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lilmajorshawty · 5 years

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Lilith Through The Houses : The Fallen

(Carpenter Brut - TURBO KILLER)

Lilith In The First House : The Demon you can see

Lilith in the first house is about more than just the dark aura or the seemingly endless gazing eyes and petrified reactions from outsiders, rather it’s a accumulation of the natives energy focused so tensely in the area of the “self” that they seem like some powerfully dark entity. the face can have a darkness to it be it in color or in it’s appearance. the hair is often dark and depending on how close to the ascendant Lilith truly is it can even overwhelm any lightening affects of planets like Jupiter or Venus here. the eyes are often stunning, and a very harsh quality lies behind the gaze. the demeanor can seem quite detached and intense even if they are standing in an idle position. the natives also carry a strong energy, one that can seem a bit repugnant or erotic. these natives often can be completely opposite of the energy they’re expressing but it can be so atmospheric that they can be accused of “seducing” or “corrupting” their siblings, co-workers, step parents, friends lovers and so on. They have a mysterious nature to them that creates a sort of fearful nature in others, as many often ponder on if they are secretly moving or plotting in silence. These natives are POWERFUL and the scary aspect about them is their ability to dominate a room, a crowd or any relationship by sheer force of will and by existing. to many they are a threat, a bully, a sharlton, a whore, or some wicked vile beast of temptation. early life can be hard especially if Lilith is afflicted from this house and sadly these natives can receive quite a bit of sexual objectification as people often worship and lust after them as if they were a demon of sexual appetite. Lilith here is dangerous as she projects the inner animal in all of us onto the native making the native a target of primal behavior in others. People can act downright like wild animals towards these natives, snarling, kicking, biting, spitting, roaring, and so on just to strike them down and make them feel as small as the native makes them feel just by existing. once mature these natives are physically astonishing, as Lilith’s dark energy courses through the body’s constitution. staying fit is usually fairly easy here. and the mental and emotional faculties are very highly attuned making them incredible readers of character and intent. as these natives age they walk into their Lithuanian image and become truly intense and immovable objects, the men can seem like the devil, like some sly creature, some harmonious gale that weights you down with a simple glare. The women are fierce, and silent, passionately observing the world like a emperor of their bloodied kingdom. she is dangerous and cold, her intentions are far from emotional and her reactions are everything but sympathetic. this can be the coldest and unnerving of individuals to meet.

(Carpenter Brut - DIVISION RUINE)

Lilith In The Second House : The Blackest of Sheep

For Lilith in The second house natives self worth can be a guessing game, sort of like a constant pendulum swing. hatred of the purest and most carnal form can be exhibited towards ones body, whilst at another moment worship and unforeseen pleasure and joy can be derived from ones own body, their sense of self and place in this grand shit show called life. as you can imagine their appetite for the finer things is unmatched, but in many cases these natives love the ruined parts of beauty. This can be the ripped jeans, the broken stilettos. the old and cracked rusty crimson lipstick or the runny eyeliner, the spiked belt or the bareness of skin pale and lifeless after a cold shower. These natives are cold to the touch and tend to have quite the intense relationship with intimacy and touch. in many ways they loathe closeness and lingering intimacy, seeking to keep a mighty far distance from close ties or entanglements that last longer than they should. the other side of this is that once they do let someone in they can be so drawn to touch and sexuality, its sensuous and amorous nature that they become a gluttonous demon for it, eating their lovers alive. they can wear plenty of silly pretend tones, and soothe anyone into a manipulative tactic and make it seem like it was all a misunderstanding. These are the robbers and thieves willing to take and bleed everything and anyone dry if it brings them closer to their obsession “having what they cannot.” These natives are magnetic and their earthy bare beauty lies in the fact that Lilith here is reflecting on her time with Adam, the sex they had, his touch and the stranious and rather euphoric state she enjoyed until she was cast out and betrayed, thus as she lay nude and bare flying in rage in an unknown sky she dammed the world, the world she believed she had once had, now telling her she could no longer own it. these natives don’t value money or materialistic objects rather they value what is not their’s, what has been created, what is so fondly gazed upon by others, they seek to tear down it’s beautiful glow and to in-turn be made beautiful in it’s downfall. These natives by nature are sacrificial and have a almost godly relationship with the plants of the earth, many are gardeners in their pare time or actively partaking in medicinal herbs and many are even inherently nomadic easily reading climate patterns and environmental signs. these natives are also amazing in the field of medicine for their ability to scope out bodily dysfunctions and emotional imbalances. that being said these natives also have the most dangerous singing voices one could ever here do to it’s magnetic and often eerily moving tone. a rejection of the sensuality or body is common with this placement by the self or by others.

(Carpenter Brut - MANIAC cover)

Lilith In The Third House : The Rumors Of Shepard

Lilith in the third is a very subtle yet remorseless position, here Lilith has a free tongue and is delighted at the intricate yet magnified level of mental mind games and manipulation plausible in human nature. These natives may have had a parent or an early influence who was a pathological liar, a schemer or in some ways a com, and false prophet. the children often were fascinated and found novelty in the weakness of the brain and sought later in life to play into this more weakened aspect. Lilith sees weakness in the expression of sympathy and compassion and often preys into these aspects via communication or even things as subtle as certain movements/mannerisms, speech patterns and eye movements to throw off their desired target. Sometimes the lies are harmless while other times they are dangerous and toxic although none of this really matters to the native. These natives aren’t heartless per say but their is an inherent disconnect in the manner that the mind and the heart interact; they don’t. you see Lilith places an almost tar like cable separating the two so she can have her fun, as emotions would interrupt her spiritual mingle so to speak. These natives enjoy vocal banter and sparring as they get to test out their new tactics(subtly of course) on others and test the efficiency. These natives are brilliant writers and can often easily decorate a paper with words and diction that would make a literary scholar and professor of 99 years drop to his knees in astonishment and awe. they can color their words in such a way that can both woo you and terrify you with it’s effect. Many with this placement have seductive voices and can easily charm your clothes off in such a way you could even feel taken advantage of. both sexes are dangerous in this regard because although they can create a pretty little portrait for you, they are secretly knitting you in their twisted and often thoroughly planned web. these natives aren’t plutonion the sense that they actively seek to control their conversations or interactions, rather they do so in such a quiet and sincerely relaxed way that it’s as if it’s instinct to naturally swirl a mass into a a joyed get together, a fight into a compliment fest, or a tragedy into a miracle. They are intellectually 100 steps and 100 lifetimes ahead of you which is what makes being in their presence such a sincerely scary thing as they tend to be alphas in any interaction with everyone around them taking the place of common folk, in the presence of a lord. A rejection of ones thoughts and ideas and even knowledge by the world is common. the arms tend to either be hairless or sporting some dark moles, and scars here and there that seemingly seem to curve into a moon like shape. Lilith working positive here awakens premonition and cerebral awareness that far exceeds the normal person.

(New Order - Elegia)

Lilith In The Fourth House : The Nomadic Evil

Two things should be mentioned be for we carry on, This is Lilith And what we are speaking on is how her presence can effect that particular area of your life by infusing it with her darker scheme but make no mistake where she lay is often the area of life that needs her power the most as to protect the native from being dogmatically bulldozed over by the treachery of the world, she is both a blessing and a great evil. In the case of the fourth house Lilith can make the home life practically non-existent. It can create detachment or loose ties with ones heritage or familial upbringing. In both men and women this aspect can show that the families history is often dark and full of lose of power and regaining of it in darker ways through sexual and emotional expression and this can involve much of the female side of the family. their can be an innate disdain for other women or MEN especially with this but it’s more common to have a disdain for the conventional Mother and Father dynamic if anything. This can make the native feel rejected when home, or as if they don’t really belong, or in some cases like home is not a real conceptual desire. the family itself can seem almost alienated and far, and much of the early interactions may have been tense, overwhelming or the women in the family could've been survivors of dark acts such as rape, murder, abuse, violence, and or anything that would’ve likely been the result of a man or society failing to give them aid. When Lilith rest here positively the above is still true but the connection to the divine feminine and women in general is passionate and endearing and instills a lot of inner will power and drive in the native. the chest can be very boney and rather tight with the way the nerves and organs coil together. so sharp chest pain, and chest compression is common due to anxiety or strong emotions. the heart can also suffer from palpation and sloppy rhythm yet miraculously the heart is in amazing condition and seems to do well enough on it’s own to fix any potentially fatal issues(still go to the doctor if any symptoms get worse though!) the native tends to express emotions in a cold and rather aloof manner and can have a very hard time flowing into their more nurturing qualities mainly because they were never really exposed to nurturing in the same sense most people are, they attribute caring and compassion to being sturdy, independent and steadfast anything other than that is useless and unnecessary. overly emotional or overly clingy types and unfortunately even children can be a very hard battle for these natives as it clashes with their essence. these natives despise intimacy and tend to prefer being alone as opposed to having to connect and get intimate with others. that being said these natives are emotional, and deeply so but this is hidden behind a wall of trauma and a very well created mask. the thing is though the mask isn’t to protect them or anything rather it’s an instinctual action to create distance and to raise themselves above those who would try to dig past their facade. They are rather powerful in nature and have almost demonic/fallen angel like emotions, often feeling wrath rather than rage, feeling pride instead of courage and feeling lust instead of love, these natives emotionally exist on a darker emotional plane than anyone would ever be able to fathom. They are by no means fiction and i tell you this because these natives are genuinely so hard to understand, like a complex myriad of fluttered wings and bloodshed, navigating their pain, and their hardships is nearly impossible and this only worsens the older they get as they periodically build more and more mazes. the mind set is often attentive but far away, they can seem like passerby’s and have a extremely closed of nature making things such as friends or lovers seem a bit difficult. they are caring but rarely ever feel as if anyone is worth the expression, they are warm, but very rarely are they willing to create a sun. these natives are mysterious but not for the “look” of it, mainly because they live in their darkness so much so that it is who they are, and if anything thats the beauty of this placement they are an innocent angel with the whitest glowing wings dancing in the dark all alone, in peace far away from the commitments of the world.

(Big Black Delta - Huggin & Kissin )

Lilith In The Fifth House : The Volcanic sin

Lilith in this house is a vortex of madness, she swarms and dances in the highways and the swamps, in search of god. She’s so angry and filled like a wine glass with sorrow and lament shouting endlessly for him to hear her pleads. She’s grieving constantly, for what seems never ending. always, constantly in pain, constantly burning her wings and re-birthing over and over each time becoming something else, something more, something darker than before. These natives are seemingly passive and bothered by the world around them, critiques of art, disgusted by the things humans passionately wave their fist in the air for, they always seem disappointed or lacking in amusement at the creations of man. these natives can brim with an almost colony of souls the moment they see that desired star power, that human pitfall where all seems lost and someone surpasses their own abilities and broken bones, and armless and all rises even still. these natives value fearlessness in the face of ones own demise and destruction, rising above adversary without wasting a moment to dwell in the sadness of the situation, art littered in pain or trauma and it’s massive weight or the intensity of someone being able to vocalize that pain and it’s darkening wave excites them. they adore man at it’s weakest moments and the fight it takes to come above those heavy waters once more. These natives can be almost demonically cold to weakness in others, turning a blind eye to someone crying or complaints of a hard life, they tend to ice out people with sob stories and even more so they tend to find complete disgust at those who sell their sob story to the masses and are worshiped for their own self pity. these natives are true seekers of sorrow and strength and it’s often why Lilith in this position is almost at the same strength as the Descendant in deciding whom these natives marry. The lover often is a cold one, dark, intense and one whom has witnessed their fair share of sorrows hence their more stoic and serious nature. the love life of these natives can be pure hell, as the romantic partners especially when younger may be attracted and even obsessed with the natives but upon the natives seeking to consummate or initiate the bond past the courting stage the lover can reject the native, coldly as if they were dirt and openly choose another, or avoid the native all together and in some extreme cases the lover could be abusive or monstrous all due to the fear and powerful emotions the native drudges up in the lover. much pain will be felt but many re-births will be the result, the natives get far more cold, far more intense and even more selective as they age. much of the rejection is due to the native unconsciously turning a blind eye to what Lilith is trying to show them within themselves. Lilith seeks to help these natives process their own pain, and to love from within rather than seek it through another person which is often why up until that is learned these natives are given nothing but hate, mis-treatment, and sorrow. The relationship with children can be healing surprisingly, Children often are afraid of these natives (at first) but as time progresses and these natives get older and harness their inner love children naturally gravitate towards them, seeing them as a source of fun and excitement, children are often very protective and fond of Lilith in the fifth house natives often showering them with love and support. the deeper alignment here is that the natives are constantly carrying an energy of sadness and are often disconnected with the world around them due to their incredibly high standards of what counts as passion, they don’t just want love they want to feel it like a raging fire in their souls until it leaves nothing but ash. they want to feel sadness like a suffocating and deafening tsunami on a deadly storm in the sea. they want to love heir children with the force of all mother united, to feel sex like a turbulent storm of water and fire crashing into the earth like molten rock and icy cool. Sexually keeping up with these natives is impossible, they move like a wrathful archangel and can be practically insatiable. Often times these natives tend to find their suitable lover sometimes between their early 20′s or mid 30′s in most cases it’s early 20′s during college or ladder adolescence as the sun is progressed into the incoming sign and its often mid 30′s following the Saturn return due to the fact that these two will be in a close interaction. the back can have moles, beauty marks or freckles or even just sport a few scars and a more darker skin tone than the rest of the body. the Body of these natives is AMAZING. these natives can seem to have model figures or have very naturally erotic bodies that can make even the most innocent person look like a sultry, she- witch the second the clothes come off. Dancing and writing tend to be past times for these natives and they can be some of the most erotic, and talented dances you could ever have the blessing of seeing. Singing and physical activities are also past times and these natives are very obsessed with the body and tend to gravitate towards more physical and martial art like sports, due to their inherent flexibility and natural stamina and vitality. the overall health is deviously good and these natives tend to have impeccable recovering abilities often mentally dealing with sicknesses. These natives can seem like they are constantly bored or unamused which can make them seem intimidating or hard to please which is often why people feel so uncomfortable or as if they must be on their best behavior around them, this includes people above them and children. many people may seem stiff or cautious around these natives due to how stoic and carnal their eyes can seem in disapproval. these natives internally feel a endless state of heartbreak and can suffer from drastic bouts of depression to episodes of euphoric highs only to come crashing down with the speed of a collapsing wave. things don’t necessarily improve rather these natives learn to take these up and down pitfalls and rise and even stronger version, a darker one than before.These natives are not easy to connect to and can be very hard to gain the time of but assuming you have what it takes they are extremely loyal and deeply sown to the ones they give their hearts too. Be careful how or what you say or do to their family, husband or kids they will annihilate you with the scorn of a trillion dead and their are no lengths they fear crossing.

(New Order - Blue Monday)

Lilith In The Sixth House : The Burning Lambs

This Position of Lilith can seem like a backdoor or a darkened curtain off to the side in the natives personality. They can demand an almost unrealistic and un-sympathetic tone to the less then polished things in the world around them. These natives crave perfection and this isn’t something that’s a simple as the clean room, and perfectly tucked shirt, or carefully honed smile, these natives need and desire perfection at it’s core in a almost spotless representation of themselves to the point of which they would rather annihilate all around them that fails to meet this high expectation. these natives condemn the more instinctual sides of man, preferring to use the mind as their highest calling. many find it difficult to work with others, preferring not only to go in alone but they enjoy the weight of taking on a duty even if it leaves them in shambles. These natives have a furious tenacity that makes them bloodthirsty for positions at work, and trying to compete with them will be a fruitless effort as much of their being and dark intellect come into the matter. in many ways they are beautiful, innocent and contrasting as much of their allure lay in their seemingly angelic and pure nature. these natives have a strong level of discipline and self restriction only second to their Lilith in Capricorn and 10th house brethren. These natives can have billions of fires and storms raging within yet present the polished car, sleek black dress and rose-marry scented smile in the phase of an entire gathering as if they weren’t impaled in the deepest of depressions moments before. a certain level of seriousness and intensity cloud these natives as more often then not they make it a point to remain objective, detached and eerily focused on the objective at hand. ignorance is blasphemy to the natives and often a source of immediate disapproval and disgusts. These natives are very intolerant of many things especially those whom are overly dependent on instinct rather than logic. These natives are incredibly sensual and pleasures can be multi-faced much like their minds. they tend to be their most sexually powerful in sexual situations of inequality. They may prefer more dominant or submissive sexual partners and have a strong need for their darkness to be expressed through sex on a constant basis otherwise frustration and mental agitation is the result. the problem here is that this can cause the underdeveloped types to get into relationships mainly for the sexual outlet rather than the emotional growth. They are immensely loyal, but very rarely ever do they commit to someone as many prefer to be alone. the masturbating tends to be aggressive and volcanic in nature and often times these natives have such an earthy and tense sexuality their co-workers and even people in their everyday lives may feel uncomfortable or sexually aroused around the person due to the power of projection. The stomach can have scars, or moles upon it in some cases or may be the source of frequent emotional upsets. the health can fluctuate and reach moments of life or death both figuratively and in reality. feeling reborn after fighting a illness is common even if it’s something as small as a cold. the animals that the native deals with can be Lilithian in nature and have darker more dangerous attributes. the animals will have powerful personalities and will be treated as an equal by the Lilith person. Hunting animals for sport or having a more grudgingly relationship with animals is common here. These natives are incredibly resilient and steady but have a very inner ward pestilence that causes them to despise reliance or support of any kind.

(Hozier - Dinner & Diatribes )

Lilith In The Seventh House : The God In we, The Devil In Me

This position of all Lilith in the Houses is One of the most paradoxical and the most devastating. These natives are like a violent wheel of chance, filled with endless possibilities of both malefic and benevolent inclination. These natives can be the sweetest drop of honey, the warmest embrace and the lover of your fantasies dressed as human. They can be your wickedest nightmare, deepest wound and most prolific demon inhabiting your body and mind. They have a level of control on their environment that would put Scorpio to shame, a level of cunning that would silence Virgo and Gemini and an almost biblical like understanding of the human brain and it’s reactions, it’s fears, it’s pitfalls, and it’s quiet longings in such a way that Sagittarius and Capricorn would fall prey. the manipulation can be quiet and a bit hidden in it’s expression but it happens, sometimes unconsciously, other times in the light of day. these natives no matter how lighthearted their chart or how many grand trines and castle of Davids will have a very unbalanced inner world, fluctuating from nun to sinner. to many outsiders these natives are adorably understanding and patient, arguably the most giving and sacrificing person you’d ever meet but behind the sweetness these natives are deeply self invested and in many ways this isn’t a bad thing but it’s also a means of self preservation at the expense of others. These natives seem closer and more intimate then they actually intend and are one of the most difficult people to get to open up or trust you as they prefer to keep much of their interactions superficial and easy. Deeper connections are usually saved for potential love interest or marriage partners but they more than most people get to meet an entirely different beast. these natives can attract heavily Lilith aspected lovers whom are dark, tantric, intense and downright possessive and sexually demanding like hungry animals. The native themselves can project their own shadow side onto the people they interact with platonically or romantically which can create a hypocritical “why are you acting like that” mentality when the truth is that they themselves are the source of the heavy seated Lilith energy. This house is most dangerous as the natives tend to get that much more intense and dark when married, expressing their “real” self, the sinner, Persephone, the black witch, the fallen angel free of shackled purity. They can end up with marriage partners or lovers who seem completely opposite of them or rather a complete 360. the lover may have tattoos, work in a taboo field of work or the music industry funeral homes, a rock-star/musician, porn,martial arts, or drug trafficking and money laundering, running a prostitution rink, selling drugs, or things like hunting, poaching, lucrative work, government work, FBI, Military and so on. The partner is often serious and Intense but LOYAL. The native can be co-dependent and attract co-dependent relationships which are more dangerous here because of the Lilith like theme. The natives can be seductive and so sexually provocative that many people who may not even be that sexual are actively aroused or turned on by the Lilith in the 7th person, often caught up in their sultry atmosphere to the point where many may be in fear, or disdain of the natives effect on them. The other lot, married, committed or otherwise who cannot help themselves develop strong obsessions with these natives. Love is death for these natives and it needs to be littered with obsession, paranoia, possession, hate, love, intensity, pain, loss, rebirth and struggle for them to truly value it, although they may intentionally reject this and seek more peaceful unions, deep down in their heart of hearts they need that chaos to mend the woes and trios of faces and inhibitions tied to love and romance for them. The buttocks and back can be incredible. the natives may have birthmarks on the butt or darker skin on the area, men may have a hairy buttocks while both sexes may have a mole or scar of some sort here. the waist and hips flow like water and can make these natives excellent at riding or rather make cowgirl-reverse-cowgirl positions their favorites. these natives are dangerously seductive and can set a whole room of men and women in under their spell as this is a gender less sexuality expressed here often sucking up any unlucky fool who dares to gaze their way. the tell tale of these natives is their deep stare, it can feel like god is looking upon you, as if the devil is entrancing you, they seem like a taboo decision that will change your life and leave it in tethers.

( Allan Rayman - Crush)

Lilith In The Eighth House : The Way we speak to the fallen

Lilith is happy here, she resonates with Hades and Pluto, she understands their loss and contempt, their lament and dutiful weight. These natives can seem magnetic without much effort. much of their movement and reaction is stalled and cautious, yet never in a way that brings to much attention to them or their actions. They are observant and still much like a spider knitting it’s web and patiently waiting for that one impulsive mistake or haphazardly movement. They are cunning researchers of human nature, often playing fortuneteller when it comes to mingling with others. Their sexuality can feel like a heavy wave devouring you in a atmospheric way. they can be around you, next to you and above you all in one instant without moving an inch. Their personality is deep but mysterious as much of their real feelings and sexual desires are hidden behind screen doors and cleverly manipulated traps set to seduce or adhere those around them. These natives prefer the -nonchalant and rather un-bothered mode of emotional expression as much of their darker or more wild nature is focused and centered only on sex.Lilith here grants these natives the ability to use their darker more traumatic experiences as an battery for their rebirth. The worst in life slides of these natives like tar and from the tar rises a new silky smooth pair of wings with an even tougher exo-skeleton. the ability to heal the pain in themselves and in others is one of their best qualities as they are strongly sympathetic and patient with the darkness and pain in others. Lilith in the 8th house more than most people are deeply aware how trauma and pain can make us lash out or self destruct as a means of regaining control and as a result these natives are the least reactive to emotional displays or darker manipulation or coercive tactics by others. In all honesty these natives feel pity for such people and do what they can to rise above them. These natives aren’t as manipulative or as power hungry as Lilith in Scorpio and tend to prefer love unions built on respect and equality, they just prefer to have control in the bedroom, but have a very open and ardent nature to the sexual ventures in general. sex is VERY important to these natives but they don’t mind waiting years or decades if it means they could find the right person who satisfies their inner sexual need of being respected and recognized as a sexual being and “loved” for it. Here we see Lilith desire to be seen and recognized for her sexuality rather than cast out for her pride in it. these natives are very sensitive towards sexual partners and tend to have deep marriages as they work very hard to maintain the sexual chemistry and love in the union all the while force-ably putting the relationship through upheavals and moments of spiritual and emotional rebirth. These natives are mainly gifted with matters of inheritance and joint business dealings but can still attract money in rather taboo or off the script like fashions. The sexual partner may be the only person these natives share their money or savings with and the family may come second or not at all depending on the relationship with the mother. Many outsiders can be obsessed with the energy of these natives often acting like fan-girls/boys at the acknowledgement of the native which typically puts them off and rather disgust them. These natives fall for the unassuming or the lighthearted free spirits who see the light in everything. the ones with Lilith towards the end of this house prefer more stoic and intense lovers. The genitalia is FIRE! quite literally, men and women with this position have sexual organs that can bring the crazy out of a mountain. They can be very passionate and deep sexually, and will be one of the most biblical experiences you’ve ever had.

( Das Rocs - Maybe, I)

Lilith in The Ninth House : The God You Did Not Believe In

Lilith in the 9th is as massive as the solar system, seeking to spread her wings over all the neatly tucked books, and scriptures, digging her nails in the spoken word and rearranging it’s tones and vibrations to her sense of grandeur. Lilith here is the grand passion and the mighty mind of man. she sees fun and joy in the merriment of dancing in the knowledge and origin of the world and very rarely will you ever catch these natives poorly informed about any subject matter as they do much work to ensure that they know the where,why, how and when of the worlds history. They can seem arrogant or entranced in their own knowledge to the point of stepping on the ideas and thoughts of others. They can have an air of supremacy and carry an air of resistance or loathing of universities or higher schooling in general deeming it as a barrier to delving deeper into knowledge. others tend to dive head first into higher schooling to an almost obsessive quality, treating it like some insatiable candy they cannot get enough of, often returning to get multiple certifications and degrees just because they know they can. these natives have a strong dislike of strings attached or chains of obligations which makes them very unreliable and rather arms length in many of their interactions. to them sex and romance, life and death, love and hate should be experienced like an expansive adventure, a gift from the demons gods of hell to live as you please and grow beyond measure. The emotions can fly UP and DOWN, HERE and THERE but they are never consistent as these natives are always heading to the next spiritual obsession. Lilith here is free, SO endlessly free and she hates being all cooped up in a boring, stagnate environment which is often why these natives can seem like birds, and many share a strong understanding or compassion of winged creatures. The thighs can be darker than other parts of the body, have scars or moles or in many cases the thighs are often plump and thick depending on how deep Lilith sits in this house. the sexual arousal can be VERY fast for these natives, especially the men. they are turned on by the uncharted and many men with this placement love sex so much that they fuck men and women, anyone that has that sexy air of inhibition is everything they’ve been begging for. the foreign travels can be to darker lands, and might involve danger, death or turbulence of some kind so its advised to be safe, and very aware of yourself and others when ever you head out of the country. Lilith is VERY bubbly here so it’s no surprise that this Lilith is one of the hardest to spot.

(New Order - Vanishing Point)

Lilith In The Tenth House : The Suited Black Paint

Lilith here is operating in the cold black visor, the feathers loose and sparingly dancing cross the corporate office like jet black paint. These natives can Seem like a cold shower, or some devastatingly subtle but violent train crash with a almost quiet disharmonious backdrop. The ambitious nature of these natives is their strong suite but also one of their most dangerous past times. these natives seek the top and can often use their black wings to blow away the competition, sometimes through charm, manipulation, scandals, black- mail, sexual liaisons or downright intimidation. These natives prefer to be in charge and don’t stay in the passenger seat of any corporation, business, activity for very long as their natural desire to sit on top triumphs above all else. Their careers can be of Lilith like nature or just be drenched in Lilith like themes, such as sexual objectification which is especially the case with women or, emotional black-mail, power plays and power trips or downright psycho-analytics. These natives are often seen as a threat by their colleagues and in true Lilith story line fashion the workers can act as god and attempt to cats him or her out of the workplace, in some ways out of fear and in others out of jealousy. Many times over the bosses or corporate peers can be perverted, dubious and false in their intent. The natives tend to have a ridiculously thick skin and easily create emotional block aids and emotional barriers as a means of alienating their issues and problems as opposes to facing them. this is not done out of a fear of what they feel, rather to them the time necessary to deal with their emotional issues is time that could be used getting ahead. these natives can be filthy in the means that they go about rising in the ranks and can be even more cold and aloof to lovers whom fail to showcase ambition or a grounded and realistic outlook on their future. These aren’t the types to marry dreamers or people who spend more time talking about their future than creating it. These natives bare Lilith disdain for the lord and because of this they tend not to place things in the hand of chance or prayer, rather they believe in actively going out to create the destiny and circumstance they desire. These natives often have a hard relationship with the father or one that is strained in some way, this can even be a step father or male relative of some kind. their is an inability to submit to the darker expression of their sexuality emotionally rather, they remain objective and steady sexually even when it’s something that should be expressed in a relaxed and calm way. Due to this their sexuality can be very BDSM and Power play friendly, they like to feel in control or be completely controlled by their sexual partners and this can sometimes be in such a way that the natives need to feel emasculated or pain in order to feel ‘alive” though this behavior is only in extreme versions. Much of the darker energy of Lilith is projected towards racing to the top, a insurmountable hill that never seems to end. these natives don’t realize that Lilith is trying to overcompensate for her perceived short comings and is on an endless tirade to prove(god) of her worthiness and power but in reflection to the natives this symbolizes a inner feeling of being inadequate or lacking in worth via their environment and their familial upbringing that is to be addressed before the native becomes engulfed in Lilith Dogma. these natives are as harsh as granite and can often struggle with the softer expression of sex and intimacy as they naturally detach and shut down emotionally from these things out of an instinctual need. That said the relationship with the children unlike their fourth house counterpart is not nearly as strained and is actually very close knit and loving. These natives give their children the world almost to compensate for what the native lacked as they themselves grew up. the kids come first in their lives, before the marriage partner and this can often cause a ripple in their marriages and one they don’t typically care to fix. these natives tend to have sharp peaks and ridges in the bone and can have rather great bone structure. under eye bags or just tightly clenched resting faces is common, beautiful smiles but these natives usually try not to smile in public.

(New Order - Leave Me Alone)

Lilith In The Eleventh House : The Millions of Lost Souls

Lilith here is Many but also few. Here Lilith understands the human psyche, she understands its’s pains because she understand the worlds pain, she sees it’s cycle. These natives are Em-paths and have a very difficult time separating their woes from the woes of others. These natives can feel the emotions of others in such an intense way that it often feels like a shock or jolt that can energize or deplete them. These natives have a keen ability of harmonizing with whatever environment you place them in but can also create chaos there by crowding up the energies. Lilith here is like a battery constantly debilitating and then re-vitalizing the area around her postivley or negativity afflicting her environment. These natives tend to attract Lilith like friends whom are often, serious, sultry, provocative, reckless, anarchist, aggressive, shady, mysterious or downright evil. These natives are not naive, and tend to be very aware of their energy and how it manifest as a great many with this placement take on a very nomadic and free spirit. Many like to wear chakra stones, and jewelry that furthers their individualistic expression. The ankles and calves of the native tend to be darker then the rest of the body or remarkably sturdy. they may still have scars or just a abnormality to them. These natives make excellent runners and many gravitate towards the sport whilst others may pick up singing or artistic expression. Lilith here is more passive than she is a troublemaker, choosing more so to lay low and experiment with her own individual self then that of others. these natives can express themselves in ways that can turn society upside down, or greatly challenge the status quo. Gender normalties are lost on these natives as they don’t really identify themselves as anything in particular, rather they are energy, constantly shifting through the cosmos. These natives have a sharp tongue that can quickly turn poisonous yet they don’t actively rely on it. Due to Lilith being so self invested in this house very rarely will the dark side of this native produce any dangerous or malefic habits, rather they will seem calm and vulnerable to the world around them. sexually they can be very quirky and new-ons. they see intimacy as a gate way to exploring their raw and darker angel and transverse sexuality in stride. that being said these natives are very odd and perplexing in matters of romance and sex and can easily fly back and forth between wants and needs sexually as Lilith is really just testing the waters. the mind is deep but depressive and these natives can suffer mighty highs and strange lows from nowhere but never anything that debilitates them. these natives are very kind and balance self centered and people centered quite naturally through the help of Lilith.

(New Order - Guilty Partner)

Lilith In The Twelfth House : The Clouds where she Scram A Mighty Scream

Lilith in this house is chaos, the reasoning being that Lilith in this house is grappling with the idea of undoing and self manifested characterization. Lilith doesn’t face her actions she seeks to free herself from them and in karmic fashion the evil in her is sent spiraling back at her. These natives are sensual, calm, intimate, healing, clairvoyant, em-paths, spiritualist, pacifist, slaves of justice and human weakness yet they also manifest as unstable, counter-productive, stagnate, false, and stuck in their escapism. These natives are so afraid of themselves that it becomes an unconscious struggle between their Lilith and them as a person. this aspect plays out like a Demonic possession. The person can feel entangled, low energy, or bouts of hedonism, sexual obscurity, impulsive action, and substance abuse that are all out of character. The thing here is that Lilith in her attempt to commit a grand escape has a chain caught on the native causing her woes and anguishes to be randomly transferred to the native. in many ways this can create an alter ego for the native as the native gets hit with personality shifts that progressively deepen as they get older. the dreams can be very LILITH like and the mind itself and it’s inner psyche can feel like hovering voices, paranoia and dreams of sharing or not being in control of ones on desires and feelings or even actions. This aspect can create a person who can seem moody and unpredictable, especially when the urge to detach and disengage pops in, it can be impossible to stop these natives. the sexuality falls on a spectrum like with all humans but with Lilith's inhabitants their can be an unconscious desire to stay celibate or an association of trauma with sex. Men and women here could've been sexually abused or taken advantage of and their can be issues surrounding the “yes” or “no, i don’t want to” in sex that can make it a very blurred area for the native. Lilith may want aggression, passion and complete domination but the person may not truly resonate or desire that and may feel appalled or fear if the personalities switch during sex. these natives NEED a sensitive and compassionate lover who will guide them and nurture them, lovers who are chosen during the Lilith persona tend to worsen and deepen the wounds of this person causing a higher frequency of escapism. I CANNOT stress enough that parents who have kids with this placement, please ensure your child is well aware of the dangers of sex and try to keep them somewhat grounded in the area as some of the emotional trauma can start very early and these natives do sadly attract the worse of the worse mainly due to how violent and angry Lilith is to be resting in this house. the natives can be seductive but its never intended, they can be provocative but it’s never something they are aware of. these natives are a mirror of the person who views them and can be a dream or nightmare but that is the power of Lilith here, even in her escape she creates a shadow in the clouds that can be anything the heart fears or wishes. these natives can sleep for LONG hours and have a hard time waking up. The nightmares tend to be hard for them to awake from and can make the natives fear going to sleep all together. Insomnia is another manifestation later in life but is not the norm. the brain is powerful but repressed. the natives can be highly sensitive to hospitals or jails and usually attributes jails to danger and naturally stay away from them and out of trouble. these natives have a natural distrust of hospitals and vice versa as in many cases things go array or seem shadier than they should. that being said later in life hospitals are crucial for the native and therapy in it’s own way is very healing for the native. the desire to use sex as a coping mechanism is a dangerous possibility here and one that should be avoided at all costs. these natives are lovers not fighters and that is their loveliest quality but also their biggest weakness. unlike the other houses whom are fusions between the natives and Lilith this house is the only house besides the 11th house in which 11th and the native are separate and because of the natives emotional nature, Lilith readily devours them. These natives must learn to fight otherwise they will fall victim to Lilith's heavy presence. through their battle with Lilith these natives become remarkably strong, often powerful spiritualist and even stronger at protecting themselves from dark energy in their later years.

#Mine #Lilith in the houses

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cubeswhump · 4 years

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Defy Fate; Reanimate, part 1: The Pieces of Osiris

Gonna make it clear that I got “Defy fate / Reanimate” from this song. This story takes inspiration from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein but I kinda took the barest base of it and ran wild.

For much of my childhood, I was dead set on being a forensic pathologist. Then I got autistic burnout which turned into a nervous breakdown and had to reevaluate my life plan. I still have a huuuuuge love for forensics/pathology and I finally put it to use. A bit too much use. You’re gonna learn about rates of decay today.

Note: Part 2 is already written and will be posted tomorrow or the day after.

Tagging @more-miserables and @brutal-nemesis

Warning for gore, self-harm (not done from depression or misery), terminal illness, whump of a minor (via flashback), death (death is a whole ass focal point of this story so be warned), drugging, creepy whumper (like super creepy), consensual mildly-NSFW stuff that doesn't go anywhere, semi-professional surgery, dismemberment, disembowelment, general grossness.

Dearil was a constant; Lorelai barely remembered life without him. He showed up in first grade an awkward little boy who didn't speak a word of English and she was the happy helper with dozens of gold stars who took him under her wing. But they grew up and he learned English and gained confidence while Lorelai retreated into her shell.

Dearil seemed the type of kid who would be bullied relentlessly: openly gay, overweight, embraced his feminine side with pinks and purples and earrings, grew his hair longer than any boy at school, could tell you every plot point of Bleach and Naruto but couldn't follow a conversation, did these things with his hands that were later identified as stimming. However, he never held his tongue and had this air of confidence that even the mean kids respected. It was quiet, studious Lorelai they picked on, but no one dared bother her when big Dearil stood next to her. When chemotherapy made him lose his hair when they were sixteen, some classmates even shaved their heads to show support.

They stayed close even Dearil repeated eleventh grade because health complications made him miss so much school. They stayed nest best friends even when Lorelai graduated six months early, when he took a gap year, when Lorelai got into medical school. Even when the dreaded Boyfriebds stuck their feet in.

The two shared an apartment while Dearil worked on a degree in business and Lorelai was kept busy as an assistant in a morgue and full-time student. They had big dreams, but Dearil's were much more feasible: he planned to open a bakery that exclusively hired neurodivergent teens and young adults. Lorelai's plans?

"They only don't want to mix magic and medicine becahse the pharmaceutical companies will lose money!" she growled, glaring daggers at the emailed rejection of her thesis.

"People fear what they don't understand. I mean, science can't explain it and it's pretty fucking crazy," Dearil replied, shrugging. "If I had to explain it, I'd say it's kinda like equivalent exchange in Fullmetal Alchemist, right? I don't really get how it works. But you're smart. You're strong-willed. You'll do great."

She didn't get his anime comparisons, but she could get lost in the sould of his voice. If she could bottle it she would drink nothing else for the rest of her life.

Then another Boyfriend came along and she heard that voice less and less. She hated everything about Frankie: the way he zipped around on that noisy motorcycle (and how dare he wear the only helmet while Dearil rode around unprotected), his spikey hair, his smug smile, his grating laughter, his leathee jackets, his lips on Dearil's.

She refrained from hexing him. She wasn't a bad person who would use witchcraft to cause harm. Her acts were subtle and harmless: placing red rose petals in Dearil's pockets and shoes and placing petunia petals in Frankie's.

"I don't know what the flowers mean but I'm guessing it's some passive-aggressive bullshit," Dearil huffed. "Cut it out."

He got a bit angrier when she tried to cut off a chunk of Frankie's stiff hair. It was just for a bad luck charm, nothing lethal, but she pled the fifth on that one.

"You're like a sister to me," Dearil reminded her that day after Frankieeft. He meant well, but she wanted to scream and cry and break things. But she forced herself to smile.

There was a thought that haunted her every day. She would be the maid of honor, perhaps wearing teal if Dearil's current hair color was anything to go by. She would have to give a speech and congratulate the grooms. Watch them kiss. It should be her under that altar! She should be wearing a white gown and veil!

She resigned to life as a lonely spinster. She'd be married to her job.

That was the worst thing she imagined happening, until life hit her like a truck... and the delivery was a truck.

Dearil was so late getting home again. Any minute now he'd call and tell her he was spending the night with Frankie. And sure enough her smartphone rang, but it wasn't Dearil.

"What's up, Kensia?" she asked, but the only response from Dearil's younger sister was sobbing. Instant dread. "Kensia? Come on, use words. I'm not a mind reader."

So Kensia spoke, and Lorelai would have preferred she didn't. She didn't remember getting off the phone. She didn't remember much of that night at all, but she couldn't forget all of it.

***

She almost didn't go to the funeral. She didn't want to wake up ever again. She thought about joining Dearil. But she got out of his bed, staggered to her bedroom, and searched her closet for appropriate attire.

The black dress was old and wouldn't cover the runes carved into her arms, but what did it matter if someone got uncomfortable? Fuck everyone else. The dress was tight in her waist and she bitterly realized that it would fit soon enough now that Dearil wouldn't be baking sugary treats all the time.

His mother came to greet her dressed in all white. The whole Jean-Pierre family wore white, even Dearil's dad whose wardrobe consisted of grey suits and plain ties. Catheline wrapped her up in a bone-crushing hug and Lorelai wanted to push her away and shout, "I'm not here for you!"

A cheap pine coffin for someone so great. What a disgrace. It was closed too. A closed-casket funeral was the most logical solution but it hirt Lorelai to know she wouldn't see his beautiful face ever again. That beautiful face was pulverized. Even Frankie, who was wearing a helmet, was killed so Dearil didn't stand a chance. He was killed on impact, painlessly.

Painless for who? It hurt so, so much.

She could scarcely hear the spoken eulogies over her own sobs, and declined to give one herself. Dearil's own mother wound up consoling Lorelai throughout the ceremony, rocking the young woman in her arms like a child. No words were shared until the end when Catheline walked Lorelai to her car.

"Traditionally in Haiti, we gather to mourn for nine days. It's a social gathering where we eat and drink and talk, nothing stiff and formal," Catheline explained through her own tears, smoothing Lorelai's messy ponytail. "You're part of the family, cheri. We want you to join us."

Like she wanted to waste her time at some social event. The only thing she wanted to do was lie in Dearil's bed and smell him on his pillow. But she couldn't shut Catheline down like that.

"Why nine days?" she asked.

"That's how long the soul takes to leave the body - that's what we Vodouists believe. We gather for nine days to assire the soul ascends safely and doesn't get stolen away by any petro loas. Evil spirits."

A pause. Lorelai got an odd look on her face. "Was he embalmed? Were his organs donated?"

Disgust flashed across Catheline's face for just a second. She took a deep breath. "We believe that harm dealt to the body after death harms the soul, so we don't usually embalm or donate organs. Dearil did want to donate his organs, you know what he's like, so we respected his wishes. He wasn't embalmed. Why do you ask?"

The question had a bit of an edge. She sniffed and dabbed her eyes.

Lorelai wasn't crying anymore, though her eyes were rimmed with red. "Catheline... If his soul is still on earth, could his body be saved?"

Catheline frowned. "What are you..." Her face contorted with horror. "No! I have nothing against you doing witchcraft, but this is where I put my foot down. Interfering with the soul? My son's soul? Imagine the pain he'd be in! How could you even think of that?"

Lorelai looked away from her. "I'm sorry... I'm just really... I'm not thinking. I wasn't thinking. I wouldn't do anything to harm her."

Cathine took her hands. "Look me in the eye. Promise me, Lorelai. Promise me you won't tamper with anything you shouldn't."

Lorelai sighed, looking into those honest brown eyes, eyes so much like Dearil's. "I promise."

***

She promised, but above-ground burial only existed to tempt grave robbers. It was a blessing; the universe wanted Lorelai to do this.

What wasn't a blessing was the man standing outside the mausoleum. Fucking Catheline must have held her suspicions and reported on them. The guard's head snapped her way, and she bolted.

"Hey!" he shouted. "What do you think you're doing?"

Every step toward her car, every step toward her front door was a knife twisting. She was leaving Dearil behind.

She went to the gathering to keep up appearances. She drank much-needed wine and ate Haitian foods even when she felt like the smallest bite of food would make her vomit. She and Catheline said nothing of their conversation, and the older woman hugged her a bit much for her liking.

The witches in the forums turned on her. They called necromancy evil and her plan foolish.

People like you are why people think so badly of us! wrote WitchBitch666. No one had any tips but MagickalShells wanted updates on her progress.

No one had done anything like this. At least, not in written history. She was completely on her own. But it wasn't the first time she did something crazy woth magic, though the forums were more help the last time.

The migraines. The vomiting. The paranoia. The way he couldn't catch his breath. Finally, the seizures. After the appointment with the neurologist, Dearil had called Lorelai crying.

Four tumors across his brain, all cancerous. Two inoperable, the structures too important and delicate.

Dearil needed her like he did when they were younger, but it wasn't enjoyable this time. The doctors estimated that he had ten months to live. They only offered to attempt to shrink the tumors with chemotherapy and "focus on his quality of life."

He slipped into a coma toward the end, and Lorelai grew desperate.

Lorelai knew little about witches. Heathens, Mama and Pedro called them. They voted for increased limitations on magic at any election - local, statewide, and nationwide. They wanted it to be outlawed entirely.

But she knew witches did things that couldn't be explained with science. Maybe science wasn't everything. So she turned to the forums.

Once a week she would rip off a fingernail with her pliers. She would sneak into Dearil's hospital room and put the fingernail under his mattress, then slice into his hand with a razor blade and draw a rune behind his ear with his blood.

Hospital staff increased security when they found the harm done to his body hand and the blood on his head, but he miraculously woke up after two weeks. He still had cancer, though, and her work wasn't done.

"You've been doing what?" he had cried when he was coherent and cognizant enough to understand, staring at the deep, angry red slash across his palm. She lunged for his hand and he stepped back. "And let me see your fucking nails!"

"Come on, you're dying," she pointed out. "What do you have to lose?"

He cringed, but they both knew she was right. So he would let her take his blood and sleep with finger and toenails under his pillow, though he shuddered to think about. She lost weight and grew pale as he regained what his mother called "bebe fat" and life returned to his eyes. The tumors shrank with each X-ray.

"You're doung this, aren't you?" asked Catheline, very seriously, and Lorelai had paled. But when the teenager bowed her head, Catheline pulled her into a hug. "Thank you, thank you, cheri. But don't kill yourself to save him."

Week eighteen. Lorelai's nails were growing back ever so slowly and terribly brittle. With two toenails left, she had to wonder what offering she would give when she ran out.

But with the next X-ray, it was announced that the boy who was supposed to be dead in mere months was in remission. He walked with a limp because of the damage the tumor did to his cerebellum, but physical therapy got that fixed up. He returned to school, behind a year, and Lorelai became fixated on influencing western medicine to adopt witchcraft, if not becoming the first doctor to use magic on her patients in the United States.

The guard was there the next night, but she made sure she wasn't seen. She linked herself to the ground and, urging him to hurry up and take a bathroom break or something. Dearin's brain was the most important thing to be kept, but the brain is one of the first things to go, ces collapsing just minutes after death. Every minute wasted waiting for this stupid guard was cellular death. Losing her Dearin.

An illusion spell. He ran to investigate the vandals kicking at tombstones and each footfall was like feet stomping on Lorelai's face. She was never so happy to feel pain though.

A spell to unlock the door would be a waste of energy. One of the runes on her chest was already seeping, and she needed to save her blood for tomorrow. She picked the lock and slipped inside as the "vandals" led the guard here and there, running him ragged.

Dearil didn't deserve to be in this house of nobodies. Name after useless name among the granite on the wall until she found a Dearil Jean-Pierre. She pried off the granite slab with her crowbar, and then the concrete under it. She dropped the concrete on her foot and puffed out her cheeks to keep in the profanities. The concrete broke in two, and she expected her throbbing toe did too.

She gripped the sides of his coffin and tugged. It took a minute to budge. Dearil wasn't very tall, and neither was Lorelai, but he was wide and heavy. Her face turned red and she grunted with effort. She jumped back as his coffin fell to the ground. It was still jammed shut, and she wished they still nailed coffins shut. She didn't know what this sealant wasade of, but it was rough.

Running out of time. Guard could come back. Hurry up.

The lid came out, and the smell. Oh god, the smell. She gagged, but it was nothing compared to when her flashlight landed on what was left of her friend.. No, that actually made her swallow back bile.

He was missing one arm, only a little mangled stub remaining in his empty sleeve, but that wasn't the problem. His face, God, his face. The left side was caved in, skin and dreadlocks torn away to reveal the gore. He didn't have much of a left eyebrow, his jaw leaned to one side with missing teeth gaping at her, and what was left of his nose was a bloody pulp with the little stud nosering glinting far from where his nostril was supposed to be. And his eyes, his gorgeous eyes... Grey-blue scleras, left eye protruding from the socket with black spots around the iris.

"Oh god, Dearil..." She rubbed her eyes, willing herself to get a grip.

This was the easy part; all she had to do was transport him. But how was she supposed to fit a 5'7", 185 pound man in an, albeit large, suitcase?

It felt so wrong undressing him. She wanted her first time seeing him nude to be consensual, but not one "yes" left his bloated lips. She tried not to look anywhere inappropriate, flushing under her mask.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she whispered as she produced the bone saw from her gym bag. She held the flashlight in her mouth as she sliced into one thigh.

Rigor mortis had passed and he was soft abd squishy, but the femur was still rock solid. It took a bit of force and then she moved to the other leg. The smell increased tenfold, and ut got even worse when she swutched ti a scalpel and sliced off strips of his wobbly, pudgy belly.

His neck was already broken and any damage could be fixed, so she pushed his chin down to his chest, avoiding looking at those glassy eyes. His remaining arm was okay to stay. It was easy to angle and wrap around his head, and she secured the limb with tape before cramming him into the plastic-lined suitcase.

She put the lid on the coffin and lifted it back into its divot. It was much lighter now, only containing clothes, flaps of skin, and two legs, and there was no evidence if tampering at first glance. She pushed the two concrete halves together and into their place on the wall, shoving the granite slab in after. They kept sliding and threatening to fall, so in the end she went around prying off and smashing dozens of slabs. With so much damage, they won't know where to start, and if they find other caskets unaffected, maybe they won't check his...

This plan was falling apart. No it wasn't. It wasn't, it wasn't!

Connecting her senses to the grounds, she found the guard outside. She held a lighter to her hand, feeling the warmth, imagining a small explosion and fire. Runes bled onto her shirt. The guard ran off to check the exosion at the other side of the graveyard, shouting. Feet trampling her face.

It was just an illusion. She wasn't one for destruction magic or vandalism. Well... The mausoleum said otherwise about vandalism, but as she walked away it was out of sight and out of mind.

She still struggled to lift Dearil into the passenger's seat of her car, having to roll the windows down to deal with the odor. She plugged her phone into the auxiliary cord and played his favorite music. She was never a fan during his life, but now she loved the sound.

She didn't go to their apartment. No, that would be far too predictable. She still had a key to Mama and Pedro's beach house, and when she checked earlier that day she found that they hadn't chamged the locks. It was only an hour's drive and she could make that to and from work, school, home without running out of gas money.

The roar of waves crashing on the shore competed with the obnoxious rumbling of a heavy wheeled suitcase on cobblestone. She got inside and turned on the lights. The table was new, very nice with polished wood. She didn't feel at all remorseful putting Dearil's odorous, leaking body on the pristine surface to operate. Preserving his brain was frst and foremost.

Face-down, his eyes didn't stare at her. She sliced around the top of his scalp, separated the skull, and then sliched straight down to his nape. She severed his optic nerves and then focused on removing the brain. The brainstem had to stay intact, so she removed the uppermost vertebrae it was attached to.

In her hands, she held Dearil's mind, the most important thing she had ever touched. Faintly grey and sagging with a chunk taken from the left. She struggled to figure out what larts were damaged the most. She reslized, with complete horror, that there wasn't musch left of Broca's area. Not his voice! I need to hear his voice! She'd have to fix that.

Wernicke's area looked okay though, so hopefully he would be able to read abd write without problem. His parietal lobe as a whole didn't look so good, and he already jad sensory issues... Hopefully it wasn't too bad.

She wished she could do an X-ray and see how the inner structures had decayed, especially his hippocampi. He needed to remember her!

Focus. She needed to focus on the task at hand. Whatever the damage was, nothing would be fixed if she just stpod there staring.

Her medical school had gotten on board with new postmortem brain preservation techniques. Liquid nitrogen, cryonics, blood substitute. The dust was mixed into the fluid in the tank, and now she allowed Dearil's brain to be submerged. She dripped fresh blood onto the rune under the tank and for just a second, the water glowed.

The human body is home to tens of trillions of microorganisms that keep you healthy. Though these populations are necessary for human survival, a single one getting out of control would be devastating. That's where the immune system comes in, suppressing overgrowth and keeping these populations in check.

But dead people have no immune system; bacteria runs rampant.

Lorai soaked a new mask in winter mint rubbing alcohol and pulled it on, and new gloves. Her goggles and apron stayed on, and sue set to work, starting the scalpel at his shoulder and ending at his breastbone. Mirror the stitch. Slice down his mutilated stomach to the start of his pelvis.

Peeling back the skin, it was clear his liver and gallbladder were no more; his insides were stained yellow-green with bile, and the winter mint did little to mask the smell of ammonia and hydrogen sulfate. She had to get rid of his stomach before the hungry microbes could do any more damage, scarcely breathing as she cracked open his ribcage and transferred internal organs to a garbage bag.

She couldn't exactly drag him outside and hose him down, so so brought him to the downstairs bathroom with the detachable shower head. He was so light now.

She rinsed him with the shower head. Water ran yellow-green, and then finally clear, though his insides still were definitely not a healthy red-pink. She wrapped him up in the fluffiest towel and brought him to the kitchen. She'd removed all the shelves in the refrigerator during her first trip to the house so she had no problems sticking Dearil's mostly empty husk inside.

And then she lit a few scented candles and went to bed.

***

The head medical examiner was a lonely older man. His wife was either dead or left him (Lorelai wasn't sure which, and she didn't care), and his only company was the corpses he sliced open. Lorelai saw the way he looked at her, eyes hungrily taking her image in. In the days after Dearil's accident, she started making moves on him even though it ft so, so wrong.

She smiled at him throughout today's shift. She washed her hair for the first time in days and let it hang lose around her face during her break. She even put on makeup, though it took a few video tutorials to get it loose.

Toward the end of her shift, she sidled up to him, whispering, "Hey, Viktor..."

He glanced at her. "Hm?"

"I'm not wearing any underwear."

He went red up to the tips of his ears.

"Come home with me," she said in a whine, fingers stroking his arm. "I'm staying at my family's summer home. I'm the only one there, all alone and sooo lonely."

"Fuck yes," he breathed.

"You ever have sex on the beach?"

"I'm getting hard just thinking about it."

She forced herself to smile instead of grimacing. "You ever been with a witch?"

"You?" His eyes widened, but then he smiled. "I bet you're magical in bed."

Ew ew ew.

"You've got that right." She placed a hand on the unmarked chest of the man on the table. His skin was the wrong shade of brown, but his hair was perfect. She already had a nose on ice that she'd taken during Viktor's break. It was a bit too dark as well, but it was just the right shape for Dearil. "How about we take this guy with us?"

Viktor recoiled. "Excuse me?"

"Come on, you said you want a magical night. Do something crazy!" she exclaimed. "You don't have to fuck him or anythibg, and we'll have him back by morning. It's not like he'll mind. It's a witch thing."

Viktor put a hand to his salt and pepper hair, eyebrows knitting together. A few emotions clouded his features before he came to a decision. "If you say so. But if we get caught this was your idea."

"Noted. But I promise you'll enjoy yourself."

He helped her wheel out the John Doe on one of the cheaper stretchers no one would miss, faces obscured by masks and a darkness spell. They stuffed the corpse into the tiny trunk of her car. Viktor pressed his lips to hers suddenly, bushy mustache scratching her. He smelled like literal death and whatever offensive oil he rubbed into his mustache so he wouldn't have to smell as much decay.

He couldn't keep his hands to himself during the whole drive, rubbing her thighs, kissong her neck, trying to unhook her bra and getting excited when he found out she wasn't wearing one. She wanted to slap his hands away, shout that her body belonged to Dearil, but this was a necessary step.

Her mind screamed but her lips purred, "Ohh, that feels so good."

He still hadn't settled down when they were taking the Doe into the house. "Talk dirty in Spanish, chica," he murmured.

"I was born in Florida," she sighed. "I don't speak that much Spanish."

"Don't you know any?"

"A bit. Do you?"

"I can say hola and count to ten," he laughed. "My Spanish classes probably ended before you were even alive. Come on, say something."

"Estas... Estas tan muerto," she said. "Eres solo, uh, um... un peón."

"That's so hot," he moaned, and she bit her cheek to keep from laughing.

Viktor's smile became a frown when they walked into the house. He set the John Doe on the table while Lorelai went and locked the door. He quickly sniffed his shirt when she wasn't looking, but the smell wasn't coming from him. And the bed in the adjacent living room was a bit of an odd choice, though he could appreciate the silk and headboard. And the ropes. This was gonna be a fun night.

Lorelai came back, a smile playing on her lips. She put a hand to his chest. "Come closer, Señor. Permítame whisper in your ear."

He leaned close, his smile tentative now. Her lups were so close they tickled him just as a sharp pain struck his neck.

"I never liked you," she whispered, pressing the needle in harder as he tried to pull away. He shoved her away and staggered back, staring at the clear fluid still in the syringe.

"What the fuck did you just do to me, you crazy bitch?" he screamed, clutching bis neck. Her smiling, round face had gone hard and cold, expression neutral.

"Oh, calm down. It's just lorazepam," she said. "They use it on unruly patients all the time. It's probably the safest injectable sedative."

Ge hit out at her but she easily dodged the sluggish attack. She pushed him down onto the bed, tying up his wrists. He still kicked his legs until she tied his ankles too. He was finally silent when she wrapped the duct tape around his head and moury several times.

"Don't look at me like that," she said, tying ger hair back. "Alexa, play Bury Me at Makeout Creek by Mitski, full album."

It's beautiful out today

I wish you could take me upstate

To the little place you would tell me about

"When you'd sense that I'd want to escape," Lorelai sang over the muffled screams and shouts, pulling on her mask, goggles, gloves, and apron. Viktor could only stare at the saws, scalpels, drills, and needles that she left on the table before she disappeared into another room.

No one could hear him scream.

#whump #whump fic #whump writing #surgical whump #medical whump #magical whump #tw self harm #self harm tw #torture #torture tw #female whumper #female whump #male whump #male whumpee #female whumpee #tw death #death tw #creepy whumper

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silverncrimson · 4 years

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( oscar isaac, 39, cismale, he / him ) Was that EZEKIEL ‘ZEKE’ MARCOLAS ? I heard a rumor they work for the O’SHEA family, but who knows for sure ? They can be a bit CALLOUS & UNETHICAL, but I also heard they can be METICULOUS & PERCEPTIVE. You’ll usually find them at SKYFALL in their spare time, when they’re not being the OWNER OF MALNATI PIZZERIA. You may want to keep an eye on that one !

- B A S I C -

Full Name: Ezekiel Miguel Marcolas Nickname(s): Zeke Age: Thirty-Nine Occupation: Owner of Malnati Pizzeria Affiliation: O’Shea Birthday: February 12th Zodiac: Aquarius

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual Alignment: Chaotic Evil

- F A M I L Y -

Father: Miguel Marcolas (deceased) Mother: Ruth Marcolas (deceased) Siblings: Constantine (35), Uriel (30), Isaiah (28), Yesenia (24)

Ex-Wife: Lucia Daughters: Stella & Stefania (15) Son: Raul (8)

- A P P E A R A N C E -

Height: 5′9″ Hair Color / Type: Dark brown Eye Color: Brown Piercings / Tattoos: No piercings. Five tattoos - the Chi Ro symbol on his left shoulder, being one of them

- H I S Q U I R K S -

He wears black leather gloves at ALL TIMES

He carries around with him pocket rags / handkerchiefs and disinfectant spray, for wiping down surfaces if he needs to

He burns EVERYTHING he gets dirty, usually from blood splatter - whether it’s his fancy jackets or his gloves (he’s got about a hundred backup pairs - several of them he keeps in his glove compartment).

He’s super meticulous about his clothes - they must be clean and tidy at all times

He often repeats himself, or counts out loud to himself

Does things in repetitions, especially if he is stressed about something

He will avoid cracks in the sidewalk

He will NOT shake your hand, or touch you at all...unless you’re his target

He drinks a shit lot of bourbon

Smokes a shit ton of cigars and cigarettes, alike

Very antisocial and a loner, but will talk to people if they initiate a conversation

- P E R S O N A L I T Y -

(+) Fiercely Loyal, Calm, Meticulous, Observant, Perceptive (-) Callous, Unethical, Intense, Inflexible, Perfectionist

- H I S D E M O N S -

He suffers from: OCD, Mysophobia, Claustrophobia

Excessive thoughts (obsessions) that lead to repetitive behaviors (compulsions).Obsessive-compulsive disorder is characterized by unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead to compulsive behaviors.

OCD often centers on themes such as a fear of germs or the need to arrange objects in a specific manner.

compulsive behavior

agitation

hypervigilance

impulsivity

meaningless and persistent repetition of own words or actions

repetitive movements

ritualistic behavior

social isolation

Mysophobia, also known as verminophobia, germophobia, germaphobia, bacillophobia and bacteriophobia, is a pathological fear of contamination and germs.

- B I O G R A P H Y -

Life long resident of Chicago, IL

The oldest of five kids. He’s got three younger brothers and a younger sister - they’re not all that close.

He suffers from OCD and Mysophobia, and a mild case of Claustrophobia - all of which developed when he was a very young child.

He had spent the summer with his aunt in Springfield, while his parents went to Mexico to visit his paternal grandparents. His Aunt Marina, unfortunately, turned out to be a massive hoarder. Her house was an absolute nightmare - disgustingly filled to the max with literal garbage, and other useless, dirty junk that she’d collected over a good ten or so years. There was no livable space anywhere, not even a proper bed, except for a very small nook in the corner of the house. He remembers vividly, to this day, the infestation of roaches, mice, rats and dead carcasses of rodents and cats, and not to mention all the fecal matter of said animals, that he’d come across that summer. The smell alone...

Even to his then four year old brain, it had been more than enough to traumatize him for life, despite not remembering much else about it.

Nowadays, he wears a pair of black leather gloves wherever he goes.

He's the owner of Malnati Pizzeria - has owned the place for ten years, his dad owning it before him. When his papi passed away, the business was then passed to Zeke.

Is divorced. He's got a vindictive ex-wife, two teen daughters (twins) and an 8 year old son - all three of whom he hardly sees these days because his ex-wife's such a bitch and has gotten the court to deny him visitation rights. So he's bitter, and angry, and HATES that woman with a passion.

His childhood was not terrible, but it wasn’t all that great, either. Especially for a kid who did suffer from OCD and who was a germaphobe.

For a good portion of his life, his family always struggled with income, and growing up in poverty in a large city like Chicago was not exactly a blast. They lived on the north side of the city, in a small, cramped, rundown apartment - it had two bedrooms, one bathroom, and it was always infested with cockroaches and mice, and spiders. His literal nightmare.

The walls were super thin, the floor tiles loose or broken, and the AC and heater rarely worked, so it was often way too cold or too hot, but never comfortable. With a family of seven living within it’s walls, it was...claustrophobic to say the least.

Things started to change gradually when he was around 12. His papi got fired from his job as a taxi driver due to him being a liability after being in one too many road-side accidents, which desperately drove him to search for work elsewhere. Somehow, and Zeke never did get the full answer from him, Miguel Marcolas wound up working for the O’Sheas. He was eventually given Malnati Pizzeria as a ‘gift’, a place of business that he could call his own, so long as he stayed loyal and did his part to keep O’Shea business running smoothly.

Zeke had always been a highly intelligent individual, scarily so, so he was quick to pick up on the changes in both his father and their financial situation. They went from barely having anything to eat or any clothes to wear, presents to give out for Christmas or birthdays, to having all that and more...more than any of them had ever had before. Of course, he wasn’t one to knock a good thing like a newfound well of money. Questioning where the pizzeria came from and how his papi was able to afford ownership wasn’t something Zeke cared to do, or know the answer to. It didn’t matter.

Though he knew deep down that whatever it was his papi was dabbling in, definitely wasn’t honorable or lawful...but again, the kid didn’t care. It eventually got him and his family out of that shit apartment, and that was a godsend in his eyes.

The older he got, the more he started helping out at the pizzeria, and by the time he was 14, Zeke had met a fair share of the members of the O’Shea gang. Because he wasn’t just another stupid and naive kid, by that time he’d already figured out exactly who his papi worked for; instead of being scared like most kids might have been, what with being surrounded on a daily basis with some of the worst criminals that the city had to offer, Zeke had felt safe in their presence. He felt in awe of those men and women and the power they held.

The uppers that passed through Malnati had their eyes on him from day one, it seemed. They clearly saw the keenness in his eyes, and the idolization, but also a great potential, because they kept him around. His father, not an affectionate or loving man by any means of the word, watched on proudly as his associates took an interest in his eldest son, quickly shaping and morphing his impressionable young mind.

At the age of seventeen, Zeke proudly received his Chi Rho, joining the O’Sheas as a sentinel. Like many, he’d have to prove to them all that he was worthy of the tattoo, and boy was he ready...and he sure as hell proved that, to.

Zeke was as loyal as one could be to the O’Sheas, and despite his OCD and Mysophobia that he had to contend with, he had his ways of working around that, and he quickly became a deadly killing machine under the close training of his General handler at the time. He rose rapidly through the ranks, until he reached his desired position among the gang - Bonebreaker.

He’s been a Bonebreaker for going on fifteen years now, and he was still thriving. He was a stone-faced killer, a psychopath with no emotions, no qualms about taking out whatever hit he was assigned. There was no remorse for what he did, and he doubted that there would ever be...he wasn’t capable of that kind of emotion.

- W A N T E D C O N N E C T I O N S -

Ex-Wife - He didn’t get worked up over a lot of things; it actually took quite a bit for him to even show that much emotion, but his ex-wife was certainly capable of pushing all of his buttons. He absolutely hated her, and the only reason she wasn’t dead, was because of his children’s sake. Despite not outwardly showing his love for his daughters and son, he did love them...as much as he was able to. They were about the only thing he truly felt any sort of positive emotions towards.

O’Sheas / Affiliates

Bonebreaker Interactions

Reaper Interactions

Malnati Pizzeria customers

Malnati Pizzeria employees

Anything!

#crimson.intro #zeke:intro #again it's not the best thing ever #again it's not the best intro ever #dropped muse

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gregellner · 5 years

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Today, rather than writing a review, I will be going through an analytical approach to a certain element of Focus Home Interactive and Asobo Studio's A Plague Tale: Innocence.

Be fairly warned: spoilers follow regarding the latter half of the game.

The element being examined is the Prima Macula, known through the game as the blood-borne connection that Hugo de Rune and others before him have to plague-bearing creatures, most notably feral rats, enabling them to exert telepathic control over the creatures to manipulate movements in their frenzy, as well as being able to see into their minds on some level to sense them when they are near.

According to a brief exchange with Narrative Director Sébastien Renard, it seems entirely possible that while the Prima Macula in 1348 France has concentrated control over rats that spread the bubonic plague, previous wielders (and subsequent ones) may have had control over other creatures declared as vermin. To use his words exactly, "Well, swarms of animals have always be a tradition among plagues, such as in the Plagues of Egypt. I can only say that our version is the rats, and let you imagine what you'd fear more :) (yet in France today, it would definitely be mosquitos! :D)"

If taken to its logical conclusion, plenty of animals could be controlled, from birds to insects to much more. Similar to the plague rats of the original Dishonored being comparable to the bloodflies of Dishonored 2 in function for an epidemic-ridden society and how someone developing their powers in one era or another would be connected to their own time and place's source of infestation, users of the Macula in other time periods could utilize their power over infected creatures to perform acts like creating a temporary artificial darkness in the form of thousands or even millions of insects or birds (if they are not afflicted with the same light sensitivity as the rats), capsize and sink watercraft through fish, or even control larger land animals than the waves upon waves of rats encountered by the de Rune children and their friends.

Similarly, the locations where said animals live would be drastically different. The gore-filled tunnels of the rats are a hint of the kind of macabre living spaces these creatures live within, but what if they were in trees as nests, or otherwise lying in wait in places at a significant height that would make it harder to spot them until it is too late?

That said, all of this may be completely inaccurate. The main element that may make this speculation invalid is a look at the historical pathology related to the Prima Macula as known within the story. Research in-game places the earliest known account of the hosts for the Prima Macula at the time of the Plague of Justinian (541-542 CE) in the Byzantine Empire, a disease that has been since confirmed as originating from the same bacteria (Yersinia pestis) as the aforementioned Black Plague (1347-1351 CE), and thus all fitting under the collective label of "plague" in terms of epidemics.

If Mr. Renard's denotation of the Macula as for "plagues" rather than all epidemics is accurate and not just a general colloquialism, then the applicability of when and how this type of power is used would be greatly limited, mostly just to rats and perhaps fleas, as there does not seem to be direct control that bearers of the Macula have over species that are infected by said rats. However, none of this is to say that the spread of the Macula would be too inherently limited. There have been many plagues throughout history, numbering greater than forty.

The existence of such a significant element as the hosts of the Prima Macula give rise to the idea of how it could potentially alter the way in which society develops if it were to be known to higher authorities, as demonstrated by Vitalis Bénévent's goals within the game itself. First it seems prudent to go over what is known about how to control the Macula.

Control over the Prima Macula relies upon certain "thresholds" through which the host experiences a lot of pain until their body can become accustomed to the power, coupled with symptoms such as times of significant weakness and some rather high fevers. Certain alchemical concoctions are capable of controlling these thresholds, such as the ones used by Béatrice de Rune and her fellow alchemist Laurentius, but only with the help of the large book known as Sanguinis Itinera ("Voyages of the Blood") was such an elixir completed. Another component important to the Macula's progress appears to be internal, related to moments of intense emotion such as heightened fear or anger, but these elements can be worked through by having someone close by to manage said fears, and are much less important once the host passes the final threshold to the point of being able to control the rats, which also appears to allot a kind of passive immunity to the plague itself through rats' unwillingness to attack said host. Whether or not this type of issue would be a significant problem for people who are older than the five-year-old Hugo is unknown, but perhaps it is a recurring element.

As shown by the alchemical works within the Inquisition, some other scientific means have been used to transmit the Prima Macula. A blood transfusion from one who has a hereditary form of the Macula to someone who does not grants a connection through their blood. The artificial host is granted power over the infected creatures at the same rate as the natural host, even crossing the thresholds in tandem. Whether or not artificial hosts suffer from the same debilitating effects as those for natural ones is unknown, but as shown by Hugo de Rune's transfusion to Vitalis Bénévent and the eventual boss battle, not only is the natural host able to sense the Macula within the artificial one, but he or she is also capable of understanding if the Macula, which appears semi-sentient (unless Hugo is wrong) is "fighting" the artificial host in some way to prevent the use of power.

Certain elements, such as the "exsanguis" substance procured from rat-infested locations and the resultant "odoris" alchemical substance utilized to draw rats into one area or another, help to give the impression of non-carriers of the Macula having some defense nonetheless, albeit one that is rather dangerous to procure and utilize. Similarly, the specially treated white rats, which respond only to Vitalis and not to Hugo, along with being immune to bright lights or fire, show another way of controlling the use of the ability itself.

All of these elements come to a head when thinking about the implications for said developments going forward.

In terms of developments to society, such scientific works could be used to manage or even neutralize the effectiveness of potential hosts of the Macula, especially with the increase in scientific knowledge since the 14th century CE. For instance, if such a serum were created, it could help to keep such a horrific superhuman from emerging, or conversely be even worse and attempt to heighten emotional extremes to keep them down with their own sickness. Neither of these are benevolent options, to be clear, but both seem within the realm of possibility for the game.

Through the experimentation of Vitalis Bénévent, it is shown that while there are drawbacks (even excluding the difficulties with blood transfusions in general), it is entirely possible that people could create more carriers of the Macula while keeping the natural hosts safely away. Between the transfusion technique and the unusual white rats, plague-based officers are entirely within the realm of possibility for the later years or centuries of the story's narrative.

Meanwhile, elements like exsanguis and odoris show how society could develop other means to control the infected creatures through a variety of inventions to redirect or otherwise neutralize them even outside of common exterminators or plague vaccines. Together with the aforementioned officers, not to mention more positive uses such as redirecting plague vectors away from population centers to limit infection, there is an enormous amount of potential at work.

Of course, all of this could be for naught, as it is not clear whether or not A Plague Tale: Innocence will have any further stories in its universe, but much like another disease-related game published by Focus Home Interactive, Vampyr, all of this serves as an interesting thought for what could potentially exist moving forward.

#focus home interactive #focus home #a plague tale #a plague tale innocence #a plague tale: innocence #hugo de rune #vitalis benevent #sebastien renard #asobo studio #vampyr #prima macula #analysis #exsanguis #odoris #inquisition #plague #epidemic #dishonored #dishonored 2

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mandos-little-friend · 4 years

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fan tag game

Stolen from @spacegayofficial. Wasn’t tagged, nor will I tag. Steal away if it takes your fancy.

Three TV shows I would have joined friend groups in: None. I’m the weirdo lurking in the background watching. Or, like in BtVS, the girl that was so meek and ignored she became invisible. That right there is me.

Three animated universes I wouldn’t have minded living in: Pokemon (for the critters). Batman: TAS/Batman Beyond’s Gotham just ‘cause. How to Train Your Dragon for *waves hand* all of it.

Three fictional characters I relate to: Temperance Brennan from Bones. Astrid from HTTYD. Fluttershy from MLP.

Three fictional characters I wouldn’t vibe with: Anakin Skywalker, circa prequels/Clone Wars. Snotlout from HTTYD. The 12th Doctor.

Three fictional characters I would be good friends with: Constable Benton Fraser from Due South. Zoey from Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Chandler Bing from Friends.

Three fictional characters I would probably most definitely have romantic feelings for: Yeah, Din Djarin would make me weak in the knees. Chandler Bing. Frank Martin from The Transporter.

Three villains I’d want to have a chat with over coffee: Catwoman. The Client would be an interesting conversation, lol. Spike from BtVS before his heel face turn.

Three superheroes I’d want to be for a day: Spiderman. Ironman. Green Lantern.

Three abilities I would want to have: Telepathy, telekinesis, invisibility.

Three ships I sail as the fierce and feared captain I am: HICCSTRID 4 EVER. MandOmera. Buffy/Angel.

Three fictional female characters I feel empowered by: Astrid. Wonder Woman. Pepper Potts.

Three fictional male characters with good ethics and morals I believe deserve more recognition: Definitely Space Dad. Benton Fraser. Hiccup.

Three fictional lgbtq+ characters I would take bullets for: Sara Lance. Oberyn Martell. Cara Dune.

Three fictional places I would have liked to visit: Berk. The Batcave. Themyscara.

Three costumes worn by fictional characters I would have rocked: Hard pass, lol.

Three characterization tropes to describe myself: Pathologically shy. The know-it-all. Makes weird jokes that hit about 50% of the time.

#things about me

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ucflibrary · 4 years

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For the month of December, the UCF Libraries Bookshelf celebrates the favorite books of employees of the UCF Libraries. And you know a major thing about librarians? They love talking about their favorite books. The books listed below are some of the favorite non-fiction books we read in 2019.

Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links for the favorite non-fiction titles read in 2019 by UCF Library employees. These 30 books plus many, many more are also on display on the 2nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library next to the bank of two elevators.

And if you find someone has checked the one you’re interested in out before you had a chance, did you know you can place an interlibrary loan and have another copy sent here for you? Click here for instructions on placing an interlibrary loan.

A Mind at Play: how Claude Shannon invented the information age by Jimmy Soni In their second collaboration, biographers Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman present the story of Claude Shannon—one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century and the architect of the Information Age, whose insights stand behind every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded. Claude Shannon was a groundbreaking polymath, a brilliant tinkerer, and a digital pioneer. In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Soni and Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Battles for Freedom: the use and abuse of American history by Eric Foner In this collection of polemical pieces, Foner expounds on the relevance of Abraham Lincoln's legacy in the age of Obama and on the need for another era of Reconstruction. In addition to articles in which Foner calls out politicians and the powerful for their abuse and misuse of American history, Foner assesses some of his fellow leading historians of the late 20th century, including Richard Hofstadter, Howard Zinn and Eric Hobsbawm. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Because Internet: understanding the new rules of language by Gretchen McCulloch Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Consider the Fork: a history of how we cook and eat by Bee Wilson Since prehistory, humans have braved sharp knives, fire, and grindstones to transform raw ingredients into something delicious--or at least edible. But these tools have also transformed how we consume, and how we think about, our food. Bee Wilson takes readers on a wonderful and witty tour of the evolution of cooking around the world, revealing the hidden history of objects we often take for granted. Blending history, science, and personal anecdotes, Wilson reveals how our culinary tools and tricks came to be and how their influence has shaped food culture today. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Dopesick: dealers, doctors, and the drug company that addicted America by Beth Macy Through unsparing, compelling, and unforgettably humane portraits of families and first responders determined to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows that one thing uniting Americans across geographic, partisan, and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But even in the midst of twin crises in drug abuse and healthcare, Macy finds reason to hope and ample signs of the spirit and tenacity that are helping the countless ordinary people ensnared by addiction build a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities. Suggested by Jeremy Lucas, Research & Information

Elbert Parr Tuttle: chief jurist of the civil rights revolution by Anne Emanuel This is the first—and the only authorized—biography of Elbert Parr Tuttle (1897–1996), the judge who led the federal court with jurisdiction over most of the Deep South through the most tumultuous years of the civil rights revolution. By the time Tuttle became chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, he had already led an exceptional life. He had cofounded a prestigious law firm, earned a Purple Heart in the battle for Okinawa in World War II, and led Republican Party efforts in the early 1950s to establish a viable presence in the South. But it was the intersection of Tuttle’s judicial career with the civil rights movement that thrust him onto history’s stage. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Ex Libris: confessions of a common reader by Anne Fadiman This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from anecdotes about Coleridge and Orwell to tales of her own pathologically literary family. As someone who played at blocks with her father's 22-volume set of Trollope ("My Ancestral Castles") and who only really considered herself married when she and her husband had merged collections ("Marrying Libraries"), she is exquisitely well equipped to expand upon the art of inscriptions, the perverse pleasures of compulsive proof-reading, the allure of long words, and the satisfactions of reading out loud. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

From Here to Eternity: traveling the world to find the good death by Caitlin Doughty Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for the dead. In rural Indonesia, she watches a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body, which has resided in the family home for two years. In La Paz, she meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and in Tokyo she encounters the Japanese kotsuage ceremony, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved-ones' bones from cremation ashes. Doughty vividly describes decomposed bodies and investigates the world's funerary history. She introduces deathcare innovators researching body composting and green burial, and examines how varied traditions, from Mexico's Dias de los Muertos to Zoroastrian sky burial help us see our own death customs in a new light. Doughty contends that the American funeral industry sells a particular -- and, upon close inspection, peculiar -- set of 'respectful' rites: bodies are whisked to a mortuary, pumped full of chemicals, and entombed in concrete. She argues that our expensive, impersonal system fosters a corrosive fear of death that hinders our ability to cope and mourn. By comparing customs, she demonstrates that mourners everywhere respond best when they help care for the deceased and have space to participate in the process. Suggested by Katy Miller, Textbook Affordability

Human Compatible: artificial intelligence and the problem of control by Stuart Russell Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines. He describes the near-term benefits we can expect, from intelligent personal assistants to vastly accelerated scientific research, and outlines the AI breakthroughs that still have to happen before we reach superhuman AI. He also spells out the ways humans are already finding to misuse AI, from lethal autonomous weapons to viral sabotage. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

In Pieces by Sally Field With raw honesty and the fresh, pitch-perfect prose of a natural-born writer, and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind-the-scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships--including her complicated love for her own mother. Suggested by Katie Kirwan, Acquisitions & Collections

Inside of a Dog: what dogs see, smell, and know by Alexandra Horowitz Although not a formal training guide, this book has practical application for dog lovers interested in understanding why their dogs do what they do. With a light touch and the weight of science behind her, Alexandra Horowitz examines the animal we think we know best but may actually understand the least. This book is as close as you can get to knowing about dogs without being a dog yourself. Suggested by Kimberly Montgomery, Cataloging

Life 3.0: being human in the age of artificial intelligence by Max Tegmark This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues—from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

Longitude: the true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time by Dava Sobel Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. This is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Suggested by Larry Cooperman, Research & Information

Mindfulness: an eight-week plan for finding peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams and Danny Penman

The book is based on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). MBCT revolves around a straightforward form of mindfulness meditation which takes just a few minutes a day for the full benefits to be revealed. MBCT has been clinically proven to be at least as effective as drugs for depression and is widely recommended by US physicians and the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical. Suggested by Tina Buck, Acquisitions & Collections

Oh, Florida!: How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country by Craig Pittman Florida. That name. That combination of sounds. Three simple syllables packing mixed messages. To some people, it’s a paradise. To others, it’s a punch line. As award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author Craig Pittman shows, it's both of these and, more important, it’s a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. This book embraces those contradictions and shows how they fit together to make this the most interesting state. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

Packing for Mars: the curious science of life in the void by Mary Roach The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. From the Space Shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule, Mary Roach takes us on the surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

Shortest Way Home: one mayor's challenge and a model for America's future by Pete Buttigieg Interweaving two narratives―that of a young man coming of age and a town regaining its economic vitality―Buttigieg recounts growing up in a Rust Belt city, amid decayed factory buildings and the steady soundtrack of rumbling freight trains passing through on their long journey to Chicagoland. Inspired by John F. Kennedy’s legacy, Buttigieg first left northern Indiana for red bricked Harvard and then studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, before joining McKinsey, where he trained as a consultant―becoming, of all things, an expert in grocery pricing. Then, Buttigieg defied the expectations that came with his pedigree, choosing to return home to Indiana and responding to the ultimate challenge of how to revive a once great industrial city and help steer its future in the twenty first century. Suggested by Jeremy Lucas, Research & Information

Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon, 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong This riveting, beautifully produced graphic memoir tells the story of the early years of the Vietnam war as seen through the eyes of a young boy named Marco, the son of a Vietnamese diplomat and his French wife. The book opens in America, where the boy's father works for the South Vietnam embassy; there the boy is made to feel self-conscious about his otherness thanks to schoolmates who play war games against the so-called "Commies." The family is called back to Saigon in 1961, where the father becomes Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem's personal interpreter; as the growing conflict between North and South intensifies, so does turmoil within Marco's family, as his mother struggles to grapple with bipolar disorder. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it’s not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do. Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. Suggested by Brian Calhoun & Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

The Library Book by Susan Orlean On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Suggested by Rachel Mulvihill, Downtown

The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit: Victorian iconoclast, children's author, and creator of The Railway Children by Eleanor Fitzsimons Edith Nesbit (1858–1924) is considered the first modern writer for children and the inventor of the children’s adventure story. Award-winning biographer Eleanor Fitzsimons uncovers the little-known details of her life, introducing readers to the Fabian Society cofounder and fabulous socialite who hosted legendary parties and had admirers by the dozen, including George Bernard Shaw. Through Nesbit’s letters and archival research, Fitzsimons reveals “E.” to have been a prolific lecturer and writer on socialism and shows how Nesbit incorporated these ideas into her writing, thereby influencing a generation of children—an aspect of her literary legacy never before examined. Suggested by Megan Haught, Teaching & Engagement/Research & Information Services

The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson This classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. Carson's writing teems with stunning, memorable images--the newly formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky; the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans; giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface; and incredibly powerful tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in the Bay of Fundy. Quite simply, she captures the mystery and allure of the ocean with a compelling blend of imagination and expertise. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost This book tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish—all in a country where the only music to be heard for miles around is “La Macarena.” He and his stalwart girlfriend Sylvia spend the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options (including the Great Beer Crisis); and contending with a bizarre cast of local characters, including “Half-Dead Fred” and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who’s never written a poem in his life). Suggested by Katie Kirwan, Acquisitions & Collections

The Source of Self-Regard: selected essays, speeches, and meditations by Toni Morrison The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

The Collected Schizophrenias: essays by Esme Weijun Wang An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community’s own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life. In essays that range from using fashion to present as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis, and from the failures of the higher education system and the dangers of institutionalization to the complexity of compounding factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease, Wang’s analytical eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with personal narrative. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services

The War on Normal People: the truth about America's disappearing jobs and why universal basic income is our future by Andrew Yang Yang imagines a different future--one in which having a job is distinct from the capacity to prosper and seek fulfillment. At this vision's core is Universal Basic Income, the concept of providing all citizens with a guaranteed income-and one that is rapidly gaining popularity among forward-thinking politicians and economists. Yang proposes that UBI is an essential step toward a new, more durable kind of economy, one he calls "human capitalism." Suggested by Jeremy Lucas, Research & Information

Trick Mirror: reflections on self-delusion by Jia Tolentino Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Suggested by Jada Reyes, Research & Information Services & Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

Two Cheers for Democracy by E. M. Forster Essays that applaud democracy's toleration of individual freedom and self-criticism and deplore its encouragement of mediocrity. Suggested by Christina Wray, Teaching & Engagement

Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: chasing fear and finding home in the great white north by Blair Braverman By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, this book brilliantly recounts Braverman’s adventures in Norway and Alaska. Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra. Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn’t cut out for life on the frontier. But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear: she was hooked on the North. On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her—and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. This book chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. Suggested by Pat Tiberii, Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery Services

#featured bookshelf #staff favorites #non-fiction #ucf library #gretchen mcculloch

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master-sass-blast · 5 years

Note

Whole list for Illyana and Mikhail, pls!!!!

Absolutely!

What is their favourite food: Illyana likes chocolate, and Mikhail likes vodka pirogis.

Do they have a fear of an animal? If so, what animal: Not really. They’re both p fearless in that regards.

What do they wear to bed: Illyana has an entire collection of goth colored pajamas, and Mikhail opts to wear as little as possible lol.

Do they like cuddling: Illyana doesn’t, Mikhail does.

Do they have a secret handshake with anyone: Mikhail makes secret handshakes with each of his niblings.

What do they look like: Pretty much like they do in the comics, except Mikhail doesn’t have the scaring and his hair is wavier, and I like to draw Illyana with a longer/thinner face.

Do they like chocolate: Sure.

What are their good and bad traits: Mikhail is extremely creative and expressive, but he also occasionally just... expresses all over people, if that makes sense. Illyana is cunning and clever, but definitely runs the end of being too ruthless at times.

Do they have any artistic talent: Yes! Mikhail plays guitar, Illyana plays violin, and Mikhail is actually quite gifted with theater and crafting.

What is their favourite room to be in, in the house they live in: The two of them move around a bit, since they can teleport and take jobs almost wherever, provided they speak the language. Illyana prefers anywhere quiet (usually her room), and Mikhail generally likes being in the middle of everything.

Do they believe in luck: Sure, but they’re both ambivalent about it.

Can they do magic: Illyana can do “magic” magic, and Mikhail can do sleight of hand magic.

Do they believe in dragons: Considering Lexie has made several exist, they kind of have to.

What is a pet peeve of theirs: Neither of them like being controlled.

What was the last thing they cried about: Mikhail tends to angry/frustrated cry, but he does it in private. Illyana cries when Nikolai and Alexandra pass away.

What is their sexuality: Mikhail is bisexual and Illyana is asexual.

Do they have a best friend? If so, who, and what makes them their best friend: Illyana is friends/eventual partners with Kitty and Lorna, who accept her for her full Slytherin self, blunt edges and all. Mikhail winds up striking quite the (platonic only) camaraderie with Neena, since they both have similar outlooks on life.

Have they ever been in a romantic relationship: Yep!

What does their relationship with their family look like? Are they close? Distant? Ect: Mikhail kinda runs the end of being a little estranged, due to some of his “less than legal” pastimes and sensitivity. He’s closest with Nikolai, then Illyana, then Alexandra, then Piotr. As he gets older, gets treatment for his bipolar disorder and the support he needs, and becomes more confident in himself, he’s able to repair those relationships. Illyana... is as close as she wants to be with her family.

Do they have a pet: Illyana, Kitty, and Lorna foster cats together.

Do they have a familiar: Still don’t know what that is, so no.

Are they a supernatural being: You could make the argument that Illyana, as the Sorceress Supreme of Limbo and wielder of the Soul Sword, has some supernatural aspects to her. The supernatural thing about Mikhail, though, is his morning breath. #stank

How do they usually wear their hair: Illyana wears hers down most of the time, and Mikhail usually wears his in a man bun.

Can they play an instrument? If so, what instrument and what can they play: Illyana plays the violin and Mikhail plays the guitar, and they play a lot of rock music/covers together.

What type a high schooler are/were they: Illyana was the art student who managed to get good grades, and Mikhail was the kid that lived in detention.

Have they ever been in a physical fight before? If so, with who? Who won: Yep. They’ve had several, wins and losses, whole nine yards.

What is their favourite holiday: Illyana likes, believe it or not, Valentine’s Day. Mikhail like Halloween.

If they could have one wish, what would they wish for: Look, wishes weird me out, so I’m just skipping this one.

Do they wants kids? If they already have kids, do they want more: Neither of them want kids.

Do they have a job: Illyana winds up working as a professional violinist and a music teacher for the Institute, and Mikhail does whatever he feels like, but mostly various “not legal” jobs.

Do they know how to drive: Mikhail does, Illyana doesn’t.

Do they get stressed out easily: Mikhail does, Illyana doesn’t.

Did they ever dye their hair before? If so, to what colour? Did they like it: Mikhail dyed his hair orange on a bet, then shaved it off the next day as a teen. Illyana likes her hair the way it is.

Have they ever broken the law: Yes. Illyana just didn’t get caught and is smart enough to not brag about it.

Do they own a plant: Nope.

Have they ever rode a horse before: Yes.

What is their favorite gif: Pass.

Do they get along with others easily: They both do. For all that Illyana may look unapproachable with her goth/dark aesthetic, she’s a good listener and relatively companionable.

Do they have any tattoos: Yes.

If I wanted to draw them, what would be distinct physical features that I would have to know to draw them correctly: Eh, already mentioned that above.

What is their favourite breed of dog: Mikhail likes Newfoundlands, and Illyana likes cats.

Do they live with anyone? If so, who: Mikhail bounces around from staying with Nikolai and Alexandra, to staying with the Reader and Piotr when they need an extra hand with kids, to hanging out with Wade and Nate, to chilling on his own, to rooming with Neena... he’s a free spirit, to say the least. Illyana winds up sharing a small house with Kitty and Lorna.

Where is their dream vacation: Mikhail’s idea of a dream vacation is throwing a dart at a map and making the most of an experience. Illyana’s idea of a dream vacation is not having to deal with either of her brothers.

Do they know more than one language: Yes. Mikhail is conversational in several languages due to his travels, and speaks Russian fluently (obvs). Illyana picks up English as she gets older, and also speaks Russian.

Are they a quick learner: Depends on what the subject is, but they both do alright.

Have they ever won a contest before? If so, what for? What did they win: They’ve won a few music contests with their duets. Most of it was various cash prizes.

If the world were to end in 24 hours, where would they be and who would they be with: They’d be with their family and friends.

What does their room look like: Mikhail’s is an explosion of all his belongings, and Illyana’s almost pathologically neat.

If they could have an extinct animal for a pet, what would they have: Mikhail would resurrect a T-Rex if he was able, and Illyana would skip the whole deal because she knows better than to get into resurrection magic.

If they got called out by someone, what would they do: Mikhail usually explodes, and Illyana either listens silently or straight up walks away while they’re talking.

Have they ever shot a gun before: Yes.

Have they ever been axe throwing: Mikhail has.

What is something that they want but can’t have: Mikhail wants a T-Rex. Illyana, admittedly would like to be able to go places without hearing people’s thoughts.

Do they know how to fish: Yes.

What is something they always wanted to do but too scared: Mikhail is afraid of commitment, so interpret that however you will. Illyana... doesn’t necessarily know fear as we do lsdkfjklsjflskdf jk jk it’s probably something like skydiving.

Do they own their own baby pictures: No.

What makes them standout among others: Their aesthetics. They both dress in a lot of black.

Do they like to show off: Mikhail does, Illyana doesn’t care one way or the other.

What is their favourite song: They both like “Ride the Lightning” by Metallica.

What would be their dream vehicle: Pass.

What is their favourite book: Mikhail likes “Much Ado About Nothing,” and Illyana likes “Pride and Prejudice.”

Who, in their opinion, makes the best food: Nikolai.

Are they approachable: If you’re willing to get past the mostly black clothes, yeah.

Did they ever change their appearance: Sure. They both like to experiment (though Illyana does stick within her goth bubble once she finds it).

What makes them smile: Family, funny movies, their niblings.

Do they like glowsticks: Sure.

What is something that is simple, but always makes them smile: For Mikhail, getting a hug from one (or both) of his parents. For Illyana, talking (or listening to) Kittty and/or Lorna.

Are they a day or night person: Night people.

Are they allergic to anything: Nope. Though Mikhail likes to joke Illyana’s allergic to silver, the sun, garlic...

What do you, the creator of this OC, like most about them: Okay, I didn’t technically create them, but Marvel basically left them blank and I moved in oops. I do like Mikhail’s passion for life and doing things, and I like Illyana’s easy-going (mostly) temperament.

Who is their ride or die: Each other and Piotr (and later, for Illyana, Kitty and Lorna).

Do they currently have a significant other? If not, are they going to get one later one: Mikhail kinda dates around without settling down, and Illyana winds up in a poly relationship with Kitty Pryde and Lorna Dane.

What attracts them to another person: For Mikhail, creativity, emotional openness, and a nice smile. For Illyana, resiliency of spirit, individuality, and willingness to try things.

Who is one person that can always make them laugh: For Mikhail, his niblings. For Illyana, Kitty or Lorna.

Have they ever partied too hard and their friends had to take them home: Mikhail definitely has, and Illyana doesn’t like parties.

Who would be their cuddle buddy: Mikhail is an open opportunity cuddler, and Illyana only cuddles with Kitty and Lorna.

Who would cheer them up after a long day: Seeing the people they love most.

If they had a nightmare, who would they run to: They talk to each other, actually. Illyana helps Mikhail sort through some of his nightmares triggered by his bipolar disorder, and Mikhail acts as Illyana’s confidant for her nightmares (which usually relate to her magical abilities or random thoughts she picks up from other people).

What object to the care for the most: Mikhail cares about his leather jacket and his guitar, and Illyana cares about her violin.

Do they like other people’s children: Yes.

How would they react if someone broke into their home: Mikhail would shoot the intruder, and Illyana would teleport them to another plane of reality.

Does anyone make them have butterflies in their stomach: Mikhail gets butterflies from anyone he’s interested in, and Illyana gets them only from Kitty and Lorna.

What is something that they are good at: Aside from their innate talents, Mikhail is good at carving wood and Illyana is good at random trivia accumulation.

What is their neutral expression: Mikhail is plain ol’ neutral, and Illyana is either resting nice face or resting bitch face, no in between.

Do they like to cook: They both do.

What is something they can’t leave home without: Illyana doesn’t leave without her keys/phone/etc, and Mikhail usually wears his leather jacket everywhere.

Who is someone that they rely on: Each other. They’re each other’s confidants for the deepest, darkest shit in their heads.

Do they liked to be tickled: Mikhail’s fine with it, Illyana does not.

Have they ever been a sword fight before: Yes.

What is a joke that they would find funny: Illyana likes only really stupid knock knock jokes and the darkest humor to ever exist, and Mikhail... is about the same, but with sex jokes thrown in.

Do they have a place that can go and turn off their brain: Mikhail plays his guitar, and Illyana plays her violin or meditates.

What was their childhood like: Pretty happy. Nikolai and Alexandra did a good job with them.

What are they like as an adult: Mikhail gains equilibrium when his bipolar disorder is treated, but is still very free-spirited and emotional. Illyana is more practical and aloof.

Do they take criticism well: Mikhail does not, and Illyana is selective about who she takes criticism from.

Have they ever jumped out of a plane: Mikhail has, Illyana hasn’t.

Who do they like to make jokes with: Each other. They both get each other’s sense of humor.

Have you ever drawn them before? If you are comfortable with it, would you post a picture: Not yet, but I probably will in the future.

#sass answers #chc stuff #illyana rasputin #mikhail rasputin

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bluewatsons · 4 years

Text

James Carney, Culture and mood disorders: the effect of abstraction in image, narrative and film on depression and anxiety, Med Hum (2019)

Abstract

Can cultural representations be used to therapeutic effect in the treatment of mood disorders like depression and anxiety? This article develops a theoretical framework that outlines how this might be achieved by way of mid-level cultural metrics that allow otherwise heterogeneous forms of representation to be grouped together. Its prediction is that abstract representations—as measured by Shannon entropy—will impact positively on anxiety, where concrete representations will positively impact on depression. The background to the prediction comes from construal level theory, a branch of social psychology that deals with the effects of abstraction on psychological distance; the types of cultural representations analysed include image, narrative and film. With a view to evaluating the hypothesis, the article surveys the empirical literature in art therapy, creative bibliotherapy and cinema therapy.

Introduction

How does culture relate to mental health? If this question is easy to ask, it is less easily answered. Both culture and mental health are highly contested terms, meaning that no two interlocutors are likely to agree on even basic definitions. In the first instance, this is because culture comprises categories of assortment like ethnicity, nationality and class, as well as symbolic practices such as religion, art and sport—a scenario that disperses the consideration of culture and mental health across a range of objects and disciplines.1 In the second, the fraught political history of medical classification means that mental pathologies are the site of some of the most vigorous debates in the critical social sciences, ensuring that no one account of what constitutes mental illness attracts majority assent. While such tensions have been productive when it comes to unsettling normative diagnostic labels,2 there can be no doubt that they have also had the effect of balkanising the literature. To be sure, there is no shortage of interesting results and discussions.3 Nevertheless, it is equally true that the lack of a background theoretical framework militates against a deeper understanding of how culture shapes (and is shaped by) the experience of mental illness.

As no single exposition is likely to successfully anticipate what such a framework will look like in totality, I shall not attempt to deliver one here. Instead, I hope to outline how one metric of variation—abstraction—promises to connect different modes of cultural representation and mood disorders in a way relevant to thinking about how cultural objects might be exploited therapeutically. The background to this will come from recent work in construal level theory (CLT), a branch of social psychology that links the experience of psychological distance to the experience of abstraction. The animating claim of CLT is that the experience of abstraction cues expectations of psychological distance in the spatial, temporal, probabilistic and social spheres, just as the experience of distance cues expectations of abstraction.4 In itself, this observation seems relatively modest, but the achievement of CLT is to identify in abstraction a mid-level metric that is sufficiently general to be detectable across a wide range of stimuli, yet concrete enough to say something non-trivial about any given one of these. What this means in practice is that CLT allows for connection to be made between the experience of cultural artefacts in the broad sense and the disposition to behave in certain ways. That is, if the experience of abstraction (or concreteness) can be linked to expanded or contracted mental horizons, then the vehicle of that experience can be identified as a stimulus for the actions that take place within those horizons. And this, indeed, is what the literature shows: the experimental programme of CLT provides many examples linking moral, social, practical and creative behaviours (among others) to the experiences of abstraction and concreteness.5

Where these discoveries connect with the mood disorders is by way of a separate body of work that identifies depression and anxiety to be problems of overgeneralisation and undergeneralisation. While both conditions are obviously more complicated than can be explained by a one-dimensional characterisation such as this, it remains the case that it picks out an important component of variation. Depression, for instance, is typically experienced as ‘a feeling of being dislodged from everyday activity’, 6 leaving the sufferer ‘an isolated object in a world without relationships’.7 Conversely, anxiety generates the sense of ‘being too much in contact with reality’8 and ‘the fearful anticipation of a catastrophe one is hopeless to prevent’. 9 What is visible in both conditions is attentional capture by interpretive frames that either strip away or exaggerate the constituent details of ordinary human experience. To this extent, CLT provides an empirically sanctioned bridge between modes of cultural expression (and the historical factors behind them) and the experience of mental illness. It hardly needs stating that this connection may well allow for insights into how cultural representations can be most effectively leveraged in support of therapeutic interventions.

Starting from these observations, I shall proceed here by delivering an overview of how different modes of cultural expression can evince abstraction and concreteness, and commenting on the relevance of this for anxiety and depression. For the most part, the cultural forms I will discuss relate to image, narrative and film. (Music I shall not consider due to lack of specialist knowledge.) All these genres of representation use different materials against different horizons of expectation, with the result that there is no simple sense in which they can be said to be abstract or concrete. Nevertheless, if the ideas I propose here are to be tested, defensible and reliable measures of this representational tendency need to be developed. Necessarily, doing this will involve a wide-ranging discussion of cultural representation; to no less a degree, it is unavoidable that some of these discussions must deal with technical concepts in linguistics, information theory and cognitive science. However, to develop even one metric of health-relevant variation that extends across several cultural forms and which admits of objective estimation must surely be admitted as a useful exercise. At the very least, it challenges the de facto approach, which is to treat different modes of expression on an individual basis, without ever taking a global overview.

CLT, depression and anxiety

If CLT and mood disorders are to contextualise an analysis of cultural forms, then the relation between the two needs to be properly explicated. The present section will do this by way of a short review of the CLT literature that discusses how its findings might be brought into contact with cognate findings on depression and anxiety. This will deliver the background knowledge needed for the subsequent engagement with specific modes of cultural representation.

For all that CLT is communicated in a specialist vocabulary, the insights behind it are rather intuitive. Central among these is the idea that human cognition persistently links abstraction and distance. ‘Abstraction’ in this connection relates to the level of detail associated with a stimulus, with CLT proponents labelling a high-detail stimulus as having a ‘low’ construal level and a low-detail stimulus as having a ‘high’ construal level. ‘Distance’ equates with psychological distance, which comprises distance in the spatial, temporal, probabilistic and social dimensions. (The adjective ‘psychological’ denotes that it is the subject’s perception or imagination of distance that matters, rather than any physical measure of distance, even if the two are frequently connected.) The CLT proposal is that that expectations of distance on these four dimensions are cued by high-construal level stimuli, just as the experience of concreteness is projected to promote expectations of nearness. And by a reciprocal process again, the experience of psychological distance leads to expectations of high-construal level, just as the experiences of nearness cue low-construal expectations. In the words of two leading CLT theorists, ‘different levels of construal serve to expand and contract one’s mental horizons and thus mentally traverse psychological distances’.10

Some examples should make these claims clearer. Take the high-construal noun ‘civilisation’: typically, this prompts one to expect psychological distance along several dimensions—thus, one speaks of ‘Roman civilisation’ (temporal distance), ‘Japanese civilisation’ (spatial distance) or ‘alien civilisation’ (social distance), but never ‘Oxford civilisation’. In the other direction, distance cues high-construal expectations. Probabilistically remote events, for instance, prompt low-detail hypotheticals (‘if alien civilisations exist, we will discover whether there are cultural universals’), when likely events enjoin more detailed ones (‘if there’s traffic on Oxford High Street, I’ll divert via Queen’s Lane’). Similar considerations obtain with respect to low-construal stimuli, though here of course the relation is with nearness. For example, a detailed statement like ‘The venue for Julia’s vocal performance has poor acoustics’ is typically consonant with Julia’s recital happening soon and not in three decades, just as ‘Julia hopes to be still able to sing on her 100th birthday’ does not usually enjoin one to ask whether the room in which she sings will have air conditioning.

In themselves, these examples are merely suggestive; the achievement of CLT is to support them with an experimental programme that links a diverse range of behavioural and cognitive outcomes to the experience of both psychological distance and construal level. With respect to distance, the evidence is that framing actions as far away on one of the dimensions of psychological distance makes high-construal purposiveness salient while inhibiting considerations of low-construal context. Liberman and Trope,11 for instance, show that action statements like ‘locking a door’ are represented in terms of constituent subactions (‘putting a key in the lock’) when located in the imminent future, but in terms of agentive intention (‘securing the house’) when set a year from the present. Cognate results are available for spatial distance,12 probabilistic distance13 and social distance.14 Another effect of distance is to prime for morality over empathy (ie, the application of abstract normative principles over the emotional engagement with the needs of another). In this connection, Eyal, Liberman and Trope demonstrate that the violation of widely accepted moral rules (sibling incest, eating pets, desecrating national symbols) is judged more harshly (ie, more morally) in far-future conditions than in near-future ones15 —presumably because contextual mitigating factors are not in play. Intensity of emotion is also linked to distance cues, with events like visiting the dentist being imagined to be less intense when imagined to be further in the future than near to the present;16 similarly, objects and events moving away from the subject are felt as having less emotional valence than object and events moving towards.17 Some other behaviours that have been identified as affected by considerations of construal level and distance include the propensity to conform,18 the alignment of goals with desires,19 the perception of expertise,20 the experience of shame,21 the appreciation of creativity,22 the use of politeness23 and the making of economic decisions.24 In all cases, the general result is the same: abstraction and psychological distance are cues for one another, just as concreteness and psychological nearness are also.

As indicated, the link between these considerations and the mood disorders comes by way of attentional capture in depression and anxiety. Though both conditions share a common cognitive trait in overrumination and are thus often comorbid,25 the focus of rumination tends to be quite distinct—and this is where CLT considerations come into view. Starting with depression, this should be understood here to mean ‘major depressive disorder’ (MDD) or ‘persistent depressive disorder’ (PDD) as classified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V). Typical symptoms of both involve depressed mood, diminished interest in activities, weight loss/gain, insomnia/hypersomnia, psychomotor agitation/retardation, fatigue, feelings of worthlessness and/or guilt, lack of concentration or decisiveness, and recurrent thoughts of death.26 MDD requires more symptoms for a shorter period for diagnosis; PDD requires fewer symptoms for longer. Both are to be distinguished from bipolar disorder, which the DSM-V now classes alongside the psychoses.27 With respect to the phenomenology of both conditions it would seem that the ruminative emphasis falls on capture by high-construal, negatively valent thoughts and memories. For instance, Watkins and Teasdale note that ‘overgeneral memory is a disorder specific phenomenon found in depression and posttraumatic stress disorder but not in generalised anxiety disorder, social phobia or obsessive-compulsive disorder’,28 with Watkins amplifying this into the more general claim that ‘the level of goal/action identification adopted in major depression is abnormal and dysfunctional, with patients with depression tending to adopt more abstract levels of goal/action identification, at least for negative information, than non-depressed controls’.29 Significantly, the CLT-predicted distance priming that this experience of abstraction should enjoin can be readily identified in first-hand accounts of depression.Matthew Ratcliffe, for example, collates the following descriptions: ‘There was just an unfathomable distance between me and any other human being’;30 ‘It feels as though you’re watching life from a long distance’;31 ‘the world looks different—familiar things seem strange, distant’;32 ‘things are no longer appear available; they are strangely distant’;33 ‘I was terribly alone, lost in a far-away place’;34 ‘You’ve lost a habitable earth. You’ve lost the invitation to live that the universe extends to us at every moment’.35 There can be no doubting the salience of psychological distance in these reports.

Moving on to anxiety, this condition should be taken here as a proxy for ‘generalised anxiety disorder’, which the DSM-V defines as ‘excessive, uncontrollable anxiety or worry for at least 6 months and associated with two of restlessness, fatigue, irritability, muscle tension, and sleep disturbance’.36 At first glance, the literature seems to identify these symptoms as a form of attentional capture by high-construal stimuli. Watkins, for instance, concludes that generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is ‘characterised by a predisposition towards adopting an abstract level of goal/action identification as the prepotent operational level … patients with GAD demonstrate a biassed tendency towards a more abstract level of processing’.37 However, though this formulation may be technically correct—after all, it is certainly true that worry deals in hypotheticals—it is questionable how useful it is. (And note the disagreement with Watkins and Teasdale quoted above.)38 Instead, it would seem more accurate to characterise anxiety as the making concrete of ostensibly abstract threats. Mathews, for example, notes that anxiety is marked by ‘persistent awareness of possible future danger, which is repeatedly rehearsed without ever being resolved’39—an appreciation that is echoed in a number of studies that identify anxiety as a form of ‘selective processing that fits [the anxious individual’s] view of the world as dangerous’.40 From a CLT perspective, this amounts to collapsing the psychological distance on the probabilistic dimension. By making unlikely events—that is, events that are probabilistically distant—salient, anxiety cues the collapsing of mental horizons into the here and now.

A cursory examination of first-hand descriptions of anxiety bears out this view of anxiety as an overconcrete immersion in the near-hypothetical. Though equivalent collations of anxiety experiences to those available for depression are less easy to find, discussions on social media forums offer some useful evocations. For instance, a psychiatrist on Reddit recalls a patient as saying anxiety ‘feel[s] like she tripped and the moment where you don’t know if you are going to catch yourself or not is how she felt all day long.’41 Another commenter likens it to what happens when your ‘stomach turns and you get hot and your heart pounds, whatever happens when you think something went very wrong and you’re about to catch shit for it’;42 a second exhorts the reader to ‘Imagine if every small decision had life or death consequences’.43 An author on the Anxiety and Depression Association of America website recalls, ‘I’d be stuck in traffic and these irritating voices would take my brain hostage. “Did you leave the coffee on? The house will catch fire, the neighbours will burn!”’44 Another recounts, ‘I don’t see five to ten ants. I see the inevitable 100 to 200 that I imagine will invade and eventually carry off our house. It’s very hard for me to deal with the here and now when I am catastrophizing’.45 The examples could be multiplied, but the point is clear: anxiety, contra depression, shrinks the horizon of cognition into immediately nearby spatial and temporal concerns.

The question that follows from framing mood disorders in this way is whether doing so provides any therapeutic insights into anxiety and depression. The answer would seem to be that it does, even if such insights are not explicitly articulated using CLT.46 Specifically, there is a small (but growing) body of evidence that exposing the depressed and the anxious to stimuli that exhibit a construal level opposite to that which characterises their condition yields positive therapeutic results. In the case of depression, Werner-Seidler and Moulds47 establish that prompting depressed and recovered individuals to recall an autobiographical memory in abstract and concrete modes yields a positive impact in the concrete mode; in their words, ‘a concrete processing mode enabled positive memory recall to have a reparative effect on mood for depressed and recovered participants’.48 Equivalently, Watkins et al show that complementing treatment as usual (TAU) for depression with concreteness training ‘seems to be an efficacious treatment for mild to moderate depression in primary care, producing significantly better outcomes than TAU’.49 Viewed through the lens of CLT, these results are explained by the adopting of a low-construal cognitive frame, where the depressive tendency towards ruminative overgeneralisation is recalibrated towards shorter psychological distances. These distances, being more amenable to everyday projects and goals, challenge the impotence in the face of the cosmos that characterises depression.

With respect to anxiety, the situation once again seems less clear-cut. Amir, Beard, Cobb and Bomyea demonstrate that diverting attention away from threatening stimuli succeeds in reducing anxious feelings50 —a result that is replicated in several places across the literature.51 However, there is also evidence that actively exposing anxious individuals to inducing stimuli can, over the course of time, ameliorate symptoms.52 How can these different data be reconciled? The key to doing this comes with recognising the role played by abstraction in both protocols. Attention diversion techniques invariably work by training participants to attend to neutral stimuli over threatening ones; as such, they strip away one dimension of experience—valence—and thereby shift the individual’s perception of the world into a marginally more abstract mode. It can be argued that exposure therapies do the same, but in a radically different way: by inserting the threatening stimulus into a series of encounters, they dampen its singularity and subordinate it to an abstract category that is amenable to cognitive manipulation. What emerges, therefore, is the finding that ‘a tendency to preferentially attend toward or away from threat, relative to an equal distribution of attention irrespective of threat, results in greater reduction in clinical symptoms and diagnoses’.53 In other words, so long as a high-construal perspective is adopted—whether by diversion or habituation—the anxiety-inducing character of a stimulus will tend to diminish.

In sum, there exist reasonable grounds for thinking that the results of CLT have relevance for the treatment of both depression and anxiety. I stress, once more, that this does not amount to saying that they are explained by CLT, or that CLT captures the full phenomenology of either condition. If it did, it would be a damning verdict on psychological medicine for it to have missed so straightforward a result, given the amount of research that anxiety and depression have stimulated over the years. Instead, the value of the CLT perspective is that it allows for connections to be made with cultural processes that may have a therapeutic value for both conditions. These processes will be the target of the next section.

Construal level and culture

Viewing culture through the lens of abstraction is not a new idea. As long ago as 1908, Wilhelm Worringer wrote of ‘the antithetic relation of empathy and abstraction’, and how the impulse towards abstraction ‘finds in beauty in the life-denying inorganic, in the crystalline or, in general terms, in all general law and necessity’.54 For Worringer, the motivation towards abstraction is ‘the immense spiritual dread of space’,55 which leaves humanity ‘tormented by the entangled inter-relationship and flux of the phenomena of the outer world’.56 By positing abstraction as the antidote to the anxiety entrained by the unpredictability of the world, it should be clear that Worringer is making a connection between mood and forms of cultural representation that is cognate to the issues under discussion here.

In the present section, my aim is to go beyond Worringer’s purely qualitative appreciation of how abstraction shapes the experience of culture and develop quantitative metrics that allow for such abstraction to be measured. The value of such measurement is that it allows for cultural representations to be compared with one another, both within and between the categories they belong to. This is a potentially controversial move, given the long-standing resistance to such acts of quantification in the humanities and the interpretive social sciences.57 Nevertheless, it is to be hoped that recent work in areas like cognitive cultural studies will have gone some distance towards illustrating the power of using empirically informed methodologies to engage with the symbolic apparatus of culture.58 Equally, the movement towards the experimental humanities points to the value of having manipulable measures that allow for the testing of predictions against real-world audiences.59 Here, both considerations will allow for an account of different forms of cultural representation that predict their impact on the mood disorders.

At a practical level, I shall focus mostly on construal level as my variable of interest. This is not at all to dismiss psychological distance as playing an important role in the operations of culture; indeed, I have written previously on how manipulations of distance play a crucial role in establishing the cognitive effect of genres such as science fiction.60 Instead, my view is that the necessarily synoptic exercise of surveying how distance emerges in several media would eclipse the no less important (and comparatively underdeveloped) issue of abstraction, which must therefore be my principal focus here. Saying this, however, invites the question of how construal level can be quantified. While it is often intuitively obvious whether a representation is abstract or concrete, this is of little value when precise comparisons are needed. Moreover, the experimental manipulations of construal level in the literature, though fit for purpose, are not generalisable across multiple modes of stimulus presentation. What is therefore needed is a reliable proxy for construal level that yields precise values and can be extended across a variety of media.

I propose here to use Shannon entropy as this measure.61 Like the thermodynamic concept it is derived from, Shannon entropy (hereafter just entropy) is a measure of how much structure is required to encode a message, with high entropy messages being more unpredictable than low entropy messages. As the central concept in information theory, entropy is surrounded by a forbidding formal vocabulary. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to illustrate by way of a linguistic example. For instance, it is easy to see that asking someone to complete a three-word phrase that starts with ‘the northern’ will more often produce ‘the northern lights’ or ‘the northern hemisphere’ than ‘the northern engine’ or ‘the northern babysitter’. This is because, in English, the former two phrases occur with a much higher frequency than the latter, meaning that any guess concerning how the phrase should be completed is more likely to be correct if it uses ‘lights’ or ‘hemisphere’ as the relevant word. In this sense, the phrase ‘the northern lights’ has less entropy than ‘the northern babysitter’, as it would require fewer guesses to reconstruct it in the event of the last word being missing.

In more formal terms, entropy is therefore ‘a measure of the information contained in a message as opposed to the part of the message that is strictly determined (hence predictable) by inherent structures’.62 What this involves in practice is calculating the average freedom to vary each symbol or item in a given message relative to the constraints that operate on that message. This is done using the following formula, where H corresponds to the entropy of the message X, i denotes a value in the range 0≤ i ≤ k when k is the number of symbols in the message, and p(xi) is the probability of a specific symbol xi occurring:

For those unfamiliar with the formalism, the sigma operator ‘Σ’ means that if there are k symbols, then the entropy should be calculated for each one of them and the results added together. The log2p(xi) quantity picks out a number y, such that 2y=p(xi). Though this formula outputs a value in bits for any well-defined system, this number is often normalised so it can only take values between ‘0’ and ‘1’ by dividing by the quantity log2(k); this quantity is called metric entropy. To see how the formula works in advance of its use below, take a simple example: a coin toss with an unbiased coin. There are two possible results (heads or tails) with the same probability each; thus p(xi)=0.5 for i=1 and i=2. The entropy of the system is calculated by summing across both possible results: – [(0.5 × log2(0.5) + (0.5 × log2(0.5)]=1. Thus, this system can be completely described using 1 bit of information. (Note that the metric entropy is also one in this example, as log22 =1.)

The relevance of entropy for the discussion of construal level and culture is that it reliably tracks abstraction. The core cognitive operation of abstraction is to strip away redundant detail and make a given system predictable—a function that reaches its apotheosis in mathematics and logic, but which is present in any act of classification or generalisation. Conversely, concreteness entails unpredictability, with its limit case being a purely random distribution of elements where the only structure is that described by the normal distribution. In the terminology under discussion, this means, counterintuitively, that low entropy corresponds to high-construal level and high entropy corresponds to low-construal level. If this identity is allowed, it means that entropy can be used as a proxy for identifying the likely impact of cultural representations on anxiety and depression.

Naturally, all of this raises the question of what such analysis might look like in practice. I shall initiate it now by giving an overview of how three modes of representation—image, narrative and film—can be discussed in terms of construal level. I would like it to be noted from the outset that my treatments of each area will be highly summary in character, and for every operational choice I make, I acknowledge that a specialist will be able to make the case for a different one. In defence of my procedure, I state here that my aim is only to demonstrate in principle how one might approach these three areas. Any thoroughgoing practical demonstration would need to be more circumspect in its approach, if also longer than is useful for an article-length exposition.

Image

Most discussions of the therapeutic potential of image focus on the production rather than the reception of visual artworks.63 However, as Vidler notes ‘anxiety, estrangement, and their psychological counterparts, anxiety neuroses and phobias have been intimately linked to the aesthetics of space’.64 For Vidler, this is a specifically modern phenomenon, but it can readily be seen that the attempt to ‘permeate the formal with the psychological’65 can inhabit the visual art of any period. The 70 k BCE ochre carvings from the Blombos Cave, for example, display a geometrical linear styling that has no obvious mimetic intention;66 conversely, the 17 k BCE animal paintings of the Lascaux Cave evince a highly concrete realism.67 Closer to the present, Celtic art of the Hallstatt style (1200–500 BCE) is geometrical, linear and spare, while that in the La Tène (450–1 BCE) style is curvilinear, richly detailed and organic68—no less than the formal innovations of the twentieth-century avant-garde contrasts with the nineteenth-century pictorial realism. The point is that the oscillation between mimetic detail and formal abstraction is a pattern the repeats across the history of visual culture.

To the extent that this is so, entropy should provide a reliable measure of abstraction in an image. The question concerns how it might be calculated. The standard protocol for doing this is to use colour as the variable i in the entropy formula, such that it takes a value from the set of k colours that make up an image. The object taking the value can be thought of as the pixels making up the image, so that for any colour i, a given image will contain m pixels of that colour. Thus, for any randomly chosen pixel from the total of n pixels in the image, the probability of it being colour i will be the fraction n/m. To illustrate, take an 8-bit grayscale computer image: this format allows 256 (ie, 28) shades of grey that can occur in any admixture. The probability of a randomly selected pixel exhibiting any given one of these shades will be given by dividing the total number of pixels exhibiting the shade by the total pixel count of the image. In turn, this allows the image entropy to be calculated by summing the 256 products of each shade’s probability by the log base 2 of this probability—a number that can then be normalised by dividing by log2(256). As even small images have very large numbers of pixels, it would be impractical to reproduce such a calculation here; it is easier just to show the results generated for specific images (figure 1), which I calculate using a python function specifically scripted for the task. As can be seen, there is a clear linear progression such that the more abstract an image is, the lower the entropy score.

Figure 1. Metric entropy scores for three images, where ‘0’ is the lowest possible value and ‘1’ is the highest. The rectangular grid is highly predictable and has a low score. The middle image—taken from Louis le Brocquy’s illustrations to Thomas Kinsella’s translation of the medieval Irish epic, Táin Bó Cuailgne—blends pictorial and schematic elements, and takes a value in the middle of the distribution. The final image, as a photograph, lacks any easily defined organising principle, and thus comes close to the entropy of a purely random distribution of pixels (ie, a score of 1).

Directing these results back to CLT, what can be said is that entropy tracks abstraction—and therefore construal level—in images in a reliable way. High-construal images, in virtue of exhibiting law-like regularities, are predictable and have low entropy; conversely, low-construal images frustrate schematic perception and have high entropy. The prediction that follows is that high entropy images should be of value for individuals with depression, when low entropy images should be of value for those suffering from anxiety. Such a claim invites assessment: is it the case that entropy tracks the therapeutic value of images?

To the extent that there is evidence available, it would seem that it does, looked at from both a historical and an experimental perspective. Starting with anxiety, Currey and Kasser69 compare the therapeutic impact of colouring a mandala design, colouring a generically abstract plaid design and colouring by way of a free-form unguided exercise. The results clearly show that colouring low entropy images in the form of the plaid design and the mandala reduced anxiety in a statistically significant way relative to colouring the free-form design, which has no impact—with this outcome being replicated in an independent follow-up study.70 In a separate study, Sandmire, Gorham, Rankin et al71 compare the impact on anxiety of mandala design, free-form painting, clay sculpting, collage making and drawing .Small sample sizes by condition did not allow the different interventions to be statistically distinguished. Nevertheless, given that the largest group chose the mandala design, the positive results they establish for art therapy across all conditions are consistent with the CLT abstraction hypothesis. Though more work is needed, these results clearly point to high entropy images as having a potentially positive impact on anxiety.

With respect to depression, the evidence is that the types of images produced by depressed individuals are of a low entropy kind, to the extent that they use less colour, have more empty space, are more constricted, are less effortful and are less meaningful.72 Correspondingly, it is unsurprising that high entropy images appear to be more therapeutically efficacious for depression. For instance, in a study that involved patients with cancer in a non-abstract watercolour-based art therapy intervention, Bar-Sela, Atid, Danos, Gebay et al73 found that depression was reduced while anxiety levels remained the same. Beyond this, it is difficult to generalise, as most experimental studies do not distinguish between the specific types of art therapy administered. Nevertheless, it is possible that the relative preponderance of concrete and mimetic modes of representation in art therapy is responsible for the positive impact on depression identified in several meta-analyses.74

It would seem, then, that there is evidence in support of the view that CLT effects on depression and anxiety can be tracked using entropy as a proxy, and they take the direction predicted. Necessarily, this requires further testing if the hypothesis is to receive the support it requires. Equally, a more cognitively ‘thick’ account of visual perception is needed to allow for entropy-reduction processes (like face and scene recognition) that improve the predictability of images. Nevertheless, it should be evident that the CLT-entropy approach points to a potentially important line of inquiry for the discussion of the therapeutic impact of images.

Narrative

If art therapy has an established therapeutic pedigree, treatment using literary materials has emerged in the last number of years as a parallel method of engaging with various disorders.75 Variously termed ‘book therapy’ or ‘creative bibliotherapy’, the idea is that ‘active immersion in great literature can help relieve, restore, or reinvigorate the troubled mind’.76 Though certainly an appealing prospect, the field is new and there is no robust proposal as to why literature should have a therapeutic effect in the first place. Montgomery and Maunders probably offer the most considered approach when they argue for literature as a vehicle for Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) effects,77 though this ultimately relies on the same ideas concerning readerly identification in fiction that underwrite less developed approaches.78 Moreover, even allowing that literature has a therapeutic effect, no approach predicts how different types of literature will interact with any one of the 297 or so conditions that at least one diagnostic system identifies as defining the repertoire of mental illness.79

As scoping a response to these problems for all forms of literature is obviously impractical, I shall restrict myself here to outlining how a CLT-informed entropic perspective might be used to make predictions concerning the therapeutic impact of narrative literature. Naturally, this poses the problem of how narratives can be understood as ‘abstract’ or ‘concrete’—not least because there are several levels, ranging from the lexical to the sentential to the discursive, that may exhibit such qualities. One useful concept for probing the distinction is that of narrativity.80 This is a global term that indexes the extent to which a cultural artefact lends itself to narrative elaboration across all its elements. A text with a high degree of narrativity will exhibit a judicious mix of surprise and predictability, with a preponderance of either surprise or predictability being deleterious to a text’s narrativity. As David Herman notes, ‘there is a lower limit of narrativity, past which certain ‘stories’ activate so few world models that they can no longer be processed as stories at all’, just as there is ‘an upper limit of narrativity, past which the tellable gives way to stereotypical, and the point of a narrative, the reason for its being told, gets lost or at least obscured’.81 In other words, a highly concrete text will be one that frustrates narrativity by resisting predictability, while an abstract text frustrates it by being too general. The connection here with entropy is obvious: texts that are either too high or too low in entropy are poor in narrativity.

One way in which these distinctions can be illustrated is by way of the link between character and action—a central plank of all forms of narrative. In this regard, one achievement of formalist models of narrative has been the identification of narrative ‘grammars’, where the key intervention involves abstracting recurrent classes of action from a given class of narratives to arrive at a general model. These models often generalise across categories like region and genre,82 but there also exist accounts that identify features purportedly present in all narratives.83 Their value for the present purpose is that they offer one clear dimension on which narrativity varies, to the extent that texts that entirely coincide with, or entirely deviate from, narrative grammars are also poor in narrativity. I shall illustrate this here using A J Greimas’s actantial model84 —not out of any conviction that Greimas is correct where others are wrong, but simply because his model is well known and supports a formal demonstration that can be readily extended to other models.

For Greimas, a character in a narrative can take one of six actants or roles: it can be a subject, an object, a helper, an opponent, a sender or a receiver (figure 2). The subject and object are paired in a relation of desire, want or need, with the subject exercising this relation on the object. Take Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels: here, Bond is typically the subject, with the defence of democratic values and the social order being the object. The helper and opponent are paired in a relation of power, such that they either augment or detract from the subject’s ability to pursue the object. In the Bond narratives, the helpers can be Q, the Bond girl, Felix Leiter and so forth; the opponent is manifested through the agents of the USSR and the various criminal enterprises that Bond confronts. The sender and receiver are paired in an axis of transmission, where the sender legitimates the subject’s actions, the value of which is delivered to the receiver. Thus, M, as representative of the Crown, authorises Bond’s actions, which benefit the British public and the wider democratic world. According to Greimas, these categories are present in all narratives, such that any character can be identified with a given actant on a given appearance (ie, they can be identified with different actants at different points in the narrative). Thus, what the actantial model defines is an underlying principle of organisation that maps the information contained in the set of character appearances into the information contained in the set of actantial roles.

Figure 2. Greimas’s six-term actantial account of narrative.

Viewing this model through the lens of entropy, the six actants define a set of values that partition the set of character appearances. This means that, for any given character appearance, that appearance can be classified under a category i, where i belongs to the set (sender, receiver, subject, object, helper, opponent). The sum of the character appearances in each category will then total the amount of appearances in the narrative. The probability, pi, of a given appearance being a particular actant is found by dividing the number of appearances in that category by the total number of appearances. As per the formula, the entropy is calculated by summing the products of each probability pi by log2(pi). In the case where there is an equal likelihood of a character belonging to one of the six roles in a given appearance, the metric entropy of the narrative is exactly 1, as there is no structure present. The latter enters into the picture via genre, which will foreground and background different actantial roles, thereby changing the relative probabilities involved. In Greimas’s words, ‘an articulation of actors constitutes a particular tale; a structure of actants constitutes a genre’.85 To properly represent this would require exact data on the relative proportion of actantial roles in different genres, which it is beyond the scope of the present article to provide. Instead, it is more useful to look at how entropy and narrativity relate to these considerations of abstraction and concreteness.

In this regard, the tendency towards concreteness has a clear expression in the realist novel. As an exercise in ‘the mimesis of consciousness’,86 realism participates in the unpredictability of its subject matter. That is, by attenuating the connection between actantial role and character identity in favour of character identity, narrative realism refuses the predictability of a schema and makes salient instead the sense of subjective freedom that attends personhood. Given the social orientation of much human cognition,87 it is unsurprising that that texts exhibiting this tendency should be narrative to a high degree. Nevertheless, it is no less true that the wholesale reproduction of subjective experience as found in texts like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake88 or Virginia Woolf’s The Waves89 have the effect of reducing narrativity. By requiring the reader to invest sustained cognitive labour before she can extract the general principle from the concrete particular, they frustrate the sense of (immediate) universality that is implicit in highly narrative texts.

On the abstract side of the spectrum, quasi-formulaic narratives like folk tales and myths are close mirror images of realist fiction, in that they also have psychological verisimilitude and functional roles, even if here the functional role predominates. The result is that such genres evince the same degree of narrativity as realist fiction, while having lower entropy. The ‘pathological’ tail to this end of the narrativity distribution is probably to be found in those simplified narratives that entirely dispense with specific actants. These are most commonly found in children’s discourse, which evolve over the course of development from primitive assertions of desire or causality to fully worked-out stories.90 Notably, such narratives are also visible in the ‘anti-narratives’ of modernist fiction, which strategically interrupt the story-telling process so as to highlight its inadequacy to human experience. Take, for instance, Samuel Beckett’s trilogy of novels, Molloy, Moran and The Unnamable, where all distinctions of character and structure eventually collapse into the ‘Where now? Who now? When now?’ of The Unnamable’s immobile subject.91

The general picture that emerges from this is that there is a clear alignment between the concept of entropy under discussion here and narrative structure. Moreover, this alignment is not merely theorised to exist, but has a long-standing expression in narratological terminology. But while this is welcome and satisfying, it is of incidental importance to the present inquiry if it cannot be connected with anxiety and depression. In this connection, the evidence is promising, if limited. As might be expected, the difficulty of making lengthy narrative materials amenable to experimental manipulation means that such studies as exist tend to focus on shorter narratives or narrative selections. With respect to depression, Carney and Robertson show that individuals exhibiting traits that correlate with depression are more strongly engaged by a high entropy version of a narrative text than a low one.92 On the side of anxiety, Glavin and Montgomery93 and Montgomery and Maunders94 offer a meta-analyses of studies that use literature in the treatment of various conditions and find either modest effects or no effects, but suggest that lack of comparability and poor design make definitive conclusions untrustworthy. Orthogonal to both, Troscianko shows substantial effects for fiction reading on several dimensions of behaviour relating to eating disorders, but the classification of fiction type is determined by thematic focus rather than abstraction or concreteness.95 Beyond this, the research literature offers little in the way of robust empirical evidence, even if there is no shortage of speculative pieces.

Thus, though there is no evidence against the proposal that abstraction impacts differentially on mood disorders, and some small evidence for it, a programme of testing is needed to properly establish the effect of narrative abstraction on depression and anxiety. I am currently engaged in an ongoing programme of such testing, which aims to ground the efflorescence of interest in creative bibliotherapy with solid empirical data. As yet, however, no solid conclusions can be reached concerning the role of abstraction in the cognitive impact of fiction—even if there are reasons to be hopeful that it might yet be used to good therapeutic effect.

Film

Just as literature has been suggested as a possible vehicle for therapeutic intervention, so too has film. The practice of using ‘motion pictures in a structured manner with specific populations for particular therapeutic gains’96 dates back to at least the 1940s,97 and continues today in a wide range of healthcare contexts.98 To the extent that it is theorised, ‘cinematherapy’ is framed in much the same way as its literary equivalent, with many theorists even going so far as to explicitly identify it as a form of bibliotherapy.99 Given the problems with bibliotherapy, this does little to clarify how cinematherapy might work, but it does point to CBT-style effects as the most commonly assigned mechanism.100 Though this may well be the case, the fact remains that such accounts say little about the specifically filmic dimension of cinematherapy, or indeed how different types of film relate to different conditions.

As will be anticipated, my suggestion is that abstraction provides one way of approaching this issue. In fact, given that film contains both visual and narrative components, it can be readily seen that two ways in which filmic entropy can be measured have already been covered. The task comes with outlining how these approaches might be adapted to account for the specific effects of cinema. In the former scenario, this involves extending the static entropy measure of a still image into a dynamic register of multiples of images per second; in the latter, it means incorporating the issues that arise when characters and actants are instantiated in physically perceivable agents and objects (ie, actors and props). Once both issues are dealt with, it should then become possible to consider the therapeutic impact of film.

To start with the issue of dynamic entropy, there is an obvious sense in which the relevant abstraction measure for film is not the average entropy across its frames, but the distribution of the entropy values these frames take. Take, for instance, the Heider-Simmel demonstration,101 which is the famous animation that uses moving shapes to illustrate the human propensity to assign agency to objects. Consider, at the same time, the introductory sequence to Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now,102 which uses richly worked cinematography to conflate the external chaos of the Vietnam war with the inner turmoil of its protagonist, Captain Willard (figure 3). It should be clear that, on a frame-by-frame basis, both films will exhibit very different entropy measures—as is clear from plots of the entropy levels for the first 1800 frames of each (figure 4). Equally, however, what should emerge is that there are marked differences in the variance of the entropy across both films. Though neither exhibits a particularly large variation, the overall spread of entropy in Apocalypse Now is much wider than in Heider-Simmel, and would likely be wider again in a longer selection (figure 5). What this serves to show is that a measure like the IQR (the numerical interval in which the middle 50% of the data lie) is likely to offer the best measure of the entropy of a sequence of film. Where this range is narrow and lies close to 1, the film will be concrete and exhibit high entropy; where it is narrow and closer to 0, it will be abstract and have low entropy. Where there is a large IQR, there is likely no worthwhile measure of the central tendency of entropy, and analysis will have better results by focusing on shorter subsequences.

Figure 3. Illustration frames from the Heider-Simmel demonstration frame (left) and ApocalypseNow.

Figure 4. Entropy by frame for Heider-Simmel and ApocalypseNow.

Figure 5. Box plots for Heider-Simmel and ApocalypseNow.

Moving on to the issue of character-based entropy, the specifically filmic problem that emerges is the high cognitive load that the audience must sustain when they are inferring the motives of ostensibly unknown persons. Unlike a linguistically mediated narrative, where mental states can, in principle, be directly communicated, acted roles are physically instantiated in real people and thus engage computationally expensive inferential processes.103 As pushing cognitive load beyond a certain point is typically antihedonic,104 this means that film, as a genre, perpetually runs the risk of alienating its audience due to excessive entropy. How might this be resolved? One solution comes by way of the ‘star’ phenomenon. As noted by theorists such as Richard Dyer, ‘The star’s presence in a film is a promise of a certain kind of thing that you would see if you went to see the film’.105 Though Dyer volunteers this as motivated by economics, it functions equally well to reduce entropy. That is, if the presence of a specific actor entrains a set of performance expectations, then these expectations reduce cognitive load by creating a set of priors that prestructure the relevant inferences. Putting this in terms of the entropy formula, the variable i will thus pick out a member of the set of conventional movie roles (action hero, femme fatale, comic relief, maverick, wise counsellor, etc). Summing across his or her appearances, the presence of a specific actor will increase the conditional probability of a given character belonging to a given role, thereby providing implicit context for making sense of their actions. As this serves to increase predictability, it lowers overall entropy, and helps resolve the problem of cognitive load. In this sense, the star system created by the film industry operates as an entropy reduction ‘grammar’ that increases consumption by lowering the cognitive demands of understanding the actions of person-like agents.

Bringing these considerations back to the mood disorders, what emerges is that abstraction is concomitant with films that have predictable action structures and character motivations, and which impose a low perceptual processing burden. Conversely, detailed visual innovation and eschewal of ready-made associations between actors and roles creates a highly concrete cinema that resists predictability. Once more, the question is whether the latter type of cinema is therapeutically efficacious for depression, where the latter is for anxiety. Such experimental testing as has been conducted supports the general idea that cinema can have a therapeutic impact, though there are no data that can be parsed in terms of abstraction and concreteness in cinematic representation and how they serve to differentially impact on mood disorders. Thus, even more than image and narrative, cinema remains a terra incognita with respect to its clinical impact. It remains possible—even plausible—that it has a palliative effect on conditions like depression and anxiety, but this needs to be supported by well-designed experiments. Given the popularity of cinema relative to other cultural forms, there can be little doubt that supporting the emergence of an effective cinematherapy by doing so would be a socially valuable outcome.

Conclusion

My aim in this study was to show that abstraction provides a useful metric for grouping together observations about how culture and mental health might interact. Necessarily, this is a speculative undertaking from which no definitive conclusions can be expected—which is as well, because no definitive conclusions have emerged. However, what will hopefully be in evidence is that mid-level measures like abstraction, in virtue of how they shape information-bearing structures, can be used to bridge the gap between mental illnesses that themselves actively shape the processing of information.106 If this is allowed, how might such a research programme be taken forward?

The first issue that would need to be addressed centres on the question of content. In the interests of exposition, I have set to one side all considerations of how subject matter might impact on the reception of abstract and concrete modes of representation—despite the obvious fact that content (rather than form) is often the primary driver of response. The problem this poses is how content can be made susceptible to systematic hypothesis testing. One solution might come from dimensional accounts of emotion like the valence-arousal-dominance (VAD) model, which maps variation between emotions into variations in the degree to which each of the three components are associated with a stimulus.107 Though experimentally investigating a system that has four parameters of variation is a formidable task, it is not intractable, and will certainly nuance the abstraction-derived model explored here. Moreover, there are now available large corpuses of words and images that have already assessed for how to trigger the VAD components, which makes the creation of experimental materials substantially easier.108

A second issue comes with the parallel problem of interpersonal variation. Several studies show that a preference for abstraction is either a driver or concomitant of stable personality traits.109 What remains unclear is how this preference relates to anxiety, depression and CLT effects. It may be, for instance, that it merely moderates susceptibility to CLT effects, and can thus be controlled for experimentally. But it may also be that it is implicated in proneness to anxiety or depression in the first place, which makes for a more complicated model. Either way, this interaction needs further research before a complete picture can emerge.

Finally, there is the issue of how the cognitive effects proposed here might be instantiated in the brain. In this regard, recent work on predictive processing and the free energy principle shows that entropy plays a crucial role in how organisms optimise for error reduction in their interaction with the world.110 The crucial idea is that organisms minimise ‘surprisal’—expressed as the log probability of a given stimulus—by either updating their model or probing the environment to gain better data. However, tolerance for surprise is not fixed, and is likely to be mediated by the predictive actions of the dopaminergic and serotonergic systems.111 As these systems are also implicated in mood disorders,112 this opens a potential avenue of connection between CLT-style cultural effects (as mediated by entropy) and the neurotransmitters involved in the regulation of mood. Though I can do no more than point to this possibility here, recent work by Carhart-Harris et al on the ‘entropic brain’ model and the impact of serotonin on active and passive coping suggests how it might be pursued by linking the surprisal of a cultural stimulus (relative to background cultural entropy) to the differential activation of 5-HTA1 and 5-HTA2 serotonin receptors.113

I do pretend that these considerations are enough to defend the present survey against its limitations. But they may point to solutions that obviate the need to reject the abstraction hypothesis merely because it is difficult to assess. With respect to the hypothesis itself, only further testing can establish whether it has value. Though such testing with cultural materials will always be difficult, I submit that the potential gains—therapeutic and intellectual—make it a practice that will richly reward being pursued.

Notes

1. Edward B Tylor (1873), Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom; Leon J Goldstein (1957), “On Defining Culture”; John Baldwin, Sandra Faulkner, and Michael Hecht (2005), “A Moving Target: The Illusive Definition of Culture.”

2. David Pilgrim, Ann. McCranie, and Recovery (2013), Recovery and Mental Health: A Critical Sociological Account; Whitehead et al., Edinburgh Companion to Crit. Med. Humanit.; Michel Foucault and Madness (1967), Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.

3. Ana Mari Cauce et al. (2002), “Cultural and Contextual Influences in Mental Health Help Seeking: A Focus on Ethnic Minority Youth”; Giyeon Kim et al. (2013), “Regional Variation of Racial Disparities in Mental Health Service Use Among Older Adults”; Kate Loewenthal (2006), Religion, Culture and Mental Health.

4. Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman (2010), “Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance”; Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope (2008), “The Psychology of Transcending the Here and How.”

5. Tal Eyal and Nira Liberman (2012), “Morality and Psychological Distance: A Construal Level Theory Perspective”; Stephan, Liberman, and Trope, “Politeness and Psychological Distance: A Construal Level Perspective.”; Liberman and Trope, “The Role of Feasibility and Desirability Considerations in near and Distant Future Decisions: A Test of Temporal Construal Theory”; Mueller, Wakslak, and Krishnan, “Construing Creativity: The How and Why of Recognizing Creative Ideas.”

6. Matthew Ratcliffe (2015), Experiences of Depression: A Study in Phenomenology, 79.

7. Thomas Fuchs (2013), “Depression, Intercorporeality, and Interaffectivity,” 229.

8. Daniel Smith (2012), Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety, 174.

9. Scott Stossel (2014), My Age of Anxiety, 56.

10. Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman (2010), “Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance,” 442.

11. Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope (1998), “The Role of Feasibility and Desirability Considerations in near and Distant Future Decisions: A Test of Temporal Construal Theory.”

12. Kentaro Fujita et al. (2006), “Spatial Distance and Mental Construal of Social Events.”

13. Cheryl J Wakslak et al. (2006), “Seeing the Forest When Entry Is Unlikely: Probability and the Mental Representation of Events.”

14. Ido Liviatan, Yaacov Trope, and Nira Liberman (2008), “Interpersonal Similarity as a Social Distance Dimension: Implications for Perception of Others’ Actions.”

15. Tal Eyal, Nira Liberman, and Yaacov Trope (2008), “Judging near and Distant Virtue and Vice.”

16. Leaf Van Boven et al. (2010), “Feeling Close: Emotional Intensity Reduces Perceived Psychological Distance.”

17. Joshua Ian Davis, James J Gross, and Kevin N Ochsner (2011), “Psychological Distance and Emotional Experience: What You See Is What You Get”; P. Sol Hart, Richard C. Stedman, and Katherine A. McComas (2015), “How the Physical Proximity of Climate Mitigation Projects Influences the Relationship between Affect and Public Support.”

18. Alison Ledgerwood and Shannon P Callahan (2012), “The Social Side of Abstraction: Psychological Distance Enhances Conformity to Group Norms.”

19. Antonio L. Freitas et al. (2009), “Action-Construal Levels and Perceived Conflict among Ongoing Goals: Implications for Positive Affect.”

20. Adam L Alter, Daniel M Oppenheimer, and Jeffrey C Zemla (2010), “Missing the Trees for the Forest: A Construal Level Account of the Illusion of Explanatory Depth.”

21. Maayan Katzir and Tal Eyal (2013), “When Stepping Outside the Self Is Not Enough: A Self-Distanced Perspective Reduces the Experience of Basic but Not of Self-Conscious Emotions.”

22. Jennifer S. Mueller, Cheryl J. Wakslak, and Viswanathan Krishnan (2014), “Construing Creativity: The How and Why of Recognizing Creative Ideas.”

23. Elena Stephan et al. (2010), “Politeness and Psychological Distance: A Construal Level Perspective.”

24. Caglar Irmak, Cheryl J. Wakslak, and Yaacov Trope (2013), “Selling the Forest, Buying the Trees: The Effect of Construal Level on Seller-Buyer Price Discrepancy.”

25. Katie A McLaughlin and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (2011), “Rumination as a Transdiagnostic Factor in Depression and Anxiety”; Jennifer A. Harrington and Virginia Blankenship (2002), “Ruminative Thoughts and Their Relation to Depression and Anxiety.”

26. American Psychiatric Association (2013b), Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 160–61.

27. American Psychiatric Association (2013b), 123.

28. E Watkins and J. D. Teasdale (2001), “Rumination and Overgeneral Memory in Depression: Effects of Self-Focus and Analytic Thinking.” 353.

29. Edward Watkins (2011), “Dysregulation in Level of Goal and Action Identification across Psychological Disorders” 270.

30. Matthew Ratcliffe (2015), 10.

31. Matthew Ratcliffe (2015), 31.

32. Matthew Ratcliffe (2015), 79.

33. Matthew Ratcliffe (2015), 71.

34. Matthew Ratcliffe (2015), 67.

35. Matthew Ratcliffe (2015), 15.

36. American Psychiatric Association (2013b), Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 222.

37. Edward Watkins (2011), “Dysregulation in Level of Goal and Action Identification across Psychological Disorders” 271.

38. E Watkins and J. D. Teasdale (2001), “Rumination and Overgeneral Memory in Depression: Effects of Self-Focus and Analytic Thinking.”

39. A Mathews (1990), “Why Worry? The Cognitive Function of Anxiety” 456.

40. Allison J Ouimet (2009), “Cognitive Vulnerability to Anxiety: A Review and an Integrative Model” 460; Yair Bar-Haim, Dominique Lamy, and Lee Pergamin (2007), “Threat-Related Attentional Bias in Anxious and Nonanxious Individuals: A Meta-Analytic Study”; Merel Kindt and Marcel Van Den Hout (2001), “Selective Attention and Anxiety: A Perspective on Developmental Issues and the Causal Status”; Karin Mogg and Brendan P Bradley (2004), “A Cognitive-Motivational Perspective on the Processing of Threat Information and Anxiety.”

41. Reddit (2015), “Psychiatrists/Psychologists of Reddit, What Is the Most Profound or Insightful Thing You Have Ever Heard from a Patient with a Mental Illness? : AskReddit.”

42. Reddit.

43. Reddit.

44. Eileen O’Meara (2017), “Panic Attack!”

45. Meredith Arthur (2017), “GAD: Hard to Recognize | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA.”

46. Ernst H W Koster, Elaine Fox, and Colin MacLeod (2009), “Introduction to the Special Section on Cognitive Bias Modification in Emotional Disorders.”

47. Aliza Werner-Seidler and Michelle L Moulds (2012), “Mood Repair and Processing Mode in Depression.”

48. Aliza Werner-Seidler and Michelle L Moulds (2012), 476.

49. E. R. Watkins et al. (2012), "Guided self-help concreteness training as an intervention for major depression in primary care: a Phase II randomized controlled trial," 222.

50. Nader Amir et al. (2009), “Attention Modification Program in Individuals with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”

51. Nader Amir and Charles T Taylor (2012), “Combining Computerized Home-Based Treatments for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: An Attention Modification Program and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”; Yuko Hakamata et al. (2010), “Attention Bias Modification Treatment: A Meta-Analysis towards the Establishment of Novel Treatment for Anxiety”; Han-Joo Lee et al. (2015), “Computerized Attention Retraining for Individuals with Elevated Health Anxiety.”

52. Stefan G Hofmann (2008), “Cognitive Processes during Fear Acquisition and Extinction in Animals and Humans: Implications for Exposure Therapy of Anxiety Disorders”; Mark B Powers and Paul M G Emmelkamp (2008), “Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Anxiety Disorders: A Meta-Analysis.”

53. Tom J Barry, Bram Vervliet, and Dirk Hermans (2015), “An Integrative Review of Attention Biases and Their Contribution to Treatment for Anxiety Disorders” 9.

54. Wilhelm Worringer (1997), Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, 4.

55. Wilhelm Worringer (1997), 15.

56. Wilhelm Worringer (1997), 16.

57. Clifford Geertz (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays; Hans-Georg Gadamer (2004), Truth and Method; Paul Ricoeur (2003), The Rule of Metaphor.

58. Pascal Boyer (2001), Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought; James Carney and Pádraig Mac Carron (2017), “Comic-Book Superheroes and Prosocial Agency: A Large-Scale Quantitative Analysis of the Effects of Cognitive Factors on Popular Representations”; Tamás Dávid-Barrett and James Carney (2015), “The Deification of Historical Figures and the Emergence of Priesthoods as a Solution to a Network Coordination Problem”; David Herman (2013), “Narrative and Mind: Directions for Inquiry”; Emily T Troscianko (2013), “Cognitive Realism and Memory in Proust’s Madeleine Episode”; Lisa Zunshine (2012), Getting Inside Your Head: What Cognitive Science Can Tell Us About Popular Culture.

59. P Matthijs Bal and Martijn Veltkamp (2013), How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation”; David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano (2013), “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind”; James Carney, Rafael Wlodarski, and Robin Dunbar (2014), “Inference or Enaction? The Impact of Genre on the Narrative Processing of Other Minds”; Carney and Robertson, “People Searching for Meaning in Their Lives Find Literature More Engaging.”

60. James Carney (2017), “The Space Between Your Ears: Construal Level Theory, Cognitive Science and Science Fiction.”

61. Claude E Shannon (1948), “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”; David McKay and Information Theory (2003), Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms; C. E. Shannon (1951), “Prediction and Entropy of Printed English.”

62. Alexander Leonidovich Kuzemsky (2017), Statistical Mechanics and the Physics of Many-Particle Model Systems, 275.

63. David G Edwards (2014), Art Therapy.

64. Anthony Vidler (2001), Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, 1.

65. Anthony Vidler (2001), 1.

66. Christopher S Henshilwood, Christopher S et al. (2002), “Emergence of Modern Human Behavior: Middle Stone Age Engravings from South Africa.”

67. Paul G Bahn (2012), Cave Art: A Guide to the Decorated Ice Age Caves of Europe.

68. D.W Harding (2007), The Archaeology of Celtic Art; Barry W Cunliffe (1997), The Ancient Celts.

69. Nancy Curry and Tim Kasser (2005), “Coloring To Reduce Anxiety.”

70. Renée van der Vennet and Susan Serice (2012), “Can Coloring Mandalas Reduce Anxiety? A Replication Study.”

71. David Alan Sandmire et al. (2012), “The Influence of Art Making on Anxiety: A Pilot Study.”

72. H Wadeson (1971), “Characteristics of Art Expression in Depression”; Harriet Wadeson (2010), Art Psychotherapy.

73. Gil Bar-Sela et al. (2007), “Art Therapy Improved Depression and Influenced Fatigue Levels in Cancer Patients on Chemotherapy.”

74. Sarah C. Slayton, Jeanne D'Archer, and Frances Kaplan (2010), “Outcome Studies on the Efficacy of Art Therapy: A Review of Findings”; Matthew W. Reynolds, Laura Nabors, and Anne Quinlan (2000), “The Effectiveness of Art Therapy: Does It Work?”

75. Jonathan J Detrixhe (2010), “Souls in Jeopardy: Questions and Innovations for Bibliotherapy with Fiction”; M L Lanza and Marilyn Lewis Lanza (1991), “Literature: A Vehicle for Emotional Connection between Clinician and Client”; Gavin Francis (2017), “Storyhealing”; Pehrsson, Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson (2015) “Fictive Bibliotherapy and Therapeutic Storytelling with Children Who Hurt”; Josie Billington (2016), Is Literature Healthy?

76. Jonathan Bate and Andrew Schuman (2016), “Books Do Furnish a Mind: The Art and Science of Bibliotherapy”, 743.

77. Paul Montgomery and Kathryn Maunders (2015), “The Effectiveness of Creative Bibliotherapy for Internalizing, Externalizing, and Prosocial Behaviors in Children: A Systematic Review.”

78. Keith Oatley (1995), “A Taxonomy of the Emotions of Literary Response and a Theory of Identification in Fictional Narrative”; Keith Oatley (1999), “Meetings of Minds: Dialogue, Sympathy, and Identification, in Reading Fiction.”

79. American Psychiatric Association (2013a), Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition.

80. Monika Fludernik (2004), Towards a “Natural” Narratology; Gerald Prince (2004), “Revisiting Narrativity.”

81. David Herman (2002), Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative, 103.

82. Alan Dundes (1964), The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales; Claude Lévi-Strauss (1964), Mythologiques, Vols. I–IV; Christian Metz (1991), Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema; Vladimir Propp (1968), Morphology of the Folktale.

83. David Herman (2011), Basic Elements of Narrative; A. J. Greimas and Catherine Porter (1977), “Elements of a Narrative Grammar”; H Porter Abbott (2000), “The of Evolutionary Origins of the Storied Mind: Modeling the Prehistory of Narrative Consciousness and Its Discontents.”

84. A.J Greimas (1983), Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method; Greimas, “Elements of a Narrative Grammar”; A.J Greimas (1987), “Actants, Actors, and Figures.”

85. A.J Greimas (1983), Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, 200.

86. Dorrit Cohn (1978), Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, 9.

87. Chris D Frith and Uta Frith (2007), “Social Cognition in Humans.”

88. James Joyce (1939), Finnegans Wake.

89. Virginia Woolf (1931), The Waves.

90. Arthur N Applebee (1989), The Child’s Concept of Story: Ages Two to Seventeen.

91. Samuel Beckett (1958), The Unnamable, 1.

92. James Carney and Cole Robertson (2018), “People Searching for Meaning in Their Lives Find Literature More Engaging.”

93. Calla E. Y. Glavin and Paul Montgomery (2017), “Creative Bibliotherapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): A Systematic Review.”

94. Paul Montgomery and Kathryn Maunders (2015), “The Effectiveness of Creative Bibliotherapy for Internalizing, Externalizing, and Prosocial Behaviors in Children: A Systematic Review.”

95. Emily T Troscianko (2018), “Literary Reading and Eating Disorders: Survey Evidence of Therapeutic Help and Harm.”

96. Michael Lee Powell and Rebecca A. Newgent (2010), “Improving the Empirical Credibility of Cinematherapy,” 41.

97. E Katz (1947), “Audio-Visual Aids for Mental Hygiene and Psychiatry”; E Katz (1945), “A Social Therapy Program for Neuropsychiatry in a General Hospital.”

98. Shannon B. Dermer and Jennifer B. Hutchings (2000), “Utilizing Movies in Family Therapy: Applications for Individuals, Couples, and Families”; Carla Gramaglia et al. (2011), “Cinematherapy in the Day Hospital Treatment of Patients with Eating Disorders. Case Study and Clinical Considerations.”

99. Linda Berg-Cross, Pamela Jennings, and Rhoda Baruch (1990), “Cinematherapy: Theory and Application”; Emily Marsick (2010), “Cinematherapy with Preadolescents Experiencing Parental Divorce: A Collective Case Study.”

100. Vitor Hugo Sambati Oliva, Andréa Vianna, and Francisco Lotufo Neto (2010), “Cinematherapy as Psychotherapeutic Intervention: Characteristics, Applications and Identification of Cognitive-Behavior Techniques.”

101. Fritz Heider et al. (1944), “An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior.”

102. Francis Ford Coppola (1979), Apocalypse Now.

103. Tamás Dávid-Barrett and Robin Dunbar (2013), “Processing Power Limits Social Group Size: Computational Evidence for the Cognitive Costs of Sociality.”

104. D. E Berlyne (1970), “Novelty, Complexity, and Hedonic Value.”

105. Richard Dyer (2004), Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, 5.

106. A. K Wittenborn et al. (2016), “Depression as a Systemic Syndrome: Mapping the Feedback Loops of Major Depressive Disorder”; Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind.

107. Albert Mehrabian (1980), Basic Dimensions for a General Psychological Theory: Implications for Personality, Social, Environmental, and Developmental Studies.

108. Peter Lang, Margaret Bradley, and B N Cuthbert (2008), “International Affective Picture System (IAPS): Affective Ratings of Pictures and Instruction Manual”; Artur Marchewka et al. (2014), “The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS): Introduction to a Novel, Standardized, Wide-Range, High-Quality, Realistic Picture Database”; Amy Beth Warriner, Victor Kuperman, and Marc Brysbaert (2013), “Norms of Valence, Arousal, and Dominance for 13,915 English Lemmas.”

109. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Adrian Furnham (2004), “Art Judgment: A Measure Related to Both Personality and Intelligence?”; Adrian Furnham and John Walker (2001), “Personality and Judgements of Abstract, Pop Art, and Representational Paintings”; H. J. Eyesenck and Hans Jürgen Eysenck (1940), “The General Factor in Aesthetic Judgments.”

110. Andy Clark (2016), Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind; Karl Friston (2010), “The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory?”; Karl J Friston, Jean Daunizeau, and Stefan J Kiebel (2009), “Reinforcement Learning or Active Inference?”; Mateus Joffily and Giorgio Coricelli (2013), “Emotional Valence and the Free-Energy Principle.”

111. Sara Matias et al. (2017), “Activity Patterns of Serotonin Neurons Underlying Cognitive Flexibility”; Friston et al., “Dopamine, Affordance and Active Inference.”

112. D Baldwin and S Rudge, 1995, “The Role of Serotonin in Depression and Anxiety.”

113. R L Carhart-Harris and D J Nutt (2017), “Serotonin and Brain Function: A Tale of Two Receptors”; Robin L Carhart-Harris et al. (2014), “The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs.”

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