#part 2 will refer to a different political subject

[not-goldy]

But isn’t JK sort of "queer cleansing" in Ch 2?

All those women in his MV’s who he had zero chemistry with but not a single reference to being into men (not that I expect that of course, being from a homophobic country. More like being in the closet, unfortunately.. but still).

I think his side of Ch 2 is interesting, based on the past ten years up until the military announcement— which is when this sudden "flipped switch" from disliking/being indifferent about dating women, refusing to sing "girl" in a Jason Derulo cover and being the object of other men’s affection, to singing about boinking women seemed to happen.

If the blurry video wasn’t true, I wonder if BH didn’t rush to clean it up because it kind of worked out to help with JK’s new "ladies man" image 💀💀 His face isn’t even decipherable but at least half the fandom ate that up!

To some extent I guess.

Heteronormativity and queer cleansing are two related but distinct concepts so I hope you are not confusing the two as one and the same in this case.

Heteronormativity in this sense is promoting hetersexuality and images of it as the standard or mainstream idea of something. For instance, what is the purpose of choosing a female lead to play the role of love interest besides the fact that that is just how things are done in the industry??

At this point it doesn't even matter at all the female you cast, it just has to be A female to play the role. It's not political, it doesn't speak to the sexual orientation of the individual, it's just what sells and what is considered the norm or standard way of doing things. You could replace the female subject with an inanimate object and the message of love and affection will not be lost.

Over using female as love interests without allowing for much diversity in music visuals has led to a situation where the woman has become a neutral marker in art. Much like words such as Man or other masculine forms gained neutrality and universality such that where you see man or dude or guy in a text you don't necessarily think they are referring strictly to a man, it's the same for women. They are there because they are expected to be there.

We are not wired to see their presence in MVs as contributing any unique or significant meaning to the story telling.

However seeing two men or two women portrayed as leads and love interests adds a political dimension to the message of the song or story of the MV.

It's why visuals such as Blood Sweat and Tears and the whole visual album of HYYH era speaks to many of us. Other wise they are all men, they can just sit and shout into a mic cos no one wants to see them grope each other- it's gay.

It's also why a producer will tell Tae to find a female to sing a part he wrote for Jimin on his personal song- it wasn't because a female voice was required for the song but simply unconventional for two men to sing a duet of that kind.

That's heteronormativity not queer cleansing.

A cleanse is an intentional act meant to please an audience, to calm their wrath and to portray conformity to the desires of the masses.

Heteronormativity is unconscious biases and decisions that are meaningless in themselves and are done not just to please but for the sheer reason that that is what we know and have come to accept as the norm.

I guess the difference is, did Jungkook have a choice other than choosing a female character for the role? No. To choose a male character for such a role would be so political and revolutionary because it would be going outside the norm.

Having a female lead is just a trend. For straight people, if they want to be "political" they often cast the real object of their affections and discard the paid models and artists. JB did that with his wife and uhm- what's the name of the dude who said his lungs under water but was breathing fire?

Queer cleansing is not just about heteronormativity. Promoting and using women as leads is not necessarily a cleanse.

It's heteronormative because whether he is in Korea or not, whether his country is conservative or not, whether he is gay or not, he would have casted a female as lead because it is expected and normalized.

I mean, why else would they have casted female leads for their mv way back when they were starting out, as young as they were, as young as he was?

Why else would he date a girl when he had no feelings whatsoever for her.

Why else were they made to pick up girls and demonstrate how they would ask a girl out or kiss a girl as entertainment disregarding the fact not all of them might have been into girls.

Let me leave you with this imagery:

Heteronormativity, like right handedness, or able bodiedness is the default setting of society. Manufacturers create products build cars, roads on the assumption that every one is right handed able-bodied straight individual and every thing in society is made to cater to this group bu default.

So sometimes when people create products to cater to the audience we can't say they are making revolutionary statements or even deliberately being discriminatory- they doing so simply because it's how things are done.

Jungkook might simply film an MV that way because that's how things are done in the industry.

I hope in the future he realizes this challenge and goes out of his way to challenge it not because he is queer but because he desires to bring change and uniqueness into the world.

And you are right. There are so many instances of hybe cleaning up his image or putting him through queer cleansing- I just don't think the MV is one of those.

Like I said, even his own fans try to queer cleanse his image by cooking up straight rumors and attacking people to try to suppress and disassociate him from any queer narrative.

And it's a cleanse because they do this with the understanding that portraying him as queer is harmful to his image or reputation or even a threat to his commercial success such as them tearing down his banners and even banning BTS in certain places because they seem "gay" smh

[dailyadventureprompts]

The Daily Adventure Prompts Masterpost

After several years of running this blog, it’s become more and more evident that I need some central reference where people can access all my different DM advice posts, important tags, and ongoing series. Sharing my ideas with people and helping to improve the art and craft of being a dungeonmaster was always the point of DAP after all, and its of no help to anyone if the answers to important questions are buried under a hundred or more pages of my rambling.

To that end, I present this post as an ever expanding catalogue of my thoughts. Something that you can page through at your leisure in hopes some of my hardwon lessons will be of use to you.  

DM Advice: The go-to tag for all my rambling on how to improve your d&d game, with some highlights presented here,

My Process

Getting Organized

Basics of Campaign writing

Railroading & Rollercoasters

The “more than you can chew” universal d&d story structure

Ghosts on the Horizon: not getting bogged down with overplanning

Mapmaking 101

Writer’s Block

Better Random Encounters

Better Loredumps and Exposition

Writing Adventures to Make your party care about your world

Series of Interest

The DM Starterpack: Focused on first timers or those who want to re-learn d&d from the ground up this series of posts is intended to give you an idea how to come up with a campaign concept, write a first adventure, run a session zero, and slowly pivot into running a larger campaign.

Tableskills: While a lot of my work focuses on how you can write better stories, these posts talk about being a better storyteller focusing in on the performance art of DMing.

Mechanics: On the flipside, sometimes you need to put on your game designer hat and focus in on ways to make the underlying engine of the game run more smoothly to better facilitate fun and storytelling.

How to Run...: there are certain types of adventure that need more thought put into them then the average monsterhunt or dungeon delve, and so I wrote a series of articles to not only help you write/design them but to pull them off at your table.

Wilderness Exploration

Heists

Naval Combat

Infiltrating a fancy party

Mystery

Airship Adventures

Political Intrigue

Mythology style epic labours

The Loot Overhaul: A series of posts where I focus in on different aspects of d&d’s treasure and item

An overhaul to player wealth & The Economy

Better Loot & Treasure Hoard generation

A case for magic item shops & Item focused treasure hauls

Shopping trips & Group Inventory Management

Making Identifying & Attuning to Items interesting

Crafting Overhaul pt 1: Weapons & Armour

Crafting Overhaul pt 2: Magic & Consumables

Monsters Reimagined: My ongoing delve into d&d’s bad monster lore and how it can be improved. Sometimes it’s because a cool monster is just underwritten, sometimes its because how they’re used in the narrative just doesn’t make sense, sometimes its because there’s decades or even centuries old pro-genocide talking points that we need to unpack.

Footnotes on Foes: For those topics that don’t warrant a full “monsters reimagined” but I still want to give my take on. Fun stuff in there, especially with lesser known monsters that could use a revamp.  

Heavy Topics: Where I deepdrive on the nuance of particular topics, ranging from uncomfortable touchstones in history that are important to my writing to sensitive subjects that you’ll want to discuss with others around your table.

Bad Opinions: Sometimes a take so awful lands in my inbox that I need to hold it up infront of my audience and perform a vivisection. Its part media study, part bloodsport.

Dungeon Design: An attempt to do what the creators of the game have put off for decades (despite being half of the title) and actually provide a coherent framework for step by step dungeon design. After nearly twenty years of banging my head against a wall, it finally seems to have worked.

Planescape: Where I try to add cool new (or revamped) destinations to the tapestry of d&d’s multiverse.

Special mention to “Why I don’t use the Great Wheel Cosmology” as it underscores a lot of my overall problems with d&d’s cosmic lore and its weird moralistic claims.

Deities: A collection of new/overhauled gods focusing on making them represent ideals that people would actually believe in as an embodiment of ideals and narrative themes.

How to use the divine in your game: a story first view of how to use faith, religion, and gods in your campaigns aiming for things more subtle and thematic.

Outer Gods: For when you want to get lovecraftian

Religion is the tag I use to talk about the concept of both faith as a theme in writing, as well as how the organized religion serves as a worldbuilding tool

Adventures by Type: not a comprehensive list

Press Start: Opening adventures for those who want a solid start for future campaigns or adventures

Campaigns: For those who’d like a larger story framework to play with

Adventure Compendium: If you’d like a lot of ideas on the same theme

Dungeon: Need I say More?

Monsterhunt: Facing off against a powerful enemy that has some tricks

Villain: In both Quantity and Quality

Player Home: Every party needs a place to rest their head

Ally: They’re here to help, usually

Patron: Benefactors of the shady and non shady verity

Mystery: Put your Sleuthing Hat on

Thief: Time to steal something

Faction: Larger groups the party can join

Adventures by Environment

Lowland

Swamp

Field

Desert

Wasteland

Highland

Cave

Mountain

Forest

Seaside

Ruin

Settlement

Village

Town

City

#DM advice #masterpost

[luxtout]

Flames Unveiled (Chapter 6- Surprise, Surprise?) Aegon II Targaryen X (Bastard Velaryon) Reader X Aemond Targaryen

Summary: After six years living away from Kings Landing, you and your family are summoned back, for reasons unknown. Your mother, Rhaenyra, has different plans for you. You swore to always protect your family, but at what cost?

Warning: References to / semi/sexual content (18+), injuries, cursing, drinking, fights, angst

Tagged: @faesspace

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

You had fallen into a routine. Each morning, Mara would rouse you with a bath, carefully select a dress for the day, and brush out your waves. Skipping breakfast had become the norm, replaced by leisurely visits to the library for a good book, followed by quiet moments spent beneath the Weirwood tree. As evening approached, you'd reluctantly return to your chamber, changing for supper. Family dinners were no longer a burden, especially since Aegon seldom attended. When he did, both of you kept your comments to a minimum.

"Y/N, you're unusually quiet today," Helaena remarked, a smile playing on her lips as her fingers traced through your hair. Your head rested on her lap, basking in the warmth of the sun.

"Everyone will be arriving within a week, and I just... I shouldn't complain. The Queen has worked hard for this to work," you sighed, lifting your head. "But sometimes it feels overwhelming."

Helaena offered a polite smile. "Let's not dwell on it. I have some news to share with you."

Shifting your weight, you lay on the ground, propped up on your elbows. "Go on."

Helaena hesitated, avoiding direct eye contact. "There is someone, someone whom I've grown to care deeply about."

You fought the urge to bite your lip, attempting to conceal your smile. "Are you going to tell me more about him?"

Helaena's hands slid over her face as she spoke, "He visits me in my chambers through the passageway. He is sweet and careful; he means a lot to me."

"That's very sweet," you replied with a smile, though your attention seemed divided. Your gaze wandered past Helaena to where Aemond and Aegon were engaged in conversation. Aegon appeared annoyed, while Aemond seemed content.

"I hear the invitations have reached all the way to Winterfell," Helaena attempted to change the subject, but you seemed lost in your thoughts, and her voice became a distant murmur.

Since the night of your excursion with Aegon, you had been trying to avoid being near him.

"Princess, have you woken yet?" Mara entered your bedchamber, her arms full of sheets. "Princess?"

Venturing further into the room, thinking you were still sleeping, she rounded the corner and discovered that you were not alone.

Your head rested on Aegon's chest, his head cocked to the side. His hand was wrapped around your waist, and your hand lay on his lap. Both of you were in your rags, now stained with red wine.

"Oh, Gods," Mara whispered, loud enough to startle both of you. You pushed off Aegon first, your body trembling as your handmaiden's eyes never left yours.

"Mara!" you stammered, attempting to roll to your feet, while Aegon sat there in silence. His eyes were dark as he stared at the ground, shame filling him up. "Mara, just... Give me—give us—a moment."

Mara, red-faced, nodded before exiting to the front room. Aegon stood up slowly, his legs shaking underneath his weight. You tried to help him, but he slapped your hands away. "Don't touch me."

"Y/N? Did you hear me?" Helaena waved her hand in front of your face.

"Hm? Oh, yes, I'm sorry." You smiled, resting back against the tree as you listened to Helaena hum.

"Good morning, sister, niece." The voice startled you and halted Helaena's singing. Aemond peered over you, his hands clasped behind his back, his boots tapping at your shoes.

"Good morning, Aemond," Helaena smiled, her eyes going to yours as you repeated the phrase.

He rocked on his heels before he spoke, "Y/N, would you accompany me in flying?"

Your eyes quickly fell to Helaena; her smile dropped but nodded to you, "Okay."

Confusion clouded your head as you lifted from your spot from under the tree. He escorted you towards the front of the Keep, where a carriage already awaited you both. You and Aemond had been in close confines in the weeks previous; most days you both sat and did nothing until he had training or if the Septa tried to get you to do your needlework. You did not mind his company but found it odd as he was so formal in asking you to fly.

"Would you not like to change into your riding leathers?" Aemond spoke up from behind you; his voice was laced with intrigue.

"I never liked this dress anyway; I do not wish to waste any more of this brilliant day," you sighed, turning to face Aemond as he guided you to the carriage. "Why such a formal invitation to fly? Did you want to lose in another race?

Aemond snickered, "Can I not fly with someone's company?"

"You have a brother and sister; they both have dragons, do they not?" You rolled your eyes, taking your place on the cushioned seat.

"They do, though Helaena never likes to take the sky, and Aegon is never sober enough to even mount his dragon." Aemond sat across from you, your head tilted back as the carriage took off.

The silence in the carriage was deafening, the sound of rocks crunching underneath the wooden wheels jostled the carriage side to side, causing your stomach to turn.

You took notice of Aemond watching as you shifted in your seat, "I never liked riding carriages. Even as a child, I would protest every trip to the Kingswood. If I could fly on dragon back everywhere, I would."

Aemond smirked, watching as you fidgeted with your dress. He hummed, "As would anyone if they knew how to fly."

You huffed, waiting for the carriage to stop, the sound of dragon cries echoing around. "This will be my last flight for the next couple of days. My mother says if I fly, I could bruise or get hurt. I might as well make the most of it."

Aemond hummed, "Then I shall try and make the most of it for you."

The carriage stopped, and Aemond stepped out first, extending a hand to you, which you happily took. You bunched your skirts as you walked down, the sound of the dragon songs echoing.

Lyrax wandered out, rushing to you and rubbing his scaly head against your body like a pup, "Gīda, Lyrax. Calm."

Aemond was already climbing Vhagar, the roar shaking the ground you stood on. You bunched your dress at the knees, ready to climb, as a guard tried to protest, "Princess, it does not seem safe if you..."

"Ser, I will be just fine. Lyrax will be sure of it." You huffed, finally making it to the saddle. "If it makes you feel any better, I will return in a few hours."

Vhagar went up in the air, and Lyrax was eager to follow, "Princess." The guard protested, but to no avail, Lyrax lifted up as you chased after Aemond.

The weather was favorable, the wind strong enough for soaring but not too much to stay in the air for long. No clouds were in sight, but the sun was warm and welcoming. It did not take long to reach Vhagar, as he soared over the skyline.

"Se jelmio iksos beneficial syt nykeā race, lo ao sīr agree." You jested, grabbing the reins slightly, waiting for a response. The weather is beneficial for a race, if you so agree,

"Olvie." Very, Aemond nodded, lifting slightly from his seat as Vhagar dipped lower. You quickly followed as you flew underneath the giant. Lyrax loved the challenge, rolling around the wings to ride over the top. Your skirts hugged your legs as the rapid winds hit you, your hair a mess, yet you did not care. From your point of view, you were winning the race. The Keep was ahead of you as you quickly turned a sharp right, Vhagar took a sharp left, barely missing a pillar with his tail.

The Keep looked so small from where you were; the Weirwood was like a red dot in the center of the courtyard, and the people looked like ants. You felt as though you were a god, flying above others as they looked up to you. Vhagar's roar interrupted your thoughts as she rounded the Keep, and both of you met in the middle.

"You seem as though you do not wish to win a race, Aemond. I beat you around the Keep; where next?"

Aemond's eye grew dark as you challenged him again, racing to the farthest rock formation in the Blackwater, then back to the Keep, and finally, after hours of flying, back to the dragon pit. The flight to the pit was calm, no race, just gliding in the air. The sun was overhead, and you enjoyed how the warmth felt against your skin. That was before Vhagar flew over the top, shadowing you from the sun.

"Thank you, uncle. Today was as grand as it could be," you yelled, unable to tell if Aemond heard you.

"Of course, niece. Maybe next time you take the air, you will win more than one race," Aemond yelled back. His joke made your face turn red.

"Fucking twat," you muttered, lowering Lyrax so he could land safely. Lyrax was a dragon who hated goodbyes. Once you slowly dismounted your dragon, trying not to rip your skirts as you jumped to the ground, Lyrax cooed one last time before running inside the pit.

Vhagar followed after, and Aemond rubbed his wrist as he walked to you. "That means you pulled too hard; the pain in your wrist."

Aemond looked past your head, "Is that so?"

"It is. Your dragon should serve you, and if it does, it should be easy to command," you simply spoke, walking side by side to the carriage. Aemond nodded, helping you into the carriage before shutting the door behind himself, taking the spot next to you.

"Are you nervous for the week coming?" he asked; his voice did not show any concern.

"Not exactly," you lied. You were terrified; flocks of people would come to Kings Landing for you.

"Good, then these next few days will go by without any notice," he smirked to himself, his hand rested on his knee as he bounced it up and down as the carriage started to roll.

Your mind went to the night he had dinner with you in your room, how he was so silent as he caressed your face, just to leave without a second thought. You were perplexed by the behavior; in truth, you were confused by your own feelings.

"Aemond, why did you come to dine with me that one evening?" you clutched your skirts.

Aemond cocked his head, locking his jaw, not uttering a word.

"Aemond, I..." your voice trailed as you noticed him shift his weight to face you, his eye went to yours, his finger wrapped itself around your pinkie, "Um, I..."

Heat flushed to your cheeks as you lost all words; your mouth was agape, like a fish gasping for air. His hand slowly crept up your arm, leaving a trail of gooseflesh before his hand stopped at your jaw. You felt the familiar pit in your stomach as he rubbed his thumb over your lips slowly.

The air in the carriage was sucked out, and you sat frozen as he closed the distance but stopped a hair away from your lips, "If I do not have time in these next few days, I shall give my gift to you now."

You let out a shallow breath before his lips merged with yours. The slow movements dragged you from your thoughts as you kissed him back. His lips were soft against yours, something that you would've never thought of. Your hands released your skirts as Aemond's hand slid past your cheek to behind your neck, deepening the kiss ever so slightly. With his free hand, he squeezed at your thigh, the cloth blocked the feeling of his flesh on yours.

His hand squeezed harder, causing you to release a gasp; his tongue slowly slid into your mouth, dancing with yours. You both pulled apart, and your body vibrated with nerves as he looked down at you, kissing the corners of your mouth, then down to your jaw.

"Aemond..." You moaned softly; the feeling of his lips pressing against the sweet spot of your neck nearly caused you to come undone right there. His hand on your thigh inched up, and you clenched your thighs as you felt wetness between them. Aemond kissed your neck all the way to your shoulder; he removed his hand from the nape of your neck, placing it around your waist, pulling you closer.

You were a mess, but you felt no other feeling than lust. The way his hands roamed your clothed body sent a jolt down your spine. You leaned into the kisses once more, but the feeling of him engulfing your neck into his mouth brought you back to reality.

"Aemond!" You shoved him off you, panting, "You cannot mark me, I... I..." You were a stuttering mess as you clenched your legs together. Aemond was silently nodding as he watched you try to fix yourself as the carriage rolled to a stop.

Your legs wobbled as you took your first step out of the carriage; your anxiety reached its peak as you watched Aemond depart from the carriage and head to the training yard. His eye sent shivers down your spine as you went into the walls of the Keep.

Once you entered your room, you pressed your body against the door. Your heart raced as the feeling washed over you again; you wanted him to hold you, to kiss you, to...

"No..." You ran to the mirror, examining your neck, only to find a small bruise, "No... Seven hells."

The door clicked open as Mara carried a pitcher of water, "Oh Princess! I did not know you were back so soon; shall I draw you a bath?"

You tried to avoid eye contact, nodding, "Yes, Mara. Please."

She started to warm water over the fire, then placed it into the tub. You silently watched from your vanity chair, the feeling of Aemond's hands roaming your body still left gooseflesh all over.

"Princess," Mara startled you, "The water is ready."

Mara helped you strip and get into the tub; you tried your best to hide your neck. As you sunk into the hot water, Mara quickly poured water over your hair, the smell of dragon rinsed into the water. Mara's hands worked at your scalp; the soap cleansed your body, finally allowing yourself to close your eyes and relax.

"Princess?" Mara's voice jolted you awake, your eyes cracked open. Her hand rested on your shoulder, "Are you alright?"

"Yes, Mara." You hummed, rising from the water, which had been tempered. Mara wrapped a towel around your body, "Mara, inform my mother I will take my dinner in my chamber."

Mara stood hesitantly before nodding and leaving the room. The room was dimly lit, the sun slowly lowered, leaving a beautiful pink and purple hue over the sky. You dressed in a simple nightgown, light blue and lightweight, combing through your waves as you listened to the distant sounds of music playing.

A servant came and went, leaving your lone plate of pork and potatoes on the table, next to a pitcher full of wine. On a beautiful night like tonight, you did not mind dining alone. You piled the fork into your mouth as you read a story you borrowed from the library; the print was very faint, and you had to reread some passages.

A low growl from a door opening pulled you from your book. You hummed as you marked the page you were on, "The hour is late."

"It is." The voice echoed from the back of your room; your eyes rolled as the figure came into your candlelight.

"Aegon, I thought you detested me from the last time you were here." You leaned back in your chair; the wine made you bolder.

Aegon stalked closer, "You were not at supper."

You stifled a laugh, "You have missed several, uncle. I have yet to shed a tear. Why is it you come to my chambers at this hour?"

Aegon did not speak; he watched your relaxed movements as he neared the table, pulling a chair up and helping himself to your wine. He did not notice your scowl as he polished off his first drink, going in for a second.

"My brother-"

"What of your brother?" You asked, rather too quickly. Aegon seemed taken aback as he scrunched his face.

"My brother," he started, waiting for your interruption, which never came, "He mentioned that you had some worry about the affairs for the coming week."

Aegon's eyes traced your face for an answer, slowly going to your neck, causing you to brush your hair over your shoulder. "There is no worry, so you both are misinformed. I shall have lords come from far for me, ladies of the realm could only dream to be in my position."

Aegon smirked slightly, "Then you do not wish to go to Flea Bottom one last time?"

Your body froze as you eyed your uncle; he drank his glass, reaching for another. "You don't expect me to believe you to be trustworthy, uncle?"

"I would not expect you to think I was. Truth is I can tolerate you when I am... well, drinking." Aegon downed his last glass before standing up, "Shall I wait any longer, or shall I go alone?"

You contemplated not going; you wanted to relax and drink wine, reading your book. However, you were drunk, and there was no talking yourself out of going.

You lifted from your chair, a smile rising to your lips as you frantically searched for the commoner clothes. Mara had washed them and laid them aside per your request, though she did not question why.

Finally, you searched under your bed and found the shirt and pants, quickly rushing to an enclosed area before stripping from your gown. Dressing was challenging as you stumbled slightly, jumping in the air to get your pants on in one go. Your shirt hung awkwardly as you tucked it into your pants, trying to tie the strings, but your fingers fumbled. Quickly lacing your boots, you stumbled to find Aegon leaning against the passageway.

"Quite finished?" He sighed, pushing the door open. You both stumbled down the steps, both obviously tipsy from the wine. The sound of guards at the opening halted your movements, but Aegon grasped your arm and led you down so you could see the white cloaks on their backs.

Aegon searched the ground, picking up a broken piece of brick, aiming it across the walkway. The sound echoed with a loud bang, causing the guards to quickly run in that direction. His hand reached yours as you both ran down the steps into Flea Bottom.

A guard turned his head, noticing the two of you, soon chasing after. Aegon's head turned, noticing the gold cloak, he picked up his pace. The music pounded as you both weaved in and out of the crowds, occasionally checking behind your shoulder. Laughter left your lips as Aegon pulled you into a building, getting lost in the crowd of bodies.

"Do you... think he... saw us?" you panted, turning to face Aegon, who was equally exhausted. His hand went to your hair, causing you to notice you forgot the hat.

"Maybe he noticed you." His fingers worked at your silver locks, not disturbing the brown waves that cascaded behind you.

"Shit," you muttered, trying your hardest to conceal your hair, but it was too late, as Aegon led you through the building. "Where are we?"

Groups of people danced and sang, giving space as Aegon pushed himself between the crowds, his hand squeezing yours to make sure you were alright. He ignored your question, leading you deeper to a stage.

Flutes and light drums played as the people on the stage danced slowly and theatrically. Their bodies told a story, Aegon the Conqueror's story. Two ladies danced together, their nude bodies weaving between their fingertips. In the middle of the stage was the old King, bare. He grasped the ladies by their hips, kissing one softly before moving to the other.

"Aegon, what is this place?" You were mesmerized by how they danced, different people joined, naked but with different paints etched from their heads to their toes.

"I come here sometimes when I do not wish to be at the Keep. It's some release from the suffocating politics that my mother and the rest of the small council wish to involve me in," Aegon clenched his jaw as he spoke, the words sounding bitter when he mentioned his mother.

The music silenced as the dancers posed after their act, allowing room for applause. You clapped as loud and as fast as you could, still entranced by how the dancers bent and arched around the props and other dancers. Aegon had enough of watching, pulling you away from the stage forcibly.

"Where are we going now?" you questioned, partially annoyed Aegon made you leave. The feeling of the night air hit your face as he led you outside and down an alleyway. The alley was narrow, the ground covered in dirt and food remains, an utter mess.

Only scarce bodies occupied the tight confines; men and women beckoned for you and Aegon to follow them, he hesitantly declined, tightening his hand around yours. The couples sneered as you walked past them, turning the corner to another building. This one was dimly lit; on one side was a stage, a man holding a lute, singing a somber song. On the opposite side, the barkeep argued with hagglers, waving his knife around, landing blows to a man who got too close.

Aegon walked you to the bar, raising his hand. "Two of your strongest ales!"

The barkeep, a man well older than your grandsire, his hair receding, only three hair strands covered his shiny head. His beard was a sprinkle of grey and white, due with age. His skin was leathery, lips crooked as he nodded, pouring two mugs and sliding them to both of you.

The lute started playing a jolly tune, everyone at the bar sang, and Aegon even tapped his foot to the beat of the old song. The ale had a bitter taste in your mouth after many hours of drinking wine. The song was of a knight who had fought in a war, only to come home to find his wife in bed with his old maid. It was an upbeat song for such a horrid story. Aegon abruptly stood up, following a woman with a large tray of alcohol.

You tipped the rim of your mug to your lips, sipping at the ale once more, listening to the song in contentment. A voice whispered beside you, "Is this your first time hearing a song like this?"

The man sitting beside you was near your age, maybe a year or two older. His hair was a mess of curly black, stopping at his shoulders, and his skin was fair, kissed with sun on his cheeks. He looked as if he did hard labor; his face had some scarring, which only intrigued you further.

"Yes, is it so obvious?" You smiled, "I rarely get to hear the music here."

The man hummed, "So you are not from here, I take it?"

You shook your hair, trying your best to make your appearance less known, "I presume not."

"Presume? You are highborn?" His grey eyes locked into your deep amethyst ones; your only hope was that they looked near black in this light. "May I buy you another drink?"

You looked at your mug, nearing the bottom, "Okay, I would like that."

He nodded, getting the barkeep's attention, "Brimsly, another for the lady."

The man nodded to him, pouring another ale and sliding it to your side. You finished your first mug, turning to your second, "Thank you."

"M'name is Gareth. Who might you be?"

You hesitated for a moment, "I do not wish to..."

Gareth drummed his hands against the table, "No problem with that, shall I give you a name? Perhaps little dove?"

The nickname made your cheeks flush, the way he whispered it in a seductive way made your heart sputter. It felt like when you were with Aemond, your stomach flipped as Gareth scooted closer. When he spoke to you, his beautiful eyes never left yours, as you both sank into your drinks. His crude jokes made you laugh in a way not fit for a lady, snorting, trying to catch your breath.

Gareth's presence was so welcoming, you nearly forgot about Aegon. Aegon, the man who left you for a tavern wench. "Excuse me, have you seen the man I came in with?"

He looked around before sipping his own ale, "I can't say I have. Normally, men go back there if they want to..."

You slammed your ale to the table; annoyance filled your body, "How long do they normally... take?"

Gareth shrugged, "Depends on everyone, how drunk they are. Could be two minutes or two hours."

Blood flushed to your ears; Aegon brought you down here as a final taste of freedom, but he is engaging in a liaison in the back rooms while you sit idly at the bar. He was supposed to make sure you were safe, make sure no one took advantage of you. You hated him, hated how he just abandoned you, so you're going to make him pay. You are a woman grown and can make decisions without him.

"So, what do you do, Gareth?" Your eyes danced from him to the backroom door.

Gareth smiled, "I am a blacksmith. I travel the Seven Kingdoms; I never stay in one place for long."

You downed your ale, "So, you will be leaving King's Landing soon?"

He laughed, raising his hand for another ale. "Aye, I will. Though, that tourney in the Princess' honor will hold me here for the week coming." You could not help but feel a weight leave your chest when he spoke, and he noticed your smile widen.

"Yes, the tourney..." You felt your lips dry, Gareth noticed, pushing the ale toward you.

He moved closer, his hand rested on your knee, "You know, little dove, you are a very beautiful creature."

You stifled a laugh, "Creature. If that is your way of flirting, you've done a brilliant job."

Gareth laughed with you, "Now, that is not what I meant, and you know it."

You held your stomach as you snorted for air; your free hand found Gareth's, the room spun due to the abundance of drinks. For a split moment, you didn't realize Gareth's hand move upward as he leaned closer. Your eyes pulled to the figure behind him, his eyes darkened and his hair a mess.

"Aegon?"

His hands gripped Gareth's shoulders, Aegon's unhinged anger shocked you as he punched Gareth repeatedly in the face. You stood frozen, jumping to your feet, watching the blood spew from Gareth's lips and nose; the women in the room shrieked and ran, and the men backed up, watching.

You weakly ran to Aegon, trying to pull his arm back, but he shoved you off; Gareth laid there taking the punches. Aegon hovered over him, "Touch her again, I'll take your hands."

Gareth spat blood in Aegon's face, but that didn't faze him. He shot up and wrapped his hand around your forearm, his grip was harsh. The old man behind the bar demanded you both leave and never come back, and you both did not object.

Aegon was unnaturally quiet, and you feared for your life. His blood-stained hands bloodied your shirt as he walked you around the corner to an alleyway. His hand let go of your forearm and moved to your hair, slamming you back to look at him. "What is your fucking problem?"

"My problem?" You countered, but his grip on your hair tightened. His hands pried at his, trying to release yourself.

"Yes, your problem. You're just like your mother, a whore. Opening your legs to whoever comes to you." His face was so close to yours; you flinched as he spoke.

"It was not like that! We were just talking." He released your hair abruptly, placing his hands on either side of your face.

You were embarrassed, and Aegon did not ease your upset. His eyes followed your lips to your neck, "Was that what that was?"

You realized he was looking at the small bruise on your neck, "Yes. That was all."

His thumb brushed against it; his anger turned to something else. The blood on his hands was still wet, it smeared against your skin as his hand remained on your neck.

"My brother, he told me of his... devotion towards you. Everyone noticed how close you two have been, and I know how my brother is after he bedded a woman." His voice was filled with accusation. A lump formed in your throat as he finished speaking, waiting for you to deny it.

"He did not bed me," You countered, "If you do not believe me, best leave it be."

Aegon stood still for a moment; his hand moved from your neck. You both stood in agonizing silence until Aegon spoke up, "Shall we go back?"

His hands withdrew from your body, but he still kept you within arms reach. You silently walked ahead of him, knowing that if you spoke, it would lead to harsh words, and you wanted the constant conflict with Aegon to end.

In the distance, screams echoed to your ears. One scream turned to multiple as the merchants and traders of Flea Bottom stampeded into the tiny alleyway, the Night's Watch behind them.

"Y/N!" Aegon quickly grabbed your arm, whipping you around to start running away from them. He pushed you further as the crowd closed in. You quickly sobered up, running as fast as your legs could take you, turning your shoulder every couple of seconds. You weaved through the streets and alleys, trying to make sure Aegon was close behind, but the crowd rushed on, more people fled into the streets.

You could see the Keep in the distance; it was so close, but you felt as if your legs were about to give out. You quickly turned left, running down an empty alley, alongside the crowd, turning right, you were near the giant steps to go back into the Keep.

"Aegon, we're almost there," you turned to smile at your uncle, but he was gone. "Aegon?"

The yells escalated in the streets as you staggered back, trying to find your uncle. Your voice got lost in the cries of women and men getting struck; before you could rush away from the stairs, rough hands grabbed you.

"Ao issi beri nyke istan se mēre naejot find ao." Daemon whipped you around; your struggle stood no match, his grip tightening. You are lucky I was the one to find you.

“Daemon, Ivestragī issa jikagon. Aegon iksos-" You halted your words as Darmon hissed, a sinister laugh before dragging you up the stairs and into the Keep. Let me go. Aegon is...

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰∙∘

A/N: Okay it is finally out! Writing this chapter was the most stressful thing. With writer's block, it not saving so I had to rewrite, it was A LOT. I hope you enjoy, and I will try to keep the flow going.

#aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii targaryen #house of the dragon #aemond targaryen #aemond x reader #jacaerys velaryon #lucaerys velaryon #rhaenyra targaryen #alicent hightower #game of throne #daemon targaryen #slow burn #aegon x you #helaena targaryen #aemond x you #enemies to lovers #house targaryen #house velaryon

[rmoonstoner]

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Poisoned Empanadas

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Pairing:

Moon Knight (Jake Lockley) x Spider!fem!reader

Spider-Man 2099 (Miguel O'Hara) x Spider!fem!reader

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Warnings:

18+, violence, strong language, mentions of death, mentions of depression, sexual themes, volatile emotions, part 2 of the sex dream, dats a big boi

***

Summary:

This one is a little different. It's a recounting of the first chapters, but from Miguel's point of view. When the reader is referred to, it will be with she/her pronouns, not you. It's going to be shorter, because I want it to fit the chapter sizes I have picked.

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Chapter 4 - B - Fast food dessert type Empanadas

These are the most commonly marketed Empanadas in the food industry. Many famous chains have their own versions of these sweet and delicious pastries. Chains like Taco Bell and McDonald's. (Yes, I know that McDonald's version is technically a pie, but to me it's literally the same thing in a rectangle, with venting slits. This is not a plug for McDonald's, I just happened to be really fucking high on edibles and eating a McDonald's pie at the time of writing this. I added Taco Bell as an afterthought. I wanted one from Taco Bell, but our location vanished mysteriously in the middle of the night a few months back.)

***

Miguel was tired and grumpy. His life up until now had be hard, and the most recent hand had him almost folding entirely.

First he had been screwed over by his boss and was tricked into being hooked on a designer drug. Next, his fiance had cheated on him with said boss. And finally, his boss had forced him into doing research and tests on a subject he didn't want to do or agreed with.

Sure the subject had originally been his own choice, but his employer thought it necessary to make certain changes to what Miguel was doing. They all added up, and eventually Miguel began to hate his work with a passion, as it wasn't his anymore. He also hated his dependency on the drug.

Then to add insult to injury, his boss changed something in his current test setup, which was working in a cure for himself, didn't tell Miguel, then when Miguel ran the experiment, he ended up being pricked by something. In his panic to fix his mistake, he hadn't seen what had pricked him.

It was an alarmingly large vial of volatile Spider DNA, and it worked quickly to change Miguel's body and his very chemical makeup. It caused him to become sicker than when he was withdrawing, yet his boss still forced him into coming into work the next day, with barely any check up on the accident. In fact, his boss was actively trying to cover it up, and offered a bribe in return to keep his mouth shut.

But Miguel wasn't going to take that bribe. He wanted to blow the whistle and make his boss pay for everything he had done to him. He thought better of those plans, and decided to politely decline the offer with not much of a fuss.

Miguel didn't think his boss would take things further after he refused.

Unfortunately he was very wrong.

He was set up yet again to fail. The next experiment he conducted, one he chose and wanted to do, had somehow failed spectacularly. He suspected it was on purpose, and Lyla had informed him it was.

Just like his boss had planned.

Miguel didn't have time to ponder on the incident. He had been violently ripped from one dimension to another in a failed experiment. An experiment that he was conducting to try and rid himself of a previous condition he had acquired in the last test.

A massive explosion ripped through the lab he was in. It happened just seconds after getting into the chair to have the robotic assistant to inject him with a serum to reverse the Spider DNA infusion.

Well, needless to say, that didn't happen.

Shit hit the fan.

Red lights and warning buzzers went off. The meters were off of the charts, breaking the indicator needles in the process. Miguel had been caught in the blast and sent flying through the wall into another part of the lab. He ended up hitting a machine that held a casing of some sort of unstable material, and then he had blacked out.

***

When Miguel awoke, it was to the sound of birds chirping. More sounds of a bustling city started to bleed through. Cars, horns, chatter, footsteps, heavy machinery…

He was confused that it was dark, as it had been daylight when he started the experiment. Mid-morning to be exact.

His whole body hurt. Muscles ached, and a lot of his skin had been bruised and cut, but it wasn't as bad as it should have been. He felt sick and after emptying his stomach and he tried to figure out where he was, and why no one had come for him all day…

Until he realized where and when he was.

***

That day sucked. Miguel was lucky enough to have his watch, and subsequently his AI assistant, survive the explosion and sudden displacement. Lyla was able to worm her way into the primitive internet networks, and with a little tweaking, she made up a basic identification system for Miguel. By doing this, she unlocked a simple bank account for him and managed to syphon some funds into it. She even booked a prepaid mid-range hotel in the bad end of town to keep him busy.

He had a long shower the first day, did a bunch of research on the current time period and the customs. Laws, and basic things one would need to know if hurled back in time some fifty plus years, and then he slept for a long time.

***

The second day of the second week, he noticed he had a gnarly beard starting to happen. He didn't enjoy the scruff, which grew so much faster now than it used to, and he needed a change. Miguel went shopping and bought a razor and some scissors, along with some basic supplies to enjoy during his stay here.

He went home and cut his hair with Lyla's guidance and shaved. He went on to do more research on the local area, with Lyla compiling files on the local heroes, starting with the most well known first. The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Vision, Hawkeye, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and every Spider-Folk there was.

Miguel found himself spending a lot of time on those ones, particularly the light Spider. He told himself it was because she had weirdly specific light related powers, and not the fact he really digged the way her outfit looked and hugged every curve.

His research led him to the more mythical or cosmic members, like Thor, The Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange, Master Wong, Captain Marvel, and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

He was amazed at just how many there were.

Then he went on to the lesser known ones. He went through a large list, and found a few that seemed quite absurd to him. One of them appeared to be a pack of ever changing and roaming knights that claimed to be the fists of Khonshu. Some of the sources he read into lead him to believe they were the same person with some sort of fashion crisis.

That one left a sour taste in Miguel's mouth and he had no idea why. He just didn't like them. How could he, when the knights left a brutal trail of blood and gore behind them wherever they went. Apparently there was a whole reddit thread dedicated to these lunatics. Miguel was suspicious that these weren't different people, and merely just one man running amok like a crazed Mr. DressUp.

The guy that was in a white tailored suit, he was reasonable, passive, and tried to talk his way out of situations. He still beat the shit out of people, but only when provoked. He also talked non-stop, and had a British accent.

The one in the scraggly ancient looking robes and bandages, he was quiet and well calculated. He had a purpose, and he would do his tasks with barely a word. He was fond of violence, and had no issues causing major bodily harm to people. He would only kill if it was necessary. When he did talk, his voice was a rough American accent.

But then the third outfit just looked exactly the same as the first one, but in a dark smokey grey. Everything was the same, but reversed. The stitching on the mask was on the other side, pocket square was on the left and not the right. He was the most violent of the three, being the only one to gleefully kill their targets while cracking lame jokes and roasting them relentlessly. He would use improvised weapons, firearms and knives, and he spoke fluent Spanish.

Miguel got lost down a rabbit hole concerning these guys. There were theories it was really three guys that worked as a team, but others recounted how they had witnessed one of them literally change his suit in the blink of an eye with the aid of some sort of magic.

Those stories were concerning to hear. That there was some madman out there fighting crime with magic, and murdering people without much consequence in the name of some ancient God. The problem was that the authorities thought there were three separate individuals, so nothing could really be done if they couldn't be caught.

Miguel spent the rest of that week researching and compiling the largest folder of data on these people as he could get.

***

In the beginning of the third week, he happened to be watching television in the sub par motel. It was a rerun of the Captain America musical, and Miguel was floored with how bad the whole thing looked. None of the characters looked like any of the heros he had seen in the paper. Just twenty minutes in, he was about to change the channel, when a Daily Bugle news bulletin came across the screen.

LOCAL SPIDER MENACE CAUSES A RAMPAGE WITH THE RHINO, AGAIN!!!

Miguel was confused at first, but as the television showed a bird's eye view of the aftermath of a warehouse that had collapsed, he found himself sitting on the edge of his seat. The camera panned to a major highway, with cars stopped all over the road and people running and screaming.

There was Spider-Man running after the Rhino down the road, and the Rhino appeared to be chasing another Spider-Man. The camera zoomed in, and Miguel was surprised to see it wasn't a man, but a woman in a black space patterned suit. She was making bubbles and disks of light appear, then jumping onto them, or using her webs on them to get away.

He was intrigued as the camera got closer. By now he figured it was a drone that was flying about covering this story. He could see how fast the space Spider was, and how she was purposely slowing down for the rampaging man to catch up to her. Every so often, she would let the angry man get so close, it almost appeared like she was either really good at her job, or like she was playing with death and hoping to get gored.

She would even toss out a snarky and sassy line at him, just to make him angrier and lash out. Apparently she was quite good at pissing off the villains and goading them into chasing her down.

***

For the next few days Miguel went out and about in his street clothing. Miguel was making note of important landmarks around the city. He scoped out Stark Tower, the Sanctum, the Daily Bugle, local laboratories and other such places. He took a look around the problem areas with high crime rates, and then he checked out the better neighbourhoods. He did it all by foot and it helped Lyla keep track of everything.

Miguel was so focused on these hot spots, that he never bothered to look up local restaurants or food places. He had gotten used to just going to the local corner store for all of his needs. It was usually mass amounts of junk food, soda water, and a couple of new drinks he had found, Mountain Dew and Monster energy drinks.

The Mountain Dew soda brand had all sorts of weird flavors. Miguel wasn't very fond of the original green one, but he very much enjoyed the ones from the cultural foods import section. His favorite was Baja Blast and Goji Citrus Strawberry. 

And the Monsters! Holy shock! They were delicious! Miguel ended up buying every flavor they had. He drank two right away, both being some sort of fruit punch flavor, he wasn't sure. He had the urge to go on a run, and he was out there for four hours, before he realized how hungry he was.

That's when he also discovered how insanely good pizza pockets and Heluva Good dip were. He spent the day working out and binge eating, much to Lyla's dismay.

***

On the seventh day of the third week, he was looking at clothing at a main street vendor, an energy drink in his hand, and he was making fun of a bootleg Spider-Man costume.

"This looks so awful. It looks nothing like the local Spiders. None of them."

"Miguel, it's a bootleg. It doesn't have an official merchandise tag on it." Lyla piped up and Miguel laughed.

"It's still shocking awful-"

"Help me! Please!"

A loud scream rang out from behind. Miguel looked over and saw a woman that was being hauled away from her car towards the alleyway. Miguel looked back at the tacky outfit and snatched it from the shelf without a single thought.

Within moments he had hidden his clothes behind a dumpster and had changed, before dashing off to help the woman. Somehow he was still carrying his half empty can of Monster. He grumbled about the tightness of the costume and how uncomfortable it was in all the wrong places.

"Maybe you should have taken the extra second to grab an adult size." Lyla snickered at him as he approached the suspect.

The suspect was surprised to see a large man in a very ill fitting and cheap spandex costume, and he shoved the woman at Miguel. Miguel caught her and apologized, then he leapt after the man on all fours. He caught up to him, and threw his can at the man. It missed, but the contents exploded all over the suspect. Miguel caught up to him while he was wiping his eyes and cursing, only to be flipped into a dumpster for his efforts.

With his luck, he managed to end up in a particularly gross pile of trash, with most of it being rancid food waste. Miguel hissed and let out a string of angry and bitter Spanish as he spent the rest of the day tracking the guy down. It was easy, because the man now stunk of Sweet Tarts, which subsequently was what the energy drink smelled like to Miguel.

It was nightfall by the time he caught up to the bastard and boy was he tired. By then, it was way too easy to take him down and subdue him. It was right before Miguel had dealt a kick to the man, took the purse, and sent him flying into some trash cans when he heard and smelled someone else's presence.

Flowers.

He smelled flowers. That was a pleasant and easy to spot smell, since he was covered in gross sticky garbage juice and body sweat from the day.

Then he could hear a heartbeat and breathing, along with gasps and a shuffle of shoes on concrete. He peaked over his shoulder and saw a small dark bump on the railing, and he turned back just in time to avoid an attack from the man he thought he had knocked out. He incapacitated the criminal and then secured him with his webs. Once done, he turned and addressed the other person's presence, and to his surprise, it was a woman. A woman that promptly hid from him.

He couldn't help himself, so he jumped up to check her out and see what her deal was and why she was creeping around on a roof all by herself.

And boy was he ever glad that he did.

There she was, that pretty little light Spider in her sparkling night sky outfit.

It was such a weird event, and in the end, she ended up sharing her identity, accusing him of being her ex boyfriend, yelling at him, her deciding he wasn't her ex, apologizing, and then buying him some pizza.

They talked all night.

Well, up until he bailed on her once he saw he still had that lady's purse.

Well okay, it was really because he was getting far too comfortable with her far too quickly. She felt safe, warm, and welcoming… After she stopped yelling at him. That got his attention, if you know what I mean.

He had openly stared at her, his eyes drinking in the way her outfit clung tightly to her body. He enjoyed the shape of her face, and how her eyes shined like the night sky. He was especially fond of the way she seemed quite feisty and foul mouthed, even if she used terms he wasn't accustomed to.

He decided it was best to stay away, keep a low profile, and hope she assumed he had left.

But things didn't go as planned.

***

Miguel had exhausted all his options, with his only local answer being Stark Industries. He set a plan into motion to try and get Lyla to jack into the place so he could snag the information he needed to get himself back home.

While he made mental notes on how to go forward, he made his way back to his hotel, collecting his lost clothes and bag from before. He had a much needed shower to rid himself of the stink he had been marinating in all night, and put the costume into the sink to soak for a few hours while he slept. Lyla had promised him she would work on something to replace it.

***

His dreams didn't help him at all.

Miguel ended up in an acid trip copy of the city, and he was stuck wandering the rooftops endlessly. He noticed the costume he was wearing, actually fit him perfectly, and the design had changed drastically. It was nice, and he made a mental note to let Lyla know.

He had no idea what the point of the dream was, but he could tell that there were lights coming from an especially dark area of rooftops. It almost looked like an aurora borealis, but only over that one rooftop. The one that was the tallest.

He decided to make his way over. His movements were choppy and almost like he was missing chunks of the journey towards the roof, and it didn't seem like he was getting any closer at all. It also felt like he was moving at fifteen frames per second, and he did not like it at all.

A flash of grey caught his eye. It was moving quickly, much faster than he was, and it was fluid and graceful. It was hopping over the buildings faster than he could keep up. At first he thought it was a shadow, but the more he looked at the streak of grey, the more he began to see it was a man in a well tailored suit.

A suit that looked freakishly familiar.

Miguel suddenly sped up and went at a full run. Everything sped up to the way he liked it to be. He wanted to get closer and catch it, and as he kept the chase up, the man that was running away started to look more and more familiar. The closer he got, the more details he could see.

The man was wearing a mask that covered his entire head. When he looked back at Miguel, he appeared to not even acknowledge him, or perhaps he didn't see him. Maybe he did,  and just didn't care. Either way, Miguel followed him, noting that, he too, was going for the lights on the building.

A sudden thought hit him like a bullet. Miguel had webs! He raised his hand and shot at the building above him. When it connected, Miguel yanked himself up and over the man in the dark grey suit. The man scowled and shot him the finger.

Triumph filled him as he zipped past the guy and drew himself closer to the light. He was filled with pride at how well he was doing. He had to make a brief stop to kick off the side of the building in order to keep up this momentum, and that's where shit went sideways.

The moment he shot out another web, it was met with a glinting metal object and it was severed. He tried again, but the same thing happened. He got angry and turned to peer behind him, seeing the masked man literally moving over him and kicking him right in the face as he used his shoulders to leap upwards.

Miguel yelped as he fell. The top of the building flew away from him, sending the light far away. He tried to shoot out a life line, but he failed to snag anything.

Darkness was threatening to swallow him up, when he tried a final time to grasp any sort of surface to save himself. The last rope he flung out managed to hit something, and he used the sudden change in motion to send him upwards.

Miguel slammed hard against a concrete wall, his claws digging in easily, like a spade into dirt. He huffed and looked up, feeling like time had shifted forwards again. He couldn't see the other man at all.

"I miss you, you know. Every night I think about you. It helps to keep me going, knowing you'll be there when I get back." Miguel heard his own voice, twisted and not exactly right sounding.

He snarled and pulled himself up, almost violently as he climbed higher and higher, similar to an angry bear chasing its prey up to the top. In seconds he had pulled himself up to the edge and looked over. His eyes focused on what was there and he grit his teeth.

There, in that fucking asshole's lap, was the girl that had bought him pizza. The pretty light Spider that he'd been thinking too much about recently. She was quiet as the guy spoke to her while his hands were all over her, grabbing and pawing, and Miguel snarled to himself.

"Do you know why I call you, 'mi estrella'? I consider you like the sun, and myself the moon. You're so brilliant and warm, and your greatness shines so brightly. It reflects onto me, making me feel like my heart is full."

The words sent Miguel's gag reflex into overdrive and he almost barfed at how corny and cheesy the phrases were. He didn't like it one bit and he began to drag himself up and to a standing position. As he stood, his eyes processed how she was reacting. She seemed distant, even though she was letting the man touch her. The lack of a response from her was maddening.

Even in his dreams, the woman he had met didn't seem too thrilled about what was happening. He wasn't either.

Miguel moved quickly. The action was so fast, the other man didn't see it coming as if time had slowed right down for everyone, except for Miguel. Miguel lunged forward, grabbed the man by the lapels, and yeeted him straight off of the building, before sliding into his place under the Galaxy Spider.

Time sped up again, and she looked surprised to see him there. Surprised, but pleased. His mouth began to move, words spilling out as she squirmed in his lap.

"Don't think about him. His pretty words mean nothing when he keeps breaking your heart." 

"Miguel." Her voice sounded like liquid silk to his ears, and he couldn't stop himself from pushing her back and kissing her with need.

He remembered calling her beautiful, and then the rest was a wild and vivid fever dream. He had been desperate as he clawed at the fabric of her suit and ravaged every inch of her skin that was revealed. She seemed to enjoy being bitten and manhandled, while he enjoyed the way she thrashed, bit, and clawed at him in return.

She made him throb with desire, and he knew that he was hooked, when he probably should have minded his own business. He knew he couldn't leave any time soon.

He enjoyed her sitting in his lap. He enjoyed it even more when he pushed her onto her back and ground into her to the point he heard the building crack, and she begged him for more. He made her come so easily, and he couldn't fathom why. It wasn't like he was a virgin or anything, but he didn't think sex could be this…

Well, pornographic and mind blowing.

His favorite part of the dream, was when he webbed her hands, feet, and torso up, then proceeded to make a makeshift sex swing. She also seemed to very much enjoy the contraption, and he made use of it for every position change after.

That dream lasted an eerily long time, and when it was done, Miguel woke up feeling like he didn't rest at all, like he was really there, actually doing that for hours. He was hot, tired, and very sweaty and sticky.

And so were his sheets.

"Good morning, Miguel. I take it you had a very… Explicit and pleasant wet dream?" Lyla chirped up at him, effectively startling him.

"Shock! Don't scare me like that. And, uh, nooo…"

"You don't have to lie to me, Miguel O'Hara. Your heart rate and blood pressure skyrocketed, you were tossing and turning  and the final evidence, is that you had a seizure like reaction and-"

"Alright already! Yes! Yes, I had a wet dream. Ya happy?"

"Oooo, was it about the lady Spider?" Lyla asked, but Miguel didn't answer.

Note:

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Series Master List

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I decided in this story, that Jake's Moon Knight suit can be different and ever changing. He wears his comic book one we didn't get to see in the Moon Knight series, and a version of Steven's suit, but charcoal and black. You might remember it from the sex dream Y/N had in a previous chapter. He won't be using the other one much.

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Special thanks to:

Beta Reader:

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[bizantineempire]

So I have some thoughts on RWRB

If you divorce it from it's adaptation, it's a perfectly servicable film.

IDK how to say it but it was too polished? I guess? (Maybe that's book nerd for it doesn't look like how I imagined it IDK) it feels like an adaptation of a short film that got a bigger budget but it lost some of the heart of the original you know?

I should have expected it but it was a lot simpler than the book. other people have mentioned the things, June, Nora, Pez, Leo etc.

I did enjoy the way they did the texting at the beginning and I wished they carried that through with the emails later (although maybe they did and I wasn't paying enough attention?)

In this day and age of streaming there is no excuse for book adaptations to be simplified movies. Here's my reasoning: streaming platforms don't need to have time slots, so they can literally release a 3 episode miniseries or a 2 episode miniseries, or 2 movie length mini series or whatever. Black mirror does a bit of this where the different eps are different lengths and honestly, there should be more of it.

I liked some of the references to the book like the powerpoint presentation reference but it just made me want to see that.

I missed seeing Alexs drive and enthusiasm for politics. Look, I'm Australian, I couldn't give a rat's bum about american politics, but reading Alex give a shit about it was interesting and to see him kinda do a politics thing but also not really made me miss Book!Alex more.

I feel like the King being all "this could be fake" would have been a lot better if ALEX HADN'T JUST RELEASED A STATEMENT SAYING THEY WERE IN LOVE!

Stephen (Steven? Stephen.) Fry saying Homoseksual

Stephen Fry BEING a homophobe was funny A+ casting

The lake scene being in the day was weird. So Henry just turns away and is silent. And then he swims away and what, doesn't say a word to Alex for the rest of the evening? Does Alex ask him what's wrong? Why don't they talk about it? it makes more sense being in the middle of the night because he cracks a joke, changes the subject and goes to sleep. Alex is a little offput but he figures he can talk about it later if it's still a thing and then Henry's gone. Makes so much more sense.

Also (this also happens in the books) So Henry's "The Spare" but what about Bea? I'm p sure she's older than Henry, but younger than Philip. Doesn't that make HER the spare? He's just overkill at that point.

If they were going to cut out a sister imho they should have cut out Bea since they did her dirty anyway. Like if she's not going to have character anyway. June would be far more utilised.

One of the things I love about the book is that by the end Alex has a great friend group. I missed that in the movie.

Zahra was perfect.

I miss chaotic brains Nora

I have very few thoughts on the actual romance part. It was fine.

TF is Miguel

As a bisexual myself, I missed the bi panic.

Also Liam. He was great.

This has nothing to do with the movie but my cat is kneading right next to me.

Why was it rated R? It was sanitised the hell????

If you like the movie, if you love it that's great. I'm glad for you. For me I might have to sit and think about it for a bit before I rewatch it.

#red white and royal blue #rwrb #rwrb film #red white and royal blue film #spoilers #agcd #alex claremont diaz #firstprince

[whitehotharlots]

If you believe in nothing, you will achieve nothing

Andrea Long Chu has a problem. She and her acolytes presently enjoy dictatorial control over every discourse that falls to the left of Fox News. They have convinced the world that speech is inherently violent and therefore a dedication to free speech is a precondition of fascism, if not outright genocide. Every decent person must agree with every thing they say, no matter how deranged or implausible. And so if a random person, for example, says that sexual dimorphism exists or that maybe cosmetic hysterectomies shouldn't be the first response to teenage mental health issues, that person has committed a severe act of violence and must be silenced.

But, oh no, it turns out that Chu and her cohort have found themselves outgunned on the topic of Israel-Palestine. The same left that has gleefully silenced all improper discussions of culture war issues for the last decade is now seeing their exact same tactics being used to silence any criticism of Israel's ongoing genocide. You can't even do something as anodyne as expressing support for a ceasefire without making a Jewish Yale student feel unsafe, and since speech is violence and feeling unsafe is even more of a genocide than an actual genocide I'm sorry, you were bad and unvalid and you must silenced. Them's the rules.

Chu attempts to reconcile these two, very sad realities in a recent piece for New York Magazine titled "The Free Speech Debate is a Trap." The essay is staggeringly moronic, even by Chu's august standards. I had to read it twice just to make sure I wasn't understanding it unfairly.

My readers seem like decent people. I find no joy in subjecting them to crap like this. But a deep dive into Chu's essay is necessary because it confirms the value of free speech on two fronts: 1) it shows why nothing short of a doctrinaire support of the first amendment can allow for the dissemination of opinions that dissent against the consensus of the permanent war state, and, 2) it demonstrates how an opposition to free speech leads to the proliferation of braindead analysis among supposed leftists.

Let us begin:

As is her wont, Chu writes in an obfuscatory style. She belabors simple points to weaken the reader's attention, so that when she sneaks in observations that are insane or otherwise very stupid we're less likely to notice.

She starts with a description of herself, another writer, and the whole staff of a poetry center being deplatformed for expressing their support of the Palestinian cause. This is, obviously, an injustice. But rather than taking the fascist's way out and deciding that maybe this free speech thing is actually worth pursuing, Chu explains that the incident actually strengthened her resolve against the free and protected exchange of ideas. Because, naturally, anything else would render her a hypocrite, and then she wouldn't be able to silence people for dissenting against gender bullshit:

Now it’s true: A left that supports the deplatforming of transphobes but opposes the deplatforming of anti-Zionists cannot justify itself by appealing to free speech — nor should it. For the liberal, freedom of speech is a deliberately empty principle. It allows a liberal institution to mediate peacefully between differing political views without any (apparent) reference to the content of those views — all while quietly promoting its own views under the banner of neutrality. The left can do better. 

Now, here it's very important to note the degree to which the concept of transphobia has been expanded in recent years, thanks in no small part to the work of Chu and her allies in media and academe. The concept once meant something like "a hatred of trans and/or gender non-conforming people," which is bad. But now it's expanded to include things like recognizing that males and females have different athletic abilities, expressing concern with the thought of male sex offenders being housed in women's prisons, the refusal of female service workers to perform intimate procedures on natal males, or even simply using words like "male" and "female." This type of extreme narrative control simply could not persist in a discourse that wasn't very broken, or among people who did not regard the aggressive policing of speech as a paramount ideal. Like the rest of the identitarians who now control what passes for the American Left, Chu is very unabashedly pro-censorship.

Strip down the blandishments and you'll find her point is simple: free speech is bad, because it allows people to say things that may discredit her. Only instead of admitting to being discredited, she shall claim that speech itself in an act of violence, because after all if she's discredited that means violence has been inflicted upon her. Herself and other people who believe everything she believes should be anointed the gatekeepers of what does or does not constitute acceptable speech. Those who break from their dictates must be shunted from the public sphere and suffer professional consequences.

The type of nihilism endorsed by Chu is only advantageous to those whose beliefs benefit the empowered. And, at the end of the day, the people who run most every left-liberal institution (including the Democratic party) are resolutely in favor of Israel's genocide. Some of them take genuine pleasure in watching Palestinians die; others were taped fucking children on a sex island and cannot upset their blackmailers; and the bulk of them are mortified by the prospect of being labeled some kind of -ist or -phobe, as they know full well--thanks, again, to the efforts of Chu and her cohort--that they would not be able to proffer any defense against such accusations, regardless of how stupid they may be.

There is no way to reconcile this situation within the boundaries set by left identitiarisn. None. You can either support free speech as an abstract principle and allow unpopular and inconvenient speech to proliferate without punishment, or you can endorse a society where the acceptability of speech is determined by the desires of the warmongering sociopaths who run the world. It's one or the other. There are no other options.

I don't think anything I've written so far is especially complicated, or even controversial. These are the sort of observations I would have easily grasped in middle school. But, oh, here's where the obfuscation sets in, where Chu demonstrates her Pulitzer Prize-winning skill of making reactionary bullshit sound left-ish.

She starts with the well-worn trope of arguing that today's speech debates aren't really about free speech because the first amendment only applies to, like, the government:

It is worth remembering the vast majority of what we call free-speech issues have little basis in the First Amendment, which only forbids the abridgment of speech by the government, not private organizations like magazines, cultural centers, or Hollywood production companies. In most states, for instance, it is perfectly legal for employers to fire workers for speech, as a Westchester synagogue did last year after a teacher wrote an anti-Zionist blog post. So when advocates talk of freedom of speech, they are usually referring neither to the Constitution nor to statutory law but to a set of civil norms imagined to promote the health of the republic but which cannot be directly enforced by the government. 

As a matter of simple fact, this is wrong. At least 32 of our 50 states require potential government employees to sign some sort of loyalty oath to Israel before they are allowed to receive state jobs. Compelled speech in support of zionist genocide--or, at least, the promise to never criticize said genocide--is enforced by the government. This is very literally a first amendment issue.

But, I will concede, the support of free speech largely redounds to a set of civil norms--the same as how we don't go around slashing other people's tires or puking in our neighbor's mailboxes not strictly because it's illegal to do so, but out of a sense of shared civic duty. Even if we can't articulate exactly why, we just sense that it would be bad to abandon our principles to a degree where we did or tolerated that sort of stuff.

These unspoken compacts are essential for the existence of any human society. And probably any animal society. And, shit, this probably applies to plants and bacteria, too. But the persistence of these compacts pisses off people like Chu because such compacts can, at times, present a threat to their capacity as the sovereign overseers of what is or is not acceptable. If judgments were deferred to science or empiricism or any other existing form of adjudicating correctness and decency, all of a sudden Chu wouldn't be a very smart intellectual, and we cannot have that.

Chu's... her... discussion of this? I hate to call it a "response," because an actual response would require some degree of honesty. But, uhh, the way she addresses this is to point out that free speech is actually, like, just a fiction, mannnnn...

While it is true that left-wing ideas have flourished in the humanities and, to a lesser extent, the social sciences — the result of the retreat of post-1968 social movements into the academy — the big private universities remain in the business of business, their endowments tied up in fossil fuels, big tech, and the prison-industrial complex and their purses fattened by wealthy donors who expect influence in return. After a letter was released at Harvard that blamed “all unfolding violence” on the Israeli government, the billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, apparently speaking for his fellow CEOs, demanded that the school publish the rosters of the student groups who had signed the letter “so as to insure [sic] that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.” The implicit understanding here was that elite private universities funnel their graduates into the nation’s highest positions of power and influence — including Congress itself — and that this pipeline must not be polluted by ideas that its previous beneficiaries find morally despicable or politically disadvantageous. The House hearing itself came chillingly close to a direct attempt by the federal government to materially intervene in the composition of the incipient professional class through, as more than one Republican suggested, the expulsion of student protesters.

Yes, indeed, speech has always been limited by the sovereign. Go back and read Locke and Bacon, see how much they hem and haw about their love of the Queen. Point to any of the hundreds or thousands of socialists who found themselves jailed in these United States for criticizing our involvement in the first World War. That's all true. But none of these facts negate the value and utility of free speech as an ideal.

If you have no principles, if your only goal is a naked quest for power, you will eventually encounter someone more empowered whose desires run counter to your own. Then you will fail, as you will have no recourse to do anything but fail. Without ideals, there is no path forward. Without decency, there is no hope. If the battle over the continuation of a genocide redounds to nothing less vulgar than two sides claiming righteousness by din of their own existence, the side that owns all the guns and media organizations is going to win.

But there's no room for such realizations within today's left, of whom Chu is a very sad but fitting embodiment. She is immensely successful not because of talent or intelligence or decency but because she manifests the perfect set of identity markers. If she were not physically hideous and/or a manipulative sociopath, she'd be a nobody. She thrives within our broken discourse only because her enablers fear her, and that fear is born of nothing more than pity. She cannot afford the existence of principles, as that would threaten her exalted status. And she is demanding that all the rest of us abandon every last sliver of hope to make sure she and friends remain in charge.

#ceasefire #palestine #andrea long chu

[yuniemaki]

on the entymology of the Liyue Qixing 璃月七星 & its links to astrology

The naming of Liyue's ruling body, the 璃月七星 / "Seven Stars of Liyue", has links to Chinese astrology and the types of characters in the Qixing.

Theoretically, with these links, we can speculate on the characteristics & possible roles of the unrevealed members of the Qixing. This is based on the 紫微斗數 (Zǐwēi dòushù), a form of fortune-telling in China.

The Ziwei Doushu is part of the study of destiny in China (命学Mìng xué), which is closely intertwined with the stars. In this form of fortune-telling, your whole life and future can be read in the stars. It's drawn in a circle like Mona's astrology readings:

And it's probably one of the inspirations for the concept of how “your fate is written in the stars of Teyvat” in Genshin.

Historically astrologers have always played a big role in imperial courts, reading the fate of the emperor in the stars and predicting his successor.

Each of the Qixing titles are named after individual stars in the Big Dipper/北斗(Běidǒu), and bear a different name in ancient Chinese astrology, referred to as a "patron star". Of note, the Qixing's patron stars are all within the 14 major stars which are used to perform readings (except Tianquan & Tianji). Many of these stars symbolise wealth, so I won’t touch on money too much. We alrea dy know the Qixing are the cream of the crop, after all.

In the Ziwei Doushu, the stars of the Big Dipper and the Sagittarius constellation are used to form 144 permutations of natal charts, or birth charts. It's since increased as stars from the BaZi and other astrology practices were implemented into the Ziwei Doushu as well.

The North Star is known as the Emperor Star, and all the stars are "subjects" led by the "emperor". The constellations are viewed as a kingdom, with each constellation performing a role in the empire in service to the emperor.

Different texts represent the Beidou differently, but it has been called the "chariot on which the emperor rides", and that it sits above the Kunlun Mountains (where gods are said to live).

An excerpt from the book The Astromonical Chronicles compiled by Ma Xu describes what concept each star represents in the constellation:

《晋书·天文志》记载，枢为天，璇为地，玑为人，权为时，衡为音，开阳为律，摇光为星。

Tianshu: sky

Tianxuan: land

Tianji: human

Tianquan: time

Yuheng: sound

Kaiyang: rhythm

Yaoguang: star

The arched polar area where the individual stars of the Qixing is located is the political center of the heavenly society.

It is located close to the 天理 [tiānlǐ]: divine justice, or it can also be loosely translated as (天)heavenly (理)principles.

Let's zoom in a little on Beidou:

Notice that the stars located in a arch-formation around the heavenly principles are the dimmest stars: Tianquan, Tianji, Tianxuan and Tianxuan. They are also the stars with the word 天(sky, heavenly) in them.

As we'll see later, these four stars handle more covert/strategic affairs in the speculated structure of the Qixing, while the Yaoguang, Yuheng and Kaiyang appear to fill more executive/operational roles.

Let's start with the stars we already know - Tianquan and Yuheng.

天权 [tiān quán]

Patron star: 文曲星 [wén qǔ xīng], lit.”cultural song”

The wenqu star is associated with 天理 [tiānlǐ]: divine justice, or it can also be loosely translated as (天)heavenly (理)principles.

The star is associated with wisdom, intelligence, elegance and knowledge. Culture, being a long-lasting part of society, could be loosely read to reflect Ningguang’s desire to leave a legacy.

The Tianquan is 1 of 2 stars which is not in the 14 major stars of the Ziwei Doushu. Instead, the Wenqu star is one of the six lucky stars that represent luck in your life, which could be a nod to how Ningguang is not your typical Qixing candidate, since she rose to the position through hard work. Or, it could signify that the position of Tianquan can be fulfilled by any qualified person.

玉衡 [yù héng]

Patron star: 廉贞星 [lián zhēn xīng], which can be loosely translated as "integrity, faithfulness"

The lianzhen star is associated with 公关 gōngguān = public relations. This star is stubborn and persistent, representing change and variation, making it difficult to pin down. It's also associated with due diligence, novel thinking and career performance.

Keqing's role of land management seems to differ slightly from the patron star's reputation, although you could take a leap and posit that estate and livelihood management would require a lot of PR to balance people’s needs.

However, the overall personality type the patron star represents seems to fit Keqing's core traits well.

天枢 [tiān shū]

Patron star: 贪狼星 [Tān láng xīng] lit. “Wolf Star”

The tanlang star is associated with multiple masks, guises, and being clever, shrewd. With this star, disasters and happiness rise and fall, intertwined with each other. Often, the individual born under this star is affable and able to build friendships very quickly.

We don't know too much about Uncle Tian's work as the Tianshu beyond security and intelligence, but we do know he did consider Yelan as a potential successor, and she is known for her many guises and shrewdness.

Based on these 3, which seem to be generally accurate to the characters in their roles, we can guess that the other Qixing members would have these characteristics:

天璇 [Tiān xuán]

Patron star: 巨门星 [Jù mén xīng] lit. “giant gate”

The jumen star represents 暗 [àn] = secrets, and 明爭暗鬥 [míngzhēng'àndòu] = both open and covert strife. It was once known as the Dark Star. People of this star are unsociable.

The Tianshu handles intelligence & security i.e. what is most likely external affairs. The Tianxuan could therefore be his internal affairs counterpart, who handles the Qixing’s private issues. After all, the Tianxuan is a bit like an opposite to the Tianshu, and we might probably never know who the Tianxuan is since the intelligence they work with would be highly confidential based on the patron star.

天玑 [Tiān jī]

Patron star: 禄存星 [Lù cún ] closest lit. “keep good fortune”

This star signifies honour, rank, and life. It has the ability to remove adversity and distress, and interestingly, is able to mediate the negative energies the Yuheng star might bring.

Perhaps the Tianji is like the treasurer of the Qixing. Someone needs to manage the government budget, and this star is very strongly associated with wealth and financial management.

The Tianji is the other star not in the 14 major stars of the Ziwei Doushu. It’s found within one of the palaces in the Ziwei Doushu’s interpretation of the constellations, but I haven’t found any particular significance on that.

开阳 [kāi yáng]

Patron star: 武曲星 [wǔ qū xīng] closest lit. “martial/fierce song”

Not to be confused with the Tianquan's patron star (wenqu). Wuqu star is a little bit similar to the Wenqu star, both are about decision making and policies, though Wuqu is less cultured and more unsociable.

The Wuqu star also represents analysis of a situation and making clear-headed decisions and also… the 廟堂 [miàotáng] = imperial court.

The Kaiyang would appear to fit a judge role, if there is a court. Given that Yanfei is a lawyer, there is probably some kind of court in the Ministry of Civil Affairs which the Kaiyang would preside over and uphold the law set by the Tianquan.

Due to the similarities between wenqu and wuqu, I'd also speculate that the Kaiyang may be groomed to be the potential successor to the Tianquan, since they both work in law enforcement and I highly doubt they'd allow any rich Tom, Dick or Harry to suddenly manage the laws of Liyue.

摇光 [yáo guāng]

Patron star: 破军星 [pò jūn xīng] lit. “Break the enemy”

Akin to 戰將 zhànjiàng = a war/battle general/commander/leader

Very interesting that this star is all about war and is typically seen as a misfortune. Although Keqing seems to lead the Millelith in crisis from what we see, it could be just because she is a Vision holder.

The Yaoguang is likely in charge of the Millelith and Liyue's military forces overall, from recruitment to training.

Sources:

北斗七星

Ziwei Doushu Astrology

Flourish Astrology

#genshin impact #genshin analysis #liyue qixing #constellations #astrology #genshin cn #ningguang #uncle tian #beidou #genshin #原神 #keqing #凝光 #genshinet #liyue #genshin liyue #genshin theory #genshin lore #lore #刻晴 #big dipper #genshin speculation

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jaco van Zyl

Published: Sept 2, 2021

The increased popularity of Critical Social Justice Theory (CSJT, commonly referred to as Woke ideology) and the different ways in which it manifests in academia, the media, politics, and private life necessitate not only a historical analysis of its evolution but also a psychological formulation thereof, based on adherents’ behavior, affective states, and what they reveal about their interpretation of the world today. The historical development of Critical Social Justice Theory in its current form has been well established thanks to the research by James Lindsey, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian. This developmental map describes the historical moments and philosophical checkpoints that ultimately led to CSJT, as it is applied today. In addition to its purely philosophical roots, there is a psychological structure underlying this worldview that requires certain psychological processes and intrapersonal dynamics on the part of its adherents for the ideology to be maintained, updated, and propagated. This article explores these processes.

Key Features of the Critical Social Justice Worldview

In their 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt categorize social activism into two types of worldviews, namely common-humanity identity politics and common-enemy identity politics. The former describes a type of social religion where the well-being of all humans is prioritized based on shared human values and common goals. It is a “social religion,” where all humans are equally included, and members of society are often referred to in familial terms. Historically, common-humanity identity politics has aimed to unite and harmonize racial, gender, and other strata of American life—and not to destroy, “dismantle,” or “cancel” any cultural artifacts of American heritage. The latter worldview, however, endorses a value system where an ever-growing list of aspects in American society are identified as “problematic” and consequently deserving of destruction. People who live by this worldview are vigilant and alert, ready to identify an enemy: a historical figure, an academic subject, language use, religious doctrine, a specific religion, a tradition, or a demographic based on immutable properties (gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc.).

The common-enemy position has a well-established equivalence in psychology. Dividing people and human artifacts into all-bad or all-good categories is a basic feature of the Woke worldview. By virtue of a person’s immutable features, he is assigned a group-identity and is either classified as belonging to the evil oppressor class, the common enemy that needs to be exposed, humiliated, and cancelled or the virtuous, innocent victim class that deserves emancipation and social justice. To the Woke, the individual gets superseded by the group classification from which he cannot escape. Broadly, the categories carrying historical and current culpability include the categories of male, white, heterosexual, and able-bodied. Alternatively, categories carrying historical and current victimhood and moral innocence include the categories female, black/people of color, LGBTQ+ and disabled. This worldview in which every individual is classed as either all-bad or all-good actualizes a defense called splitting. Splitting is a primitive defence of young infants and in character constellations of some adults according to which people are either seen as purely evil and hostile, or purely innocent and loving. 

Within this split worldview, certain qualities are attributed to the Other, including feelings, intentions, wishes, and character traits. The attribution of such mental and character traits onto someone else can be described as the defence mechanism known as projection. Prejudice of any kind (be that sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, ableism, etc.) may be seen as the result of people projecting hostile aspects to whole groups of people. Once this split worldview has been established, guilt and innocence of the role players within every incident are determined by gender, race, or sexual orientation. Critical Social Justice Theory does not ask whether racism or sexism or homophobia took place; it assumes that it inevitably did:

“The question is not ‘did racism take place’? but rather ‘how did racism manifest in that situation?'” 

An appropriate question here may be framed as: “Where do the feelings, intentions, wishes, or character traits projected upon the other originate?”

There is no better a person to answer this question than the author of the Woke text White Fragility herself, Robin DiAngelo:

“I was invited to the retirement party of a white friend. The party was a pot-luck picnic held in a public park. As I walked down the slope toward the picnic shelters, I noticed two parties going on side by side. One gathering was primarily composed of white people, and the other appeared to be all black people. I experienced a sense of disequilibrium as I approached and had to choose which party was my friend’s. I felt a mild sense of anxiety as I considered that I might have to enter the all-black group, then mild relief as I realized that my friend was in the other group. This relief was amplified as I thought that I might have mistakenly walked over to the black party!

Patrick Rosal writes poignantly about the pain of being mistaken for the help at a black-tie event celebrating National Book Award winners…I have made this assumption myself when I have been unable to hide my surprise that the black man is the school principal or when I ask a Latinx woman kneeling in her garden if this is her home.”

The above admissions of her own prejudice assumed to be universal experience of all white people demonstrates the projection defenses CSJT adherents employ in their categorization of perceived oppression in each encounter. It is the contention of this piece that the feelings, intentions, wishes, or character traits projected to the Other originate with the person himself. These can be devaluing projections or idealizing projections (concordant with the primitive split into all-good and all-bad objects). With devaluing projections, aspects of the person they find internally intolerable, repudiating, or immoral within themselves get projected onto the bad object. Engaging the devalued Other with projected parts of themselves gives such individuals a greater sense of control over the otherwise intolerable aspects present yet denied within themselves. Often, those who employ this defensive splitting and projecting of bad aspects of themselves to the devalued Other, oftentimes manifest the exact type of projected characteristics themselves.

In contrast with devaluation and dehumanization of the Oppressor, the victimized Other is necessarily endowed with the opposite: all-good status of innocence, virtue, moral privilege, heroism, and essential purity. What is noteworthy is that some of the most passionate and devoted adherents of CSJT are also the most privileged elite of society. It seems that a vast number of these adherents belong to the category of white, often male, and heterosexual, frequently occupying prominent corporate, teaching, celebrity, or political positions, and belonging to middle- to upper-class households, having graduated from privileged schools and colleges, with concomitant great social influence, thus corresponding to CSJT’s definition of unearned privilege thanks to a most unjust, racist, and oppressive system. It is, therefore, logical to conclude that guilt about their shared perpetration of oppression may be too intolerable to bear. This anguish is solved in two ways: 

By projecting the guilt onto non-adhering members of the same devalued category, pointing out the racism in others, resorting to call-out and cancellation campaigns, and terrorizing individuals suspected of non-adherence (which is tantamount to endorsing racism) online, in the media, and especially before the suspected perpetrator’s employer. 

By employing a defense called identification with the victim, they act as allies to victimized minorities, describing themselves in self-deprecating terms, confessing their own racism and oppression, and vowing to commit to the Woke cause of dismantling systemically oppressive racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic systems. This allyship may, in fact, be described as a conscious or subconscious strategy to rid oneself of one’s own sense of complicity in the believed perpetration of oppression, by demonizing the devalued Other and, thus, camouflaging oneself through self-debasement and virtue-signaling behavior.  

A further appeal for such passionate endorsement of the CSJT comes from the social incentives. In the media, in centers of higher education, as the ethos of many corporations, at museums, in demonstrations by sports stars, at social events, and in the public statements by celebrities and artists, CSJT is framed as the moral goal of society—a new social religion. Not only is this worldview presented as morally superior to currently competing alternatives, but there is also a sense of prestige attached to it by virtue of the status associated with society’s trailblazers of trends—a Thorstein Veblen Theory of trendy morality. Through narrative saturation in the media, the appearance of consensus, fear of ostracization, and association with what is prestigious, classy, and trendy, a moral ideal is created: A mass movement has been formed consisting of individuals of apparently one mind, striving toward the same indisputable and prestigious ideal. In his 1921 volume, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Sigmund Freud expounded on the idea that everyone identifies with a parent, teacher, or other admired figure, according to which certain personal goals for the future are set. In committing to these goals, the individual makes certain sacrifices, while feeling motivated by the imaginary pleasure he would enjoy from attaining these goals. In addition to identifying with the victim as an object of sympathy, the subject is also seduced into identifying with the idealized object (admired celebrities, artists, athletes, etc.) endorsing a worldview portrayed as morally prestigious. In doing so, the adherent to the CSJT enjoys the comfort of moral bliss, a sense of triumph, and the enhancement of self-esteem.

This state can only be maintained for as long as the all-good versus all-bad split is maintained. Psychologically, this is a much simpler maneuver compared to a more difficult alternative: namely, to tolerate ambivalence. It may be more bearable to condemn whole demographics, whole cultures, and whole histories as all-evil on the grounds of the despised aspects of such persons and their artifacts (also called part-object representation) than to deal with the complexities of appreciating that people of all races, genders, sexual orientations, histories, and cultures consist of both positive and negative aspects to various degrees (i.e., whole object representation). 

CSJT ensures the maintenance of the psychic split in various ways. The assigning of privilege and perpetration, on the one hand, and disadvantage and moral purity, on the other, is not based on alterable factors but on static, immutable characteristics framed in totally offensive terms. One  does not and might never hear of authoritative-parenthood privilege; addiction-free household privilege; disease-free childhood privilege; or early-trauma-free privilege; nuclear family privilege. These categories (whose correlations with improved development into adulthood have been confirmed) would weaken the split between unchangeable categories and turn it into a more workable framework in which those concerned with social justice could work. Adherents of the Woke worldview disallow this more complex approach to social issues (psychologically, an ambivalent position) and, instead, succumb to the simplistic and often pleasurable permission to demonize entire categories of people according to immutable traits.

Adherents of the CSJT also have a conspicuous relationship with world history. Central to their worldview, historical research, as recounted by the oppressor (heterosexual white male), cannot be trusted and merely perpetuates oppression and hate. In response, the Woke engage in a process of historical revisionism, applying the principles of postmodernism (evidence has no objective value, only subjective benefit) and cultural Marxism (oppressor-victim dichotomy along racial, gender, sexual orientation, and other categories) as their methodology to arrive at preferred, predetermined conclusions. Therefore, the white heterosexual male is an evil oppressor, and the minority class is the tragic hero. Historical empathy, or the ability to appreciate the complex reality of history, is no longer applied. Instead, history is used to remind one of the oppressor class’ inherent evil. Whatever can be said of the historical white male may also be claimed of the white heterosexual male today: He is greedy, oppressive, violent, unjust, and immoral. Since the past is also present in the CSJT worldview, historical culpability is also present culpability. To the Woke, history does not exist as history; history is current, and representatives of history are to be judged according to today’s moral values (also called, presentism).

A fundamental flaw in the CSJT worldview of history is that it cannot adequately account for the historical record when white nations have been the victims of defeat and oppression. These include the enslavement of Europeans by North African and Middle Eastern nations as well as by other European nations. Similarly, the Woke switch strategy is applied when presented with well-documented history involving the imperialism, warfare, genocide, and enslavement of Native American and African tribes by other Native American and African tribes. Shaka Zulu, the warrior king of the Zulus in the 19th century, displaced Jele, AmaHlubi, Swati, Matebele, and Makololo people who settled in other regions in Southern Africa, or were assimilated into other tribes. Similarly, the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade involved non-European tribal warlords like Tippu Tip of East Africa and others who participated in the oppressionof other non-European subjects. Whole kingdoms like the Hausa and Igbo Empires of Nigeria flourished during the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade and virtually collapsed when Napoleon brought it to an end. History reflects the complexity of human society in which moral judgments can hardly be made in black-and-white (or all-good versus all-bad) fashion. Current research has not found an application of CSJ doctrine implicating non-European nations in a social matrix of oppressor and oppressed demographics. 

Tangential to the CSJT worldview is the strategy employed when current social affairs are reported. Politicians, Big Tech companies, university lecturers, and legacy media resort to narrative selection and narrative saturation by creating a perception of today’s world that closely resembles the CSJT “reality.” The aim appears to be the manipulation of the listener’s perception of social reality, heightened selective awareness of incidents, and perceptual blindness to aspects of reality which do not fit into this precise narrative. This narrative follows the same split in which members of all-bad object-categories are pre-emptively devalued and rendered culpable as the oppressor, and members of the all-good object-categories are overvalued as innocent and unfairly oppressed. Thus, Eric Kaufman explains:

“At the extreme, minorities are viewed as hyper-fragile children than must be protected from all harms, however microscopic or imaginary. The majority is hated and feared as a vicious predator against whom one must constantly stand on guard, and which should be attacked remorselessly.”

But contrary to the totalizing narrative, the latest evidence shows a significantly more complex picture in terms of: 

The income gap among ethnicities and genders in the United States

Hate crime statistics in the United States

Police brutality in the United States

State of suffering (as opposed to comfortable privilege) facing men 

According to Kaufman, this selective maneuvering by CSJT adherents in dealing with historical and social information reveals a concerted effort to perpetuate a social narrative in which the evil white male-dominated West is in toto responsible for the oppression and suffering of the innocent, noble, morally pure victim classes—not only historically, but also presently.

What follows from this? CSJT adherents are clear: Through a process called problematizing, every aspect of European/Western society is to be combed to make visible its inherent oppressiveness. CSJT provides the doctrinal blueprint for how evil Western society is, and every single aspect of society should be interpreted accordingly to confirm its inherent evil. In this process of dismantling all traces of “whiteness” or of the “hegemony of heteronormativity” from Western society, nothing escapes the devaluing gaze of the CSJT activist. Dismantling is a euphemism for destruction, and the moral rationale for this is due to Western society’s inherent badness. DiAngelo herself writes:

“There are many approaches to antiracist work; one of them is to try to develop a positive white identity. Those who promote this approach often suggest we develop this positive identity by reclaiming the cultural heritage that was lost during assimilation into whiteness for European ethnics. However, a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy…Rather, I strive to be ‘less white.’”

No credit is given to Western society as the locus of the Enlightenment, and the same standard of blanket disqualification is not consistently applied to other cultural groupings. CSJT adherents have demonstrated their disgust for the West, problematizing everything from Shakespeare and Beethoven to mathematics and science. The above excerpt is a clear admission that ambivalence cannot be endured; that there can only be one approach to dealing with Western society, and that is to dismantle it. Anything softer than that would be accommodation (also referred to as maintaining the status quo). Just as splitting into immutable categories ensures that the split is immutably secured, stating that non-racism can never be achieved ensures that dismantling is an endless process: There will always be something more to destroy. To those familiar with psychodynamic theory, this final defense of actively engaging in violating and spoiling even cherished (socially idealized) aspects of Western society is a defensive constellation called pathological envy.

In 1957, the British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein published her ultimate work Envy and Gratitude, in which she meticulously maps out the infant dynamics of greed (or appetite for pleasure), envy, and jealousy. She describes the conditions under which these dynamics result in pathological envy in adulthood and, conversely, how resolution results in gratitude and creativity. In this paper, she describes primal envy as “the angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something desirable—the envious impulse being to take it away or to spoil it.” Due to the frustration of not getting their desires satisfied, the subject projects destructive impulses into the Other, who is perceived to be withholding what the subject desires. Excessive envy is accompanied by excessively destructive and spoiling impulses. Once the admired/idealized Other has been devalued (even irrevocably destroyed), it is difficult for the subject to regard this spoiled object as valuable and obtainable again. The ultimate loss of the once-idealized Other leads to gratitude impairment.

Persons who have character constellations dominated by envy come across as bitter, demanding, entitled, insatiably dissatisfied, critical, nonreceptive to compliments, pessimistic, and aggressive. Since relief from frustration is obtained from destroying the envied object, the satisfaction of gratitude is not achieved. Instead, the pleasure from devaluation and sadistic spoiling of coveted resources (to the Woke: privilege, power, and normativity) becomes irresistible. The subject also enjoys the bliss of self-idealization as it is no longer subjected to the limitations, criticism, and judgment of the now-devalued Other. Granting the devalued Other even the slightest bit of accommodation could result in unbearable ambivalence. Such ambivalence would threaten the narcissistic perfection of the subject and would expose him to unbearable guilt. Instead, the person resorts to splitting and devaluation, as ambivalence would remind him of the once-enjoyed valued object of which he is currently deprived due to his own destructive violation of that object. 

From the CSJT perspective, what is the coveted “something” that the Other possesses and withholds that justifies the envious destruction of the Other? It is, according to Douglas Murray, among other things, power:

“[E]verything is viewed solely through the prism of ‘power.’ Of course power exists as a force in the world, but so do charity, forgiveness and love. If you were to ask most people what matters in their lives very few would say ‘power.’ Nevertheless for a certain type of person who is intent on finding blame rather than forgiveness in the world…absolutely everything in life is a political choice and a political act.”

At a collective level, adherents of CSJT and their obsession with power manifests this psychoanalytic formulation of envy observably. Every individual is capable of disgust and bitterness due to his own privately-experienced frustrations and defeats. Crowded together around a socio-political cause like CSJ and fueled by narrative-creation and saturation from legacy media outlets, such individuals can easily align their grievances and demand the utter dismantling, destruction, and violation of an imperfect yet evolving system consisting of categories of people deemed unfairly advantaged, oppressively powerful, and protective of their privilege.

The aggressive utterances by CSJT activists and their destructive behaviour toward dissidents online, on university campuses, and at places of employment, belie their self-justifying claims that they repudiate hate, intolerance, and oppression. Such behavior betrays more a burning hatred toward those perceived to be privileged than concern for those perceived to be disenfranchised.

The Future of CSJT

As explained above, CSJT is a radical worldview under which more destructive trends can be expected. From a psychodynamic perspective, the CSJT worldview drives individuals to desire a particular resource: “systemic power.” CSJT has provided for the perpetual devaluation of the Other by formulating its utter intolerance of negotiation and accommodation of anything less than a commitment to destroy (or dismantle) Western civilization. Its totalizing nature drives it to ensure that not a single aspect of society is left untouched by its dismantling commitment. The outcome will be a three-fold experience: first, the enjoyment of brute primal pleasure from destroying the envied Other, primal narcissistic bliss of moral self-idealization, and, third, unbridled access to resources (“systemic power”) on CSJT terms with severely limited reflective ability. 

A worldview so voracious for power, with no capacity for self-reflection, is a recipe for totalitarianism. CSJT’s failure to usher in a worldwide “anti-racist” utopia will not disillusion its adherents. Instead, hunger for power and the pleasure of envious destruction will greatly weaken restraint. Maintaining a de facto conviction that their own position is above all scrutiny, adherents of CSJT will scapegoat yet another devalued and oppressive Other as the reason for society’s disintegration, and the reason for Theory’s “failure” will be sought elsewhere. Theory will be elevated to scriptural status, and, as a result, it will be immune from criticism. 

One extreme response to the failure of CSJT to turn the West into an “anti-racist” utopia will likely be a defensive maneuver familiar in psychoanalysis. Following Sigmund Freud’s observations in Group Psychology, devotees of radical religious and political movements identify with an external idealized individual or cause. The psychological investment into the idealized Other can be so extreme that, should the Other or their cause disappoint, devotees will much rather resort to masochism than to bear failure. It would, therefore, be no surprise if, even after the failure of CSJT to transform society into an “anti-racist” utopia, the most extreme adherents still seek a kind of heroic martyrdom in service of Theory.

Since CSJT is essentially hostile, envious, and ultimately necrophilic (destruction-oriented), what does the  alternative look like from a psychodynamic perspective?

The Burden of a Complex Reality

One of the greatest psychological milestones an infant achieves is to integrate good and bad within the Other and eventually the good and bad within the self. Prior to such an achievement, it perceives the Other entirely represented by its parts: the Other as the all-good breast, or the all-good hand, or the all-bad face, and so on. Healthy psychological development involves progressing from experiencing the world within this defensive split (and projectively engaging the world within this split) to gradually realizing that the same Other contains aspects that are both good and bad.

Developmental progress is, therefore, the infant’s ability more fully to perceive and respond to reality with all its complexity. This, undoubtedly, leads to greater restraint in instinctive responses. Within the more primitive split, the infant perceives and responds instinctively with destructive aggression, or with spoiling envy, or with engulfing adoration, etc., of the Other. More developed psychological representation of complex reality as a mixture of both good and bad aspects curtails such unbridled responses and leads to a more moderated affective response: 

When the primitive split representation of the Other is not adequately resolved, instinctive responses to reality will be the default mode of response. When any collective (family system, community, subculture, or society as a whole) fosters and rewards such regressive representations of the world, it will be increasingly difficult for individuals, especially those growing up under such poorly-structured systems of representation, to advance to a worldview that more adequately takes into account the full spectrum of complexities. A worldview consistent with a primitive psychological system of representation would be one of in- and out-group arrangements, highly tribalized interactions, stereotypes, and gross generalizations.

Conclusion

According to psychodynamic theory, when the early, more primitive position of crude splits and projections have been adequately resolved, the individual will appreciate more naturally that every person is an imperfect mix of both good and bad traits. This reality is true not only of the Other but also of the self and of  society, as it is made up of such “blended” individuals.

Such a worldview would likely fall within the category of a common-humanity social justice, as opposed to the common-enemy worldview of CSJT. A common-humanity worldview recognizes the failures—even dismally so—in tribes’ and nations’ histories, but it also appreciates their successes and accomplishments. It celebrates these triumphs, while acknowledging and committing to learn from the failures. A common-humanity worldview appreciates that while past eras may have consisted of social structures where a specific gender or certain religions or races were more dominant than others, their failures cannot be ascribed to such categories, nor can specific categories be essentially evil or essentially good.

Contrary to the common-enemy worldview, the common-humanity worldview is hesitant to resort to simplistic categories of saints and monsters. It appreciates the complexity of humanity, of society, of communities and of individuals, and reflects this in interactions and expressions. The common-enemy approach in CSJT (and the accompanying wholesale designation of culpability and characterization attributed to certain races, a genders, sexual orientations, and cultures) is a regressive response to social challenges. A more adaptable and psychologically mature approach is a common-humanity worldview, positioned to improving developmental and social factors such as family dynamics, parenting styles, adequate basic education, and living environments.

Jaco van Zyl is a clinical psychologist in South Africa.

==

One of the things that's thematically apparent from the Critical Theory-based, ahem, "scholarship" is the resentment and jealousy the authors hold towards the real domains, such as the sciences. Buried under the postmodern nonsense are petulant children who are envious of the fact they'll never produce anything as meaningful or important or even objectively useful. They could see how influential and well regarded the sciences are, but since they were incapable of participating or competing, they pivoted to attack at the level of epistemology - how we determine what's true - and demanded that it was bigoted for them to be excluded. That's why there's deranged, bogus fields and fraudulent papers like "Feminist Glaciology" and "Queer Agriculture."

It's not just Grievance Studies because the domains are based on hatred, envy and resentment of specific categories of people - men, heterosexuals, white people, healthy people, etc. - but because those embroiled in those areas are like the jealous Cain to the scientific Abel.

#Jaco van Zyl #critical social justice #psychology #human psychology #critical theory #woke ideology #woke #wokeness #cult of woke #wokeism #wokeness as religion #religion is a mental illness

[aboutanancientenquiry]

The nature and function of curses in Ancient Egypt (I)

I reproduce in this post the part of the introduction of the PhD thesis of Sarah Louise Colledge (The Process of Cursing in Ancient Egypt, Liverpool 2015, pp 10-13) in which the author presents and criticizes the work of S. Morschauser, Threat Formulae in Ancient Egypt: a Study of the History, Structure and Use of Threats and Curses in Ancient Egypt, Baltimore 1991. According to Morschaucer, the ancient Egyptian curses would be just “threat formulae” or “legal texts” without magical connotations and the use of the term “curse” should be avoided for them.

“Morschauser’s publication provides an extensive collection of curses from the monuments of pharaonic Egypt under the heading ‘threat-formulae’. This categorisation is not represented by any ancient vocabulary or category, but by the German term ‘Drohformeln’.2 Morschauser deems the term ‘curse’ unsuitable due to its modern connotations of invoking the wrath of deities, although he later states ‘Egyptian threats essentially rely on deities for their enforcement’.3 Morschauser only uses curses which fit his particular formula, those with two parts: a stipulation/protasis (‘if this happens…’) and an injunction/apodosis (‘…then that happens’), although curses which differ from this formula are briefly referred to in various sections. This publication is divided into an introduction and conclusion, with three intervening chapters: ‘The Form and Structure of the Threat in Ancient Egypt’, ‘The Nature and Use of the Threat in Ancient Egypt’ and ‘Egyptian Classification of the Threat Formula’. 

Morschauser’s introduction provides a wide chronological context for cursing in general, ‘Indeed, throughout the ancient world, the “curse” was a common instrument of social, political, and religious interaction (or the lack of it)’.4 The threat formulae under consideration are also given a chronological, as well as a geographical, context. Morschauser accompanies the word ‘curse’ with double quotation marks each time it occurs in this section, as he says his threat-formulae lack the modern magical connotations which curses hold. Morschauser states that he omits ritual and religious literature such as the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, although he hoped to deal with these in a future publication. His publication is stated to be ‘intended to discuss the structure, nature and use of the threat-formulae in ancient Egypt’.5 

The first chapter examines the grammatical structures and vocabulary of both Middle and Late Egyptian threat-formulae. Morschauser lists grammatical forms found in the stipulations, as well as the words and constructions used to identify the subject of the curse. He examines the type of offences referred to in the stipulation, and notes that it is difficult to separate criminal cases from civil offences: both are treated equally by the ancient Egyptians. Morschauser categorises the curses according to the criminal act which they try to prevent, and groups them by the vocabulary used to describe the act. The vocabulary and grammatical structures used in the injunction are then presented in the same way. Morschauser provides full transliterations and translations, as well as references and a time period (e.g. Middle Kingdom or Dynasty number), but sometimes fails to expand on the context of the examples, such as geographical or physical locations, the medium and the user.

Morschauser repeatedly highlights the correlation between ‘codified law’ 6 and threat-formulae due to shared language features, but it is unclear which examples he is presenting as codified law, and which as threat-formulae: all examples have the same grammatical formula, and contain a situation to be prevented, and a consequence should the situation occur. Due to this ambiguity, it is unclear whether Morschauser actually provides any examples of codified law to support his argument – that threat-formulae, like codified law, protect people and their interests using a shared vocabulary and structure, namely conditional clauses. The differences between threat-formulae and codified law are also addressed: the former generally holds supernatural entities responsible for enforcing a vague punishment, and the latter an official body for enforcing a specific, usually physical, punishment. Threat-formulae also remained effective after the curser’s death. 

Morschauser provides tables in an attempt to highlight the usage of a selection of words found in curses throughout the pharaonic period, but as most of the chosen words were used across extensive time periods, no real pattern emerges. Morschauser does not address the popularity of the selected words in other genres of text, which would provide the context and comparison necessary for discussion. 

The subject of deities acting as agents is addressed, in particular the favouring of certain deities at different periods in time. Morschauser assumes that as religious and magical texts such as the Pyramid and Execration Texts contained ritual acts, and the threat-formulae he focuses on make no mention of these types of acts, the latter did not involve rituals, and so were not seen as magical or ritual texts by the Egyptians.7 Morschauser says that verbalisation of these threat-formulae was not a ritual act associated with magic, but was due to their function as an oath. Also, as some magical texts such as Papyrus Bremner Rhind have clearly stated titles, Morschauser concludes that threat-formulae do not belong to these genres, or even their own genre, as none are titled. He states that threat-formulae are components of legal texts, in particular a conditional legal formulation. 

Morschauser’s second chapter, ‘The Nature and Use of the Threat in Ancient Egypt’, discusses the types of curses used in the different time periods, from the Old Kingdom through to the Late Period. Although this chapter refers to the curses from the first chapter, the more detailed context previously lacking is addressed here. The areas of discussion here mirror the subject themes of the protasis and apodosis addressed in the first chapter. If Morschauser discusses anything new here it is not obvious to the reader. 

The third chapter, ‘Egyptian Classification of the Threat-Formula’, is brief in comparison to the first two chapters. Here, Morschauser examines four ancient Egyptian words or phrases traditionally translated as ‘curse’, and dismisses each one as a suitable label for his threat-formulae due to their ambiguous meanings: wA (conspire), Hwi sDb (to punish a moral wrong), sHwr (make, declare (a person) a criminal) and Sni (a binding pronouncement, ban).8 

The publication concludes by summarising Morschauser’s argument, and by stating that the formulae were used by private individuals who chose the injunction based on personal choice rather than regulation. The threats were a way of keeping order and maintaining Maat, designed to compensate for limitations in the law. 

Morschauser’s publication is useful as an introduction to the subject of cursing in ancient Egypt and provides extensive philological material and bibliography. However, the repeated presentation of opinions as facts perhaps undermines this study of curses, suggesting that one might more fully explore the genre. Morschauser’s main concern is to secularise cursing and demonstrate that curses are actually legal texts; evidence that does not pertain to this is largely overlooked. Beyond sentence structure, Morschauser does not mention how his sample of threat-formulae have been chosen, and the philological data is not related to wider material beyond legal documents. A common mistake made in this publication is the projection of modern day biases onto ancient concepts, in particular the differentiation between types of offence as legal or social crimes. Morschauser himself appears to realise his error, as seen in conflicting quotes: ‘As noted, the threat was designed to address judicial circumstances’9 and ‘However, it would be ill-founded to infer that every stipulation in a threat corresponded to some formally defined legal structure’. 10 Overall, this publication is useful to those interested in this one particular type of curse, but Morschauser’s strict criteria guidelines mean that this is by no means an exhaustive study of cursing in ancient Egypt.”

Sarah Colledge, Egyptology PhD from the University of Liverpool, main interest is ancient Egyptian curses, also Abu Sibel. Source: https://liverpool.academia.edu/SarahColledge

The whole text of the thesis of Sarah Colledge on cursing in ancient Egypt can be found as pdf on https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3000011/1/ColledgeSar_Sep2015.pdf

#ancient egypt #egyptology #ancient egyptian curses #sarah colledge

[cumbunnywitch]

For the record, I am a trans woman. I've been going off about it for a little bit but the use of TMA/TME to identify masc-aligned AFAB people is actually pretty shitty and you shouldn't do it. If you think you're doing it in good faith, I have good news for you: You're not actually an asshole yet. Let me explain beneath the Keep Reading(it's gonna be a long one folks).

TMA/TME is meant to be an identifier for people who are "Affected" by Transmisogyny. Now that looks really dang simple on the surface, believe me it does. Let me tell you where it gets complicated.

Transmisogyny is the intersection of being a transgender woman and experiencing misogyny. This is the easy part.

TMA/TME isn't intersectional.

The use of TMA/TMA has lead to a notable increase in the divide between feminine and masculine aligned trans folk.

This distinction is not only too vague, but entirely unhelpful.

Number 1: Every trans person can be affected by every kind of misogyny and misandry. Yes, Misandry is a real thing, it's a word that exists in the dictionary and everything.

Let me give you an example. A TERF might say that a trans man is "just a confused girl". This is actually Misogyny, because the subject that the TERF is basing their belief on is the person having been born female. A TERF might also say "that trans man is going to kill a woman because all that raging testosterone and becoming aligned with men!" This is misandry (this has also been coined transandrophobia) because the TERF is basing their belief on the person transitioning and taking hormones.

So, now do we see? We can do the same with trans women, too. Allow me: "That trans woman is a groomer who wants to turn kids gay." The subject is feminine, and the transness is treated as the problem. Another! "That girly boy is wearing a skirt again, someone should tell him how gay he looks." The subject again is a trans woman, but is being treated as a man. This is misandry.

So, we can see now that the focal point of all this is actually the intent of the transphobe. See, they don't actually care about being right, they care about whatever delusion they've paid into. While it's important to identify transphobia, we can all be affected by it in varied ways that don't actually matter.

Number 2: TMA/TME isn't intersectional. Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how a person's various social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage.

What the fuck does that even mean, you may be asking. Well, I'll tell you. Basically, every single part of who you are, where you came from, how rich or poor you were, both in wealth and social mobility, race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, gender, hair color eye color ayyy macarena all lead in to how privileged you are, in terms of a feminist progressive analysis. Basically, "being intersectional" isn't even really a thing? It's just a buzzword people mistakenly throw around when they actually mean inclusive.

If they do mean intersectional, then they are specifically referring to identifying oppression that a person may experience due to - and this is really important - every single part of their background. A trans woman can experience all kinds of oppression and violence, for a multitude of reasons. A trans man can experience very similar kinds of oppression. There are no single words, no matter how many prefixes and suffixes you butcher to get it to look pretty, it's not worth the scrabble points to try and nail down a single comment by transphobes as being one hyper-specific thing.

Number 3: This is the big one, and the reason I'm making this post. This Ask/Answer is a huge, HUGE problem. Implying that trans men, mascs, or AFAB enbies cannot or will not ally with trans women, or that they actively hate cis and trans women or AMAB, is not only a willfully ignorant point of view, but is actively dangerous to trans people as a whole, not to mention the progression of trans rights.

The thought that trans men are dangerous men, changing the words a bit and using TME instead, is actually transphobic. You are being "phobic" against some kind of "trans" person. See that? I'm being literal right here, too. If you saw the inverse of this and don't label it as transmisogyny, then you're either lying to yourself, or you don't understand anything about homophobia, transphobia, or possibly any language on Earth.

(side note, transphobia and homophobia isn't a literal fear of those stated groups, it's actually closer to a mass hysteria led from a fear of the unknown, xenophobia, and the very human habit to be aggressive towards scary things as a defense mechanism, wrapped up tightly in complex emotions because this defense mechanism was meant for when we were afraid of being eaten by predators in our caves.)

The point anyway, is that I've seen a large portion of the trans community outright denying that trans men can even have their own special kind of transphobia, which is untrue(see point 1), and using TMA/TME language to get around outright saying that transmasculine people are, in their minds, equivalent to the oppressive patriarchy. Please talk to more trans people. Everyone is an asshole in their 20s, I sure as fuck was.

Number 4: Ok so TMA/TME doesn't actually define anyone. Like, it can't. The only people who can literally be TME, is the known ruling class of a society that makes and enforces laws.

Here's the fuckin' thing guys, gals, and nonbinary pals: TransMisogyny, as stated, affects anyone that could be perceived as Feminine(the gyny part), whether they actually are or aren't.

Do you know what we base hate crime on, in the US at least? Intent. If someone attacks, say, a dark skinned woman because they think she's black, but it turns out she just has a really dark spray tan, or is Indian, or a Pacific Islander, or South American or it was really dark out, or... it doesn't matter. The intent is what matters.

You see, in this example, the woman was attacked because someone thought she was black and attacked her because of that false idea. Full stop. If a man attacks you, a trans woman, because he thinks you're "just a man with tits", that's a transphobic attack, full stop. That's where we stop caring about what kind of attack and what you actually looked like and deal with the intent of the attacker.

So, say we want to actually identify that intent and label it. IDK, for statistics or to relate to others or whatever. You can define that attack in whatever way you want from there, I guess, but if the attacker thinks "this man needs to be taught a lesson" then the attack was actually that the man intended to attack a "man", despite that not being how you identify. The overall attack is still transphobic, but comes from a place of misandry/androphobia. This comes down to a whole other list of things I'll get character limited trying to explain, but the intent is what defines an act. That's why Attempted Murder is a crime. Just because someone doesn't finish the job, doesn't mean go scot free; the intent was to kill.

___________

Let me finish with a plea. Please stop trying to make TMA/TME work. The only thing it actually does for the trans community is waste time, waste energy, and gets us to use transphobic and exclusive language. If you still think I'm wrong, go spend some time researching what intersectionality gets wrong. Spend time thinking of things that can help us all retain our rights and fight for the ones we've lost or never had.

Yelling at each other about who is more oppressed right now is by far the most idiotic thing we could be doing as a community. It's like playing chess and instead of trying to take pieces from your opponent, you knock some of your own pieces down and remove them from the board. You're just putting them in a better position to beat you. When you're down to just one pawn, your king and queen, and maybe a rook against a full board, you might as well just surrender.

If you want to be another Blair White, please get the fuck out, and stay the fuck away from pride you dumb piece of inflammatory shit. If you read this entire post and you still think it's a good idea to hate on "the other side of the spectrum" or that trans people of a different flavor are less oppressed, less subject to oppression, or anything of that nature, I invite you to please block me, and never talk to a single trans person for as long as you may live.

We don't need you. Stop holding us back.

#trans #trans rights #trans rights are human rights #intersectionality #intersectional politics #discourse #terfs are poisoning the well and your mind #oppression is not a laserbeam #oppression is a hand grenade

[iseethatimicy]

Yuusona | Shimiko

★ ── "𝐈'𝐋𝐋 𝐁𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍𝐒."

𓇼 Name: Shimiko Aezirana-Solarix 𓇼 Nickname: Shimmie, Miko, Madame de Sirène (Rook), Science Freak, Eel Enthusiast 𓇼 Birthday: November 3 𓇼 Age: 17 𓇼 Height: 162 cm 𓇼 Dominant Hand: Right 𓇼 Homeland: The Coral Sea 𓇼 Family: Celesta Aevinia-Solarix (Twin Sister), ???? Aezirana (Mother), ???? Solarix (Father)

★ Year: 2nd ★ Class: 2-A (No. 16) ★ Club: Science Club ★ Best Subject: Mermaid Biology ★ Hobbies: Making potions ★ Pet Peeves: Drama involving her ★ Favorite Food: Blueberry Scones ★ Least Favorite Food: Anything with eels inside ★ Talent: Poetry

𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐐𝐔𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐂 ── 𝐒𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐍'𝐒 𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌

Shimiko's unique magic is called "Siren's Scream" and with this, Shimiko is capable of emitting astonishingly beautiful and enchanting singing voice that is capable of hypnotizing anyone to do whatever she wants. Because it involves mind-control, this unique magic is considered to be one of the more powerful ones, requiring a higher level of magical ability than others. Overusing it too much can sore her throat and her voice.

♡ 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄

PICREW/NEKA LINK ── SD Sprite | Headshot

She has fair skin, dark-brown eyes and elbow-length, raven black hair that ruffles at the bottom, with her bangs parting to her left. She wears black eyeshadow, purple eyeliner, black nailpolish, and a small, shiny purple bow with a skull pin on the left side of her hair.

★ 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

At first glance, Shimiko is enigmatic and eccentric being notorious for her obsession with eels. The self-known eel enthusiast would constantly reference eels in almost every sentence and going as far as referring to everyone as different types of eels. Other students find her creepy and unsettling because of her extraordinary behavior.

The more you get to know her, It is shown that she's polite, kind, responsible and much more mature than her sister. Celesta describes her kinder personality as alluring to others, especially Shimiko's small number of admirers. Although it might seem like Shimiko genuinely cares for her younger twin sister, It is shown that she actually resents and hates Celesta with a burning passion.

♥ 𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐀

Her english voiceclaim is Kailee Morgue.

Her favorite flowers are Blue Bells.

She knows everything about eels and is rumored to have an eel pit.

She came from the same father as Celesta, but different mothers.

(backstory is about to be rewritten, ignore dis ✨)

She used to be very shy, chubby and often wore baggy clothing before her glow up during her second year.

She has roughly around 200 followers on Magicam due to posting photos of herself.

Shimiko finds emo boys very attractive

If the Science Club didn't exist, she'd be in the Light Music Club.

She can play the electric guitar.

She is a Siren mermaid.

♡ last updated: 10/5/2023

♡ I do not consent for my work to be plagiarized, copied, or fed into any AI software. If you would like to make a similar idea, please credit @iseethatimicy

#shimiko (my oc) #twisted wonderland OC #twisted wonderland #repost!

[beardedmrbean]

The second part of the Twitter Files revelations dropped on Thursday night, revealing the social media giant did, in fact, engage in the suppression of conservatives and skeptics of lockdowns during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, but questions remain about the extent of the suppression.

"A new #TwitterFiles investigation reveals that teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics—all in secret, without informing users," journalist Bari Weiss revealed in a Twitter thread on Thursday, referring to the suppression as "shadow-banning." 

Several conservative users, including Stanford University's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — a longstanding opponent of a COVID groupthink during the pandemic who expressed opposition to lockdowns — and Fox News’ Dan Bongino were named in the files as having been placed on the site’s secret blacklists.

"Twitter denied that it does such things," Weiss noted. "In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gadde (then Head of Legal Policy and Trust) and Kayvon Beykpour (Head of Product) said, ‘We do not shadow ban.’ They added, ‘And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.’"

However, questions remain about the extent of the suppression and whether left-wing accounts faced similar restrictions. It is currently unknown just how many accounts have been subject to what Twitter calls "visibility filtering." 

ELON MUSK’S SECOND INSTALLMENT OF ‘TWITTER FILIES’ REVEALS ‘SECRET BLACKLISTS,’ BARI WEISS REPORTS

"'Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see to different levels. It’s a very powerful tool,' one senior Twitter employee told us," Weiss tweeted. 

"'VF' refers to Twitter’s control over user visibility. It used VF to block searches of individual users; to limit the scope of a particular tweet’s discoverability; to block select users’ posts from ever appearing on the ‘trending’ page; and from inclusion in hashtag searches. All without users’ knowledge."

Twitter did not return Fox News Digital's inquiries about the extent of "visibility filtering," as well as the partisan breakdown of the practice. 

Bongino reacted the revelations, tweeting, "We ALWAYS knew we were a target of the Twitter suppression machine. ALWAYS. Yet liberals insisted it was another 'conspiracy theory.' Tonight is vindication, yet I expect no apologies from liberals. They live to abuse power and they’ll make no apologies for doing so."

#nunyas news #the reasons for many #peoples opposition to the purchase #is becoming more and more clear

[leefi]

The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere Read-through | Part 7: 90-100

Part 1: 1-14 | Part 2: 14-22 | Part 3: 22-34 | Part 4: 34-64 | Part 5: 64-80 | Part 6: 81-90 | Part 7: 90-100 | Part 8: 100-127 (caught up here)

Bal is soooo funny for choosing to simply sit out and wait the loop. If that were me I’d be acting out. I’d be skipping around the sanctuary acting mischevious and committing hooliganry. Hey does Fang have loop memories

SU NAME REVEAL!!! KUROKA!

raises hand. I have another question. did samium also fuck that old man

Shiko is so sweet oh my goddddd 😭 I wonder if Kuroka fell in love with her...

I hadn't even realized how much of a fan I was. That another me had been growing on those lonely nights, only waiting for someone to draw it out.

Even though it was such a small thing, for the first time, I felt like I was able to be someone other than myself. Someone who shined brightly.

Just like her. AWWWUWYYYYYYUUUUWUWUUUUUUUU!!!!! AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

"Fang, Su, have you still got enough eris for barriers?"

Fang looked at their scepter, making a thoughtful hum. "Yeah, for a few minutes."

I thought Fang didn’t have their scepter?

Another thing I'd failed to understand at the time was that this was largely by design. Replicating high-quality food was impossibly cheap, and a low-hanging fruit in terms of helping people's quality of life. It was the politics of spite, or 'tough love' if you wanted to be charitable; choosing not to help others for no reason other than them having not earned it, or at least treating it as not worth the infinitesimally minor inconvenience to their betters.

oh i dont like this worldbuilding that much anymore

“Nowadays you can get your nutrition managed with pills anyway. It's not like when we were kids, when it actually mattered what you ate."

"There's still no long-term research into the subject," [Shiko]’s mother replied, frowning. "And besides, it's not simply a matter of health. There are social consequences to having a limited palate."

“social consequences”? lets kill her

"I'm just saying, it wouldn't hurt to be a little more conscientious," Shiko's mother insisted, holding up a hand. "And I know I've only been here for a couple of years now, but I really don't think it's that bad. Some parts in town seem a little deprived, but the theater is nice, and I've never had any trouble finding anything from the shops. It's hardly Altaia or Old Yru, but it's not as though we're eking out a living on the Lower Planes."

KUROKA BABY IM GONNA GET YOU OUT OF THERE. IM GONNA GET YOU OUT

Shiko’s granddad and Samium were conspiring to use her???? “Get the drop on her”???????? I mean this isn’t anything we didn’t already know but hearing them speak so plainly and shamelessly about it IN HER HOUSE is repulsive

I'd done a lot of stuff for a person my age, especially if you counted the stuff from-- Well, you know. I'd traveled by carriage, bus, tram, vacuum tram, boat and airship. I'd been to seven different countries and lived in four. I'd played in an amateur sport team (assuming chess counts as a sport).

it does not

Ophelia had been unspokenly left out as well; she apparently produced such an aura of eternal femininity that our minds had just silently registered it as the correct call after we'd only been able to find three shovels in the greenhouse.

also me if im being completely honest. *the gorillas get released* sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry

Hey while they’re digging I’ve been thinking. using the dying gods as their proxy has me wondering if this really is an integrated pneuma in some person enacting its long thought out (hehe) revenge. But that doesn’t explain multiple culprits especially considering they’ve been referring to death with different gendered pronouns

She looked between us. "Questions?"

Linos looked to the side. "Uh, do you see any problems with the plan, Zeno?"

There was a pause, then an approving thump from the luggage pile.

funniest character

a possible explanation for many of these contradictions was that there wasn't just one 'mastermind', but competing groups.

One calls it 'master'. The other calls it 'Her'...

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES. It's almost like...a battle of wills? A battle of competing ideologies?

"I think I-- I think I have a hernia," I said weakly.

"What you have is a case of the weeny-whinies.” THE WEENY WHINIES!!!!

KAMRANSU SWEEP!!! im doing yuri multiplication in my head rn

hum. "Indeed, you've stumbled upon the fundamental issue. After all, if what we inhabit is not the true reality, but merely the product of a physical process within another, it seems very improbable for our 'creators' to be playing with tools akin to our own. Our very conception of inter-dimensional spacetime - and the associated concepts of entropy, movement, and finite energy - could be nothing more than an amusing fabrication, with no bearing on actual physics."

Kind of like how a two-dimensional creature can only interpret a 3-dimensional world from a 2-dimensional perspective, and a 3-dimensional creature can only interpret a 5th-dimensional world from a 3rd and simplified 4th dimensional perspective…but what defines “actual?“ is any of your universe “actual”, for that matter? You have no confidence that your reality is real beyond the myths you’ve heard of the ironworkers. I don't mean to explicitly suggest this is a simulation by any means, but rather...I'm thinking back to Zeno's question. "Why turn back the self when you can turn back the world?". Well, if you're conflicted on what a "self" constitutes, it only follows to reason that the nature of the world around you too would also fall into question...

Well, that depends, Utsushikome. Do you believe a pawn is destined only to look across at its rival pieces for eternity, by its very nature?" She stabbed her fork into a tomato, spilling its red fluid. "Or, perchance, might it learn to crane its neck towards heaven?"

My eyes drifted from the tower towards the ceiling of the bioenclosure proper. The blackness.

Slowly, I clicked my tongue. OHHHHOHOHOHOGOGOGOGOGOOGOGOGOHOHHOHHOOHHOOHOGOGOGOGOYOYO RHHEEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHE

She nodded several times, like I'd said something profound. "Yes. That's it exactly." She exhaled. "It's cowardice. People are afraid of death, so they try to turn it into something it isn't. Something beautiful and cathartic, something symbiotic with humanity, just like Grandmaster Melanthos was talking about. So they don't have to face the truth that it was all for fucking nothing. That being mortal is an accident of material circumstance, just as much as hunger or, or-- I don't know, going *bald*.” 🦍

"When people think of truly eternal lives, of sticking not just a few more centuries on the pile but outlasting the lifespan of stars, the scope of the proposition is harrowing. What would we become, in trying to achieve true stability as creatures of chaos and change? Could we?" Her voice grew a little quieter; solemn, almost. "What would we do, without that option to simply fade away?" She looked towards me. "What do you think, Su?"

I went for a third round of blinking, just to emphasize the point.

Why does [Kam] always single me out in these conversations?

big ass crush on you

Ohhh Kam is a 60 year old minor! Cool!

Even though she'd dismissed questions on the subject with an affect of far-sightedness back in the transpositioning chamber, the fact of the matter was that people our age getting stressed out about their own mortality was freakishly rare; I'd literally never met another person quite like [Kam].

This trait she and I share. I was having existential breakdowns at the tender age of 5

Ohhh Su is in her early-mid thirties! Okay yeah that checks out with her mental illness

You're only 32, Su," she said, frowning. "It's a little early to making world-weary statements like that, don't you think?

*looks at su* *looks at orv*

*looks back at su*

Of all the years I could live, could thrive, until all those regrets are nothing more than a single drop in a vast lake. I'm sure the same is true for you, too."

This really was out of character for her. I felt a complicated feeling in my chest. "That's, uh... Kam..."

"Is this really the right time for this?" Ran asked flatly. "The philosophy was one thing, but this is getting weirdly romantic."

Kam scoffed, making a gesture of distaste. "Don't be peculiar, Ran."

KAMSU SWEEP WE HAVE LITEREALLY NEVER BEEN MORE BACK THAN WE ARE RIGHT NOW

"Perfect," Kam said, stepping towards it immediately.

"Feels a little weird to be looting the dead," I said, glancing around.

"This is no time for sentiment, Su," Kam replied. She walked up to the cabinet in question and, after unsuccessfully trying the lock, took the butt of her refractor rifle and shattered it, before casting it aside and sliding the larger weapon out.

this actually became a COD lobby im crying

saw Samium lying down in the bed, eyes half-open, staring at the ceiling. Other than the fact that there was a book by the side that seemed to be gone now - fiction, probably, the cover depicting a ship - that felt a little confusing. So he could read a novel, after all? Or maybe someone had left it here?

Ship of Theoseus chan?

Why did the playwright just look at me

"Okay, so. Here's the thing," they said. "The monster might be, uh, real."

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPP

WE HAVE LITERALLY NEVER BEEN MORE BACK THAN THIS MOMENT FOLKS THIS IS IT. THIS IS REAL. IT'S HAPPENING

Okay for all my excitement about the beast is there any way to check if that’s actually the phantasm conjuring arcana they talked about earlier? Could explain the grim reaper but I don’t remember if it could produce sound or not…or how big it could get. Could also just be a really advanced golem since the power was active while this was happening? (And that was the negating factor when they were debating COBD (cause of Bardiyas death before))

I’m pretty sure the beak thing is actually real though, so many people have corroborated it. The beast only showed up while people were panicking

Man I wouldn’t be surprised if this conversation with Samium we’re seeing over the logic thing concluded with Su pushing him out the window. my rationale towards this is would that be fucking crazy or what

So, this sounds like it's coming from way off in the distance-- Like really far down the hall, or behind a wall, or something. Now, I'm getting a really bad vibe at this point,

Have i mentioned yet how much I love fang

Ann says we should just gun it." Anna's eyes narrowed slightly at her name being shortened, but didn't interject.

Have i mentioned yet how much i LOVE fang

I said something stupid about hiding up in the armory, maybe grabbing some of the grenades, so we went all the way up

they are addicted to those grenades

If Ptolema thinks the beast is fake then I believe that it's fake. She’s consistently proven to have the best observational skills of the entire group, picking things up that other people don’t see. As she says, she's got the mind of a surgeon. She knows how a body is meant to be built and interact with its environment. Believe women!!!! Ema sweep!!!!

Can I be honest. Creepy children’s stories scare me so much and I could barely get through that one barn quest in Cyberpunk 2077 and this children's slideshow with the piglet is reminding me of that. I literally couldn’t sleep for a few days after playing that. Anyway. Animal Farm? because there is a farm with animals

no i'm being deadass was that an animal farm redux. it felt like an animal farm redux

It would be so funny if Fang acted the way they do because something was wrong with them. But it would be even funnier if they're just like this

#tftbn #orv spoilers

[kendrixtermina]

The Centers as sliding scales

Welcome to today’s entry from the Theory Post List

The idea here is to try & pin some fundamental mechanism that holds regardless of functionality level and complexes around it, and perhaps serve as a guide for ppl to pin the wings on their fixes if so desired.

Impulse Triad

8w7 – There’s almost no filter. Any impulse naturally comes and goes just as quickly once expressed. Sometimes more sanguine than choleric.

Im going to make the bold assertion that if you have this even as your last fix you’ve probably a tendency to sometimes blurt stuff out without thinking. If its your core theres no other filter on top, so you just do stuff.

8w9 – There is some delay, so the individual is not quickly provoked to response, but once the swing comes, it still comes all the way with no holding back, with a bit of extra pressure from the delay

9w8 – There’s still some tendency to simply act on the impulse, but the stronger it is, the more dissipation & delay you see. As a result, the individual shows irritation on small matters, but avoids far-reaching confrontations. This is probably the most ‚normal‘ configuration.

9w1 – Dissipation is the default, so you get a very ‚nice, civilized‘ person that is very hard to provoke into a reaction. What can’t be dissipated is redirected. So they may feel that they ‚should‘ always be nice in a way that 9w8 doesn’t.

1w9 – Little natural impulses get through – what isn’t redirected is dispersed. Hence usually a measured, sober or tightly controlled appearance.

The keyword is ‚directness‘ – Rather than natural impulses coming and going, there is a „linear motor“. The person starts and doesn’t stop. Actions are almost always deliberate & hence often focussed or meticulous – hence quickly changing goals are disliked.

1w2 – Pure redirection, with no dispersion.

Hence the difference in that 1w9s can come off stilted or subdued whereas 1w2s often read as passionate (preachers, political types etc.). 1w9 dissipates impulses that don’t pass the filter; 1w2 is pure redirection so the redirected response has the full ‚swing‘ of the original impulse behind it.

1w9 and 9w1 would hence appear as the ‚least animalistic‘/ ‚most civilized‘, in a diffuse vs. Controlled way respectively.

It’s also worth noting that the 1 component redirection is a quick, kneejerk thing based on subjective sensations of disgust, comfort or alignment, not a thought-through deliberate choice like what mental type would do – hence, its much quicker & less ‚costly‘ than thinking it through explicitly.

It’s like using a heuristic in optimization.

Emotional Triad

This has often been conceptualized with regards to identity – with 2 getting it from the outside, 4 from inner preferences and 3 both impressing others & inwardly deciding what ideals to embody. – Or which parts of identity one stresses, alone stuff  preferences & flaws, tangible archievements or relationship-related stuff – in both those frameworks wings would represent indeterminate settings like a 3w2 would stress archievements but also relationships – objective proof of popularity exists at this overlap, whereas 3w4 would have more ‚self-mythology‘ & rely more on conceptual ideas like wealth and titles.

But I think an even more fundamental underlying quality that the above ultimately derives from is directness and manner of emotional expression.

2 expresses directly (& hence leans a bit into action/impulse), 3 uses shared associations, 4 uses personal associations, mostly processes inwardly, showing the refined products of that inner processing through symbolic gestures.

You can see this rather well in art:

2: rather direct descriptions of feelings – im crying, i cant sleep, i was shaking etc.

3: pop culture references & cultural associations – ‚just like the movies‘, comparison to famous places or cultural tropes etc.

4: metaphors and symbolism made up on the spot – sometimes curating one’s own defined set personal aesthetic like Victorian Madwoman or Antichrist Superstar

Advertisement is sort of a cheap mass-produced knockoff of the 3 strategy – to make the masses associate certain emotions & aesthetics with a product. 3s call up the association the audience already has, 4s illustrate their own associations & use those but it’s a difference in strategy.

Hence why 2s are rarer in artists cause they express their feelings right away directly through actions. There isn’t a backlog that needs processing. Of course a 2 could still be repressed due to a tragic backstory or just do art simply because they want to/ for the love of it, they’re just less likely to need it as an outlet. Loads of ppl would prefer concrete actionable help over ‚look I worked long hours to buy us this suburban house, which is associated with happy families‘ or symbolic/romantic gestures. It’s just a difference in how ppl show love.

There you see the overlap with the analogies predominating in Conceptland, but unlike the head types 4 still has that primarily personal lens. (same for distinguishing, say, 2 and 9)

Often when a heart type tries to talk about a ‚big picture‘ narrative, they often turn it into a personal story.  

Like a 3 will discuss an election & talk mostly about how her boyfriend supported her & how everyone was acting „like highschool students“, or 4 will do a song about a natural disaster by telling the story of an individual victim losing their beloved in the storm.

With head types you often see the opposite – „this shitty relationship is a metaphor for whats wrong with society“. Can’t help but fit it into a pattern.

2w1 – all direct expression, hence, feelings are often shown through action & service

2w3 – mostly direct expression, but with some shared associations that are put to the purpose of direct connection. Like wanting to be pretty like a celebrity so a particular person will like you.

3w2 – Referencing common associations predominates but still mixed with some direct expression, but there has been a shift in focus – getting direct adoration not as an end onto itself but as proof that you have ‚objectively measurable‘ popularity. The idea that if you do the things that are connected with worth & recognition you’ll get worth & recognition themselves that way.

3w4 – using common associations, but with personal style & flourishes, telling an embellishes life story etc. but still of the purpose of evoking association in others.

4w3 – stiff references common symbols but puts primarily them in their own context. For example, might have a thing about shakespeare because shakespeare is considered cultivated and deep, but will lampshade their own interpretation of it.

4w5 – Own associations only. Which means you need to lean a bit into the mental center to make them, though the purpose is still the refinement & expression of feelings.

Since you want others to respond your channel of expression, the different ways of attaining personal validation (& hence the identity stuff) follow as a consequence.

Mental Triad

The breakthrough realization here is that 6 is all about seeing information in context – such as relationships, agendas, morality, practical use etc. & generally having a sensitivity to context. It’s the ‚systhematic‘ intelligence.

7 then is multi-context thinking whereas 5 is looking at things apart from or independent of the original context, and the w6 variant of each is basically ‚still considering the original context a little bit‘. (& can’t avoid worrying about it, hence this is usually the more overtly anxious variant.)

It figures then why there’s a line of connection between the two because once you’ve taken something out of its context it becomes easier to plopp it in a new one, and conversely if you’re used to shifting things across contexts its a bit easier to see what remains the same every time.

7 is not just ‚associative‘, (that may describe 4 or 9 as well) but specifically improvisational. The extroverted ressourceful, thinking on your feet intelligence – you concoct a solution for this particular problem on the fly as needed & then move on.

Hence why Ti auxillaries are often 7 or w7 ‚activated on demand on behalf of the dominant‘ nature of the auxillary function. It’s making a solution, persuasive argument (...or rationalization) ad hoc as needed.

As for the 6s, there are some who masterfully apply the extra strenghts granted by their wing to practical problem solving with a perseverance that people with those cores probably wouldnt typically have, whereas others distrust & overcompensate for what they’d see as a tendency to stray from the safe waters of common sense. Like 6w7 believing that they or people in general are too easily taken in by new impressions, or 6w5s turning out really rigid or hypersceptical to avoid concocting any unrealistic nonsense.

Could be the same person depending on how confident they’re feeling today.

7w8 – all improv, hence leaning more on action/impulse.

7w6 – mostly improvisational but still particially using a ‚grid‘ or ‚map‘.

6w7 – mostly systhematic thinking but with a bit of improvisational – this is probably the most usual.

6w5 – systhematic thinking is strongly predominant, but with a bit of synthetizing function.

5w6 – still has some 6-like detail affinity & capacity to interface with other people’s maps or grids on a surface level, but they keep their own ‚filing system’.

Some individuals report a sense of being ‚probably incomprehensible‘ beneath a polite commonsense veneer and not wanting others to find that out.

5w4 – Everything gets plucked out of the OG context and put in your personal sorting algorithm, which means personal associations get mixed in or that it’ll be more shaped by your preferences. So it seems one cannot win, as one would be either be led astray by the crap of others or one’s own crap. The perfect midpoint of no undue influence is ellusive, if it exists at all.

#enneagram #typology

[nerves-nebula]

OKAY SO #1 - Guinea pig

SO this is moreso a reference to a habit of my adoptive mother's rather than a specific event, but there's also one event that really sticks out because it is a story she herself likes to tell people.

But first, background information. The term "guinea pig" was used by her because of a few reasons. First, she's big into some non-traditional spiritual people.

I think it was Richard Gordon(? might've been a different bloke) who created his theories and ideas in the realm of what he does, but needed people to test these on. He couldn't just go out and find people to introduce these concepts to (too many variables plus not enough control) SO he decided to work on his children.

He had 2 daughters I think it was? maybe 3 kids? Where he had them practice different spiritual methods and he'd test the results against those without the spiritual methods, and etc etc. He called his kids "guinea pigs".

My adoptive mother wanted to do a similar thing with me basically, where if she had me practice/doing certain things/rituals that the other foster kids didn't have to (to a degree anyways) she'd be able to compare results and use them as proof of whether we were "working in the right direction".

So summary of that, she's called me her "little guinea pig" since I was little because I was the person she would try new things on before talking to other people about it. Test subject and all that.

NOW going back to the "one story that she likes to tell people" bit.

SO I was like, somewhere between 6 and 8 and we were going over to a family friends place for one of their kid's birthdays (pretty much the only family with kids we ever saw lol). In the car she turned to me and decided that it was time for an experiment where "I couldn't find a way to leave" because "she could tell I wasn't putting my all into it".

I very much did not want to do that and I decided that because my adoptive father was there (at this point I was in foster care though :/ ) if I speak up he'll probably put a stop to it. He didn't.

I tried telling her that I didn't want to be her guinea pig anymore and that I was really tired of having to do all that stuff if there wasn't often results and I'd be blamed for there being no results. I tried saying it as politely as I could, but she... did not respond well.

Things lead to another and she was lowkey yelling about how I was "rejecting healing" and "had let the humans of the world infect me". She ""agreed"" to not call me a guinea pig for a while (<- more about this after). I was crying and stuff and had to come up with an excuse for why it looked like I was crying when we arrived at the birthday party.

I told my adoptive parents the excuse so they could approve it but they ended up telling the parents at the party that I was being difficult (so if I said anything I was just being a crazy kid. didn't help that "adoptive child syndrome" exists. People's belief of the "adoptive child syndrome" heavily impacted how people treated me growing up -_- )

FINAL PART: The reason why she ""agreed"" not to call me a guinea pig for a while was because after a few years it became like a joke thing? (not sure the exact words for it lol). She eventually went back to calling me a guinea pig, but she'd also be like "haha, remember that time you were so crazy and cried because I want the best for you? Remember how ridiculous that was? I'm so glad you aren't like that anymore, right? :)"

(the thing is she's ALSO told this story to other people?? Like even just last year when some people I don't know well were visiting. We were in a restaurant and there was like 5 people I barely knew there and she told them the story and did the whole "haha but my kid now hates me because of this, don't you?".

I had to subtly try to calm her down so she didn't believe that because it'd get messy after the event if I didn't. Everyone was uncomfortable (I think?) and she went into wayy too much detail about me crying and how stupid I was being. IDK why she wanted to talk about that, but she followed it up by telling them that when I had my wisdom teeth removed they had "given me date rape drugs and I hadn't felt a thing" as if like, that's something to be proud of. ??)

ANYWAYS THERE'S STORY #1: Guinea Pig.

T'was long and looking back kinda funny like she is built SO different xD

CHRIST ALIVE. That's fucked, but thanks for sharing!

here's my little "weird thing my mom used to call one of her kids" fact I guess: She used to call my oldest sister her "Little Husband" as well as treated her like an "equal" in some instances

I was partially raised by my oldest sister too and though I never called her mom I did think of her as a protector cause she was the only one who would protect us from our older brother.

But yeah the whole "Little Husband" thing is sOOO upsetting hafhadsudhdg

OH aLSO what the FUCK is adopted child syndrome????? I'm looking it up but it just seems to be "this kid isn't acting grateful for being adopted so I'm going to call their problems a syndrome" and thats uh. um. WELL I don't like it.

#nnstuff #ask #child abuse #abuse

[queermediastudies]

Jess' Queer Media Example: Ga(y)mes

Known as the ninth art, video games play an equally important role in reflecting society and politics as other works of art we know. In the article Not Gay as in Happy: Queer Resistance and Video Games, authors argue that queer video games and games with queerness content do not exist to please players or a certain group of people for pleasure, but as a radical rebellion.

In the game industry, game enterprises and independent games have many different differences, the former has a wider audience, has more resources and a platform for sales, and its game production is subject to more constraints and influence; while the latter is often in the limited resources to create works, the lack of corporate constraints allow these games to express what the production team wants to express more freely. The example I bring today is the game hades by Super Giant Game. hades are a roguelike action game, based on Greek mythology and the gods of Athens as a source of inspiration and story. The player takes the role of Zagreus, the son of Hades, who fights various opponents and bosses and his own father in order to escape from hell. It won the 79th Hugo Award for Best Video Game.

In Hades, there are not only direct expressions of queer content, but also many occurrences of queer significant. The former is easy to spot for almost all player groups, while the latter becomes a more obvious representation of identities in queer groups.

Queer Content- Zagreus + Thanatos + Megaera

The romantic relationship of male characters with male characters in the game and their multilateral romantic relationship with female characters is part of the queer culture. This is not only an expression of rebellion against tradition in sexual orientation, but also a rebellion against traditional two-person relationships in romantic relationships.

(1:53-2:22)

Queer signifies: Dionysus

The NPC character in this game, although it does not indicate his direct sexual orientation, but many players, especially those who belong to the queer community can identify his body queer elements, such as wearing garter stockings, being flirty, androgynous (not explicitly stated, but can be speculated from the dialogue).

The cultural landscape of video games has become a more "diverse" place not because of the promise of the games themselves, but as a result of challenging norms that undermine dominant power structures (Ruberg & Phillips, 2018). Hades is very natural and ordinary in its presentation of queer content and elements, it is not a game that seems very radical and boasts its own queer attributes, but its queer content and many hints are diverse and rich. And it is considered a niche queerness while becoming the best game of the year in 2021, which represents the success of its rebellion.

Reference: Ruberg, B., & Phillips, A. (2018). Not Gay as in Happy: Queer Resistance and Video Games (Introduction). Game Studies, 18(3). https://doi.org/ISSN:1604-7982

#media examples #queermedia #queer game studies #Youtube