#there’s no such thing as ‘white culture’ and people only pull it to try to one up black culture

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Trump and his sycophants have destroyed the Republican Party. They are no longer conservatives either fiscally or on foreign policy. They are a party of chaos beholden to the right-wing culture warrior oligarchs. They are the derogatory agents of those oligarchs and the corporations owned by them. They make decisions based on the whim of a deranged madman.

They have gone from being closet racists/bigots to being full blown Nazis that call for the extermination of their culture war scapegoats they call “vermin” (marginalized people/political rivals). They take this term directly from Hitler who they openly embrace in speech and writing. They no longer care about tax cuts for all but just for the 1% and corporations. They want endless wars to profit from and to distract and rally their deplorable base. They no longer want small, limited government but opt for a massive government that intrudes into its citizens private lives and tramples their freedoms.

The party of law and order is now a party of criminals, sex offenders, grifters, traitors, and murderous street thugs. They are proud of this and fund raise and merchandise from their lawlessness. They have bought control of what is now an illegitimate SCOTUS which never allows them to be held accountable.

They use the KKK, Neo-Nazi groups, armed right-wing militias, Neo-Confederates, and white supremacists to persecute their opponents and victims in the streets and inside the Capitol itself. They tell us to “get over it” when mindless gun violence decimates our families in every public venue from churches, to schools, to 4th of July celebrations, movie theaters, shopping malls, and even a Super Bowl parade.

The police, courts, and legislatures are infested with their white nationalist/supremacists and Christo-fascists. They openly take money from Russia and others to influence our foreign policy and economic policy. Money from Russia is funneled into the NRA and Congress to allow a massive proliferation of gun violence on our streets that destabilizes our society.

They claim to be the party of the military but they degrade and insult our troops and cast our veterans into the streets. They abandon our allies and our treaty obligations at the behest of foreign dictators that bribe them.

They bust our unions and pass laws to weaken or prevent organized labor. They are forcing society to become wage slaves with no security, insurance, or pensions. They force our workers into the “gig economy” where everyone works incredible hours 7 days a week at multiple jobs and still are left unable to afford rent or mortgages. Nearly the entire population is one or two paychecks away from being homeless.

Decades of trickle down economics has seen our tax dollars poured into the accounts of billionaires, millionaires, and corporations with not a penny trickling down to the working class. The middle class has been practically wiped out by cruel Republican legislation written by political think tanks established and funded by oligarchs. The only thing these pseudo-conservatives conserve is their own wealth.

This is late stage capitalism run amok. The economy has been drained and now the oligarchs and corporations are plundering the government. They have taken advantage of decades of right-wing propaganda proliferated by Fox News, conservatives talk radio, and internet podcasts that have brain washed the rural areas into blaming the Democrats that are trying help them while convincing them to vote for the Republicans who have impoverished them. The French Revolution in reverse.

They see the Orange Dictator as their last best chance to completely take over the government and create a kleptocracy that pulls the strings behind an autocracy that pretends to be a republic.

The chaos of the Republican puppets is to distract everyone from the takeover by the oligarchs, corporations, and deep pocketed foreign adversaries.

#vote Biden Harris 2024 #vote blue always #vote democratic down the ballot #republican assholes #traitor trump #crooked donald #Republican corruption #Republican chaos

[phantom-of-the-memes]

is it okay to learn gaeilge if you aren’t irish but most of your heritage actually is from ireland? i totally get what you were saying with your other post about barely having irish heritage and making it an aesthetic but if that’s not the case it’s not like a closed language right?

Ok so I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here and explain my post and my feelings about this.

First and foremost, it’s not a closed language.

More people learning Irish is always a good thing. However, I think you should ask yourself your intentions for learning Irish. This is where Irish people’s annoyance at US Americans can come in.

Firstly is regards to my posts about my frustrations at Americans making my post about Ireland and our relationship with Irish and efforts to preserve it, about themselves. Sometimes the best way to be and ally to a cultural group that you are not in, is to say nothing and to simply listen. This is something we deal with on the daily, and have dealt with for centuries. Having lived in the USA for centuries and now culturally being an American, you do not feel this.

I think because America is such a mish mash of DNA, you guys have a different idea of race than we do. We identify as nationalities rather than race. Yes we are black or white, but first and foremost we are Irish or Nigerian or Korean or whatever!

An Irish person is someone who lives in Ireland, who is immersed in our culture, who is affected by our laws and politics. Not someone who had a relative centuries ago that was Irish, but is now part of a different culture. You can have zero Irish ancestry and be Irish because you live on the island! Minimising a whole culture down to blood percentages is weird and not at all how it works.

Here is when the “celtiboo” (Celtic weaboo, ie, someone who is obsessed with and fetishises the Celtic nations such as Ireland) issue comes in. Someone could have ten different DNA percentages of different European countries, yet they focus in on Ireland. This is because of the fetishised idea that people have of us and our culture. People refuse to listen to Irish people, and will only believe their idea of what our culture and history is. I know this first hand living in a city that is inundated with tourists on the daily. My sister is a tour guide at a massive historical site here. US Americans won’t listen to us.

You don’t really see this with these same people who might have French DNA for example. And there is a massive difference between our Languages. French is a language that is far from endangered. It is itself a colonisers language. You learn French so you can go to French speaking countries and use your skills. With Irish, realistically you won’t get to use it. We only get to use it when studying in school or in Gaeltachts (Irish speaking areas), and they aren’t that common.

So you have to ask yourself why you do you want to learn it? Is it for a gimmick or party trick? Something you can pull out that other people in your country won’t have heard of?

When we say we want to preserve Irish, we mean that we want our people in Ireland to be able to speak it. We aren’t trying to spread that language around the world. We just want to restore things to the way they were before England colonised us.

Anyways, in conclusion, just please don’t claim to be a nationality that your aren’t and try to speak on our issues. Please be respectful of native languages and when people from the affected group speak on our troubles, just listen! Please don’t reply making it about yourself and your whatever percentage DNA that put you in “exactly the same position” as us, because it doesn’t.

#ireland #irish #hozier #unreal unearth #hozier unreal unearth #Gaeilge #celtiboo #usa #us american #America #American

[sophie-frm-mars]

Hi Sophie! In light of the genocide in Palestine and the conspiracies around it, do you have any thoughts on how to avoid conspiracy thought?

You pointed out in Conspiracy on the Left that conspiracists will often switch from using language that recognizes incentives and structures, to language that indicates direct malice and intent. I've seen this in real time with Zionism where people will stop using it as a term to describe the ideology and actions of Israel and America (economic and military interests, the historical inertia of the british empire, the interest of capital and western nations using Israel as a base in the Middle East), to using it as a placeholder for jews (people accusing individual people (usually american) of attempting to silence voices with media platforms)

I was gonna say I find this one really straightforward, but at the same time I myself have actually rushed into condemnations of Israel that gave too much leniency to antisemitic ideas, so there probably is a bit more to it. I'll get to it

Firstly, the straightforward part of it is that there are jews all around the world who absolutely fucking despise israel and its genocidal project, so even saying "Israel doesn't represent jews" is too mild. Israel actively denies citizenship to ethiopian jews for instance. I think the main thing is to recognise it for what it is - an outpost of imperialist white supremacy in the Middle East - and to recognise Zionism as a primarily American and imperial core phenomenon rather than a jewish one.

Once you have those ideas down it's pretty easy to separate it out because assuming that any jewish person or org supports Israel just because they're jewish is clearly antisemitic. But here's the rub, Israel uses jewish identity as a shield to justify its actions. At the same time that there are illegal settlers literally giving interviews saying "I describe myself as a fascist" the Israeli state claims that Hamas reads Mein Kampf and that Palestinians are literal Nazis. Not only that but Israeli statesmen use references to things like Amalek to signal their genocidal intentions, basically using the cultural references of Judaism to simultaneously hide behind and also attack.

Where I fell into something antisemitic was when I found out about the IDF cumjacker squad, the guys who go out to get the semen of Israel's fallen dead. the Jizzrael Defence Force if you will. Someone who was talking about it said that the justification had some kind of origin in the hebrew bible and I parroted this without thinking until a jewish friend pulled me up on it. There was no source and there was frankly no reason to repeat it even if it had been true, right? but I got carried away. The reality is that the cumjacker battalion exists for the same reason as sterilisation & organ harvesting programs, because Israel is a Starship-Troopers-Ass fascist nightmare state that sees the bodies of the pure and good as essential to the domination of the future and the bodies of the impure and wrong as wretched at worse and resources at best.

How I think we can avoid the trap of sharing these rhetorical points is by remembering what Israel's relationship to judaism is, which is primarily as a shield. "Shoot and Cry" is the phrase to remember. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said "We can forgive them for killing our children but we can never forgive them for making us kill theirs". This bogus remorse over their genocide of palestinians (because they understand genocide because of the holocaust, see?) and constant preemptive counterattack (Amalek attacked Israel first, see) is the place where Israel touches base with jewish identity, but if you can't see any benefit to Israel's strategy in association with jewish identity, it's likely someone is just trying to say The Jews instead of Israel or repeating the talking point of someone who is.

[atopfourthwall]

I wanna clarify up front that I both understand and agree with the "don't send death threats to creators" and the whole fan entitlement thing... but listening to Zeb Wells gleefully, smugly talk about how funny it is that people care about Ms Marvel and dismissing the criticism of his fridging her is absolutely fucking maddening, and kind of disgusting. Kamala Khan is a character who was massively meaningful to me, and has been massively meaningful to a LOT of brown girls who read comics. The whole treatment of her has been really, really gross - and tinged with more than a little bit of racism, not least of all the whole "Let's bring in the teenage muslim girl for one issue so she can die to save a white lady." Yes, she's going to come back soon, this whole thing is a marketing stunt to make her a mutant and MCU-ify her... which is gross in and of itself, but at least means she's not gone forever... but that's part of the problem. From start to finish the creative choices made for Kamala Khan during this arc feel incredibly exploitative, particularly because she is a woman of color - none of them are ABOUT HER. The creative team have made that abundantly clear, multiple times. Again - I am not gonna send anyone death threats, and no one should do that. But what do you do when creators seem to be actively trying to provoke that response? How are fans who are upset by this supposed to respond to this kind of overtly provocative dismissal of why this is significant to us, particularly those of us who AREN'T really represented particularly heavily in comics to begin with? How are we supposed to get Editorial to understand this is simply not okay when they seem to WANT backlash, and will treat ALL backlash as something positive or otherwise funny? I'm not buying any of the comics about "The Death of Ms Marvel", but I know other people will - and I'm worried that message could easily be interpreted as "People don't care about Kamala Khan anymore", which could lead to MORE mistreatment of her character. As someone who is very familiar with the industry and fan culture surrounding comics - what would your advice be in terms of expressing how shitty this decision was and how specifically terrible Zeb Wells and Nick Lowe's attitude have been to this whole situation?

There really are only two things you can do: -Talk about it - give the reasons why and discourage other people from buying it or anything else related to this debacle. Contact Marvel and say "As a fan and customer, I am upset and you are damaging future sales by doing this." Will people listen? Eh, maybe not, but you can't control what other people do or believe. -Now this is the really hard one, but it's the same one that I've stuck to: actually don't buy it. In fact, don't buy anything with Zeb Wells' name on it. Tell people "Do not buy anything with his name on it and this is why." And you have to stick to your guns on this. "Ms. Marvel is coming back already? No. Fuck you; you have made it clear you do not want me as a customer and my opinion does not matter. So I am washing my hands of this. Unless I can see that you recognize what a mistake this was, I will no longer be a customer. And I will tell others to not be customers." And I know that can be hard because you WANT to support the character, you WANT to read more stories with them, you feel you need to... but you have to let it go. Because otherwise they'll pull this shit again in 5 years because they think they can get away with it. And if they don't hear the message... well, that's their problem. This is their mess - they can revel in it and you're free of it. After all, if they're still producing the bullshit that you hated to begin with, why are you STILL giving them money? And this is why I still haven't bought a Peter Parker Spider-Man comic since One More Day - especially when, like Lucy and Charlie Brown, they keep yanking the football away at the last second for fixing it. They don't want my money? Fine. They won't get it.

[eetherealgoddess]

Someone requested a bonten/purge au in one of my comment sections forever ago. Hope you enjoy!♡︎♡︎♡︎

ꨄWork Nightꨄ

Oneshot - Yandere Bonten/Purge Au

❦You work during the purge❦

Hanemiya Kazutora, Sanzu Haruchiyo, & Haitani Brothers x Reader

Not fully proofread!

MY TR FANDOM WORKS ARE ONLY ON TUMBLR, AO3, AND WATTPAD UNDER EETHEREALGODDESS! REPORT IF YOU SEE IT POSTED UNDER ANYONE ELSE BUT ME!!!

I apologize if I get any Japanese etiquette or culture wrong, I literally have to research the culture for some of my fandom stories so if anything is wrong, please excuse my ignorance.

Notice:

✩Y/n is 18+. I picture her as a black female but you can see her however.

✩Some parts of the story may not be realistic or factual. After all, this is a work of fiction.

✩Although it's a dark 'romance,' I do not condone any of the behavior displayed.

✩Dark content such as: gore, violence, triggering topics, graphic scenes, vulgar language, explicit sexual content, etc.

✩There may be scenes that involve non con and/ or dubcon so don’t read if that makes you uncomfortable

✩That being said, this story is for 18+ only.

Enjoy!

Work Night

Recently, you learned about the extra money you could make by working on Purge night. Usually, you wouldn’t stay out during the ‘holiday’ but you decided to try it. Now, why wouldn’t you just go out and steal from a bank or something? Because, that’s a death sentence. Other people are out doing the exact same thing. At least you’ll still be safe inside. The job is to clean and mandate the shop, protecting the merchandise while it stays closed. Fortunately, the store you work in has never been broken into, or stolen from, nobody really caring for flowers on a night as chaotic as this, which makes your job easy.

Unlike other stores surrounding you, this one is a small business, and the price to protect it was too good to pass. You’re also not alone, currently sweeping the floor amongst the other two coworkers who are taking care of the other chores on the checklist. Hearing tapping on the window, the three of you look up, your body jolting as you eye the masked strangers

“Do you know them?” One of your coworkers questions. You respond with a shake of your head as your grip on the wooden stick tightens while your body tenses. You all stood quietly, examining the tall figures. Blood stains their suits as well as the weapons that are hanging to their sides. One of them moves closer to the window before he taps the metal bat against the glass and tilts his head, the moonlight exposing the red liquid splattered on the white crying mask.

“The doors are locked right?” The other coworker questions.

“Yeah.” You respond breathlessly. Your heart pounds against your chest as a sense of dread forms when they all move closer. You gasp as the man pulls his arms back and slams the bat against the glass. Shards shatter everywhere before they step inside. You hear your coworkers shriek as you all scramble to run towards the back door.

“Fuck!” You hiss just as you move out of the way right before the person with the baton could crack your skull. You make eye contact through the mask, an eerie smile plastered on the white face. You fall in the process, rolling your body out of the way before the weapon could meet your stomach, smacking a piece of glass when making contact with the floor.

“Pesky little thing.” He all but purrs as you get back on your feet. Your head turns to the person with pink hair holding a katana closing in on one of your coworkers who backed into a corner.

“Please! Don’t kill me!” Her legs shake as she holds her hands up, her eyes wide as tears fall down her face. The mask holds a frown that resembles the person’s grip on the weapon before they pull back and penetrate her chest. You gasp right before dodging the machete that almost slices through your neck, turning your attention to the purple mullet who has on a mask that displays an expression of laughter.

You change your direction, running towards the large hole in which they entered, passing the man using the bat to beat your male coworker’s face into unrecognition. You hop through the hole and run aimlessly, your only thought to get somewhere safe and hide from not only your current tormentors, but anyone else who’s lingering around to be a menace on this celebratory night.

“Please, please, please.” You beg to whatever deity can hear you above, your legs burning as you feel tightness in your stomach from running faster than you’ve ever had to before.

You force yourself to sprint through the pain as you hear footsteps behind, not bothering to turn around. Your adrenaline pumps as you continue down the sidewalk. You begin to struggle to breathe the longer you push yourself, attempting to take in deep breaths and releasing as a way to fight through the pain. You knew you couldn’t stop, especially with the footsteps closing in behind you.

You make a side glance to an alleyway and turn into it, hoping to find a way through by a shortcut. Before you can continue, a hand grabs your bicep and snatches you back.

“Where do ya think yer goin?” The random middle aged man pulls you toward him with a gun against your head. He wrapped an arm around your neck and leans closer to your ear.

“Yer gonna do what I say.” He growls in your ear as his grip tightens while you’re frozen.

“My, my. You’re in quite the predicament, huh?” The man with the machete states, amusement dripping from his tone. The guy holding you turns his attention to the three masked men with confusion on his face.

“Who the hell are you? Go away! This is my kill!” He exclaims with anger.

“Your kill? We found her first.” The guy with the bat argues with a chuckle.

Your eyes widen when you notice that the guy with the katana is missing. Fear engulfing your mind you pull your head forward before slamming it back against the man’s nose causing him to release his grip and cover his wound. Blood drips over his mouth as you move just in time for the weapon to slice through his body, the blade piercing through his stomach now stained with fresh blood. The sound of his gun hitting the ground echoed through the alleyway.

Holy fuck! I just almost got kabobed!

You swiftly snatch the gun from the ground and clumsily aim it at all four men whose attention has turned to you.

“Back the hell up!” You exclaim, scared out of your mind as your hand shakes while holding the gun. Your reaction causes smirks and laughs from the masked figures in front of you.

“Go ahead. Shoot.” Your eyes widened at the male with the katana as your grip tightened on the gun.

Honestly the only time you’ve ever seen a gun was on tv so this is your first time holding the weapon. You had no idea how to use it besides pulling the trigger, but for some reason you hesitate. You breathe heavily as you back up slowly.

“J-just stay away from me! Let me go a-and I won’t have to.”

You stupid bitch, just shoot them! What’s wrong with you?

You look up at the sky, noticing how the night gradually disappears as dawn forms.

Thank God! If I can just hold out till this is over, I’ll be free!

“If you don’t wanna get shot then go away! Now!” You demand, voice trembling as you figure out how to cock the gun.

“Oh? You’re giving us ultimatums now?” The tallest one questions with mirth.

“It’s hilarious that you think you have a say in anything just because you’re holding a gun.” The purple mullet states, crossing his arms with the machete still in his hand.

The sound of their phones going off causes them to grab the devices from their pockets and eye the notification.

“Seems to be your lucky day.”

“Boss needs us guys, let's go.”

“See ya next time!”

They all walk away, leaving you holding the gun as you watch them walk off. You release a large breath as your hand is placed on your chest to hopefully ease the pounding of your heart. Gun still in hand you rush off to your home.

“I-I survived!” You laugh out when you make it inside, locking the door behind you.

“I need to smoke some tree on god.” You moan out before turning on the news.

You listen to the news anchor announcing the end of the purge. You set the gun on the table and walk to your bedroom. After you gather your pajamas you take a quick shower, wiping residue grime and blood, thinking back on your dead coworkers with a shiver.

A few months since the traumatic event passes and your life has only gotten weirder since then. First and foremost, you decided that you wanted to get out more considering you have been a loner for most of your life and don’t really have any major accomplishments since graduating from highschool. Considering the purge was a more recent holiday, you knew that your death could approach even sooner than before.

Anytime you had downloaded dating apps, you never took it seriously enough to make friends or partners so you went out of your comfort zone and met quite a few people this time. Unfortunately, it seems as though after about a week or so they would ghost you for no particular reason that was stated. No matter how much you thought you had bonded with someone, they disappeared as if they never existed in the first place.

You didn’t take it personally at first but after a few times you wondered if there was something wrong with you. It wasn’t until there was someone you talked to for longer than the deadline in which the others had disappeared. You couldn’t believe you caught the attention of someone so attractive but you accepted the circumstances regardless.

More time passes as you two get to know each other and bond quickly, becoming closer than you ever had with someone in a long time. So close that you two decide to spend the purge together at your apartment. He offered his place but you wanted to stay in the vicinity of your own home just in case.

You had just stepped out of the shower while he was in the living room. After drying yourself and lotioning up you put on a different outfit. Just as you step out of the bathroom, you notice a presence with a familiar suit sitting on your bed with his leg crossed. Icy blue orbs pierce your own as your eyes widen.

“R-Ran!” You yell in fear as you run out of the room. “Someone broke in!” You run to the kitchen to grab the gun, only to be pulled back by your arm. You eye the unknown man who looks almost identical to the male you had been seeing though you could recognize that purple mullet from anywhere.

“God, why’d you have to drag this so long?”

“Isn’t it obvious? He wanted her all to himself.” A male with golden eyes says from the couch.

“Ah, yeah. You’ve caught me.” The man with mid length blonde and black hair chuckles, walking towards you.

“He even grew his hair out. Ridiculous.” The pink haired man spits as he walks into the room.

“W-What the fuck is going on?” You yell, eyeing Ran with confusion and anger.

“You know, we could’ve just snatched her that night. Why’d we have to wait a whole year?”

“Cuz it’s fun, Kazu. Didn’t you enjoy murdering all of those people she talked to.”

“Whatever. Let’s just hurry up so we can explain it to Mikey so he doesn’t kill her.”

“What the hell are all of you talking ab-!” Before you could finish you were interrupted by an impact on your head, succumbing to the darkness.

You groan as you wake up with a throbbing headache, aiming to rub your head only for your arms to not move. When your vision is back you notice that your arms are tied behind the chair you’re forced to sit on.

“What is it about you that caught those idiots' attention?” You look ahead to see a man with platinum hair boring into you with dark orbs. Your breath hitches as you become wary of your surroundings. His aura doesn’t help.

“I-I don’t know what’s going on! Please, let me go!”

“Did I say you could speak?” You immediately shut your mouth as you eye him with discomfort.

“You’ve distracted my men. Why?”

You didn’t know whether to answer or not though it’s not like you have a response anyway. Considering the memories that recollected you knew that Ran had been one of the masked strangers from that night. You had no idea why he did what he did or how you caught their attention to the point where you’re not dead yet. You don’t want to find out, all you want is to go home.

“I guess we’ll have to find out.”

Your eyebrows furrowed in concern. You have no idea what he means by that. As if cued, the said group of males walk in, Ran with his original short haired purple style that you remembered from a year ago.

“You found her, you deal with her.” The short man states with a stoic expression before he stands from his seat and walks out of the room.

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere tokyo revengers #tokyo revengers #tokyo rev x you #tokyo rev x reader #kazutora hanemiya #kazutora x you #kazutora x reader #sanzu haruchiyo #sanzu x reader #sanzu x you #ran haitani #ran x reader #ran x you #rin haitani #rin x reader #rin x you #bonten #bonten x reader #yandere bonten #bonten au #purge #tw purge #purge au #bonten trio #bonten timeline #yandere males #yandere x you

[bijoumikhawal]

I've gotten tired of making a post like this every few months so let's just fire a few of these off, and feel free to add on! Tropes you should at minimum reconsider using when you write or talk about Julian Bashir:

Mentions of "harem" pants, "Arabian nights" aesthetics, etc. These are improper terminology (that feeds into racist ideas) for real things, and when using that terminology those things are often being misrepresented. For my part, if you would actually like to know about the material culture of the Middle East and North Africa, I'm a "hobby" researcher of that very topic and will readily answer asks about it- with the caveat that I mostly know about Egypt, and I'm not the best person to ask about Sudanese specific culture even though I know a little, and I don't know much about Indian or Pakistani fashion (mentioning because these seem to be the most common cultures brought up around Julian).

comparisons to monkeys, apes, the word "simian". This should be obvious but it happens a fair amount, and it's almost comedic given a common trope is to comment on how much Garak hates being compared to a lizard.

This is separate but the way some people use mammalian tips from writing xenofic and trying to understand how an alien would think and categorize things into something that feels very exoticifying. It's not a "full stop, do not do this" but it is something I've noticed

Jokes about how undesirable Julian is. He's the exception that proves the rule about fandom's obsession with white twinks and a rare example of a brown nerd who isn't pinned into the "Couldn't sleep with a woman if they were the last two people on earth" box. I'm not saying we can't make fun of how he flirts just- Stay clear of Raj BBT territory

Conversely: my most hated garashir trope is when the author makes Julian's libido a problem by making him inconsiderate, cruel, and outright manipulative in service of his dick, and the writing often makes it clear they're connecting this to his masculinity. Julian does do some really stupid shit when it comes to his relationships, but this particular way of trying to incorporate this into writing him is just OOC, and you need to not confuse writing Julian's canonical robust and healthy sex life with negative stereotypes about lecherous Black and brown men. There's fics that pull off Julian being a bit of a dick or manipulative well- such as Salt the Earth or the ageswap series (at least where I last left off on it).

making his eyes green or blue. I have the same eye color as Siddig, more or less, and while it's technically hazel (or olive, as some people call it) most people think it's brown and most lighting makes it look brown. If you look at screencaps of Julian, you'll notice it also most of the time, looks brown. This sounds minor if you haven't experienced it, but it has a real and very negative impact on people's self image.

Older one but to be clear: if you're writing Julian as explicitly Muslim, find and replacing "god" with "allah" in English text is not how Muslims (or Arabic speakers in general) use the word? It is really funny to read, but please...

Over focusing on Julian as British. There's a long, LONG conversation that could be had about the dynamics of assimilation and how European racism (ime) very specifically views it as progressive to strip people of their culture and thinks they're causing the problem if they don't go along with it that would need its own post and which I've had with white fans before and feel exhausted thinking about- but to put it simply, there is no such thing as "just British", even for white Englishmen.

Yes the inverse is also wrong but I really haven't read a fic newer than 2014 guilty of that lmao and I think some of the more recent complaints about it are overblown, given I've read only a few fics recently published that delve into Julian as a Brown/African Person and I enjoyed them

I would personally appreciate it if fic writers were a little more balanced about cultural discussions honestly. If you write a lot about Cardassian culture, it'd be nice if Julian’s background was discussed. I won't say that kind of research is easy (again, I do this as a "hobby" that's very important to me, it's actually really annoying and difficult sometimes), but it is possible. I recently talked about how not doing this kind of mentally slots Julian into a "white guy" role.

This is not a matter of me policing your "artistic expression". I have no control over what you do. I would just like for fandom, a hobby I do for fun, to be a place where people stop being racist in a way that directly impacts me.

#cipher talk #ds9 #julian bashir

[creature-wizard]

What would it take to be a starseed or new ager without being problematic?

Since I've seen people claim that it's possible to be a starseed or new ager without believing in the bad stuff, I've decided to write a list of some of the stuff they'd have to give up on in order for their spirituality to not be crawling with racism, colonialism, and genocide:

Literally all of the conspiracy stuff. All that stuff can be traced back to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (a known hoax), early modern witch panic and blood libel, and other sundry forms of antisemitism. Literally anything connected to the reptilian conspiracy theory has got to go.

Atlantis. It was literally a fictional city and pretty much all Atlantis belief is tied in with the above conspiracism.

All of the ancient aliens stuff. All of the so-called evidence is fabrication, hoax, or wishful thinking. The whole entire thing is rooted in white supremacy, even if people try to gloss over it today.

The whole entire missionary attitude; IE, the belief that people need to "wake up to the truth" or whatever. Missionary work is a tool of colonialism. The end whole goal of eliminating all other forms of spirituality is cultural genocide, plain and simple.

The whole Perennialism thing, with the belief that every spiritual tradition is derived from some pure, untainted ur-religion that the world must return to, which just so happens to be the form of spirituality you believe in.

The whole Millennialism thing, with the belief that the world is on the cusp of entering a new age where everyone will be a New Ager and no other forms of spirituality will exist.

The belief that humanity is evolving into a "higher" form. (This is literally Victorian age pseudoscience.)

Claiming that symptoms associated with autism, ADHD, and trauma in general are actually signs of being a starseed, thus dehumanizing the neurodivergent.

The belief that past lives or lost memories can be accurately remembered through recovered memory therapy. (Not only is this bunk, it fuels pseudohistory and conspiracy theories.)

Anything that can be traced back to books with obvious Nazi sympathies, like Other Tongues - Other Flesh, and the alleged diary of Admiral Byrd. (The latter of which is an obvious forgery if you use any critical thinking skills whatsoever while reading it - nobody writes in their journal while literally controlling a plane.)

Anything that can be traced back to Helena Blavatsky, William Walker Atkinson, and other people known for just pulling shit out of their asses and claiming it came from a reliable source.

This isn't even all of the stuff that would have to go, but it's some of the biggest stuff that would have to go, and I'm pretty sure that if you ejected all of this, you wouldn't have much of anything left.

#starseeds #starseed #new age #spirituality #religion #conspirituality #conspiracy theories #conspiracism #witchblr

[gatheringbones]

[“As history has shown, and as I was at the time experiencing, a strap-on can be sexy, but it can also be a failure and a threat. It draws attention to how contradictory and fragile our definitions of male and female are, and how tightly we cling to them, even in relationships between women, where gender and sexuality are more flexible.

I think it’s important to look at how this played out, not just in the history of straight men policing lesbians but in the lesbian community policing itself. In the 1940s and 50s a bar scene began to develop in cities across the country, marking the first time when lesbians, particularly working-class ones, gathered publicly and in large numbers. During this time a butch/femme culture developed that included strict codes of dress and behavior both in and outside the bedroom. Butch women slicked back their hair, wore suits and jeans, and were, generally, the “givers” of sexual pleasure. Femme women wore dresses and makeup and were the “receivers” of sexual pleasure. In some ways, this culture was liberating, as it represented a powerful, cohesive group aesthetic and safety in numbers. Especially for women who actually identified as butch, it was also a chance to finally adopt masculine dress without being seen as failed or dangerous but rather as sexy and loveable. For others this culture was a trap, pushing women into restrictive sex and gender roles in the same ways heterosexuality had. It is by no means the only lesbian aesthetic, but I think part of the reason it has stuck around for so long in the popular imagination as the way lesbians are is because it allows straight people to again see themselves as the center of the sexual world.

In either case, strap-ons were not widely used, or at least not talked about. In Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, a book that documents the lives of Black and white lesbians in Buffalo, there is a pretty exhaustive set of interviews about sex acts and terminology, but no one mentions owning, liking, or even trying sex with a strap-on. Indeed, the one mention of a dildo is one of bewilderment as Vic, a self-identified butch, talks about her friend pulling her into the bathroom to show her the new strap-on she got. “Jesus, she whipped this thing out . . . I’m supposed to be butch and my face felt like a neon sign. I could feel the embarrassment. How do you admire a dildo? No seriously, what do you say?”

Butches in the book took great pride “in their own hands and their ability to please,” which “did not dispose them to think that a dildo would improve their lovemaking.” It’s interesting that they considered the dildo less potent and successful than hands. This could be read as displacing the power of the dick, but, coupled with the silence surrounding strap-on use, it also points to a greater fear about the lesbian body. How regulated and small it had to be to exist. How easily it could be diminished by something outside itself, or destroyed altogether.

In the lesbian radical feminist movement of the 1960s and 70s, there was also a great deal of attention focused on creating distance from dicks. Jill Johnston argued in A Lesbian Nation that the only true road to female liberation was the conscious “withdrawal at every level from the man to develop woman supremacy.” This meant that not only butch/femme dynamics but also penetrative sex were out. Anne Koedt developed the theory that the vaginal orgasm was a myth perpetrated by Freud in order to center male sexual desire for penetration, though her evidence for this was a study done by Kinsey—a man—that found the vagina was not particularly sensitive to touch. True orgasms, Koedt argued, only came from the clitoris—even though she interestingly also called the clit “the female equivalent of the penis”—so if women wanted to have enjoyable sex there was no need for penetration, only clitoral stimulation. Andrea Dworkin went so far as to call the penis “a hidden symbol of terror” and argued that “violence is male, the male is the penis.”

Dorothy Allison writes about the effects this had on herself and other lesbians at the time. “No one admitted to using dildos, wanting to be tied up, wanting to be penetrated, or talking dirty—all that male stuff . . . my lover wanted us to perform tribadism, stare into each other’s eyes, and orgasm simultaneously. Egalitarian, female, feminist, revolutionary.” In attempting to free themselves from the penis, in many ways radical lesbians ended up reinscribing the power of the dick and sacrificing the range of sexual pleasure they could experience in the process.

In a counter to this, the lesbian sexual outlaws of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s argued that dildos were actually great, not problematic, but primarily because they didn’t reference the penis at all. Some even argued that wearing a dildo turns a woman into a cyborg, not woman, man, or even human, just a body involved in the mechanistic movements of giving and receiving pleasure. While there is something freeing about this argument, as it gets us out from under the idea that we can’t talk about strap-ons and that a woman wearing a strap-on is only trying to make up for a never-ending lack, it still bypasses the sticky, complicated reality of the gendered/human world we live in and the simple fact that sometimes lesbians want strap-ons to look like penises.

All of this begs the question: can a dyke wear a dick and just have some damn fun?”]

amy gall, from my dick, your dick, our dick, from wanting: women writing about desire, 2023

#amy gall #lesbian literature #currently reading #saint vallous #history stuff

[akajustmerry]

I haven't seen chibnall but I have a hard time imagining being worse than moffat. I'm sure it's possible but that man... he was bad. also out of curiosity what's the problem with eccleston? or did you just use his name as a reference for which era was rtd. feel free to ignore this if you like, I hope you have a good day!

hellooo!

look, you won't hear me arguing moffat wasn't bad but believe me Chibnall was worse. He wrote an entire sequence where the Doctor tricks the Master (then played by British-Indian actor Sacha Dhawan) into being caught by the Nazis, knowing what the Nazis would do to him. Like, the Doctor, presenting as a white woman, handed over the Master, her best friend presenting as a Brown man to the most notorious white supremacist regimes in history. And that moment was framed as a successful ploy!! As a "win" for the Doctor.

I'm sorry but, to me, Moffats fucking decrepit cringe Gen X Misogyny did nowhere near as much damage as thoughtlessly portraying the Doctor as someone who will literally use Nazism against a poc and framing it as clever girlboss behaviour. Like, it's not fun that these are the people we have to choose from but one of these things is not like the other.

As for the Eccleston stuff, I was referring to Christopher Eccleston's conflict with the BBC and by extension implied conflict with RTD. The full details of the conflict have never been fully made public but Eccleston has always maintained he quit the show due to the culture created by the show runners and producers. He's said he'd never work with RTD again. Eccleston implied that one of the reasons the relationship between himself and RTD broke down was Eccleston's desire for the Doctor to be a role model whose intellect wasn't inherently tied to being upper class English and had to really fight to use his natural accent. It's worth noting that the we wouldn't have a Doctor without an RP (received pronunciation) accent again until Capaldi. David even mentioned Russell's "enthusiasm" for DT to speak in RP not his natural accent in his interview with Jodie in 2020.

I want to believe that RTD has grown since the mid 00s, and perhaps this time around things will be different. But I think a lot of people point to Moffat as the worst because his bigotry is the most visible and easiest to critique. It's more popular and acceptable to critique sexism against white women than it is to critique racism and classism. But in reality all of these showrunners are white British men who have pulled white British bullshit and I won't stand for Chibnall and Davies shortcomings being scapegoated via Moffat.

Also, this is not a defense necessarily but a lot of people who hate moffat era who did NOT watch Capaldi's seasons and did not watch season 10 with Bill Potts. So their critique often lacks the perspective of Moffat's best season that proves he's capable of writing something genuinely compelling that's not gross and sexiest. Like it genuinely infuriates me when people talk about "moffat who" but they're only really talking about Matt Smiths seasons. Again none of that is a defence but it's just to say that most people who say Moffat is the worst are people who a) are really talking about Sherlock, which, fair enough that was shit b) people who just think 10th Doctor best Doctor and don't actually care about anything after that era in any meaningful way. Or c) people who have a pretty incomplete view of the series was and where it currently is.

omg this is long sorry I hope I don't sound rude I'm not trying to be I just have so many thoughts about this. I hope this answers your question, please let me know if I need to clarify anything <3

#anon #doctor who #/

[butterflydm]

looking towards s3

I'm going to be doing a bit of wild speculation for s3, here, after going through the various book narratives and moments to check off what the show has already covered (including some speculation about certain plotlines having been subbed in for other ones) and so what's likely next for them in s3. Contains book spoilers through Knife of Dreams and casting and location spoilers for s3.

(for a more thorough "what's already been done", @sixth-light has one here: what's in and what's out: characters; worldbuilding)

The Eye of the World:

I think we can probably all agree that the one big thing from EotW that hasn't been covered yet is the introduction of the Caemlyn-related characters, other than Elayne -- namely Elaida, Gawyn, Galad, and likely Morgase. We know that this will happen in s3, at least to a certain extent.

They came in clutch at the last minute with giving us Elayne taking care of her 'bird with a broken wing' aka her meet-cute with Rand.

The Great Hunt:

Pretty much everything narratively important about TGH was covered this season. Some of it was remixed (Rand's 'Fal Dara' encounter with Siuan and the Aes Sedai happening in 2x7 in Cairhien instead of at the start of the arc) but pretty much everything important has been done.

And Siuan being much harsher with Rand in the show than in the books makes it understandable why Rand is not willing to trust Aes Sedai (with a handful of exceptions). imo the change in Siuan's plotline was done for three reasons: a. to set-up Rand's increasing wariness around the White Tower and Aes Sedai; b. to have a narrative reason why none of our main characters are going back to the White Tower next season; c. to set up a character arc for Siuan in s3+. Obviously, time will tell on whether or not I'm right, but those were the reasons that came to mind immediately after 2x7 and I still think they're likely reasons.

re: 'flicker-flicker' - the most important thing coming out of flicker-flicker is that Mat is determined never to 'betray' Rand, like it's implied that he did in some of the flicker worlds, and Mat has absolutely made that emotional commitment due to the events of this season.

The only important minor character from bk2 specifically that we don't get introduced to is Egeanin, I think, and again, that's a case of "if we have her, we want to introduce her when she's more narratively relevant", which would be either s3 or s4 in this case, for Nynaeve and Elayne's storyline. We also still have Egwene's introduction to Gawyn being held in reserve for when he enters the story.

The Dragon Reborn:

Elements pulled from TDR into s2:

Perrin (and thus viewers) getting introduced to Aiel culture (though through Aviendha rather than Gaul, combining two separate elements of bk3 into one introduction).

Mat being trapped in the White Tower and then released back out into the world.

Our introduction to Moiraine's spy network.

I think that Elyas being more human-apathetic plus Ishamael telling Perrin that "the more wolf you are, the more you're mine" may have subbed in for Noam and his loss of connection to humanity, driving Perrin to be wary of the wolf-connection.

Moiraine threatening Lan with a forced bond-change because she's trying to push him away.

Rand being hounded in his dreams and being lured to a site of prophecy by one of the Forsaken in an attempt to rescue Egwene.

Rand's moment of killing people and them kneeling to him (in the books, he actually sets them up to kneel; I liked the show's approach much better)

We also witnessed Mat having an actual reason for his Old Tongue memories and his fighting prowess and the show also may tie his luck into him blowing the Horn, given that he said his battle-cry, so I feel like the "archetype" he has in the Heroes is the Gambler (which I think the 'finn call him?). I really loved that all of Mat's random stuff has kinda been consolidated (and the Horn scene might be my favorite scene of the whole series thus far).

Rand being recognized as the Car'a'carn by Aiel searchers.

Elements that were not used but will happen next season: Perrin meeting Faile. I also think it's likely that Perrin will start going into TAR next season (which could give us either Birgitte or Uno | Gaidal Cain in a re-occurring role). Elayne and Nynaeve becoming Black Ajah Hunters (I'm unsure if Egwene will or if she's going to go straight to her bk 4 plotline; I suspect that she's going with Rand), which is also their bk4 plot. I do think we'll get both Perrin (via Hopper) and Egwene (via the Wise Ones) learning TAR.

Things I'm not sure we'll get:

I'm doubtful that we'll get Egwene & Elayne's Accepted tests at all:

Egwene may come across as an even better patsy/figurehead to Salidar if she's a novice

2x7 really makes me feel doubtful that The Dragon Reborn's friends will be able to waltz into Tar Valon and then waltz back out again (unless they are returning specifically to spy out the mood in TV re: the Dragon and Moiraine?)

Egwene choosing over and over to abandon Rand in the Tests feels like it would directly contradict her character arc in s2, where her motivation for working so hard in the Tower was to give herself the strength to protect the ones she loves.

@sixth-light suggested the idea that Egwene might get her "what is to come" vision in Rhuidean and I like that idea a lot -- if she goes with Aviendha to the silver rings and catches glimpses of her potential futures!

I feel like Aludra might not get introduced until very soon before we need to take the Stone of Tear (or potentially not until after Ebou Dar, when she's needed to create the dragons).

I also suspect that we'll skip Thom's storyline from this book just like we skipped his storyline from bk2 and go straight into his post-Tear bk4 storyline, since Rand is going to be doing Aiel politics and not Westlands politics next season. So my current suspicion is that Thom is going to be part of Elayne & Nynaeve's storyline (and then once Elayne and Nynaeve come back into Rand's storyline, that could be when Thom helps Rand).

This is also the book when balefire first appears (Rand uses it on Darkhounds; Nynaeve uses it for the first (and only?) time; and Moiraine uses it twice). Not sure when the show will introduce it, because I feel like it's going to be The One Way to actually kill Forsaken, so it may be held back closer to when one of them dies. I suspect we'll see Lanfear get doorway'd in s3, but I don't think any of the Forsaken will get killed off until s4 (Rahvin, if he exists) at the earliest. If Rand kills Rahvin with balefire in s4, that gives the rest of the Forsaken a reason to back off and keep their distance (especially if Moridin shows up in s5 to take the reins back over on prioritizing corrupting Rand over killing him).

What might happen in s3 but might be reserved for s4: the convergence on Tear and the various roads people take there. I feel like Tear is likely to come after the Waste and maybe even after Cairhien (Tear may be where Sammael is instead of Illian, but then Rand fails to kill him there and he flees to Illian?).

Also, as I keep noting in my reread posts (which is where I'm getting this info from) Mat is much less anti-Rand than fandom agreement had led me to believe/remember was happening in the books at this time. He dislikes The Dragon Reborn (TM) but his thoughts about Rand as a person tend to be more regretful or frustrated than fearful. So the show is doing fine there, since they've dealt with the The Dragon Reborn (TM) issue by having the whole "who is the Dragon plotline?" in s1.

The Fires of Heaven-A Crown of Swords:

I think we already covered "oh no someone else may get Lan's bond" and he'll go directly from Moiraine to Nynaeve, because Alanna has a more important forced bond to take (probably in s4). I am wondering if we'll see Nynaeve bonding Lan much earlier than in canon, maybe even at the end of s3 if Moiraine goes through the doorway and Nynaeve ends up in the same city as Rand & co.

Crossroads of Twilight-Knife of Dreams:

Guess who just got murdered! So... no Renna and no Seta. And maybe no more Suroth. The show has been ruthless with the Seanchan (not a complaint). The show is also leaning much more heavily on the friendship of the Two Rivers Five (plus now Elayne), so Mat doing any of the bullshit that he does in CoT & KoD feels less likely because this Mat doesn't have the excuse of dagger-sickness to forget what happened to Egwene in Falme. After the show made such a (beautiful! spectacular!) show of Mat being a good person at heart, even being a Hero of the Horn, which he wasn't in the books... yeah, they are not doing the book version of Mat & Tuon (thank fucking goodness). They may do a version of Mat & Tuon, but I think it will be very different from the books, if it happens.

One of the new interesting changes that the show appears to have done (from what Egwene said in 2x8) is make sul'dam extremely weak channelers instead of being learners. I think this has some fascinating implications re: Tuon because it means that a collar would 100% work on her. In the books, the sul'dam get tested along with all the other women to see if they are damane and if any of them have sparked, they end up caught.

It's only over long years of use that they develop their 'affinity' with their damane and this is when the collar would work on them. So, per book canon, it's entirely possible that putting a collar on Tuon during any of the books would fail to do anything, because she's still quite young and also is not 'complete' as often as many other sul'dam because of her high status. But in show canon? That collar will work 100%, because they use the Searchers to find marath'damane instead of testing every woman in the Empire every year (until they turn 25, I think it was). If the show is working backwards to decide on these changes, then it's entirely possible that this change in the way finding marath'damane is done was 100% specifically for Tuon's potential storyline down the road.

Also, I love that it means that Tuon is a weak-ass channeler, because that was always my head-canon for her anyway.

The Shadow Rising:

Elements already pulled from TSR+ into s2: Rand knows that Selene is Lanfear and Lanfear is offering to protect him from the other Forsaken and wants to work with him. And Rand also knows that "the Dark One" is actually Ishamael and the rest of the Forsaken are now out in the world. We've also learned about ji'e'toh already. TSR is also when Moghedien was introduced.

What likely won't happen in s3: I think Tear itself will be held back until after the arc in the Waste. They've already done some of the related character-work from the start of bk4 in s2 already, with Lanfear and Rand, and most of the other stuff (the 'finn doorway) could be moved to Falme if need be. Or, since we have the all characters going east, maybe it'll be in Caemlyn when the characters split up to their various plotlines (which would give us Elaida's Foretelling for Rand and Egwene meeting Gawyn) and then they wouldn't have needed to have Falme as a location shoot for s3 at all.

I do suspect that the Rand & Elayne relationship is being pushed to a later season and we'll likely get the beginnings of Rand & Aviendha instead (which makes me suspect that Elayne's storylines would get adjusted in a later season to actually give her time with Rand).

What likely WILL happen in s3: the Tower coup and Elaida taking over as Amyrlin; Rand & co going to the Waste and Rand becoming Car'a'carn while Mat gets his medallion and Egwene gets Wise One training; Elayne and Nynaeve (and Thom?) going Black Ajah hunting (or specifically after Liandrin?). Potentially we will see Rand and Aviendha catch feelings for each other as Rand and Egwene fall apart (and Lanfear stalks Rand from the sidelines, since she's not supposed to be interacting with him). And Perrin defending the Two Rivers, of course.

I don't think that we'll get Tuon this early, though we may get the prophecy (and the dread from the audience that Mat is destined to marry one of these horrible slaver people, because the Court of the Nine Moons has already been mentioned).

In addition to being a big book for Rand & Lanfear developments, TSR is wonderful for Rand & Mat as well. There are so many amazing moments for them in this book. If the show hits even a handful of these beats, s3 will be great for the Cauthor side of fandom. Especially with how Josha and Dónal are playing Rand & Mat as very handsy friends who are comfortable with physical touch.

So, what are some potential ways they could go with s3?

(I promise that any and all speculation with be at least 85% inaccurate and may be as much as 100%; does contain some casting and location spoilers for what we know about s3 so far)

Starting place in 3x1:

Option One: Falme subbed for Tear

We do Tear-stuff in Falme (doorway; maybe bubbles of evil) and then the characters split up for separate journeys.

Pros: making the most out of our current location! the characters are already there!

Cons: Have to pay a location fee for an additional season when they could instead use a s3 location.

Option Two: Caemlyn subbed for Tear

We know that Caemlyn is going to be in s3 and they might want to get the most out of their new location.

Pros: Might get Elaida's Foretelling of Rand. Egwene meets Gawyn without needing to go to the White Tower. Mat could do his 1v2 quarterstaff battle against Elayne's brothers. Means that everyone has already traveled significantly to the east during the break between seasons but they're all still together as a group, meaning we won't need as big a timeskip after this. And Elaida's Foretelling could even be the trigger for Rand & co needing to flee the city.

Cons: can't think of any but I'm sure they exist; this genuinely seems like such a good option to me that I am 100% marking it down to potentially write as a fic, if I ever get the time (I continue to collect plot bunnies at an alarming rate in this fandom!)

Option Three: Hurrying through BK3's ending (aka Tear is Tear)

This seems more expensive than it's worth, but maybe they got more money for s3!

Pros: bk3 Tear will be done, I guess?

Cons: expensive set piece and location that is then promptly abandoned so that everyone can go somewhere else

So, we've done our set-up episode and now we've moving on to: everyone goes somewhere else!

Where do they go?

Stop, Wait... Option Four: There Isn't A Set-Up Episode

This is the option for not having any set-up at all and just jumping into everyone's individual journeys.

Pros: Faster to get into the main story

Cons: No bonding time for the group as a whole; fewer character interactions; would probably make me sad

Well, we've either done our set-up or we haven't, so where is everyone going?

Perrin -> The Two Rivers

I mean, we all know it. Perrin is kinda the reason that I think we won't start with everyone already at their destinations, because I don't think Perrin's storyline in the Two Rivers is meaty enough to be stretched out over eight entire episodes.

Wondergirls -> ???

A White Tower stop-over seems fairly unlikely to me after 2x7, though there's a chance. I think it's more likely that we'll get them splitting up to go into their bk4 plotlines.

(If the Wondergirls do go to the White Tower, what is Rand doing during this time? How does Egwene reunite with Rand for her bk4 plotline?)

Verin burned her bridges with Siuan & Leane, potentially (she COULD probably talk herself out of being viewed as Black Ajah... maybe... but it's hard to see how she could talk herself out of being viewed as breaking Tower law) which implies to me that SHE isn't going to return to the Tower, and she is the one who introduces Dreaming to Egwene in the books. Which makes me lean towards the idea of Doing Tear (and the White Tower plots) in Caemlyn.

They could take some of the characters back to Tar Valon in s3 but... but that bridge between Moiraine and Siuan is so scorched right now that it's difficult to see Siuan being willing to let any of them leave the White Tower if they go there again.

Mat -> Rhuidean

Mat didn't touch the dagger, so he has no need to go back to the White Tower literally ever, especially since one of his Hero friends put the Horn away into an interdimensional pocket for later.

Rafe has implied that we will see Mat's quarterstaff battle at some point (unless he just meant that we would see Mat wielding a quarterstaff against two opponents at once, which definitely happened in 2x8), which leads me further to think about s3 starting in Caemlyn, because after that, Gawyn and Galad go off into separate plotlines.

If we assume that Caemlyn takes the place of both Tear and the White Tower for book 3 & early book 4 events, then everyone would go to their book 4 plotlines from here -- Perrin would go west to the Two Rivers; Rand & co would go to the Waste; Elayne & Nynaeve would go to do some Liandrin-hunting. We would only need five main locations for the season, at least two of which are pre-existing -- Caemlyn, the Two Rivers, Tar Valon, the Aiel Waste/Rhuidean, and whichever city Elayne & Nynaeve go to in order to hunt Liandrin (and if it's Cairhien, then they already have the location/set).

Events that I'm Pretty Sure we'll get in s3:

Rhuidean. Rand's walk through Aiel history and Mat's encounter with the foxes. Rand saving Mat's life. <3

Asmodean becomes Rand's teacher.

I do think we'll likely get Couladin proclaiming himself as the Car'a'carn and the chaos of Alcair Dal, because Mat killing Couladin is really what creates the BotRH and cements him as the leader.

The White Tower coup.

Nynaeve faces off against Moghedien... or maybe this season she will still be focused on Liandrin?

The Battle of the Two Rivers.

I think we will start to get Rand & Aviendha in this season, but slow-burn. But if they plan to do the Moiraine & Lanfear show-off at the end of the season, then you'd want the Rand & Aviendha relationship to begin to flower. And then Lanfear is out of the picture (as far as Rand knows), which would let him worry less about her killing any woman that he's attracted to.

Things that we Might Get in s3 (depending on pacing):

We might get either Cairhien or Tear at the end of the season. That really depends on pacing and I don't know how fast they plan to move through the arc in the Waste. There are really only two big Events in the Waste in bk4 -- Rhuidean and Alcair Dal; though there's also visiting Cold Rocks Hold and the attack there.

Moiraine and Lanfear's encounter with the doorway. The reason that I'm thinking this might happen in s3 is because someone (was it Rafe?) teased about a "big cast change" at then end of s3 that book readers would be familiar with. Losing Moiraine right as he gets a Forsaken as a teacher would be very intriguing.

If we are going to do the polycule (*crosses fingers hard*), then there needs to be a decent stretch of time where Elayne is actually allowed by the plot to spend time with Rand. We got our meet-cute and it was beautiful, so I have high hopes. There is also a new tor.com interview where Rafe says that Elayne and Rand have a 'huge arc' together.

For now, I think the time period after her book 4 plotline and before she gets involved in Ebou Dar seems like the best time (as opposed to just wandering the countryside for weeks because Nynaeve can't remember the word 'Salidar'). So after Rand has returned to the wetlands. I am going to speculate that s3 ends with the Battle of Cairhien while, at the same time, Elayne and Nynaeve go to Cairhien for their own story reasons. Because they've already done their book 4 plotline, and maybe part of their book 5 plotline, there's no need for them to hurry off right away. And Elayne spends most of s4 with Rand (and Aviendha) (and Mat). Elayne can help Rand navigate politics in Cairhien, and they can fall in love while being big ol' workaholics. We also could have Dumai's Wells happen here so that Rand can get rescued not only by Perrin but also by Mat, Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve, & Aviendha. Which would just be nice.

I do think, based on the Power of Friendship vibe that we had in the s2 finale, that the show is going to be bringing our characters back together a lot more often than the books did (and I'm happy about that).

So, based on that idea... a tentative outline for s3 (I am not expecting this to end up being at all accurate, lol, just feeling some things out about a potential way things could go based on what we've see so far in terms of how quickly the plot moves and how the show seems like it's more willing to reunite all the characters, so I am going to try to get everyone to Cairhien by ep8 so that they can reunite again; we also might be doing Tear instead at the end of the season):

ep1: The opening of the season is supposed to start with a 'bang'. Would they do the Tower coup this early in the season? Siuan ended s2 in a terrible political position, having the Dragon in her possession and then losing him. And if anyone finds out that she was conspiring with Moiraine for twenty years... otoh, would they want to show us Elaida in Caemlyn first, before taking her to the Tower for that plotline?

I'm not sure how much of a time-jump we'll get, though probably a bit of one, but I'm hoping we'll get to see all the characters together in the same location, as happened in Tear in the books. This may take place either in Falme or in Caemlyn, but our characters will have a chance to regroup and mingle. We may get some of our action from the start of book 4 here -- the bubble of evil, getting rumors of trouble in the Two Rivers. If the opening episode is in Caemlyn and not Falme, it may also feature: Mat vs Gawyn & Galad; Egwene and Rand (at least) meeting Gawyn and Galad. Rand meeting Elaida and getting a version of the Foretelling. This might also have our characters meeting up with Verin and Alanna in Caemlyn, and we may get our Verin & Egwene scenes and a certain gift of a twisted stone ring.

perhaps spurred by Elaida's Foretelling, our group scatters to their future destinations. Since they are much closer to the Two Rivers than they were in the books at this time, it might be that Loial leads Rand's group through the Ways to Rhuidean, rather than leading Perrin to the Two Rivers. Egwene meets the Wise Ones in TAR and decides she also needs to go to Rhuidean with Rand.

ep2: Perrin arrives in the Two Rivers and we get a look into that situation; Elayne and Nynaeve get interrogated by a woman who is definitely not secretly Moghedien. Rand and Mat ask permission to go to Rhuidean. In order to make it so that all the characters are heading in to the same place, maybe Elayne and Nynaeve went to Cairhien to investigate Liandrin's disappearance? Since all the 'known' Seanchan were killed off in the Battle of Falme, the show may have the Seanchan take s3 (and s4?) off as they regroup before their next offensive.

ep3: They've put a pretty heavy-hitter in as ep3 in s2 and it seems likely they would try to do the same in s3 because of the way that Prime drops shows, so let's call ep3 the Rhuidean episode, where we learn about the Aiel's past and Mat finds a doorway. Moiraine goes through the silver rings, learning about what will happen to her in the future, and writes some letters (alt: Moiraine goes through the doorway in Rhuidean as well and learns it there?).

ep4: Rand & co travel towards Alcair Dal (skipping Cold Rocks Hold); If the White Tower Schism didn't happen in ep1, maybe it happens here. I'm going to tentatively put the Coup here. Rahvin arrives in Caemlyn, if he exists?

ep5: Alcair Dal & Rand trapping Asmodean as a teacher (with Lanfear's help). Couladin announces that he's the Car'a'carn and decides to march on Cairhien, and Rand already feels guilty about getting Lanfear to help him escape in 2x7 and her torching the city, so he's extra motivated to stop him.

ep6: Battle of the Two Rivers, so that Perrin will be able to start his cross-country road trip to meet back up with everyone else by the end of the season? Maybe including the 'trap' for Faile that happened in TDR and it makes Perrin realize that he has feelings for her, which he feels guilty about. Asmodean begins teaching Rand.

ep7: Nynaeve and Moghedien have a confrontation in Cairhien and Nynaeve manages to defeat Moghedien, causing her to flee (or maybe this is Nynaeve defeating Liandrin? We might want to keep Moggy scary for the moment). At the end of the episode, the Shaido Aiel have arrived to lay siege to the city.

ep8: Battle of Cairhien - Mat kills Couladin and forms the Band of the Red Hand; Lanfear finds out that Rand and Aviendha have... slept together? kissed? have feelings for each other? And Moiraine and Lanfear have their appointment at the docks when Lanfear loses it as she realizes that after all her work, Lews Therin/Rand is never going to love her the way that she wants him to.

Then, in the name of 'letting the characters spend more time together', Rand's friends maybe actually get to hang out with him in s4 before people split up again, giving us a situation where the whole group gets to reassemble to save Rand at Dumai's Wells? Hard to guess without knowing how much will get covered in s3. They've done a great job pulling in plot lines from various books so far.

s2 did an amazing job of having a handful of themes that they explored through multiple characters and storylines, so I expect that s3 will also have some themes that they will be using. Not sure what it might be yet though once we get our s3 trailer (in, like, a year or a year and a half, lol) we'll probably have a better idea, because Halsey's "Control" being used for the s2 trailer was INCREDIBLY accurate for some of s2's themes -- "who is in control?" and the idea of fear and control and trying to own someone's power were very much at play in s2.

So what character arcs might we see in s3?

I think we're going to see Moiraine & Lan firmly established as mentors to Rand throughout the season, doing their best to prepare him for the future. And then Rand is potentially going to lose both of them at the end of the season (since I think that the show might bring all the characters together at the end of the season again, we might even see Nynaeve "bonding Lan to save his life" at the end of s3).

In general, there's just... honestly gonna be so much Rand stuff that I will be absolutely overwhelmed (in a good way). TDR-TSR-TFoH are my favorite run of the books and there are just so parts of TSR that are SO good (and a lot of them are Rand).

Theory for Mat's arc in s3: I wonder if we're going to start with him choosing to take a bodyguard-type role for Rand (because of his guilt over the stabbening) and transition to taking a general/captain-role at the end of the season (which would involve more independence in the future when he needs to leave Rand's plotline) as the Maidens take over as Rand's bodyguards. TSR is such a good book for both Rand and Mat in general, so I'm really looking forward to what the show does because the show has invested so much in their relationship already.

I am so so curious about what dynamic will be established for Rand & Asmodean and how many of the other characters might know the truth about him. In the books, Moiraine reveals in her letter to Rand that she knew who he really was but agreed with Rand that perhaps there was no choice but to work with him, because she agrees that Rand needs the training.

I do think we'll see some vibes between Rand and Elayne in the first episode, but that they won't act on them. But Rand was clearly struck by Elayne tenderly healing him with the sunlight in her hair and I do think we'll get some follow-up on that moment in ep1.

We'll also be getting Rand and Egwene pulling away from each other as romance partners (but perhaps settling into being trusted friends?). And I agree with @markantonys that it makes the most sense to have Rand & Aviendha as Rand's first established romance post-Egwene, because of the way the plotlines are set-up (Aviendha is actually going to be around Rand all season) and because she comes from a culture that leaves space for adding additional partners, so you don't need to use the misunderstanding loophole for Elayne and then Min to be added to the relationship in the future.

Perrin is going to come face-to-face with his guilt and grief over his wife's death when he goes back to the Two Rivers. Especially when he begins to catch feelings for Faile. We'll also see him training in TAR with Hopper. We'll see the continuation of his struggle with Dain. I do wonder if Dain might die at the end of s3, for similar reasons to why Renna, Seta, & Suroth died at the end of s2, leaving room for Galad to become the main Young Whitecloak figure in the future. Because the Whitecloaks spend several books not really being relevant in the middle part of the series.

Given how Nynaeve struggled with her block this season and it's been a real obstacle for her, one that she can't handwave away by doing the Bruce Banner "I'm always angry" thing like she kinda does in the books, I think that her main struggle this upcoming season is going to be trying to break her block and that they might even have her succeed at the end of the season against Moghedien -- much like s2 featured Egwene, Mat, & Moiraine coming into their powers (or back into their powers for Moiraine), s3 may see Nynaeve, Rand, & Perrin doing that.

The fact that Siuan disagreed so strongly with Moiraine in 2x7 makes me feel that it's more likely that she will survive the coup, because now she has tons of space for a character growth arc once she's struggling with actually dealing with her own stubborn Two Rivers person in the form of Egwene.

This will be Elayne's first season as an established member of the group -- one of the reasons that I think we'll get a set-up episode at the start of the season is that it makes sense to establish what her place is within the group. And then if Thom is in her storyline, we'll be able to explore a lot of her feelings about being the Daughter-Heir and her relationship with her mother, even if Morgase isn't shown on-screen.

Given that we killed off* all the 'known' Seanchan, I wonder if that means that we'll be taking a break from them in seasons 3&4, and then have them return at the end of s5(?), after Mat, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Lan have all gone to Ebou Dar (maybe Egeanin's plotline is shifted to Ebou Dar and we see that being explored at the start of s5 before the bulk of the Seanchan attack at the end?).

(* well, Suroth might not be dead, since we didn't actually see her die and she might have gotten rescued from the water, so she might be existing in a quantum state -- dead if they can't get the actress back later on but alive if they can)

We had a LOT of plotlines in s2 -- five major plotlines (Rand, Mat, and Perrin each got their own, while Egwene & Nynaeve and Moiraine & Lan did some sharing) plus we had the villain plotlines.

I’m guessing that we’ll only have three main plotlines in s3, which will give them all a bit more breathing room — we’ll have Rand & co in the Waste; Perrin & co in the Two Rivers; and Nynaeve & co doing a version of Tanchico. I think that the White Tower coup is likely to be a plotline for one-three episodes rather than something that spans the entire season.

And now, just for fun, a WoT s2 speculation scorecard! How well did I do?

I'll go backwards in time, so starting with my most recent speculation (that I did based on the 2x8 trailer that aired post 2x7).

That shot of Rand asking "who are you?" would be to that lovely shot of Elayne with sunlight in her hair: Correct!

Lanfear and Ishamael will fall apart while the Two Rivers kids stick together: Correct!

Elayne and Nynaeve will have to separate due to only have one sul'dam outfit: Wrong!

Hopper is going to die; Perrin will kill Daddy Bornhald in retaliation: Correct!

I had, like, three different guesses for the Horn situation so I'm not giving myself any credit there, lol

Turok will die by channeling, not by sword: Correct!

Moiraine and Lan will free damane as their plotline for this episode: Wrong!

Speculation for 2x7 made after trailer that came out after 2x6:

I do a lot of vague spec, the first firm thing I say without as much waffling is that Rand will be put under 'house arrest' by Siuan: Correct!

Mat saw Rand get taken by Lan & co: Wrong!

Lanfear and/or Ishamael arranges the fire in Foregate to free Rand from his 'house arrest' by the Aes Sedai: Correct!

Egwene gets to socialize with other damane: Wrong!

Speculation for 2x6-2x8 based on imdb listings for the last three episodes:

again, I do a lot of waffling and 'maybe this, maybe that', my first solid spec is that Liandrin's son would die in 2x6: Correct!

I did think we would get the royal wedding, so I will mark that: Wrong!

Natti Cauthon would appear as part of Ishy messing with Mat: Correct!

I thought the White Tower would be a location in these last three episodes: Wrong!

Yacissa will get killed by the Black Ajah: Wrong! (very happy to be wrong; I LOVE her)

Lanfear will help Rand out as his presence creates a wedge between Lanfear and Ishmael: ...kinda? I mean, she was Team Rand the second she learned Rand existed, lol.

Rand will leave Cairhien via Waygate: Correct!

Maigan will be Pura: Wrong! (no one is Pura, at least not now, and Maigan is very dead)

Loial will get to visit Egwene in the 'kennels': Wrong!

Egwene won't be freed until 2x8: Correct!

The 2x8 cold open will focus on LTT & Ishamael: Correct!

Ishamael will experience a painful reversal of expectations in 2x8 as his plans fall to pieces: Correct!

I also speculated here that Perrin would kill Bornhald in this version but I already counted that one above.

Uno will reappear as one of the Heroes of the Horn: Correct!

Speculation for 2x4 based on the first three episodes:

Moiraine doesn't already know Rand is in Cairhien: Wrong!

Lan will show the Lanfear poem to Alanna & co: Wrong!

Liandrin will tell Nynaeve that Perrin & co were captured by the Seanchan: Correct!

Logain was deliberately placed in Cairhien to lure Rand there: Correct!

Before we got the episode titles but after the trailer came out:

Siuan's trip to Cairhien occurs in episode 6: Correct!

Rand will still be wandering around the countryside when he meets Selene: Wrong!

Moiraine and Lan will be researching at Verin's in 2x1: Correct!

Rand and Selene's main episode will be ep2: Wrong!

The shot of Lan on Mandarb in the woods will be in Nynaeve's Accepted Test: Correct!

Nynaeve's Accepted Test will happen in ep3: Correct!

Moiraine and Rand reunite in ep4: Correct! (wrong about how/why though)

Perrin meets the Seanchan in ep5: Wrong!

Perrin meets Aviendha in ep5: Correct!

Rand meets Logain in ep6: Wrong!

"We get the New Spring flashback scene, see Moiraine & Siuan happy and young, then hear Gitara's Foretelling": Close! (I guessed it for ep6)

Verin will be in Perrin's plotline: Wrong!

Liandrin will be confirmed as a darkfriend in ep6: Close! (it was ep5)

Egwene, Nynaeve, & Elayne will spend the first 5 episodes in the White Tower and the last 3 in Falme: Close! (it's more 4 in WT; 1 traveling; 3 Falme)

I did a huge post of How Does Mat Get To Falme, which ended up being hilariously incorrect as "Lanfear has him bonked over the head and then Travels him there" was not on my radar, lol. But my favored method included him reuniting with Rand in Cairhien, so I'm glad that part still happened.

Anyway, I didn't do so awful in my predictions, I think.

(In terms of 'accidental predictions', I did write a fic involving Rand being tied to a bed in Cairhien by his lover literally months before we had any clue it would be happening in the show, - and while I'm talking about randomly accidentally being a Prophet in my fics: in Voice, I had Lanfear (who we had not yet met in the show) giving solid relationship advice - "That's fear talking, not fact" & I had this line for Mat: "Maybe Mat was destined to be a failure and a disappointment, like his father. But he wouldn't just lie down and let it happen." which is essentially what it feels like we just got from him in 2x8.)

#wot s3 speculation #wot speculation #butterfly watches wot #wot #wheel of time #wot on prime #wot show spoilers #wot prime spoilers #wot s2 spoilers #wheel of time s2 spoilers #wot 2x8 spoilers #wot book spoilers #knife of dreams #wot speculation scorecard

[alyjojo]

October 👻 2023 PAC - Who Haunts You & Why?

Welcome to my fun & spooky October PAC, where it may turn out actually spooky 😈 At least, that was the initial intention. Most are likely to get very deep, these are likely difficult subjects and people to “haunt” us in the first place. Some situations will be darker than others, I will lightly touch on what I see and remain empathetic and in the flow without getting too deep or painfully descriptive. We want to heal it, not re-live it. You know you 🙏 The oracles I’m using for this reading are all for descriptive purposes to help shed light on a character profile or situation, not to be taken literally, unless they do for you. I’m also not putting any focus on signs, it can be any sign in this energy. These are meant to be general, for many different people so if it sounds like you, great. Some may have more than one, or not feel pulled to choose any, and that’s fine too.

Hopefully this helps anyone drawn to it! I love everyone on this blog, it’s grown so much in the past two years, thanks to you guys 🥳

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Pile 1 - Crow 🖤

Living or Passed?: Living

Character Oracle: The Founder

Who they are: King of Swords, 5 Swords & 8 Pentacles

Why: 9 Wands & King of Pentacles

Oracles: ENGAGEMENT RING 💍

- Higher Commitment

- Eternity

- Partnership & Union

- Completion

71 - Free Associate

Allow the first thing that comes into your mind without self-censorship to bestow a vision upon you.

70 - Insight

See beyond appearances, masks, cliches, and cultural stereotypes to gain insight.

Several stories are coming through at once with this King of Swords. This feels like an authority figure, and with The Founder, they are the ones that did something “first”. Or better, in their mind, or yours, and it creates a LOT of pressure on you to meet or exceed the standards of this other person. King of Swords is a very intelligent person, they don’t consider emotions in their decision making, only the logic and facts they have in front of them. They can be very black & white in how they view solutions, there’s a right way and a wrong way, and while they are friendly & focused on fairness, they can also be straight to the point and almost cutting with how they communicate with others. Just the facts, and they use that sword to cut off what doesn’t serve them or isn’t useful or necessary, information included, they can seem quite unemotional, even cold.

With The Founder, this is also someone very responsible and in charge of something. I’m getting a boss at work, a landlord, a parent, possibly a father in-law or someone in your person/spouse’s family, or this can be an ex-spouse/co-parent of yours or your person’s. They’re involved but also removed from your immediate situation or relationship, yet they still hover in your energy as a means of comparison or not living up to some standard set before. You or your person may split child custody with this ex, so their input is always involved, even if/when it’s not wanted.

You see them as 5 Swords, cruel, instigative, always out to prove a point or put someone down, or your methods perhaps. Queen & King of Pentacles are here, for those in relationships or where this is family or an ex, showing this is your person and you match up in energy. But you can’t shake this other person. They could be jealous of your relationship, how you do things, where you live, or they try to one-up you and show you that they can do it better than you can. They could purposely be difficult with custody to inconvenience you or your person where baby-sitting is concerned, they’re someone that tries to sabotage in order to prove a point, and a lot of this could be regarding money or value, comparing yours & mine. It’s all regarding feelings for this Queen of Pentacles, you or your person, whether romantic or family, whoever they are, this King shows their hurt by being an asshole. Is that okay, no, but that’s what I get from them.

For work/home situations, they’re just very difficult to deal with. They may sabotage you in these ways, not putting work into their property (that you live on) so that you’re forced to leave (or want to). Not giving you the right hours or pay, treating you like less deserving of something you’ve worked hard for. They could be condescending about your work, where you/your person works, and what you have or don’t have. Or them just being them brings out these sorts of inadequate feelings in you, and it’s your issue more than theirs. Comparing what kind of worker, lover, parent, or how intelligent you are. No matter who this is, they’re involved in a stable situation you can’t just pick up and leave. It’s possible this is someone that’s forced you out of a job, a home, a relationship even, and you’re on the outside looking in, having to trudge through the mud while this person sits on a throne…in your mind. They feel like they’re right, and this again could be a judge, some level of authority, and you’re left battling their decisions/actions either privately or because you’ve been forced to by their own bs. Or your perception of it, this can be someone that just triggers your own issues too…knowingly, for some, especially if a boss or some kind of father figure.

It could be your person that’s the problem too, if they’re the ones constantly comparing the two of you or bringing them up. “Well Swords did it that way, and Swords thinks xyz, etc.,” which makes it incredibly difficult for you to be your own person with your own methods, we should be discussing what Pentacles thinks and does ok fk Swords 💯 You could wonder if you’re even cut out for this, this person really weighs on your self esteem, they’re the 3rd energy in a situation/relationship for two.

There’s a small story here about a possible financial advisor that’s giving you hell as well. You may not have the money for something and they’re crushing your dreams with matter-of-fact speak regarding credit, savings, purchases, things you’ve found very difficult or are really trying to overcome. You could feel like they rub your face in shame, but I don’t get that they do, or don’t mean to. Or that’s their job? Something about them makes you feel crazy.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻:

7 Pentacles & Ace of Wands

Bottom of the deck shows to maintain your self control and your anger, give yourself the time and space you need to calm down, because sometimes the reality of the situation may not be how you’re seeing it in the moment. You could jump to conclusions or have a bit of a temper with this person, and I get a lot of it are your own insecurities. Your person needs to be on your side too, if that’s an issue, or at least play mediator, they’re really the one that has to deal with them, not you (for many of you). Let them handle it. I get hopeful energy, sometimes this will really piss you off, and other times it won’t seem so bad, try to assume nothing and allow yourself & this person the space they need to grow and change. Basically, just be respectful, and if they’re not, show them how it’s done ❤️ For many of you this is unavoidable, and it’s also like you’re loosely on the same team, better to cooperate. Some of you just need to save money, apply elsewhere, move possibly, and otherwise give things time to grow before acting on change. For many of you, boundaries could be necessary depending on what this person is doing to sabotage or affect an environment or relationship. They’re allowed to (and do, being Swords), and you’re allowed to as well 💯

Pile 2 - Potions 🧪

Living or Passed?: Both - Two Stories

Character Oracle: The Thief

Who they are: The Sun, 2 Swords rev, Knight of Swords & The World

Why: 9 Pentacles, Ace of Swords & 6 Swords

Oracles: POKER FACE ♦️

- Taking a Chance

- Risks & Options

- Not Showing Hand

- Gambling

33 - Perfectionism

Be content to know perfection as a distant utopian goal to which we journey but never arrive.

22 - Counsel

Seek out the counsel of those whose lives and creative work you most admire.

75 - Originality

Feel lighthearted and free while trusting that your unique way of doing things is the right way.

These PACs never fail to amaze me. This whole pile is Spirit giving you a round of applause for how you’ve already handled a situation, because it’s done, and you don’t have to worry about them anymore.

The first story is regarding an actual spirit/ghost/poltergeist or what have you. The troublesome & meddlesome kind too. I don’t get “dark”, just tricky, problematic. Only take it if you know you’ve dealt with one, this is simply confirmation & validation for your experience. I’m specifically getting a spirit that liked to take things, or move them, maybe break them. It’s possible they were a child, doesn’t have to be, they liked to mess with you. Always when you were alone, that’s here under “why” they chose you, you were the one in a light 💡 energy, you were alone, and they liked you. Something about you drew them in, where with others they were pretty avoidant or even shy. I get you probably having done some research, and telling this spirit where to go. It’s possible you called in someone who does this for a living, a medium, priest, something like that. Or you did it yourself, and again, they liked you. Whatever you did, it worked, they’ve moved on to the light 💡and won’t bother you again 💚

The second story is for someone alive, a trickster, possibly a gambler or someone that likes to take risks and/or possibly use others for their gain in some way. You are already aware of this person and all of the bs that comes with them, you’ve already told them where to go and have ended the connection. For some, it’s possible this is a parent, or a child, maybe someone you knew as a child. You could have gone to counseling regarding things this person has done, or how they’ve affected you. You have moved on, and have done the right thing. I do sense possible hurt here for a lot of you, in the way you saw the world and how it was/should be - before and after this person. They’ve changed your perspective in many ways, probably negative ways. How a parent “should” be. Or trying to guide a child/friend/etc. that won’t listen and heads down the wrong paths. This person is only out for themselves, and you’ve had to remove yourself from this, which was probably very difficult for you. There is an energy here of forgiveness, them, their actions, yourself, needing to for your own sake. Gain your clarity & allow yourself to move on from this, I see nothing but happiness for you now & moving forward ☀️

3333 is here with Perfectionism, The Sun and The World, showing a shady character is not comfortable in the light - which is you, and they had to leave that behind. You make this person feel uncomfortable, and their darkness stares them in the face around you. This is not your problem, they’re fighting their own demons, or they prefer their own demons.

222 is here with making the decision to seek Counsel, could be counseling, rehab, you may have had to cut someone off until they get help, or need to now. Either way there is someone important that could be or needs to be involved with this, but it’s not your place to.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻: You’ve got this, for many, it’s already handled 💯

For those of you who have not yet handled this, removing yourself is the best thing for you, and you need to only worry about you. Same as this person only worries about them. You may have some ideal they should’ve lived up to, and they should have, *they* probably know that too, but that’s not who they are. If this person left one day and never came back, or you did, I’m getting it’s for your highest good. Are they bad, no. But they’re not good for you, that’s what’s important for you to know, and then Originality points out how wonderful you really are. If this situation runs deeper than even I see, Counsel is here for a reason, it could be good to talk to someone with an outside perspective to help you work through some of these possible traumas. Not that anything is wrong with you, you just owe it to yourself to honor your own experiences and sort through your feelings with someone that is an expert at these things. Some of you have already done this and Spirit is applauding everything you’ve done to deal with this, you’ve done an amazing job 👏

Pile 3 - Window 🪟

Living or Passed?: Living

Character Oracle: The Pathless

Who they are: 8 Pentacles, Queen of Cups, Knight of Wands, 4 Swords rev

Why: The Sun, Ace of Wands, The Magician, 3 Swords

Oracles: KARMIC RELATIONSHIP 🪢

- Resentments & Triggers

- Perception

- Intensity & Letting Go

- Turmoil & Fleeting

4 - Recycle

Learn from the past and apply it to creating your vision of the future.

51 - Time

Time can be seen to be both linear and a spiral - circle back to explore concepts form the past and create the future.

444 on the clock as I begin this reading, two 4’s in your reading as well, this message is about learning from the past in order to create stable relationships in the present, healing yourself from old hurts. Both oracles show past energy, I’m getting you’ve either moved on from this person or they’ve left and you’re needing to. They don’t have great energy 😕

I’ve gotten a few messages showing feminine energy specifically, doesn’t have to be romantic to be karmic, but for some of you this is definitely romantic. It can be any kind of connection, but tough lessons were learned from this person. You loved them. Some of you still do, and always will. I’m getting it’s been very difficult to move on from them, for those that already have. This is the kind of person with no direction, no goals, no real definition of anything in their life. There could be a noticeable age difference between you, or they’re the kind of person who IS an adult, but will always have a rebellious & spontaneous teenage sort of energy. They’re exciting, they make you feel good, happy, ready to take on the world. And then they let you down, disappear, date other people, cheat, hop from situation to situation, person to person, in the hopes that the next one will give them the sense of direction they’re looking for. This one will have purpose. This one is the right one.

But it’s never the one, and they come and go in and out of your life, and probably countless others as well. I get that you’re angry with this person, you want to hold them accountable, and they’re a dodger in nature. They dodge accountability, responsibility, maturity, rules, this person has an answer for everything and none of those answers actually make sense. Yet it works for them, and they know how to craft a reality around them to suit them, for the time being. Until they change again. This could be someone promiscuous in anything, partners, hopping from job to job, moving from place to place, and there’s always some drama attached to them, something they’re running from. They may have simply left you.

I’m also getting you could have done this to them or other people, because of the heavy past energy, and there’s one person in particular that you regret hurting, and they’re haunting you for that reason if that’s the case. Someone was very sexual, spontaneous, rushed into things and created painful situations, that’s the focus. But I’m getting it’s more than that too, that was just one representation of a much deeper issue where this person was/is concerned, and it’s the lack of direction, boundaries, and dreams that causes this sort of personality to dominate their energy. They siphon off of other people’s energy, other people’s goals & dreams, being appealing, sweet, kind & loving and using it to their advantage. They are all of those things, that’s why it works for them. They’re also non-committal and a restless sort of person, I’m getting they’re “too far gone” with this sort of energy, nothing can change them but God, karma, themselves, the consequences of their actions, time, etc. Not you. If it was you, no one could have changed this, not even you at the time.

For a small part of you, this could be a person that literally changed a job of yours, you could’ve lost a job or they did, you could’ve moved or traveled in regards to work or they did. Work is part of the loss, along with them. Or money. For most of you this just shows something you’ve struggled with for a long time, actually letting go of this person/situation. Or they have.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻:

Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man & The Hierophant

All major arcanas, all very intense energy, this is a whole life lesson for this person. Karma, and this is a karmic, you’re the lesson that showed them what they’re doing and have done to people they care about. What losing people costs them. What acting on passion or spontaneity (or anger) does to relationships. This message shows the only thing that will teach them is time, time brings perspective on commitment, marriage, religion for some, karma for sure. They will “get theirs”. I also get your own perspective changing with time too, karmic relationships have two sides, two lessons, both of you were meant to meet and experience each other for a purpose. For those that have not already moved away from this, even just emotionally, now is the time to learn it, feel it, and let it go. It’s out of your hands 🙏

Pile 4 - Bouquet 💐

Living or Passed?: Living

Character Oracle: The Shepherd

Who they are: The Fool, 5 Swords, 6 Wands, The Hermit & 10 Swords

Why: 5 Wands, 9 Swords rev & Ace of Swords

Oracles: ASCENDING 🎈

- Learning & Expansion

- Transcending

- Preparing for Union

- New Phase

78 - Recharge

When the pace of life becomes too hectic, know to slow down, be mindful, and go with the flow.

5 - Pitch

Be as clear, concise, and professional as you can be when you explain your ideas to potential associates.

45 - Collaboration

Creative people can be inspired by sharing and stimulating creativity in others.

I’m not pulling out signs here but the fire 🔥 is intense with this pile. There is a lot of conflict with what looks like a pair, a couple, probably parents or grandparents being the most obvious story here. If they aren’t fire signs, then they’re fiery in nature, could have hot tempers and are used to getting their way. If anything, I’m getting you could be too much alike 💯 How this ended initially was a nasty conflict and big-headed egos, you/they are right and the other person is wrong, stick it to them, sort of energy. This had to do with you doing what you want, not what they want. Periodttt. You were glad to leave this, glad to be alone, glad to do wtf you want to do.

I’m getting it worked for you too! Maybe not entirely, but for the most part you’ve succeeded and ascended spiritually, you just keep on rising higher. This could all be switched as well, and you’re watching another person/people rise in their lives, without you. Some of you chased after a goal that crashed and burned terribly, and are now considering a “walk of shame” back to parents or something. You could need them. I do get this being family for the most part, could be a friend/s as well. It doesn’t have to be a couple, that’s just here for where it does apply, 3 Pentacles too. Two people, and you, probably parents. In like…one case, it could be romantic, and you’re haunted over whether someone cheated on you or not, and I get no. The Wands are naturally very flirty, is that okay idk depends on you, but it shows the Death of this occurring before they met the other person. It also answers the question of a reconnect, they’re with someone else now. If there was a known issue in a romantic connection, it’s like something got flirty, someone got pissed off (you?), and it ended immediately after that. No Moon energy, no secrets, no hidden anything beyond that.

You’re conflicted inside on whether or not you could heal this connection, and work together again. Be friends again. Be close again. Come to holiday dinners again. I’m getting you don’t talk much if at all. More specifically, there’s something they have that you want, could be regarding a career or some kind of teamwork collaboration, but I don’t get you literally working together. You need someone’s help, or they could need yours, but you feel like this bridge has been burned, and are afraid of Ace of Swords, clear cut truth & communication, being cut off, or rejected. Or having to again. Except for the ex moving on story, if so it’s not hidden, I don’t see any reason why this can’t be healed, except things like pride…shame…guilt, big egos are at play in all of you. It’s like it runs in the family or something 😜 I’m also getting this feeling that you haven’t done anything this person hasn’t done as well, there is some kind of equal ground or understanding between you. The Shepherd protects its “family” and I get that what this is, is a family, people that look out for you, did, want to, or could, and it’s up to you where/how this goes if it goes.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻:

Queen & King of Wands, 3 Pentacles

Just ask. Be clear, honest, Ace of Swords, no tricks or avoidance, games or bs just be truthful about what’s happened, how you are, what you want, etc., and give this person/people the benefit of the doubt. It feels really positive to try mending these fences, like all of you can rise to another level of understanding with each other and feel good about it.

Pile 5 - Hades ☠️

Living or Passed?: Both - 2 Stories

Character Oracle: The Spymaster

Who they are: 10 Pentacles, 6 Swords, The Tower, 4 Pentacles, Queen of Pentacles, 8 Swords

Why: 6 Wands, 9 Cups, Temperance

Oracles: THE DRAGONFLY 🪽

- Light-hearted & Adapt

- Finding Out & Change

- Things Coming to Light & Heal

72 - Nature

Go out in Nature as much as you can, for it’s pure creativity can teach you everything you need to know.

39 - Direction

Switch gears, reboot, and try a new and different direction.

66 - New Start

Sometimes we must realize that what we have done needs to be discarded and we must make a new start.

We’ll start with the living energy first, there are slight variations that separate them into two stories, one being your own actions, the other being someone else’s. Either you stalk them, or they stalk you, this is someone that watches you closely with everything you do. To the point of obsession even. Or you do. There is heavy earth energy here, you/they could reflect that, or the issues here have a lot to do with money, success, and material things. A business. An inheritance. Your career. Or just greed in the sense of no one giving a damn. No one helping you out, financially or otherwise, there is no team effort from a whole group of people. For many, this is your family that you feel victimized by. For others this could be someone that ran out on you (maybe a whole family) and left you to fend for yourself, carrying the bag and everything else on your own shoulders, with no help. Possibly being a single parent, unexpectedly, having the rug pulled out from under your feet and you had no choice but to be strong enough to hold it together, for a group, a business perhaps (or kids). Or you could have done this to them.

This person, or you, the wrong one, is trying to make a comeback into this situation, or wants to, because they see how well things are going for you. It could be you too, there’s a message about playing the victim and trying to gain sympathy, for money, expecting that from others…not helping yourself, just blaming everyone else for your problems. Or that’s them. It’s not the main story, but it’s here as a side note, 8 Swords is either trapped unwillingly, or keeps themselves trapped on purpose, both are possible. There are cases where you or this person were actually put into very difficult & painful situations and just left there with no care or help from anyone around you. Those that left, or you had to leave, haunt you, mostly due to deeply rooted negative perceptions and grudges you still carry, or you know they do.

If they are trying to come back around, it’s because you’re successful now, your dreams have come true, you’ve risen above The Tower and pulled yourself through the mud and the darkness to get where you are today. You could be doing quite well for yourself. And these people just expect a seat at your table? Or you expect a seat at theirs? I don’t think so. The skepticism is healthy, and the distrust makes sense, no matter which side it’s coming from. What are people’s real intentions?

There is a small side story about maybe a coworker or a family member that was in the same business as you, same kind of job, and it’s like they left this behind and succeeded elsewhere, and you didn’t. Or you left, they stayed and took it very far, dreams come true, hard work rewarded, and you’re like damn…that could’ve been me.

There is also a passed loved one story, likely a family member, that watches over you all of the time. They even come up as Temperance, which is always shown as an Angel 😇, they could be a Spirit guide of yours or are just part of your spiritual team, they’re always with you. The Tower may show how they passed on, something quick, unexpected, and very upsetting. Someone you wanted to hold onto, or they wanted to hold on to you. Or maybe your parent, if a grandparent. There could’ve been an inheritance issue with this person, they could have been seen as greedy, or may have been left to their own devices. The outcast of the family, the single parent, possibly an earth sign, they did everything on their own, because they had no choice. Or when they passed on, they left you in that state, and it was out of their control 🙏

For the passed on story, I’m getting a clear message about animals, could be dragonflies, crows & birds, I have those both here. Nature is generally showing anything you see outside that acts peculiar towards you, strangely friendly and such. They send those critters to you, and many say that Spirits often like to use animals as a sign they’re with you. There’s also a note here about whatever you’re doing, needing to switch tracks and do something else, or if you already have, you’re being applauded for that. Some of you started from near nothing and have gone far, they’re cheering for you 👏 Some are encouraging you to do this, if it’s something you’re dealing with now. It’s really a feeling of validation and pride, they’re proud of you for how far you’ve come, and making a dream of yours come true. I’m getting them being with you every step of the way, for all of your life going forward too.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻: For the living

Ace of Pentacles & The Hanged Man

In simplest terms, you may need to take this opportunity to look at things from another perspective, especially in terms of money and the motives of other people, yourself included. Is everyone judging everyone based on some bs sense of worth - via money & material things or are others out to take what’s yours, or vice versa? Is there even money to spread around like that, or like is expected, because I get a sense that there isn’t. In all stories there is a confusion in how you’re seeing money and how that’s a value to you or other people, it’s something you need to see differently than you do currently. What even is value, to you? People that “flex” what they have could really bother you, but it’s like IS it what they’re spending on? Or is it the family around them? Or in some cases the family they left behind, staring at them through the window of the internet & life like wtf…any side could be you, there is no *one* energy strongest in this pile.

Pile 6 - The Babadook 🎩

Living or Passed?: Could be either

Character Oracle: The Brawler

Who they are: 10 Swords, The Empress, 8 Swords, The Hierophant & 10 Cups

Why: The Emperor & 9 Wands

Oracles: ASCENDING 🎈

- Learning & Expansion

- Transcending

- Preparing for Union

- New Phase

50 - Sacred Space

Use beautiful art, music, and creativity if all kinds to put you into a sacred space.

57 - Worry

Worry is attachment to a particular outcome and the fear that it will not come to pass.

This is the most clear reading by far I’ve gotten, the most obvious answer is a parent, or a dynamic between parents. Particularly a mother. For some, your mother may have passed on and your father is a mess over it, it’s like you lost both people the same day, in many ways. Your relationship with one parent isn’t the same after the other one passes on, which is especially difficult for you as children if that’s the case. Sending you lots of love. That won’t be for everyone.

A father figure could be particularly aggressive with this Brawler card here, this is someone that is always fighting, a “tough guy” mentality, like they dare you to go against them. Doesn’t have to be a father either, it could be the mother too. Or a spouse, an ex-spouse, an ex in general, someone destructive, mouthy, you have to walk on eggshells around them. I get a clear narcissist energy from the Brawler card - lacking empathy, and for any of you that have dealt with that traumatic psychological mindfuck, I see you, you’re included. Parent or not, these don’t have to be parents, they’re just here. Marriage & spouses are clearly highlighted too. This could be your situation, your parents, or even a friend that’s married to an asshole and you can’t get them out of your head, it haunts you, because you’re powerless, and they are too it looks like.

Some of you may have literally lost people to a tragedy of some sort involving domestic violence or something very painful like that, maybe blaming the other person involved for what’s happened. In the worst case I can see, one parent may have hurt you, and the other just stood by quietly, or didn’t believe you, they didn’t do shit about it when they should have. It could be switched in any of these cases but I’m not getting that specifically, I’m talking to a hurt person, not the problem. Someone may have hurt you like this, could be close to you, could be a complete stranger. Cases of violence and harm on any level are included. It also doesn’t have to be that serious. This can include step-parents that maybe pulled your own away from you, or that’s how you feel. It can be a co-dependent relationship of some kind, and feeling powerless to do anything about difficult situations in this dynamic of chains - that’s what I’m getting from this whole pile. Someone is in chains, could be you, could be someone else, but it stays with you at all times.

Some of you have freed yourself from a bad situation, but someone else is still there, could be kids, parents, whoever, and you constantly worry about them. You could’ve been left by one parent and the other one is a mess, and you can’t get out of this because they’re emotionally dependent on you. You could’ve been forced to grow up very young because those around you weren’t equipped to deal with reality, like you were the adult here, and you were idk 8 years old. If anyone harmed you as a child, especially in any way regarding violence, or any level of abuse, this is describing them.

You want to grow from this, escape this, want to be better and set better examples for those around you. You could have children of your own, and are haunted by shitty parents, wanting to be better for your own kids, make better decisions that others never did for you or gave to you. You want people around you to guide you and show you the way, or you want to be this person yourself, maybe both. The family you never had, or maybe did have at one time, and something terrible happened to change all of that. It’s like the memories of happiness and a happily ever after are what haunt you. If a spouse, you’re tempted to make it work, even if this is someone you’re cautious about or around. Or you were, and you tried. If a spouse it’s like this person never stops trying and “haunting” can be more like “stalking” because they will literally never leave you alone 💯 My heart goes out to all of you.

The tamest story I’m seeing is a person that wants to follow their dreams, maybe go to school for a specific thing or do things in a way they feel is right, and in order to do this they would have to fight. Or have already fought someone, that they miss and want to reconcile with, but aren’t sure that they can. In this story, you’re happy, it’s others with the problem. No matter what your story is, or who is involved, boundaries seems to have been the lesson here, keeping people behind a wall out of caution of what they will or could do to you, and I don’t get that’s wrong, that’s learned. It’s a trauma response.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻:

Temperance, 2 Swords & Queen of Cups

For those thinking of making amends, that’s here as a possibility. You could. Don’t have to. I’m getting more than anything that worrying about what will or won’t happen is not useful for you, like you have no control over this. For some that’s the whole problem. I don’t get any one answer because there isn’t one story, no right or wrong way to do or handle any of this. Your advice is to take care of yourself, your heart, your space, give all of the love to you that you would another person. And be very patient with yourself, how you process things, because I get a lot of fear and indecision that’s not helpful to you. It’s really just “take as long as you need”, some of you are dealing with or have dealt with some serious trauma, and you can’t be expected to heal, overcome, “deal with it” or any other mindless bs advice in one day, week, year, five years, doesn’t matter because everyone is different. You focus on you 💯 Love you 💯 Worry about you ❤️ If you want to reconcile with people or not, I don’t get any answer you coming up with being right or wrong, it’s about doing what you feel is best. Ascending 🎈 If this is a person that has passed on, it’s a similar message, with “I love you” attached - Queen of Cups.

Pile 7 - Sinkhole 🕳️

Living or Passed?: Both - 3 Stories

Character Oracle: The Sentinel

Who they are: 5 Cups, Page of Swords, Page of Pentacles, Temperance & The Devil

Why: Queen of Cups, Ace of Cups, 4 Cups & 4 Pentacles

Oracles: DEATH ☠️

- The Relationship is Over

- No Second Chances

- Grow & Transform

- What’s Dead is Dead

36 - Generosity

You can afford to be generous with the gift of your time and attention.

3 - Share

To help you make progress, it’s a good idea to share what you have and what you care about.

Story 1 is about a literal entity, and you’ll know if this is you, because you already expected it, you’re aware of the things going on around you, they make themselves known. Are chatty even, you could have heard actual talking, have seen messages or are receiving them regularly. I almost get an “attachment”, like they are attached TO you. Stuck to you, holding on, it’s possible they’ve even followed you from another place. Are they still with you, yes. I keep getting “they”, and I see two Pages here, there are two of them. It’s possible they’re children, or just young, and it’s likely they’re together. Siblings, friends, I’m not sure but they come together with you as a pair. I don’t get a negative vibe from them, I get a very sad one. Why they latch onto you, because you’re a loving person, almost like a mother or a parent they don’t have and want. You could have living children around and they want to be one of them, they don’t want to “go away”. I get that they don’t know what “away” means, or how to get there, or what comes after, they’d rather be with you. For others with an entity, same energy but not a child, just chatty, noisy, they make it known.

Story 2 are for those who have lost children, or even friends & family while young yourself, people you’ve lost in childhood, or over the years, even if they’re still alive right now. You grieve what’s been lost, and the sadness weighs on your heart like a weight that never leaves. I’m getting you are a very deep, loving, and nurturing sort of person, this could also be their energy for some of you. It stays with you because of how much you loved them, and wanted them to stay, so you hold on tightly to your memories and what you still have of them…but those memories are being tainted with the amount of grief they bring you at the same time. It’s like you feel guilty if you’re too happy. There is no winning in this situation, and I’m sending you so, so much love.

Story 3 is for romantic heartbreak, having been betrayed by some ex lover. It could be the lover themselves or someone they moved on with, things they’ve said and done to you. There’s a lack of closure with this, and it keeps you sad, you want to know why things happened the way they did, what they were planning, how this even happened, how you missed something. It’s caused a lack of trust in you that’s still not been overcome, it’s like it didn’t have to be this way. Essentially, your heart is wanting to ask a snake 🐍 why it bit you. You loved this person deeply, genuinely, and were very kind & loving to them. It’s possible they were this way to you and played you for a fool, you feel that way. Your pride is wounded, and they hurt you very deeply by treating you as someone that could just be replaced, when you gave them nothing but unconditional, pure love. You hang onto this and them tightly, forever holding a grudge, forever upset that this ever happened.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻:

For the actual spirits, I’m getting that you’re going to have to be a little manipulative in how you handle this. Talk up “the light” and why they should go towards it. Their family is there, friends are there, it’s a beautiful place with the most amazing scenery and everything they could ever want, this place is no good. Someone can actually hug them and talk to them over there. Essentially selling them what they want, is the best tactic to getting them off of you, at least the ones I’m picking up on.

For the other stories where your own heart is centered on grief, heavy sadness, remorse, regrets, heartbreak, the advice is to “see the light” yourself. Your family, your friends, what you have right now, and how far you’ve come. Be proud of yourself. You could be needing to see people more, or spend time with loved ones and friends more. You can honor sadness and still make time for happiness, gratitude, deep connections with other people, seeing how things maybe worked out for the best - in some cases, not all 💯 I’m getting group energy, if grief is your main focus and you’ve lost someone, this can be a community drive or a cancer 5k run or something to honor your lost ones in a way you actually can. Planting a tree, donating something nice to a park, adopting a road, there are many different avenues to remember people, and they’ll see that, they’ll know. There’s no need to feel guilty or conflicted for feeling happy today, your loved ones on the other side want you to be, and they are too. They miss you too, and they’ll see you soon…to them, it’s soon. In the meantime, they’re always with you, always, and they like to be honored in special ways, thought of and celebrated like they’re still here, because they are, just in another way. For those who have lost loved ones, I’m getting they too are chatty, they send you messages and signs often, and if you think you’re just crazy, you’re not. Talk to them, ask for signs & they’ll show you however they can. You could also try contacting a medium of some kind to actually talk with them, if that’s something you’d like to try, again I get “chatty”, like they’d love to show up for you.

For some of you, the advice is simply, if you miss them then tell them, call them, where that’s possible. For the ex story I’m getting you’ve already come a long way, or you will eventually get to a point where things are so good you wouldn’t change them, and if you’re not there yet just keep moving forward ❤️

Pile 8 - Siren 🧜‍♀️

Living or Passed?: Probably still alive

Character Oracle: The Puppeteer & The Aspirant

Who they are: Wheel of Fortune, 4 Pentacles, The Devil, 6 Swords, The Hanged Man

Why: 6 Pentacles, 2 Wands, Queen of Cups

Oracles: THE RUNNER 🏃‍♂️

- Fear of Intimacy

- Running Away

- Intensity & Letting Go

- Turmoil & Fleeting

54 - Visualize

When we develop our abilities to visualize, we can manifest maximum influence on our experience of reality.

43 - Change

For a change, do something you usually do a certain way in a different way.

80 - Go Deeper

Expressing the deeper meanings in life, while staying attuned to childlike wonder, is at the heart of all great art.

This is probably going to be the most popular pile, because I’ve pulled two character cards and the energy is very vague and general, meaning many people will resonate with it. This is the “loved and lost” pile, Twin Flame, karmic relationships, doesn’t have to be but they’re all included. It can be a parent that ran off, a friend, cousin, someone you looked up to. They can be anyone. And it is not only those who have been left, but those who run.

Most of these people are still alive, not all perhaps, but I’m getting there are no spirits haunting anyone here, even if that’s the case. It’s memories & love that haunt you. The character cards show the two sides of a Twin Flame, that’s the easiest way to describe this dynamic and split the stories - even if that’s not exactly your story, the feelings are the same.

Story 1 - The Left Behind

It’s a spiritual connection, karmic in nature, so the pull between you is intense. It’s like they know you, they read you, they can understand what you’re thinking and feeling before even you do. They may have manipulated you, tricked you, you could have felt bamboozled and lost when this person just left, because it felt so REAL. It was intense, and everything inside of you *knows* this person was meant to be your person, or in your life, there’s a thread connecting you…but they ran off. How can a person just DO that? You can’t just leave, and you haven’t. Some of you have been tied to this person for a long time, holding on a little longer, forever waiting for them to grow up, see sense, see the light, realize you’re worth it.

Why, because this person gave you a sense of meaning that runs deeper than most other people in your life. All spiritual ties feel this intense, you just know, and you don’t know how you know but you do. You could still see synchronicities that remind you of them - even when you don’t want to, you try to force them out of your head, and then you dream about them and it starts all over again. You’re never going to be able to actually let this person go, but you do need to change your side of things, so that this doesn’t remain so strong. It’s Devil energy currently, keeping you trapped, you feel like you can’t escape it. Some of you could feel used, and discarded, and similar to the last pile, want to ask a snake 🐍 why it bit you. The answer won’t make you feel better, and for many of you, it’s why they never returned. And if you love them anyway, they can’t respect you for that, because a snake knows it’s a snake, and they’d likely do it again 💯 But you may not know how to continue on without them, and that’s the whole lesson of this very deep soul connection. They’ve changed your whole life, now you have to, on your own.

Story 2 - The Runner

The Aspirant is your character card, it’s the eager to run, eager to rush into new experiences, try on different faces in different places with different people, and make mistakes, but being afraid to face them once that’s happened. You’ve probably had a life full of all sorts of experiences and connections, many stories to tell anyone who’d like to listen, and many of them which didn’t run that deep, most things probably don’t with you. Life is life and it’s for living. Deep is something that feels like entrapment, it’s good in the moment but who you are is not built for what’s required of taking something “deep” all the way. It’s not comfortable, not FUN, it’s not for you. There is too much out there to see, do, be, and explore. Too many potential lovers to meet, too many different jobs to try your hand at, you’re not the person to want to stay put…forever. That’s daunting. There could be many reasons why, you all probably have all sorts of personal philosophies and beliefs on why “staying put” is not for you, and they’re not wrong, that’s you. Wheel of Fortune, you’re meant to be this way, because you’re meant to learn whatever it is you’re learning through all of this, it’s brought as much joy as it has any sorrow.

There is one particular person though, that sticks with you no matter where you go, you can’t outrun them, the feelings, the guilt, the longing in some cases. Maybe even the obsession, either you or them. You keep running and they constantly follow you, in dreams, even if you haven’t spoken in years. Time works funny in a karmic/Twin relationship. Time works funny on the other side, like it doesn’t really exist, and neither does it in these intense connections. It does and it doesn’t. They’re put here to make you feel the way you feel, because face it, no one else could. There’s something about *them* that was real, genuine, the depth of this connection came to you naturally, and it moved quickly. If it was intimate, it felt like your soul was on fire. It scared you. If it was family, you felt like you *were* this person, the connection was like two same people, they understood and loved you like no one else could. You probably didn’t know that then.

Your people are probably still alive, not all, but you can’t go back. If they’ve passed on, that’s probably what triggered a spiritual awakening of sorts, because runners don’t usually watch tarot readings or believe in…much. The 3D, what’s in front of them, LIFE IS FOR LIVING, you pave your own way etc etc, not analyzing karmic lessons, that’s boring 🤪 with beliefs & nonsense right, what a headache and it’s depressing af, too much, that’s likely not your cup of tea. Or it was at one time, and you’re not alone. I’ve met way more people like this than the other way 💯

Why you’re haunted, because of love. Same as the first story, there was a purpose with some person, a direction you never felt you really had, they gave you meaning, definition, you felt like you knew who you were when you were with them. Or who you wanted to be. Some of this may have been hopeful projection, not who *you* really are, because you ended up leaving this behind. Or was it? You always question what if. Something made you leave, and The Wheel of Fortune shows things being destined, karmic, outside of your control (or theirs). Could’ve been another person, an opportunity, a job, moving away while young, a death in some cases. Life was life-ing, some of you chose to walk and others had no choice. It was your path to do whatever you did, for whatever reason you did it, especially in this connection. Many things are free will, and some things are soul-level lessons, orchestrated by things outside of us, and those feel the most intense, they’re the soul connections. Like this one, whoever they are. Is it your fault? Depends on your own story. Some yes, some no, and some “you couldn’t have known”. Shocking you was the point, they were the jolt.

Advice to deal with this ghost 👻:

9 Pentacles, 4 Swords, 5 Pentacles & Ace of Wands

I don’t get a reconcile energy from either of you, 9 Pentacles is happily independent, with or without a person, and that’s what you’re needing to achieve within yourself. Healing from whatever has happened. Healing any abandonment issues that came with it. Releasing it entirely, because for many of you, control is not a factor - you have none. It either is or it isn’t, and it’s not up to you with whoever this is. Whether or not it’s Twin Flame doesn’t seem to matter, because it’s the same advice.

Assume they’re not coming back. Ever. You have to worry about yourself, live for yourself, do what you want to do and express your soul’s purpose in whatever way that is for you, this person is not a factor in that. They may have started the story, but then made their exit, and it’s up to you to continue it, change it, mold it, surprise us, and come up with your own ending. Be free of them. Will you still think of them, dream of them, sure, especially Twins. Whoever they are IS a soul tie, you’re not crazy. Many are just lessons. It was meant to be this DEEP and intense, meant to start a fire in you that doesn’t die, but it needs to be redirected.

Ace of Wands shows you needing to feel passion for other things, head off in other directions, feel joy and inspiration from new experiences. Pretend they never happened, what would you do now? Who are you now? Who do you want to be, what would that person do? What makes you feel ALIVE, by yourself, because it feels good, it’s for you, your whole soul resonates with this thing? And then do that. Could be music could be gardening could be work, whatever makes you feel like *you*. You won’t forget them, but for awhile you should probably try to, on purpose, and have faith that whatever you do or whoever you end up with, it’s the right thing for you. This person filled you with purpose and love, now they’re unconsciously keeping you chained away from purpose, and love ❤️

———————————

P.S. After finishing

That was intense. I was thinking Halloween fun and maybe some actual demons let’s do this, when I first had the idea, and what I got was…real shit. Things that hit our core. Things we’ve held onto a long time. I’m both surprised, and not. I’m sending you all love & hugs, we’ve all got demons, just not the kind that pop up in the mirror and say BOO 👻 Though a couple could. You never know.

Happy Halloween! And thank you for being a part of my intense/funny little tarot corner of the interwebs. I appreciate & love you all, and I’m cheering on everyone to win 🏆 at everything they want to win at along their soul’s journey 🥰 Thank you!

#PAC #pick a card #pick a pile #pick a picture #astrology #tarot #ghosts #demons #spirits #haunting #who haunts you #October 2023 #astroblr #tarotblr #Halloween

[ericdeggans]

Why hoping Lily Gladstone won an Oscar does not equal valuing race over talent.

Social media is never a great place to have discussions about race and culture. The real issues at hand are way too nuanced and detailed for outrage factories like X/Twitter and Instagram to handle.

Still, I was disappointed to see so many people – perhaps willfully – missing the point online when discussion rose after the Oscars about Lily Gladstone failing to win best actress honors.

No doubt, a win for Gladstone – who would have been the first Native American woman to earn a major acting Oscar – also would have felt like a serious triumph for champions touting the power of diversity in film.

Feeling the love big time today, especially from Indian Country. Kittō”kuniikaakomimmō”po’waw - seriously, I love you all ❤️ (Better believe when I was leaving the Dolby Theater and walked passed the big Oscar statue I gave that golden booty a little Coup tap - Count: one 😉)

— Lily Gladstone (@lily_gladstone) March 12, 2024

Those of us who clock these things regularly knew that Emma Stone’s turn in Poor Things was most likely to spoil that scenario. Stone offered a showy-yet-accomplished performance as a singular character in an ambitious, creatively weird production. A much-loved past winner delivering a career-best effort, she was just the kind of nominee that Oscar loves to reward. And, as Vulture pointed out, modern Oscar voters seem to enjoy turning against expectations in big moments like this.

But when I expressed those feelings online – that Stone was marvelous and more than earned the award, but the Oscar academy really missed a chance to make history by overlooking Gladstone’s more subtle, quietly powerful turn in a better movie – the knives came out.

The gist of most negative reactions was the implication that I and others lamenting her loss were insisting that ethnicity should trump talent. As if the only or most important reason that an indigenous woman could be nominated for such a lofty award, is by people trying to bring social justice to the Oscars. (I guess Gladstone’s wins as best actress at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards, among others, were also nods to diversity?)

As if it couldn’t be possible that perhaps -- just perhaps -- some racial cultural preferences were mixed up in Oscar voters’ attraction to the story of a beautiful, young white woman who has loads of sex while learning to define herself in a male dominated world.

What really disappointed me, however, was reading an analysis which reached all the way back to the 2017 Oscars to imply that one reason Barry Jenkins’ masterpiece Moonlight won best picture honors over La La Land was the pressure to bring social justice to the Oscars.

Talk about missing the point by a mile. What I’m driving at, when I advocate for contenders like Gladstone, Barry Jenkins and Jeffrey Wright, isn’t a finger on the scale to make up for past exclusion.

It’s a plea for Oscar voters to see these performances the way I and so many other people actually see them.

I still remember watching last year’s version of The Color Purple in a screening alongside lots of folks from Black fraternity and sorority organizations. And when the moment arrived where Danielle Brooks’ character intoned about her husband, “I loves Harpo — God knows I do — but I’ll kill him dead before I let him or anybody beat me,” it felt like the whole theater said those words with her. That’s how iconic those lines -- first spoken on film by Oprah Winfrey in the 1985 production – have become for Black America.

That same feeling came after I first saw Cord Jefferson’s brilliant American Fiction, centered on a frustrated, floundering Black writer who creates a stereotypical parody of a Black novel as a dark joke, only to see it become a best seller. I felt as if Jefferson had pulled the same bait-and-switch with his movie that his lead character managed onscreen – using the outrageous premise to draw us all into a more subtle and deliberately powerful story of a Black man struggling to connect with his family after huge losses.

I needed three attempts to get through watching all of Gladstone’s work in Killers of the Flower Moon. Not because the movie was so long I had to “get my mail forwarded to the theater,” like Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel joked. But because it was so hard for me to watch a film centered on the historic exploitation and murder of Native American people by white men.

It sounds like a simple idea, but it’s worth repeating: evocative moments in films will speak differently to different people.

Sometimes, when I’m pushing for a win in an awards category, or championing a particular project, it’s not because I’m putting a finger on the scale for the sake of equality. It’s because I’m more invested in that story than some others because of who I am. And I’m challenging some people, who might not see their cultural preferences as preferences, to consider exactly why they love one thing over another.

In many ways, it is sad to see great artists pitted against each other in these contests. Comparing the delightful, dangerous absurdity of Poor Things to the gritty, punishing tone in Killers of the Flower Moon feels like a fool’s errand, anyway.

But with so much that comes from an Oscar win – including proof that inclusion brings success, accolades and a great argument for more equity – it is important to understand why some people value some performances.

And part of living in a diverse society means valuing the wide range of opinions and reactions, not shrugging off those that don’t fit your worldview.

#oscars #gladstone #movies #racism #tv #Youtube

[markantonys]

You know, considering the show only fans' reaction to the Seanchean, if they do put Mat and Tuon together, they're gonna have to give her and them a LOT and I mean A LOT of character development. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Tuon shows up already with thoughts and doubts about slavery. Cause there's simply no way people are gonna be okay with it.

yeah i really do not envy them having to figure out what to do here, because EVERYTHING about mat/tuon and about tuon as a character is a giant landmine. (even just with casting, because the Head Slaver being a black woman is 🥴 especially if we then get scenes of her having to be told by a white man that slavery is bad. but if you DON'T cast a black actor as tuon then you've whitewashed a book-canonically black character. tuon's character design is the kinda thing where rj was trying to go for a ~boundary-breaking role reversal~ but it just really isn't a good look, and i don't envy the show having to deal with his choices there.)

anyway, i'm really hoping for tuon to be introduced at least a season or two before she meets mat so that she can have some development before they even cross paths, let alone begin having romance. (similar to how elayne, aviendha, and min were all developed through non-rand characters this season, which was a great choice.) one idea i'm quite fond of* is tuon showing up in nynaeve and elayne's storyline in s3 in an egeanin-esque role (tho not exactly equivalent ofc given tuon's and egeanin's differences in status/life situation/etc), so then she unknowingly befriends and comes to respect 2 ~marath'damane~, thus she has to start rethinking some things about seanchan culture when she finds out her new buddies can channel. and in s4 maybe she can have some kind of invented plotline to keep her development moving along, and s5 might be the time for her to first meet mat, and they can spend seasons 6 AND 7 together with the romance being a very slow burn. if the show just has tuon show up in ebou dar straightaway with the initial invasion rather than in a second wave after mat's storyline's been left out of an entire book, then she can meet mat sooner and they can leave sooner and have more time to spend together.

rj could have pulled off mat/tuon if he'd introduced her way sooner and had left enough time for their relationship to develop naturally and for HER to develop naturally, rather than breaking mat's characterization to cram him into a rushed relationship it makes no sense for him to want to be part of at this point in time. in WH it really does feel like rj was planning a whole meaty character development arc for tuon, but then realized between books that he wasn't gonna have enough time for it in the main series and came up with the idea of the outriggers spinoff, and in COT suddenly we have tuon being a completely static character and mat replaced by a pod person who's obsessed with her and has completely changed his views on slavery.

but the show has the benefit of knowing the endpoint already, so hopefully they're already planning for how to make the mat/tuon romance feel more believable. i think the only 2 options are a) introduce tuon way earlier and give her a proper redemption arc, or b) make it a political marriage which mat is putting up with for the greater good but has 0 romantic interest in tuon. because yeah, mat falling in love with an unrepentant slaver would make him absolutely vile in the eyes of all viewers, especially after how hard the show went on showing the vileness of the seanchan in s2. show viewers will not have forgotten the torture egwene suffered by the time mat meets tuon as easily as so many book readers apparently did.

*i'm also very fond of the idea of tuon being introduced in seanchan proper because i spent the whole series expecting us to see seanchan proper and the court of the 9 moons etc and felt SO robbed that we never did, so i'd loooooove if the show took us there and had tuon leading a plotline there before she leaves for the westlands. but purely in terms of getting her to start rethinking the damane system early on, this scenario wouldn't be as useful as the one of her meeting nynaeve and elayne in the westlands.

and finally, it's very interesting that they killed off every single notable seanchan character from s2. this could mean that they didn't want to leave any loose ends because the seanchan will be entirely absent for the next season or two, ooooooooooooor it could mean that they wanted to clear the stage for tuon to step up as our major seanchan character in the next season or two.

#anonymous #answered #wot book spoilers #wot show spoilers

[likeadevils]

I trust your opinion. If you were making bets about what TS11's themes, concepts and sound would be like.. What would you like& prefer? and what would you think Taylor would do?

thank you for trusting my opinion but i am god awful at predicting what taylor is going to do next. that being said:

i think something taylor learned with all too well, anti-hero, and cruel summer is to… trust her instincts, i guess? not that she hasn’t in the past, but she’s mentioned that those songs were her favorites of their respective albums, and she didn’t expect that the general public would enjoy them as much— at least, not to the degree that they have been. but they’ve all been #1s, and more impressively to me, they’ve all broken through into wider pop culture in a way that’s super hard to do nowadays. like can you tell me what’s #1 right now because i can’t. but anyways i think she’ll be following what she wants to hear a little bit more, and trusting that her and the general public’s taste is pretty aligned at the moment. so like, to boil it down into a bingo card prediction, the lead single is going to be taylor’s favorite song on the album

also, bingo square, the color will be white. no evidence just vibes

i think another thing taylor recently learned is trusting that not only her fanbase, but the wider pop landscape would accept complex ideas delivered with a complex vocabulary. in some ways i think she was really burned by me!— she had been taught that it’s the we are never ever getting back together and shake it offs that you send to pop radio, not the all too wells. and then me! got torn apart (deservedly or not), and then the world shut down and it’s not like she needs to find a tour off her next album so what the hell, let’s take out the immediate hooks and replace it with flowery language. and it was a massive hit! twice! but it’s not the kind of music she wants to make forever. so midnights was an added gamble— can you marry the hooks with the collegiate vocabulary? and you can! anti-hero was her biggest chart success ever! so i expect more dictionary/thesaurus starter pack memes in our future, no matter what genre it’ll end up in

that being said, i think she’ll be staying in pop. i maaaaybe could see a kind of pop rock thing happening— think like, the electric guitar she adds to don’t blame me when it’s preformed live.

regardless i do think she’ll be pulling in more rep influences— i’m not super in the buisness of trying to track down when exactly she’s been re-recording, so this is coming from swiftie brain rot not timeline brain rot, but if i had to guess i would say she was mostly recording rep over the summer and with the occasional ts11 track thrown in as well. but i could be wrong maybe she has three albums recorded. idk. i am very interested in what the rep sounds like though, i think that’ll be the biggest clue to what ts11 will sound like

i’m curious how auto-biographical it’ll be. honestly, i could see taylor creating a single character to inhabit and tracking their story throughout an album, which would parallel the emotions she’s going through, but not the exact situations. but that’s me projecting what i would need to do to process the fucking year she’s been through, and taylor has consistently been saying how much she gets from having people sing back the words thought she must be alone in thinking, so like maybe it’ll be intensely About Her, who knows

as for release, i’m a big post eras tour believer. like i know it’s been said a million times but god how impossible would it be to add another set to that thing. like we might get the announcement and lead single while still on tour, but not a full album

i’m also expecting a more talk-y rollout. i would bet we’re getting a couple of print interviews— not anywhere near 1989 or lover levels, but like, you know. rolling stone, vogue, maybe another time, that kind of thing. and in front of camera stuff too— zane lowe, a bbc live longe, some late night appearances, maybe going on kelly clarkson’s show. and maaaaybe a hot wings episode. maybe. i think taylor got a bit burned by the long roll out for lover, and regardless she had other priorities when it came to the midnights release, but it’s been a while and she does like to surprise people by doing something completely predictable. but also this is totally me being like pleaseeeee give interviews they help me with timeline research so much

i predict this every time but visual album!!! if i keep saying it one day it’ll be true!!! it just makes sense she’s been getting so into directing!!!

while we’re in the realm of things that would make me specifically go insane i just think it would be funny if she got paul mccartney to feature on a song. just to be petty. imagine your ex is releasing an album and she gets one of your favorite musicians to play on it. and after the sweet nothing debacle too. oh. so ouchie. also she would have paul fucking mccartney on an album that’s insane in its own right

while we’re throwing spaghetti at the wall. two word title. let’s get crazy maybe 3+ words why not (this is by far the least serious prediction if the title is more than one word i’ll lose my mind)

maybe some religious imagery for the visuals? i’m trying to think of aesthetics taylor hasn’t thoroughly explored. what’s coming to mind is stained glass windows and like, the wild west. this is not at all influenced by me being raised catholic in the american southwest what are you talking about

so to sum up i think i want a pop rock opera with a title along the lines of “the blank of firstname lastname” about a woman in the wild west that has climatic scenes in a cathedral?? i guess that’s the shape i want?? i was not aware that’s what i wanted when i started writing this post okay

#asks* #i’ve thought about this for like hours sorry to keep you so long

[rainbowchewynuggets]

IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE IT'S DONE

I've been grinding away at this for months. I can't wait for people to see it. This project turned out to have a lot of gears behind it, so check out the artist statement below!

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

I love this song. The first time I heard it, I already began picturing a story where a woman stumbled upon a gathering of birds in the forest and became so enthralled by their song that she partied with them until she became a bird, herself. It turns out that isn’t too far off from the singer, Yma Sumac’s, first experiences learning to sing. She would imitate the animals near her home in the hills of the Andes mountains as a very young kid, developing a vocal range that would make her famous later on.

From there, I fell into a montage of research on her life and the Peruvian festival music that defined her early career, as well as the complicated story of the exotica music she became most known for in the United States. I followed that up with a month-long dive into northwest Peruvian culture, mythology, ornithology, flora, and topographical studies. Then, I blacked out somewhere during the drawing phase, and now I’m here.

While I really value what I’ve learned while doing this project, I think it’s important to note that I did it all as an amateur researcher and a foreigner to the subject. I decided it would be a little conceited to try to make a totally accurate depiction of a traditional Peruvian festival, so I instead focused on referencing the regional variation of these traditions. Costumes and music have their own specific designs and textures depending on the area, and dances and festivities reflect local history. Yet, it all shares the same themes of celebrating prosperity and surviving hardship. Common motifs and characters reflect a shared heritage and cultural identity that coexists with individuality. It’s all just very cool to me.

So I asked myself, what if these birds had their own version of these traditions? What would a bird sing a folk song about? What would be new and cool to Yma, but still familiar enough that she could join in? (I got lucky, since Peruvian festival culture is already very reverent of birds and feather patterns.)

What I ended up with pulled a lot from the Carnaval de Cajamarca, which originated in the next town over from Yma’s childhood home of Ichocán. It also references these dances, among others:

Huaylarsh - Los Emplumados - Marinera - Tondero - White Dance / Los Chunchos

It’s also important to know that I took a lot of creative liberties with my research to pull the story together. I hope I haven’t used any elements in a harmful or insensitive way–and if I have, I’d like to know so that I can apologize. (I also missed out on some cool stuff, like the White Dance always having shaker beads on the legs.) I highly encourage you to have a look at some of the sources I did, and to look further if you’re interested. I found it all very enlightening, and I hope you will too.

Yma’s wikipedia, which seems like a mostly accurate overview based on other sources

Her official website, curated by a fan and friend

A segment on NPR about her musical career

The interview I got the opening from

The ornithology archive that saved my ass

I’d like to work on uploading all the frames as an image reel somewhere so they can be looked at individually. Might take a while, though.

Thanks for watching!

(To those using a screen reader, the video description follows this message. I'd like to apologize for putting the description as the last thing on the post. Not only is it extremely long, but this seemed to be the rare instance where the description would benefit from the context of the post's commentary before being read itself. I wrote and formatted this description in a way that I hoped would apply to aid various disabilities that impede enjoying music videos, and I am very interested in getting feedback.)

DESCRIPTION

[The following is presented as an animatic (a series of still images edited into a video) set to music. The art is drawn with condensed yet fuzzy pastel-like linework and full color. The song used is “Chuncho” by Yma Sumac. The song was composed to imitate the various sounds of tropical birds and animals. It has no lyrics, at least in a traditional sense. I, the describer, have tried my best to translate the especially abstract nature of this song into language that can be interpreted through text. Please use the best of your imagination to fill in the rest. An audio description will always refer to the visual description that follows it.

Audio: A male interviewer asks, “Since you are referred to the bird who became a woman in your native Peru, Ms. Sumac, may we hear your exotic voice?”

Visuals: A title card appears with gold lettering on a black background. It reads one word: Chuncho. The word is depicted as if it were carved into a flat surface with loose individual strokes.

Audio: A woman answers, “I will try to imitate the birds, as I did in my earliest years in the mountains of Peru.”

Visuals: Credits appear, also in gold text: Sung by Yma Sumac (Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chàvarri del Castillo. Drawn by Carlie Hughes (rainbowchewynuggets).

Audio: The music begins with the steady four-note strumming of a guitar, which will continue throughout the song. Then, it is accompanied by low ragged notes from a heavy woodwind instrument.

Visuals: A green cicada flicks its wings as it rests on a plant with jagged leaves and a little white flower growing from the middle. Beetles of green, red, and yellow crawl around on trees and ferns among puffy yellow blooms. Yellow humpback beetles huddle together on a cold stone surface as mothlike butterflies cling to hanging purple-grey moss in the background. A cluster of butterflies of black, green, blue, orange, purple, and red flare their wings along stems and vines. A line of spiny cocoons hang from a vine leading up the center of the group.

Audio: A vocalist, the same woman as before, begins to sing in vocables. Her first notes are short, round, and bubbly, like the chirping of a small bird. The lilt of a flute follows.

(“B-bm, bui-bui-buiii…”)

Visuals: A small village sits on the side of a forested and scrub-covered mountain at night. Buildings twinkle with yellow and blue window light through the darkness. At the edge of the forest, a tall lean woman appears with warm orange skin, long black hair, a simple green dress cinched at the waist with blue trim on the neck, hem, wrist, and waist, and a powder blue shawl tied at the chest. She sneaks away from the village into the temperate tropical forest, glancing back to make sure hasn’t been followed. She grows more at ease as she leaves the buildings behind and strides between bushes, deeper into the trees. She passes a flowering plant with orange petals. Its bulbs are held aloft on long, long stems.

Audio: The vocalist sings in elongated threads of notes, wavering in a minor key in a mischievous way.

(“Whu, hu-uuuu…”)

Visuals: The woman grazes her fingers along a bush with little black berries and white spiky flowers. Her hand passes up and down with the shape of the bush, like the rise and fall of an ocean wave. She walks uphill, past pink clover and increasingly frequent stones.

Audio: The vocalist clicks and rolls her tongue with her notes, like drops of water splashing across stones.

(“Dlu, dlu-dlu-dlu-dlu-buiii…”)

Visuals: A voice suddenly gets her attention. The voice passes by as a green line with wide wave forms. The woman follows it. She passes through a stone forest–dense moss-covered rock formations that reach up toward the sky. The ground below is streaked with snake trails. The line of song is now yellow. It leads her forward along a trail through the rocks. She climbs a more precarious formation of boulders, through dense shrubbery and a dramatic rocky landscape. As the voice shifts redder, her colors shift pinker. Even the environment’s colors are shifting to pinks and blues. She climbs a hill, past tall spindly trees and a nearly vertical mountainside. The pink line of song leads her still upward.

Audio: The vocalist belts out the deep throaty call of a tropical bird trying to be heard far and wide. The notes increase in frequency, then widen into a whoop that softens to a murmur. The flute follows her with a few short forceful notes.

(“Ah, bya bya bya-bya-bya-bya-bya-byaaa, whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-wi, wa-wa-wa wiii…”)

Visuals: When the woman reaches the top of the hill, a light shines up at her from the other side, returning her original colors. Below, she sees a gathering of human-sized bird people celebrating on a leafy platform. They’re dancing in different sized circles around a tree at the center. Rainbow colored ribbons of different lengths have been tied to the branches of the tree and hang down to form the silhouette of a condor. More ribbons and colorful bulbs hang from the leaves above. The line of song (now light blue) travels in a circle around the tree trunk. The camera zooms in, revealing details of the birds and their costumes. The birds are pigeons, hawks, cuckoos, seedbirds, and corvids. They’re all dressed in colorful hats, vests, slacks, and dresses with patterns that reflect those of their feathers. A circle of spotted woodpeckers closest to the trunk wear purple gowns and party hats. The party’s singing expands the blue circle of light. A wider circle of yellow, green, and white birds sit and watch the celebration from the edges of the platform. As a line of bright manakin birds zip by with their hands clasped together, the woman approaches from a nearby branch. She’s enticed by the party and joins the dance, clasping hands with a green parrot and leading the line with a broad smile on her face.

Audio: The vocalist makes a quick sudden series of escalating notes, then makes a hard sound with her teeth and returns to a low whoop. The flute echoes her.

(Ba-bana-baba-cht!,  waw waw waw waw waw waw waw wiii…”)

Visuals: The birds switch to individual dances. A short red woodpecker and a tan long-necked bird with ribbons in her hair dance and sing together, their lines of song intertwining. The woman and three pigeons in red and black dresses stomp their heels in a quartet dance. She follows their steps flawlessly, familiar with the type of dance. When they begin to sing and whistle, she joins them–though her voice isn’t as strong as theirs and her line of song is thin and brittle.

Audio: The vocalist makes a low growl, at first imperceptible, that grows to a steady rumble. The flute follows.

(“Rhhh…, rhh, rhh rhhh…”)

Visuals: Then, the lights darken and redden. The woman stops to notice all the other birds heading to the back of the platform. They climb and flutter up to sit in fruit-bearing branches that grow just beyond. The woman finds herself a spot and picks a piece of fruit to eat. She takes a bite as a show begins. A band of various birds wearing ponchos and cloth hats sit down by the show platform. They play their instruments (flute, guitars and a drum) and count in the performance.

Audio: The vocalist makes more short bubbly chirps. They grow higher in small strings of notes until the phrase ends with a low long note.

(“Bom-bom, t-bom-bom-bom, mbom-bom wiii…”)

Visuals: Five owls appear, bathed in magenta spotlight before the center tree trunk. All of them have their yellow-spotted wings wrapped to mostly cover their black and gold-trimmed dresses. The four owls on the sides are short and red, while the one in the center is tall and bright purple. As all five begin to sing a golden song, they operatically open their wings and extend their feathers. As the light darkens to violet, the black and gold patterns in the folds of their wings leap out as if exposed to blacklight. They extend their arms upward and then double over to kneel on the stage, fully splaying their wings in a dramatic display. The woman watching is transfixed.

Audio: The vocalist rolls a noise from the back of her throat. Once, twice, three times–before hitching the roll up and down and letting it trail off. The flute makes a low hollow arc of a note.

(“Ghhh, ghhh, ghh gh-gh-gheee…”)

Visuals: Cut to the next performance. Two teams of blackbirds with long waving feathers compete, standing on each other’s shoulders to form two pyramids. The one at the top of each team lunges forward to try to strike the other with a long stick, propelled by their team. Their feathers glow with yellow light from above. The team on the left—with orange vests and red sashes—strikes first, only nearly missing. They gloat as the lime vest and green sash team on the right recoils and protests. Then, it’s the green team’s turn to take a confident lunge, forcing the red to frantically pull back in time to dodge. On the next strike, the red team buries the stick in the top of the enemy pyramid (actually tucked under the green leader’s arm). The victim feigns a mortal wound, and the entire team flies away. The red team poses, victorious. The red leader gets down to the floor to greet the widow of the green team, wearing a green dress. She peers at him from behind a silky black wing. As soon as he lands, she whacks him over the head with her own concealed stick. He is surprised. She is unamused.

Audio: The vocalist lets out a ghostly wail that wavers wildly like an eerie wind, higher and higher. A shaker instrument rumbles beneath her voice.

(“Woaaa… woaaa… woaa–”)

Visuals: Next, it’s dark. Three colorful birds in masks and costumes tread the air at an angle on the left side of the screen against a blue and green background. There’s a yellow spiky one, representing lightning. A blue round-feathered one, representing rain. And a spade-feathered green one, representing trees. Long beaded threads tied to their wings and tails wave and tangle across the screen as a group of five hummingbirds in shades of red struggle to survive the “storm” raging around them. The colored ribbons of the central tree are muted and flutter with the power of the wind. Two other birds hug the trunk, nearly out of sight. There’s a prop on the floor to the right made to look like a stone alcove, where more hummingbirds are hiding. The storm bringer birds beat their wings hard, casting the strings of lightning, water, and leaf shaped beads in huge chaotic waves. The five hummingbirds in vests and dresses wince and tumble against the wind, flying together in a tight circle. The threads crisscross behind them, an overwhelming force on the tiny birds’ scale. A red line of song floats up to reach them, guiding them down to the nest.

Audio: When her wail is at its highest, the vocalist pushes it further into the voice of a shrill songbird. The note hangs high in the air, then takes a few steps down and up. The segment ends with the sudden interjection of the low round voice–as if in surprise–and a trailing mumble.

(“Haaa, aa-aa aa-aa aa-aa, hoa? Ah, bw-huh…”)

Visuals: Those in the stone nest finish singing and reunite with the others, pulling them down to safety. A blackbird hiding behind the trunk spreads its wings, sitting on the shoulders of a brown woodpecker. The blackbird’s vest and wingspan are covered in yellow, signaling the coming of daylight. The storm birds retreat and sit still on a nearby branch. The wind is suddenly gone.

Audio: The guitar plays alone.

Visuals: After the stage performances, the audience members move back to the platform. They’re gathered off to the far left side of the central tree trunk, standing in a circle around a single figure. The light of the gathering area is deep plum-purple in far off areas and warm dull pink over the crowd. The empty space around the single dancer is salmon red, and the figure herself is blue.

Audio: The vocalist perfectly mimics the sound of a flutter, of delicate waving in the wind.

(“W-w-w-w-w-w-w”)

Visuals: The camera zooms in on her hand as it flits a pink handkerchief in the air.

Audio: The vocalist belts a pair of bold staunch vocables. The second note is held for several seconds before fading out.

(“Kyen, kyen…”)

Visuals: The camera pulls back to reveal the rest of her. She’s a blue eagle with wings that grade from red at the arms to pink to blue at the wingtips in a wavy pattern. Her smiling beak is bright pink. Her dress is royal blue with reddish-pink trimmed ruffles on the hem of the skirt, waist frill, neck frill, and the flower decoration on the side of her head. She stands with the hem of her dress in one hand and the handkerchief extended in the other in an open invitation to dance. A pale pink spotlight frames her head and shoulders against the darkness, and a dark pink line of song passes behind her. Her partner, an eagle of the same coloration with a blue vest and pants, pink shirt, pale orange sash, a blue hat in one hand, and a pink hanky of his own raised in the other, is calling to her. He puts his hands behind his back and takes high steps toward her. When the two are close, they turn and walk parallel to each other in a slow circle. The male’s back is to his partner. He looks at her over his shoulder with a smile and abruptly splays his feathers to be cute. There’s a layer of pink under his outer coat. She grins, entertained.

Audio: The vocalist repeats the two vocables, twisting the end of the second up into a high wavering trill that eventually soothes and disappears.

(“Kyen, kye–eee, ee, eee, ee…”)

Visuals: The two turn to face each other, circling tighter and tighter in unified song until they’re face to face, looking deep into each other’s eyes. With another turn, they’ve passed by each other and out of sight.

Audio: The vocalist makes a whisper, a ghost of the two vocables. Then, a few quick whistles, barely loud enough to hear.

(“Hyo, hyo”)

Visuals: The woman, who has been captivated by the dance, suddenly notices that the crowd has dispersed around her. Partners are walking off in all directions, leaving her alone. The dance is over.

Audio: The guitar picks up, getting faster and louder for a bit.

Visuals: The woman walks alone in the blue night air along a tangle of tree branches that form a pathway. She walks with her hands behind her back, her face looking preoccupied and a little disappointed. Bushels of soft leaves pass by in the background.

Audio: A high, light pleasant note from the vocalist overtakes the guitar. It grows until it fills the soundscape.

(“Aaa…”)

Visuals: An orange song reaches her from the direction she came, and she stops. When she turns, she sees a blue swift standing on the branch path, far behind her in an opening in the trees. The underside of his feathers is dingy orange, and he’s wearing a black vest, white pants, a rusty red sash around his waist, a bright green kerchief around his neck, and an orange rectangular accessory tied around his neck like a necklace. His face is obscured by a white hat with an orange band. He bows low with a hand on the hat. The hat comes off, revealing inviting eyes and a smiling orange beak. The woman grins and accepts the invitation with determination.

Audio: The vocalist draws long high vocables that resemble a wail. They trail off with a low note.

(“Whoa whoaaa…”)

Visuals: She and the swift untie the fabric around their necks and step toward each other as the line of song forms a ring above them. The woman holds the ends of the shawl in her hands and her hands at her hips with the body of the shawl hanging behind her waist. The bird holds his kerchief out in one hand with the hat in the other, held behind his back. He takes measured winding steps along the branches. The woman mirrors his steps, then pushes off of the main path and lands on an outcropping branch.

Audio: The vocalist’s song wavers back up and demurely bobs up and down, intertwined with tweeting from the flute.

(“Hoa…  ohee…”)

Visuals: Her voice, seafoam green and a little stronger than before, trails behind her. She darts back onto the main branch and ducks behind the bird, then circles around to face him, the two only a few feet apart. They exchange steps pushing the other forward and back and flicking their garments in time with their movements. The woman’s voice grows stronger, nearly matching his. The bird quickly catches up as she moves backward, dancing beside her. The two dancers then leap from the main branch and fall down into the rocky forest below, passing by grassy plateaus and vines creeping through stone. Their song follows all the way down. They leap across boulders in the moonlight, side by side. The swift suddenly stops and folds his kerchief around the center of the shawl, hitching the two together. 

Audio: The vocalist belts a complex series of syllables that mimic the heavy majestic cawing of a large bird or hawk. The flute makes itself known a little as the voice fades out.

(“Hlau-lau-lau hau-au-wau-wa-wiii…”)

Visuals: The woman, at the receiving end of the momentum, is swung wide and lets out a vibrant complex line of song that could match any bird’s. The two pull closer to each other and end their song on a low steady note. Then, they bow to each other as the camera pulls back. They’re standing on a rock that rises above a basin of  water among huge formations of rock. Pairs of birds dance all around them in the shallows.

Audio: The guitar takes over for a bit.

Visuals: The camera cuts to an upward view of a varied group of birds sitting in branches, staring downward with interest. The light from the moon coming down through a break in the trees above is now cool green. The light coming up from where the birds are looking is orange-red. 

Audio: The vocalist lets out the aggressive growling of a cat.

(“U-wau, wau-wau-wau-wau”)

Visuals: Below, the woman is dancing in a line with three reddish woodpeckers in a greenish clearing in the trees. They wear intricately detailed dresses in different combinations of bright green, yellow, red, and black with geometric and floral embroidery. The dresses are cinched at the waist with a piece of fabric covered in colored bands. Their heads are covered in scarves with the same colors and patterns. They sing and step aggressively toward the left of the screen. At the other side of the clearing, a line of four red and white faced woodpeckers with green beaks and wings face right. They wear bright green hats, kerchiefs, and sashes, yellow and black striped vests, and dark red pants with yellow tassels at the ankles. Their black shoes tap against the ground as they make quick little dance steps and flutter yellow handkerchiefs. They hold onto the brims of their hats and then lean down with a flourish of their arms, exposing the red crests of their heads sticking up underneath. The dance then changes formation. The girls dance in a line to the left as the boys step in a line to the right. 

Audio: The growl hushes down to a wavering whisper, like wings beating in the dark.

(“Tchwahh-cwah-cwah-cwah-cwah-cwah-cwah-cwah…”)

Visuals: Out on a cliff by a waterfall, the scene is bathed in cyan. The line of dancers–alternating male, female, male, female–do a hopping dance from partners on the left to those on the right and back again as they move along the cliff, passing behind the waterfall as it disappears into the greenery in the foreground.

Audio: The guitar asserts itself again.

Visuals: Everything is suddenly red. A guitarist in a blue poncho and a red neck sash frets the neck of a guitar with a brown feathered hand. Rainbow ribbons are tied to the headstock. A deep orange song emanates from the strings.

Audio: The vocalist quickly accompanies the guitar with a harmonized version of the growl that revs up climatically, taking steps up the scale until it’s at its absolute height.

(“U-wa-wa ee-ee eh-oh! Oh-oh-oh-ohh!”)

Visuals: A congress of the partygoing birds stand in lines facing each other, all wearing blue outfits with red kerchiefs with rainbow tassels on them. The group jumps up and down in unison as part of a dance. The party breaks into smaller dances, and the woman dances by herself. She’s wearing a green skirt and flowy purple top with red underskirt, waist cinch, and scarf. Rainbow tassels are attached to the overskirt, and they swish with her movements. Beside her are a hawk woman and a pair of long billed bird men dancing in a circle with their ankles locked. A pair of red birds with white streaks on their wings suddenly hoist the woman into the air, as other birds are hoisted in the distance. As she’s held aloft, she sings and spreads her arms, revealing more tassels on her top, resembling wings. Her song is immense and beautiful. The camera focuses on one of the hoisted birds in the background, who has executed a handstand with the person who threw them. The blackbird’s feathers are all sorts of bright colors. The song passes by behind him. The excitement of the party disguises the presence of a looming pair of yellow slitted eyes peering out from a dark spot between the leaves nearby. A trio of purple pigeons dancing in a line with twigs and colored strings in their hands dip and weave together. The one in front balks, noticing the threat at last.

Audio: The high energy of the music suddenly cuts out. The shrill call of a small bird climbs up out of the silence.

(“Eee…”)

Visuals: A striped short legged pampas cat pounces into the center of the dance field. It misses the birds, but the illusion is shattered. The bird people are just birds again. They fly in a frenzy up through the trees to the safety of the early morning sky. The hilltop erupts with silhouettes of wings.

Audio: When the small bird’s call is at its highest, it tumbles back down and transforms into a low disquieting wail. The guitar re-enters.

(“Ee-ee-ee-ah-ahh ahh oohhh…”)

Visuals: The pampas cat has retreated into the dim tawny forest. It stands on a bent tree branch among bushes and hanging moss and stares into the camera with glowing yellow pupils. A tiny rodent scurries by and into a bush. The cat notices and darts after it. Nearby, dozens of bats hang from the underside of a rock formation that extends over a field of berry bushes. Their sleepy heads are tucked into their folded wings. A straggler flaps up to join the rest as the sun continues to rise. Elsewhere, a hive with wasp-like insects resting on the outside hangs over a rock. Sunlight gleams over the scene from a break in the trees in the background. A large brown mouse climbs up on the rock, backlit by the sun. It grabs a wasp in its teeth and leaves before the rest of the hive can wake up.

Audio: The vocalist makes a low steady murmur. A couple shakes from the shaker instrument follow.

(“Hoo…”)

Visuals: A colony of green and brown frogs with purple eye ridges, yellow faces, and orange bellies are asleep on dewy ridges of rock. A green cicada hangs out on a leaf off to the top left corner. The mouse jumps down through their resting spot, waking them all up. The frogs croak a green song as the cicada hangs on for dear life on the swinging leaf. The wind moans through the crevices of another stone forest. The little flowering shrubs that grow on the rocks bristle in the breeze. A variety of green, yellow, and blue lizards poke their heads out of the rocks, into the morning light.

Audio: The vocalist repeats the murmur. The flute follows this time.

(“Hoo…”)

Visuals: The camera pulls back to view the entire rock formation. The still rising sun shines only on the top half of right-facing stones. Long spindly tree trunks grow from the top left, out of sight. Long grass waves on the ground below. An alpaca-like vicuña raises its head from the long grass, facing the light. In the branches of the trees above, various birds perch facing left.

Audio: The vocalist makes a mysterious sound that begins as a harsh sound between her teeth and ends as a whisper. It echoes in the background.

(“Chwah-ah…”)

Visuals: The camera turns back to the village. Golden light casts diagonally across the brown roofs and tan buildings. The silhouette of a small bird flies toward the center of town.

Audio: The vocalist makes the sound again, then pulls the whisper up into a harsh repeated rasp from the back of her throat.

(“Chwah-ah qwah-qw-qw-qw-qw-qwah-qwah-qwah”)

Visuals: Down in between the one-story houses, the bird flutters down. Long shadows lay across a passage leading toward a door on the side of a building. We see the shadow of the woman land in the soft dirt path where the bird’s would have. She heads toward the door at a walking pace.

Audio: The call returns to a whisper. The vocalist clicks her throat in a short series of hollow sounds, nearly like the creaking of wood.

(“Qwk-qwk-qwk-qwk-qwk, qwk qwk qwk qwk”)

Visuals: As she opens the door to enter the purple interior light of the house, we see that she’s back in her green dress, but now her shawl is red. The sun glints in her hair. Before she goes inside, she looks back and winks at the camera with a smile. Then, she slowly pulls the door behind her until it’s shut.

Audio: The vocalist lets out her breath entirely as the accompanying music trickles into silence.

(“Haaa…”)

Visuals: The screen is black for a few seconds.

Audio: The high whistling call of a green manakin can be heard over the rustling of forest trees. The call’s tone is raised at the end, like it’s asking a question.

(“Twee?… Twee?… Twee?… Twee?”)

Visuals: The end card appears. Yellow and green lettering and a border lay on a black background. The text reads: Yma Sumac. Peruvian soprano and composer. October 13th 1922 until November 1st 2008. Biographical and reference info in description. Chuncho, 1953. Written by Moises Vivanco. Capitol Records, Universal Music Publishing Group. Carlie Hughes. Tumblr @rainbowchewynuggets. www.carliehughes.com. End ID]

INDEX

#chuncho song #animatic #chuncho animatic #night festival animatic #the night festival #yma sumac #the birds #the forest creatures #this was supposed to go up on her birthday but i got sick aaa #Youtube

[dropintomanga]

Sometimes, Mental Health Pros Suck - On ANN's Pulled Nagata Kabi Review

So I heard something controversial happened in the world of manga reviews. And it quite happens to revolve around a manga figure a lot of people know too well - Nagata Kabi.

Nagata's latest release in the U.S., My Pancreas Broke, But My Life Got Better, was reviewed by Anime News Network. While I normally find their reviews of manga to be fine, something about this one ticked off A LOT of people on social media. Then I heard it got pulled off the website a few days after it was published, but I later found it via Archive.org.

So I read what the review was like and there's a few points that came to my mind.

First, I can see why people were saying the reviewer, who is an actual mental health professional, was condescending towards Nagata's experiences. Throughout all of her works, Nagata always seems to be going through something. It can make someone think that she's not trying hard enough, especially if you're a professional whose job is to help people like Nagata.

Second, the reviewer expressed frustration over Nagata not getting better. Maybe some of the frustration is warranted, but the thing is the reviewer doesn't really know, know Nagata. They're only getting a glimpse of Nagata's personality through her works. While the works do provide a clear and often heavy picture of her life so far, I don't think they tell the whole story. I remember Nagata saying she struggles with how she portrays herself in her memoir manga compared to how she is in person. There's always multiple layers to a person.

Lastly, I know people are saying "How dare they call themselves a mental health pro if they are acting like an insensitive prick." My response to that is because psychiatry/psychology has become a conflict-riddled field where some professionals turn out to be pricks. They are taught a very Western way of thinking in that the individual has no one to blame but themselves for whatever mental health disorder they have. All of the solutions should be placed in the hands of the individual. A lot of mental health professionals aren't trained well enough to strongly consider factors (i.e. cultural/socioeconomic) outside of the individual that cause people to have mental distress.

While it does suck that Nagata seems to have something going on most of the time, I do want her to be okay. I don't want her to force herself to be happy for the sake of other people. I have a lot of compassion for Nagata. While the reviewer says that she should get the professional help she needs and considering the reviewer's earlier comments, I honestly don't know if it might be the best idea for Nagata.

A long while back, when I was in therapy, my social worker switched me to a different psychiatrist than the one I was seeing at the time. I was originally under a Chinese psychiatrist, but my social worker said the new one fitted my schedule more. So I said alright. The new psychiatrist was a really old white male in his '60s-'70s with glasses. When I saw them for the first time, one of the first questions he asked was "How is my sex life?" I was aghast and questioned why he asked that. Then he went on to say "Maybe you should get a girlfriend. It can help your depression." Over the next few sessions, that psychiatrist's line of questioning about my well-being became a bit too personal to my liking. I told him to stop asking those questions and he apologized. I later told my social worker that I don't want to see him anymore despite her saying that he's a funny guy.

Seeing that review made me think about that awful psychiatrist experience I had and I do not want Nagata to go through moments like that because there's a good amount of bad apples in the mental health industry.

I'm glad ANN took down that review because they're not mental health professionals. And people like that reviewer are one of the big reasons why I got rid of the Manga Therapy name. I don't think professionals have all the answers to life's problems.

Going forward, there was a good question asked on social media - how do you make mental illness relatable to those who don’t have it? That's hard because mental illness is always portrayed as "crazy", "sick", "mad", etc. While it's clear that extreme forms of mental illness can be problematic, I feel that depression and anxiety are normal signs that the world is messed up. You think that people in power want to admit that they're the ones causing a lot of mental health problems?

You know, I think all people living with mental illness want is to not just be relatable - they want compassion, that's it.

And in a way that doesn't come off as something that sounds too much like a professional/expert, but more from an actual human being that doesn't have to act like one.

#mental health #therapy #industry #manga #community #mental health industry #Nagata Kabi