#Its never been done before!! Not when it comes to THE rule and THE percieved legacy of jason todd the dead robin

[adelinamoteru]

the problem with jason’s writing post resurrection is that like. you spend all this time while he was gone building up these batfam characters and their views and morals and way of interacting with each other and their world. and then you bring back this one character who’s been dead for however long, but an insanely long period of however long, and you’ve made it so his worldview has become drastically different than what he was being taught. then you dump the antagonist route completely and start trying to figure out how to bring him back into the fold.

but once again, you’ve spent around 15yrs expanding these characters separately from jason todd. so what do you do? you mold and reform what jason is meant to be post resurrection until he fits into those standards. its what makes sense to do. how can you justify the batfam characters doing an almost complete 180. maybe a 90. on their views purely because of one character? purely because of jason todd when nothing has set ever been able to set that change in motion beforehand? so now jason has to be the one to change. except the change completely contradicts all the beliefs he’s formed in his post resurrection plot-line.

and now jason todd as a character becomes bland. he becomes a victim to bad writing and character assassinations. he’s wishy washy. nobody knows what to do with him so his character and the characters he interacts with only continue to suffer as a result. everybody begins to stop taking him and his stances seriously. all because you’ll never remove him from the sources that led to the origin of jason todd.

a batfam character away from batfam? well now why would the writers ever think to do that!

#jason todd #dcu #red hood #dc #dc meta #it’s aggravating like #you bring back and hes put into this role— into being a foil and bringing stellar contradictions to the norm— and then u realize that would #Be too much of an upset to the world u’ve already built and the status quo u’ve already held #So u toss him in the gutter and keep cutting him up to fit into that norm #And as a result his character suffers his writing sucks and absolutely zero positive changes in his relationships have occured #LET THE LITTLE BIRDY FLY AWAY FROM ITS NEST #already jason has trouble finding writers that like him #and now u want those writers to develop batfam characters in a way where they have to actually acknowledge some of jasons points? #its like telling them to shoot a dog dead #except that dog was robin jason and they actually gladly did it #and also all of this is a part of the reason why fanon reconciliations are handled the way that they are #both the writers and the fandom just dont know how to write development on the side of batfam minus jason #Its never been done before!! Not when it comes to THE rule and THE percieved legacy of jason todd the dead robin #how would they change? how would u write it #THEY DONT KNOW HOW #its literally never been seen before #How do u resist the system ur boxed in 😭😭😭

[witchcraftandburialdirt]

Is maiden Haru weary of men or is it just people in general? Is there any type of person he's extremely nervous around like people taller or stronger than him or is it just a general wariness that comes from his past?

✧ ─ 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 𝐈𝐍𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒 ─ ✧ MEDIEVAL VERSE

When Haruko first arrived at the camp and was tossed into Tarhos' tent, it would be pretty easy to assume that he might get along with the other women of the camp - but he doesn't get along with them either. Haru is an aggressive dog that sees the worst in everyone around him immediately, he's been beat, assaulted, violated and torn apart for his "beauty" - and the fear of what others can do to him has almost consumed him to a point to mar his own face in order to escape. Everyone who is capable of touching him is someone he is afraid of, anyone with hands, anyone with eyes - anyone who could percieve him and drink in his body without his permission.

He is so afraid. So so afraid of everyone - its why he's bitey and argumentative when he first meets Tarhos, he wants to be left alone - for once in the decade he's been enslaved does he demand to be alone and ... For the first time since then, someone lets him. Tarhos is an exception to the rule because of this one reason: he gives Haruko agency and autonomy. He gives him the right to say "no", to anything, which is something neither of them could ever have had - they were never treated like thinking, important creatures - just livestock to kill and bed. Initally Haruko doesn't even trust that, surely its just a ploy for Tarhos to get him to lower his guard and hurt him - force him to do something, remind him of how easily all of that could be stripped away. It's what he expects him to do but ... He doesn't.

No one is like that, no one has ever done that for him before. Only once he's sure that it is safe for him does he truly begin to let that fear begin to wane, Tarhos gives him a space that he can weep, be vulnerable and explore his problems without any sort of expectation or compensation. Tarhos is safety to Haru, and that is the one thing he will never fear.

#ℍ𝔸ℝ𝕌𝕂𝕆 ℕ𝔸𝕂𝔸𝕊𝕆ℕ𝔼 ... 【 ᴛʜᴇ ꜰʟᴏᴡᴇʀ ᴍᴀɪᴅᴇɴ 】 #headcanon inquiries #bells of black sunday #verse: medieval #mun speaks #sa mention #abuse ment tw #tbh the more i think on it the more horrified i am by Haru's life in medieval #its so dreadful and hopeless

[warrioreowynofrohan]

On Gondor and Nationalism

Gondor, and particularly Denethor and Boromir, is characterized more than any other realm in The Lord of the Rings by nationalism, and there is a sharp contrast between its actual role in the war and the way Denethor and Boromir percieve its role. Two quotes in The Return of the King form the core of Tolkien’s discussion of nationalism, and both are conversations between Denethor and Gandalf.

The first:

Denethor: Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men’s purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, my lord, is mine and no other man’s, unless the king should come again.

Gandalf: ...I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I should not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit or flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?

And the second, discussing Denethor’s views on what should have been done with the Ring:

Denethor: It should have been kept, hidden, hidden dark and deep. Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need, but set beyond his grasp, save by a victory so final that what then befell would not trouble us, being dead.

Gandalf: You think, as is your wont, my lord, of Gondor only. Yet there are other men and other lives, and time still to be. And for me, I pity even his slaves.

Denethor: And where will other men look for help if Gondor falls?

Both of these conversations point to the fundamental flaw in Denethor’s worldview, and it is a nuanced one. He is not the weak, selfish old man presented in the films; he is intelligent, pragmatic, and realistic, and his strategy and tactics are thoughtful. Again unlike the movies, the mission he sends Faramir on - to prevent the armies of Mordor from crossing Anduin, and cause them heavy losses if they do cross - is not a pointless suicide mission but a crucial and tactically necessary battle. He is wrong in his attitude towards and treatment of Faramir, not in sending him into danger.

Denethor represents (as, in another way, does Saruman) the wisdom of the world. His statement that, as the steward of Gondor, his highest purpose must be the good of Gondor, would be approved by many political theorists. But in the wider vision of the story of The Lord of the Rings, expressed by Gandalf, it is critically flawed in its narrowness and arrogance. The war against Sauron is not about the victory or preservation of one realm alone; it is about saving anything and everything good in Middle-earth, in the present or the future. This is the moment when Gandalf comes closest, of any point in the story, to stating outright who he is and what his purpose is; he doesn’t say outright that he was sent by the Valar to preserve the world against Sauron, but he comes near enough to it that Denethor, an intelligent and learned man, could pick up on it if he wanted to. It is important to Gandalf to at least try to get Denethor to understand the importance of what he’s saying.

In the second conversation, though, Denethor has fallen still farther from the truth. In the first one, he only said that Gondor’s good had to be his highest priority, as its ruler; now he says that if Minas Tirith falls, Sauron’s conquered the world anyway and it doesn’t matter if he gets the Ring. In his eyes, Minas Tirith is the only thing standing against Sauron, and the only thing that matters; its defeat is to him synonymous with the destruction of the world. People across Middle-earth are fighting against Sauron: on the very day of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the elves of Lothlórien are fighting off an assault by Sauron’s forces, as are the wood-elves in Mirkwood; the Battle of Dale in which the kings of both Dale and the Lonely Mountain fall will be two days later. Gondor is not alone in this war; it is not the only realm fighting and not the only one whose battles matter. It is not the bulwark sheltering the peaceful rest of the world from war; the rest of the world is fighting. But Denethor chooses to regard it as the only place of importance.

These are perspectives that he passed on, in part, to his eldest son, as seen in some of Boromir’s deeds at the Council of Elrond as well as in his later temptation by the Ring. At the Council, he takes the tone that Gondor is unacknowledged and unappreciated and is doing all the work of fighting Sauron: “Few, I deem, know of our deeds, and therefore guess little of their peril, if we should fail at last...By our valour the wild folk of the East are still restrained, and the terror of Morgul kept at bay; and thus alone are peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind us, bulwark of the West...those who shelter behind us give us praise, if ever they hear our name: much praise but little help.” He also - very importantly - instantly conflates “Doom” in the prophecy he hears with “the Doom of Minas Tirith”: the same thing Denethor is doing when he says that, if Minas Tirith falls, the world has already fallen and there’s no point in keeping the Ring away from Sauron. When he is told that the Ring cannot be wielded to defeat Sauron by force of arms, he acts as though the other members of the Council are abandoning Gondor. And so the Ring tempts him with the power to save Minas Tirith, because that’s the only way he can concieve of for the world to be saved.

Aragorn’s response to Boromir, in speaking of the Rangers, is not a counter-boast but an attempt (like Gandalf’s with Denethor) to give Boromir a broader perspective: many people are fighting and resisting Sauron and other evil things, in their own ways (“the servants of the Enemy...are found in many places, not in Mordor only”). Gondor is not alone; it is playing one particular role, while others play other roles.

This attitude, that its battles are the only ones that matter, is quite unique to Gondor. Legolas and Gimli, fighting in the wars of Rohan and Gondor, recognize that their kin cannot come to them: “They have no need to march to war...war already marches on their own lands”. The hobbits continually think little of themselves and their actions, even while achieving great things. (One example that amuses me is the contrast at the Council of Elrond between Boromir, who thinks his comparatively uneventful journey quite heroic - “since the way was full of doubt and danger, I took the journey upon myself” - and Frodo, who regards his achievement of escaping to Rivendell while pursued by all nine of the Nazgûl, and surviving a wound that would have been worse-than-fatal to most other mortals, with an attitude of ‘well, I rather muffed that up’.) The Ents very much have their own priorites - Treebeard says “I am not really on anyone’s side, as no one is really on my side - no one cares for the woods these days” - but they involve themselves in the war beyond merely defending Fangorn, by destroying the orcs who invade Rohan from the north. Théoden likewise keeps the big picture, not just the narrow ‘good of Rohan’ in mind, continuing with his army to the relief of Gondor even as news comes of Rohan being invaded from the north and east (the aforementioned orcs whom the Ents deal with).

Frodo comes closest to understanding what Gandalf is saying in the first-quoted conversation with Denethor. After seeing the Witch-king’s army march out from Minas Morgul, Frodo is tempted to despair: “Even if my errand is performed, no one will ever know. There will be no one I can tell. It will be in vain.” But he resists this: what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Gandalf or Galadriel or anyone else ever knew about it was beside the purpose. Aragorn, too, understands it: the march on the Black Gate is the antithesis of Denethor’s perspective: sacrifice of the armies of Gondor and Rohan without even knowing what may happen after they are defeated, in the hope that they may enable someone else to win the victory. They have no way of guessing that Frodo and Sam will reach Mount Doom at the same time as the armies clash at the Black Gate; their hope is founded on the idea of distracting Sauron long enough that Frodo and Sam can destroy the Ring days later, after the armies are all dead.

And Denethor and Boromir’s attitudes are all the more ironic because, in the end, Gondor doesn’t hold up very well. They fall apart and stop even trying to man the walls of Minas Tirith after a mere two days of siege, when food supplies haven’t even begun to be an issue. For a fortified city, especially one as well-designed for defense as Minas Tirith, that’s a very short amount of time to hold out against a siege! During the march on the Black Gate, even the sight of the Plains of Gorgoroth is too much for some of the men of Gondor and Rohan, and they can’t keep going. Yes, they’re just regular people and have never seen anything this horrible before, but Frodo and Sam and now Pippin are also just regular people used to peaceful lives, and they keep going. The purpose of this comparison isn’t to run down the Men of Gondor, but to point out how deeply wrong the idea is of them being the only ones whose fight matters, the only ones with the nerve and determination to protect the rest of the world. The hobbits, who don’t think of themselves as anything special or important or strong, are the ones who save the world, and they do it through hope, endurance, self-sacrifice, love, and compassion, not through military might.

#tolkien #the lord of the rings #denethor #boromir #gondor #aragorn #frodo baggins #gandalf #politics

[pretchatta]

@cameoamalthea made a post about Bo-Katan and I have Many Thoughts, but for ease of reading I’ve put my response here under the read more! (warning: spoilers for the whole of season 2 of The Mandalorian)

Why Ahsoka still supports Bo-Katan is a GREAT question (that I actually started thinking about earlier today), but first, I want to talk about the rest of Bo's past - she is NOT a good person. She's definitely a Yasha Greyjoy, believing in the conquering, predatory supremacy of the Mandalorians, and something I'm exploring in a fic series I'm currently writing is how she came to be that way.

I think it was mentioned somewhere that Satine's father was Duke of Mandalore before she was Duchess, and it was him who started the pacifist New Mandalorian government. I don't know if this is a hereditary-monarchy kinda situation or more democratic, but my interpretation is "there are sort of royal families and even though there technically are elections, it's always Clan Kryze or Vizsla or similar who get elected". My headcanon is that Satine was the eldest child and so groomed to take the throne, while Bo was sort of pushed to the side in very typical second-child fashion. So she grew up with a fair amount of internalised resentment towards her family, and then at some point fell in with some more traditional Mandalorians, and from there it was all too easy to oppose her father and sister and everything they stood for.

So, she believes Mandalorians are top-of-the-food-chain warriors, and that it's perfectly okay to burn villages, kill helpless people, and smack the butt of any skinny torgruta kid who shows up unannounced. She's a Bad Person. She’s also so committed to this ideology that she’s willing to team up with a former Sith and a bunch of criminals to get what she wants. But then Maul kills Vizsla, and declares himself leader of Death Watch and Mandalore, and this is her limit - as you said, not because he's bad, but because he's not Mandalorian. (It was at this point that I, as an audience member, really started to like her - the cool female lieutennant is standing up to a bad guy! And it's for a reason that isn't "this is morally wrong and I have developed a conscience"! I love that, because after a while that does get a bit boring.) So now she's fighting Maul, and we know the Jedi are also fighting Maul, so it makes perfect sense for them to team up against their common enemy who is far stronger than each of them.

I then think that during the Siege of Mandalore she has a bit of an internal crisis. Before, when the Shadow Collective were pretending to invade so Death Watch could save the day, yes there were Mandalorians being hurt, but it was all under control, it was just a pretend invasion, after all. Now, however, everything is much more real - the war is now on Mandalore, her home, and it's hurting her people, and there's nothing she can do to stop it without more fighting. It's actually partly her fault, because she was part of Death Watch, and they set this whole thing in motion. So she then sees Ahsoka, who is committed to peace, take out Maul with no casualties (up until this point, most if not all of the Maul fights she's seen either involve decapitation or lots of explosions - if she'd tried to take him, a lot of people would have died in the fight, both soldiers and innocents). She's also been part of the desperate fighting in the streets, and I think she's finally starting to realise that maybe Satine was right - their people can't take much more of this, because they're going to destroy themselves. Maybe they should think about less combative ways to rule themselves? She says “I wish I was good at something other than war” and then “My sister tried that. I never understood her idealism” and I always thought there was an unsaid “until now” at the end of that second one - she wants to be what Mandalore needs, and she’s realising that might not be a warrior.

But for now, they need to get through this, and that means fighting off the crime syndicates that are literally in their streets, that means accepting the help of the Republic and its soldiers, and it eventually means Bo-Katan herself taking up the position of ruler of Mandalore. We know that doesn’t last long, because Saxon and the Empire rise up to take it from her, but then Sabine finds the Darksaber and unifies the clans. Bo says “I had my chance to rule, and I failed. I am not my sister. I am not the leader you seek” - she’s definitely done some reflecting on maybe-Satine-was-right-after-all, and starting to realise how badly she’s messed up. But as you say, Sabine and the other clans push her into accepting the Darksaber and the throne.

Now I (finally) come to Ahsoka. Ahsoka saw Death Watch Bo - she directly saw her burning the village, and she also saw the effects Death Watch’s attempts at taking over had on Mandalore when she went to help weed out corruption in Sundari. Yes, a lot of it was due to the war, but a lot of those problems were definitely exacerbated by Death Watch’s actions and presence. Ahsoka then teamed up with her to fight Maul - ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ - and on my first watch I didn’t think much of her saying “I’ve learned from the best, including you.” I was too busy thinking “yeah, Bo-Katan IS the best!” but on my second watch - why does Ahsoka think she’s ‘the best’? Did she see something that we, the audience, did not? The Clone Wars didn’t show us any scenes with just Ahsoka and Bo before the fighting started - perhaps they had a conversation where Ahsoka confronted Bo about the terrible things in her past, and Bo explained that she was misguided and regretted it and was trying to do what was best for her people now. That would make sense.

Because then, in The Mandalorian, Bo directs Din to Ahsoka (edit: and she does it very specifically, too - usually in Star Wars you get a system, maybe a planet, but Bo knows the exact city). Why would she even know where Ahsoka is? They didn’t interact in the Rebels arc. From what we see of Ahsoka, Tython Corvus isn’t even her permanent residence, she’s just there to help one village tiny city and get information out of someone. So why does Bo have very recent information on her location? The only answer is that they must be allies who share that information willingly. And since the character of Ahsoka is Good, her allies must also be - unless they’ve made another temporary arrangement to team up and defeat a common enemy. But Bo is hunting Gideon and Ahsoka is hunting Thrawn (I am unbelievably excited) so they’re apparently on different quests. Which means... they must be friends.

In the episode The Heiress, Bo acts pretty okay. Yeah, she calls Din’s way of life a cult and is kinda rude about it, but it’s in response to him literally telling her she’s not a Mandalorian as, like, the first thing he says to her, and there are a lot of people out there who are rude and dismissive of someone’s way of life/upbringing without being Inherently Evil and Bad. Her motivations in that episode are: save a fellow Mandalorian, who might also be able to help her find and fight Gideon, and find and fight Gideon. She’s not interested in helping Din on his side-quest to reunite a child with his people - she feels the struggle for Mandalore is more important than one child. 

In the episode The Rescue, however, she definitely goes out of her way to insult Boba and Jango completely unneccessary. Maybe she has a valid reason to dislike clones? I don’t think it would have anything to do with the Republic/Empire’s takeover of Mandalore - that wasn’t the clones’ fault*. She asked for Republic help, and then it was Palpatine and Saxon who kept them there. However, other than that, I don’t think she did much wrong? She still has the single-minded determination to duel Gideon and retake the Darksaber, which she might feel a need to do this time around because she has to prove - to herself, to Mandalore, to everyone - that she’s worthy of it. But for her, even though she’s accepted that maybe pacifism is okay, Mandalore is still pretty high up on her priority list, so it comes ahead of Din, Grogu and the New Republic.

So future seasons have a lot to answer for:

Why is Ahsoka willingly allied with Bo-Katan, given that Bo has never done anything objectively good/anything that wasn’t motivated by a need to see Mandalore ruled by Mandalorians wearing beskar?

Why does Bo hate the Fetts so much?

How will Bo handle Din having possession of the Darksaber now?

(edit: the below was added after posting)

* Why I don’t think it’s the clones’ fault: Bo knew what she was doing when she invited the Republic to help her retake Mandalore. Obi-Wan specifically asked her about it, and she said she would deal with it later. She knew that by using Republic gunships and clones the Senate would take an interest in Mandalore, and it would be seen as Mandalore allying itself with the Republic. When the Republic then became the Empire, the clones would either have simply continued serving the Senate - formerly Republic, now Imperial - or been decommissioned, in which case the Senate would have sent an alternative force to represent its interests. Unless there’s a specific mention of this in canon that I’m missing, the clones would only have been following orders from the Senate, and that would have been very clear to the Mandalorians. Any betrayal of Mandalore came from the Empire not leaving after Maul was defeated, not the clones spontaneously deciding that now the Republic was gone, they’re free men, they can choose between Mandalore and the Empire, and they choose the Empire.

Bo specifically has it out for Jango and Boba for some reason. I think she knows who Boba is, and that he’s not just any clone - I’ve seen several posts on this but the most obvious is that Boba was a pretty high-profile bounty hunter in the OT who she must have heard of. I think it’s something around how she percieves Jango’s Mandalorian-ness, his status as Boba’s father and the process of cloning in general, and therefore Boba’s claim to any Mandalorian armour, heritage and identity.

#bo katan kryze #the mandalorian #mando spoiler #cameoamalthea #tcw #rebels #coraposting

[emptymanuscript]

You ever get into something real complicated, ask yourself why the hell you’re doing this, and then realize the simpler version is right there >_<

For some reason I got it into my head to make a hardness scale for magic. And I was piling in all this stuff for a spread sheet, with Gandalf in Lord of the Rings as a control and... why the hell am I doing all that. When if I look along the bottom, there’s a much more usable scale.

So... my noodling for a Hardness of Magic - a scale of 1 to 10; 1 being least hard to 10 being most hard. ...I believe that softness should actually be a different scale instead of 1 being the ultimate softness. I feel like hardness measures a likeness to science while softness measures something like the explorations of psyche or society. But I dunno. I’ll deal with that later. Hopefully much much later or never.

1) INFERABLE - The Magic happens in a way that is inferrable but not observable The phrase “Peice of Cake” in the movie The Labyrinth.

2) OBSERVABLE - The Reader can observe the magic that is cast The Force is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together - and somehow it lets you hear ghosts, predict your enemies, and use telekinesis. You can see it. There is a spell X. How it works or how it relates to other magics may still be unclear.

3) RELATIONAL - The Reader can infer how multiple magics relate Gandalf keeps casting light spells all the time - it’s almost as if light is a theme of his magic. Perhaps his ability to make fire and fireworks is related. But we are never told for sure. X and Y relate, so Z that shares some features may also relate.

4) RUBRICAL - The Reader can observe the rule by which multiple magics fit together Vancian Magic in D&D with its classes and levels of magic or how Voodoo Dolls work in fiction to control a person’s motion or give them pain but can’t hypnotize them - it’s about the explicit rule of spell X fits into magical school Z but spell Y doesn’t because only Z-ish spells fit. The school of Necromancy is the school of magic relating to death. A light spell wouldn’t fit.

5) CLASSIFIABLE - The Reader can observe the reasoning of the operation of the rule by which multiple magics fit together A Voodoo doll works by the laws of contagion and sympathy, what has been a part of someone is always connected to them and what you do to an image of someone is done to the real person. So because a person’s hair is separated from them but on the doll, the doll is now connected to the person by contagion. And because the doll is now a image of that person what happens to the doll happens sympathetically to the person. So the reasoninng of the rules - this connects to that, and manipulating this manipulates that - is explicit. Spell X fits into school Z and Spell Y doesn’t because of principle A. Only spells that directly affect the currently dead fit into the school of necromancy - so a spell that would kill a living person wouldn’t be considered necromancy in that paradigm. While a spell that made a body look alive would still be necromancy.

6) PREDICTABLE - The Reader can use the reasoning to predict another peice of magic that would fit the rule(s) by which the magic fits together Because a doll works in part by the law of contagion, the hair of the victim allowing a connection between doll and person, we can assume that you can use hair as a method for a different spell that connects, like a tracker because the laws of magic tell us that part of a person is always connected to them, and we can guess that before we are explicitly told that ultra-conservative jewish women burned their hair to prevent magic being used against them before they had any contact with the stories of Voodoo because an idea like contagion is in both cultures. The rule is predictive. Because of principle X we can expect magic Y to cause Z effect. If saying someone’s true name gives you power to control them, and you learn the true name of a river, the reader can expect that you can exert control over the river.

7) ASSESSABLE - The Reader can use the essential reasoning of the magic to evaluate different uses in relation to each other - allowing you to judge whether one iteration is better at a goal than another. In Fullmetal Alchemist, the same transmutations cast at the opposite ends of the story have radically different results and the story displays why they are different. Edward has a different understanding of the tools at hand. In such a way that the audience can observe and infer things that make certain transmutations better than others. This is even in the beginning though with Edward able to make a circle with his arms as opposed to drawing a transmutation array on the ground. It’s recognizable as the same basic art, he’s just showing an expertise that others, even skilled others, don’t share. Because of that information, the audience can recognize the power of varying alchemists by the complexity of their arrays and that more complex spells require more complex arrays. A more complex array for a simple spell would show us before we were ever told that the user was an inferior alchemist. X is true, therefore Y is superior to Z for purpose A.

8) VALIDATABLE - You can determine relevant or true information from irrelevant or false information. Let’s take FMA again.  The power level, sophistication of magical array, and knowledge of the subject are all important to the ability to transmute. But the fundamental driving force of magic is the law of equivalent exchange, you cannot create something that requires more than what is put into the exchange. This is the real reason why resurrection spells fail, because no one puts enough in to the exchange to equal what they want out of the exchange. Life is more than matter. And because of that principle we can spot improper spell use without being told it is improper spell use. If someone does something that otherwise looks completely correct but violates that most relevant piece of information, we know that something else besides just transmutation is going on. Which is also why some of the later big twists in the series make perfect logical sense, the fundamental relavence of information has been shown, so we have been prepared to logic out truth from appearances. If X is absolutely true and Y contradicts X, we can expect Y to be false even if Y feels generally right.

9) MODIFIABLE - The principles are understandably transposable for use in different expressions. This is a little like #6 in that it is predictive. But more than being predictive it is showing an underlying core principle of multiple effects. In the same way that light is different colors for the same reason that sound comes in different pitches and also that if you drop a rock in water you will get ripples. While they might appear on the surface to be very different, the fundamental way things work is the same - disturbing a fluid causes a wave, bigger disturbances cause bigger waves, more waves in a given period produce higher frequency phenomenen, less waves produce lower frequency phenomenen. And yeah, that’s science but I can’t think of a book that does this. Avatar the Last Airbender brushes against this with the idea that the principles of flow mechanics of water bending carry over into the principles of direction mechanics of pure fire / lightning. Energy redirection was essentially the same no matter what element was being bent or what type of bender was doing the redirection. But where this sort of thing is most common is in Role Playing Games where it is possible for the player to design their own powers / magic. Pretty much the entire GURPS Powers book is about using this level of hardness in a single system to produce radically different expressions in a game space that will interact predictably for the purposes of arbitration.

10) PARALLEL - An Alternative Science. At this point there’s not much hardness to be gained anymore. The fiction presents a set of fundamental laws and extrapolates from them to get the effects the audience percieves in the fiction. The laws are identified in such a way that the audience can determine for themselves how magic works in such a way that they can, if they choose, extrapolate and predict powers before those powers appear and are demonstrated because all the tools to do so have been given to them. Character errors in how magic works can be caught because the established rules provide an error-check framework. If a reader knows fire can only be created or controlled with a magic word that starts with an I because human magic was stolen from a latin speaking demon, we know the guy who promises a village an ever burning bonfire by speaking the word Aeternum into the bonfire pit is either a charlatan or an idiot. But he may possibly be an immortal charlatan or idiot since he knows the latin word for eternity. 

Or, in nice chart form for my Mohs sci-fi scale rip off:

A Proposed Hardness Scale for Fantasy

I think this would  make most fantasy hang out around hardness 3 to 7 with a few outliers which seems like the way things should be.

And... what a waste of time, oy.

#writeblr #fantasy #fantasy fiction #speculative fiction #sci-fi #watch me not work #rambling

[prettyprivilege101]

Pretty Privilege In the Industry

When you hear the word “model” what do you immediately think of? The terms that almost automatically come into my mind are “tall” “skinny” and “beautiful”, but who determines what is beautiful? It is important for me to emphasis again and again that beauty is subjective: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” what I consider beautiful might not be what you consider beautiful. But this is where society comes in, and sets these standards or rules on what is or isn’t beautiful.  Beauty standards are created and maintained by the what we consume as a society. These are the standards we see in the media, the covers of magazines, on the runway, and on billboards. For decades the standard  of beauty was white, skinny, and cisgendered. Individuals who embodied this standard are often widely celebrated and most definitely benefit from pretty privilege. This is most easily observed in the modeling industry. I will break this down in 3 different ways using the modeling industry 1. Race 2. Gender 3. Weight these characteristics will help show you how beauty standards are forever changing and how they affect our perceptions of who we deem attractive thus, who is “privileged”.

1. POC in the modeling indsutry

You may recognize the woman on the right if you have any knowledge of the modeling industry, Naomi Campbell is a Black supermodel who rose to fame in the late 80s.So why does race matter if this is about beauty capital? Well if we go back in time and analyze what society deemed beautiful in the 19th century, we can easily see that white women were the face of beauty. Modeling and the fashion industry were the biggest influence in the standard of beauty at one point, when you flipped through magazines or analyzed runway shows the roster of models participated often mirror the same size, stature and race, White, skinny and tall women have always been the status quo for these industries.This has a direct correlation on who society deems “pretty”, there was no place for POC to even be considered apart of the conversation until they were given a chance to participate in the modeling and fashion industry. Even once they got their foot in the door, in 2019 only 36.1 percent of the models walking the prominent New York Fashion week were POC.

2. Gender roles in the Modeling Industry

In today’s society we see a rise in the fight against gender roles and binary labels. As the representation and exposure of race does, gender can too influences our view on what we deem as attractive. As we know the fashion industry and media platforms follow whats “hot”, “new”, and “trendy”. Though gender fluidity and an individual expressing themselves should never be described as any of those terms, when facing reality we know representation is not always done genuinely, though one company may be the blueprint and start this way, other companies simply follow after seeing their success. When Fani Segerman discusses gender within the modeling industry in Sian Ferguson’s Teenvogue article “The Importance of Non-Binary Models in the Fashion Industry” Segerman notes “Sometimes, potential clients want to seem progressive by including a non-binary individual and then patting themselves on the back,” “People might want to cash in on it as a trend.” This creates a counterproductive issue that is very prominent amongst the fashion industry, when Ferguson further dives into the lack of BIPOC non-binary models they note “The fashion world is no stranger when it comes to challenging gender roles, but representation of androgynous and gender non-conforming models are limited. Googling ‘androgynous models’ turns up plenty of pictures of white, thin, conventionally-attractive people with sharp cheekbones — and not much else.”  Again, the lack of representation creates a significant mold for who we deem as attractive. This also plays into the way we find straight men like Harry Styles or Brad Pitt in woman’s clothing as sexy and or strong but, when an actual queer or non binary person participates in these acts they face hate and criticism. Why is it okay for binary people to “play dress up” with others identities? It’s attractive when a “sexy” straight man does it and he’s dubbed as “in touch with his sexuality” but frowned upon when a queer and or non-binary person does it they are considered “going through a phase.” The intersectionality of this issue can definitely be seen as a double standard but, it is just as much roped into the pretty privilege aspect due to the ideals of these identities being the “hot new” thing.

TW: BODY IMAGE/WEIGHT

3. Body Inclusivity in the Modeling Industry

Circling back to the question I asked at the beginning of this blog post “When you hear the word “model” what do you immediately think of?” Were your answers the same? Has the information i’ve provided so far changed your perception on how and why you think this way? A word that is almost synchronous to “model” is thin. Just a couple decades ago the model industry was infamous for its popular 90’s look “Heroin chic”. When Edward Helmore discusses this fashion fad in his Guardian article “'Heroin chic’ and the tangled legacy of photographer Davide Sorrenti” he explains how the look was ultimately “glamourising super-skinny, strung-out models.”  Models extremely stick thin malnourished look due to drug use (or not) was all the rave wherever fashion was available and promoted. Addressing the lack of body inclusivity in the modeling industry has been long over due, because once again this is a factor amongst what we deem attractive. Though, it is no competition I would argue fat phobia is a bigger issue within the modeling industry than racism is. Seeing a bigger or “fat” model (another term is so very subjective especially in an industry where drug addiction type skinny is praised) was almost taboo. The lack of representation and marketing towards this group of individuals especially “fat” women, set the beauty standard that skinny=pretty. But like we’ve seen before, this standard shifts and evolves to where the new trend today is to represent different body types but of course theres a catch. In Gianluca Russo’s nylon piece “Dismantling The Acceptable Plus Body and Anti Fatness within the Fat Community” Russo highlights plus size models are defined by being “…not too fat where it made thin people uncomfortable, but just fat enough where bodies could still be sexualized and viewed as attractive. In and of itself, this new plus-size ideal created a divide that largely stands today of women above and below a size 22/24, erasing those of higher sizes — commonly referred to as superfats and infinifats — from the conversation.” This is very relevant conversation today, when you think of the ideal body type of the mid 2000’s what and who do you think of? Perhaps, a tiny waist, a voluptuous behind, Kim Kardashian? This body size would very well be considered “plus size” back in the 90’s but today it is what is sought after though it can often be unrealistic just like the heroin chic look.

These were 3 very general sub genres of features we perceive and dub attractive, as well as the most popular features the modeling industry and media like to define and tweak to the version of “pretty” they want to feed to the masses. Alhough I can go more in depth on how this ‘criteria’ affects almost every workspace, this is just an overview on an inustry that manipulates how we percieve others beauty and of how we utilize these characteristics from what we consume, to place value and ‘privilege’ upon others.

#ris #rlife

[cosmic-elementalist]

Channeling and Divination

This, in my opinion, is the single most important aspect of Magickal theory.

Each of us, no matter how subjective our experiences may seem, is uniquely and inseparably connected to, part of, and co-creator of everything we might call "divine" or Magickal.

I've seen a lot of people come looking on the Internet when they first start looking into their Magickal potential, and many have been told that the best place to start is to read everything they can pour their eyes over... Not that I don't believe that we can learn a great deal from the experiences and beliefs of other people, I just think that if someone starts to absorb all this second hand information before they develop a strong "inner compass", the most likely result is that they will devote a lot of energy believing things which they will ultimately have to discard.

Not that it's the end of the world to believe something which we later choose not to! We've all been there and surely we are lacking in consciousness if we do not adapt our ideas to the changes life throws at us!

So what would be my advice to anyone with doubts as to how to persue Magick in their lives?

Learn to contemplate!

And before we start contemplating any old thing, I find that contemplating our own consciousness is a pretty solid place to start.

So, contemplation is what some people would call "meditating on" or "meditating about" something. In case you have never tried this before, it can take some time to get into the right mindset for this to work...

but if we start contemplating our own consciousness, it is not even necessary to enter a fully gnostic state of mind - the reflections of the ego-mind must be acknowledged before we can see past them.

Most people, it would seem, are only conscious of the beliefs we create for ourselves as "adults", ignoring the baseline of beliefs that are implanted into us when our egos are being formated; most of us cannot even remember our full childhoods, and yet this is a time we are programmed and conditioned to the extreme.

We come so pure into this world, without filter, Intent connecting only to the Will to Live, and as our other Will(s) develop, this process is normally corrupted by the expectations society has for us. We are molded and punished at every turn for not complying to the rules of a world full of frustrated adults. Most of this conditioning is so traumatic that it eventually gets repressed, but we continue to be plagued by the reprecussions of over-bearing toilet training (one of the few things a baby doesn't need to learn, but when we put them in diapers because it's "conveniant" they loose touch with their natural ability to communicate this need), getting yelled at for being curious, getting punished for self - love, or whatever else the people who thought they were doing did to us for our supposed well being.

Some people call this shadow work, some psychology, no matter what you call it, I don't believe it's possible to perform integral Magick without having swum in the seas of our darkest nightmares.

If we regularly take the time to question our beliefs, in a calm and dedicated fashion, we can begin to fine tune our instincts. We learn to get a feel for what we believe but are willing to keep investigating, the things we know, all be it in an abstract fashion, and the things we feel repulsed by (and should therefore learn to investigate skeptically). And remember, if we are really afraid of something, its best to take precautions in case the worst should happen. In my experience, it often does, as is the "law of atttaction"... But if we are well prepared psychologically, the realization of our greatest fears is cathartic at the least, and freeing at its best.

Once we can more comfortably recognize our personal "thought - forms", our contemplations can begin to explore the collective-consciousness. In my opinion, it is essential to recognize the voices inside our own minds before we explore the collective mind, but all too often this is not the case (since most people are not taught we have "telepathic" abilities) and we mistake a voice that is not our own to be the source of our will! For many people, this can be as simple as internalizing mother's thoughts about us, to something far more complicated...

The ancient greeks believed that almost all thoughts were messages from the gods, and now a days someone is likely to get drugged and detained against their will for that, but im pretty sure that does nothing to cure the real problem!

The collective-consciousness, in my opinion at least, has a will of it's own, even if that will is just some sort of residual collective will... even if we try to look into the collective-collective-consciousness (like, involving all being in all existance and nonexistance), we will always be looking through some filter of pre-conceived "reality" which inhibits us from experiencing the full depths of existance and non existance.

Normally, the depths which affect us in our daily lives are the ones anchored in our present time-space. Just as we transmit our thoughts to the Aether, the collective-consciousness is right there, in the mind-scape outside our personal minds. This is normally a semi - permeable destinction, which is why things like "grounding" and "meditation" are so important if we want to channel things from the Aether!

Most of us find that channeling, much like manifestation, is something we have done long before there was a word in our personal vocabulary to describe it.

Divination

Divination is basically how we name the tools for setting the mood, allowing us to see through a thinner filter, and yet, the symbology implied by all divination techniques necesitates the belief in those symbols (which is a basic definition of a filter). In my opinion, it becomes important to study cultures different from our own, worldviews different from our own once we have learnt to play with belief, so as to avoid creating a harder ego-filter, rather than a more transparent one...

There are many forms of divination, all relating to the symbols most likely to bypass the rational, filtering mind...

This often has to do with facing taboo as a way to free ourselves from conditioning and to "see" clearer...

Other symbols in divination might rely on over stimulating or distracting the rational mind, giving it a "complete" symbol set to represent the world, as tarot intends to do.

Im going to have to dedicate a separate post on forms of divination, let me just finish this by saying that with practice, and plently of self - contemplation, it is possible to channel any information without the help of symbolic tools such as divination. Keep in mind that we don't all percieve the Aether equally - some percieving it through their "sight" some "feeling" "hearing" "smelling" "knowing" "tasting"... if you choose to filter your channeled information through a "god" or whatever facilitates your connection!

More of my posts on divination:

Interpretation ( contemplation and intuition )

Entering a Gnostic State of Mind

Divination

Extra Sensory Perception

The Main Reason a Spell Doesn't Work ( or a divination is inaccurate )

"Truth"

"Logic"

Why it's important to share (even when we might be wrong)

Summoning Lost Objects

#witchblr #witchcraft #magic theory #magick #channeling #divination #beginner witch #curious #magical theory #baby witch #witchery #contemplation #meditation #magick theory #clairvoyant #clairvoiance #clairsentience #claircognizance #gnosis #witchcraft 101 #original content

[usernamingishard]

Two types of Education

Education in its boring, miserable and destructive form. Incessant, tasteless feed of facts. Did you know Red Blood Cells have no nucleus? Did you know an atom in nature has as many protons as it does electrons? Did you know Weight is a force of pull down?

This is important for practitioners. People who will use this previously acquired knowledge to do a job that’s quite famous now in the world. Most obvious, is a Surgeon. He has to know how to properly cut and where the dangerous arteries and veins are, how to stop or reduce bleeding, how to counter the effect of removing an organ and operate the life support machine, even if for the small amount of time it takes for a transplant to be performed, how to perform a transplant so the new organ can do its predecessor’s job and every artery and vein going in and out of said Organ. Thanks goes to the first person who discovered or tried all this operation long ago, and wrote it in textbooks, then the thanks goes to this practitioner, who went by the books and followed the rules to get things done.

Everyone calls it tasteless. But truth is, due to some Psychological issue, this is how students percieve it. Tasteless and boring. Maybe due to the schooling system, and how it’s too much, considering everything else the student may be interested in doing. Maybe it’s modern day life, the stress from everything from social expectations to lowered self-esteem from some thing or other related to media. The reason is not the issue I’m talking about, what I’m saying is, it’s not actually a natural, born evil to learn facts. We actually enjoy it when it’s presented well and is chosen by the person by themself. Lots of people actually buy books, watch documentaries, and watch educational youtube videos. —————    That’s just the first type of Education. The other, is the edit of behaviour. “Education attempts to modify behaviour through the process of learning” -S. B. Kakkar, Educational Psychology (2012). You are taught facts in such a way and sequence that your behaviour is more professional.

In a Chemical reaction equilibrium, if you increase the concentration of the product, more of the reactants are produced from the product you added, which then decreases. If you perform exercise and expend too much Oxygen from your blood, your head messages your lungs and heart to increase the concentration of Oxygen in your blood by breathing faster and more heavily. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”.

All seemingly general facts that we really wouldn’t care about if we were gonna be Musicians in the end, and would never use in practice, right?

Well, no. In three different type of sciences, random facts have been thrown at you seemingly to tip you off. But if you focus on these very unrelated things, you’ll realise how they all convey the same *general* concept. Favourability of equilibrium. Any external change is reacted to in such a way that the change is less obvious.

When you get conveyed this concept, by being taught about it over and over and over in so many different forms, you start to expect to see it and understand its different forms.

Suddenly, you know of the idea of human backlash. If you, as a manager, take away from your employees rights or even compliments, they’ll take away from their own effort as well. You can expect this shortgiving. Employee no longer allowed a 20 minute coffee break? Employee comes to work late. —————    Now, I wanna start my rant. Let me discuss School systems. They suck. Sure, the first few years, you are offered the type of learning you need to understand how to act in life. Such as logic and reasoning, self-dependancy, dreams and aspirations, the fact that most things can be answered. (Keep in mind that I don’t exactly remember everything I took in Kindergarten)

Let me clarify if it’s hard to understand and apply (Although I don’t remember everything from Kindergarten). The part about Logic and Reasoning. Your teacher asks you a question, and you don’t know how to answer, so he tells you the answer. But he doesn’t just throw it at you. “Because two plus two equals four, right? Try counting with your fingers.” See how in this new perspective you can easily answer the question, what’s two plus two? “Ok, look at this. I’ve got two Oranges, and I add two more. Recount all the oranges, and what do you get?” The fact that after the teacher told the kid to add on his fingers, and then tried another method by actually adding oranges. It conveys the idea of making things simpler by logic, AND conveys the idea of how perspective leads to answer. So, everything has an answer with the right perspective. The part about self-dependancy. That’s easy to explain. Ever heard of Homework? You have to prove you are actually worth something (with all your knowledge) by doing your homework, since your parents aren’t allowed by the school to help you. Suddenly, you get used to depending on yourself.

Jump a very small amount of years ahead and concepts get more and more complex, such as the idea of backlash that I stated above.

But then, jump more years again, and you’ve got yourself a problem. I’m less than three years away from choosing my life career by entering college. I want to be a Psychologist. A glorified friend-to-talk-to who earns money. Does this involve Mathematics in any way? Do I need to know anything about Physics to practice this job? Even if the job involves a little bit of Anatomical study of the Brain, do I really need to go into such depth regarding Biological molecules’ functions in the human body involved in digestion, and their exact name, structure and constituents?

Because I strive for a certain class of Universities, I have to choose very high depth level of Biology, Chemistry and Math as my graduation subjects, all of which are extremely hard. And I wish I had a reason not to argument this. No, the whole thing about learning Behaviour and concepts do not exist in these subjects. Moreover, it’s not even educatikn of the first type. I get to learn excessive information that holds no value in a life-lesson form, and no value in the profession I hope to practice. Not to mention the stress it adds in my life with all the quizzes and the incessant progression from one lesson to another, when I get not enough time to study the lesson before jumping to the next, and the amount of free time it eats which I could have spent enjoying one way or another, and the dreams of things I’d self-teach if I had the time.

[now-age-conciousness-blog]

WHAT IS GOD? God is a Human Construct. Now calm down, breathe and listen to what I say with an open mind. As Lao Tsu says in the Dao "A bowl is most useful when it is empty" so empty your bowl and just for a brief moment think and ponder upon what I am going to say? I am not saying God doesnt exist, all religions agree that there is a higher power which cannot be explained, yet Gods take on very human charecteristics in all religions not only professing peace and love, but vengance, lust, incest, plaguse, curses, jealousy, hatred, war mongering etc and a vast array of human emotions. The big question here is why? And here lies the absolute truth of my statement. God is a Human construct, religion is a human construct. Have you ever stopped to wonder why all ancient Greek Gods were Greek? Why the Europeans took a Palestinian Jew and made him white? Why African Gods are African? Why are Indian Gods Indian? Why now blacks are saying Jesus was Black? Why paradise to a Prophet in the desert was revealed as a place with an abundance of water? I pose to you a question, if Lions had religious dogma do you suppose that their God would be a Zebra or another all powerful lion? In this way God is a human construct. SO DOES GOD NOT EXIST? On the contrary, a higher power does exist but each persons concept is different and many wars were started and fought on the basis of these constructs until this very day. God exists as a battery if you will, that all laws of physics and mathematics give explanations of the power of God yet still that is again only to our sensory perception but God is something far greater then we have the capacity to comprehend or measure with our limited perceptions. If I was to say that all life has an essence of God, many call it the breath of God, however every religion calls this the soul, and with our sight we can percieve this, one needs only look into a dead mans eyes to see the "spark of life" that was present while he was alive is no longer present after the breath has left his body. Almost all religions say, that this is the soul returned to God. If God is in everything, and everything is creation then our atoms return to the universe and in essence just take up a different form inside of this cosmic life force or what we call God. SO YOU ARE SAYING RELIGION IS WRONG? This question is complex, and something we must analyze very carefully before we make any critical decisions. I have said that dogma has its place, but blind faith is dangerous, and little knowledge of faith is the most dangerous of all Dogmas. For now, until we can get more indepth I will say yes and no and that as people we have completely missed the mark and if we do not turn at this point this will turn into one of the greatest catastrophes mankind has ever known because as all people tout that they follow a dogma of love, we are certainly very efficient at hate and killing those that do not share our particular God ideal. Yet the lesson that God has been trying to reveal to us has been lost in ethno centricity, greed, lust, power, prestige and various forms of corruption. However as God created tigers with claws and fangs, monkeys with strong limds and birds with wings. He made us to reason and think, and it is this that we underutilize and has turned us into a cancer on ths planet destroying and rending all asunder. However it is only knowledge and reason that can set us free So If Religion is A Human Construct and God is A Human Construct How Do We Have Morals? If you believe that God is our creator, if you believe that we have a soul that returns to God, then you must believe that inside of that coding is the manual you seek. If I were to break it down to you it would be like this, your family or partner,your friends, your possesions do not make you happy, it is not their purpose. Anything that affects you, positively or negatively is of your own doing. If someone was to call you a particullaly nasty name, you have many avenues, to ignore it and not let it affect you, to agree with it and go into depression, to verbally challenge the person who said it or to take violent measures either at them or at yourself in the form of suicide. Yet all of those actions did not come from the person who verbally abused you, but from how you chose to react. However if we can communicate directly with God, inside of ourselves and recognize God for what it is the manual will be clear. The difference between ordinary humans and those chosen by God is that they were able to transcend our sensory organs to present to us this index which is the basis of every single God concept that was every used by man as an example of an ideal life. So How Exactly Are We Supposed To Find This Spirit Within? I am glad you asked! Firstly we must recognize that man is made up of many components: 1) Physical Self 2) Concious Self 3) Subconcious Self 4) Logical/Sensory Self 5) Spiritual Self If these things are in balance, you could stand in the very presence of God and see the answers for yourself and find ultimate peace. Physical/Conscious/Sub Concious/Logical and Sensory Self These while being seperate things cannot exist without one another, they are all one in the same, and in later writings I will expand more upon each, but for those that wish to follow this path I will give you a glimpse into the rules our community has for living in the physical world as civilized citizens, adhere to this and many things will fall naturally into place for the next level, the sprituality aspect of our beings. Community Laws 1) Respect everyone regardless of Race, Creed, Faith, Age, Gender or sexual preference. We are all subject to trials, and all destined to live together. 2) People will like you or dislike you, remain neutral but do not allow the desire for acceptance change who you are, the only person with the power to change you is you. 3) Do not seek to attract undue attention by over exageratting your deeds, no deed is greater or smaller then its intention and the deed will attract as much attention as it deserves without you blowing your own horn. Remain Humble in all achivements and grateful for all failures as they are truly your only opprtunity to grow. 4) Express your opinion openly and frankly to those that seek it and only to the person you are addressing, in no way shape or form are you to berate, belittle or gossip about anyone not present to answer your opinion with one of their own. 5) Your word is your bond, do not make oths and promises lightly, even if there is a 1% chance you may not be able to do it, do not promise. If you do make such an oth honour it always. 6) Always praise those who have done something admirable, but never belittle others to make you look good. 7) live with love and compassion for all of creation without hope of reward or agenda. 8) Accept the life you have at this very moment and understand that if it changes for better or for worse it is a result iof your choices, no one else is to blame or give credit to for the life you have. 9) Regret nothing, regret will not change your past, learn and move forward. 10) Do not chase worldy lusts, food, drugs, sex, fame etc. Enjoy what you have and learn from the past, plan and hope for the future and live in the now, because truly that is all that anyone ever has. 11) you cannot own another human being, in all relationships everyone is free to follow their hearts be it education, sexual, career or any other life choice. You cannot allow petty jealosuy or social norm from allowing them to experience their own life in a way that makes them happy. 12) Accept the death of your body, without this realization you will never truly live your full potential. 13) Balance your food, a strong body is a strong mind and a strong mins is the only pathway to God. you owe yourself and God a healthy life so you can earnestlly live and seek whatever truths you feel you need 14) Do not be obbsessed with yourself but strike a balance between humility and vanity 15) Never desire anothers life, you do not know their struggle and never complain about yours as your situation is a amalgamation of your own choices and no one else is to blame. Blessings

[alsodiplodocus]

“Eingriff” (Intrusion) (Growth pt. 2) (2016)

This bit of “Growth” is a lot more meditative and actually does not have much happening in it, but exists to explain what on earth happened at the end of that last one and tie into the third part (that one’s my favourite). I tried to still make it exciting to read, though. “Traum Series” vibes are strong with this particluar bit.

Click this thing to get to the story:

I still can't really describe what happened next. It was as if my whole overgrown body just seperated itself from me, and I became part of something entirely new. I had nothing left to feel who I am or where I was. The only thing I was left with were my own thoughts. But while I tried to gather what is happening to me, something starts intervening from outside, as if it wants to talk to me. It was a voice, but not the type of voice you would experience through sound. It was as if it is speaking directly to my thoughts.

It was a conversation consisting of pure exchange of thoughts: There was no sound, no form, it was just a direct connection to my though. Conversation without sound is actually a pretty wonderful thing - without the necessity to push everything through the air, everything is suddenly a lot clearer and faster: The speed of thought surpasses that of sound. There was nothing foreign in this, actually it was the contrary. The voice i was percieving was the most natural thing I could imagine. It was all very familiar, as if it was nested somewhere in my thoughts all this time, but didnt decide to speak up until then. And now, with my body swallowed by plants lying somewhere in my bedroom, I understood it for the first time in my life. "Ah, finally I found you", the voice conveyed. "If you werent so stuck up behind all that steel and concrete, we would get to know each other much earlier. But you remained hidden and did not leave me any other choice. You cant just hide from me all of your life, though." It was in this moment that I realized how all of this must somehow make sense - the news report warning me about wild plants in the middle of New York, the roots and plants that somehow got into my room. And now this voice... I tried to formulate some answer, but that was not necessary. Communication through thought does not need formulation, and apparently this... thing, whatever it is, was following along. "You might ask yourself, who is talking to you. Or what happened to the outside world and your body. I know, it's all very sudden. Normally this isnt how I act. I will explain everything, I will show you everything, and I will let you roam free again. But only if you agree that the dream you once had might never come to fruition."

I still wasnt certain about who or what in ungodly hell is in my head, but it seemed to be benevolent. But the voice was far from done. "As always you are clueless. Just like the rest of your sick race. ALl your life I was part of you, but you never tried to acknowledge me like in this moment. I have been waiting for you! But well, let me tell you who I am first - well, actually, you have known me all your life. You were born from me, and one day you will return. I am in all that you see and hear every day, and without me, you would never have existed in the first place. Allow me to introduce myself: I am nature. So this is what it feels like to have contact to nature itself. This is why I was not feeling anything wrong as it suddenly started to talk to my thoughts. And this is why the wonder of the New York plant breakout happened - something must have deeply disturbed nature, and now it has come to get me. "Well, and you needed this long to get it, honey?", the voice interrupts me.

"And yes, of course that is why I took your body. Nobody else would do it. I might seem harsh, but I'm just doing this to stop you and protect both myself, you and the rest of your kind. Don't worry, it's not all over yet. I'm just correcting the course of our shared life for a bit. Soon you can let off steam again, and it will all continue as it once went.

I'm sure thousands of questions are plaguing you, but lets begin with the obvious: Yes, I have been watching you from your birth. I have been watching before, even. I was watching everyone. Even now, my eyes are everywhere. I know what you think, I know your plans, and I understand you like no one else does, not even you. I also know you tried to hide your plans, but you don't get past me. You just don't. You just have to understand one simple thing. From the beginning of time, when everything was in its initial state, it was all balanced according to my slowly evolving scheme. I give, and I take. Just like I took you, even though I'm usually not as obvious about it. It was like this before you joined me, and I was most definetely sure it would stay: You come and you go. And now please dont start whining about how it all was not enough. I have always given what you ask of me. You always had more than enough to enjoy your time here, but you just weren't content like everyone else. You just didn't stop. This seperates you. Every time I have created something, it has gone, and it seemed alright that way - but not for you. Something in you would just not accept things to leave. In no time, you have worked yourself up on the list of priorities, cramming yourself in at number one and clinging to that spot like nobody else. You would start documenting and describing everything you could touch and started just taking things without asking. That's not nice. You always were a worrisome child. It was as if you're just digging a tunnel into some alien mountain, without ever wondering what is on the other side or why you're digging at all: No matter what's over there, it had to come to the lught. And it seemed completely normal for you to just risk everything for it. You, your achievements, your environment.

And somehow you managed to live like that, until you came in. Nothing was enough for you, you always stole more energy in the name of everyone around you. But did you even know what you would do with it? If your little sphere of glass and wire would eventually do everything you set out for it, you would not have any boundaires anymore. And do you know, what happens if you dont give a human boundaries? Well, one thing is for sure, not many of you would be left. You don't understand, what you have made there isn't just a lot of energy. It would burn the rules I have set up. You might have a lot of knowledge about me and how i work, but it seems you don't know anything about the rest of your own species. At some point only one of you godless ones would remain, I would be helpless, and your creation would be the reason for the destruction of your own little world.

I'm not going to let that happen. I have stopped your plan already, but that's not enough. Wether you know it or not, one of your friends has told most of New York of what you were doing. You are stopped, and the rest of them must follow. People are going to write out today as an odd science experiemnt causing plants to grow faster, with the effect getting out of hand. Nobody would believe I came to stop anything. I am sorry."

And with those words, the monolithic voice just stopped. If all I have heard was true, things had no other way to go: Nature has taken all that has made me myself: My inventions, my environment, my body. All that just to not let itself be in harms way any longer. My old self died and all that came with it - however, things seem to not have ended for me. The voice appears again. "Of course our story wont end here, I thought through it all. Otherwise I would not be stuck in this situation. I still need you. Without you, the plan stops here. To create order once again, I will have to first finish what I started in New York, and then I will give you a new body to continue living without my further intervention. But you will keep your little infinity sphere for yourself. If not, I will knock at your door. And this time, I know where you are. Understood? Alright. Then let me begin with the rest of my plan. Just enjoy the view."