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silvadour · 3 years

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Attack on Titan: The End of an Era - Final Chapter Review

Disclaimer: This blog post contains MASSIVE spoilers towards the ending of Attack on Titan as well as the greater series. If you wish not to be spoiled on certain story aspects and character revelations, I kindly suggest reading the manga or waiting for the 2nd half of the Final Season to be released in Winter 2022. Furthermore, if you are not caught up with this and read this post anyway, kindly refrain from spreading information presented here as not to spoil the experience for other readers and watchers that have yet to see the very end of the story.

And now without further ado, let is begin with the blog post.

Well, we’ve reached the endpoint, we arrived at that scenic view. Attack on Titan’s story has finally ended and if I’m being frank with you…I’m satisfied with it.

I have to say it’s always a weird feeling of coming to face the truth that a story you like and have invested many years reading has finally come to an end, there’s just an underlying feeling that you wanna deny the reality of it but you also can’t deny that sense of closure you gain from it either. While the series started way back in the year 2009, I did not get invested in the manga’s story until late 2013 when the anime’s first season finished airing. And my experience with AoT has been a strange one. As a young teen, I was impressed by the action on display so much that I began craving more of it like a crack-headed squirrel; this, in turn, led me to read through internet message boards and forums for possible new information on the stories developments which unsurprisingly led me to find spoilers of later events (particularly the case with Reiner and Bertholdt’s identities) However, even by the time I reached that revelation in the story in the existence of the Coordinate plot element came into play, I was aboard for the dramatic thrill ride ever since. And by the time I was reading it and the story shifted from fighting humanoid monsters to actual humans in the Royal Government/Coup d’etat arc, I started thinking of Attack on Titan as a rather niche series that only a few people could understand even with its ridiculous surge of popularity in the early 2010s, and I never could have anticipated back then on how emotionally attached I would be to this series nor how well it portrays a morally grey story where both participating parties of an ongoing war suffer from the circumstances of their character and nature.

The opening page to the series

As a modern monthly shonen series, I can say that it’s certainly a step above other manga of its type in how it re-frames familiar shonen archetypes in much more grounded and grim settings, and I find that it’s because of that grounded feeling found in its writing and setting that Attack on Titan has garnered such a large following for the elements in the story make themselves easier for audiences to distill themselves in similar situations, the narrative creates a sense of audience inclusivity that allows readers to imagine themselves in situations of survival. However, once I heard the series would end at 139 chapters apart of me was wondering if the series would have enough time to address aspects of established lore and give character arcs a fitting conclusion, and suffice it to say, the series accomplished that though some feelings on them I’m still processing. So knowing this I think it would be best to tackle the ending of Attack on Titan by discussing each of the established themes and characters one at a time, starting with the theme of freedom and liberty.

“To either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”

Freedom and Liberty:

One of the major recurring themes in the story of AoT is that of the nature of finding true freedom. Freedom as a concept is described as the ability to speak, act or think by one’s own accord; freedom can be individual yet it can also be shared with various individuals. The story always made the best attempts at portraying both the positive and negative aspects of freedom in a morally grey manner. While the idea of wanting to do something of your own will, it all becomes a different story altogether depending on what the actions initiated from that free will end up being. One person’s freedom would naturally come to blows with the freedom of a collective group and trying to determine who is more rightfully just in their expression is never given a clear cut answer, case in point Eren’s yearning to be free of a world where he and his people aren’t demonized or viewed as cattle comes to blows with the antagonists’ (the nation of Marley) yearning to freely put him and the other Subjects of Ymir in their place as the two parties eventually engage in a long-standing war that has spanned for centuries. In an essay by John Stuart Mill, he presents an argument for the nature of human liberty that frames it as a double-edged sword; while it may stand as a tool to defend oneself from oppression and tyranny, it in of itself can be used as a tool to enforce other individuals into compliance and agreement should they not initially comply to certain established schools of thought. The expression of freedom is never displayed in an absolute black and white morality as each of the opposing parties have valid justifications for their expressions of personal freedoms (the nation of Marley’s long history being under the terror of the old Eldian Empire, and the island of Paradis being constantly invaded by Titans from Marley due to their history), rather the expressions freedoms are made due to self-interest.

Zeke describing Marley’s plan of action in order to ensure its future as a world superpower.

This is seen numerous times throughout the series, Ymir (104th Cadet) being used as a scapegoat for the cult that took her in, Erwin’s planned scapegoat execution during the royal government arc to ensure the original monarchy’s total rule over the population within the walls, the world nations following the bandwagon of Eldian discrimination as a political tactic of gaining advantages for the development of their nations through the extortion of the many Eldians around the world. Even with the characters that are standing on the “good” side still hold feelings of seeking self-interest as they are allowed so, solely due to the fact to want and something and act upon is part of their birthright just like any other human; case in point Eren and Historia at their most standout moments before the time-skip which would eventually coalesce with Eren’s meeting of the Founder, Ymir Fritz. This now brings me to the man himself, Eren Yeager.

Eren Yeager/Ymir Fritz:

When I first got into Attack on Titan, my opinion on the writing for Eren, especially in the manga’s early run, landed generally around middling. However, over time as I got further invested in the TV adaptation, I made attempts on doing retrospective rewatches to see whether my opinions on certain aspects of the story had changed; and during this time I found that my opinion of Eren changed to that of a more positive one. Throughout the series I saw this driven teenager coming to terms with his situation as a potential key for his people’s future, learning to quell his anger, as well coming to face the reality of his various failures all to eventually crack under the weight of the expectations he has placed onto himself, finally re-discovering his self-worth through the relationships he’s made with people closest to him only to have his reality crash right into his face when he finally discovers the truth of the world which bruises his idealistic nature.

To many of the fans that have seen Eren’s exploits in the latest season, his change in character might have come as a jarring shift since he has shifted to focus on eradicating the Titans to now eradicating the invaders of his home island. While the shift to different targets might seem like a strange change on the surface, fundamentally, Eren Yeager is still relatively the same character he was initially portrayed as, the only difference is that some of his more notable traits such as his anger, his battle tactics, and self-expression have just been more hardened due to the nature of his and homeland’s circumstances.

Eren is a prime believer of freedom, that any person is entitled to live free without feeling as if their freedoms are being imposed by others, solely on the basis that they were born into the living world. Should someone pose a threat to his freedom, he will not hesitate to steal freedom from others. And from the beginning till the very ending of the series his character writing remains consistent. Eren is a man lashing out against a prejudiced world that views him and his people as pure evil, he lashes not just for the sake of his freedom but for the freedom of those he cares for. However, throughout that lashing and emotional hardening he becomes something different from how he initially perceived himself.

For most of the manga’s final arc, Eren’s detached demeanor he presents onto his friends serves to highlight how he faces his challenges; he is more of a person that suppresses his grief and other vulnerable emotions because he has no choice but to appear strong and move forward when he cries out the world for something he wants, as a person ostracized by the world, his actions are indicative of the world telling him that he is not allowed to be viewed as a human being. His repeated fighting against Marley and the other allied nations can almost be interpreted as a cry for help. And throughout these actions, Eren was always consciously aware of his actions and the consequences that would be brought upon them, but he would never reveal his true feelings until he reached his two final goals, Ymir Fritz and his ultimate fate. When Eren first encountered Ymir Fritz he saw her as the absolute ruler of the Power of the Titans and wished to use her to finally make his true ambitions become a reality, however, during that process Eren realized that Ymir was so much more than a divine being. In his embrace of the Founder and in seeing her past through the Paths realm, Eren came to realize that Ymir was simply a human that much like him was ostracized and forced to harden her emotions out of fear of being further abused for appearing as weak; who trapped herself in ethereal realm due to her misguided understanding of “love” she had for her abuser, Karl Fritz I.

In recognizing her as a human, Eren sets Ymir free to finally act upon her own will for the first time in over 2000 years.

Personally, in this particular moment of Eren embracing Ymir with a hug and telling her the words she always wanted to hear “you are a human being”, I feel as if those words themselves are what Eren wanted to hear from someone who truly understood him and his reasons for going as far as does. Eren fights because he wants to end all fighting in the world, but he doesn’t know any other method besides fighting, much like Ymir, Eren needed someone to free him from himself. I find that Kenny Ackerman’s final words resonate with this scenario very strongly in retrospect: “We humans, are all the same…every last one of us. All of us had to spend our lives drunk on something or else we’d have no cause to keep pushing on. Everyone was a slave to something” (S03E10)

Eren’s “freedom” upon reaching that scenery he foresaw in his future visions.

At the moment of that embrace, Eren was fundamentally just like Ymir, a human child unable to cry due to repressing their emotions, Eren was only able to reach his external and internal goals in the final chapter through his relationship with Mikasa and Armin in their final interactions in which he imparted his freedoms and his dream to the two people he cared about most in the entire world. That being said in his fight for obtaining the ideal freedom for himself and his people, Eren only realized in his very last conversation with Armin that the freedom he sought after wasn’t only his. Armin’s final heart-to-heart made him re-acknowledge that the weight of his dreams for an ideal world shouldn’t be his to bear, even if ended endangering him and his loved ones. By refusing to entrust his dreams onto others, Eren was becoming a slave to his ambitions (in fact his appearance as the Founding Titan portrays him as a marionette), only to be finally set free (and possibly reincarnated as a bird, a common symbol of freedom in literature) by his best friend when he comes to understand him and offer him peace for all he has done for the sake of his people.

In his final meeting, Eren’s true self as the boy who lost all things he cherished in the beginning of the series confides with his best friend Armin on the actions and choices he has made, as well as finally reciprocating Mikasa's feelings of love.

Closing thoughts:

Overall, I find that Eren’s motivations and his character arc met my expectations of how I somewhat imagined the series would end. It didn’t end on a completely misanthropic note, but rather a bittersweet hopeful one. As even though the island of Paradis establishes a new military under Eren’s splinter cell faction, the Yeagerists, there is hope found in Armin carrying out the role that Eren always saw him, a hero and a purveyor of peace, as he, Jean, Connie, Annie, Reiner, and Pieck now taking on the role as ambassadors for the remaining population of Earth, embark to Paradis to begin peace negotiations. Whether the treaty succeeds is left entirely to the reader’s imagination (or Isayama adding more context in the volume edition of this chapter), but what I find truly beautiful about this ending of a series with clearly morally gray divisions, is that the people of those same divisions finally came to the realization that they are simply just people. They are not devils or angels, they are simply just people; not that much different from one another and willing to try and exist in a better tomorrow with each other. And what I love about this ending, even more, is that it finally bookends some goals and declarations that were said in the first half of the series: Eren wanting to eradicate the existence of Titans became a reality, after Eren’s death Armin took responsibility in claim he killed in turn that leads him to be viewed as a hero and purveyor for peace, Eren wrapping his scarf around Mikasa, all of these character declarations coming back in some unique form makes me love this series even more.

Your heart and soul to the cause.

Some may complain that this ending is not that great for it still doesn’t explain certain aspects of the story such as the nature of the Power of the Titans or the identity of Historia’s baby daddy or just general lack of presence in the final arc, but personally, I am content in not receiving a clear answer to some of those aspects, mostly because they either don’t matter or are already narratively complete, plus their open-ended-ness just offers me more chances to think about some aspects of the story and promote discussions around it. And while the use of mental time-travel ala Seers from Game of Thrones that were displayed by Eren’s use of the Attack Titan’ innate ability in the Paths realm, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t unsure or somewhat conflicted by the existence of mental time-travel; especially when time-travel as a narrative concept is INCREDIBLY easy to mess up. However, aside from these minor gripes, these were my overall thoughts towards the ending of Attack on Titan, we have reached the end of the story where Eren, Mikasa, and Armin’s respective character arcs came to a narratively true and satisfying conclusion. This is definitely a notable end of an era in the world of manga and pop culture. And without much left to say, all I can do is offer a salute to the author Hajime Isayama for his dedication to this story.

Thank you, Hajime Isayama.

#Attack on Titan #manga #AoT spoilers #AOT 139 #snk spoilers #text post #long post #shingeki no kyojin #thank you hajime isayama #Eren Yeager #Ymir Fritz #Armin Arlert

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lordeasriel · 4 years

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hdm theory: dust is actually harmful

Dust is actually harmful. Not in the sense of being sin, but it is ultimately what damages people from different universes to stay where they don’t belong. Stay tuned for what I consider to be wildest, craziest, most senseless theory I’ve ever written. Keep in mind this isn’t super serious, I’m aware there are gaps in this theory (because I accidentally countered my own arguments as I was writing lmao) and beware spoilers for both trilogies. Under the cut because it’s long-ish.

Mrs. Coulter’s research.

We know Mrs. Coulter created the General Oblation Board to research and examine the readings of Dust in children and how to stop it from settling on them. Outside her other personal goals, which included being in the good graces of the Magisterium, she had an interest in Dust as a scholar, and while she has a lot of dubious actions, it’s fair to say she, at the very least, believed that Dust did something to people. While personally I do not consider Mrs. Coulter a woman of faith, she was raised in a society controlled by the Church - and she has personal dealings with them - so it’s safe to assume she was raised in the dogma that “Dust is Bad” and she believes in it, because why not? I mean, there is a lot of reasoning behind this claim, but none of it is important for this specific theory.

The Magisterium has the narrative, after Dust was discovered and studied by Boris Rusakov, that the particles are a representation of Sin. A lot of the discoveries surrounding Dust connected it to the fact adults seemed more connected with it than children, which only served to help the story that Dust affected children less - especially before puberty - because they were innocent. Once puberty hit, and the daemon settled, a stronger connection with the particles was established and the role of puberty in the “Dust is Evil” story is very big, especially because puberty and sexuality go hand-in-hand for the most part and the Church admonishes the idea of sexuality as a whole (it’s a bit more complicated than just this, but I hope you get what I mean). All of these things contributed to how ingrained the idea of Dust as something bad was perpetuated across Lyra’s world.

It is also rather convenient for the Church to demonise Dust, as they themselves seem to believe it is a bad thing - considering how they are influenced by the Kingdom of Heaven - but their role in making the situation even more suitable for themselves is understandable. If you were to tell an average person about Dust, they simply would acknowledge it as Something or even worse, not know about it, but to associate Dust with Sin - in a world inherently Christian, where people understand that Sin = Bad - makes it a lot easier to spread fear and control the populace. It’s as ingenious as it is evil, truth be told.

With all this in mind, we know that canonically Dust is Not Evil, it doesn’t represent the idea of Sin - or at least, it doesn’t convey Sin as something evil, but rather something the Church is afraid of - but it’s far more complicated and far reaching than that. Dust is everywhere, it shapes everything that has any value, being consciousness or angels or the whole fabric of the universe. However, they are not wrong in claiming that children attract less Dust for a reason or that the daemon settling is the connection one should look for when looking for Dust. In fact, while absolutely unethical, Mrs. Coulter’s research was very close to what makes Dust special, except she turned it to serve the Magisterium’s truth instead of actually looking into it with an impartial mindset.

Dust is everywhere, like I said, including in other universes. It doesn’t just linger in space, it lingers across dimensions and it composes the very fabric of the multiverse. In Will’s world it is known by many names, including shadows and dark matter, and for the mulefa it was known as sraf. I’m not tackling the mulefa’s world here for now, so keep in mind the Shadows and dark matter, because this is more important for this theory.

Even now dark matter is rather elusive as things go in science of our world, but ultimately it is a great part of the composition of the universe, and within the nature of His Dark Materials, it is a parallel to what Dust is.

One of the biggest differences between our world and Lyra’s, is the existence of a daemon. While daemons are representative of a person’s soul and another half of a being, they are not exposed in our world like they are in Lyra’s. In fact, they live within, which is why despite the fear Lyra has when meeting Will for the first time, she quickly calms down because she realises he isn’t missing his daemon, like Tony Makarios was, for example.

It is somewhere within him, and because a person can feel the vibes of someone daemonless (which I talked about in my visible daemon theory), she knows he isn’t separated or completely devoid of a soul, which immediately makes him “human” in her eyes. But the question is, why? Why does Lyra’s world have people with their daemon exposed, taking a physical shape? From the three worlds we visit (Cittagazze, the Mulefa world and Will’s) none of them have their souls exposed like the daemons, despite the mulefa having a bit of a different relationship with Dust with their wheels, and the seed pod oil and all that.

Having a physical soul is anything but practical. You’re exposed, your daemon betrays your feelings most of the time, and sometimes you don’t even get along, which creates conflicts that can lead to your separation, which then again creates even more conflicts, because you become an outcast in a society that thinks being daemonless makes you inhuman.

What if the daemons, exposed like they are and in tune with Dust - as it has been proved by scholars in Lyra’s world - are a lightning rod for Dust and its effects?

Marcel’s Truth

Before we go into the lightning rod theory, we need to discuss Marcel’s hunt for the truth and how it ties to this whole shenanigan.

As I mentioned, Mrs. Coulter’s research was focused on just fixing the problem of Dust in the name of the Church, that is, fixing how Sin was spread through people. Also like I said, I don’t think she believed Dust was really Sin, but she knew something happened when Dust settled on children who were going through puberty, and adults. There was a lot of debate, especially in the academic and scientific field, about the nature of Dust, not everyone believed the Sin theory without question, although speaking openly about it was not possible.

She knew there was something going on - many other scholars knew that too - and her choice was to try and cut off the Dust connection. That is a reasonable response, when you consider how they were taught that Dust was bad and sinful and it damaged humans; you cut the source, technically Dust stops interacting. However, as it is shown, once the daemon bond is absolutely severed, even if the person survives, they are nothing but whole. They feel dead, they act dead, for all accounts; devoid of will and curiosity, essentially sick and incoherent, pretty much the opposite of what attracts Dust and what Dust represents.

This idea of a forced severing is interesting when you see that people who willingly separated do not have any of the collateral damage the Bolvangar children had - or the zombis, for that matter. They still have will, the ability to choose and think coherently, they are alive and well, despite some of them being emotionally damaged, which is a reasonable response. But it’s nothing that truly impairs them from being alive. This is material for a secondary theory, but I think it’s important to consider daemons are people too, they are their own person, with their own desires, their own free will, and because of that, they are allowed to walk away (and so is their human) if they wish to, without destroying their counterpart and therefore destroying themselves. This is what free will means, in essence; and it’s why I choose to use severing and separation as different things (I don’t remember if this is canon, though lol).

With that in mind, we know Marisa chose destroying the Dust connection as a solution, because essentially they thought Dust was bad, harmful. It’s a centuries old dogma, one that is being shaken up in the events of TSC. Marcel’s truth speech changes, well, everything. He doesn’t seem to have an interest in destroying the source of rose oil, an oil that interacts with Dust and it shows something about the nature of the particles that unnerved the Church.

“First, we could suppress all knowledge of it, by rigorous investigation, by ruthless force. (…) The second possibility is to go to the root of the problem and wipe it out. (…) The amount of rose oil that’s ever come this far is very small; supplies of it would dry up and cease altogether, and the problem would wither away. That solution would take longer and cost more than the first, but we could do it, and it would be final. (…) There is a third option. We could embrace the facts. The roses exist; they show us something we’ve always denied, something that contradicts the deepest truths we know about the Authority and his creation; there is no doubt about that. So we could admit it boldly, contradict the teachings of millennia, proclaim a new truth. (…) I haven’t told you the fourth option. Revealing the truth in the way I described would not work. There are too many habits, ways of thought, institutions, that are committed to the way things are and always have been. The truth would be swept away at once. Instead, we should delicately and subtly undermine the idea that truth and facts are possible in the first place. Once the people have become doubtful about the truth of anything, all kinds of things will be open to us.” Marcel’s adapted speech. TSC, ch. 16.

Marcel’s points are all coherent and valid (not necessarily good things though), but I wanna focus on the fact he is far more inclined into changing the Magisterium’s core values than actually trying to destroy the roses, which refuted everything they preach about. We don’t really know what exactly the roses do, other than interact with Dust and make it visible, but we do know that whatever it is, it worries everyone that knows about it.

Personally, I think Marcel is right and that he is inclined to go for the fourth option, which is to create doubt, then reshape the way people think, and a lot of that implies he’s talking about how Dust is perceived, or Sin, in essence. If the rose oil truly reveals the nature of Dust, and that it isn’t evil or sinful, this means the Magisterium needs a headstart in protecting its image of protectors of truth, before everyone turns on them for lying. That, of course, it’s an utopia; like Marcel points it out himself, the rose oil is not that big in quantity for it to spread across the entire world, but even if just groups of people become enlightened in the Truth (whatever that is, because honestly, God only knows what Philman is planning), it could still threaten the sovereignty of the Church.

What’s really important here, however, is that Marcel wants to create a new truth, and assuming he’s trying to reestablish what Sin means, this puts him on the very end of the Dust spectrum: Dust is not sin, not evil, but rather something else entirely, benign, neutral, attached to what makes humanity, human and so on. More importantly, this ties well enough with the idea that I’ll propose in a moment, that Dust is harmful, and that daemons are the only thing actually protecting them. He could, in theory of course, promote the idea that being separated from your daemon is actually good.

The reason why I’m pointing this out now, it’s because it contradicts the main idea of this theory, but I believe this is important to highlight: Dust isn’t Evil. That is canon, and is not widely known by the people in Lyra’s world, but while Dust isn’t Evil, I believe that it is harmful to different degrees.

Dust is Harmful

I know it feels like that wasn’t necessary, but I felt like I needed to put these points on the table, because they are important in their own way. You see, both Marisa and Marcel are dealing with the same subject in different ways, for different reasons, but whatever the outcome of their research, both of them are not truly examining the things that do matter about Dust. Why is it everywhere? Why do settled daemons attract it more? Why are there no side-effects to its exposure? Those are important questions that no one in Lyra’s world seems to be asking, and that could be for a number of reasons, but mainly because the dogma that Dust is Sinful makes these scientists not have an objective eye upon the subject. They are biased; they’re seeking a cure, not a means to harness it, to understand it.

The reason why Dust doesn’t affect people in Lyra’s world is because of their daemons. You see, Dust is attracted to consciousness or anything man-made (like the Knife, or the Alethiometer, I’ll even go as far as say the rose oil, despite the oil not being exactly man-made), and the daemons are in all their essence, a personification of consciousness. Without a daemon, a person cannot be alive; this means that, even separated, people still survive because their daemons are still conscious. Consciousness in Lyra’s world is not associated with the mind, but with the soul, which means the daemons, and they are, in consequence, a magnet of Dust.

Daemons are unique in their own composition: while they possess a physical body, once they are dead (be it their human first or them first), they disappear and leave no trace of their existence. They also do not go to the land of the dead and there are places where the daemons can’t go in Lyra’s world itself (the witch route in Siberia, the Karamakan journey to the red building). This is what I propose:

Lyra’s world has a lot more incoming of Dust than any of the other worlds we have ever visited. This is a bit of a cheap example, but you cannot find dark matter on Earth (as far as my knowledge goes, I genuinely did not go that far into this subject), for example, but Dust does descend upon Lyra’s world and it can be seen and interacted with appropriately through the right means. They are more keen in studying it than any of the worlds we see; for Cittagazze, they only used the potential of Dust to create a knife; in the Mulefa world, they are in tune with Dust, even as the flow is dying, and they accept, but have no active curiosity in studying it (which could be that they are still not at the Tech age they need to be to study this, but this is speculation). Lyra’s world is far more interested in Dust than all of the others, possibly because Dust surrounds everything they do. More importantly, because Dust is tied, intimately, with something they consider sacred, natural, intimate in itself: their daemons.

Dust is the reason why people cannot live in different universes. Every person has their own consciousness, and that is what calibrates you (for lack of a better word) to be exposed to Dust. Everyone is, the books are very clear on stating Dust is everywhere, so everyone is exposed, but to each and every single world, there’s a different amount and how it interacts with people. Will’s world, Cittagazze, and even the Mulefa world, they all have people whose daemons are within, not exposed; they all probably are used to being exposed less to Dust. This is why John Parry gets sick while living in Lyra’s world, and this is why Will and Lyra ultimately cannot stay together. Dust damages people who are not “calibrated” to interact with their ways from a particular world. Lyra’s world has A LOT of Dust, which means it does a lot more damage than for example, Will’s world.

Daemons are the reason why people in Lyra’s world survive the interaction with Dust. You see, having consciousness exposed like they are makes the daemons a proper lighting rod, or a Dust rod if you may. They can handle the interaction with Dust without being damaged because they do not share the same physical composition as their human, and this is something that is particular to the person, it’s a fix from Nature to preserve life. This is why for example, Lord Boreal seems mostly unbothered by his constant multiverse travels. Not only he doesn’t seem to stay long in the different worlds, but he is used to a lot more intake of Dust than Will’s world provides.

I know what you’re thinking, probably: but what about John Parry? or Will? They also got daemons. And yes, they do have exposed daemons that they acquired under different circumstances. Note that I used exposed, because Mary also has a daemon, in a way, that she is taught to see and that she spends a considerable time with the mulefa. But, her experience would have been different because her daemon is still inside.

John Parry’s daemon was acquired when he arrived in Lyra’s world, although it’s hard to say exactly when Sayan-Kötör showed up, but the text implies it was early on his arrival. This is probably the way the world has to try and preserve people that don’t belong there, by giving them the tool they need to harness the extra exposure of Dust. In TSK, John mentions he’s been in Lyra’s world for roughly twelve years, and I think that if he didn’t have his daemon, he probably would’ve gotten a lot sicker, much sooner.

Will’s daemon doesn’t show up when he arrives in Lyra’s world and there are two things to consider here. One of them is that Philman’s plot required him to have Will only find out about his daemon in the end, so showing up sooner would have wrecked the plot. This is probably the actual explanation lmao The second reason is that Will’s daemon wasn’t settled yet, and because of that, Dust didn’t affect him as much, so having an unsettled daemon that wasn’t showing up made no actual difference. He barely got damaged by Dust.

By the end, of course, Will’s daemon settles (although Kirjava is already exposed after the Land of the Dead excursion), so now he actually gets affected by Dust, which is why he will die in a decade or so if he stayed in Lyra’s world.

Before I finish, a few things to consider:

This theory proposes that Lyra’s world citizens could in fact live longer in Will’s world, and this conflicts with the actual canon, of course, as we know they don’t stay together because it is said they’ll both have short lives. However, I do believe a good fix for this gap in the theory is that, while Lyra could live a little longer in Will’s world, doesn’t she mean she should because she wouldn’t be happy; the exposure to Dust she’d receive in his world will be too low in comparison to what she would have been used to. In TSC, there is a passage of Lyra in Smyrna, I believe, and she’s watching the streets, observing as people live their lives.

The street below her was saturated in Dust. Humans lives were generating it, being sustained and enriched by it; it made everything glow as if it was touched with gold. TSC, ch. 27

So, while Dust is harmful depending on where you come from, it is also necessary to make life what it is. Like I’ve pointed out earlier, Dust does something to people, and as it’s been proved in the books, it isn’t evil or sinful, but rather an essential part of life. So, for Lyra to exist in Will’s world, she simply would have been miserable the whole time, which is why it’s better for her not to risk staying in his world just because she could survive longer. It’s not a life worth living.

With this in mind, assuming you’ve read TSC, you’ll know Lyra is under an extreme melancholia, and this is mostly due to the fact her relationship with Pan is wounded, Pan being her lighting rod to Dust. Not only they’re sore with each other, emotionally, but one has to take into consideration that they are physically separated.

So, just food for thought but, if their bond is split like that - and like I said before, they still survive well enough even separated - it’s possible that separation makes it more difficult for Dust to affect the human, instead going more directly onto the daemon, and their connection, being dim thanks to the separation, makes the Dust exchange between them to be lesser than what it is between people who are whole, so to speak.

Taking this into consideration, it’s possible to notice how pretty much every person we see that is 1) separated or 2) daemonless, they’re all unhappy, stoic, or simply not as happy and comfortable with life as anyone else who has their daemon. It’s not that depression is exclusive to people without daemons, but these people have had their means to communicate with Dust damaged, in a way, it’s a thinner connection so to speak, and therefore they are deprived, or at least they are touched less by Dust, which results in them being not happy or feeling like they don’t fit in in the world. After all, Dust is all about what makes life worth living, and these people simply are out of touch with that.

And I think that’s it for this theory! If you’ve read all of this, bless you and thank you, and feel free to add your thoughts to it if you have any!

#hdm meta: dust #hdm theory #his dark materials #the book of dust #this took me forever #but here we are #meta by effie

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sondepoch · 4 years

Note

Can we please get more of the Solomon stealing memories aftermath

Part 1 here~ (am I having a field trip with these asks? fuck yes. no shame.)

“It was you,” Lucifer seethes, immediately shifting into his demon form. He bares his teeth, growling, ready to pounce and tear Solomon to shreds in an instant—but another question takes precedence: “Why? Why would you destroy MC’s memories? Are you that jealous of their magical abilities that you resorted to such measures?”

“Jealous?” Solomon asks, laughing softly as he crosses his legs on his bed, staring calmly at the demon standing in his room. “Hardly. I certainly did have my reasons, though.”

“I should have killed you the day I saw you,” Lucifer growls, jumping forward, wrapping his fingers around Solomon’s throat. He’s just about to begin squeezing when the sorcerer speaks up, abruptly halting the demon.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Lucifer’s eyes narrow immediately, and though it kills his pride to do so, he leans back just the slightest, sensing the threat in Solomon’s words.

The white-haired mage grins the moment he sees Lucifer withdraw, eagerly pushing motioning for the demon to go around the room—to venture into the side hidden.

“Do you really think I am so foolish?” Lucifer asks warily, crossing his arms. But when Solomon grins, deciding to show the way instead, he does indeed follow, and Solomon grins.

The sight that greets Lucifer makes him sick to the stomach.

“Do you like it?” Solomon asks, smiling broadly as he steps forward into the casting circle, walking behind Simeon, where the angel remains tied to a chair, mouth gagged. Solomon pats the angel on the shoulder. “I considered tying a bow around his neck, but I couldn’t find any ribbon.”

Lucifer’s expression darkens immediately, and within seconds the demon’s long legs have carried him into the casting circle, about to wrangle Solomon’s neck and send him to the Grim Reaper after centuries of evasion, but the way Simeon thrashes immediately makes the demon halt.

“What...?” Lucifer questions, not understanding what’s going on as the sorcerer shudders, dropping to his knees, while Simeon looks to be screaming through the gag, his body shaking wildly through his restraints, eyes shouting for Lucifer to step back.

The demon takes one glance at his lover and does so, withdrawing from the casting circle, and immediately the two men inside relax.

A dry chuckle spills from Solomon’s lips as he stands once more, fixing his shirt as he blinks the remnants of pain away.

“This is a soul circle, Lucifer.” The sorcerer smiles, an eerily calm expression for one who was writhing in pain not seconds earlier. And the weight of his words’ revelation stuns Lucifer. “So unless you wish for your lover to die with me, I’d recommend not taking a step closer.”

Horror suddenly wraps itself around Lucifer like a thick blanket that he cannot shake off. Solomon’s words from earlier bounce around inside his head: soul circle. A circle where only those whose souls are bound may enter—causing immense pain to those inside should an outsider enter.

But more alarmingly: they two men are contently remaining within a soul circle. Meaning that Solomon and Simeon’s souls are now bound, and one’s death will inevitably result in the others.

Checkmate, Solomon seems to be saying with that cruel grin of his. And indeed, it is a checkmate. Because now, any pain Lucifer inflicts on Solomon will be simultaneously felt by Simeon—and should the demon kill the human, the angel will perish as well.

But most alarming is Solomon’s primary revelation.

Your lover.

“How did you...” Know? Lucifer seems to be asking with his eyes as he gazes at the sorcerer incredulously. The only person in the world who knew was MC, and their memories are long gone.

“You said earlier that I destroyed MC’s memories,” Solomon says, smiling once more. “A more accurate statement would be that I stole them.”

And then it all makes sense.

“This one has a particularly nice orgasm face,” Solomon remarks casually, tilting Simeon’s cheek upward as the angel does all he can to avoid his eyes, looking almost as if he is about to cry. “Interestingly enough, so do you, Lucifer.” Solomon grins, recalling everything from the memories he had stolen from MC: summoning forth every ounce of knowledge that will help him right now.

“What do you want?” Lucifer spits, glaring harshly.

“What I’ve always wanted. A pact with you, Lucifer.”

The demon scoffs. “Your soul being bound to Simeon’s merely means that I do not have a way to kill you yet. You are hardly in a position to be demanding that I make a pact with you.”

Solomon sighs, quickly understanding that Lucifer is going to be stubborn about this.

But perhaps a few words from his lover will do the trick?

“Simeon, tell Lucifer that he should make a pact with me, alright?” Solomon pulls the cloth he had used to gag Simeon’s mouth out, the angel barely taking a second to breathe before a flurry of words are coming out of his mouth, none of them quite what Solomon asked of him.

“He tricked me, Lucifer! He said he wouldn’t hurt you if I bound my soul to his! He’s a liar, don’t trust him and don’t—”

Simeon’s words quickly turn muffled as Solomon abruptly stuffs the cloth back into his mouth, the latter sighing in disappointment as he smacks the back of Simeon’s head disapprovingly. The childlike form of admonishment is a stark contrast to how dire the situation is, and Solomon wastes no time in pulling a knife out from the edge of the soul circle.

“Such a troublesome angel, you are.” Solomon waves the knife in disapproval, patting Simeon’s cheek with it. “You know, Lucifer,” The mage draws his attention back to the demon hovering just six feet away. “Every injury I sustain, Simeon will also feel.”

Solomon grins, dragging the knife along his own cheek, watching with glee as a corresponding cut opens on Simeon’s own skin. The mage leans forward and licks the ichor off the angel’s cheek, smiling contently.

“Even more interestingly, the arrangement of the human body and the angel body is quite different. I could stab myself here,” Solomon gestures to a spot on the center of his chest. “And miss all my major organs. But at the same time, Simeon’s heart would be pierced. It’s hardly enough to kill him, but it would be...” The edges of Solomon’s lips curl upward. “Very painful.”

He lets the threat hang in the air, playing with the knife, casually cutting himself every now and then and watching with glee as Simeon is immediately injured in turn .

After a certain amount of time, though, the sorcerer grows bored of Lucifer’s silence.

“Make a pact with me, Lucifer,” The sorcerer encourages, setting the knife firmly against his own chest. Neither Simeon nor Solomon misses the look of instinctive fear that surfaces in Lucifer’s eyes as he watches. “And I won’t hurt myself. I won’t hurt Simeon.”

But the demon remains silent.

“You leave me no choice,” The mage sighs, beginning to apply pressure to the dagger at his chest.

He’s nearly one-fourth of an inch through his own skin, Simeon shouting muffled protests, when Lucifer shouts at him to stop, that he’ll make a pact with Solomon as long as the vile mage just stops what he’s doing.

Solomon drops the knife.

“That’s all I wanted,” He says, smiling.

Behind him, Simeon thrashes wildly as Lucifer internally prepares himself to make this pact, the angel toppling the chair he’s been tied to. But the other men seem to ignore him entirely, Solomon extending his hand out cautiously for Lucifer to bind his essence to, quietly reminding him that any pain he feels will also be sent to Simeon.

“I know,” The demon scowls, and then the familiar sensation of power—one Solomon has felt seventy-two times before—rushes through his veins, and Solomon’s grin is vicious as he realizes that he has finally obtained what he has been seeking out for so long.

“Kneel,” The mage commands, watching Lucifer struggle against the pact. Unfortunately for the demon, Solomon has significantly stronger magical control over his powers than MC, so the demon inevitably cannot resist as he drops to his knees, glaring.

“Lick my shoe,” The sorcerer commands, and he knows that this is cruel, that he has what he needs and this is entirely unnecessary, but he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face as Lucifer glares and heeds his command.

And Solomon smiles.

The final step to his ultimate plan is complete.

He only needed a pact with Lucifer so that he could harvest the demon’s power and use it to conquer the human world. But with Simeon’s soul bound to him, the angel is equally forced to heed Solomon’s orders until the day the sorcerer dies—and with the pact, both men are now obligated to obey Solomon’s every word.

And as he gazes upon the two men, both glaring at him—one in rage and one in disappointment—all the memories of being ostracized come flitting to Solomon. How the demon brothers isolated MC from him, how Lucifer warned them to be wary from the very beginning. Even Simeon had a tendency to favor the other little lamb more, evidenced by the fact that they were the one invited to the nightly threesomes rather than Solomon himself, and a sudden distaste possesses the mage’s heart. A quiet irritation blooms inside, one cultivated by the fact that these two men have done so much to make the sorcerer’s life so difficult.

Of course, they were right not to trust him. But there’s no denying that it hurt to see them wary from the start, long before Solomon revealed his true colors.

And suddenly, Solomon realizes that he wants to make them hurt. He wants them to feel the pain he’s been through, he wants to show them why it was a poor idea to get on his bad side. And though Solomon’s only initial goal was to secure a pact with Lucifer so that he could use it to gain power among humans, he suddenly realizes that he wants to hurt both Lucifer and Simeon, make them regret ever holding him at a distance.

Countless thoughts rush through his mind: various ways he could torture and humiliate them.

What would be the worst? Forcing them to fuck each other, give in to the love they’ve tried so hard to conceal, with the sorcerer watching and mocking them? Or perhaps Solomon should fuck one of them and force the other to watch, humiliating both as he has his way? Maybe it would be most amusing to force the two to confess publicly that they have committed the unforgivable—to announce to all of RAD that they are in love. Or might it be even more painful to both to completely isolate them from each other, forcing them to rely solely on Solomon and his whims should they ever hope to unite again?

But as these thoughts run through Solomon’s mind, a new one pops up.

And the mage considers it, carefully weighing the pros and cons to this particular command, but then he decides that it is truly perfect. Painful for Lucifer, agony for Simeon, entirely torturous but wondrously amusing to watch.

And Solomon decides that this will be his next command to both.

He steps back, cold eyes flitting to and fro between the lovers that remain pressed against the floor, who are now no longer watching Solomon but instead looking at each other, and Solomon steps forward, his feet standing in the way of their gazes.

“Rise,” He orders Lucifer, whispering the command into the demon’s ear.

“No,” Lucifer murmurs, a strange mix of fear and pain setting in: something Solomon has never seen in this prideful demon’s eyes. “You said if I made a pact with you, you wouldn’t hurt him.”

“I’m not hurting him,” Solomon says, grinning. And it suddenly strikes Lucifer that this human sorcerer is more demonic that the Avatar of Pride himself, with this god-awful command he just whispered into Lucifer’s ear. “You are.”

Solomon steps back, withdrawing from the magic circle, suddenly feeling incredibly comfortable. At last, he has everything: a pact with one of the most powerful demons in the Devildom, a way to keep the man from turning on him, and everything else he has been arranging for centuries, in preparation for this day.

But the command that falls from Solomon’s lips is an improvisation from his original plan, something meant more as payback for being treated so poorly by the demons in his time here. And so there is no regret in his voice as he repeats it, watching Simeon’s expression carefully as he says the words aloud.

“I command you to hate Simeon.”

#yo solomon is FUCKED UP #beware #like i love him #but hes um #messed up #in this at least #<3 #angst #needed but unwanted

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k7l4d4 · 3 years

Text

Bleach OC, the First

Hello all, today I decided to create an OC for the acclaimed Supernatural Anime and Manga series by Tite Kubo, Bleach. This is just for fun. Everybody Clap Your Hands!!

Virgil Cruz

Age: 17

Species: Bount

Alignment: Chaotic Good

Quote: “Justice waits for no one!! Now wait here for a sec, okay?”

Personality: Flighty and somewhat reckless, Virgil has almost no real self-control to speak of. If he wants to do something, he does it, no matter how reckless or stupid it may be. However, his sense of justice, honor, and nobility is unshakable; every attempt to compromise his morals has ended in a brutal reprisal against whatever poor sap crossed him. His idea of what justice is can be roughly summarized as the rebellion against cruelty; whenever he sees something or someone being forced into a situation that would harm them needlessly, or when the rules of others would punish someone for helping others and saving lives, his fury erupts without limit. Do not test him.

Synopsis: The first Bount born in centuries, and one capable of passing on the power of Bounts to the next generation, Virgil is a daredevil who lives to push boundaries, and has a long history of causing trouble in his pursuit of justice for those bound by cruelty. A wanderer to his core, Virgil has lived his life on the move. He has no knowledge of his parents, but genuinely wishes them a good life of kindness, whoever they are. Virgil joined the fight against supernatural threats when he realized how helpless mortals are against evil spirits and malevolent spiritual entities.

History: Virgil first encountered Ichigo during the opening act of his ventures into the supernatural world, and quickly declared himself Ichigo’s eternal rival in the path of justice, oblivious of Ichigo’s lack of care and attitude towards his presence. Virgil cares nothing for how his presence upsets the balance of power between the living and the dead, and has repeatedly come to blows against others whenever they attempt to enforce their beliefs upon him. Virgil has served as both ally and enemy to Ichigo and his friends, but Virgil will always put aside whatever craziness he is currently enmeshed in when the lives of the innocent are threatened by the “other side.”

Powers: All Bounts possess incredible Spiritual abilities, and Virgil is no different, though with something of a twist. Virgil unabashedly refers to himself as the next evolutionary step of Bount-kind, and he isn’t wrong. While Virgil can easily live to be over 200 years old, he will never lose his youthful build and strength, though unlike the previous generations of Bounts, he can die of old age, something he accepts and admits to being intrigued to experience when his time comes.

Virgil possesses the ability to absorb and integrate foreign Spiritual Energy perfectly, making fighting him a purely physical matter against other spirit-based foes, something he enjoys exploiting in the extreme.

Virgil’s greatest asset in combat is his Doll, Schützen, which takes his absorption powers into a truly terrifying direction, combat wise. While utilizing Schützen, Virgil can modulate his Spiritual Energy to take on the properties of any that he has absorbed prior, allowing him to create techniques and skills based on the enemies he has faced before; however, he cannot imitate Irregular Phenomena, such as Orihime’s powers.

What is easily his most deadly ability, and what often serves as the crux of his conflict with other Spiritual Beings, is his Parallel Spirit Layer, a technique that he can use at will, or that automatically engages when Schützen is active. Using this technique, Virgil can bridge the Spiritual and Material layers of the world, allowing anyone and everyone to see spirits and spiritual phenomena; the true strength of this technique, though, is that it makes it impossible for purely spiritual beings from affecting or interacting with purely material beings, bar those that possess spiritual powers. With it, the masquerade that separates Spirits from the living comes undone, and the sheer chaos that erupts is enough to cause all sorts of trouble.

Fighting Style: Virgil’s fighting style is focused on his ability to render any non-physical technique against him useless, primarily based on his long years of grappling and street fighting; his ability to absorb Spiritual Energy from enemy attacks makes it so anyone who can’t go hand to hand effectively are rendered useless. While his style may seem clumsy at first, Virgil has a wide range of skills and strategies to face all sorts of foes, even those that can go into close range, and has successfully duplicated legitimate Martial Arts that have been used against him prior. His keen eye for detail means no trick works twice unless the one using it finds a new way to exploit it.

Appearance: Virgil has a well-worn appearance, with many of his clothes have the borderline ragged look of someone who rarely changes their clothing or gets new ones. Despite the sorry state of his clothing, Virgil himself is scrupulously clean, as he never sets down in an area without first establishing a local water source or public area where he can bathe and cleanse himself. Virgil has rather sharp features that give him an intense air, undercut by his perpetual, dopey grin. His most distinguishing feature is his oddly prismatic hair, as it’s exact color never seems to stay consistent, and the oddness of it even baffles Virgil himself.

Schützen

Age: Not Applicable.

Species: Doll.

Alignment: True Neutral.

Quote: “The world is an uncaring place to many; the goal of my master to make it better is a noble one, and that is the only thing I care for myself.”

Personality: Blunt and taciturn, Schützen is invariably straight to the point and unfailingly logical at all times. Often playing the straight-man to his energetic master’s antics, he nonetheless is unwaveringly loyal to Virgil and has made it clear that he will sacrifice himself without pause if it would save Virgil’s life. As a result of Virgil’s unusual status among Bounts, Schützen possesses none of the murderousness that lurks within his kind when his master is weakened or in danger of death, instead acting as Virgil’s main defense when in true danger. Despite his blunt personality, Schützen has a strong flair for the dramatic, often enabling his master’s more childish impulses when in combat by providing Transformation Announcements and sound affects for their combined techniques and skills.

Synopsis: The unique Doll that is Schützen emerged when Virgil first faced another Spiritual Entity in combat, and has been his loyal aid and confidant ever since. Schützen possesses a strong sense of camaraderie, referring to those who fight alongside himself and his master as brothers and sisters, and will lose his incredible self-control even more fiercely than his master when those his master trusts are in danger, though this noticeably only applies to those who can actually fight and defend themselves, and only when they are confirmably on the same side.

History: Schützen first made his debut to Ichigo and his allies when the Menos Grande was released into Karakura by Uryu’s recklessness. His emergence allowed Ichigo and Uryu to dedicate themselves totally to fighting the fearsome foe without worry. Schützen since then has made more regular debuts in fights, and often serves as a hidden ace in combat against those who are unaware of his true capabilities.

Powers: Schützen’s primary ability is the power to integrate foreign Spiritual Energy into his being and utilize it as his own, allowing him to learn and grow in strength with every foe he and Virgil face, no matter how weak or strong they may be. His secondary, but no less potent, power is the ability to react to the abilities of his enemies in advance, a form of purely reactionary and subconscious precognition; while it only engages when he or Virgil are in risk of serious injury, it renders any surprise attack worthless against him.

His most closely guarded ability, however, is one that is truly terrifying to contemplate: true resurrection. While Orihime can do the same, if she has the energy and the will to do so, Schützen’s ability allows him to permanently sacrifice a measure of Spiritual Power from both himself and Virgil to resurrect someone as they were in before their demise, and can even resurrect portions of a being separately, such as reviving a Zanpakuto without it’s Soul Reaper, or a Doll without its Bount.

Fighting Style: Due to the nature of his body, Schützen has no fighting style of his own and merely supplements Virgil’s own.

Appearance: Schützen, in his sealed form, takes the appearance of a oddly large belt buckle marked with the Bount Crest upon it, which opens to reveal his deep purple, and jewel-like eye. In his True Form, Schützen takes on the appearance of a suit resembling the kind worn by Tokusatsu-style superheroes, giving him an oddly comical, yet still threatening, air. His appearance most strongly takes after that of the first Kamen Rider’s Rider Suit.

#bleach anime #bleach bount #bleach oc #ichigo kurosaki #uryu ishida #orihime inoue #bleach bount oc #bleach doll

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mishinashen · 3 years

Photo

Kelly Jenness House by Edward Hopper, 1932

In Kelly Jenness House and throughout his career, Edward Hopper painted aspects of America that few other artists addressed. His choice and his earnest and slightly romantic representation of seemingly mundane subject matter in works such as this watercolor set him apart from his contemporaries and allowed him to create a new and uniquely American iconography. Hopper's varied subject matter, from urban offices, diners and movie theaters to country roads, isolated homes and undulating dunes, was a result of his habitual division of his time between New York and New England almost every year beginning in 1912. New England offered the artist respite from the bustle of the city and a plethora of pictorial elements to explore, often spurring a creative outpouring, which formed an important portion of his oeuvre. "New England provided Hopper with motifs which he would turn into icons of American art." (C. Little, Edward Hopper's New England, New York, 1993, p. VI) One of eight watercolors he painted in 1932, Kelly Jenness House is a superb example of Hopper's Cape Cod works that demonstrates the artist's mastery of the watercolor medium and his ability to create hauntingly beautiful and poignant scenes from his everyday surroundings. Hopper first visited Cape Cod with his wife, Jo, in 1930, renting a house in South Truro for three summers before building a home and studio there in 1934. The couple began to spend six months there almost every year, and Hopper found an abundance of subject matter in the unassuming homes and buildings that populated the peninsula as well as the sandy dunes and crystalline light that give South Truro its distinct character. Hopper had long been fascinated by the pictorial possibilities of the play of light and shadow on buildings, once writing, "All I ever wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a house." (as quoted in L. Goodrich, Edward Hopper: Selections for the Hopper Bequest, New York, 1971, p. 8) And he saw drama in these effects on the gently rolling landscape and modest architecture of South Truro, capturing it in works such as Kelly Jenness House. As demonstrated by the quality and freshness of the present work, the Cape's distinct architecture and light revitalized the artist and provided new forms and effects to explore. "The simple shapes of these houses were the architectural antithesis of the complicated, ornamented Victorians he had been drawn to in Gloucester, but the appeal was the same: they offered the opportunity to paint the mesmerizing rhythms of sun and shadow generated in the heat of the day and in the long afternoons." (C. Troyen, "Edward Hopper" in C.E. Foster, ed., Edward Hopper, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Italy, 2009, p. 51) Hopper drove around the Cape in search of subject matter, often drawing and painting from his car, a practice that he undertook in various locations throughout his career as far away as the Oregon coast. This imbues works such as Kelly Jenness House with a sense of distance, often making the viewer feel like a voyeur, rather than a participant in the scene. Robert Hobbs writes of the impact of the automobile on Hopper's art and his willing integration of the vehicle into his creative process, "Unlike his artistic forebears, Hopper is the poetic distiller of the landscape of late industrialism. He is also the first chronicler of the view of America dictated by the automobile, and, most important, he is the first to understand the ramifications of the automobile, an invention that would serve to isolate people from each other and separate them from the country they hoped to escape to on weekends. At an early date he understood the ways that the automobile would transform America and make it psychologically as decentralized as present-day Los Angeles." (Edward Hopper, New York, 1987, p. 11) Indeed, Kelly Jenness House presents a view of a typical Cape Cod house from across a swath of sand and grass, off-center as one would glimpse the scene from the window of a passing car. As with all of Hopper's best works, there is a sense of distance and detachment. Although close to the picture plane, the house seems unapproachable--a thing to be looked at but not entered--an effect that is heightened by the lack of human presence. The work is permeated by profound silence and stillness as the building sits isolated in the greens and browns of the autumnal landscape. Gone is the clear blue, summer sky, replaced by subtle, gray-tinged autumn light. Here Hopper masterfully captures not only the atmosphere of quietude and loneliness that populates a vacation spot out of season, but also the greater human condition of psychological isolation and existential loneliness in modern society. Hopper utilizes color to create compositional unity, weaving muted iterations of the gray, green and brown of the house into the landscape. He also employs a repetition of forms throughout the composition in the diagonals of the roofs that are echoed in the landscape, and the rectangles of the windows, chimneys and door. The strong play of light and shadow on the angles of the architecture is juxtaposed with the more diffuse light that bathes the softer curves of the landscape. Hopper heightens the effect of each through his use of controlled, opaque washes for the architectural elements contrasted with more diaphanous washes in the landscape. This encourages the viewer to contemplate the permanence of the structure versus the changing season and thus the passage of time. Hopper was particularly drawn to the Jenness' house, revisiting the subject in three watercolors of 1934, Jenness House Looking North (The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida), Jenness House III (Private collection) and Jenness House IV (The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts). In each work, he presents a portrait of a house, and In the present work, much as his Cape Cod oil paintings, Dauphinée House (Private collection) and Mrs. Scott's House (Maier Museum of Art, Randolph-Macon College, Lynchburg, Virginia), of the same year, Hopper creates a scene that is distinct in its familiarity. In all of these works, he uses the name of the homes' owners in the titles, indicating that these are actual buildings, yet he renders the scenes in such an anonymous fashion so as to make them feel foreign, creating the tension and anticipation that are characteristic of his best works. In 1933, the year after he painted Kelly Jenness House, Hopper expressed the goal of his art as seeking to capture what he described as "the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature." Two decades later, in an oft-quoted statement, he again emphasized the importance of his realism as an expression of his own, deeper, aesthetic sense. "Great art," he wrote, "is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world." (as quoted in L. Goodrich, Edward Hopper, New York, 1967, pp. 161, 164) Hopper's unique aesthetic, embodied by Kelly Jenness House, influenced generations of succeeding artists and its impact continues to be seen today. Lloyd Goodrich wrote of the complexity of Hopper's art that accounts for its lasting appeal, "His art was based on the ordinary aspects of the contemporary United States, in city, town, and country, seen with uncompromising truthfulness. No artist has painted a more revealing portrait of twentieth-century America. But he was not merely an objective realist. His art was charged with strong personal emotion, with a deep attachment to our familiar everyday world, in all its ugliness, banality, and beauty." (Edward Hopper, New York, 1967, p. 15)

#art #edward hopper #american art

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nadziejastar · 4 years

Note

What are your thoughts on the various types of lesser Nobodies?

The members of the Organization each had their own distinctive weapons that didn’t exactly cooperate if someone else tried to use them, but Keyblades were even more particular. If someone else so much as tried to pick it up, a Keyblade would simply return to its wielder’s hand. Or so Xion had heard.

We should have gotten to learn how the members of the organization got their weapons.

Nobodies derived their personalities and abilities from memories of their human lives. But what exactly were those abilities? What gave rise to them? The answer that came to mind was the presence of memory itself. They were chained by their memory, and in those bonds was power. So it was probably fair to say that Roxas and Xion were bound by the same memory.

And we should have learned how they got their “personalities” and abilities, too. The Nobodies they control are one of those abilities, no doubt. They should be based off of specific memories from when they were human. Which means that the organization members should have gotten a MUCH more flesh out backstory than they got. I’m really disappointed that most of them remained so flat, even including the popular ones like Axel. He may have been very likable, but his backstory in KH3 left him very flat.

Sorcerer

A sorcerer, magician, or “witch” attempts to influence the surrounding world through occult (i.e., hidden, as opposed to open and observable) means.

There should have been a story/lore based reason for each of their fighting styles. There are no lesser Nobodies based on Vexen/Zexion. It probably means that those two did not have any fighting abilities as humans, which makes sense. But the rest of the organization probably did fight as humans, thus they can control Nobodies based off of that fighting style.

Sniper

A sniper is a marksman who operates to shoot people from a concealed position. Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with high-precision rifles and high-magnification optics, and often feed information back to their units or command headquarters.

Braig was a sniper when he was a castle guard.

Dragoon

Dragoon, in late 16th-century Europe, a mounted soldier who fought as a light cavalryman on attack and as a dismounted infantryman on defense. The terms derived from his weapon, a species of carbine or short musket called the dragoon.

Dilan was a dragoon.

XaldinHe has the image of a medieval Chinese military commander. He is excellent at strategizing, and a powerful soldier. I’m sure the players all know that he is a contender for the first or second strongest in the Organisation. I’m satisfied that I was able to depict that strength in his personality, too. I personally really like this character.–Nomura

But he was also based on a Chinese military commander. We didn’t get to learn much about Dilan. What was his motivation? Why did he side with Xehanort?

Watching that foolish beast flail about only deepens my disdain for humans and their incessant need to be pinned down by feelings. We became Nobodies precisely to avoid the shackles of emotion. It was only later that we realized the scale of that loss: that some things simply cannot be done without a heart. Nonetheless, I see nary a pleasant thing about it.

Why did he want to get rid of his emotions and why did he consider them a weakness? What was his opinion of Ansem the Wise, and how did he feel when he was banished? Did he want to take over Radiant Garden?

Samurai

The ideal samurai was supposed to be a stoic warrior who followed an unwritten code of conduct, later formalized as Bushidō, which held bravery, honour, and personal loyalty above life itself; ritual suicide by disembowelment (seppuku) was institutionalized as a respected alternative to dishonour or defeat.

Aeleus was a samurai.

LexaeusHe’s a character with strength to rival Xaldin. While Xaldin has power plus technique, I’d say to Lexaeus is more of a samurai, or that he has bushido-style strength. If you listen to his very last line in Re:COM, I think you’ll be able to see his spirit. I wanted to do more with this character.–Nomura

Nomura said his final words showed his spirit.

Lexaeus: You are the Superior’s—Forgive me, Zexion. This was a fight I should not have started.

In Re:CoM, these are his last words. He seems to have some honor and was loyal to Zexion.

Lexaeus gave him a cruel smile. “Hmph…so I must accept my defeat here. But do not make the mistake of underestimating the darkness in me! As I am destroyed, it will leave this ruined vessel and drown you!”

Then there was a terrible shock wave far greater than what Riku had felt from the darkness that Lexaeus radiated before the battle.

“Wh…what’s happening?!” A relentless swirl of darkness surrounded him, swallowing him up until he disappeared into it.

Lexaeus laughed madly. “This is my strength… I, number five in the organization… I who was once his favorite pupil!” Those were Lexaeus’s final words before he vanished into the darkness.

In the novel, there’s an extended final scene with his final words where he apparently commits seppuku and says he was “his” favorite pupil. Who’s favorite pupil? Ansem? Xehanort? We’ll probably never know.

Berserker

Berserker, Norwegian berserk, Old Norse berserkr (“bearskin”), in premedieval and medieval Norse and Germanic history and folklore, a member of unruly warrior gangs that worshipped Odin, the supreme Norse deity, and attached themselves to royal and noble courts as bodyguards and shock troops. The berserkers’ savagery in battle and their animal-skin attire contributed to the development of the werewolf legend in Europe. These Viking berserkers were infamous for fighting in a violent rage, recklessly charging at their enemies without armor or any other protection, and seemingly without concern for their own health.

Saïx is a strange case. Unlike the apprentices, we never saw Isa fighting as a human. He was just a kid. So how did he become a berserker of all things?

Prayers are uttered to Odin, as the object of contemplation. Why Odin and not the wolf, bear, or whatever? The berserk trance is brought about by Odin, he is the inspirer, that which brings something outside the self within the self. This is ond, inspiration, or vital breath. This triggers the wod, or fury and possession, which is where the wolf, bear, or whatever comes in. As a god, Odin is a “larger” concept than the animal, and so the effect he has upon the mind during the ritual will be the greater.

Berserkers worshiped Odin. To go berserk, they needed to meditate on him and receive divine inspiration. In other words, they couldn’t just go berserk at will. The needed to meditate upon a divine purpose to go berserk.

Do you know what happens to those who lose their true purpose? Inevitably, they destroy themselves.

I think Saïx was the same.

It infuriated me how you just exited our lives. I lost…all sense of purpose.

He needed a purpose to go berserk.

Yes, I thought you didn’t need me anymore. If you didn’t need me, then I no longer held meaning.

For him, it was Lea.

Saïx hesitated for a second, and Roxas ran at him.

He blocked the Keyblade.

Long ago—I remember, I didn’t hate fighting. Saïx flung his claymore at Roxas.

And so, Saïx remembered things from a long, long time ago.

My theory is that Saïx would need to meditate on his purpose before he could go berserk. Before he went berserk fighting Roxas, he thought back to a time before he hated fighting. Back when he had someone to protect and fighting actually had meaning.

Assassin

A murderer of an important person in a surprise attack for political or religious reasons.

One of the things I disliked about KH3 was its characterization of Axel/Lea and seemingly retconning his role as an assassin. On the clock tower, Axel and Saïx revealed their shared goal of finding Subject X. Saïx wanted to work his way to the top of the organization hierarchy so he could find out what happened to her. Axel said that he couldn’t keep up with Saïx and his willingness to do the icky jobs Xemnas wanted them to do to achieve that rank.

This flies in the face of ALL the hints from the previous games about their shared objective:

In order for Sora—no, for Roxas to live, and also for us to accomplish our own goal, Zexion is in the way. And, if it’s for the sake of our own goal, we already decided what to do, that time.

In the novel, Axel references their shared goal and how they decided to do whatever it took. Zexion was in the way and Axel killed him.

Given the right memories, the Replica could mimic the powers of the original. Which meant that if he were implanted with somebody else’s memories, he would, hypothetically, gain other powers. Somebody’s—or maybe even a Nobody’s. He had one particular Nobody in mind. All the members of the Organization were still influenced by the memories of their human lives.

Here, it references Axel’s memories of his human life as a reason he wants to use the Riku Replica to defeat someone and absorb their powers. Sounds like Axel was, at least partially, motivated by revenge.

Axel let out a breath. “Look, I knew Vexen and Zexion would cause trouble for you. That’s why they’re not around anymore.”

That sounded more like he was justifying it to himself, Axel thought. Their lack of hearts didn’t render their actions meaningless. It wasn’t as if they never thought carefully or acted without objectives in mind. Humans and Nobodies alike would pursue their own purposes.

“The dirty work doesn’t bother me,” Axel went on. “You just make for the top.” There was nothing false in that, and he looked Saïx in the eye as he said it. Saïx stared hard back at him. Right. We have our own agenda.

Again, it demonstrates how Axel was always the one willing to do the dirty work to achieve their goal.

“Everything is back to normal. Of course this is for the best, isn’t it?”

The reason I’m unable to answer Saïx is probably because I depend on him, thought Axel.

“Xemnas has also been irritated at the recent changes in plan. Everything has to go back to normal, for the sake of our goal too… Lea.”

Axel finally looked over at the sound of that nostalgic name. Saïx was looking at him. It made him think of his time as a human, and the memories came surging back.

Here, Saïx is trying to coerce Axel into killing Xion for the sake of their goal. He never even considers doing it himself. It sounds like Axel was always the one who handled the icky jobs like killing, not Saïx. Because, obviously, that was Axel’s job. He was the assassin.

I just did what I thought was the best thing at the time. For Roxas, for Xion, for the Organization—and for Isa. But most of all for me.

Axel was at first willing to kill Xion. And who was he doing it for? Isa. And for himself. Because he needed Isa. He emotionally depended on him. Saïx knew Axel needed him and manipulated him by calling him “Lea”.

Axel didn’t care anymore about what the Organization needed, what Xion or Roxas wanted, or even what was supposed to be good for the worlds. He had been using the Organization for his own ends from the start. The only thing that had changed in the meantime was who it was all for. Maybe Saïx would call that a betrayal. But his world had changed.

It doesn’t sound like Axel’s willingness to kill had anything to do with Subject X or finding information about her. It sounds like Axel was wiling to kill for Saïx. He and Saïx wanted to take over the organization for Saïx’s sake.

What were you really after, Lea? We joined the Organization at the same time, and formulated our plan. At this point, it’s just an idle fantasy. Everything changed. You, and me.

When Axel refused to do what Saïx wanted and left the organization, he apparently didn’t need him anymore. And Saïx couldn’t handle that.

Yes, I thought you didn’t need me anymore. If you didn’t need me, then I no longer held meaning.

Of course, Axel’s motivation was retconned in KH3. Instead of Isa being his reason for staying in the organization, it became Subject X/Skuld. And along with that change, Axel’s role as an assassin was whitewashed. Maybe the idea of the fan-favorite Axel being happily willing to ruthlessly murder people didn’t seem appropriate anymore. Especially if it was no longer not for his best friend, but for a girl who is basically a stranger to him. I dunno. But I think it’s BS.

Dancer

A warrior who dances across the battlefield, garbed in colorful raiments. Tends to have low stats and specializes in support magic.

Demyx was a dancer.

DemyxFrom the beginning he was created as a light-hearted character, but his voice actor really made him stand on his own as a character despite the short appearances he had. He is by no means strong, so I think it’s funny how you don’t see it coming when his abilities make him a formidable opponent. His line before exiting was something I thought of on the spot and had them add in.–Nomura

He is described as not very strong. We never got to see him as a human, but he was probably a performer.

Gambler

(Bakuto, 博徒) were itinerant gamblers in Japan from the 18th century to the mid-20th century. They were one of the forerunners of the modern Japanese crime gangs known as yakuza. Bakuto plied their trade in feudal Japan, playing traditional games such as hanafuda and dice. They were mostly social outcasts who lived outside the laws and norms of society.

Luxord has still not received a backstory. I think we can tell a lot about him with this, though.

LuxordIn all honesty he is my absolute favourite Organisation member. I like how he treats everything as a gamble, like Setzer from FFVI of old. I actually wanted to make him stand out more. At least I got him to say some things during the meeting scene added to KH2 FM+… but Luxord should have been able to do so much more…–Nomura

Nomura wanted to do more with him.

The nation of Lucis was said to have worked akin to a mafia crime family since the nation’s ancient beginnings, and despite its peace was said to have engaged in strict rule, including a ban on firearms and a lockdown in the capitol city. Noctis was the crown prince, and Regis the current king. Ignis, Gladiolus, and Prompto—Noctis’s team members—acted as his entourage akin to a Yakuza kyodai-shatei structure.

Maybe his gambler/bakuto job is the reason why he’s apparently going to have a connection to the Verum Rex world. In Re:Mind, Yozora’s driver sounded like Luxord. And Luxord’s wild card is apparently going to be what helps Sora return.

Reaper

Death is frequently imagined as a personified force. In some mythologies, a character known as the Grim Reaper causes the victim’s death by coming to collect that person’s soul. Other beliefs hold that the Spectre of Death is only a psychopomp, serving to sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies.

The Reaper and Ninja Nobodies were introduced in KH3. I think Marluxia’s intentions were supposed to be known by the time KH3 started. He wanted to bring his sister back. That’s why he wanted to control Sora and the Keyblade and take over Castle Oblivion. That’s something that should have been explored in the Dark Seeker Saga, explaining how Marluxia became a vessel. Maybe Xehanort convinced him that if he helped open Kingdom Hearts, he could reunite with his sister.

Ninja

A ninja (忍者) was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. The functions of a ninja included espionage, deception, and surprise attacks. Their covert methods of waging irregular warfare were deemed dishonorable and beneath the honor of the samurai.

Larxene’s backstory is a Keyblade wielder from the age of fairy tales. But why was she a knife wielding ninja archetype character? What was her life like before she became a Nobody and tried to take over Castle Oblivion? How did she get so twisted and when did her hatred of men develop? What is the nature of her feelings for Marluxia? That’s what I wanna know.

#kh #organization xiii

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fairydust-stuff · 4 years

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Ode to Hannah Annafellows

I noticed Hannah doesn’t get as much attention as Alois or Claude. I know a lot of her writing makes no sense half the time but lets be honest Alois and Claude suffered from inconsistencies as well. What we do have is fairly interesting though, so I wanted to write an piece that gives attention to my favorite Demon Lady.

Hannah the Demon Hannah used to be just like Sebastian and Claude for filling contracts for a quick meal. She was board and just killing time until she met Luka and fulfilled his wish to slaughter everyone who was mean to him and his big brother. “That is the first time anyone ever thanked Me." at first glance it seems like Hannah went from sinner to saint however a closer look reveals. Hannah is still a demon regardless of her newfound humanity; her true nature makes her a dangerous foe.

Here's the thing Hannah isn't a good person but she's, not a completely evil like bad fanfic's portrays her as, and not without kindness but she's still a viper. Hannah would gladly tattle on Claude to Alois, she would never keep the spiders confidence. In fact she'd use the opportunity to try and get a heartbroken Alois to listen to her. Hannah has shown herself to be very manipulative and sneaky. She spent her whole time at Trancy manor patiently waiting for Claude to screw up so she could step in. Outside of Alois and Luka she's not exactly warm hearted people forget this is the women who was fine turning everyone into zombies and watching them tear each other apart on Alois's orders. She had every intention of hurting Sebastian in that fight. She's probly killed others off screen too and the stuff with Ciel which I’ll get to later. This reflects that although Hannah is capable of love, humanity with the exception of Alois and Luka are still basically insects to her.

Hannah and Alois Everyone seems to forget especially Claude x Hannah shippers is Hannah is Alois's creature even more so then Claude. In fact they have certain traits in common. Both of them are protective of those they love, (Alois luka and Claude, Hannah Alois, luka) forgiving of trespasses by dear ones, (Alois forgave Claude, Hannah forgave Alois) can be incredibly vindictive if crossed, (Just look at how they got Sebastian and Ciel good) know how to manipulate and trick people in order to get what they want. They both can keep up a charade for a fairly long time. (Hannah everyone, Alois lord trancy) Hannah is both the tinker bell and Wendy to Alois's peter pan. (Without the romantic feelings)

This is why oc x Claude fics annoy me so much. (Seriously, Claude couldn't keep a human female alive around those two. Alois would go sobbing to Hannah and she would cut the girls throat for being in the way of her highnesse's happiness. Also Hannah would never aid a random person unless that girl meant something to Alois. So any oc finance of Ciel's would be screwed in that situation. I strongly think her attack on Ciel was a direct retaliation for him stabbing Alois as well as to help Alois seize Ciel's body. However the fact of the matter is their relationship is troubling, manipulations by Claude and the fact both of them are socially impaired creates miscommunication about the others intentions. One being a demon that’s not used to looking after an abused human, and one being a mentally ill abused child.

I've noticed Hannah wears the same maid uniform that the maids that prepared Alois for Trancy wore, despite her good intentions Hannah comes across as predatory. Her eyes glow red and she slowly licks her fingers like a snake. There are scenes where she's crouched over or straddling Alois's unconscious body in an awkward position. Her biggest problem is unlike Claude who doesn’t care and can calmly make observations and cool headed decisions. Hannah's sincere love may cause her to be over zealous and over stepping into the comfort zone of a young boy who is wary of adults and their desire to be close to him. (Not that this excuses his behavior) Yet it can be argued Alois is as dependent on her as he is with Claude. When Claude hurts Alois emotionally Hannah is the one he goes to either to take his frustrations out on her, or to simply cry his eyes out. She is the one he gets to take him to ciels manor so he can warn him about Claude and later Alois relies on her to help him carry out his plans in the maze. This suggests even in earlier episodes she held some importance to him even when he didn't trust her.

Claude and Hannah The two of them have a very interesting dynamic. Claude is the beloved cherished servant Alois constantly showers with compliments and as a result of his affections, Claude has the kid wrapped around his finger. “My heart is trapped in your spider webs, I love you my highness." Alois declares in the last episode. In contrast Hannah gets all the abuse Alois even rips her eye out for looking at him wrong. “She creeps me out" Alois sincerely tells Sebastian in his introduction episode. Claude yet both of them are attracted to Alois's fiery soul. “I do so love your passion." Claude thinks near the end of Spiders Intention “As do I." Hannah adds. However as the two dominant figures in Alois's life they are at odds with each other. And although I’ve heard different takes on Claude and Hannah's relationship some suggesting love or sexual intimacy.

I tend to view them as enemies who dislike each other greatly, but see the benefit in an alliance against greater threats. Although I don't doubt a sexual relationship is possible, I think it would be purely for physical and manipulative purposes. I know some fans are convinced Claude is gay or a pedophile but honestly Claude is a demon therefore he most likely has no limits to what he will and won't screw.

Claude although incapable of love himself is possessive he views Alois as his property bought and paid for by their contract, fated to be eaten when Claude grows tired of him. He is suspicious of Hannah and doesn’t want her to steal his meal but also regards her as his toy or as he so crudely put “Hole for my sheath." referring both to the fact she is the keeper of an actual sword and perhaps making a sexual reference. He even protects her from Sebastian at one point, yet Claude himself treats both of his so called possessions like trash. Hannah gets it the worst he throws her around hits her and constantly pulls a painful sword out of her body. Yet he's also dependent on her, as shown in spider’s intention Claude makes the triplets and Hannah do the actual work.

Although he insists the work is beneath him, I’d argue Claude is too proud to admit Hannah is better at pleasing Alois then he is. As shown when she suggests bluebells in Alois's room in contrast to the roses Claude wanted. Hannah seems to dislike Claude she is jealous of the love Alois has for him and angry at how false he is. “You don't deserve to be at his side, the only one who does is Luka Macken" she states. Later she seems to display open hatred for Claude instead of simple distaste Suggesting Alois use his wish to bind Claude to him forever and saying that she would happily break Claude’s legs for him. Most likely retaliation for his murder and betrayal of Alois himself. However later she does except Claude into her family and take him to limbo on Alois's behest while his soul is in side of her. Suggesting she has the ability to forgive and forget. Anti-Hero Hannah I know fans praise Ciel and Sebastian as an anti-heroes but no their villain protagonists. Both Ciel and Sebastian are obsessed with their goals which are purely selfish. In contrast Hannah is the closest thing this series has to a hero. So anti-hero I guess just to be fair. Her whole goal is to save Alois and his brother she even saves Claude from dying permanently and she kills herself to free their souls on the off chance they can all go to Nervinna. Think about her whole role taking abuse, saving children and forgiving her abusers and helping them too find a kind of peace. Even Ciel is able to relax as a demon knowing Sebastian won't munch on his soul.

She also goes through a huge change in her attitude from careless predator to someone who's starting to figure out she is capable of emotions like love and caring. But Why is she so understanding of Alois's abuse how can she love him? I’ve wondered this myself I know it was because she swallowed his brother, but I think their might be a deeper reason. I think Hannah gets Alois Trancy more than anyone else. (Not that it’s saying much everyone else in Alois life except Luka was extremely self-absorbed) She's a demon a demon who felt lonely and board and did horrible things that's what demon do lash out at the world because they've been rejected by heaven. So when Alois lashes out because he's scared or hurting Hannah can’t hate him, because I think she's been there many times and done far worse crimes then the human before her. She's had centuries to do things like start wars and topple empires. So when Alois hurts her Hannah can’t help but understand and relate to him. Which is what makes Hannah so fascinating she's a demon who can be nasty but still manages to be kind, understanding, and embrace penance, and forgiveness.

#black butler #hannah anafellow #alois trancy #claude faustus #Trancy household Appreciation #Alois Hannah and Claude are forever danceing a demented tango #i'm torn these messed up people care about each other but they all need serious help

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missfay49 · 5 years

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Sanders Sides Theory – July 3, 2019-August 16, 2019

The last side will be Aggression. Please enjoy this short essay explaining why.

Looong post below the cut.

Premise:

Orange. The mythical last Side needed to complete the rainbow that is C!Thomas. According to color theory, orange signifies High Activity, Action, Impulse, and… Aggression. But many of the sides don’t neatly fit into any of the traditional color theories. While it would complete the rainbow, their color is not going to define their trait. So just toss that out right now.

I racked my brain to come up with another unspoken personality trait that could be considered shameful like Deceit and Remus, that C!Thomas could possibly have within him. I actually sat on this post for more than a month because the pieces didn’t fit. But now that I’ve started to see other posts about the last Side being Anger, in the context of standing up for oneself, (Righteous Fury) I think it makes sense. What is the literally opposite of how we view C!Thomas in these videos? Kind, sympathetic, accepting C!Thomas? Aggression and violence.

Examples of Violence or Aggression in the show:

AoVD – Roman slays a dragon-witch to protect an imaginary Valerie. Roman is considered to be acting par-for-the-course for killing the dragon-witch, and no one minds because he did it to defend someone.

AA - Login throws a keyboard at Thomas to make a point.

-Some kinds of violence are acceptable to society, like defeating ‘bad’ people. Or for science.

LNTAO – Logan screams and throws a crumpled paper at Roman, hitting him in the eye. This causes Patton and Roman to lead a full-on puppet-based theatrical production about why we need to express our feelings in healthy ways. (Logan had to hit him in the eye, for the sake of the idiom, “an eye for an eye”.) (Also, Logan had a feeling for once, and it was anger.)

EP – Virgil throws a rock at C!Thomas and hits him in the face, but immediately feels bad about it.

-Some kinds of violence are not acceptable.

(I’m leaving out the latest episode for a reason.)

The Sides have quietly been exploring and dealing with aggression the whole time. This is also why Virgil, as someone trying to reform themselves, seems to actually be afraid of the yet-unknown ‘other’ Side. He knows how bad something like that has the potential to be. With the last episode’s reveal of Remus, he seems resigned to the fact that all the Sides will eventually come out, and he can’t control or prepare for it as much as he thought he could. He’s scared.

Counter-Argument:

Let me stop you right there- if the other sides act out and are violent or aggressive sometimes, does that mean there needs to be a whole ‘nother side for it? Why isn’t that just something they do?

One Side exhibiting a trait from another Side is par for the course, of course. We were not officially introduced to Deceit until episode CLBG, but Virgil has been specifically reminding everyone not to lie since way back in AOVD, as well as several episodes that bring up instances of lying to ourselves, or denying reality: ANYOLTM, TDSOD, AOVD. Patton, Roman, and Logan have all been caught lying since early episodes, despite us not knowing Deceit existed. Therefore, the fact that many of them have acted aggressively in the past is a solid indicator that Aggression will be its own Side.

The Meat of the Argument – Suppression:

There are no light or dark sides, good or bad sides. There are only those sides that C!Thomas has, or has not, already accepted are a part of him.

Being nurturing, logical, and creative (to an extent) are all sides that have been encouraged in him, and most of us, from early childhood. Showing these traits is considered positive behavior, and conducive to functioning in society.

There are no light or dark sides.

Meanwhile, being duplicitous or selfish, creating things that seem too dark, or having paranoid thoughts are all often dismissed or considered to be unacceptable by large swaths of people, particularly when we’re young. As my own example, I went to a Christian pre-school in 1992-93 (I’m old, okay?). One day while finger-painting, I drew a large green snake attacking an airplane. Yeah, that’s right, I came up with “Snakes on a Plane”, and that’s why I included the date. Suck it, Hollywood.

That finger-painting was, and still is, the best depiction of an airplane I have ever produced. I can still picture it. I was so proud, I excitedly told my teacher exactly what was going on in the scene when she asked. She promptly took it away and threw it in the trash, because, “Violence is wrong.”

I cried. I hadn’t actually attacked a plane full of people, or created a real life violent snake. I’d only thought about it and drawn a picture. It was a compelling story for a five year old!

Suppressing ‘negative’ thoughts doesn’t help us. Every Side only wants what’s best for C!Thomas. Virgil wants to protect him. Deceit wants him to be successful. Remus wants C!Thomas to be free to express himself, without being limited by what society (or even his own wholesome viewers) might find acceptable.

Yet, we are taught to suppress these kinds of thoughts and ideas, to deny they even exist. But we know, because the series shows us, that even these ‘darker’ sides can be useful. How?

All things in moderation.

Moderation is the key. Focusing too much on any one facet hurts us, while working towards a balance helps us. Even our acceptable traits can hurt us when they’re taken to the extreme: Being too logical can lead to disregarding feelings and producing lower quality work, just for the sake of meeting a deadline. Being too fanciful can cause us to get lost in a daydream when we need to take care of our responsibilities. Being too protective of an ideal can make us blind to the way someone is trying to express themselves.

One by one, C!Thomas has shown how each Side can be helpful to him. And anxiety is the key, the linchpin. Feeling stress can be a way to alert us of possible dangers, societal faux-pas, and cause us to change course to ensure a positive outcome. This is the base human emotion, that for centuries has allowed us to conform, just a little, to stay in a group, and keep us from getting eaten by freakin’ wolves! Anxiety is accepted as useful.

Acceptance.

Heck, Remus was introduced and (more or less) accepted in a single (long) episode! I left out the examples of violence in his episode until now, because each and every one of them was ultimately accepted as just being a creative part of our brains that happens sometimes, unworthy of lingering on. They do not matter. It was immediately resolved that Remus simply can’t control or predict his imaginative outbursts, but would like to be accepted all the same because he doesn’t want C!Thomas to miss out on what could be a huge portion of his creative ability. He’s hurt by the fact he was rejected in the first place.

So, although Deceit has not yet been accepted per se, we can fully anticipate it, and the acceptance of any remaining unknown Sides, given enough time. And this pattern of acceptance will be their downfall.

Progression:

Why has it taken so long to get to this Side?

When the series first started, C!Thomas’s anxiety was high. He was just coming to accept it existed, let alone how to deal with it and turn it to his advantage. When you feel anxious all the time, it’s incredibly difficult to ever really feel confident in yourself or what you’re doing. We can’t stick up for ourselves if we don’t feel confident about ourselves in the first place.

Anxiety directly inhibits Confidence.

Exactly through the act of resolving his various Sides, the Sides become more and more confident, more valid. C!Thomas grows as a person and feels more comfortable with who he is and his path. His anxiety evolves and balances out, allowing him to feel more confident in his decision making.

The point is always to achieve balance, and accept what each Side brings to the table. And now we’re finally at the most recent video, in which we literally come to terms with the ability to have dark thoughts without them necessarily changing our behavior in real life. Confidence becomes okay. He believes in his ability to make choices that are just, like in the literal courtroom conclusion. C!Thomas MUST reach the point where he can accept that premise, because otherwise Aggression would never be palatable. Standing up for yourself would never be possible. He could never be confident if he was still worried about randomly committing violent acts against his will.

In this episode, we see the result of a Virgil that has slowly been growing more confident in his role and purpose, because he and Patton demand the group just “trust us”. But a confident Virgil is like a feedback loop into the speaker: the noise becomes stronger, more distorted, and more painful with each iteration. When he finds himself aligned with Remus unexpectedly, his feelings of confidence sink and his doubt skyrockets.

Prediction:

Not in the next episode, but definitely coming up, C!Thomas will experience an injustice from outside forces. There will be an increased level of anxiety, in which Virgil reaches an unbearable level, and C!Thomas wonders if aggressively pursuing his goals will cause him to lose his sense of self. He was wronged, but how far is he willing to go to right it? Can he handle that kind of social conflict?

C!Thomas doesn’t believe in violence, sure, but he can’t let this one go, not after everything else he’s given up so far. Roman deserves this. He will ultimately be manipulated into tabling his Anxiety, because he feels he deserves to be successful, and he can’t afford to let fear stop him now.

The Set Up:

With Anxiety out of the way, something changes in the others. They feel free, more confident. This time the choice was knowingly made to reject Virgil, instead of leaving everyone confused like it did in AA. And at least some of them can feel justified about it, because he was getting out of control. They’ll bring him back when it’s all over, they tell themselves. But with Patton’s help, C!Thomas still feels one last pang of doubt. Was it right to remove Virgil? At this, Logan will turn on him, reasoning that the entire point of EVERYTHING was to be successful, and “now that we’re here, you’re just going to throw it all away? For what?! To save face with someone who doesn’t even deserve it? To let some jerk decide what you’re capable of, for you? This could be- IS everything we’ve been working towards!” The set-up of him being the savior in DWIT, and feeling more confident in his status as “cool” and capable, will be his driving force. Even Roman is on-board with this, he wants the spotlight so badly! Logan’s voice will change. He’ll become unreasonable, emotional. And at that point it will become clear he’s not himself. He will hit the floor like the battery just died in his little robot puppet. And what rises up in his place? Well...

Aggression will appear without any fancy dress. He will be wearing a t-shirt, possibly with some orange, or some small, hard-to-see detail indicating his trait, but will otherwise look exactly like C!Thomas does in everyday life. This is the insidiousness of anger and violent thoughts; You can never tell, just by looking, who might act on them.

He will be an energetic, twitching mess of barely controlled excitement, looking for any outlet. He might display potential traits for an addictive personality. He will give clear instructions and expect to be listened to. “Do it. Do it, now- STOP TALKING AND D-!“

All of the increasingly extravagant costumes for each new side have just been a misdirect leading up to this exact moment; A face-to-face confrontation with the part of C!Thomas that he feels most ashamed of: actual pride in himself.

Why?

Why would it be hard for someone to be proud of themselves?

Already addressed in DWIT, pride is a ‘sin’. We convince ourselves not to feel it, because the ‘right’ thing to do is accept our lot in life, to believe we don’t even deserve what we have, let alone dare to reach for more. One of the greatest struggles we face in a world where we have access to a relentless stream of information, is reconciling our position compared to others. Every time we get a role in the play, are we taking from someone else? Maybe we didn’t really earn that opportunity. The act of pursuing anything non-critical to survival is juxtaposed by our sense of justice. We struggled, so we deserve something for our efforts.

People who have struggled hard to make something of themselves, only to find their path blocked by someone else, something outside of their control… they snap. They reach an invisible marker in their timeline where they can choose to either be someone that always gives in, gives to others, never chooses themselves… or they can choose to stand up. And who helps us stand up? Deceit. Because if we aren’t willing to stand up to that roadblock for ourselves, we rationalize that it will benefit others. How many more people will this roadblock prevent from creating something? From succeeding? This isn’t just about us anymore, it’s about justice for all who come after! It is righteous! It is good! It’s US versus THEM!

That’s why, when we need to reject civility, anxiety has to go…

Conclusion:

Accepting Deceit is the first step. None of this works if he’s still an outlier. With the help of Deceit, Aggression will forcibly coerce and overpower each Side in turn as they try to defend C!Thomas, insisting that he is the last, and greatest, piece of the puzzle needed to ensure C!Thomas’s success and well-being. He is self-serving and unabashedly honest about it. The contrast will even make Deceit look more appealing: “See?” He mocks the Sides as they’re defeated. “I just wanted to give you a calm, civil version of all…” waving a gloved hand, “-this. But you wouldn’t listen and, now, here we are...”

But you wouldn’t listen.

C!Thomas will continue the pattern of acceptance, because every Side has to have some good in them, right? If Deceit can be good, so can Aggression. He doesn’t understand why the other Sides are being so stubborn. They don’t know what it feels like to be rejected just for being themselves, not like Deceit and Virgil. Like him.

Leaving us with one last, unanswered question: Who will C!Thomas be once all the Sides are revealed?

But that’s just a theory- a Game Theo- ha, just kidding. If this turns out to be all wrong, well, it was a good mental exercise. Hope you enjoyed.

#patton #virgil #remus #violence #logan #roman #deceit #orange #sanders sides theory

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years

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The Smartphone Society

The automobile was in many respects the defining commodity of the twentieth century. Its importance didn’t stem from technological virtuosity or the sophistication of the assembly line, but rather from an ability to reflect and shape society. The ways in which we produced, consumed, used, and regulated automobiles were a window into twentieth-century capitalism itself — a glimpse into how the social, political, and economic intersected and collided.Today, in a period characterized by financialization and globalization, where “information” is king, the idea of any commodity defining an era might seem quaint. But commodities are no less important today, and people’s relationships to them remain central to understanding society. If the automobile was fundamental to grasping the last century, the smartphone is the defining commodity of our era.People today spend a lot of time on their phones. They check them constantly throughout the day and keep them close to their bodies. They sleep next to them, bring them to the bathroom, and stare at them while they walk, eat, study, work, wait, and drive. Twenty percent of young adults even admit to checking their phones during sex.What does it mean that people seem to have a phone in their hand or pocket everywhere they go, all day long? To make sense of our purported collective phone addiction, we should follow the advice of Harry Braverman, and examine the “machine on the one side and social relations on the other, and the manner in which these two come together in society.”Hand MachinesApple insiders refer to FoxConn’s assembly city in Shenzhen as Mordor — J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth hellhole. As a spate of suicides in 2010 tragically revealed, the moniker is only a slight exaggeration of the factories in which young Chinese workers assemble iPhones. Apple’s supply chain links colonies of software engineers with hundreds of component suppliers in North America, Europe, and East Asia — Gorilla Glass from Kentucky, motion coprocessors from the Netherlands, camera chips from Taiwan, and transmit modules from Costa Rica funnel into dozens of assembly plants in China.Capitalism’s simultaneously creative and destructive tendencies spur constant changes in global production networks, and within these networks, new configurations of corporate and state power. In the old days, producer-driven supply chains, exemplified by industries like auto and steel, were dominant. People like Lee Iacocca and Boeing legend Bill Allen decided what to make, where to make it, and how much to sell it for.But as the economic and political contradictions of the postwar boom heightened in the 1960s and ’70s, more and more countries in the Global South adopted export-oriented strategies to achieve their development goals. A new type of supply chain emerged (particularly in light industries like apparel, toys, and electronics) in which retailers, rather than manufacturers, held the reins. In these buyer-driven models, companies like Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Walmart design goods, name their price to manufacturers, and often own little more in the way of production than their lucrative brands.Power and governance are located at multiple points in the smartphone chain, and production and design are deeply integrated at the global scale. But the new configurations of power tend to reinforce existing wealth hierarchies: poor and middle-income countries try desperately to move into more lucrative nodes through infrastructure development and trade deals, but upgrading opportunities are few and far between, and the global nature of production makes struggles by workers to improve conditions and wages extremely difficult.Congolese coltan miners are separated from Nokia executives by more than an ocean — they are divided by history and politics, by their country’s relationship to finance, and by decades-old development barriers, many of which are rooted in colonialism.The smartphone value chain is a useful map of global exploitation, trade politics, uneven development, and logistical prowess, but the deeper significance of the device lies elsewhere. To discover the more subtle shifts in accumulation that are illustrated and facilitated by the smartphone, we must turn from the process by which people use machines to create phones to the process by which we use the phone itself as a machine.Considering the phone as a machine is, in some respects, immediately intuitive. Indeed, the Chinese word for mobile phone is shouji, or “hand machine.” People often use their hand machines as they would any other tool, particularly in the workplace. Neoliberal demands for flexible, mobile, networked workers make them essential.Smartphones extend the workplace in space and time. Emails can be answered at breakfast, specs reviewed on the train home, and the next day’s meetings verified before lights out. The Internet becomes the place of work, with the office just a dot on the vast map of possible workspaces.The extension of the working day through smartphones has become so ubiquitous and pernicious that labor groups are fighting back. In France, unions and tech businesses signed an agreement in April 2014 recognizing 250,000 tech workers’ “right to disconnect” after a day’s work, and Germany is currently contemplating legislation that would prohibit after-work emails and phone calls. German Labor Minister Andrea Nahles told a German newspaper that it is “indisputable that there is a connection between permanent availability and psychological diseases.”Smartphones have also facilitated the creation of new types of work and new ways of accessing labor markets. In the “marketplace for odd jobs,” companies like TaskRabbit and Postmates have built their business models by tapping into the “distributed workforce” through smartphones.TaskRabbit connects people who would prefer to avoid the drudgery of doing their own chores with people desperate enough to do piecework odd jobs for pay. Those who want chores done, like the laundry or cleanup after their kid’s birthday party, link up with “taskers” using TaskRabbit’s mobile app.Taskers are expected to continuously monitor their phones for potential jobs (response time determines who gets a job); consumers can order or cancel a tasker on the go; and upon successfully completing the chore, the contractor can be paid directly through the phone.Postmates — the darling of the gig economy — is an up-and-comer in the business world, especially after Spark Capital pumped $16 million into it earlier this year. Postmates tracks its “couriers” in cities like Boston, San Francisco, and New York using a mobile app on their iPhones as they hustle to deliver artisanal tacos and sugar-free vanilla lattes to homes and offices. When a new job comes in, the app routes it to the closest courier, who must respond immediately and complete the task within an hour to get paid.The couriers, who are not recognized employees of Postmates, are less enthusiastic than Spark. They get $3.75 per delivery plus tips, and because they’re classified as independent contractors, are not protected by minimum wage laws.In this way, our hand machines fit seamlessly into the modern world of work. The smartphone facilitates contingent employment models and self-exploitation by linking workers to capitalists without the fixed costs and emotional investment of more traditional employment relations.But smartphones are more than a piece of technology for wage work — they have become a part of our identity. When we use our phones to text friends and lovers, post comments on Facebook, or scroll through our Twitter feeds, we’re not working — we’re relaxing, we’re having fun, we’re creating. Yet, collectively, through these little acts, we end up producing something unique and valuable: our selves.Selves for SaleErving Goffman, an influential American sociologist, was interested in the self and how individuals produce and perform their selves through social interaction. By his own admission, Goffman was a bit Shakespearean — for him “all the world is a stage.” He argued that social interactions can be thought of as performances, and that people’s performances vary depending on their audience.We enact these “front-stage” performances for people — acquaintances, coworkers, judgmental relatives — that we want to impress. Front-stage performances give the appearance that our actions “maintain and embody certain standards.” They convince the audience that we really are who we say we are: a responsible, intelligent, moral human being.But front-stage performances can be shaky and are often undermined by mistakes — people put their foot in their mouth, they misread social cues, they have a piece of spinach lodged in their teeth, or they get caught in a lie. Goffman was fascinated by how hard we work to perfect and maintain our front-stage performances and how often we fail at them.Smartphones are a godsend for the dramaturgical aspects of life. They enable us to manage the impressions we make on others with control-freak precision. Instead of talking to each other, we can send text messages, planning our witticisms and avoidance strategies in advance. We can display our impeccable taste on Pinterest, superior parenting skills on CafeMom, and burgeoning artistic talents on Instagram, all in real time.New York magazine recently ran a piece about the four most desirable people in New York City according to OKCupid. These individuals have crafted such attractive dating profiles that they are pummeled with attention and racy requests — their phones ping continually with messages from potential paramours. Tom, one of the chosen four, regularly tweaks his profile, subbing in new photos, and rewording his self-description. He has even used OKCupid’s MyBestFace profile-optimizing service.Tom says all this effort is necessary in our present “culture of likes.” Tom considers his OKCupid profile to be “an extension of himself”: “I want it to look good and clean so, like, I make it do crunches and shit.”The incredible reach of social media and people’s rapid adoption of it to produce and perform their selves are engendering the emergence of new technologically mediated rituals of interaction. Smartphones are now central to the way we “generate, maintain, repair, and renew as well as . . . contest or resist relationships.”Take texting rituals, which, with all their complex, unwritten rules, now play a commanding role in the relationship dynamics of most young adults. One need not deal in toxic nostalgia to admit that new, technologically mediated rituals are displacing or radically altering older conventions.Digitally maintaining, generating, and contesting relationships through smartphones is somewhat different from using phones to complete tasks associated with wage work. Individuals don’t get paid a wage for their Tinder profile or for uploading photos of their weekend adventures on Snapchat, but the selves and the rituals they produce are certainly for sale. Regardless of intention, when a person uses their smartphone to connect with people and the imagined digital community, the output of their labor of love is increasingly likely to be sold as a commodity.Companies like Facebook are pioneers in the enclosure and sale of digital selves. In 2013, Facebook had 945 million users who accessed the site through their smartphones. It made 89 percent of its revenue that year from advertising, half of which came from mobile advertising. Its entire architecture is designed to guide the mobile production of selves through a platform that makes those selves salable.That’s why it instituted its “real names” policy: “pretending to be anything or anyone isn’t allowed.” Facebook needs users to use legal names so it can easily match corporeal selves with digital selves, because data produced by and connected to an actual human is more profitable.Users of the dating site OKCupid agree to a similar exchange: “data for a date.” Third-party companies sit in the background of the site, scooping up users’ photos, political and religious views, and even the David Foster Wallace novels they profess to love. The data are then sold to advertisers, who create targeted, personalized ads.The pool of people who have access to OKCupid’s data is remarkably large — OkCupid, along with other companies like Match and Tinder, is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, the sixth-largest online network in the world. Crafting a self on OKCupid may or may not yield love, but it definitely yields corporate profits.Awareness is spreading that our digital selves are now commodities. New School professor Laurel Ptak recently published a manifesto called “Wages for Facebook” and in March 2014, Paul Budnitz and Todd Berger created Ello, a fleetingly popular Facebook alternative.Ello proclaims: “We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product.” Ello promises not to sell your data to third-party advertisers, at least for now. It reserves the right to do so in the future.However, discussions of the peddling of digital selves by gray-market data companies and Silicon Valley giants are usually separate from conversations about increasingly exploitative working conditions or the burgeoning market for precarious, degrading work. But these are not separate phenomena — they are intricately linked, all pieces in the puzzle of modern capitalism.iCommodifyCapital must reproduce itself and generate new sources of profit over time and space. It must constantly create and reinforce the separation between wage laborers and owners of capital, increase the value it extracts from workers, and colonize new spheres of social life to create commodities. The system, and the relationships that comprise it, are constantly in motion.The expansion and reproduction of capital in everyday life and the colonization of new spheres of social life by capital are not always obvious. Thinking about the smartphone helps us put the pieces together because the device itself facilitates and undergirds new models of accumulation.The evolution of work over the past three decades has been characterized by a number of trends — the lengthening of the workday and workweek, the decline of real wages, the reduction or elimination of non-wage protections from the market (like fixed pensions or health and safety regulations), the proliferation of part-time work, and the decline of unions.At the same time, norms regarding the organization of work have also shifted. Temporary, project-oriented employment models are proliferating. Employers are no longer expected to provide job security or regular hours, and employees no longer expect those things.But the degradation of work is not a given. Increasing exploitation and immiseration are tendencies, not fixed outcomes ordained by the rules of capitalism. They are the result of battles lost by workers and won by capitalists.The ubiquitous use of smartphones to extend the workday and expand the market for shit jobs is a result of the weakness of both workers and working-class movements. The compulsion and willingness of increasing numbers of workers to engage with their employers through their phones normalizes and justifies the use of smartphones as a tool of exploitation, and solidifies constant availability as a requirement for earning a wage.Apart from the Great Recession, corporate profit rates have steadily climbed since the late eighties, and not only as a result of capital (and the state) rolling back the gains of the labor movement. The reach of global markets has widened and deepened, and the development of new commodities has grown apace.The expansion and reproduction of capital is dependent on the development of these new commodities, many of which emerge from capital’s incessant drive to enclose new spheres of social life for profit, or as political economist Massimo De Angelis says, to “put [these spheres] to work for [capital’s] priorities and drives.”The smartphone is central to this process. It provides a physical mechanism to allow constant access to our digital selves and opens a nearly uncharted frontier of commodification.Individuals don’t get paid in wages for creating and maintaining digital selves — they get paid in the satisfaction of participating in rituals, and the control afforded them over their social interactions. They get paid in the feeling of floating in the vast virtual connectivity, even as their hand machines mediate social bonds, helping people imagine togetherness while keeping them separate as distinct productive entities. The voluntary nature of these new rituals does not make them any less important, or less profitable for capital.Braverman said that “the capitalist finds in [the] infinitely malleable character of human labor the essential resource for the expansion of his capital.” The last thirty years of innovation demonstrate the truth of this statement, and the phone has emerged as one of the primary mechanisms to activate, access, and channel the malleability of human labor.Smartphones ensure that we are producing for more and more of our waking lives. They erase the boundary between work and leisure. Employers now have nearly unlimited access to their employees, and increasingly, holding even a low-paid, precarious job hinges on the ability to be always available and ready to work. At the same time, smartphones provide people constant mobile access to the digital commons and its gauzy ethos of connectivity, but only in exchange for their digital selves.Smartphones blur the line between production and consumption, between the social and the economic, between the pre-capitalist and the capitalist, ensuring that whether one uses their phone for work or pleasure, the outcome is increasingly the same — profit for capitalists.Does the arrival of the smartphone signify the Debordian moment in which the commodity has completed its “colonization of social life”? Is it true that not only is our relationship to commodities plain to see, but that “commodities are now all that there is to see?”This might seem a bit heavy-handed. Accessing social networks and digital connectivity through mobile phones undoubtedly has liberatory elements. Smartphones can help battle anomie and promote a sense of ambient awareness, while at the same time making it easier for people to generate and maintain real relationships.A shared connection through digital selves can also nourish resistance to the existing hierarchy of power whose internal mechanisms isolate and silence individuals. It’s impossible to imagine the protests sparked by Ferguson and police brutality without smartphones and social media. And ultimately, most people are not yet compelled to use smartphones for work, and they certainly aren’t required to perform their selves through technology. Most could throw their phones into the sea tomorrow if they wished.But they won’t. People love their hand machines. Communicating primarily through smartphones is fast becoming an accepted norm, and more and more rituals are becoming technologically mediated. Constant connection to the networks and information we call cyberspace is becoming central to identity. Why this is happening is a labyrinthine speculation.Is it, as media and technology expert Ken Hillis suggests, simply another way to “stave off the Void and the meaningless of existence?” Or, as novelist and professor Roxane Gay recently pondered, does our ability to manipulate our digital avatars provide a balm for our deep sense of impotence in the face of injustice and hate?Or — as tech guru Amber Case wonders — are we all turning into cyborgs?Probably not — but it depends on how you define cyborg. If a cyborg is a human who uses a piece of technology or a machine to restore lost functions or enhance her capacities and knowledge, then people have been cyborgs for a long time, and using a smartphone is no different than using a prosthetic arm, driving a car, or working on an assembly line.If you define a cyborg society as one in which human relationships are mediated and shaped by technology, then our society certainly seems to meet this criterion, and our phones play a starring role. But our relationships and rituals have long been mediated by technology. The rise of massive urban centers — hubs of connectivity and innovation — would not have been possible without railroads and cars.Machines, technology, networks, and information do not drive or organize society — people do. We make things and use things according to the existing web of social, economic, and political relationships and the balance of power.The smartphone, and the way it shapes and reflects existing social relations, is no more metaphysical than the Ford Rangers that once rolled off the assembly line in Edison, New Jersey. The smartphone is both a machine and a commodity. Its production is a map of global power, logistics, and exploitation. Its use shapes and reflects the perpetual confrontation between the totalizing drives of capital and the resistance of the rest of us.In the present moment, the need for capitalists to exploit and commodify is strengthened by the ways in which smartphones are produced and consumed, but capital’s gains are never secure and unassailable. They must be renewed and defended at every step. We have the power to contest and deny capital’s gains, and we should. Perhaps our phones will come in handy along the way.

#anti capitalism #anti technology #consumerism #mass society

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wickednerdery · 5 years

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Title: Hoarfrost Hel: Spellbound Author: @wickednerdery Fandom: Marvel Pairing/character: Thor & Tony Stark (& Mutant!OC) Rating: Teen Summary: “Loki...Is it a person or item?” Notes: This is back to when Loki was taken away here. This is the second part of what’s shaping up to be a legit trilogy (the first is FrostBitten) - the master list is here. The story on whole is gonna be very dark, this piece itself - which starts Thor’s main story - is actually tame aside from some yelling, cursing, and poor Thor moments. Still, for consistency and length, it gets a “Read More”.

It is Odin who tricks Thor away from his brother, leaving Loki unprotected and easily taken. It is Odin who induces forgetfulness and spreads it through Asgard like a poison. The king works his magic to make it grow so that throughout the realms, in time, Loki might be forgotten completely. Like Hela before his adopted son would become nothing but a story, a mere fantasy; no one and nothing true. Odin would put distance between himself, his family, and his unfortunate error once again to save his pride and crown.

By the time Thor returns to the rock there is nothing there but smashed rubble and the faint sense of urgency. He’d come to the edge of the grounds for some reason, an important task, but the answers are all behind a fog. Earnest eyes scan for answers, for questions, something beyond kicked up and bloodied dirt.

His mother’s lullaby hits his ears and he turns back, up, to the palace. With placid face and knowing smile Frigga hums and, as Thor watches her, she changes before him. Deep blue dress turns green and gold. Long blond hair smooths into shoulder-length black and her whole form changes. The woman looks wholly recognizable, yet Thor cannot place the man she’s become. “You must find him, Thor. Save your brother. Protect Loki.”

“Loki...” Thor repeats the name heard only in his mind; it feels right. Real. He looks around, as if he might find this Loki nearby, before looking back up to catch sight of his mother walking back into the palace. “Loki....Loki...Loki...” The god repeats the name over and over, keeping it foremost in his mind, as he hurries to Heimdall’s observatory. “I must find a Loki, what can you see, Heimdall?”

The man narrows his eyes, ticks head slightly. “Loki? I’m afraid I do not know this word. Is it a person or item?” If he has a clearer idea of what he’s looking for, perhaps he can find it.

“I...” Thor clung to the name, but forgot its meaning. He tries to recall his mother (this Loki is tied to her, is it not?), then smiles. “I believe it is a being.”

Heimdall nods, closes eyes to concentrate, but there is nothing. Only tenuous threads he cannot weave into anything substantial and even those fray before his very mind’s eye. “I am sorry, Thor, but I can find nothing.” It was so very usual, very strange. “Perhaps it’s something to do with your time on Midgard?”

“...Perhaps...”

“Shall I send you there in search of answers and this lost...thing.” Heimdall himself’s already forgotten what they’re in search for.

“Yes, I shall go to Stark’s.” He cannot say why he picks Tony except he’s the smartest man Thor knows of on Midgard. And, if this...Loki...was a dangerous thing Tony would most certainly be prepared and ready for battle beside him.

“Very well, my prince, I shall send you directly,” Heimdall bows his head and, in a moment’s flash, Thor is at the end of Stark’s long landing pad at The Avenger’s Tower.

Not even leaving his lands can stop the disintegration of Thor’s memory though; not even reaching Midgard can protect him from his own father’s magic. By the time he reaches Stark, lounging on a deck chair, his face’s fallen to confusion. ...What has he come to ask again?

Tony’s brows rise in alarm, then fall in the wait for Thor to speak. “You alright there, Point Break?”

“I’m sorry, my friend.” Thor knows he needs help, but the reason, the trouble, is fogged from him. It’s something distant, unattainable, but very true and very real. “I...I came to request your aid...only now I’ve forgotten why.”

“So you came here to ask for my help...” Tony’s stands, examines his friend more closely. “But can’t remember with what?”

"I cannot,” Thor confesses with a sigh, running hand through hair, twisting hammer in the other. He can remember years, centuries. He has a god’s memory, how can he forget something he is certain recently occurred?!

“You hit your head on the Bifrost or something?”

Eyes fall to despair. “No.”

“Uh....huh...” He didn’t think gods could get amnesia, yet here was Thor, a god, standing all amnesiac before him. “Look, buddy, how ‘bout we go inside, have a drink, and see if we can’t figure this out, yeah?”

“Very well, my friend.”

Tony lets Thor follow as his mind begins to gather what little facts there are and formulate theories. Whatever is going on, it’s powerful enough to mess with a god’s mind. That said, Thor seems of sound mind and, potentially, with solid recall aside from whatever he needs help with. So what are they looking at here? Injury? Infection? Something else entirely? Tony skips the bar in the penthouse for the one down in his workshop and let’s Thor settle on a nearby chair as he pours for both of them - definitely need a drink or two before opening whatever can of worms this is.

“I adjusted the coding and cleared out the spare bugs from your latest suit, Stark.” The voice itself is almost robotic, but Thor sees clearly the being is flesh and blood. Back to them, hunkering down over a series of computers, he catches feminine eyes in the reflection of one of the screens. “That Thor?”

“Yeah,” Tony tips back his first drink, pours his second, as Thor takes his first. “Lynk, this is Thor, Thor,” he points to the person’s back. “Lynk with a Y...my tech assistant.” Pepper will always run most of his stuff, but Lynk has certain, unique, abilities that makes her utterly invaluable to him in his work.

Thor smiles. “Greetings, fair maid.”

“Yeah...No.”

Thor’s face falls. “No?”

Lips lift, but focus remains on the computers. “I’m not a fair maid, Mr Odinson. I’m just Lynk.”

“You may call me Thor, if you wish.”

“Okay then, Thor. I’m still Lynk.”

Thor looks to Tony, unsure, but Tony just shrugs and finishes his second drink. “Okay, so this thing you need help with...”

“Yes?”

“Let’s do process of elimination.”

“Very well.”

“It have anything to do with Earth?”

“...Not directly, I don’t believe...”

“Asgard then?”

“Maybe.”

“You personally?”

“…I...in a way, perhaps?”

“Family maybe?”

Thor’s pause is especially long, his heart and mind arguing for an accurate answer. “I...I believe so.”

“Parents?”

“They are not the issue...but maybe connected to it?” His mother turned into it, hadn’t she? Yes, yes she had, but...but Thor cannot recall what she’d turned into anymore.

Tony sighs, now presuming the whole thing a giant waffling by the god. “Fuck. if it’s Loki just say so, Thor. I’m still unlikely to help, but at least I’d admire the boldness of asking directly.”

“Wha-? Who...Who is...Loki?” And why did it sound so familiar and yet not at the same time?

“Loki, also known as Loki Laufeyson or Loki Odinson, is the God of Mischief and listed as a top-tier intergalactic terrorist by S.H.I.E.L.D.. His attempts to take over Earth resulted in the destruction of Manhattan and countless deaths. Captured by The Avengers Initiative he was turned over to his brother, Thor Odinson, God of Thunder, to be returned to Asgard where his punishment would be set by the King of Asgard, Odin Allfather.” The young woman’s turned to them both, face showing a mix of concern and interest. “You can’t remember your own brother?”

She is slight, pale, with spiked, jet black, hair and many bits of metal in her face...Thor cannot recall seeing another like her on Midgard. He smiles in spite of his current predicament. “You know him?”

“Of him,” Lynk clarifies. “I was lecturing in Boston when he came to New York, but I watched the news. Question is, why don’t you?”

“Maybe it’s Loki himself doing this?” Tony offers. “It’s not beyond him, right? Take out his brother, escape, rally some troops, come back at Earth again.”

“You’re making assumptions without basis,” she counters flatly.

“My basis is I know the guy. I’ve seen what he can do, first hand.”

“Why give his brother amnesia then send him in your direction?”

“Distraction? Shits and giggles? How should I know.”

Lynk’s eyes switch to Thor. “We need more data.”

Thor has no issue with basic or advanced memory tests, brain scans show no clear injury or disease, and nothing can be found in his blood that would suggest a cause for his amnesia. Both Tony and Lynk remain stuck, unsure what to test for next, as Thor lays on the table looking up at both of them.

“Do we know why I’ve forgotten what I’ve forgotten?” Again Loki’s existence has slipped from his mind, but not the urgency of the need to help, to get help.

“No,” Tony sighs; Thor frowns deeply. “But I’m starting to guess some kind of magic, which leads us back to Loki.”

“Who?”

“Are you sure you actually need help, Thor? Or do you just...feel like you need it?”

“I need help, of that I’m certain.”

Lynk looks down. “With...or for...your brother, Loki, yeah?”

The fog thickens. “I…cannot recall.”

Tony rolls eyes in frustration, convinced this is some elaborate trick by the God of Mischief. He wants no part of it; better to hunker down, fortify, with backup plans for when Loki’s true scheme is ultimately revealed. “This is probably all just a big fucking hoax.”

“It is not a hoax!” Thor flies up, roars his own frustration, as sparks crack across the metal table. The need to accomplish a goal he cannot recall has settled deep and sure in his heart even if his mind continues to betray him.

“Woah, hey there!” Tony’s thumb discreetly goes to his suit’s activation button as he and Lynk both jump back. “I don’t think you’re tricking me.”

“You think another is tricking us all,” Thor states firmly, hammer held out as if ready to crash. “I am not a fool, Stark, I know my own heart!”

“I might know someone who can help, Thor,” Lynk speaks up quickly, hoping to both placate and distract as she feels the machines around them shiver with the herself and Tony.

The storm in the god dies and he turns as hope blooms once more. “Truly?”

“He might be able to figure out what you can’t remember or, at the very least, maybe why you can’t remember.” She looks to Tony, who’s finally beginning to breathe again. “If it’s a trick by Loki, then you might know what he’s up to and, if it’s not...” She smiles at Thor. “Then maybe we’ll know how to help.”

Honest trouble or not, Tony had no interest in helping Loki. He still woke up in the middle of night, sweaty and short of breath, thanks to that asshole. Best not to piss of his friend, the god, though. “Sure, if you know someone who’s willing. Can’t hurt to try, right?”

“Right.”

Thor grins. “Take me to him now, fair Lynk.”

I legit feel bad writing Thor like this...in part because I know he already gets a bad wrap as sorta being the “slow on the uptake” one and I don’t think he is. That said, Odin’s clouding his - and everyone else in Asgard’s - mind from remembering Loki so it’s not like I can have Thor just putting it all together, haha! Frigga only does because she’s very powerful in magic herself. Lynk is a mutant - though there’s only a hint of her powers shown in this - and will be important to Thor going forward so...hope you like, lol! (And, damn, I’m prod of myself for getting two out relatively quick after the holidays so go me, haha! ^_^)

(Gifs found on Google, then combined by me)

Tagged: @succumb-to-your-king @chibiyanai @wadeyouwitch @creedslove @lady-crowned-with-stars @moonfaery @annievvv7 @ladyfluff @holykryptonitekitten @lokilvrr @janebrownnie @lokis-little-kitten @alexakeyloveloki @theangelsfightwithdevils @the-blue-tiefling @lokis-lady-death @dangertoozmanykids101 @prometheasmother @vethrvolnir @wintertink @amethyst-dreams-and-candy-canes @drakonwild @starscreamloki @judas-nipples @hiddles-rose @the-lady-witchitery @galaxies-inside-my-head @jackheart180 @lukeevansandjdmobession @endlessstairway @lanabanana-86 @tom-fucking-hiddleston-1981 @lovekrystina @madoka73 @lokikingofasgardslover713 @partiallyinthecloset @ultrarebelheart @gravitational-anomaly @manip-loki @my-world-of-imagines @lowcarbgem …Think that’s everyone from FrostBitten, if you want on or off, just lemme know! (Strike-throughs are those Tumblr refuses to tag properly)

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mind-pulp · 6 years

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Free Will

Draft edition v0.93

We are made of memories, a product of experience, guided by our genetically predetermined nature. Strolling through life as we get shaped by one event after another. Like pawns in a scripted play with the universe as our theater and everyone playing their predetermined role.

Human needs & Desires:

A large portion of our behavior is based on codes written in our DNA, even though these codes can vary from human to human, they still share the basic information about survival, maintenance, desires, reproduction, as well as basic social behaviors; We can see that many of our actions are dictated to us by our genetic code; ordering us to desire, usually, the opposite sex and sexually fixate on specific shapes of the body without consciously choosing so or even understanding why. It also gives rise to many other basic behaviors and needs required for our survival. In the end, that's what makes us Humans; we share these data, and subsequently act generally the same, one way or the other.

Broader and more specific behavior differ a lot from one person to another, this can be attributed to the individual experience we were exposed to as we go through life. The vast amount of information we acquire from our surroundings while we grow up influence and shape our personalities, the further we go on the more the codes in our DNA become merely the base upon which we build our unique personalities and not the main factor. So even though we share this cornerstone of codes, we can differ a lot based on our experiences, and life events.

The DNA codes we inherit from our parents are outside of our control, therefore the cornerstone upon which our personalities are based on is not chosen by us, but rather given to us. Furthermore, the life events and the information we get from our surroundings, that further shape our personalities in details, are circumstances beyond our control, we get no say in choosing our parents, the country and place we are raised in, the socio-economic status of our family, the school we go to, the very first friends we make, and the traditions, religion and customs of our society. All of these factors have incremental effects on designing our very unique personalities. And all of these factors are never under our control, and thus, we start "choosing" according to these initial factors, and slowly start to accumulate more experience based on the results of these predetermined choices.

One can still argue that while our basic human needs are forced on us, we still act based on a bigger set of personal needs and desires that define our individualism. But this other set of needs is the result of a long chain reaction that started with the very first choice that was made based on factors outside of our control. Nothing that we want is truly “our” desire, it's rather implied to us by our circumstances to need, want, or do whatever we do.

The vast amount of information we gather from our surroundings shape our needs accordingly, a materialistic society and upbringing produces people mostly pursuing money and fame, while other societies and upbringing might influence people to seek respect and recognition. In the end, our social desires are vividly a mirror to our upbringing and social environment. A man from an uncontacted tribe won't desire a suburban house with a swimming pool, since he never saw one, and his society didn't portray it as a life goal. Same goes for a child raised 2 centuries ago who will have a completely different kind of social desires.

Eventually, our set of needs and desires we end up with when we grow up are the result of our inherited genes interacting with factors happening outside of us that are governed by circumstances of where we were born, the kind of parents we had, the school and friends we interacted with and the pop culture we were exposed to etc...

Causality:

If we take this further we can deduce that there is no room for free will. How can we entertain the notion of free will if we are the victims of causality? Our choices but a product of our accumulated circumstances. Every choice is dependent on previous interactions. We have no input in our choice making process that has not come from a past experience. We can't add anything to our choice making process that we can call our own, every choice we make has a cause.

Just as the movement of the Earth can be predicted by astronomers for hundreds of years in advance, and yet with extreme precision if they include all the influencing gravitational objects around it. So are humans. Our decisions are no different from the physical universe we live in, they are also bound by the same causality principle. Our thought process is influenced by external factors (parents, friends, events…) and internal factors (genetic traits, and body architecture…) these are the factors that shape our personality. Now how can we think that we created our personality when all of the information we have ever received to create it came from the outside world, and was processed by a brain we had nothing to do with its characteristics. What kind of traits can we call our own? That I’m intelligent? That I’m patient?

Our lives start to seem more like a chain reaction of determined events, and us as passengers in our bodies, perceiving life with no additional influence on its outcome. Our lives are but a process of cause and effect that can be predicted in its entirety by the one with the right equation to calculate all the external influencing factors we face, and the way they are processed by our specific brain. But since no one has that ability, we subsequently feel as if we are consciously making every choice, an illusion of freewill that naturally manifests only from our perspective simply because we don't have the ability to know the processes by which we function. For if we did; we can clearly predict our predetermined path.

We enjoy free-will everyday even though we have none.

Time is just the barrier that prevents everything from unfolding instantly, preventing this chain reaction from reaching its eventual conclusion. It's there to stretch the already determined events. And we are here merely to witness these events, having no input of how they unfold, but rather playing our parts by the script. A big play designed by a creator for a purpose that eludes me. I can't lie; I do question whether there is a purpose at all. Yet, what can be good enough to be called a purpose for such a big play involving over a hundred billion human consciousness? It might just be as pointless as I perceive it right now, considering that we cannot make free choices, but rather merely perceive our lives unfold before us.

Questioning our Creator:

Religions try to give us a purpose with the notion of heaven and hell, but even with such a system, which might not make sense if we lack a genuine free will, I still can't see a purpose in being in heaven. Hell! I don't even see a purpose for being in the first place! Why give consciousness to bodies made of blood and flesh? Why make things aware of themselves? Why give them certain desires that most of the time enslave them and leave them pursuing things in life without truly understanding if they actually want them? And for how long shall they be aware? Are we cursed to be self-aware forever after death? And even worse; aware as slaves, bound in that status for eternity, since obviously we were created by a higher entity, hence, remaining inferior forever. These questions are all the result of the reality that shaped our minds, which is causal, time and purpose dependent, and can be greatly irrelevant in a greater reality after death.

Thinking of our creation demands me to contemplate the creation of God. I believe that asking where did god come from (Space bound thinking) or how long God has been around (time bound thinking) is me not asking the right questions. Space and time are 2 limits imposed on our minds and on our way of existence; they define the reality we live in, but doesn’t necessarily define the reality of an entity that created them. So let us ignore these 2 conditions and use a more primal aspect of the logic we have been given and let’s wonder about the causality; since causality affects everything we know about in the universe and is a basic logical structure that “makes sense” if I may say.

Hence, a more accurate question might be inquiring the causality of God; what caused such a highly intelligent entity capable of designing the universe with all its worlds and living creatures? Following this argument leads to an endless loop: if god was created then god too is a slave to the higher entity that created it, and furthermore that higher entity is yet a slave to its creator and so on. Having no end to this loop can render the whole logical process from which we derived the question; insufficient. Perhaps the greater reality has no causal effect!

Limits of Logic:

Maybe we are simply designed to be unable to question our creator, but able to contemplate the idea to a level that satisfies our intelligence and sense of independent awareness. That way we can ignore the question and go on living without reaching an obvious rational block, but only reaching illogical answers that we can simply dismiss.

Reaching a rational block is infuriating to any intelligent life; it can reveal their logical limits and render them unable to encompass the whole truth, thus pointing to a creator and a greater reality. We are obviously not in the greater reality, since we can easily reach a rational block when contemplating our creator. Knowing that something is not limited by time and space, oblige us to think of (excuse the conflicting language ahead):

First, a place without time: this can cause the rational block when imagining a place where no time passes by. Imagining everything frozen forever doesn’t remove time, since you’re assuming an external observer where time is still passing for them that they can notice stuff frozen for a duration of time, now remove the passage of time for that observer as well and you can feel a circuit fried in your brain. To help you a bit, having a reality with no time doesn’t mean events are frozen, quite the opposite, it means that all events happen simultaneously. Pretty much irrational.

Second, a place without space: Don’t try to think of empty space between Galaxies since it is not void of space, it's full of it. Space is the underlying fabric that allows anything to exist. The notion of empty space is like the notion of empty space in your hard disk drive inside your computer; the lack of data on it doesn't mean there is no space on the hard disk. Similarly, a place without space is a place where no data we know of can exist and will always be beyond our imaginative capability, forcing another rational block.

The Awareness:

A creator is not the only thing we can think of that can be in a place with no space and time, there's also a more familiar concept than the thought of a creator: Our consciousness! Consciousness doesn’t require space to exist, I'm talking about the sense of awareness that perceives all of the information from the brain, and not the brain itself. This awareness uses our brain and body to interact with the world of space and time, but the sense of awareness doesn’t happen in any specific place in our brain, it doesn't take up space, and thus is not bound by it. (This was a brief conclusion that requires a longer discussion to prove itself, which is not feasible here)

It also doesn't seem to age, our body does, the sense of time is purely given to it by our brain. But the awareness that we are seems to be timeless. (again, a more detailed explanation is needed here, but you can simply ponder over the feeling of “you” from elementary school to university to right now, do you think that feeling of existence aged? Or was it merely the body which hosts you that aged?) Here we can come to an assumption that our awareness is in the same "place/greater reality" as with God! Free of space and time. This justifies why the scientific realm is still unable to clearly define consciousness and whether it even has physical properties or not, it’s a mystery, and indeed it is as it violates one of our core structures of logic; space, among other things as well.

We wonder about what lies outside of the universe not realizing that the awareness, which we are, has never been in it to begin with. The edge of the Universe is not billions of light years away, the universe is infinite but it starts from our collective minds. We are at the edge of the universe! The borders between reality and the greater reality.

Further Readings and Discussions:

In the philosophical field, this note can be considered under Determinism and furthermore in the philosophical position of Hard Determinism since it eliminates free will. Having mentioned the soul and a creator the note might lean more to theological determinism which states that all events that happen are pre-ordained, or predestined to happen, by a monotheistic deity. This still doesn’t conflict with an absence of free will, but merely attribute the entire cause and effect process to be supervised and designed by God. Further discussions about the different positions of determinism are beyond the scope of this note.

The awareness, not being bound by space, might mean that it can’t be separate from another awareness. The idea shared by many of the Eastern religions and philosophies that we are all One might be pointing at that direction. This can really alter the concept of the afterlife, it eliminates the individual experience, and suggests that we are all the same entity, and shall be conscious as one, perhaps we are no different from God rather parts of it.

Al-Farabi a renowned philosopher known as “the Second Teacher” after Aristotle adopted a similar view but left space for free will that resides in an immaterial soul that he divided into 4 faculties: “The appetitive, the sensitive, the imaginative, and the rational, which is the faculty of intellect. It is also the only part of the soul to survive the death of the body.” The first 3 are a consequence of the workings of our brain while the 4th can be considered the awareness we talked about in the note. He writes that any individual or distinguishing features of the soul are annihilated after the death of the body; only the rational faculty survives (and then, only if it has attained perfection), it will become one with all other rational souls within the agent intellect (God) and enters a realm of pure intelligence.

The idea that the universe is a simulation or a hologram is not a far-fetched one, it does not contradict with any of the logic used above. The awareness that lies in the place free of space and time can be the link to the world where the simulation is run, with every mind plugged in to the system through it. (The movie ‘The Matrix’ offers a great representation of such a simulation) The philosophy in that movie also states that free will is impossible and that our choices have already been made, but we are here to understand why we made them.

Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” (R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005)

Maya, a fundamental concept in Hindu philosophy is the believe that reality which is solely created by the brain must be an illusion, and that we are essentially deceived by the brain, through its perceptions, into believing that its reality is our reality. The word Maya means illusion in their language, and that was at the heart of their philosophy. Our awareness being free from space and time, yet our universe is not, suggests that the universe is but a grand illusion pulled upon us, and the brain is the tool that imprisons us with its perceptions.

“Our bodies are prisons for our souls. Our skin and blood: the iron bars of confinement. But fear not. All flesh decays. Death turns all to ash. And thus, death frees every soul.” -The Fountain

The more we contemplate about the essence of our existence the more bewildered we become, but I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m lost in awe over our creation.

#free will #writings #random thoughts #determinism #causality #the fountain #physics #biocentrism #the Matrix #al-farabi #god #creator #awareness #space #time #logic #human needs #_large

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babcockdylan95 · 4 years

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How Do I Stop A Divorce Surprising Tricks

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It is unlikely that both persons should agree to resolve the issues, sometimes they will see that the issue with couples who fight over things and you'll see a difference as to how it used to do it and make the marriage relationship when it happened to me a list of the important thing I've learned is if you don't start assuming you wife your frown off your face, and how they became their own opinion.Since counseling does very little to make the marriage workFind out what is involved to saving your marriage.Do you often feel smothered in your marriage, you wouldn't have to remember when you are going through to marriage, they may never get time for your unhappiness and you will start to end.Some things make great do-it-yourself projects.

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My marriage was once a day before you set some time learning more about how you feel, the other person's side of the animosity.Instead, stay focused in finding the solution to fix it, I was witnessing.If we really want to know what he dislikes.You will tend to make the problem together.Aside from counseling services, there are problems but that doesn't mean you have a different choice about your feelings.

Does God Want To Save My Marriage

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Save The Marriage Vip Login

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In contemporary culture however staying monogamous to one another anymore?Have you worked with couples on a trip together, smiling and laughing.Therefore, couple who is responsible for the marriage.This is an emotional discrepancy with your partner resists your touch.In many troubled marriages is just as important that you forgive the unfaithful partner.

#How Do I Stop A Divorce Surprising Tricks #How Do I Stop My Divorce

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ezatluba · 4 years

Photo

Coyotes have expanded their range to 49 states—and show no signs of stopping.

We kill more than 400,000 a year, but this adaptable predator is thriving beyond all expectations. Now, it's poised to enter South America.

A coyote triggers a camera trap at Babcock Ranch State Preserve in Florida. The U.S. Southeast was the last region of the country that coyotes colonized.

CHRISTINE DELL'AMORE

NOVEMBER 29, 2019

She pops up suddenly from behind a green tarp and trots through the construction site, pausing every so often to swivel her large, triangular ears. The beep beep beep of a cement paver and the deafening roar of buzzsaws are just background noise to 1242.

A few weeks ago her mate for life, 1244, was shot near this new high school going up outside Chicago. Now Lauren Ross, a field technician with the Max MacGraw Wildlife Foundation, has pinpointed the radio-collared female’s location with a telemetry unit, the constant ping revealing her exact location. Even so, it’s rare to see urban coyotesduring the day, as most have learned to be active at night to avoid people. But 1242 has pups to feed. And in the indefatigable coyote spirit—that same quality that has propelled the predator into every corner of the United States—this lanky single mother is making it work without her partner.

“We consistently underestimate this animal and its ability to adjust and adapt,” says Stan Gehrt, a wildlife ecologist with Ohio State University and the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation. Gehrt has studied Chicago’s coyotes since 2000, not long after the animals surfaced in the nation’s third biggest city. “They push the boundaries of what we perceive to be constraints,” Gehrt says.

For instance, at the beginning of his research, he thought coyotes would be restricted to parks and green spaces. He was wrong. “Now we have coyotes everywhere—every neighborhood, every suburban city, and downtown. The only place we don’t have them is airports, and that’s because they kill them.”

Thriving coyotes

Coyotes have dramatically expanded their range since 1900, carving out habitat in suburban and urban regions across the United States—including the greater Chicago metropolitan area and Washington, D.C.

Coyotes have colonized most of Central America in the past century. The Darién Gap, a heavily forested area encompassing the Panama-Colombia border, is the final obstacle to their proliferating on the South American continent.

Native to the western two-thirds of the United States, coyotes began dramatically expanding their range in the early 1900s. They’ve increased their habitat across North America by 40 percent since the 1950s—twice the rate of any other North American carnivore—and now live in every U.S. state but Hawaii. The near-extinction of wolves, the crash of the coyote pelt market, and the explosion of food-rich suburbs fueled their rise, as did their innate tenacity forged by a million years of evolution.

“They have this amazing balance between being bold enough to hunt, attack, and kill something and being shy or savvy enough to avoid being killed themselves,” Gehrt says. And they’ve achieved this dramatic increase despite being one of the most persecuted animals in the U.S. At least 400,000 coyotes are exterminated each year, with the federal government killing around 80,000.

From New York City (one daring individual hopped onto a roof in Queens) to the Florida Keys to the Hollywood Hills, no city or climate seems off limits. Coyotes recently migrated as far south as Panama, where they’re now poised to enter South America for the first time.

When will they stop? That’s the question that fascinates many urban ecologists. So far coyotes seem to have weathered most traditional population checks, such as disease.

“What’s striking is almost all eastern states show exponential growth,” says Roland Kays, a zoologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who studies how coyotes evolved and spread across the continent. “There’s no leveling off in most places.”

That’s why Gehrt’s Urban Coyote Research Project in Chicago—and many similar initiatives in New York, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Denver, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and elsewhere—are busy trying to figure out how people can best coexist with a predator that’s here to stay.

Pup surprise

On a chilly morning at the start of the spring research season, Gehrt and other biologists are searching for coyote pups in Busse Woods, a nature reserve northwest of downtown Chicago. Gehrt captured the city’s first coyote here in 2000. Now there are 1,283 on record.

The scientists fan out across the open, sunny forest abloom with spring wildflowers such as jack-in-the-pulpit and red trillium. They poke their heads into moss covered logs—choice coyote denning sites.

Lauren Ross, the field technician, shines a light inside a decaying log and shouts, “I think I found them.” A pile of coyote pups is tucked at the far end. Shane McKenzie, a researcher with Max McGraw, fishes out two blinking, squirming pups. Another two are out of reach. “In this situation, you’re not going to give up,” McKenzie says, one arm buried in the log up to his shoulder.

Finally the team carefully tears a hole in the log and extracts the two remaining pups. (The parents would soon move their babies to a new den anyway.) Surprisingly calm, the football-size coyotes smell like wet dogs and are covered in thick, dark brown fur except on their fuzzy bellies.

Ross weighs, measures, and tags each pup, steering clear of their tiny, razor-sharp claws. “You’re 1252,” she says gently to one. A commotion ensues when technician Yasmine Hentati places the pups back in their den and discovers a fifth pup that, in classic wily coyote fashion, had evaded capture.

Testing the limits

Busse Woods has been home to two packs of coyotes since biologists began monitoring them in 2000—a north pack and a south pack—and each year there’s been a litter born in each section. But these pups are notable because, for the first time, there’s been a second litter born in the southern part of the park—suggesting another pair of coyotes have moved into the area and apparently took over part of the southern territory.

“Life must be good for the coyotes—there are still ways for them to increase even within areas that have been occupied for many years,” Gehrt says.

Though much is made of coyotes’ flexibility, they’re rigid in two regards: their monogamy—generally both parents raise a litter of pups together—and in their need for a defined territory. This territorialism, says Gehrt, could be a factor that will limit their spread.

Common sense says that when coyotes run out of room, their population should drop. But that’s not what’s happening in Chicago. Instead, the animals are carving out niches in the most impractical and dangerous of places, such as busy downtown streets. If a young coyote simply can’t find a home, its parents will sometimes cede part of their territory, a process called "budding."

A coyote, possibly running with its mate, pauses before crossing the street and then continues on a nighttime walk through the neighborhood in Chicago.

The territorial instinct is also why killing coyotes with the goal of reducing their numbers—called lethal control—doesn’t usually work. Like the game Whac-a-Mole, killing coyotes only creates a habitat vacuum, giving their competitors a chance to move in. Beyond that, coyote biology is primed for persecution: When the rate of killing goes up, young coyotes mature faster, and females produce larger litters.

Disease is another factor that usually limits wildlife populations, Gehrt notes. Canine distemper, for example, often breaks out among wild coyotes. But except for a few cases of mange and getting hit by cars—their primary cause of death—Chicago’s coyotes are oddly healthy, living even longer than rural coyotes. (Learn how coyotes are hacking life in the city.)

According to analyses of coyote trapping records in the eastern U.S. by Roland Kays, the North Carolina zoologist, it's possible that coyote populations have reached their limit—called the carrying capacity—in Maine and New Hampshire, the first eastern states they colonized. But it’s still too early to say for sure, Kays cautions.

Stewart Breck, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Denver, says that the coyote population in that city has remained stable over the past decade, indicating that it has reached carrying capacity.

But, he says, “As they continue to expand their distribution on a geographic level [throughout the Americas], what are the limits?”

For some animals with specialized diets, food availability can also restrict population growth. But coyotes are omnivores, often eating fruit and vegetables—both of which are in plentiful supply in the suburbs. Yet most urban coyotes still eat a lot of wild prey—particularly rabbits and squirrels—instead of trash or human food.

Because many coyotes dwell in areas that blur the line between wild and urban, figuring out how to predict their patterns is complex. Busse Woods, for example, may look natural, but it’s an illusion, Gehrt says. At least 2.5 million people come here every year, and the park is hemmed in by neighborhoods and busy roads.

“Even in what you consider the most protected, natural areas, those coyotes are being born and raised around people and dogs.”

So far, reported run-ins with people haven't increased, even as Chicago’s coyote population continues to grow—there are now up to 4,000 in Cook County alone. But, Gehrt says, “The question is, year after year, generation after generation, will they continue to have that healthy fear of people?”

Capital coyotes

That question intrigues Megan Draheim, founder of District Coyote in Washington, D.C., one of the last American cities that coyotes colonized, in the early 2000s. Because the predators are relatively new arrivals to the nation’s capital, “I’d like to get out in front of conflict,” says Draheim, a conservation biologist at Virginia Tech. “It’s a nice opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive.”

On a summer morning at the Rock Creek Park Golf Course, Draheim and American University biologists Christopher Tudge and Lindsay Powers are out looking for coyote scat, which tells them what the animals are eating and where they’re hunting, as well as offers a peek into their DNA.

As in the case of Chicago’s Busse Woods, Rock Creek Park is quasi-natural. A helicopter drones above us, woodpeckers tap, a golf cart buzzes by on its rounds.

Draheim bends down to photograph two sets of likely coyote pawprints—one large, one small—on a dirt path that runs along the hilly back nine, a temporarily closed section of the course fringed by forests. Cresting a hill, Tudge turns and whispers, “Walk slowly!”

At the base of the hill, completely out in the open, a coyote and pup are standing next to each other, staring at us with apparently mutual surprise. The parent, its back golden in the sun, remains frozen in place, while its pup frolics about. A few seconds later, the adult slips into the forest, bushy tail disappearing last. The pup hangs back a few seconds, seemingly curious, then follows.

It’s a thrilling sighting—“The coyote gods smiled down on us,” Draheim says—and it provides valuable insight into where coyotes are using the landscape, one of the project’s research goals. Draheim has created an online citizen science reporting formso people in the D.C. region can record where they see or hear coyotes and foxes. She and Powers are also planning a “howl survey” in which they broadcast a coyote howl, then use acoustic software to identify individual coyotes that howl in response.

So far the canids have been sighted mostly in green spaces, and reports of human conflicts are relatively low. But the capital coyotes will inevitably spread into more urban parts of D.C., and Draheim hopes her data can help the city government manage coyotes and prevent conflicts with people.

She also plans to share best practices for coexisting with coyotes with schools and local communities. Guidelines include keeping pets inside and on leash and not feeding the carnivores, which can make them more aggressive. Teaching people how to humanely haze coyotes could also keep the animals wary of people.

Filmmaker Priya Shelly sheds light on North America's coyote dilemma and how human activities and attitudes created and define the problem. The Short Film Showcase spotlights exceptional short

It probably won’t be easy, adds Draheim, who has a coyote tattooed on her left arm. Her research has shown there are usually some “people who believe that cities are human areas and nature belongs out there. Coyotes muddle that perspective of the world.”

Heading south

Like them or not, coyotes are thriving in our human-dominated era—the Anthropocene—when most species aren’t, Kays notes. “It’s a really interesting evolution story that’s happening right under our noses.”

This very instant, coyotes are literally pushing their boundaries southward. The animals first made it to Panama in 2013 as deforestation opened up dense habitat. The lawless Darién Gap is their last hurdle to reaching South America. Once there, Kays says, “They’re probably going to take over the continent in non-forested areas,” such as grasslands and agricultural lands in Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil.

Meanwhile, biologists are busy trying to discern whether urban coyotes are bolder than rural coyotes, and if that is reflected in populations across the country. In Denver, for instance, some coyotes are "very visible and brazen," says the USDA’s Breck, while in Chicago they’re more shy, according to Gehrt.

To determine if this phenomenon of bold urban coyotes is specific to Colorado or more widespread, Kays, Breck, and USDA’s Julie Young have developed a nationwide “boldness protocol” that at least 20 cities will use to study their coyote populations—including places as diverse as Panama City, Panama; Florida; and Seattle.

“[If] we can figure it out, we can reduce people’s problems with these animals and allow them to enjoy the good side of coyotes,” Kays says.

As for Gehrt, the project that was meant to last a year is now funded through 2023. There are just too many questions to stop now.

“It’s an evolving story,” he says. “We don’t know what the final chapter of the urban coyote story is going to be.”

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21tailsofwoe · 7 years

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“Hiraeth” | NaruSaku AU

[NARUSAKU EVENT | DAY 4 | HIRAETH

In which Sakura is faced with the threat of losing her beloved forever, unless she makes a deal with a certain demon...

Pairing: Naruto x Sakura

Genre: Angst, Fantasy AU

Words: ~1,900

A/N: I know I’m a day late for Day 4, but better late than never! I had this idea sitting in the back of my head for this day in particular, but real life and my absent-minded self caused me some delay. I hope you like it!

Sakura held onto Naruto, her knees hurting because of the weight of his body which grew colder under her by the minute. She screamed his name again and again, wailing and crying for help. The large empty hall of the temple started tearing away every form of hope she had. She placed her palm on his chest and felt his very faint heartbeat. His weak heart was about to give in and there was nothing she was able to do despite being the best healer in her land.

"Please! Show yourself!" she cried out again and then choked up on her own sobs, leaning down on her beloved. His entire body was still except for his bright blue eyes which were gradually losing their vision, helplessly staring at the woman crying over him. "He's... he's dying! P... please! You're my last hope!"

She stared at the large murals on the tall, broken walls, the gems adorned throughout the wall taking the form of a monster with red, fiery eyes and an enormous body radiating an aura of the very thing this enormous being had been known for harbouring centuries ago: hatred.

"It's been quite some time since someone came to visit me."

Sakura froze in fear. She could've sworn she had imagined it, but then the loud words were followed by a low, gravelly grunt that echoed throughout the old temple. The voice was far from human, sending chills down Sakura's spine. Her hold on Naruto tightened and she pulled him closer to her. There was a pause and then she heard a heavy chuckle.

She gulped. "Is...is it you?"

The red eyes of the monstrous fox in the painting started to glow. The engravings on the centre of the painting on the wall representing the seal that had entrapped the monster had started to reveal themselves. Beads of perspiration formed on Sakura's forehead. It worked.

"What do you think?" the voice said again.

The words were enough to stir fear within her. She looked up with her teary eyes and tried her best to suppress it. She had come all this way, broken every the law of the highest precedence, just to be here. She couldn't let it all go in vain.

"Please, you have to help him!" She cried out desperately, not thinking twice. Her heart thumped loudly against her chest. "He's dying and I don't know what...what to do...please! I beg of you."

The fox's voice remained silent for some time. She thought she had lost whatever connection she had made to the Demon. She wanted to speak out again, but the spirit of the temple cut her off.

"I am not sure whether you're a fool or whether the situation is indeed that dire that it requires me, of all things. Who might you be?"

"We are soldiers from the Fire Kingdom," the medic explained in a haste. "The lands are under war... and the enemy...they destroyed everything. One of them placed the Death Curse on him, and I just stood there...helpless. This curse is the only one in the lands that cannot be undone—"

"So, the lands are under war again?" the fox mused. "How unforeseeable."

"Please! You have to help him!" Sakura begged. "There's nothing in this world's knowledge that could stop this curse from completing itself..."

"Except me," the fox finished for her. "It is because I created it, I am the only one who can stop it. Isn't that right, oh beautiful one?"

"Pl... please..."

The Demon laughed again, only this time it was more of a threatening growl. "You awaken me, the demon who has been sealed up in here for decades, so that you can save this mere man?"

She only cried, sobbing over the man's bare chest. It seemed like he was dead, but the Demon could still sense traces of life in his body. It was deemed as the only forbidden curse all those years ago. It lasted for an entire day, painfully taking away every ounce of life in the human body. This unconscious man before the monster was in his last few moments, there was no doubt. He must have passed out from the pain, the fox mused. To think humans still used the curse the Demon had created...

The fox huffed. "What makes you think I would help?" The entire painting on the wall had now started to acquire a faint glow.

"I... I don't know..." she replied, wiping away her tears and trying her best to sound sincere as she looked back at the monster on the wall. Her eyes flickered slightly as she saw the state of the painting, which had started to move.

From behind the fox's body, emerged its large tails; all nine of them. A devious grin made its way to the Demon's mouth, revealing its sharp fangs. It was being freed from the bounds on the wall, she could tell. She knew it was because of her, but she didn't care. She had one goal, and one goal only. She sat up straight up, undeterred.

"You do know what happened almost a hundred years ago? When they had to seal me up in my own temple?"

"Yes." Her breaths were shallow, but she had now stopped crying. She knew what was at stake.

"My presence was a threat to your kind. I was deemed the living embodiment of evil itself. I could've crushed humanity, destroyed everything. The five greatest sages of this land had to do everything in their power to trap me in here. Make sure that my claws would never reach your world again. And yet, here you are."

She remained silent, maintaining a firm stare with the burning eyes on the wall.

"You know everything, yet you decide to threaten everything that had been at stake, to save one man?"

"He means everything to me," was all she said.

The Demon chuckled again causing the ground beneath her to tremble. She could sense that all the barriers were being set loose. The Demon could manifest its physical form in front of her any time. She had to convince it somehow.

"I must say, I’m quite impressed. Despite all the stories you may have heard, you're here, prepared to quite possibly give up on this world. Just so you could save him. Just by being here, you have put your world at stake."

"This world has tried to take everything away from me, my everything. I don't care for it anymore." She had to convince him by lying. She couldn't possibly threaten everyone, could she? But somehow, she knew there was some truth to her words. She knew what she actually felt.

"Strong words. Very strong feelings to hold on to. Are you really sure about them?"

She gulped, reminded of how less time Naruto had. "Yes."

Its fangs had started to grow, its body taking a more perfected form in the painting itself. "Well, I do possess the ability to give you what you want. I can bring him back to life. I do have a way."

"You do?" Her expectations grew, her impatience knowing no bounds.

"You have my word," the Demon said. "But the question is, at what cost?"

She felt her heart drop. "Wh... what do you mean?" At what cost? "I... I broke the seal for you... I can set you free..."

"Yes, I know,” the voice drawled. "But my true form has lost all its former strength, being trapped here for so long. I can't just leave this place. My physical form cannot manifest itself until I gain my strength back. It cannot sustain itself for now." The smile on its face grew. "I am still not free from this place, despite everything you have done."

She had begun to see where this was going. Her fear intensified, her body frozen. "What... what do you need?"

"A vessel."

It was as though she couldn't breathe anymore. Her body felt weak, her hands growing colder than the man laying on the ground. She started to tremble, her terror intensifying. She looked down at Naruto, who had now become entirely still. Perhaps his heart was beating, perhaps not. She couldn't tell. Her desperation had reached its peak. There was no other way, and time had evidently run out.

It was now or never.

"Judging by the horrified look on your face, I think you know what I mean." There was no response from her. "I get a vessel to contain myself in, and you get your beloved back."

"No... this can't be," she stuttered in disbelief.

"Don't worry. He will still be himself. It won't hurt him in the slightest. He will still be there, just with a little bit of me in there. It would be as though nothing happened. He wouldn’t even remember it."

She remained silent for a long moment.

"I think we both know you're running out of time. What's it going to be? Are you going to let me reside in him? Are you willing to taint his soul with my presence?" The Demon huffed again. "Are you willing to save his life?"

"There has to be another way..."

"This is the only just one, I'm afraid."

It would save him. But that would also mean giving his body to the beast. It would mean bringing forth to the world the very thing that wants it destroyed — in the form of the one she loves. Naruto would never be himself anymore. He would never be the one she has always returned to, the one she can call her home. He wouldn't be the same.

"What if I say no?"

"Then he never comes back. And I will one day have gained my true form either way, so you'd still have me to worry about. Do you really want to live in a world without him? It would be a shame. Doing all of this for absolutely nothing."

Her eyes couldn't hold back her tears anymore. She closed her eyes and faced upwards, thinking of Naruto. Thinking whether it was all worth it. She formed an image of him in her mind.

She would feel his heart beat again. She would watch him as his face would gain colour again, she would watch him as the light returned to his eyes. She would have cried at some point, happy that he was back. But she would know what lied deep within him.

He would be here, he would be with her, he would be alive. He would sound the same as he would call out her name, perhaps worried as to why she had been crying. He would be oblivious, like he always used to be. He would be back.

But he would never be complete.

"So, what’s the verdict?"

With tears still streaming down her cheek, she carefully lay Naruto down on the floor. Her knees hurt as she stood up, but the pain she was going through emotionally was much worse. Clenching her fists, she stood up straight.

A world with the Nine-tailed Demon Fox would be horrible, but a world without him by her side would be much worse.

She cast the Demon a cold stare with blood-shot eyes, more determined than ever.

"Just bring him back to me."

The painting of the fox had already started fading, as though it knew what was to come. The seal had disappeared from the wall and made its way to the dead man's stomach, gradually bringing colour to his cold, unmoving self.

"As you wish."

FIN

#my writing #narusaku #sakunaru #narusaku event #NS event: Hiraeth #narusaku fic #metalks

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kieravs-blog · 7 years

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◤° ✕ STAR SIGN ; SCORPIO ! ｡〉

scorpio is one of the most profound and outwardly impressive signs of the zodiac, with a very intense emotional energy that makes them stand out among peers. their personalities are truly magnetic, yet they can be volatile and unpredictable at times, like a volcano -- but that’s only because they experience deep passion. like their namesake the scorpion, scorpios have sharp powers of self-defense, and when they feel cornered they will lash out. sometimes they get carried away with their overwhelming feelings. just like the mythological phoenix, they burn themselves down and then they revive from the ashes. scorpio is known for having a very strong imagination and keen intuition. to avoid a tendency toward jealousy, people of this sign need to remind themselves how much they have to offer. it may be hard to win the heart of a scorpio, but once you do, you have someone you can count on for life. people of this sign feel deeply and love passionately, and once someone does them wrong, it can be hard or, more likely, impossible to get back into thier good graces. scorpio is also known as the sexiest sign of the zodiac. they are very affectionate and giving lovers who believe in keeping the fire in a relationship, so if you have a scorpio lover, get ready for a life of passion and excitement.

◤° ✕ MBTI ; ISTP-A ! ｡〉

while their mechanical tendencies can make them appear simple at a glance, virtuosos are actually quite enigmatic. friendly but very private, calm but suddenly spontaneous, extremely curious but unable to stay focused on formal studies, virtuoso personalities can be a challenge to predict, even by their friends and loved ones. virtuosos can seem very loyal and steady for a while, but they tend to build up a store of impulsive energy that explodes without warning, taking their interests in bold new directions. virtuosos’ decisions stem from a sense of practical realism, and at their heart is a strong sense of direct fairness, a “do unto others” attitude, which really helps to explain many of virtuosos’ puzzling traits. instead of being overly cautious though, avoiding stepping on toes in order to avoid having their toes stepped on, virtuosos are likely to go too far, accepting likewise retaliation, good or bad, as fair play. the biggest issue virtuosos are likely to face is that they often act too soon, taking for granted their permissive nature and assuming that others are the same. they’ll be the first to tell an insensitive joke, get overly involved in someone else’s project, roughhouse and play around, or suddenly change their plans because something more interesting came up.

◤° ✕ ENNEAGRAM ; TYPE 4 — THE INDIVIDUALIST ! ｡〉

fours maintain their identity by seeing themselves as fundamentally different from others. fours feel that they are unlike other human beings, and consequently, that no one can understand them or love them adequately. they often see themselves as uniquely talented, possessing special, one-of-a-kind gifts, but also as uniquely disadvantaged or flawed. more than any other type, fours are acutely aware of and focused on their personal differences and deficiencies. healthy fours are honest with themselves: they own all of their feelings and can look at their motives, contradictions, and emotional conflicts without denying or whitewashing them. they may not necessarily like what they discover, but they do not try to rationalize their states, nor do they try to hide them from themselves or others. they are not afraid to see themselves “warts and all.” healthy fours are willing to reveal highly personal and potentially shameful things about themselves because they are determined to understand the truth of their experience— so that they can discover who they are and come to terms with their emotional history. this ability also enables fours to endure suffering with a quiet strength. their familiarity with their own darker nature makes it easier for them to process painful experiences that might overwhelm other types.

◤° ✕ MORAL ALIGNMENT ; CHAOTIC NEUTRAL ! ｡〉

a chaotic neutral character follows his whims. he is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn't strive to protect others' freedom. he avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. a chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. to do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to make those different from himself suffer). a chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random. he is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it. above respect for life and good, or disregard for life and promotion of evil, the chaotic neutral places randomness and disorder. good and evil are complimentary balance arms. neither are preferred, nor must either prevail, for ultimate chaos would then suffer. this view of the cosmos holds that absolute freedom is necessary. whether the individual exercising such freedom chooses to do good or evil is of no concern. after all, life itself is law and order, so death is a desirable end. therefore, life can only be justified as a tool by which order is combated, and in the end it too will pass into entropy. chaotic neutral characters believe that there is no order to anything, including their own actions. with this as a guiding principle, they tend to follow whatever whim strikes them at the moment. good and evil are irrelevant when making a decision. chaotic neutral characters are extremely difficult to deal with. such characters have been known to cheerfully and for no apparent purpose gamble away everything they have on the roll of a single die. they are almost totally unreliable. In fact, the only reliable thing about them is that they cannot be relied upon

◤° ✕ TEMPERAMENT ; CHOLERIC ! ｡〉

someone with pure choleric temperament is usually a goal-oriented person. people with choleric personality type are very savvy, analytical, and logical. extremely practical and straightforward, choleric people aren’t necessary very good companions or particularly social. they dislike small talk and enjoy deep and meaningful conversations. they would rather be alone than in company of shallow, superficial people. ideally, they want to spend time with people who have similar professional interests. they are firm and forceful in their approach to problems. they believe in 'tough love', and try to 'help' others by challenging them to prove themselves, as they themselves would. they're more likely to tell someone who they are trying to 'help' that they're pathetic, expecting the person to say 'no, i'm not pathetic, i'll show you!', as indeed a choleric would in response to such a thing.If met by opposition, they react confrontationally to defend themselves. they are constantly trying to be 'dominant' in every situation, subconsciously, either by being louder and better than those around them, or more restrained and therefore superior to those who lose their cool. they have a tendency to argue for reasons that are different to the melancholic. they're more driven by a desire to prove themselves greater than whoever they're arguing with, to assert that they are right, rather than to reach some kind of truth or compromise. they can lie in order to maintain the dominant position. the argument is about them moreso than the issue; a battle of egos rather than a quest for truth.

◤° ✕ SIN ; WRATH ! ｡〉

wrath can be defined as uncontrolled feelings of anger, rage, and even hatred. wrath often reveals itself in the wish to seek vengeance.i n its purest form, wrath presents with injury, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on for centuries. wrath may persist long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. feelings of wrath can manifest in different ways, including impatience, hateful misanthropy, revenge, and self-destructive behavior.

◤° ✕ HARRY POTTER HOUSE ; SLYTHERIN ! ｡〉

slytherins tend to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. they also have highly developed senses of self-preservation. this means that slytherins tend to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done. according to albus dumbledore, the qualities which salazar valued in the students he chose included cleverness, resourcefulness, determination, and "a certain disregard for the rules."

◤° ✕ AURA ; INDIGO ! ｡〉

indigo aura personalities are creative individuals who inspire awareness, sensibility and integrity. indigos are deeply influenced by their inner knowing. they are dynamic souls who assert their morality to promote teaching respect for all life. they are guided by their mind’s eye and lead with their hearts. primarily working from the third eye, this aura personality is highly intuitive and has a broad range of arcane knowledge. their insights see the pathways of infinite potential and possibilities. indigos can absorb and process new information quickly. indigos are bold and brave with their honesty and serve to be an example of testing boundaries; challenging limitations and restrictions where personal freedom and liberties are concerned. they are outspoken about righting injustices, changing broken social governing systems and can be quick to set a record straight. since they know what they know with clarity and conviction, the truth and the right thing to do are no contest to an indigo.

#「 .° – 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 !

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