum site called “The Living Library” (now defunct), and learned the term “soulbonding”.

In that community I found others who echoed my story in various ways. Deep personal connections to entities from other worlds, many of whom they found depicted in the flourishing ecosystem of thought and imagination, stories, that surrounds the human race. Others, discovered their unconventional friends via dreams, visions, or odd circumstances just like myself. One person I met had actually found one such friend first, in this instance a version of Edward Elric from “Full Metal Alchemist”, before learning years later—with a start I imagine—that Edward actually had an entire manga and anime about him.

I say “version” because another amazing phenomenon I discovered was the occurrence of many instantiations of people, characters, from infinite worlds, all with slight variances from one another. That is when I was introduced to the idea of Multiverse Theory and Many Worlds Theory.

As my personal investigations led me down various spiritual rabbit holes, and eventually led me to spirit-working and witchcraft, I found more and more ideas that seemed to jive with my experience.

I discovered what are colloquially called “pop pantheons” in occult circles. Pantheons of spirits and deities who connect to pop culture figures in human society—and even figures from “fiction”. And there is a whole, thriving community of people who lead successful, fulfilled, and meaningful spiritual lives working with these entities. I learned that reality and “truth” are not objective like I had been taught so long ago. And I finally understood MY truth—all we have are myths and stories. Experience is subjective and the only measure of meaning and truth we have is in the effects we see in our own lives.

With tremendous wonder and happiness, and even love, I have seen the effects my unconventional friends and family have wrought in my life. Asura is my familiar spirit now, and I have a whole host of other beings whom I love. Some come from “personal gnosis”, or unique experience, such as Asura. Others are beings who have come to me from the vast world of collective Dreaming that permeates our world, evident in media sources, in the form of stories.

I still have moments of doubt. I sometimes wonder, “Gee-golly-whiz, am I NUTS?” But then I remember that my truth exists only in my own experience. My ethereal family brings me happiness, growth, and meaning. And there really is no difference between my relationship with them and the relationship I had with Jesus so long ago. Every experience is real to me, and brings with it change and good. And that is what matters.

In this blog I intend to share my experience, in hopes that it can offer a beacon to others in similar situations. Every person’s experience is unique, though I hope mine can at least offer some hope, understanding, and love to another.

Cheers.

And happy story-telling.

- Cosmic

#soulbond #soulbonding #spirituality #spirits #spirit-work #spirit #stories #writer #writing #poppantheon #pop pantheons #occult spirituality #witch #spiritworker #spirit work #my story #my post #SILVERfamily

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five-rivers · 3 years

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Stars Aligned Chapter 2

Here’s the thing. Danny knew this was a dumb decision. At least as dumb as stepping into the ghost portal (but at least he’d gotten some nifty powers out of that, hey?). Whatever reason his bio-dad had for chucking him out the door within days of his birth couldn’t be good. Putting himself within reach of the man… Yeah. Not his brightest thought.

(Not to mention the wizards. And witches. That was so weird, how they had two different names for essentially the same thing. Then again… actor, actress… Why were people so weird?)

On the other hand, twin brother. Twin brother who had to live with aforementioned baby-abandoning bio-dad. Twin brother who wasn’t allowed to visit America. Or, Danny suspected, a family of squibs.

Yeah.

So, here he was. Getting everything in order for a wizard passport and wizard international travel, because bio-family refused to even look at an airport.

Danny had a suspicion that, based on how they spelled the word and a few other comments in that particular letter, that they weren’t entirely clear on what an airport was.

Fun.

On the other hand, in comparison to the actual, normal, legal passport he’d gotten, just in case bio-family left him somewhere, wizard passports were much, much easier to get. The wait times were practically nonexistent. He could, in theory, get the passport on the same day he traveled. All that was needed was proof he was a wizard and his adoption papers.

Of course, ‘proof he was a wizard’ actually meant ‘wand.’ Wands being something they used as personal ID, despite the fact that they were a) sticks, and b) didn’t actually carry any personally identifiable information. Sure, Jack said that they were somehow connected to their owners, but unless there were, like, giant books of details about everyone’s wands at every place that would, conceivably, need ID, and had people trained to identify all those tiny little characteristics… Danny just couldn’t see how it would work.

Danny’s current theory was that all wizards were just insane, which meant that his twin would most likely fit right in with the rest of Danny’s family, right as soon as Danny figured out how to legally kidnap him.

(No, Danny didn’t have a ghostly Obsession, and it definitely wasn’t family related. He was only half-ghost, after all. Why do you ask?)

Anyway. Wizard passport. Wizard ID. Wizard sticks.

Wands.

Wands meant a nerve-wracking trip to the nearest wizarding town with Jack. Evidently, he’d lived there a couple of years after his parents sent him away from Britain when he was around fourteen because of ‘the war.’

Abruptly, many of Jack’s stories about his childhood made more sense.

(It had always been something of a joke between Jazz and Danny to try and figure out what ‘the war’ was supposed to be, and if Jack’s parents had just… Conned him into thinking he’d eaten horse meat. For some reason. Even if the Fentons hadn’t seemed like that kind of people, no matter how eccentric.)

(Also, evidently Jazz and Danny had never met Jack’s biological parents, who were not named Fenton, although his adopted mother was also a witch.)

(Why was everything so complicated?)

The “wizarding community” was a small town accessible only by a train line invisible to ‘no-majs.’ And also flying brooms. Which wizards used. Danny had seen the train before, not realizing that he wasn’t supposed to. Several times. Usually while flying to Wisconsin to deal with whatever Vlad had done that week.

If Danny was a wizard, was Vlad? Was being half-ghost somehow tied up in being magical? What did that mean for Dani?

(Hey, maybe this whole affair could be used to bring Dani into the family safely. Who was to say that he didn’t have a secret twin sister?)

Danny could admit that the town itself, which had almost a Ghost Zone vibe with how all the architecture seemed to be from fifty plus to a hundred years ago and also the physics breaking magic, was sort of cool. It was… cute, he guessed. He didn’t really like how everyone was staring at Jack, their clothes were just as weird, but it wasn’t a new thing. People always stared at Jack.

That’s what happened when you wore hazard-orange jumpsuits twenty-four seven.

The shops all had names out of a fantasy novel, and at one point they got turned around and wound up on a residential street where they had to ask for directions, but eventually they made it to ‘Willoughby’s Wand Emporium.’

The interior of Willoughby’s Wand Emporium reminded Danny strongly of a shoe store. The shelves were all lined with boxes of approximately that size, and the employees all carried measuring tape. It also smelled like a shoe store: musty and dry, with a hint of polish. Or maybe it was wood varnish? Or some kind of paint.

A young woman bounced up. “Hi, how can we help you today? Replacement wand?”

“First time, actually,” said Jack.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the woman. “You’re just so tall for your age.”

“I’m fourteen,” said Danny.

The woman began to turn red.

“He was missed,” said Jack. “It happens.” He smiled, but it looked far more strained than usual.

“Oh,” said the woman. “Ahem. Well, if you’ll come right this way, I can start taking measurements, and start trying out wands. The wand chooses the wizard, they say!”

“Okay,” said Danny, shrugging. That was… interesting. Were the wands sentient? Did that somehow make them acceptable IDs?

Seemed really weird to keep sentient things stored in boxes.

… Said the kid who stored sentient beings in a soup thermos.

A really high-tech soup thermos.

Didn’t make it better.

Except he didn’t keep them in the thermos indefinitely. Except for Dan.

Danny didn’t know if the wizards kept the wands in boxes indefinitely, either. Maybe he should stop assuming things. That had gotten him in trouble with ghosts more than once.

The woman took her measuring tape from where it hung around her shoulders, held it out in front of herself, and promptly dropped it. It did not fall.

As basic as levitation was for ghosts, it was really weird to see a human do it. (Especially when it always took so much concentration for him to levitate things other than himself—Hence why he never really used the ability in battle.)

The measuring tape flitted around Danny’s head, shoulders, arms, and body, taking measurements. He had to sit on his reflexes hard to prevent himself from trying to catch it or knock it out of the air.

He was so nervous. Was it normal to be nervous?

The measuring tape snaked back through the air to the woman, who smiled. “Alright,” she said, “we can start with that. Uh, to explain the process, we usually start out with wands in the appropriate size range and try and zero in on the ones that respond best to you from there.” She flicked her own wand, and several thin boxes slid themselves off the shelves. “We use a wide variety of wand woods from a variety of wandmakers. Just about any tree that grows in North America is probably represented here.” She paused. “Except for palm trees.”

“That makes sense,” said Danny. Palm trees were quite different from other trees.

“Alright. Let’s start with pine. The core of this one is dragon heartstring—Harvested humanely, of course!”

“Core?” said Danny, latching on to the familiar word even as he regarded the wand itself dubiously.

“Yes. As with our woods, we also stock a wide range of wand cores. Each wand has a core made of a small part of a magical creature. Dragon heartstring, unicorn hair, and phoenix feather are the standard ones… But that standardization is rather British. We have a few others available. Thunderbird tail feather—Only taken during molt. Wampus cat hair. Dittany. Rougarou hair. Jackalope antler… Those are the more common ones, though we do have others. Even some kneazle whisker, although most people don’t want those.”

“Why not?”

“Ah, they tend not to be very strong. But sheer power isn’t everything. Some prefer control, need lower power output… or are worried about accidents while they’re learning. We do see some adult learners every now and then.”

That actually sounded sort of appealing to Danny, but he supposed he’d better go about this normally. At least at first.

He picked up the pine wand and immediately dropped it.

“Ow,” he said.

“Ow?” repeated the woman. “Oh,” she said, catching sight of the burn on his hand. “That’s… not supposed to happen.”

“Y’know,” said Danny, conversationally, “I’ve only held, like, two magical things in my life, and both of them have damaged my hands. Is this, like, a common thing, or am I just ridiculously unlucky.”

“Second one, I think,” said the woman. “Cynthia’s good at minor healing charms. I’m going to go get her. Okay? Okay.”

Shortly thereafter, phoenix feather wands were also eliminated as a possibility, not because they burned Danny, but because they seemed intent on burning everything else around him. Pine wands were also a definite no-go (“Don’t worry about the lifespan thing,” said the woman, “that’s a myth.”). As was everything but elder, apple, pear, hornbeam, thorn, and yew (this list got another mention of myths from the shop assistant).

At this point, the shop owner, Mrs. Willoughby, was drawn out from the back room to observe the mess Danny was making.

“My,” she said, “I haven’t seen anyone have this much trouble in a while. Heather, why don’t you go get some of the specialty cores.”

“I thought the unicorn was working well,” protested the woman who’d been helping Danny so far. She winced as Danny picked up a new wand and exploded a light. “Comparatively.”

“Yes, we could probably eventually find a unicorn hair wand that would work for him, but all things considered… I feel like we should explore other avenues.” She sniffed. “Nothing associated with fire. Perhaps kelpie mane?”

“I’ll check,” said Heather.

Kelpie mane, it turned out, did the same sort of thing as phoenix tail feather when it came to Danny. Only with a lot more water involved.

“I didn’t think that would work, anyway,” said Mrs. Willoughby.

“Then why,” said Danny, wringing water out of his shirt, “did you have me try it?”

“Oh, cases like you greatly improve our understanding of wandlore,” said Mrs. Willoughby. “You’re not likely to have noticed this yet, but the population of wizards and witches is so small compared to the no-maj population that everyone who gets very far in a profession has to be a bit of an innovator. I’m recording this for future reference, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing what you do in life. If anything. It would be very helpful to me if you became famous.”

“Hard pass on that,” said Danny.

“Or at least come back at some point.”

“I’ll consider it,” said Danny. “But, like, we were really hoping to do other things today, so maybe…” He made a circular motion with his hand. “Or at least, ugh, I don’t know. I feel like everything you give me is trying to kill me.”

It was a very familiar feeling, and a very unwelcome one, nonetheless.

“We really aren’t,” said Mrs. Willoughby. “But perhaps… from now on, we’ll limit to the woods to the Rosaceaes. The others tend to be called unlucky. Well, except for the hornbeam. Is there anything you’re singularly passionate about?”

Singularly passionate? “Not really,” said Danny, who did not think about ghosts or helping people or space. He shifted, uncomfortable, and squelched.

Screw it. He was supposedly a wizard, now, right?

He phased the water off himself.

“Oh my god!” shouted Heather. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Uh,” said Danny. “No?”

“Calm down, Heather. Don’t act like you’ve never seen accidental magic before.”

“Not with a teenager doing it!”

They were now attracting a crowd. Yay.

“He’s not trained, yet,” said Mrs. Willoughby, unconcerned. “Don’t be rude.”

“Yeah, can we get back on track, here?”

After a few more tries, Mrs. Willoughby had determined that the wood that reacted the least badly to Danny was hawthorn. Then she sent Heather into the storage room to fetch more.

“I don’t know why we even have these,” said Heather, under her breath, carrying several boxes marked with stamps that read ‘THESTRAL.’

“Because some people have trauma, Heather.”

“He’s a teenager. I seriously doubt he has deep personal experiences with death.”

“Wow, way to assume, Heather,” said another shop assistant, who was passing by with a far-too-curious customer.

“Here,” said Mrs. Willoughby, handing Danny a box. “Try this one. It’s hawthorn.”

With some suspicion, Danny slid the cover off the box and gingerly picked up the wand inside.

It didn’t do anything like what the other wands had. Instead, the slender length of wood gave him a faint echo of the feeling he got when he was on an emotional high and engaging in either extreme mischief or obsession-adjacent activities (because he did not have a real, ghostly, capital-O Obsession).

Danny declined to hold it with all five fingers, lest he be overcome with mania.

Yes, he was paranoid. But when touching things can go as badly for you as they did for Danny, paranoia was justified.

“Oh, it looks like you’ve found your match,” said Mrs. Willoughby, clapping.

With the ease of practice, Danny did not let any trace of horror or unease show on his face. He ignored the surge of glee from the wand, and carefully placed it back in the box.

Yeah. He needed a wand for passport purposes, but there was no way he was going to use that. He’d just fake magic with ghost powers. It had been working out okay so far.

What was the worst that could happen?

A rather relieved Jack paid for the wand, and they made their way, slowly, to the government building.

“So,” said Jack. “You want to save getting those beginner magic manuals for another day?”

“Absolutely,” said Danny. He wondered if his twin had gone through anything even remotely like this and if it was really worth all this trouble to meet a person he would have basically nothing in common with other than blood.

Blood that likely meant less than usual, considering that his was diluted with ectoplasm. A fact he would have to hide. With no allies or back up. In England.

(Again, this whole endeavor was not his greatest idea.)

Draco supervised the house-elves as they cleaned out the room next to his own, feeling rather blank. He had campaigned vigorously for his twin to come, but now that he was…

The boy, for all that he was as much a Malfoy as Draco, was an American for all intents and purposes. What did Americans even like? What did they call their bastardized version of Quidditch? Would Deneb even know about wizard games? According to the woman from the agency, he’d been raised as a muggle by those squibs he’d been placed with.

Slowly but surely, Draco’s heart sank. He had no idea what his twin would be like. Deneb, despite being his brother, would essentially be a stranger.

He was beginning to understand why his mother was so angry at his father.

#danny phantom #dp/hp crossover #dp/hp twin au #stars aligned

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takuyakistall · 3 years

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I recently re-read his Dorm SSR personal story here! A few questions and thoughts lingered inside my head as I read it and it collectively got worse when @poisonepel started questioning things too. Which ultimately led to me writing this down while running on half a brain cell and a spoonful of rice for lunch. This isn’t necessarily an analysis but more of just me questioning a lot of stuff. I already pointed out things that are already obvious so it might get repetitive. Placed under the cut since it’s a bit lengthy! I tried my best to be coherent in the very least.

Rook’s Nickname for Jade - Rook calls Jade “Monsieur Mastermind” and perhaps you’re already telling me right now that I shouldn’t look deeper into this since it doesn’t look like it matters anyway but let me tell you right now that I tend to overanalyze things when it comes to Jade. I find it a bit odd how Rook calls Jade the mastermind, presuming that we’re talking about the Octavinelle trio, when it’s often Azul that’s shown to be as such. Of course, it’s been revealed that Rook analyzes or stalks nearly everything that happens to catch his interest (Jade’s Gym Personal). So it’s safe to presume that his judgement is, if not entirely correct, accurate. “Your staple food, your habits, your walking speed, when you sleep, your heart rate, how many times you blink… those and many others I have recorded perfectly.” Just by reading this line alone I became pretty sure that he observed something deeper than that--which is his personality.

The question is, why is Jade the mastermind instead of Azul? Why is Azul’s nickname “Roi du Fort” instead of being the mastermind? Well, it might be common knowledge but Jade, in a way, controls Azul despite what it looks like to the public which is Azul controlling Jade since he, as the higher authority, has power over him. I read a popular post explaining why Jade probably undertakes the role of a servant rather than taking the position for himself knowing that he has the full capabilities to do so. This will be explained further later in a different note.

What I’m trying to imply is that behind the scenes, Azul isn’t really the mastermind behind everything despite what it seems. It’s Jade who’s really in control of things, by picking up the act of a servant or butler.

“If the entire hierarchy collapses just due to the absence of a single person, then that proves that they aren’t all as great as they seem.” - I just had the need to point this particular line out since it just seemed so… Jade. Everything about this line just screams out the same vibes he radiates, cold and severe. I know he’s faking the whole thing about having a falling out with Azul and wanting to join Pomefiore but I think it is true that without him, Octavinelle won’t nearly be as great from when he was still there.

First of all, He’s Octavinelle’s vice-dorm leader. Surely, being in such a high position, he carries a lot of duties that only he can do as the acting vice leader. There’s also the fact that he does it superbly than other people which is why Octavinelle is the way it is right now, it would be hard to replace him. They would have to look for someone who’s on par with Jade, in the very least.

Secondly, he’s somewhat an emotional pillar to Azul. Judging from their childhood and current relationship as of now, I like to think that a big reason why Azul is the way he is right now, is because of Jade and Floyd acting as his emotional support or whatever even though they insist that their relationship is purely just for business and will drop it if it’s no longer beneficiary to them. The main reason why I think that way is because of the Octavinelle CM which has a scene of Azul holding a bubble in between his hands. Inside the bubble were the twins in their eel forms. The next thing that happened--the bubble popped and disappeared, along with the tweels inside it. We could see the horror on Azul’s face when it happened in that scene and slowly led to the overblot scene which says a lot about how Azul views the twins. Have a more detailed explanation regarding their relationship here! Summary, Azul will lose his shit if Jade were to disappear. Now, where is Octavinelle in all of this? Probably a mess in the corner right there with their dorm leader not in his right state of mind. In short, Octavinelle will probably crumble under the absence of Jade. The reason why Octavinelle is still functioning under Azul’s command during this whole stunt Jade is making is precisely because Azul knew that it was all an act.

"Jade’s excellence in everything he does is renowned even among the Dorm Leaders. He might be a super secretary or something to be able to answer Azul's difficult requests." - Vil's words to Rook during their little talk about letting Jade into Pomefiore. This stuck out to me because back then I didn't really give this much thought but now that I'm re-reading this, it makes me wonder how good is Jade at his job as a Vice Dorm Leader? These words coming from Vil hold a certain weight I can't describe, for him to say that his excellence is renowned even among the Dorm Leaders and to be described as a Super Secretary.

For Jade to have earned this kind of reputation despite being in the land for only two years so far is quite a feat! I would've expected less from someone else but this is Jade we're talking about so, ignoring his terrible weakness in flying, I can assume that Jade worked hard for him to have reached this kind of performance level in such a short time. To be recognized by almost all of the Dorm Leaders isn't an easy feat.

Jade as an attendant - During his first day as Vil's attendant, Vil mentioned how off-putting he is from the fact that Jade was almost too good for someone on their first day. "You managed to get on such friendly terms with the stuffy and straight-laced people of the industry in such little time; and you were also perfect when it came to helping out with the shooting. You've worked much harder than I thought you would." His words. I think this is due to the nature of Jade's silver tongue, which is being able to speak in a way that makes other people do or believe what you want them to do or believe. It seems very fitting for a character like Jade.

Because of the recent personals that got released for Jade, namely the Birthday SSR, they talked about family there and it got me thinking quite a bit as to how Jade can speak so eloquently especially now that I've read that he managed to get on the good side of people who are probably way older than he is and straight-laced, no less. He vaguely mentioned their family background when he was telling a story from his childhood and said how different people would come over to their party and offer them presents. I'm assuming that these people are possibly older than he is, judging from the fact that one of them attempted to give the twins liquor despite them being at a young age, and I thought that maybe Jade grew up used to being surrounded by adults to the point where he picks up a lot of speech patterns and habits. Which inevitably leads to what he is right now. Nothing is confirmed yet, this is a mere thought I had.

Jade's past with Azul - It's briefly mentioned here in the story. Jade mentioned how there weren't as many mer-folk as there are humans so they were all basically put in the same class together during elementary school. Azul didn't catch his interest back then, it seems. He mentioned not being able to remember the very reason why the three of them—Jade, Floyd, and Azul—ended up together currently in Night Raven College.

I am genuinely curious as to what actually made the twins interested in someone like Azul. Correct me if I'm wrong but they did mention it in Chapter 3, right? Was it the growing interest when they finally took notice of Azul using his unique magic on basically everyone who fell into his trap? Someone tell me the details if it was ever mentioned, my memory is failing me.

“Tenebres” - The shoe brand Vil wanted to get his hands on but unfortunately did not obtain, particularly, the Mirror Shoe. "Tenebres" apparently only sells their products to people who they deem worthy for designs, even the designer themselves has yet to make a public appearance as they are shrouded in mystery. Vil didn't have enough time to acquire it but, surprise! Jade Leech has somehow managed to get his perfect hands on the pair of red shoes Vil wanted so much. Frankly enough, Vil was impressed he managed to obtain something he could not—alone, no less.

This is just me pondering but this particular line made me wonder, "Heh, they did some at the cost of a bit of trouble. No matter, how about you try these on instead of dwelling on the matter?", to what lengths did he actually have to go through to obtain just a pair of shoes? Or rather, what connections does he have to be able to obtain this so easily and brush it off with a mere, "cost of a bit of trouble" when clearly Vil already expressed the difficulty in obtaining these?

Another note I have to make but not completely sure if it's relevant is his family. As I've said before, they mentioned that they deal with a lot of people due to the nature of their business and that made me wonder if the designer/owner of this certain shoe brand is one of them? Perhaps Jade was able to easily contact them because of connections his family has although Floyd's wish in the event Stars & Wishes contradicts this possibility.

In Floyd's wish, he mentioned wanting a pair of shoes and Idia immediately asked him why he couldn't just buy them. Floyd answered with a simple, "I can't usually get them." Because of the price. Which, again, contradicts my theory about the Leech family being connected to the shoe brand. Although! Vil did mention how the shoe brand only sells it to people they deem worthy. Perhaps, Floyd isn't…? No—it still wouldn't explain how easily Jade got the shoes and had the brand get Vil a job there as an ambassador. Surely, that isn't due to just any normal connections anymore. Definitely shady, I want to know more.

Jade is in control - As I've said earlier, Jade is somewhat in control despite playing the role of a servant. Prime example is when Vil told him his throat was parched, Jade immediately acted upon it fully knowing what his original intentions were. He gave Vil a drink that the Mostro Lounge was apparently serving without having Vil question it further and even went as far as to let Jade take a picture and post it—even he decided the caption for the post! With a simple flow of events just like that, Jade has managed to manipulate Vil without him knowing. He did it all while taking in the role of a servant and that in itself says a lot about how he does things

I think it's worth it to take note of the fact that Jade does not like bringing attention to himself and merely brushes it off as mere shyness of some sorts when really, all he wants to do is lay low and draw as little attention to himself. It makes his job easier that way—perhaps that's the reason why he lets Azul take the spotlight all the damn time.

Another thing to take note of is something I saw from a post in Tumblr which basically sums up the whole reason why Jade is always adopting the butler persona wherever he goes. It's because he likes to be in control that way—you'd let down your guard around him and let him serve you. You want a drink? He'll serve you a drink but-! He is in control over what you will get. That's exactly what happened in this exact scene, Vil waltzed right into the center of Jade's palms.

Vil never noticed - I'm not saying Vil is dumb, because he is most definitely not. Although through the very end, I don't know if it's just because Vil got carried away with the feeling of achievement taking over him due to recent events but he did just brush away the reason why Jade was in Pomefiore in the first place and let him go away peacefully, "So long as he doesn't bare his fangs at us." In other words, Jade managed to outsmart Vil and possibly, Rook.

This is probably one of the reasons why I am confident enough to say that Jade truly is one of the most cunning bitches in the entire game because this whole ordeal just pretty much proved it.

Aftermath - There we go! We got an explanation about how Jade managed to manipulate and use Vil for his own gains err, in this context, probably Azul's. When Jade took a picture of Vil with the drink and posted it, he did it with the intention of taking advantage of Vil's popularity and viewer reach. Jade expressed his thankfulness when he mentioned how Vil saw him as "useful" perhaps his reputation prior helped him reach his goal?

Azul praised Jade with something along the lines of "As expected of you, Jade. You're the best Night Raven's College has to offer when it comes to sneaking into another's pockets after all." Which really just backs up some of the statements I made earlier about how Jade manipulates people by letting people let their guard down around him while thinking they're the ones who have power over Jade when clearly it's not as simple as it seems. Azul mentioning that only Jade could pull off something like this just puts me off for some reason but I'll leave it be for the time being.

After that, Jade and Azul had a conversation that started with Azul asking him if he had any difficulties during his stay in Pomefiore and if he had any troubles keeping up with Vil. Jade, jokingly(?), responded that it was nothing compared to Azul's demands and orders and his time at Pomefiore was actually a vacation of some sorts for him. Which really makes me wonder what jobs does Azul usually give him if this one was somewhat of a break for Jade? A task that seemed impossible to Floyd, Jade said it was a vacation. It's a bit frightening but I guess that's his charm? Hard-working is one way to put it.

That's the end of my Dorm SSR mini-analysis, I guess! Thank you for sticking with me till the end even though a lot of these might be repetitive. I'll probably add more depending on future brainrot but for now, this is fine. Feel free to tell me what you think about this!

#twst #twisted wonderland #jade #twst jade #jade leech #twisted wonderland jade #vil schoenheight #i mean #he appears in the story #twst theory #not really a theory but eh. . ..

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shoesofthefishermanswife · 2 years

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kade!!!! more sporelings hcs pls 🙏

hello nia!!

this is definitely not what you asked but i’m just going to use this as an excuse to just talk about their aging bc it's really interesting to me as it’s not like a consistent ratio of sporelings weeks to human years ?? plus the whole accelerated timeline thing makes my child development major brain go brrr (ik, a reveal that has surprised literally no one)

anyways i might go off for a while so I'll drop this :)

how fast are they developing?

okay so I've decided that 1 week real-time is roughly 6 months developmentally. I pulled this figure from the polaroid labeled 2 weeks wherein hazel and rose take their first steps, an event happens on average around 12 months.

when applied loosely, this works to map pictures on the fridges to the developmental ages they are in each picture.

(although i would argue they seem a little younger than 2 1/2 here, but drawing kids' ages accurately is hard so i'll let it slide)

however, this obviously falls apart when as we approach 25 weeks and the girls are clearly supposed to be older than 12.5

^^^^ not 12-year-olds

so what happened?

i've decided after like 15 weeks it picks up and now we're at like 1 week = 1 year, making the girls roughly 18 and 21 there. (also i've head-canoned thorn as 3 human years older bc she looks around 4 when the twins are 1). an accelerating rate of development probably means sad things for their lifespans but shhh

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what does this mean for their ability to learn things?

literally nothing bc this is fictional and the writers certainly didn't think about it, but i am so now you have to too. :)

okay so the two major things that jump out to me is language acquisition and gross motor skills.

language acquisition:

okay without giving an entire lecture on language and brain development, what's important to know is that in a typical adult, language is lateralized. this means that the areas in our brain that process language are mostly found in the left hemispheric cortex. but in a kid, they are distributed more evenly, and this lateralization occurs in late adolescence. additionally, your brain is constantly going through synaptic pruning, trying to strengthen the pathways you use while getting rid of the ones you don't. so, while babies can hear the difference between all phonemes in any language, you quickly lose the ability to differentiate between the ones you don't.

essentially, it is impossible to learn to speak a language perfectly if you don't start learning it at a young age, and it may be impossible to learn to speak any language at all if you aren't exposed as a child. (this is lenneberg's critical period theory)

tldr: your brain structure moves away from language learning with age

so, the question that haunts me at night is: even if they are damn smart kids, they're not picking up an entire language in the 20 or so weeks they have before their brain structure is too different. (even though they aren't losing too much to synaptic pruning bc they would be actively using it). how the fuck do they know how to talk?

gross motor skills:

ever noticed your kiddo could roll over or take a few steps one day and couldn't the next? this is because even typical babies grow too fast for themselves to keep up with- they have to take a sec to adjust to their new bodies.

how would the sporelings, who are actually growing like inches per day, ever keep up enough that they could master walking and running at such a young age?

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yeah anyways this is Not what you asked for but these are thoughts that i have. i will do a list of cute little things when i'm in the right mindset for that

#sorry this took so long for me to get around to #i have literally no idea what this even is #asks #the sporelings #poison ivy: cycle of life and death #nia tag

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