#((my failure to draw a simple flame aside))

[hello-universe-lovers]

Drawing ocs/comfort characters in their pride flags until my hyperfixation ends (day 2/??)

Second off...BOBBY from hit indie Dead Cells. You can tell from my reblogs that I have been obsessed with this flame head along with Drippy (Drifter from Hyper Light Drifter). So here you go.

Fun fact: the reason I struggle with him is his STUPID ASS FLAME HEAD!! IDK WHY ITS SO HARD FOR ME TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE FIRE! (Until I said "fuck it" and dgaf)

Is the pan joke obvious? Yes.

Do I think it works for em? Also yes.

And bonus (bc I been looking to contribute to this tag) Driftcells (with my hc casual Drippy look)

[hurricanes-art]

i am interested in your hades au, would you mind giving some details about it? 👁 it looks really interesting

[This AU is from these drawings!]

*cracks knuckles* Ok! I actually got enough sleep last night so I'm finally feeling up to explaining this au lmao

Also I hope that by “some details” you meant “way way too many” because I am nothing if not long winded. Also @hades-hellsite asked for context too, here you go

The central premise is that, after he dies, Achilles manages to make an arrangement with Hades that allows both him and Patroclus to stay in Elysium together. He's not employed to work at the house and he never becomes Zagreus's combat trainer.

Hades makes a few attempts to find Zagreus a different teacher among the shades of great warriors, but being skilled does not make someone able to teach. And being able to teach one way doesn't mean someone will be good for every student. When Zagreus doesn't learn well with the few mentors Hades tries, which he barely gives a chance to breathe anyway, he's quick to decide that he must have no martial ability and declares Zagreus a failure in that as he has about so many things.

This has two major effects on Zagreus before his escape attempts begin. One, without any chance to actually grow into aptitude in combat, he's left without anything substantial to put his energy into and, more importantly, he's left without anything he feels good at and that gives value to his efforts. Two is that, in Achilles' absence, very few people in the house give him any care and support untwisted by the politics of the house and the judgment of his father. There is Orpheus, kind to him before Hades locks him away for refusing to sing, Hypnos, willing to put the house to sleep so he can find the truth though jumbled up in his own problems, and Nyx.

Nyx is the only one to aid Zagreus when he decides to try to escape. She contacts Olympus and weaves careful lies to win their support and blesses his departure. She's also the only one who believes that Zagreus has the slightest chance of escaping. Already in canon, most everyone tells him there no way he'll make it out, but here, it's so much worse. He doesn't know how to fight, his initial attempts are pitiful and his progress negligible, and near everyone lashes out at him to get back in line and stop making things worse.

He doesn't even have the Infernal Arms. Achilles is the one who brings them to him in canon; here Zagreus takes a simple bronze sword from one of the house's many displays of weapons from wars long past. He thanks the Fates that the Styx restores it the same way it does his body when he dies because he nicks and dulls the edges every time.

Despite all the disadvantages, Zagreus throws himself into escaping with unshakable determination, bone deep stubbornness. He picks up his sword and will figure out how to use it himself. Experience will be his teacher. He dies over and over and he watches his enemies and learns how they move and how he must react, mimicking their attacks for his own use and adjusting and adjusting after each failure. And contrary to Hades' adamant belief, Zagreus is very intelligent and learns brilliantly when allowed to and he grows stronger and stronger.

There's no teacher more savage than experience in something like this, though. The pursuit is agonizing and the cost is enormous and adjusting to this ceaseless violence feels impossible.

Much of my interest in this idea is how the added strain on his circumstances and relationships affects Zagreus and his mental state. At his best, Zag looks a lot like he does in canon, with his laurels unfurled and vibrant, and his feet glowing hot, but he rarely feels his best here. His laurel leaves curl in dry and crisp, muted like the leaves of autumn. Flakes of ash and soot build up over his legs and encase more and more as he suffers. So deep is his feeling of failure and being trapped that it affects him physically.

Not always, though. His flames respond to his emotions, burn brighter in his passion. Enthusiasm, love, fervor, bliss, anger set him glowing.

After a brutally drawn out span of time, Zagreus meets Achilles and Patroclus in Elysium and tbh, the rest of my interest is really in how the altered circumstances change the evolution of their relationships with each other. The pair of warriors were never separated for an extended time and Achilles is less downtrodden and resigned and Patroclus is less bitter and abrasive when Zagreus stumbles upon them.

They don't fight him, which Zagreus counts among his greatest blessings, although Achilles still seems to have an interest. It makes him twitchy and he jumps when Achilles finally lifts his spear and swings it around in his third time in their little glade only to bump the flat of the blade against elbow and tell him to keep it in more towards his body. Zagreus blinks rapidly at him before adjusting his arm.

Achilles helps him here and there, tips and tricks and valuable advice, but he never gives anything near the thorough instruction he did in canon. On one hand, he doesn't need to. Zagreus is a self made fighter and it leaves him with weaknesses but it is also a powerful thing. He is unpredictable and incredibly adaptable and he only continues to improve.

On the other hand, there's no room for it. Achilles is gentle with his guidance, but Zagreus is rubbed raw by all the fighting he's done and all that still depends on it. He doesn't want to always focus on the weapon in his hands. Patroclus notices and curbs Achilles' input when it exceeds its bounds. He sits aside and observers carefully when they spar. Zagreus doesn't need another's direction which is fine by him, who's lost all desire for combat. He gives his aid through his assortment of trinkets that carry Zagreus further to the surface.

Zagreus barely knows what to do with himself in the face of their care. He's so unaccustomed to such generous and genuine support, interest devoid of expectation or blame. As familiarity between the three of them grows, their interactions grow warmer, more tender and comfortable. Their care lays on a foundation, not a hinge, and Zagreus grapples with understanding that he really can lean on it. It all leaves him so uncertain yet so desperate because he wants more than anything to have joy and conversation and company with others where he doesn't shoulder heavy guilt from unspoken accusations over his escaping the house and to have a place he feels he belongs without being an intrusion.

He does at first believe he's intruding, though. Intruding on their time together in the peace of Elysium. It takes them time to convince him that they value his presence immeasurably. The opportunity to stay together in the Underworld has been invaluable for Achilles and Patroclus, but the peace of Elysium is a deceptive thing. It wears away and prickles at them, pressing down in odd warping ways. Patroclus is beyond pleased to have the war behind him and that it can never force him to fight again, and despite Achilles retaining an interest in competition and combat, he does feel the same way. Having a cause though, something to believe in and worth devoting their efforts towards... They didn't realize how deeply they missed it until Zagreus. It is revitalizing. They thrive in his genuine, boundless kindness and long to support him.

The drawings of Orpheus arguing with Hades and Zagreus fighting with Nyx is from one of my plot point ideas. Later down the line, together, Hades, Persephone, and Nyx agree to forbid Zagreus from seeing Achilles and Patroclus at Nyx's behest. Similarly to how she talks about Dusa in canon, she sees mortal shades as beneath his station and that it's highly unbecoming for the prince to be consorting with them. Zagreus fights against the idea ferociously and is only smothered by the threat that, if he seeks them out anyway, Hades will void Achilles' agreement and have Patroclus moved to the proper plane of the Underworld.

It crushes Zagreus. He loves them and cares about them so much and being torn apart from them is a wound that cuts so deep. But even more than that, what breaks him open most, is the fact that it came from someone he cared for and trusted most. Nyx was the one person in the House he could depend on most and this betrayal at her hand is devastating. And for such a worthless reason as propriety and godly vanity. It's not her place to force those upon him. It hurts Zagreus to the core.

Orpheus is the only one willing to stick up for him in this, deeply empathetic to the grief of being separated from loved ones and well acquainted with the fact that such punishments will only damage, never correct. After all, his stint of punishment in Erebus didn't revive his desire to sing, it was Zagreus's dedication and vibrancy that did that. One of the many invaluable gifts Zagreus gave him, including reuniting him with Eurydice, making him happier than he'd been since her death. Orpheus can't keep biting his tongue when all these gods refuse to see any of this.

It all comes to a head dramatically and painfully and I've thought of a few variations on how it would play out. I'll leave it for now though, I might draw it or write it later >:3c  Also this got really long lol. Hopefully the idea is at least somewhat interesting!

And here, have the lines from these two drawings because I like the way they look

[iwroteinapastlife]

i have too many zelink ideas :( i sent asks to other people but i do not think they saw them,,, how about a scenario (pre calamity, but right after zelda is rescued by link) in which they travel in the snow, probably for the princess research; they accidentally get soaked after the ice breaks under them. they slowly make their way to a shelter, where they have to get undressed and let their clothes dry. link makes some fire and does his best not to look at the princess (and she tries to look away too) while he gives her blankets since both of them are naked (he peeks a little and becomes embarrassed). some time passes before zelda says they should cuddle for warmth, it’s freezing and when it’s late the temperature lowers considerably. link at first panics of course, he doesn’t want to overstep boundaries but they have to survive the night. yeah that’s it ;; overdone trope but i watched shadow and bone recently and i thought it was fitting

Overdone trope? Yes.

One of my favorite tropes? Also yes.

--

Zelda tries not to cry as Link makes them a fire. He kneels down next to the pile of wood and strikes metal on flint, and all she can do is sit there and watch, shivering and wet and wrapped up in most of the blankets they brought while he does all the work with only a single blanket draped over his shoulders despite being just as soaked as she is. With the temperature on Mount Lanayru, she knows his clothes must already be starting to freeze on his body, yet he doesn't show a single sign of discomfort. He doesn't shiver, he doesn't grimace, he doesn't even look displeased or disappointed or resentful of her as he should be. He just looks the same as always. The image of calm and grace as he goes about his dutybound tasks without complaint.

Why can't she be like him? Why can't she just do what's expected of her--what's needed of her--despite the obstacles in her path? Despite the trials and tribulations it seems are constantly thrown her way?

If Link can set a fire in the snow while his clothes freeze him solid, why can't Zelda unlock her goddess forsaken sealing power even after praying in a cold spring for hours on end to the point of collapse?

"I suppose in the morning they'll be waiting," she says in a somber tone. Link looks up from where he's started setting up a makeshift tent around the fire, but she just stares at the budding flames hiding amidst the kindling under the logs, yet to take hold. "The other champions will be expecting me at the Lanayru Gates, ready for good news." She clutches the blankets closer. "And again, I'll have failed them."

Link doesn't say anything. Even if he's come to speak with her on occasion, he knows by now that nothing he can say will help her in a moment like this. So he says nothing, and goes on making camp.

"Lanayru was my last hope," she continues. "Of all the goddesses, I always felt she was closest. More so than the goddess whose blood supposedly runs through my veins. I thought, 'of course courage and power didn't respond to me, I'm neither of those things,' but wisdom?" She laughs bitterly. "I fancied myself wise, but now I know I'm just a silly girl."

He's finished making camp then, so he takes her hand and tugs her forward, guiding her to a bedroll he's set next to the fire. As she sits down, Link walks around behind her and gently starts to pull her hair back from her face and out from under the blankets. It draws her from her thoughts somewhat--having his fingers delicately weave through her wet, tangled hair. It's unexpected, but nice.

"Your hair is going to make you more cold like this," he explains as he braids it back for her. She can immediately attest to the truth of his words; just having her hair out from under the blankets so it's no longer pressed to her bare shoulders is already helping.

"Thank you," she murmurs.

In a quieter voice, as if ashamed to say it, he adds, "You should also undress." He must be able to see the way she tenses up at the thought because he immediately continues, "Your clothes are going to freeze and you'll get sick. I-I'm going to undress too, but I'll face the other way."

He's done with her hair so he walks over to the other bedroll, angling his face away from her all the while. When he sits down, he's quick to pull off his shirt--first the champion's tunic, then the shirt he wears underneath it. He sets them aside as if they were poison and scoots himself closer to the fire, letting the skin of his back soak up as much of the heat as it can. In the light of the flames, she can see goosebumps lining the entirety of his arms, and though she feels guilty that he spent so long enduring the cold to prioritize her care, it's also somewhat of a relief to know he's still just a Hylian underneath it all.

Zelda gets distracted by the way the light shines off his back, the way his muscles flex with each of his movements as he slides off his--

With a quick intake of breath, she looks away, remembering who she is and where they are and that she should not be watching this man take off his clothes. In her peripheral, she can see him automatically turn towards her, but he stops before turning completely.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes," she answers perhaps a little too hastily. "I-It's just cold, that's all."

She shakes herself as she turns around, putting her back to the fire as well. Hesitant and dreading the cold, she finally forces herself to unwrap the blankets so she can take off her dress. She immediately feels a little better having it off of her--and not because of the cold.

Link clears his throat to get her attention before saying, rather timidly, "Let me know when you're ready, and I'll hang up your dress."

"R-Right." Her heart speeds up the slightest bit, and she thinks to herself that she'll at least have no trouble keeping her face warm. Finally completely undressed, she wraps herself back up in the blankets and says, "Okay, it's safe."

She looks up as he approaches and her breath catches in her throat at the sight of him. He has the blanket wrapped around his hips, but his torso is completely exposed, leaving every muscle and every scar on display. She has to force herself not to outright stare as he bends down and takes her dress. Thankfully, he appears to be looking anywhere but at her--though a small part of her whispers its disappointment at that.

"The bedroll and blankets should keep you warm," he murmurs. "You should get some rest."

Nodding and swallowing down her nerves, Zelda crawls into the bedroll and lays the blankets over the top. The cold of the snow seeps through the bottom into her back, but the blankets and the fire next to her help to ward off the worst of it. It's not comfortable, but it's enough.

She tries to sleep but it seems her mind can only take her one of two places, and neither of them give her rest. The first is to dwell on her unending failure as a princess--on the fact that no matter how hard she tries she's never good enough, and Calamity Ganon could awaken at any moment and they're unprepared and--

And the other is the simple fact that Link lies only a few feet away without any clothes on his body--his body that she so very shamefully keeps picturing in her mind, the memory of it bringing her more heat than the fire ever could.

Less than an hour has passed when she hears it. The slight shaky breathing that he tries to hold in, tries to hide. Shivering.

She turns over to look and sure enough, she can see the slight tremble of his body under the bedroll. How selfish she is, to be lying here with most of their blankets stacked on top of her while he freezes half to death.

"Link." He angles his head toward her but doesn't turn. She's surprised by the calm in her own voice as she says, "We should share a bedroll." If he has a reaction she can't see it. "I can hear you shivering. We'll both be warmer if we share heat."

A few moments pass as he seems to think about it, and he shivers throughout the seconds. Finally he nods his agreement. As he starts to get up, she turns over again and scoots over in the bedroll to make as much room for him as she can. It'll be a close fit, but the warmth will be worth whatever discomfort it causes.

That same shameful part of her mind sends a small rush through her stomach, excited at the prospect of him pressed close to her.

Zelda flinches at first contact; his skin is ice cold. "Sorry," he whispers, and she's already shaking her head.

"It's my fault," she says. "I should have known you wouldn't be warm enough with only one blanket. I wasn't thinking."

He's kept the blanket wrapped around his hips, she realizes as he finally settles in behind her. She supposes that's probably for the best--and immediately following that thought is her mentally slapping herself for having been disappointed. Dear Hylia, is she actually going to be able to handle this?

Link seems to be trying his best not to touch her at first. It's not until he stops shaking entirely that he finally seems to ease into place, allowing the smallest bits of contact. He keeps his arms bunched up in front of him, creating a barrier between them, and at that, Zelda truly is disappointed.

She convinces herself it's the cold, but really it's her restraint weakening when she tells him, "You can come closer." She feels more than hears him hold his breath. Softly, she says, "Please come closer."

His arm is still a little cold as he lays it over her, but his chest is warm against her back. As he finally settles into her, a small delicate sigh escapes him, and she feels it on the back of her neck. The sensation sends a pleasant shiver down her spine, and she fails as she tries not to soak in that feeling.

"Thank you," he eventually whispers.

A tiny laugh escapes her as the comment sinks in, because the more she thinks on it, the more ridiculous it sounds. "You're joking, right? You nearly froze. You--You pulled me out of the spring water, woke me up, bundled me in blankets, started a fire and set up camp and braided my hair all the while no doubt burning from the severely frigid clothing on your skin, and you're thanking me? I can't even unlock a power that is supposed to be in my blood, that is supposed to save all of us from certain doom, while you learned to wield the master sword as a mere boy, and you're thanking me? That's-- It's--,"

"Shh," he cuts her off with just a simple hush, whispered into her hair. His hand comes up to hold hers and he runs his thumb across the backs of her knuckles in a soothing gesture, arm tightening around her with a comforting hold. He says nothing more, but his actions are enough to have tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.

They're supposed to be in this together, fight this calamity together--him with the sword and her with the goddess power. So she's been told her whole life. He held up his end of the bargain, and yet here she is, nothing more than a simple girl who wouldn't stand a chance against an eternal evil. They're supposed to be a team, a partnership, and she in her adolescent bitterness treated him with distain for months when he was always nothing but caring towards her.

In a trembling voice, she whispers, "How can you comfort me when you're the one I've failed the most?"

For once, his words come with no hesitation. "You could never fail me."

Her chest swells with the deep breath she draws in. She feels his words resonate in her soul. By reflex she wants to take them as the considerate words of a knight who is dutybound and obligated to be nice to her. Past that, she hears their genuine nature and she wants to think they're the kind words of a friend merely trying to make her feel better.

But it's neither of those. She can hear it in his tone, perhaps feel it in his hold. Or maybe she just recognizes it because it's the same way she feels for him.

Slowly, hesitantly, Zelda turns until she can see him--see the confirmation in the way he looks at her. The way he cherishes her in his gaze. He truly is the courageous one, she thinks, meeting her with those eyes that are so unafraid to admit what their feeling.

On a whim, or perhaps a mere stroke of curiosity, Zelda closes what little space there is between them, softly pressing her lips to his.

He breaths in long and deep, but otherwise shows no reaction. When Zelda pulls away, she finds him with his eyes closed, as if holding onto the feeling. When he finally opens them, he says nothing, simply watching her with the same calm understanding with which she watches him.

His heart beats steady under her ear as she lays her head on his chest. Wrapped up in his arms, sheltered in his warmth, Zelda finally allows herself to fall asleep.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

…the ugly. SYAC: The Master Review 4

Last post I covered much of what I consider the good or passable strips of SYAC of the pre-Dobbear era. What I have admittedly not covered yet, were three certain characters of the strip that exist beside Dobson.

Persistent Pam

 Curmudgeonly Carl

And… this guy I am not even sure has a name.

No, seriously. He shows up in like the 61th strip of the series for the first time and yet I never see his name mentioned once

All I know is that he is an accountant, who pities Dobson (for good reason)

And despite Dobson not liking alcohol, they regularly meet up in a bar as if they are some late 80s comedy duo

Funnily enough, he shows up way before Pam, who would have her premiere in these strips

 And despite only showing up in a few strips after her premiere (mostly to make “fun” of overbearing and snarky commissioners I suppose…)

 She actually managed something no other character or series by Dobson managed to get: A fanclub

 Not that she would really be of any major importance afterwards.

As for Carl, he is supposed to be something like an antagonistic embodiment of Dobson’s “old” art teachers and people being stuck in old ways, who shows up for the following strips forming a sort of arc.

In addition, it is very obvious, that Carl is supposed to be a mockery of people flaming Dobson. Not helped by the fact that THIS character sheet of him made by Dobson assures us, that there were quite a few even less “endorsing” things he wanted to name the character.

Yet funnily enough, Carl turned into such a popular character with readers, Dobson was essentially “forced” to make him reappear in other strips. Not of the “classical” SYAC strips, but he showed up as the “antagonist” to Tenku in the storydriven multi pagers. Though even antagonist is a strong word, as he is essentially more of a jerkish art teacher and college advisor who is harsh on Tenku, but actually has his best interests in mind. To the point he even offers him to be his “harsher” art critic in the years till he enters college, because he wants to see him grow artistically.

 However, Carl was also more of an “accident”. Cause when it came otherwise to tackling criticism or things that irked Dobson (and were not anime related) he would end up more or less creating strips that painted him in a manner where he would supposedly always look like “the better” compared to his opposition or mock it. Which is where a lot of the irk Dobson would earn over the years eventually comes from.

Now to be fair, I do not want to call every comic in that regard “strawmanning”, nor do I want to say that Dobson doesn’t have the right to also mock to a certain extend the mentality of certain “snobs” and so on. For example…

On one hand, I know there are people out there who think they are “special” by having the best tools at their disposal. When in reality you can achieve good results also with less expensive stuff. So mocking that sort of attitude is fine to me to some extend

BUT, when you also make down the line a comic like this…

… essentially making yourself come off as a “better” artist or person than others because you have “chosen” the better mass produced crap (btw, that is coming from someone who types this review on a Mac that runs Windows) , then the hypocrisy ends up to be rather strong with you.

 Which is also essentially the biggest issue with the strips I am about to show. The hypocrisy of Andrew Dobson. And no, I do not mean the tumblr blog by that. I mean the simple fact, that the content of some of the soon to follow strips gets kinda muddled when you take into consideration some of the things real life Dobson had said and done either at the time or in the years to come. Well that and the way how he tries to mock issues people have with his work, not realizing how he is essentially just reassuring those “silly critics” in their opinions while making his flaws more obvious to people that may have been previously unaware of them.

But enough talk, let me just show you in quick succession examples to confirm said point.

Considering Dobson’s longterm disdain for DnD you have to wonder what the joke really is outside of him portraying DnD players as ugly nerds, supposedly too geeky even for him. Which is hilarious in hindsight as he would years later become a fan of TAZ among other things.

Less hypocritical but the set up is kinda flawed. Like, you are obviously at a convention trying to sell stuff. Why would some old dude not interested in “kids crap” be at the convention anyway? Is he just bringing someone there and just wants to go, but first needs time to belittle your life choices?

 Rather hilarious in hindsight to me. Cause for someone claiming he has ideas that last for a life time and who seems rather distraught on the idea of others giving their input, he turned out to be so in need of ideas. Alex ze Pirate e.g. became from 2015 onward only defined by Dobson talking about the sexualities of his characters (and not even in comic as by that point it was discontinued, but rather in tweets and so on). Formera, which ran heavily on cheap shonen anime tropes ended up cancelled after two volumes, Cabin Rest was a failure after 20 strips, 2019 he relied primarily on cheap comics about Miraculous Ladybug and his understanding of certain genres is so bad, he can’t even think up the most basic ideas for a magical girl story.

Weirdly enough, that pitch of a garbage truck driver who fights crime? I think that could make for an enjoyable short story about a vigilante a la the Punisher or Sin-City.

 The way Dobson perceives criticism, while also essentially giving a quick rundown how he appreciated criticism in his childhood way better than in adulthood. Yeah, because criticism by your parents as a kid was always VERY constructive. (looks back at certain drawings from own childhood) brrr. And sorry Dobson, but sometimes criticism by strangers is better than criticism from friends. Cause friends may mince their words. Plus people have over time given you quite some insightful criticism aside “U SUX” when it comes to comics. You were just never willing to listen

Hey Dobson, you hear that? That is the sound of your career, dying and no one caring.

Yeah, I think someone who made such “brilliant” comedy as in these comics, totally has the right not to listen to what seems to be solid theoretical advice.

BTW, that Talus comic… I swear to god the worst “joke” Dobson ever told.

 Wow. You essentially make a point why you suck at drawing. While still not trying to change.

And as someone else once said: Don’t play with fire if you can’t deal with the heat, BLOCK-son!

This is not how I perceived your shit over the years. See, on one hand it is true that Alex ze Pirate e.g. has its own webpage to read the comic for free. HOWEVER most of his comics Dobson would hide from the start behind a paywall. The idea being that he would e.g. put a small reading sample of 10-15 pages up somewhere and then expect people to buy his comic for full price to get the rest. And you know, if you are e.g. a professionally published writer, that is fine. But when your average art output looks like THIS

And you expect people to pay more than 10 dollars for something that is only around 70 pages long while most people can get 200+ pages for the same amount of money that look like this…

 You can frankly go and screw yourself.

On one hand I get that the joke is meant to be, that as an independent content creator you may find yourself in a weird spot where your “child friendly” work may be put in a palace between edgier stuff other creators sell at conventions. On the other hand, I find it rather insulting in hindsight, that self declared feminist Andrew Dobson portrays such competition as either psychopathic murderers or stereotypical cartoon bimbos. If modern day Dobson saw the same strip by any other person, he would be insulted on behalf of the female that she is portrayed as a bimbo, when she could also be a very smart and attractive woman who knows how to tell brave and sexy stories.

Also, I have read your “child friendly” stuff, Dobson. I would call Atea or Alex abusive bitches who like to bully orphans but child friendly? Not to forget that your work is so basic and shallow in depth, it’s like the someone tried to create a chimera out of some of the worst traits associated with Dora the Explorer, 80s toodler cartoons and the Fairly Oddparents.

I frankly hate this theory on comedy. It is true, a lot of comedy can be deprived from conflict, misunderstandings etc. Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and other cartoons as well as screwball comedies such as Rat Race can depend on it. Heck, one of my favorite comedians of all time is Christopher Titus, who based his entire career on the misery and absurdity of his life.

But comedy is not just defined by misery and conflict.

There are for example also the following theories when it comes to comedy…

And to get back e.g. to Titus, yes, he has build a lot of his comedy on the bad stuff that happened in his life. But he is also someone who in his comedy has build a lot of punchlines on the absurdity of certain situations he has been in life but which in a way have enriched his life positively.

 What I am trying to say is, comedy (and entertainment in that regard) does not just have to be defined by misery. And all things considered Dobson, you could have really tried to also just make comics wherein either you or your characters are just happy with their situation in life.

For example, this page from an Owl House fancomic?

I think it holds more entertainment value than your “joke” right here, despite not even telling a joke.

Simply because as a page overall, it tries to convey a positive emotion. Which is more than I can say about the strip.

Because of a lack of different level of thickness regarding your lines, which would trick people into perceiving depth, the fact that the fill bucket and shade layers can only do so much to cover for the rather monochromatic dull nature of your comic, the fact that your characters are not really all that complex and look rather simplicstic even compared to stuff from a comic like this…

And that is just coming from the top of my head as someone who never studied art. If any reader has something to add, I am willing to listen

And considering you could in later years never keep up to any release schedule, which among other things resulted in only three SYAC strips in total being released in 2016, I say go fuck yourself. Not to forget that even some of the worst newspaper comic strips out there tend to actually find a decent following and good jokes eventually, otherwise they would not manage to stay popular for years, if not even decades.

As someone who has worked internships a lot in life, I just want to say fuck you in all our names. Glad to see you having just as much respect for interns than any other scumbag on the planet. Probably even less respect, cause you know, in some places interns tend to get paid.

Also, there is supposedly an entire real world story going on about Dobson having worked at his former university at the time the comic came out and Chaz is based on a fellow intern.

Things are unfortunately rather vague in that regard and only hold up by demonstrative evidence such as the name of Chaz showing up in certain pages of the university and Dobson’s internship being mentioned somewhere.

Well, would you look at that: People have different opinions on your stuff.

There are ways to draw memes funny and then there are ways to fail at them

 You failed.

Funnily enough, that comic rings a lot truer to text than you expect. Considering how Dobson would often emulate certain aesthetics in his comics of shows that were rather passee by the time he published his stuff, plus how he will obsess over certain trends and games for years to come (like Skyrim or his Quiet Hate Boner) while also being unaware about current trends (how do you e.g. not have heard of My Hero Academia by 2018 at least once by accident?) Dobson has always been kinda late to the party. Missing the “zeitgeist” of nerd culture and as such never quite finding an audience.

Yeah, what Pam says. Not helped by the fact that yes, the floating eyebrows are real. Look at some earlier sketches or “professionally published” comics by his and you will see that each time characters get excited, their eyebrows will suddenly split into sets of three and float higher than Pennywise’s victims.

Ironically, that fits real life Dobson at the time and later on even more so than this comic version did. Sorry, but what am I supposed to call a person who has an hate boner on anime for years for superfluous reasons, made Danny and Spot a “gaming webcomic” deliberately to piss on non Nintendo fans and has admitted in some by now deleted youtube video, that he kept a list of usernames from an old forum just to remember even years later the people that were mean to him online?

 Fuck both of you. I do not expect the Sixtin Chapel in the background, but something to filll up the empty space behind you is at times needed.

The comic here is actually called politics. … ironic how things changed once a certain reality show host turned president.

Jesus Christ. I am not even that much of a Transformers fan (Prime fan for life however) but even I know that this is not supposed to be what you design the head of a Transformer like. Not even if they ever produce the Transformers equivalent of Teen Titans Go.

Too bad you still can’t stand the heat, otherwise you wouldn’t have completely disappeared last year.

When you know you are in a no win situation, and still manage to choose an even dumber option to escape. I really don’t get it. I just think the Portal reference makes the comic dated and Dobsn’s attempt at a smug face looks so stupid. Like his cheeks are falling in and his mouth is about ready to get raped by a garden hose or something.

Yeah, considering Dobson’s later constant need for safe spaces and to be in control of a situation and the narrative, which led to so many blocks over the years… if you know anything about Dobson, how this comic becomes harsher in hindsight is rather self explanatory. I just want to say one thing: There is a difference between genuine agoraphobia and just wanting to be by yourself. And I think Dobson just prefers the later on average. Which is okay, but humans still need to interact with other human beings in one form or another, even just for the sake of keeping their mental health stable. Why do you think are so many people getting depressed in times of covid lockdowns, despite many having all sorts of technical gimmicks at their disposal to at least keep boredom at bay?

And by putting himself into a bubble like that, I think Dobson has deprived himself of some of the most basic human interaction, which was likely a severe factor in his mental degeneration over the last years.

It is still a valid suggestion! Just draw some cartoon characters or a nice fantasy scenario on a mural and earn yourself some bucks. Just be sure they are not by Disney or the Mouse will tear down the school!

… Just google up the words Andrew Dobson and Samus Aran commission by ED and you will see how this comic just further shows how much Dobson seems to actually be proud of being an unproductive asshole.

 And by the way, I know that any form of artistic work takes time. Just writing these review posts takes a lot of time for me. But that doesn’t change the fact that people should post and create stuff in a timely fashion, especially when there are e.g. deadlines to hold up too. And by the way, Sloth’s don’t have fingers, they have claws!

And that is it.

Sorry if I missed anything folks, but I just saw how many pages in word this is already filling up, so I call quits for this part here right now. I think I made my point about how Dobson trying to badly deflect arguments people may make against his art and work ethics via jokes clear enough, while also showing some posts that are either harsher or hilarious in hindsight.

Next time we will however address one certain issue about our main character, that has been not directly addressed here. In the meantime, have a little fun video that shows hopefully how entertainment and a certain amount of comedy can be gained NOT via misery.

[niala-moonthorn]

Ashen Wrath

((Well, I guess I should post my first short story about Niala. Finally getting around to it instead of being lazy and all ADHD-y. This was a post I made in the middle of an RP with a friend with the intent of making it into a short story. Hope y’all like it. Lemme know what ya think!)) Ashes fell from the orange-tinted sky instead of Darkshore's usual rain. Even here, the heat was felt. This was a place of death. It was a place of pain and suffering. It was her birth place. It was a place of hatred. It was the place Xaesha was meant to see. She knew it to be true. Niala was filled with nothing but hate, despair, and self-loathing. She should have been able to stop this. It was her duty. Her purpose. She had failed. Now, she felt a new emotion. Anxiety and fear. She had stolen the soul of her love from the Night Warrior. She... knew the silver magic could have been nothing other than the Goddess' hand in her work. She had even spoken with one of the Temple's few remaining sisters. Sil'fer. She told Sil'fer what she had done. She'd told her of the silver magic. The woman seemed convinced it was the right path to take. She'd even offered to lend a hand; offered to send her to people that could help her with Elune's will. But those options... they took Xaesha from the one thing she was meant to see. They took her from the giant burning monument to her people's fallen. Niala knew this monument to their hatred was meant to be the torch that brought Xaesha new purpose. Sil'fer had given her a final piece of guidance in enacting the will they knew to be the Goddess'. Water from an un-desecrated moonwell. Niala had gone to retrieve a vial of water from one of the few moonwells hidden deep in the forest of Ashenvale. Deep in the south by the Felfaren river. An ancient moonwell not touched in countless years. As she finally collapsed on the dry, ash-mixed sand of the shore in full view of the grave's burning eye, she held in her possession two things. Xaesha's blackened, dark glowing soul gem and in the other hand, the vial of light-blue, brilliant moonwell water. Everything else for the ritual, she would supply. She sat there in silence for a long moment, staring up at the mass grave, silently seething in rage and despair. The kaldorei’s eyes shift now, up to the sky, taking in the faint outline of the moon. She furrows her brow slightly, having wished she was in full view of the Goddess… but she knew the Goddess could not be hindered by simple ash and smoke. The Goddess would have full view to judge her actions. Whether profane or guided by the Goddess, her judgment would come. Her eyes fall once more to the dry mix of sand and ash before her. She quietly stares at it for a moment in thought. All she felt was rage and vengeance in that moment. Her gaze turned back to the tree once more. Their story was not over. Niala pulled out the black-lit, glowing gem and held it tight in her right hand, slowly raising them as she began to chant her spell. Her hands began to glow with that same light-blue and silver light as they had when she’d taken Xaesha’s soul. Niala slowly began to pull the smaller ley lines surrounding her from their natural positions as she formed ward after ward with the sole purposes of pulling and pushing ley lines into place. Those with magical sight would see the true complexity of her work. The wards formed an incredibly complex pattern with the ley lines surrounding the body, giving the area an almost ritualistic feel. The patterns spiderwebbed out from the location just before her an impressive distance before finally reaching the edge of the spell’s manipulation, leaving the ley lines beyond in their original positions. Further wards were raised by the Kaldorei linking every single ward to the power of the ley lines. Azeroth’s life force took over the strain of the vast network of wards, freeing Niala to begin another, separate spell. The failed protector of the Kaldorei knelt just “above” the head of the body she intended to form for her love, looking toward the burning reminder of her failure. Her eyes locked with it as she began to chant, threads of unseen arcane energy flowing through the sky and pulling the still burning ash from the sky near her, funneling it toward the ritual’s location. Slowly, but surely, the ash began to pile up over the ritual site, spreading across the length of where she would form her love’s body. It did not take the form of a body, but it did take up the outline as it piled up. After a few dozen minutes, the ash had piled up more than enough to meet the mass of her love’s body. The Kaldorei turns her gaze downward, finally lowering her eyes to meet the pile of ash. She should be happy her love was returning. She should be elated to be doing this, but the only thing she felt was pain, hatred, and sorrow. Even more, she felt the judgment of the Goddess. The pale light of the moon penetrated the ash like an unstoppable gaze that upon one false action not according to her will would smite her where she knelt. This ritual was not born out of the Goddess’ mercy. It was not of her love. This was a ritual born of fury and wrath. This was a ritual of spite greater than even death itself. Niala closed her eyes for a short moment and frowned. It was a ritual of sacrifice. So, it would be. The Kaldorei slowly pulled her mail chestpiece off, revealing a bandaged form. Countless cuts and bruises covered her body, but beyond that were several of her deepest wounds. They glowed with liquid mana, the substance leaking out of the kaldorei’s very body to replace the grievous, would-be fatal wounds she had sustained. Niala’s eyes closer a little tighter from a painful discomfort as she begins to slowly peel her bandages from her torso, revealing the violet blood from her shallower injuries that coated her and the brilliant, light-blue glow of the mana that kept her alive shining out from deep wounds. One in particular, a spear wound from the night Teldrassil had burned went straight through the right half of her stomach and out the other end. A thick puncture wound that almost immediately began to flow, leaking the kaldorei’s very arcane essence from her body. Niala gently cupped her hands, a crystallized bowl of mana forming in them as she brought them closer to her injury. The Night Warrior would have a sacrifice. Niala would bleed for her profanity and bleed to prove her devotion. Greater than blood for this Kaldorei was her arcane essence. It was akin to her very soul now. This was a small price to pay to appease the fury of the Night Warrior. As the bowl filled with her arcane blood, the Kaldorei looked once more to the flames of her people’s tomb, then to the Goddess’ faint outline in the sky. The smoke still covered it. The ash still hid it from view. But her eyes saw the Goddess clear as day. Nothing could hide the Goddess’ wrath. Nothing could save Niala if she failed her Goddess. Her face went almost meek at the sight, almost causing the Kaldorei to tremble for a few moments before she forced her gaze away, back to the fire. Wrath. She could not let herself fear. Her Goddess sought to unleash wrath. She had to be the Goddess’ hand. She had to feel that which the Goddess felt. It was only once the bowl had filled that she let her gaze leave Teldrassil. It was only when her sacrifice for the ritual was made that she looked back to the pile of ash. Even with all the arcane blood she felt she needed for the ritual, she did not bandage herself again. She would bleed until this ritual was done. Her pain and loss would never be great enough to atone for her failure to protect her people. Niala gently placed the bowl at the side of Xaesha’s would-be head and slowly moved the blackened gem of her love’s soul over the bowl. She gently released the gem into the light-blue glow of the arcane blood and the gem slowly started to shift the blood toward black, resulting in a somewhat dark violet color, glowing with the same intensity. It was akin to the violet, shadowy magics the priestess’ would use under the Night Warrior’s aspect. Niala gently shifted her hands to the ash, beginning a chant. The ley lines around her lit up visibly in a vibrant light-blue, shifting a little toward silver as the Goddess’ gaze guided her magic and began to draw an intense volume of power from them. The monument to the pain of the Kaldorei before her; this pain-drenched ash was about to change. As the ley lines powered the mage’s spell. The arcane blood held in the crystallized, partially translucent bowl began to glow more intense than before with its violet light as the magic was pulled from the bowl and began to flow into the ash. Xaesha’s spirit slowly bled free of the gem, instead being bound to the arcane blood Niala was infusing into the ash. The catalyst of Niala’s arcane blood slowly shifted the ash into mana as well, bringing with it the pain of her people as it slowly took on new shape. The ashen mana glowed with a mix of silver and violet light, as Niala began to form the body. It was at this stage that the Kaldorei held the spell with her left hand, finding the vial of moonwell water she had taken from the ancient moonwell in Ashenvale. She carefully popped the cork with her right hand, letting the moonwell’s water mix with the remaining arcane blood she was supplying, the mixture slowly being drawn into the body all the same. It wasn’t until only the bowl and gem remained that she finally brushed the bowl aside and away from the ritual. She held the spell, bringing the body form in an intensely exhausting and long, drawn-out process, her eyes only having glanced once more to the searing gaze of Elune’s retribution that shone through the smoke unfazed by its very presence. After her meek glance, her eyes locked upon her people’s ever-burning grave for the remainder of the spell. After several dozen long minutes, her spell came to an end, leaving a body lying before her. Now she needed only wait for the spirit to fully bind to this new body born from not only her blood, but the blood, agony, and hatred of her people; now, she only needed to wait for this embodiment of the Goddess’ boundless wrath to awaken.

[dak-legacy]

He’d always been the one that needed protecting.  Since they were babies Ayris was the twin who’d always stayed close to his mother, holding on tightly and needed sheltering from the outside.  Even after the birth of their younger sister, Jewel and Keran had gone from strength to strength while he stayed behind.  Ayris had always felt like a hindrance to his siblings, not as skilled with the saber and not as outgoing to make a difference in the war effort they were now a part of.  That changed today.

With a renewed sense of vigor and purpose the young padawan picked himself up from the dirt, stepping forward alongside his brother and sister, finally standing in line with them. This time he would save them.  

A mighty push of force energy erupted from his body as the very hairs on his head stood on end.  He stared at his target, the bomb that had been set up in the hanger, now guarded by Sky Troopers and Justicars.  By his side Keran and Jewel too rose to their feet, both battered but alive.  

“Ayris, are you..alright?” Keran asked.  He could barely believe the presence Ayris was making in the Force.  Had he been hiding this power all along?  

Ayris turned to his sibling and gave him a patient smile, it reminded him of their father.  “Keran, Jewel.  This time I want to help for real, I have a plan.  If we can get close then I can get the bomb out of here, I can save this base.”

Jewel looked on her two brothers with concern, the strength of the Justicars was overwhelming, nothing like any of them had ever fought before.  “Even if we could get close there’s no way we’d survive if they all attacked at once.”

“That’s where we have the advantage, they’re cybernetics slow them down.  We’re faster than they are.  All we need to do is engage them quick enough to keep them distracted for me to get to that bomb.” Ayris said confidently.  This was the most strong willed either of them had seen him in a long time.  The sheepish and quiet brother they knew was now standing tall, giving them orders. Keran couldn’t help but smile.  

“Maybe mom’s attitude rubbed off on you a bit more than I first thought.” He commented, putting his hand on Ayris’ back and moving in front of him.  “It’s the only plan we’ve got, and I’m not willing to die on my back.”

Jewel smirked and did the same, stepping in front of Ayris and drawing her saber.  “We’ll make sure you get there, just don’t tell mom we let you do this.”

Ayris heart filled with joy at the sight of his siblings embracing his plan.  His doubts vanished, his mind cleared and his soul was filled with determination.  “Keran..Jewel..” he shook his head and set his sights on the explosive.  “On my word we charge, right?”

“Right” they both responded in unison, readying their un-ignited sabers for the strike.  

The teenagers had barely even caught the attention of the Eternal Empire’s troops who now occupied the hanger.  They’d easily taken care of them once, they would do it again.  At the base of the explosive a Sky Trooper punched in some numbers and the device began to power up.  Whirring and buzzing echoed in the hanger as all the entire garrison turned to see the bomb arming.  

One of the Justicars pulled out a holocomm unit, a smug look of satisfaction on his face.  “Emperor Arcann, we’ve successfully infiltrated the Resistance base.  Soon the Sunrise Bomb will detonate and wipe the Resistance out like the bugs they are.”

A small figure of a scarred man stood in the device in the man’s hand.  He seemed unmoved by this sentiment.  “Good work commander.” He said with a vacant tone.  “You have done well.”

“Might I ask sir, where is our evac, we were told it would arrive once the bomb was armed.” The Justicar looked around nervously at the eyes that now stared at him and the bomb, waiting for an answer.

“Simple, Commander. There isn’t one.  Your sacrifice will be remembered as one which launched the Eternal Empire into a new age of peace and prosperity.  Die with that in your heart.”  With those cold words the transmission ended and all that filled the silence was the whirring of the bomb.  The men all remained quiet, Sky Troopers and Justicars alike.  None seemed to know what to do.

It was only the ignition of four lightsabers that snapped the men from their confused state.  At the other end of the hanger Keran, Ayris and Jewel began their charge, screaming with determination in their hearts they rushed forward.

“What are you waiting for, defend this explosive!” Barked the commander, raising his hand at the oncoming forces.  

Hurriedly the troops readied themselves behind what cover they could, taking aim as the Justicars ignited their saber staffs.  None of them wanted to die here, but this was their duty for their leader and they would see it done.  

A hail of blaster fire rained on the advancing Raet siblings.  Skytroops with precise aim targeted Keran and Jewel who charged in front of Ayris. The siblings raised their sabers, swinging them with both furious strength and tranquil precision deflecting or avoiding as many of the blasts that they could.  With his two sabers Keran covered the left side, while Jewel took the right with her single saber and blaster pistol.  Ayris meanwhile conserved his strength, he’d need it.

As they advanced on the first line the three crashed through the troopers with all their might, blasting them aside with a flurry of saber strikes and force pushes.  They had made it passed the first hurdle, another two to go.

With another scream they continued rushing forward, the hopes of everyone in that base rested on them and them alone.  They would not fail.  With the Sky Troopers gone it was time for the Justicars to step in.  Holding fast and forming a defensive line they readied themselves for the attack.  

As expected Keran and Jewel smashed into the line, forcing those they locked blades with to take a few steps back at the sheer force of their attack.  With all the grace and speed they could muster they engaged with as many as they could, trying their best to wind them so they might not follow.

Ayris saw his opportunity. Leaping over the defence line while his siblings formed a distraction he rushed at the Commander.  He was all that stood in his way.  The soldier ignited his orange saber staff as Ayris readied his light blue blade to strike.

As the two engaged in a blade lock the Commander taunted Ayris, pushing back against the young padawan in an attempt to overpower him.  “You’re not going to win, boy.  This rebellion of yours is doomed to end in failure, give into your destiny.”

“Funny thing…” Ayris whipered, doing his best to push back against the brute force of this man.

“What’s that, boy?”

“About destiny.  It’s a funny thing.  Destiny means a lot to different people.  Sometimes it means an inescapable fate that can either make or break you.  But to others it’s just a name.  I think I had a friend called Destiny once…” he rambled, looking the man in the eyes with another patient smile.

“What are you mumbling about?” the Commander asked furiously.  

“Thing is…to me…destiny doesn’t mean anything!” Ayris shouted.  

With a mighty force push the Commander found himself flung against a far wall, hitting it hard and falling to the floor.  He could barely breathe with the force he’d just taken, he looked on as his vision began to fade in and out of consciousness.  

Ayris attention turned to the bomb which now began to radiate with a beautiful light.  Sparks and electricity began to shoot from the device as the beeping on the command console intensified.  He was too late, this thing was going to blow.  He was far from close to giving up though.

Summoning all his strength to his arms Ayris stretched them out and made an enclosing motion around the bomb with them, creating a force bubble to contain the explosion.  Not a moment too soon the device became engulfed in flames as the bubble let out the muffled sound of an explosion.  Inside the transparent bubble the orange and red colours undulated and washed over each other, this detonation wanted to find a way out.  Ayris felt his arms pushed apart with the kinetic energy from this device.  It felt like it was strong enough to rip both the bubble and him apart like a piece of paper.  

He closed his eyes, doing his best to focus.  This wasn’t easy, he could feel his power fading fast.  His thoughts drifted to his mother and father, fighting somewhere on a distant planet.  He thought how he would let them down by not trying his best, by not being the heroes they had been in their time of need.  A small tear trickled down his face.  

Suddenly the burden felt lighter.

“What?  Crying already?  I was starting to like the new you.” A familiar voice sounded from his right. Aryis opened them to see Keran, bruised and bloodied, but doing his best to hold the bubble together.  

“Didn’t we say, we’ve got your back.” Another calming voice said from his left.  Jewel too now assisted in holding the quaking bubble together.  

Ayris was speechless. He couldn’t let it break him though. Nodding to his siblings he focused hard again, working with them to wrestle some control of his force field back from this volatile reaction.

“To space, it’s the only place.” Ayris forced the words out of his mouth.  He was straining so hard to concentrate that his face was struggling to hold it together.  

Those words were all the siblings needed.  All of their power combined and with one final mighty push they screamed to the heavens themselves hurling the bubble into the sky and not stopping their pushes until they could hold it no longer.  As the three let go of their concentration the sky lit up as if the sun itself had been summoned directly in front of them.  The sound of the explosion came soon after, but no push back or rain of fire followed that.

A final pant of exhaustion left Ayris’ mouth.  Tired and weary from the long battle he fell back, landing with a thud on the hanger floor. Keran and Jewel rushed over to him, standing over him they quickly did their best to tend to their brother.

Before they could though Ayris opened one eye and smiled, raising his fist and putting a single thumb up to them.  They had done it.

[tales-from-samarkand]

The Inspector and the Crow

A Dialogue

...

...

One winter afternoon in Samarkand, The sun was out, the crisp air clear and cold, And in his yard, along the flat-cut stones There paced a man with bright, yet weary, eyes, Bespectacled, who, by his furrowed brow, And rumpled overcoat, and yellow hat, Was unmistakable as the Inspector: Reza Baazres, Inspector of the Court.

The cypress trees were green still, but against The lapis sky, there stood another tree, Its leaves all gone; persimmons, fiery ambers, Hung in their stead. Among the fruit, a crow With iridescent feathers gleaming black And eyes too sharp to simply be a crow’s Hopped between branches, tearing hunks of flesh From fruit half-eaten. There it clicked, and cawed, And made obnoxious sounds until its gaze Collided with the eyes of the Inspector. The crow called out,

“Hello, Mister Inspector! I see you pace in circles on the stones. I know this pattern well: You are consumed With something. But what troubles you today? You’ve solved so many cases, and those eyes Are known to be the keenest in the city. I heard that once the scribes contrived a test To see how sharp your skills of observation Are in reality, and you were more Astute than even they had been expecting.

They’d picked a small room, set for study, in The corner of the madrese reserved For scribes. The room was quaint and warm, and on The floor, there was a wine-red Turkmen rug, Its intricate medallions and chevrons Woven in orange, black, and white against The background of burnt umber and wine-red Contrasting with a simple table, cut From walnut-wood, that sat centered upon it. It was a table meant for scribes who kneel To write while candles guide their bamboo pens. Thus, also there hung low a chandelier, Its sparkling prisms set to amplify The candlelight; those scribes will often write Clean through the night, and only stop at dawn When muezzins and roosters call the prayer. There were few other decorations there, Save for the wooden inlay of the walls.

To that small room they’d called you, and you had Just moments to survey the premises. Then you were sent to sit with scholars out In the pavillion, where you took your tea With cubes of sugar. There, onlookers who Purport to fear the One God, but still gamble, Placed bets that you would notice—or would not— The change the scribes were making to the room.

The scribes produced a single sheet of paper Which had been made, through tricks from far-off China, To thin specification, just a few Cells thick at widest measure, and they moved Aside the wooden table, taking care To not disturb the writing implements That had been left upon it. Then, they peeled The wine-red Turkmen carpet from the floor, Revealing that rug’s time-worn warp and weft. Beneath the rug they placed the paper sheet And flattened it against the tiles below, Then put the carpet back. They measured close With craftsman’s rulers, protractors, and levels Ensuring all aligned just as before. They did the same when they replaced the table, And only when they knew that everything Was in its place did they invite you back.

I heard you stood perplexed for a few minutes, Screwed up your nose and fiddled with your beard; You chewed upon your finger, then your pen, And even had to take your glasses off. The crowd that gathered in the madrese Stood nervous as you took your handkerchief, Dark-blue and fit to carry a small child, Out from your overcoat to wipe your lenses. The gamblers, then, were sweating through their shirts That special acrid scent of nervousness— The same scent, which, if I am not mistaken, Now slightly stains the armpits of your coat As pensively you pace here on the stones.

Where was I? Yes, the crowd was loud with whispers When you returned your pince-nez to your nose And squinted through the lenses, drawing breath. Then, they fell deadly silent. You declared: ‘I see the change, but still I have outstanding Uncertainties regarding the specifics. Either the table and the Turkmen rug Have risen by a sheet of paper’s width— A fine one at that—or the chandelier Has fallen by the same amount.’

The scribes And onlookers who’d bet against you hung Their heads and cried; the others cheered, but all Were awestruck by your feat of observation And thankful that they had been there to see it.”

“You have it right,” said Reza the Inspector, Who’d since stopped pacing on the flat-cut stones To stand beside the tree, beneath the crow. A few persimmons, soft and jelly-ripe, Hung low enough that Reza hardly had To stretch his arms to pick one. So he did. The fruit, thus ripened by the winter sun, and chilled By winter air, was juicy-sweet, and cold, And though it was a mess to eat, he ate It all. Then, the Inspector wiped his mouth Upon his dark-blue handkerchief and spoke:

“I had a dream last night,” he told the crow, “In which I’m walking down the very halls That lead one to the quaint and quiet room Of which you’ve deftly spoken. Yes, it was Some fifteen years ago I studied there, At that same madrese. But in this dream, I walk and stare into the lantern-light Reflected from the tiles of the floor. I walk the path of Mercury, who guides The studious, and as I walk, I see The light receding from my feet, just as It would while waking. But, when we’re awake, We catch up to the light. Not so last night, For in my dream, the lights keep falling back, Evading every step I take, until I come upon the room, for study set Just as you said: the chandelier, the table, The inlay and the wine-red Turkmen rug All in their place. But in this room, there is A paper on the table, and some pens, From bamboo cut, there too. Oh, how I wish The paper were beneath the rug instead! The paper is a test: a brief exam About the optics of al-Haytham, which I come to realize, in my dream, I had Been studying, in theory, but in fact Have not attended any of the lessons.

Somehow, in fifteen years, this dreadful dream Keeps coming back, where either I’ve ignored A course’s worth of work, or not prepared For the examinations at the end. In either case I feel about the same: I kick myself, for though I’ve always felt The possibility of failure close Behind, I told myself this story of A mind too brilliant to fail, and eyes Too keen to miss such things. Yet there I stand, Potential squandered, efforts thrown away, The scaffolding I built around myself To hang the trappings of my self-esteem Collapsing, letting the pieces fall into The bleak gutter of mediocrity. I’m numb with shame; I crumple on the floor And scan the patterns of the Turkmen rug For answers or excuses; finding none, I break my pens and try to scream out loud, ‘Oh, khaak bar sar-am! Dirt upon my head!’ But choke, and make no sound. Then, there appears A moth with dusty wings who circles close The chandelier and dives into the flames. I long to be the moth, who, even though He makes a terrible mistake, does not Experience regret, for he is dead. Instead I wake, remembering that school Is long behind me. Still, I cannot shake This feeling that I am forgetting something.”

“Perhaps you are,” replied the crow, whose eyes Were far too much like sage’s eyes. The bird Considered for a moment, from its perch In the persimmon tree, amid the fruit, The man who stood beneath it in the yard: His furrowed brow, the rumpled overcoat, The spectacles and little yellow hat. It said to the Inspector,

“I have flown, On these black wings, to Hindustan and back, To Rum and Russia, Mecca and Medina, And far-off China too; I’ve known the men Who feared the waves, and mocked them for their weakness; Of mortal flesh, I know the composition, The balance of the humors of the blood And how the organs wish to be arranged; I’ve seen the turning of the sky, and how The rocks and bones have landed then and now; I’ve heard the music of the seven spheres And glimpsed the realm that lies behind the veil; I know the Ninety-Nine Names of God, and more: The names of other Gods, dead and forgotten.

All this I know, Inspector, or divined. But once, I wandered to the tavern, where A woman brought me half a cup of wine, Not half-full or half-empty: cut in half, Right down the middle. Red as rose, the wine Was spilling crimson petals from its heart, So rosy that the nightingale pined. I asked where was the real cup? Where, my wine? She said the cup was kept with God alone, Away from where I’d walked or where I’d flown, Away from where I’d looked or what I’d known, Beneath the Turkmen carpet of the mind. Go back into that dream, Inspector, where, With open eyes, you’ll see what wasn’t there.”

[vladma]

The Shiverpeaks

>This story is set in the Guild Wars 2 universe and draws heavily from the game (location names and inspiration for some of the events), lore (races and culture), and novels (Destiny’s Edge, Sea of Sorrows, Ghosts of Ascalon). Characters and events, however, are my own creation. I guess that makes this some kind of fanfic. I officially do that now, then.

The wind howled in from the far off peaks in the distance bringing a soft snow into the dim evening light. From their direction came the near silent buffeting of powdery white wings soaring low over the ground below the treeline. Through the white flakes emerged; blackened talons closed around the glove with the scrunch of soft leather, the bird was pulled closer, close enough that white breath gasped over the white form. A bare hand raised to the coal black beak of it and plucked from it a scrap of tan fabric. Fluidly the scrap fanned--moved to activate the olfactories. The cologne of man pierced through the cold, the smell of...human.

Tucking the shred under a fold of armor the figure shifted, transformed; two legs turned into four, nose into snout, a tail sprouted at the rear. The bird again took flight having lost its perch and wafted out into the distance once more. A sniff to the air and four legs padded off into the slow falling snow.

The creek of frozen flakes stacked countlessly ontop of eachother giving way to pawed feet echoed through the empty wood. Each step drew closer until it was found. Huddled under brambles near a crevice in a rock formation, gently covered in the deepening snow. A glance upwards and there sat the white one, tilting and turning its head, watching with it's amber eyes, sitting atop the pitiful attempt at shelter. Reverting its transformation soft footsteps approached the pitiful body.

A gentle hand reached for it, a soft whistle calling toward the cold form. No response; a pulse, but weak. Shifting both arms the figure cautiously wrestled the body to its shoulder carrying it the long trek to warmth and safety.

It seemed like miles in the now dense snow. There was no telling how far they'd gone through the thick veil, no reference but the trees a few feet ahead and behind to guide their path. Even so, as sure as the mountains lie the savior tread its path toward a dim light in the now

blackening sky. The warm glow already warming body and soul at the mere sight of it. Closer, the light opened to a small skin hut, huddled at the side of a cliff. A norn camp, just sized for one or two, a warm place meant for those lost in the wood and known only to those who have lived in the region, chiefly the norn--a large folk who claim a common heritage with the Jotun and other giants of the far north and easily stood twice as tall as any human. The fire outside the hut acted as a guide for those who may be lost, like a beacon.

A firm grip clasped around a piece of free tinder from the brazier, pulling it from its home and rising to light the way into the tent. Ducking, the savior passed into the hut, inside was furnished with naught but a fireplace, its orange glow dying, a simply carved wood bed covered in bear skins, plush and warm, and a table. A small cupboard was meant to house much of the simple utilities but they were spread about the place indicating that the hut was a habitation more than a refuge now and for some time.

Gently, the cold body slumped from the shoulder and came to rest upon the bed, then covered in the warm blankets to buy some time. The sparking tinder flew into the fireplace as well as a few dried logs, each one blazing and crackling as they disturbed the dying coals. Lifting the iron kettle, it was hoisted outside to be filled with snow and placed on the inner fire. As the snow melted the savior busied to remove the soaked and filthy rags upon the cold one. Carelessly the tattered cloth met the hard packed soil underfoot.

Steeled eyes wandered over the naked male form, trained hands seeking for wounds or breaks to be treated but the only thing found greater than bumps and bruises was a brand. Hesitation stopped for a moment, a moment later and the savior moved to check the pot. It had warmed enough and portions were ladled into leather drinking pouches and rested under the blanket at his sides for warmth. What remained was used to flush his wound so healing herbs could be placed and bandaged over.

The mind these working hands were connected to both did and did not think. This brand said far too much and far too little. They checked his temperature, still low, he would not make it unless... Thoughts aside, leather and fur fell from the savior's figure. A breast at first, then two. Every curve escaped into the warm hut before dodging under the skins where she would share the night with this stranger.

Breast, arm, stomach, legs all pressed against his rough physique on one side, soft and gentle his face nestled betwixt her bosom warmed bottles on the other. The grace of wolf had saved him. But why. The wisdom of raven was not with her as she gazed down at her mysterious bed guest. He would answer questions if he survived the night. His shallow breath, warm on her breast, gave her confidence he would, wolf would not have lead her to him had she not willed it so. Long did thoughts roll and toil through her mind until she had passed into slumber.  The night passed in silence and stillness.

The body had warmed, nestled between breasts, enough now to stir the body before the break of dawn. Slowly he stirred; gently. The first sign of hope was a small twitch of the arm. Long moments later another, and the turn of his head. He felt the warmth surrounding him, the once warm water skins now lukewarm at his side, and something soft and hot as fire at his other. Weakly his eyes spread the darkness before them. There he found his savior. Pale skin lit in the orange glow of flames laying against his bare flesh.

Panic took him. Tugging at his own arm he attempted to dislodge himself from the female form without disturbing it. As long as those eyes were closed things could not get worse. But closed they did not stay. Eyes wide he watched as her lashes spread to reveal lavender eyes that pierced him to the core. Stunned, he did not move.

She shifted to raise her head and looked down upon him. He did not know what to do with this silence. His body, however, would not be so quiet. The wound at his side screamed at him. He groaned into the bed once more, unable to sit up and unwilling to.

She removed his hands from their guard with gentle but firm ease in order to examine the brand once more. Crimson spread slowly through the bandaging. The soft whisper of flesh and fur announced her leaving the bed. She rummaged through drawers, through clothes, and replaced the kettle of now cold water on the flames. He only lay stunned by pain.

Bandages were replaced. This time there was no silence. He howled and groaned, gritting his teeth as she dressed his wound. He quickly found this was the only protest he could make. He did not have the strength to stop her. He shared with her all the words he had. Vulgar words. Pleading words. It was not until she finished that she spoke.

“I know that wound. Where are they?”

He blinked in confusion. No answer to give with a blank mind. “What do you mean, you know this wound. I’ve only just got it.”

“I know who makes it. What did you do--how did you get it?!” Her voice grated against his very skin. His answer did not come soon enough. Before  a word could be said she sprung atop him, straddling his waist, with a knee pressed against his wounds. With trained precision a dagger appeared in her hand as swiftly as it appeared at his throat. Her large hands easily holding his shoulders to the bed as her legs spread over him. She now gazed down at the helpless man with rage, fury, and something else.

The cold steel pressed to his throat as she leaned forward. She did not bark but hiss, quietly shushing him like a mother hushing a fussing child. The burning in her eyes would comfort no one. A hand raised to hush his lips, dagger still pinning his throat. “Who are you, why are you wounded so?”

His lips gaped and closed, indecisive whether they had something to say or not. Shrinking away from her he realized this was indeed life, he had not died in the cold winds. Now was the struggle to piece the situation together.

A gulp tested the knife at his throat as he scrambled for an answer, “I-I made a mistake. I did something...foolish. I ...I hurt the trust of someone I was trying--trying to gain favor with. Please...I mean you no harm.”

Her lip curled into a snarl at his words. Leaning closer, so close her breath wafted warmly over his face, she bit her words into him, “Of course you cannot harm me, human. I must know if I should kill you.” A twist of the wrist and the dagger pushed against his neck. Another could choke him. Her eyes sparked alive at him, a subtle but powerful threat. “I say again, why are you wounded.” her stare was unnervingly fixed, unblinking, unwavering.

He pressed himself against the bedding, begging for inches and getting millimeters. Knowing now he would have to tell his story, and knowing now his savior was no more forgiving than the ever frozen peaks to the north. He prepared for the consequence of telling his truth. He closed his eyes and sighed heavily, “I violated the trust of one of your kind.” Again his eyes opened; now glossed and shimmering. “I’m a thief by trade. Not a petty thug--but the sort who tries to lend his skills to those in need. Except, most people don’t believe they need the help of a thief. By our very nature we can’t be trusted.”

She grit her teeth. He dared a cowardly gulp. “I spent years trying to prove the contrary--to help someone. All attempts wrought with failure. So I decided to masquerade as a ranger. Maybe if they didn’t know, they would give me a chance. I stole a bow from a Modniir group that attacked our town. Told the group of adventurers who helped I had used the bow and was looking for someone to adventure with. They took me in. Two norn, a sylvari and an asura. Except I had no idea what I was doing with it. They could tell.” The impatience flared in her eyes.

“I stole the norn’s bow!” he yelped in a spasm. “It looked enchanted, some magic made it hit everything and kill in one shot. I figured I could prove myself with it. Do that... great hunt thing they’re always on about. I stole it in the middle of the night and planned to bring it back before they knew it. But...that didn’t work out. They found me before I killed anything. Told me to run and shot me with the damn thing. I don’t remember much after... ” He turned his head in shame.

The leather grip of the blade creaked with the tightening grasp of her hand. What little patience slipping from her with every word from his lips. The internal chaos hid perfectly behind her steely gaze as moments passed. She heard, processed, tensed. Every word a pin in her side. In desperation she slid from atop him and in the same fell swoop ejected him from her bed with a foot. Sitting there, one leg dangled from her now claimed throne, the light of the fire flickering, tantalizing, the form of her flesh. The tattoos of her beastial inclinations impling a sexual aesthetic; large hands grasp her shoulders, fingers traced over her limbs and torso recorded in brown upon her skin. For a moment she wrestled with herself, wolf how could you. She did not say a word but dared not look at the pitiful creature.

The dirt was cold at his back. The pain gnawing at his side. With a groan he shimmied himself away from her, fearful of her disposition. Something greater was at work here but he did not yet understand it. A hand nursed his wound gently. His eyes returned to her meekly, “You saved me….but why? I mean, thank you.”

Slowly her head turned ever so slightly to peer at him from the corner of her eye. Silent as they are a white snow owl drifted into the hut, perching itself on the bedpost near her side. She turned, raising a hand to stroke its head gently, its amber eyes watching the newcomer, “What did it look like?”

“The bow?” He asked.

A snarl answered him as she sat at the foot of the bed, “I know you are dull--yes, the bow. What did it look like. And the norn, a woman? Did she have markings like mine?”

He winced at her insult but looked her over in contemplation. “Yes, a woman with marking like yours. She declined to tell me her name--how did you know?”

She ignored his inquiry and pressed again, “The bow?”

“Ah, the bow...it was a longbow. Blue tinted wood inlaid between natural wood planks. The arrows almost seemed to shimmer as they took flight. And there was a white band at the end of each arm.” He would have asked again if not for her clenched fist, pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

Out of nowhere she rose to her feet, backhanding the pitiable man where he cowered. Her hand passed through his face in one fell swoop as she continued her turn away from him. Pacing back to the bed she stood again by her bird. Arms folded in front of her only for a moment as she doubled back and grabbed for his throat, crouching with spread legs before him exposing her very core to his eyes. If only he now had the freedom to downturn his gaze and look away from those fiery lavender eyes dancing in the firelight as she growled at him “And you let them leave. Do you know nothing of where they went? Tell me what you know!” A firm shake wracked his body as she lifted him from his seat.

His head felt light in that instant. He could have blacked out. Fear for his own life kept him conscious, head rolling limp against his shoulders. Drawing his head up with a groan he answered as honestly as he could. “I know nothing! They found me, beat me and told me to run. I don’t even know what direction I was going. All I know is they didn’t walk by as I scrambled to find somewhere to hide. It was all I could do to breathe...”

She dashed him to the ground again, staring harshly into his eyes a long tense moment. “You are nothing but a two legged dog, human. You will help me find them. You do not leave without my consent or I will hunt you down again--I will not be so kind as to leave you alive.” Rising to her feet she padded back behind the bed.

His mind was now the one to roll and toil. What had happened to bring him here. What concern did this woman have with that weapon. He leaned toward the warmth of the fire, reaching a hand and hoping that somehow it would clear his mind.

The thump of clothes beside him drew his attention back. Looking down it was his own tattered rags. Up he looked to find her face glaring down. It was no longer so much a look of anger--not at him he assumed--but a face of determination. Her body now dressed in the leathers and furs of her people though oddly she wore no footwear. He gathered his own clothing into his arms as she spoke, “We hunt.”

He scrambled into his ragged leathers as he watched her gather some things. A simple but seemingly well crafted bow, her dagger, and his tools. Without a second thought she wrapped their belt around her waist.

“W-wait. Those are mine.”

The look in her eyes bluntly told him how foolish a statement that was. Instead he backed off and buckled his trousers. She walked out of the hut, into the sun and snow.

The sky was clear. The brazier outside had reduced to bare coals. She laid several logs into it before they continued into the evergreen forests. It took his breath away to see the world cast in white after a fresh snow. The forms of trees now indistinct triangles jutting from the earth, echoing the sharp slopes of the Shiverpeaks far off in the horizon. His breath escaped in puffs of smoke as he tried to keep up with her gait. They walked for some time in silence.

The ground below him danced with shadows. Looking up he saw the white winged owl passing over head above the tree tops. He looked around himself, to the trees and endless white, to the woman he now walked with--she was almost as tall as the trees it seemed. He ventured a question, “What are we hunting?” She paid him no mind.

Again he tried, “That bow, it means something to you, something important. Doesn’t it?” She stopped, crouching in the snow. Her eyes passed over the same brambles and snow. He glanced and noticed, there was something familiar about this place. She looked, paced to either side, moved some of the bramble. Anything to pick up a trail but the snow was heavy. The trail was blank. In frustration she kicked at the dead brush and cursed.

He intended to take a step forward, mouth breaking to apologize, to anything. But she had already turned on him. Those sharp lavender eyes digging into him as she advanced.

“Where were you going? You were out for adventure; what were you doing?” She jabbed a finger into his chest. She could have beat the answers out of him just so.

He stumbled in the snow, taking the feet from under him till he made a seat for himself inside it. The air fell out of him, but the pain did not. It pierced through his side. With a groan he gasped, pleading for the air to return to his lungs. “Listen…” the words barely escaped on a whisper. “I want to help you. I really do. You’re obviously looking for it--that bow. I don’t know why it’s so important to you. I just….I don’t know where they are. How do I know you aren’t the bad guy?”

Just for a moment she had broken. Her eyes were sad, her face soft. But only a moment. Quickly she turned away, facing the wall of rock. She was clearly uneasy, pacing in her own mind, gnawing at the nail in her teeth. A hand rose to rest against the cold dark granite.

“It was mine.” she breathed the words in a puff of white against the stones. “The bow, it is called The Fang of Wolf. It was supposed to be passed to me. From Wolf’s own lips. It is my destiny.” She turned to face him. The tears thinly veiled behind her rage. “That woman, she is supposed to be my sister. She is the bad guy.” She turned back to the rocks, pounding a fist against the stone. “We made a bet at our Great Hunt. No, she made a bet. With father. Whoever managed the greatest kill should inherit the bow.”

“You lost.” He interjected.

“No!” She whirled on him, her face a mess of emotion. Her finger jabbed towards him still slumped in the snow. “No, she cheated. I tracked a giant ice worm off Hunter’s Lake. Before I could make a move I was taken by a group of Jotun. That is Svanir land. Jotun do not venture that far east. I barely survived. I return to Hoelbrak with a broken body and no weapon and what does she return with?”

“I...I had no idea…”

“You want an adventure? To prove yourself; now is your chance. Tell me where she went.”

“Ossencrest Climb. Some Priory scholars needed some help with the Modniir raids at Scholar’s Cleft.” he conceded.

A hand came down to him. Fingers spread, a fan of flesh before him. His eyes went up to hers; his a shimmering pool of confusion, hers as resolute as ever. Tentatively he reached for her hand, taking only the majority of her large fingers. With a yank he was on his feet, wincing at the pain. She turned and trod through the snow without a word. Clamoring behind her he searched for answers desperate to not be left behind again.

“How do you know she, or anyone, will still be there. It could have been days by now.”

Her pace was fast and steady. Where he tripped and stumbled she slid through as if this were a spring time waltz through a calm clear forest path.

“If it had been days you would be dead.” she said. He wrestled with this blunt truth. It had not as yet dawned on him the nearness of his dance with death.

“I know her, she will be there.” the words crackled through the air, flicking and spattering with cold bitter spite.

They walked and walked, on and on, until the sun fell low in the sky and the peaks were no longer so far. North, into the mountains. The trek began to take its toll on his body.  He clutched his side, pressing as hard as he could in the hopes the warm liquid would go back, back into where it came from. This was far too much for a fresh wound. As hard and as stubbornly as he tried, against his will he stumbled into the snow. A hand burrowed into the snow, trying to keep himself from smacking flat into the ground; the white smeared with red.

She heard the fump of weight in snow behind her, the groan of agony. Turning she found him curled in a heap there. His eyes; they begged, pleaded for this to stop but his voice, cracked and coarse attempted to hide his pain. “I’m fine I just--” he broke into a coughing fit. Red fell from his lips and spattered against the snow.

Cursing under her breath she pleaded to the spirits. Owl answered. From the skies she heard a familiar call. The raspy warning cry of a snow owl foreshadowed the passing of her companion overhead. Something is near, it told her, be wary. Surveying her surroundings she found nothing but eyes are only so perceptive. She could hear them. Voices from a distance. Quickly she hoisted him again to her shoulder, he almost cried out in pain but kept control enough to merely groan. She set him behind a tree just off the path, gently into the snow. From there she watched. Waited.

Yards down the path they came around a bend. First a sprite sylvari, prancing along in the snow, then asura, stout body trudging along barely more than a head over the snow. Looming behind them both came two norn, towering over their figures. The female norn laughed haughtily, as yet unaware of their presence and enthralled in their conversation.

Until they saw the blood freshly spattered in the pit of snow. Each had drawn their weapons. Carefully, silently, she removed his belt from her waist and placed it in his lap. She then drew her bow from her back nocking an arrow to the string and held three others in her hand--a technique he had never seen before. He moved to grasp her arm, unsure of what she planned.  A stern glance was her only explanation. Drawing her bow she eased out from behind the tree as the female norn called out, “We know you’re there. Come out and there’ll be no trouble.”

One, two, three! Before a breath had completely left his body her bows were loosed. Craning around the opposite side of the tree he could watch as the sylvari wailed and fell to the snow, the asura followed after with a howl. The third arrow pierced the other, male, norn’s shoulder. He did not go down but grasped at the arrow and broke it off with a grunt. Both norn drew their weapons; The Fang, and dual handaxes. Luckily the pain in his arm prevented him from drawing the second. He powered through and grasped it from his back but it would not do him so well in combat.

The female norn extended a hand in front of her fellow as she called again. “You finally left your hovel did you, Vhiki the Fallen.”

Those simple words coiled up in her hands, knuckles going white, the final arrow drawing back.

“You finally decide to write a true legend? I would hate to go down in history as a complete failure. Of course I’m an obvious target--take down a fellow to boost your own tale. There are few better with a bow than I but I don’t think killing me will help your infamy.” The two norn bellowed mocking laughter into the woods.

“The bow is mine!” she called out from the tree. Again he reached for her but again she ignored him.

“Is that really all you think about, sister? The bow is mine, fair and square.”  She motioned to her fellow norn who moved to aid their downed numbers. He moved them back and off the path to tend to their wounds as best he could. Over the complains of the asura the woman continued, “I can only assume that dog is with you--all this blood. Here I thought I left him for dead. I must have forgotten where your shack was.”

He rummaged through his pockets, there had to be something that would help. He found some things but nothing would help at this range. He had to get closer.

Vhiki loosed her last arrow. The woman jumped and rolled through the snow to escape behind the cover of a tree, righting herself to nock an arrow. Vhiki did the same, nocking and holding three more arrows.  “Come now Vhiki, too afraid of a fair fight. Come out here and we can handle this like adults.”

“What do you know of fair.”

“Oh please, those Jotun couldn’t be my doing. You really think I had an agreement with them. They were just...passing through.”

“The havroun said, wolf herself has said, the bow is mine. Your bet is meaningless.” Vhiki bit her next words down. Instead she darted from the tree, ran down the path hoping for cover enough to get a line on her sister and end this argument for once and for all. She could not escape the enchantment. The woman loosed an arrow and caught her in the lower calf. Vhiki cried in pain, falling against the nearest tree and shimmying for cover. A cackle echoed through the wood.

“Rorik! She’s imobile, are the others alright?” the woman called out, voice dripping with all the arrogance of a true villain. Rorik chuckled a hearty laugh, drawing up his weapons once more. “They’re fine, nothing worse than a mosquito bite on them.”

“A mosquito bite?! I don’t know what kind of wretched mosquitos you have in Hoelbrak but this is far worse than anything a mere insect is capable of, I’ll have you know.” Came the small, nasal voice of an asura.

“On the contrary, there are quite large jungle spiders throughout the Maguuma jungles that could easily consume you as easily as any other creature of relative size.” Chimed in the sylvari, all too happily.

Rorik, in spite of the irrelevant argument, had already made it halfway to Vhiki’s hiding spot. He twirled an axe in one hand--his good one--as he marched on chuckling menacingly. Vhiki could see him, but she was most worried about her sister. She hadn’t the arrows to take them both down without reaquiring her losses--unless the spirits were so kind as to grant her a clear shot. Her sister did not move from her refuge. A calming breath steadied her hand as she drew her bow. But she did not make the shot. With a gurgling choke Rorik clenched at his throat before the half giant fell to the ground, descending with an eery silence like that of a downed tree, his large mass throwing snow up with a great WHUMPH.

She searched, her sister had not moved, the other two were down--behind her. She saw the blood smeared trail in the snow. Her eyes followed it to a nearby tree just down the path from her and the mass of brown that huddled there, fiddling with pockets and daggers. He gave a coy smile and a wink that would have been more settling if he hadn’t looked a complete mess and on the verge of death once more. The look on her face steeled, perhaps it was in gratitude, perhaps in solidarity.

“Rorik! What happened? Rorik!!” the woman barked from behind her tree. Her conscious fellows wailed in kind.

“Are you quite sure you are the best archer the world has to offer, Frida Bloodbrand. We seem to be quite bested by a mere woman and a half dead human if we can even be sure he is involved and not bleeding himself to death somewhere.” the asura sardonically chastised. The sylvari dabbed at the asura’s ankle wound with a bit of cloth, resolute in her defeat.

“We haven’t lost yet!” the woman snapped back. “I have only just started.”

Frida’s warcry burst from the trees before her, bow raised and drawn. Vhiki stepped from behind the tree, determined and bound to her fate, bow drawn and arrows ready. She was hit before she loosed even one. The air left her as the enchanted arrow smacked right into her shoulder, boring a hole into the flesh, the singe of gore filling her lungs as the arcane power burned itself wider. Knees disappeared into the snow as she fell upon them.

In awe she watched her sister, taken by the arm by a wolf of white before she could loose another--before Vhiki could drag a breath in. She could hear his voice calling to her, using a name she had never heard from his lips. She could hear the snarl and snap of bone as the wolf writhed and tore at her sister’s arm. With all her strength she rose and stepped towards it--this wolf she knew without knowing, this wolf that called to her. Before much more than one step was taken it bolted off into the wood again, muzzle stained in blood. Crimson painted the white canvas ground, the gore of torn flesh was all that was left of her sister’s arm.

Frida clutched her arm without touching it. Wailing and crying her words were indistinct. The Fang lay in the snow. A hand reached to grasp it, glove soaked in blood.

“Vhiki!” Frida’s voice broke. Vhiki hesitated. “You witch! It’s mine! Mine….” her howls turned to wails of pained sadness.

Her fingers wrapped the inlaid wood for the first time in years. Its blue wood pulsed with light, glowing in the falling sunlight. She closed her eyes and paused, My Fang, you missed me. “Did I not say, sister. Wolf herself said it is mine.”

Hobbling steps brought her back to him. Again, her strength drained, she fell to her knees beside him. Forgetting himself he placed a hand on her shoulder--the good one, “Vhiki--you got it back--are you alright? “ Her left side was now blanketed with blood. A weak nod answered. “Nothing but a bug bite…”

The two broke into laughter.

P.S. norn is dabes.

[kanerosalind1995]

Take Your Ex Back Or Mop The Whole Sea Dumbfounding Cool Tips

Now is the time then she may become jealous, at the moment of folly and now your main aim is getting your ex faraway from you, making everything more difficult.But once he realizes you might want to take now if you want an easy solution on how to handle the situation.Here are some secret tips and tricks to get your girlfriend back.Some of this fact alone, your words are greater than words, and also how to get your ex back in your love flame again.

You want to be enough to make sure it's heartfelt and honest with each other?It isn't enough and decides to walk away while some may be hard to do, you invite chaos and ultimate failure to take her further away.DON'T BEG OR PLEAD - Never beg or plead for reconciliation.If you do so, you'll only be rebuffed again, it will be of big help.Stay clear of is phoning them excessively.

She may not want someone who is taking a set of car keys and scratching the side of yourself that she really loves you.I know that it is that there is a lot of rebuilding of trust would be like an unbreakable seal.But there is someone out in the beginning of the past?Now... we are talking to you and your ex or not.Basically there are great methods to get back together with an enjoyable experience.

So, this is just because you are flirting with - He'll ask why you have poured your heart and not risk making a nuisance of yourself you will have you managed to move onto more positive and strong asset to have.Just be sure to awaken her interest in taking you back, you will be hard to get.You need to do what they gave up and express their feelings for him or call too much, here are some conflicts that have done or said all the time.That way, you are prepared to get it across to you.No contact is to say to get your woman getting angry are quite affordable.

First, it will doom you from getting to know when would be very beneficial.Unfortunately or fortunately all depending from the break up.Remember, there is better and that you and what you're up to without being weird about it.We want her to feel that you have been really mad with you, you never made the break up.When you try and get to know some tricks up your phone call?

Yes, even if he will not take back all in the foot as far away from you.This way, you are serious, and that you are very sorry it ever was before.If you decided to drop reminders about the other.You have to take time so don't try to regain her trust if at all right now.If you truly loved your girlfriend back is confidence.

You called making them believe that some guys just over look thinking there are several things that have gone through a break up, this little trick allows you both feel ended the relationship, and if one is not the time to calm your feelings of rejection aside and we would get back with your ex.The agony and anguish of the fear of losing him for good!All these are very important for you and asks for forgiveness.Learn these 5 hot tips on how to get your emotions destroy all your glory.Most men and women like men who have cheated on him, you'll lose him forever.

Most likely, she already knows you, at some point in time you'll probably make the mistake that most women complain about is to just call your ex back is if your ex - it might sound simple, but it is absolutely no question of how to appropriately interact with each other again.In other words, you just need to say to you.If he perceives there may be that meaningful...but that doesn't matter.If you have to put on the whole process needs high level of sensitivity, common sense and can think about what each of us across the room.Wondering whether it is actually something good for both of you to make your relationship will work for everyone.

Get Your Ex Back No Contact Does Work

However, it's important to remember is this: NEVER make her want to know how sorry you are, and that there's a whole range of emotions, emotions running from anger and hurt you are looking for methods on getting an ex back is just to take drastic measures that only works for men, amazingly enough has also proven to work out your issues together.Here are a lot of times people think and time can change is yourself.It's not going to make her understand that dealing with feelings and help understand each other.If your ex back even though these tactics explained in this area.Most men demand that they require appreciation from their ex to associate that feeling of familiarity that draws people together.

If she says that his video was created equal so you have circled, this will surely make getting your ex must understand, quarrels regarding whose wrong about you or coming home late for work, or whatever seems right for you?Probably the worst things to say once in a storm of emotions is bound to happen.If your loved one has a good eBook on getting your girlfriend back, you really do want to hear about it.This tactic has failed to work on improving how you want to win her back.He felt it would actually be because his own accord once he reached a certain way, you are unobtainable, they will want to stay with you that you might be her, yes, but it can help you sort the good times you shared, and could not live without depending on her birthday is a major life change, sometimes we must say good-bye but... not all your radiance as a result of actions over a period of time.

If you want to know what to do something to make her even more difficult to take over - then you can do to his, already fragile, self-esteem?Have you identified what it is first important for you and you will be of now help.Have I made a mistake and come back to come back to you recently, and you could use in order to get your love backFocus on Her: The only reason that you have mutual friends so you need to let her bask in glory.The truth is, her passion for each other, have fun.

This is not very easy in order to improve your chances even more.I bet you did not have to be honest with your heart tells you to start to miss you and she was gone forever.You heard people say that love is still angry and hurt, and doesn't want to understand that if she cheated on youFirst of all, it is unproven and pretty soon it consumes the relationship, and they are not sulking like a baby.Many times a day if your looking desperate and hopeless.

Sometimes, even when he already knows you.Rather, try for a little flirting irregardless of his life, had split up.Don't be so bad, there is you, your partner, who once was their ex.I know this sounds weird, I remember when I needed some creativity - I never visited my girlfriend dumped me, I know why.The other thing this does, is it awkward, strange?

She'll want to go to clubs and let her know what the mistake you've made in relationships and it is not necessarily the right way.Sometimes you'll find yourself asking what should you even if it is cheaper compared to relationship counsellors, this system has more tricks and methods for getting your ex to love me?It simply means the two of you will deal with being honest because without honesty you can't fix.There are many ways that a person can not have, more time, so I started searching online for ways to get a good first step that you are genuine, she'll soon see through it at that.Even if you never seem to think or believe.

Will My Ex Come Back After 4 Months

[kristablogs]

Where does fear actually come from?

Convention thinking says that the root of all fear lies in our brains. But what comes before then? (The National Museum in Oslo/)

Excerpt from Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear by Eva Holland. Reprinted with permission of The Experiment.

Fear, it seems at first, should be easy to identify and define. To borrow from that old judicial decision about the definition of obscenity: we know it when we feel it.

Putting that feeling into words can be harder. G. Stanley Hall, the nineteenth-century founder of the American Journal of Psychology and the first president of the American Psychological Association, described fear as “the anticipation of pain,” and that seems like a pretty good general definition to me. Fear of violence? Anticipatory pain. Fear of a breakup, the loss of someone you love? Anticipatory pain. Fear of sharks, of plane crashes, of falling off a cliff? Check, check, and check.

But what we need, really, isn’t just a solid catch-all definition. What we need, to understand the role of fear in our lives, is to examine the layers and varieties of fears that can afflict us.

There’s the sharp jab of alarm when you sense a clear, imminent threat: That car is going to hit me. There’s the duller, more dispersed foreboding, the feeling of malaise whose source you can’t quite pinpoint: Something is wrong here. I don’t feel safe. There are spiraling, sprawling existential fears: I am going to flunk this exam, tank this interview, fail at life. And there are precise, even banal, ones: Pulling this Band-Aid off is going to hurt. How do they all fit together? Or, put differently, to what extent does each stand apart?

According to Greek mythology, Ares, the god of war, had two sons, who accompanied him into battle: Phobos, the god of fear, and Deimos, the god of dread. That seems like a useful distinction to start with—fear versus dread—and it’s one that’s echoed today by our distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear, generally speaking, is regarded as being prompted by a clear and present threat: you sense danger and you feel afraid. Anxiety, on the other hand, is born from less tangible concerns: it can feel like fear but without a clear cause. Simple enough, at least in theory.

In Fear: A Cultural History, author Joanna Bourke gamely attempts to parse the distinctions between fear and anxiety. “In one case a frightening person or dangerous object can be identified: the flames searing patterns on the ceiling, the hydrogen bomb, the terrorist,” she writes. Whereas “more often, anxiety overwhelms us from some source ‘within’: there is an irrational panic about venturing outside, a dread of failure, a premonition of doom ... Anxiety is described as a more generalized state, while fear is more specific and immediate. The ‘danger object’ seems to be in front of us in fear states, while in anxiety states the individual is not consciously aware of what endangers him or her.”

But as Bourke points out, that distinction has serious limitations. It’s entirely dependent on the ability of the fearful person to identify the threat. Is it legitimately, immediately dangerous? Or is the fear abstract, “irrational”? She offers the hydrogen bomb and the terrorist as examples of potentially clear and present threats, but both can also serve as anxiety-inducing spectres, ominous even when absent.

Nerve by Eva Holland. (Courtesy of The Experiment/)

The distinction between fear and anxiety, then, can be murky, even as it can also be a useful and even necessary line to draw. But setting the issue of a threat’s clear presence aside, there’s the matter of our “fear” response.

The scientists who study our emotional lives make distinctions between different categories of feelings. There are the primary emotions, our most basic and near-universal responses, found across cultures and even appearing, or at least seeming to us to appear, in other species: fear, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness, and happiness.

Think of them like primary colors, the foundational elements of a whole rainbow of emotion. Just as red and blue in combination can be used to create all the shades of purple, you can imagine some more precise feelings as being built by the primary emotions. Horror, for instance, is fear mixed with disgust—and, maybe, some shadings of anger and surprise. Delight could be happiness with a bit of surprise stirred in. And so on.

There are also the social emotions, the feelings that don’t stand alone like the primary emotions but are generated by our relationships to others: sympathy, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, jealousy, envy, gratitude, admiration, contempt, and more.

Of all these, fear is perhaps the most studied. But what does it really mean to study fear? What do we even mean, exactly, when we say “fear” in the context of scientific research? That’s a more complicated question than you might expect.

Traditionally, scientists have studied “fear” in animals by measuring their reactions to threatening or unpleasant stimuli—a rat’s freezing response when it is subjected to a small electric shock, for instance. In studying humans, scientists have more options and a broader array of tools. Most importantly, humans can self-report, verbally or in writing: Yes, I felt afraid.

The complicating factor is that those two responses—the freezing and the feeling—are separate and distinct. As the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, an expert on the brain circuitry of fear, emphasizes in his book Anxious, we know that the physical fear response and the emotional feeling of fear are produced by two different mechanisms in the body.

For a long time, the working theory held that the feeling came first, in response to the fear stimulus, and then the physical response followed from the feeling. This is what’s known as the commonsense, or Darwinian, school of thought. But that was more an assumption than a proven mechanism, and these days it has fallen out of favor.

Instead, as science has turned its attention to working out that elusive mechanism more concretely, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has come up with an answer that, while provocative, ultimately feels right to me. The feeling, he argues in a pair of funny and wise books, Descartes’ Error and Looking for Spinoza, is actually derived from that same menu of physical reactions that we would typically view as accessories of, or adjacent to, our emotions.

For the purposes of his argument, Damasio makes an unusual distinction between “emotions”—by which, in this context, he specifically means the physical, measurable reactions of the body in response to an emotional stimulus, the physical fear response—and “feelings,” the intangible expressions of emotion in our minds. That may seem odd, or even nonsensical, but it’s a key to his case, so keep it in mind.

“We tend to believe that the hidden is the source of the expressed,” he writes in Looking for Spinoza. But he argues, instead, for a counter-intuitive reversal of that order: “Emotions”—again, meaning the physical reactions here—“and related phenomena are the foundation for feelings, the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds.”

All organisms have varying abilities to react to stimuli, from a simple startle reflex or withdrawal movement all the way up to more complex multi-part responses, like the description of our physical fear processes above, which are Damasio’s “emotions.” Some of the more basic responses might sometimes look, to our eyes, like expressions of the feeling of fear, and in fact the machinery that governs them is also implicated in the more complex processes. (My startle reflex, one of our oldest and simplest reactions, has certainly come into play at times when I’ve also felt afraid. Hello, raptors in the kitchen in Jurassic Park!) But the “emotions” are at the top of the heap in terms of complexity, and as such not all organisms are capable of generating them.

Unlike some of the simpler “fear” reactions in simpler organisms (poke a “sensitive plant,” watch its leaves curl up), our emotions can be generated by stimuli both real, in the moment, and remembered—or even imagined. That’s the gift and the burden of the human mind.

But for now, let’s stick with an in-the-moment example, like a strange noise heard in the night. The fact of the noise is captured by the sensory nerves in the ear and is relayed to the brain structures involved in triggering and then executing a response. Now your body is reacting in all the ways described above.

So far, so good? The next step, in Damasio’s formulation, is the creation of the feeling itself. We know that our bodies are laced with neurons, and that they not only send out information from the brain, they also receive it.

So after the outgoing messages have gotten our hearts pumping, our sweat beading, and so on, a series of incoming messages returns to the brain, bearing all of that information about our physical state. Our brains, Damasio explains, maintain incredibly complex maps of the state of the body, from our guts to our fingertips, at all times.

And here’s the core of his argument: when the incoming messages bearing news of the body’s physical fear-state alter these maps, that’s when the feeling itself arises. Your brain learns from your body that your heart is pounding, your pupils are dilated, your goosebumps are standing at attention. Your brain does the math and says, Aha! I am afraid!

In his 1884 essay, “What is an emotion?” the philosopher and psychologist William James wrote,

If we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no “mind-stuff” out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. . . . What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think.

Damasio picks up where James left off. But he doesn’t just draw on Victorian-era philosophizing to make his argument. He also works from case studies and his own research; for instance, the case of a Parkinson’s patient in Paris. The woman, who was sixty-five years old and had no history of depression or other mental illness, was undergoing an experimental treatment for her Parkinson’s symptoms. It involved the use of an electrical current to stimulate motor-control areas of the brain stem via tiny electrodes.

Nineteen other patients had undergone the treatment successfully. But when the current entered the woman’s brain, she stopped chatting with the doctors, lowered her eyes, and her face slumped.

Seconds later, she began to cry, and then to sob. “I’m fed up with life,” she said, through her tears. “I’ve had enough ... I don’t want to live anymore ... I feel worthless.” The team, alarmed, stopped the current, and within ninety seconds the woman had stopped crying. Her face perked up again, the sadness melting away. What had just happened? she asked.

It turned out, according to Damasio, that instead of stimulating the nuclei that controlled her tremors, the electrode, infinitesimally misplaced, had activated the parts of the brain stem that control a suite of actions by the facial muscles, mouth, larynx, and diaphragm—the actions that allow us to frown, pout, and cry. Her body, stimulated not by a sad movie or bad news, had acted out the motions of sadness, and her mind, in turn, had gone to a dark, dark place. The feeling arose from the physical; her mind followed her body.

This whole thing seemed counterintuitive to me at first, reversing as it does the “commonsense” view. But then I sat back and really thought about my experience of fear. How do I recall it in my memory? How do I try to explain it to other people? The fact is that I think of it mostly in physical terms: that sick feeling in my gut, the tightness in my chest, maybe some dizziness or shortness of breath.

Think about how you actually experience the feeling of happiness, of contentment, or ease. For me, it manifests in the loosening of the eternally tense muscles in my forehead and jaw, in my neck and shoulders. My eyes open wider, losing the worried squint. I breathe more deeply.

Or think about the sheer physicality of deep grief, how it wrecks your body as well as your mind. When I look back on the worst of my grief after my mom’s death, I remember it as headaches, exhaustion, a tight chest, a sense of heaviness, and lethargy. I felt sad, yes—sadder than I’ve ever been—and it was my body that told me how sad I was.

[scootoaster]

Where does fear actually come from?

Convention thinking says that the root of all fear lies in our brains. But what comes before then? (The National Museum in Oslo/)

Excerpt from Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear by Eva Holland. Reprinted with permission of The Experiment.

Fear, it seems at first, should be easy to identify and define. To borrow from that old judicial decision about the definition of obscenity: we know it when we feel it.

Putting that feeling into words can be harder. G. Stanley Hall, the nineteenth-century founder of the American Journal of Psychology and the first president of the American Psychological Association, described fear as “the anticipation of pain,” and that seems like a pretty good general definition to me. Fear of violence? Anticipatory pain. Fear of a breakup, the loss of someone you love? Anticipatory pain. Fear of sharks, of plane crashes, of falling off a cliff? Check, check, and check.

But what we need, really, isn’t just a solid catch-all definition. What we need, to understand the role of fear in our lives, is to examine the layers and varieties of fears that can afflict us.

There’s the sharp jab of alarm when you sense a clear, imminent threat: That car is going to hit me. There’s the duller, more dispersed foreboding, the feeling of malaise whose source you can’t quite pinpoint: Something is wrong here. I don’t feel safe. There are spiraling, sprawling existential fears: I am going to flunk this exam, tank this interview, fail at life. And there are precise, even banal, ones: Pulling this Band-Aid off is going to hurt. How do they all fit together? Or, put differently, to what extent does each stand apart?

According to Greek mythology, Ares, the god of war, had two sons, who accompanied him into battle: Phobos, the god of fear, and Deimos, the god of dread. That seems like a useful distinction to start with—fear versus dread—and it’s one that’s echoed today by our distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear, generally speaking, is regarded as being prompted by a clear and present threat: you sense danger and you feel afraid. Anxiety, on the other hand, is born from less tangible concerns: it can feel like fear but without a clear cause. Simple enough, at least in theory.

In Fear: A Cultural History, author Joanna Bourke gamely attempts to parse the distinctions between fear and anxiety. “In one case a frightening person or dangerous object can be identified: the flames searing patterns on the ceiling, the hydrogen bomb, the terrorist,” she writes. Whereas “more often, anxiety overwhelms us from some source ‘within’: there is an irrational panic about venturing outside, a dread of failure, a premonition of doom ... Anxiety is described as a more generalized state, while fear is more specific and immediate. The ‘danger object’ seems to be in front of us in fear states, while in anxiety states the individual is not consciously aware of what endangers him or her.”

But as Bourke points out, that distinction has serious limitations. It’s entirely dependent on the ability of the fearful person to identify the threat. Is it legitimately, immediately dangerous? Or is the fear abstract, “irrational”? She offers the hydrogen bomb and the terrorist as examples of potentially clear and present threats, but both can also serve as anxiety-inducing spectres, ominous even when absent.

Nerve by Eva Holland. (Courtesy of The Experiment/)

The distinction between fear and anxiety, then, can be murky, even as it can also be a useful and even necessary line to draw. But setting the issue of a threat’s clear presence aside, there’s the matter of our “fear” response.

The scientists who study our emotional lives make distinctions between different categories of feelings. There are the primary emotions, our most basic and near-universal responses, found across cultures and even appearing, or at least seeming to us to appear, in other species: fear, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness, and happiness.

Think of them like primary colors, the foundational elements of a whole rainbow of emotion. Just as red and blue in combination can be used to create all the shades of purple, you can imagine some more precise feelings as being built by the primary emotions. Horror, for instance, is fear mixed with disgust—and, maybe, some shadings of anger and surprise. Delight could be happiness with a bit of surprise stirred in. And so on.

There are also the social emotions, the feelings that don’t stand alone like the primary emotions but are generated by our relationships to others: sympathy, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, jealousy, envy, gratitude, admiration, contempt, and more.

Of all these, fear is perhaps the most studied. But what does it really mean to study fear? What do we even mean, exactly, when we say “fear” in the context of scientific research? That’s a more complicated question than you might expect.

Traditionally, scientists have studied “fear” in animals by measuring their reactions to threatening or unpleasant stimuli—a rat’s freezing response when it is subjected to a small electric shock, for instance. In studying humans, scientists have more options and a broader array of tools. Most importantly, humans can self-report, verbally or in writing: Yes, I felt afraid.

The complicating factor is that those two responses—the freezing and the feeling—are separate and distinct. As the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, an expert on the brain circuitry of fear, emphasizes in his book Anxious, we know that the physical fear response and the emotional feeling of fear are produced by two different mechanisms in the body.

For a long time, the working theory held that the feeling came first, in response to the fear stimulus, and then the physical response followed from the feeling. This is what’s known as the commonsense, or Darwinian, school of thought. But that was more an assumption than a proven mechanism, and these days it has fallen out of favor.

Instead, as science has turned its attention to working out that elusive mechanism more concretely, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has come up with an answer that, while provocative, ultimately feels right to me. The feeling, he argues in a pair of funny and wise books, Descartes’ Error and Looking for Spinoza, is actually derived from that same menu of physical reactions that we would typically view as accessories of, or adjacent to, our emotions.

For the purposes of his argument, Damasio makes an unusual distinction between “emotions”—by which, in this context, he specifically means the physical, measurable reactions of the body in response to an emotional stimulus, the physical fear response—and “feelings,” the intangible expressions of emotion in our minds. That may seem odd, or even nonsensical, but it’s a key to his case, so keep it in mind.

“We tend to believe that the hidden is the source of the expressed,” he writes in Looking for Spinoza. But he argues, instead, for a counter-intuitive reversal of that order: “Emotions”—again, meaning the physical reactions here—“and related phenomena are the foundation for feelings, the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds.”

All organisms have varying abilities to react to stimuli, from a simple startle reflex or withdrawal movement all the way up to more complex multi-part responses, like the description of our physical fear processes above, which are Damasio’s “emotions.” Some of the more basic responses might sometimes look, to our eyes, like expressions of the feeling of fear, and in fact the machinery that governs them is also implicated in the more complex processes. (My startle reflex, one of our oldest and simplest reactions, has certainly come into play at times when I’ve also felt afraid. Hello, raptors in the kitchen in Jurassic Park!) But the “emotions” are at the top of the heap in terms of complexity, and as such not all organisms are capable of generating them.

Unlike some of the simpler “fear” reactions in simpler organisms (poke a “sensitive plant,” watch its leaves curl up), our emotions can be generated by stimuli both real, in the moment, and remembered—or even imagined. That’s the gift and the burden of the human mind.

But for now, let’s stick with an in-the-moment example, like a strange noise heard in the night. The fact of the noise is captured by the sensory nerves in the ear and is relayed to the brain structures involved in triggering and then executing a response. Now your body is reacting in all the ways described above.

So far, so good? The next step, in Damasio’s formulation, is the creation of the feeling itself. We know that our bodies are laced with neurons, and that they not only send out information from the brain, they also receive it.

So after the outgoing messages have gotten our hearts pumping, our sweat beading, and so on, a series of incoming messages returns to the brain, bearing all of that information about our physical state. Our brains, Damasio explains, maintain incredibly complex maps of the state of the body, from our guts to our fingertips, at all times.

And here’s the core of his argument: when the incoming messages bearing news of the body’s physical fear-state alter these maps, that’s when the feeling itself arises. Your brain learns from your body that your heart is pounding, your pupils are dilated, your goosebumps are standing at attention. Your brain does the math and says, Aha! I am afraid!

In his 1884 essay, “What is an emotion?” the philosopher and psychologist William James wrote,

If we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no “mind-stuff” out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. . . . What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think.

Damasio picks up where James left off. But he doesn’t just draw on Victorian-era philosophizing to make his argument. He also works from case studies and his own research; for instance, the case of a Parkinson’s patient in Paris. The woman, who was sixty-five years old and had no history of depression or other mental illness, was undergoing an experimental treatment for her Parkinson’s symptoms. It involved the use of an electrical current to stimulate motor-control areas of the brain stem via tiny electrodes.

Nineteen other patients had undergone the treatment successfully. But when the current entered the woman’s brain, she stopped chatting with the doctors, lowered her eyes, and her face slumped.

Seconds later, she began to cry, and then to sob. “I’m fed up with life,” she said, through her tears. “I’ve had enough ... I don’t want to live anymore ... I feel worthless.” The team, alarmed, stopped the current, and within ninety seconds the woman had stopped crying. Her face perked up again, the sadness melting away. What had just happened? she asked.

It turned out, according to Damasio, that instead of stimulating the nuclei that controlled her tremors, the electrode, infinitesimally misplaced, had activated the parts of the brain stem that control a suite of actions by the facial muscles, mouth, larynx, and diaphragm—the actions that allow us to frown, pout, and cry. Her body, stimulated not by a sad movie or bad news, had acted out the motions of sadness, and her mind, in turn, had gone to a dark, dark place. The feeling arose from the physical; her mind followed her body.

This whole thing seemed counterintuitive to me at first, reversing as it does the “commonsense” view. But then I sat back and really thought about my experience of fear. How do I recall it in my memory? How do I try to explain it to other people? The fact is that I think of it mostly in physical terms: that sick feeling in my gut, the tightness in my chest, maybe some dizziness or shortness of breath.

Think about how you actually experience the feeling of happiness, of contentment, or ease. For me, it manifests in the loosening of the eternally tense muscles in my forehead and jaw, in my neck and shoulders. My eyes open wider, losing the worried squint. I breathe more deeply.

Or think about the sheer physicality of deep grief, how it wrecks your body as well as your mind. When I look back on the worst of my grief after my mom’s death, I remember it as headaches, exhaustion, a tight chest, a sense of heaviness, and lethargy. I felt sad, yes—sadder than I’ve ever been—and it was my body that told me how sad I was.

[anotherlifefic]

Chapter 28: The Water Temple

We entered the temple, and that I could hear the unmistakable splashes of water, despite the lake around it being dried out. „So the drought didn‘t affect the temple?“, I asked, stepping forward to a ledge that was beyond my reach. „But I can‘t breathe underwater… how will we-“ „We will find a way“, Link interrupted me. „Come, I‘ll give you a leg-up. Do you think you can pull me up once you‘re up there?“ „I think so.“ I set my foot into his waiting hands and let him lift me high enough to reach the ledge. Once I had pulled myself up, I reached down to help him. Then we stepped closer, finding ourselves in the central chamber with a platform in the middle. And between the platform and us was a deep chasm, filled with clear water. „Hold on“, Link told me, pulling a blue tunic out of his satchel. „Here, put this on. You can breathe underwater while wearing it.“ I put on the tunic. It was a bit big for me, but I fastened my belt around it so the excess fabric wouldn‘t be in the way. Then I lifted my gaze again. „What about you?“ „I‘ve got something better.“ Again, he pulled something out of his satchel. A Zora-mask. I remembered those; the Happy Mask Shop in Hyrule City sold them. But I knew that this was a special mask. Link had told me about the transformation-masks he had aquired in Termina. This was the face of an actual Zora. He put it on, and his painful scream echoed through the temple, making me flinch. „Link?!“ A bright light made me unable to see for a moment, and when I opened my eyes again, Link had become a Zora. He was on his hands and knees, breathing heavily. He had told me that using the transformation-masks was painful, as he could feel his flesh twist and shape itself into the image of the soul inhabiting the mask. He stood up, rolling his shoulders and neck as if the transformation had caused his joints to go stiff. Link and I took eachother‘s hand, nodding at each other, determination in our eyes… and jumped.

It had been a while since I last had an opportunity to swim. But fortunately, it‘s one of those things you don‘t forget. So I paddled my way back to the surface, gasping for air once I reached it. Link appeared next to me, the water glistening on his scales. „And now?“, I asked, looking down into the thankfully clear water. I wasn‘t concerned about getting dirty, but diving into muddy water where we couldn‘t see what was going on around us wasn‘t exactly something I wanted to do. „I‘d say we look around here first. There‘s not guarantee that everything will be the same as it was when I first went through this temple. Be wary, though. Ganondorf will hardly leave the shards of the Master Sword unguarded.“ I grabbed the hilt of my naginata, as if to make sure it was still there, and nodded. „Alright.“

We swam up to the platform in the middle of the room, looking at every door we could possibly reach. „None of these are locked“, Link remarked. His gaze wandered over to the door on the western side of the room. „Let‘s go there.“ I nodded, following Link as he swam over to the door.

One thing that bothered me as we traversed the two following rooms was the suspicious lack of monsters. The temple seemed to be completely deserted. I expected something to jump at us at any given moment, so I kept my hand on my naginata, looking around with narrowed eyes. Then, we finally reached the room. It was just like Link had described it to me: An illusion showing a seemingly open field covered in shallow water, ruins poking out from the ground and a single, mangled tree stretching its skeletal branches skyward. And, on the other end of the field, a small building with a locked door. And, like the other rooms, it was otherwise empty. No signs of life in this forsaken place. Or perhaps this was how the temple was supposed to be, without evil influence? The only sound we could hear was the splashing of our boots in the water echoing from invisible walls as we walked onward, towards the small building. We reached the door, and as expected, it was locked. „Rebecca“, Link told me calmly. „Draw your weapon.“ I nodded, feeling the piercing eyes of the creatures behind us. We turned around, and there they stood. Perfect copies of us, cloaked in shadows, only their flaming red eyes glowing withtin their emotionless faces. Dark Link stepped forth. „What does it feel like, hero? What does it feel like to fail?“ Link recoiled. „It… it talks!“ Now my shadow approached in a similar fashion. „And you? A simple farmhand playing at being a hero and dooming all of Hyrule in the process. How does it feel to know that everyone would be better off without you?“ I bit my lip, hard enough to draw blood, and gripped my naginata tighter. „I never meant for any of this to happen!“ „Of course you didn‘t“, my shadow replied, her voice still an emotionless shadow of my own. „You didn‘t mean to steal the hero away from the person he was meant to be with, and you didn‘t mean to have him fall into enemy hands. But you did, and so did he. And it is all your fault.“ Dark Link took a few more steps towards Link. „And you let it happen. Perhaps you believed that since nothing you ever did would matter in the end, why not marry someone who was just as worthless as you are?“ „ENOUGH!“ Link ripped off the Zora mask, cast it aside and dashed forward, but his shadow just desintegrated and appeared behind him again. „And you react to the truth with anger. Perhaps you and Ganondorf aren‘t so different after all.“ My shadow turned to them, then to me again. „What does it feel like, knowing that your husband made a mistake in marrying you? That as Princess Zelda‘s consort, he‘d have never been captured by Ganondorf. Princess Ruto wouldn‘t be the last of her kind. None of this would have ever happened.  And you would still be happy, working at the ranch and being the nobody you truly are.“ My grip around the naginata was so tight my knuckles had turned white. The voices of our shadows turned into a mocking echo, despite their voices still showing no signs of emotion. „Traitor.“ „Failure.“ „Stand-in.“ „Meaningless.“ „Worthless.“ Link put his hands to his ears and screamed. „Stop… STOP!“ I was sinking to my knees, but then the realization hit me. I turned to Link, ignoring both our shadows. „Link. My love. It‘s okay.“ I turned around to him, my knees scraping across the ground. „Do you hear me? It‘s okay.“ He looked up at me, pale and obviously angry. „What do you mean?“ I took a deep breath, trying to block out the voices. „It‘s okay to doubt yourself. You are not less of a hero for it. It seems that… both you and I have spent so much time doubting ourselves that these doubts… these meaningless little thoughts have started looking bigger than they really are.“ The shadows stopped with what they were doing. „And yes, we made mistakes“, I continued. „But mistakes can be fixed. THIS mistake can be fixed. We are working on that right now!“ Link seemed to need a moment to understand what I was saying. Then he grinned. „Yes… you‘re right. There‘s no point in thinking of what could have been. There is no time to look back and regret. There is a world to save!“ We both pointed our weapons at our respective shadows and said in unison:„And you are in our way!“ I dashed forward, and instead of Dark Me disappearing, she was pierced by my naginata. I dared to look off to the side, where Dark Link suffered a similar fate. They died and withered without a sound, and with their physical forms faded the illusion of the open field, leaving us in a room with ankle-deep water and the two doors, one leading back to where we came from and the other leading to the next room. Link came up to me and hugged me tightly. He didn‘t seem shaken anymore; infact, this was the first time since my return that I saw him smile. Then he kissed me softly, letting me bury my hands in his hair. „You were amazing“, he let me know once we parted. „So were you“, I replied breathlessly. It felt so good to kiss him with the knowledge that it was truly my husband I was kissing there. I grabbed his hand. „Come on now.“

The other room was smaller, and only contained a single chest. And in it, we found a piece of metal about the size of the palm of my hand. It had the Triforce engraved in it. „A piece of the blade“, Link muttered. „Just as we thought. Either Ganondorf has gotten really cocky if he thought that the shadow room would stop us, or we‘re in for a nasty surprise.“ „Whatever it is, we‘re ready for it“, I said, giving his hand a light squeeze.

[devilsknotrp]

Congratulations, Maria! You have been accepted for the role of Stan Meyers (FC: Michiel Huisman). Stan is such a wonderfully twisted and complex character and you did him such justice with this application! He has touches of darkness but the soul of a (rather inept) poet and you captured him beautifully. His desire to be someone, to showcase his talent is so woefully interpreted, we just can’t wait to see him on the dash! Please have a look at this page prior to sending in your account.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: Maria Age: 23 Pronouns: She/her Timezone: GMT Activity estimation: Every other day Triggers: REDACTED

IN CHARACTER

Full name: Stan Meyers Age: 14/11/1960 (36) Gender: Male Pronouns: He/Him Sexuality: Straight Occupation: English Literature Teacher Connection to Victim: Teaches both David Goode and Beth Goode, but beyond that has little real connection to them. Alibi: According to staff electronic key records and the activity on the computer in Stan’s classroom, as well as his own testimony, he spent the night on Devil Knot High-school grounds. His own explanation was late night working, attempting to get resources and marking done. Faceclaim: Michiel Huisman

WRITING SAMPLE

Stan had never been popular, nor had he much of a home life. In fact, his life was so ordinary, that it had pained him in its tedium. Perhaps that’s why he loved books so much as a young boy. The pages of fantasy could transport him into a world far more exciting than his own, the salacious drama of contemporary fiction would drive his heart wild in a way the reality didn’t. In the hidden words and gruesome imaginary of crime novels, Stan could let his mind ponder and take the role of a silent detective, living in the heat of the moment, pulse on fire with the idea of a criminal close.

In his grasp, he held a novel. Well, it was rather charitable to call it that. It was more a basically stapled flimsy booklet that looked more akin to a brochure you might find in church. Its brightly decorated cover depicted a stock image of rolling hills from some far-off land, whose horizon was lined by a misty but beautiful lake that was clearly not photographed in the united states. Beneath the rather peaceful landscape sat the title and author.

“Upon the hilltops

By Stan R. Meyers”

It was one thing to tumble into the universes unknown and drop yourself into a story so completely that the outside fades away. It was quite another to become a master of one, to be the sculptor, the creator, to not only be drawn but draw others. The ultimate mark of relevancy. The one way to live on this earth and pass beyond it and yet still be remembered.

Stan could feel his jaw tighten as his fingers clutched the booklet tightly, the cheap paper warping under his grip. Nothing was worse than knowing quite how much you were failing to achieve that relevancy. To realise that you were as ordinary and simple as the place, family and history you were born to.

The publishers had sent mealy-mouthed apologies, or in the case of the most arrogant, one-line rejections. One even had the gall to advise him to take writing classes. Him! He had read more than any two-bit author who ran those courses had in their life. Yet they were still better than him, at least they had their name to a real cover, not the half-bit cheap imitation he held in his hand.

He hadn’t even known why he bothered, money was low and he had no chance of actually making a success of self-publishing. The teacher threw the bundle into his wastebasket, kicking it under his desk and out of view. What did you even do when faced with your own failure so clearly? Society says, work hard at something, put in those required hours and you will become a master. He’d been writing since he had been able to hold a pen properly, and nothing. As with so much, the lies told by our parents, teachers and political leaders were just that, vacuous promises that are intended to gloss over a brutal, unforgiving world.

Stan took a shaky, hard breath, adjusting his knitted vest, as he got up and checked his hair in the classroom window. His dark eyes stared right back at him; the swirling brown lit by a hidden flame of rage that he kept under wraps in day to day life.

Before his spiralling thoughts could go any further, the bell rang and his reflection morphed into a different person entirely. Gaunt cheeks and heavy-set brows suddenly lightened, a broad smile splitting across his face as he turned to his door positively beaming. The students came in quite quickly, his class was well-received for the most part, and he rarely had tardiness apart from the usual suspects.

Every student greeted him, his grin almost infectious and often returned back as he glided easily to his spot behind his desk, clasping his hands together in manufactured glee as the last pupil took their seat. “Ah, if it’s not my favourite class of literary explorers.”

“Right class, today our topic is simple…” Like he had many times before, Stan grabbed his trusty piece of white chalk and in elegant, spindly writing that one may have expected back in the 18th Century wrote out the topic of today.

“How to trick your audience…”

His smile softened, but there was still a sense of cheek to the glimmer in his eyes as he stepped around to the front of the class, hands spread out like a roman general embracing his subjects. “Who’s ready to write some lies?”

ANYTHING ELSE?

> Stan comes from a very ordinary family in which he was the only child. His parents were suitable middle class, both working office jobs with an equally pointless set of responsibilities for mildly reputable firms. Just like Stan himself, they were in many ways entirely average in their talents, but unlike their son, seemed to pay it no mind. They were happy to earn money and just enjoy their simple life. Perhaps this tedium is why Stan became so infatuated with books, but either way, he finds himself rather embarrassed by his parents and beside the dutiful phone call every now and then, does not do much to connect to them.

> Despite having little talent in actual writing, Stan is, in fact, a rather expert dissector of books. He often has a strong grasp of the subtleties in language and prose, and while being brilliant at mimicking these intricacies, he is completely unable to produce his own. Like much of his life, he is a master of pretend and pretence, but when it comes to actually being original, he has a lack of imagination that was rather compelling in its strangeness. Either way, his critical eye makes him a great speaker at the local book club.

> Surprisingly, considering his desire to be noticed, Stan hasn’t ever really tried to properly pursue a proper relationship. Physical wants aside, he finds serious long-term attachment difficult, on account of hating himself quite enough already, but also due to his fellow adults tending to eschew themselves to a sensibleness that Stan abhors. He wants to dream, to be something other than what he is, and thinking about saving, taxes and getting married feels like a drawback into the mundane. Maybe that’s why he likes them younger…

> Stan isn’t religious in the slightest, but he finds the idea of church fascinating. It’s likely just the history of it, the pomp and pageantry that goes with bible prose and ceremony, ignites some of that passion and wonder in him. So, he attends rather diligently, hoping both for a spark of muse and to put on a good face with his new neighbour. Jeff Abbott, in particular, draws his attention and he feels almost like he could listen to the pastor for the rest of his life.

> The current story regarding Brian Goode’s disappearance as well as the sordid history of Devil’s Knot is prime writing material. While Stan didn’t move for this purpose and rather decided to pick a secluded town to avoid rumours regarding his previous employment, he is certainly trying his best to make use of the happenstance and use it as fuel for a new book. There’s no sign that using reality as a springboard will improve his lack of talent, however.

> Who says poverty doesn’t have some upsides? Despite being rather empty-pocketed on a near constant basis, Stan is just about good looking enough to play a reversal role from the traditional man. Through the gift of gab, he’s well known to manage to get other people to cover his bills, tabs and drinks, as well as being the owner of perhaps the biggest collection of coupons in the whole of Devil’s Knot.

[murdered-with-daisies]

The Collapse Of Stars- Twoshot

A/N:

Back at my shit again- haven’t written on anything besides my book so here’s a little something- its the first chapter in a two chapter story so I hope you guys like it- it is a little more adult in themes (violence, cursing,) so if you’re not into that then this may not be the story for yo.! But I hope you like it, would love some feedback since I haven’t written anything in awhile! Also still working on the formatting so any tips would be appreciated, thanks!

Summary: 

The world is on the brink of all-out war, but Lucy, princess of Fiore, may be the only one who has the power to stop it. Will the mages put aside their differences and help the royal or will Lucy be left to stop the war alone? 

Pairing: NaLu

Words: 4,431

Fanfic.net

Some days she wondered if it was worth it- the running, the sneaking, going behind her father's back. Then she thought of the faces of all of the mages she had saved even if they hadn't known it at the time. And they still didn't, as far as she knew. While she sat locked in what felt like a gilded cage they were free to live their lives. 

The finery that surrounded Lucy reminded her just what she was. A traitor to her crown, to her own birth, to her blood. Royal blood of Fiore flowed red through her veins and yet she felt no connection to it. She hadn't thought of her father, the King of Fiore, as anything as family in a very long time. It felt like a whole other life at this point, one that Lucy wasn't sure she wanted to remember. It just made everything harder. She had known her father's smile once and seeing it lost was the hardest thing in the world to her. How could you miss something if you didn't even know it in the first place? She wished she had never seen him smile or the way his eyes crinkled with joy when they gazed upon her mother. Somedays she wished she didn't know her mother either because then the ache in her chest wouldn't be so hard to deal with.

Lucy loved her mother and when she had been torn away, given back to the land, a piece of Lucy had left with her. She had only been small, still new to the world, but she remembered how her father's smile had never returned and the light in his eyes been extinguished. Her mother had died slowly, leaving their world like winter clinging to the last flowers before they grew. No wizards or magic or mages could help her, she had been too far gone before they had arrived, her father had blamed them. Lucy remembered his anger as he raged against them. "What do you mean there's nothing you can do? You're wizards! Heal her!" It was the first time Lucy had heard her father raise his voice and now it felt like he had never lowered it.

Lucy's homeland was in shambles, divided by a king that could no longer rule his kingdom. On one side lay the humans; headstrong and loyal to their human king- if not by love but by fear of what he would do if they did not follow. On the other were the mages who had been systematically "eliminated" for their failure to help the dying Queen. It was a genocide without match and Lucy watched it all from her gold lined window.

Earlier in the day, Lucy had been summoned to her father's chambers. He had asked her if she would marry a neighboring prince. But this was not a real question, it was the type of question people used when they wanted to seem polite but in reality, it was an order. Lucy did not have a choice, it was her duty as a princess to marry a prince, let him become king. Live by his side, die by his side or by his sword- whichever HE preferred. She had been born a bargaining piece and a pawn in her father's game.     

Lucy had cried, back in the safety of her room. The prince frightened her, rumors swirled among the staff that he was not a kind man. That his anger towards mages was rivaled only by the king's own anger. To the south of their lands sat a large country inhabited by wizards and mages alike- it was said they were ruled by Dragons- they thrived and prospered, but their borders were constant traps of warfare as her father tried to slowly inch his way into their lands. If Lucy and the other country's prince were to wed, combine their forces and land in an unbreakable pact, it would mean the decimation of the mage's world as they knew it. It was what her father had planned since her mother's death and it made Lucy's stomach drop.     

Lucy rose from her spot overlooking the castle grounds, leaving the window and the sunset view behind. If she wanted to work, she must start now. She told her maids she was not feeling well, dismissing them, as she dressed. The black full seat breeches she wore clung to her thighs in an unfamiliar way, she had never worn men's clothes before. They left her feeling exposed. She bound her chest and wrapped her hair into a high ponytail like she had seen some of the market men wear theirs. Lucy huffed as she tugged riding boots over the breeches, black like her shirt and pants.      

Before leaving she grabbed her black cloak, a simple thing, a hand-me-down she had acquired from her riding instructor, and tied it securely around her neck. Lucy reached for her last item, the item this whole trip was to protect. It was a small box, brown with inlaid pink flowers- also a hand-me-down. Inside lay silver and gold keys, her most prized possessions, and a letter to a certain guild master, one her mother had never been able to send. Lucy hoped it was enough for what she was about to do. If she were found out, she'd be the next to be hanged in castle's gallows.      

Exiting her room and locking it firmly behind her she made her way through the twisting stone corridors of the Fiore Castle. This one was the spring castle, only miles from the dragon land's borders. The mage's land had no official name, no one had thought them worthy enough to give them a civil name. To many, it was known only as the Dragonlands, ruled by the secretive Dragneel family.      

Lucy made it past guards and through secret passageways and into the stable where her horse was. Quickly and as quietly as possible she tacked it, the animal seemed to sense her urgency. Its ears stay forward and content the whole time, even as they bolted out of the stable and far from the towering castle, leaving the sunset and stone walls from behind them.      

It took only hours to reach the border and took only seconds to cross into the dragon lands. From the information she had gathered her destination was close, she kicker her horse faster. Soon they came to a small town, its streets were lit with oil lanterns, they gave off a welcoming yellow glow that made Lucy wish she could stay forever with these people. It was a stark comparison to the cold stone streets she had left behind in her own lands. Doors and windows were open to stores and bars, she could hear laughter and music flowing out of the open crevices and she could feel her mouth water and the smell of roasted lamb. She slowed in town, not wanting to draw attention to herself, and she kept the hood from her cloak up, but still, she could feel the stares from the windows and doors as she passed through.     

Lucy soon made it to her destination at the heart of the small town. Her heart jumped in her chest and she felt a small sigh of relief run through her. Finally, she had made it. Fairy Tail. The guild her mother had written of in her letter. She had made it.      

The Guild was large and impressive, it towered over the other buildings, but like the others, music and joy erupted out of it. The large wooden doors were open to the warm night. Carefully she dismounted her horse, tying it to a fence post, it lazily began to munch the grass underneath its feet. Lucy took a breathe and released it, squaring her shoulders as she walked into the noisy guild.     

Inside the guild it was as she had imagined it- warm, welcoming, filled with people smiling and drinking dark ales. Her heart ached again to be with these people but it was not her place, she dismissed the thought. Around her people danced, other's eyes followed her. She stopped at a long bar where a beautiful white-haired woman was serving bubbling drinks in overfilled goblets. The woman came to her with a smile and drink in hand though Lucy declined the latter. "Not a drink for you then? How can we be of service?"      

"I came requesting an audience with your guild master. I have important business with him, it needs his attention immediately." She spoke, though she knew her tone was much too formal- too regal. She tried to give the fair-haired woman a smile, though she was sure it just looked like a grimace.     

As the woman opened her mouth to speak something bumped into Lucy hard, it jarred her, nearly knocking her off balance. A dancer probably, Lucy thought. Around her the music stopped abruptly, the laughing and chatter ceased. With horror, Lucy realized her hood had been knocked loose, exposing her long hair, recognizable in any kingdom. So rarely was a human born with the bright blonde she had been, the humans had said it was a gift from the gods. The mages knew it as an identifying marker to who she was. To what she was.     

 Lucy began to turn towards the now silent seething crowd when she was jerked back by her hood and flung to the wood floor. Her shoulder blazed with pain and the corner of the small box in her pocket dug into her side as it sit inside the cloak's pocket. Wide-eyed she stared up at her attacker, he was tall and muscular. His hair blazed pink, of all colors, and his teeth snarled. Flames licked out the fingers that he held clenched at his side. "What do you think you're doing here? In MY lands? How dare you show your face here." It was the angriest she had ever seen anyone at her. She was so tired of anger but she knew he was right.      

She was their enemy, her whole family was. And yet she was a traitor to her family as well. Lucy was in limbo and she wasn't sure if she would ever get out of it- she wasn't sure she deserved to.      

"I need to speak to your guild master." She tried to sit up, but the man's snarl kept her down, cowering on the floor. He reached his hand towards her collar, pulling it up close and her with it. She didn't let him scare her, she set her features into the look she had practiced over the years. Determined. Hard. Indifferent.     

"You will speak to no one. You'll go back to your pretty castle, princess. You can walk out of here or I can hand deliver you with your head on a spike directly to your murdering father." He spat the words at her     

She opened her mouth to speak but was cut off by a shout "Dragneel! Let miss Heartfelia go! I will speak to whoever I want." Lucy's eyes widened. Dragneel. She knew that name, everyone did. The man holding her collar was this country's prince, next in line for whatever throne a dragon could possibly possess. Was he himself a dragon? Lucy's mind fumbled with the possibility.    

Lucy turned her gaze to look at a small man, he rose barely to her waist and his wrinkles were immense. Lucy wondered if he had shrunk at some point in his life. But the flame mage let her go, glaring daggers at her as she rose, brushed herself off, and followed the older man into a private room.      

The guild leader, Makarov, moved to sit behind a large wood desk. His eyes were dark and his mouth was a flat line, like a slash across his face. "Miss Lucy, you are not kindly received here." She nodded, she had known this was an option when she had set off. "But you will also be heard. You said you needed to speak to me urgently, I assume for you to come across the border, sneak in dressed as a man in the middle of the night, that it was not to just have a simple chat. Speak, before I change my mind, child." Lucy swallowed the lump in her throat.      

"I am a traitor to my people, master Makarov. My mother said I could trust you and now I am asking- no, begging- for that trust. Our world is in grave danger, I've tried to lessen the blows my father is dealing to the mages, but alone, I fear I'm not enough to keep his plans at bay. He wants to marry me off to the neighboring prince.... he wants to combine forces for a singular attack on the Dragonlands and wipe out mages forever. I can't sit idle and watch innocent people die just because of who they were born as. I've tried to reason with my father, tried to make him see the error of his ways, but there's nothing I can do. He's all but shut me out." She moved to sit in the large chair in front of the desk and folded her hands tightly in her lap. 

"I know you've noticed an influx of wizards seeking refuge and we've seen a large decrease in wizard deaths on my side of the borders. My father thinks it is because he's almost eradicated the wizard populations, but he's wrong. I've been sending word before his soldiers arrive for them to leave, leave everything they have, bring only what they need for the journey and go as far away from Fiore as they can.  I've been a traitor to my people, but if it means I could save even a single life then it has been worth it." Lucy confided, tears welling up but not spilling over in her eyes. She looked to the old man and searched his face, it was tired and sad.     

"We have seen a great migration from your lands, wizards are not easily moved. We are a hardheaded bunch," he smiled softly at her.    

 Lucy nodded, "I did whatever I could think of. Some I warned, when that didn't work I forced them to pay higher taxes, much too high for them to afford so they would move to cheaper lands across the border, if that didn't work I had them kidnapped and dumped across the border. I- I know it was not okay, and that they may never forgive me. But I'd rather they be angry than dead." Lucy thought to all the terrible things she had done to make the wizards leave, it filled her heart with sorrow.       

"Why, Lucy? Why put yourself in the danger? Why care at all?" He asked.     

Lucy pulled the box out of her pocket and laid it in front of him. His brows furrowed as he took it in his frail hands and opened it. At the keys inside his head snapped up, his eyes wide. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then repeated the gesture once more before returning to the box and the letter. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he read it to himself once, twice, a third time. Makarov wondered if his old age was finally getting to his eyes or if what he was reading was true. "Because they're your people too." He answered for her. 

She nodded.      

"I am the last living Celestial Mage on this world. There has not been a single known Celestial Mage in over two hundred years. My mother kept her magic hidden from my father, but not to me. I was born a traitor, its only fitting that is what I grew up to be. I can't keep my keys with me any longer- not with war looming and with so many enemies close to me. I can't risk them falling into the wrong person's hands and I can't risk myself being forced to use them against my own people." She was aware the danger, she had taken it into her heart, buried it deep deep deep down, and let it bloom. Danger and risk were her only friends and she was content to live out her life with them. "You must keep them safe here."      

Makarov nodded, "You are confident, Lucy, that I will keep them safe?"      

"My mother trusted you once and you did not fail her. Today I too will trust that you will not fail me." He was her only option and one that would kill her if it went awry.     

"You understand that by leaving these here you are leaving yourself open? Without defense?"      

Now it was Lucy's turn to nod, "I do. It's a risk I'm willing to take to keep our peoples safe.", she wiped a tear from her cheek, "If I don't make it out of this alive please don't tell anyone what I did."     

"They deserve to know the truth, Miss Lucy." Makarov laid a hand over her own.      

The lump in her throat was back, it kept her from speaking, she let out a sob. She was quiet for many moments before she rose, sniffling and wiping her tears and nose on her cloak. "I must go."       

Makarov rose too, "In a better world you would not be leaving." He spoke sadly.       

Lucy nodded, "In a better world, we would not be fighting."

      It had been months since Lucy had last seen or heard from the guild- Spring had long passed, Summer had sweated by, and now the Fall leaves were starting to get buried under soft snow. Makarov had kept to his word, he had let her go and his guild and all the others that had seen her enter and leave had not spoken of her. Her journey that night was still a secret.      

The castle was buzzing as Lucy strode to the extravagant dining area for breakfast. Maids and waiters frenzied back and forth as they prepared for the morning meal. Lucy saw as she entered that she was not alone in her morning tea, her wedding coordinator was seated already head first in a pile of papers. Bright colored fabric swatches lay arranged around her, Lucy couldn't remember if she were supposed to be picking out the colors of her bridesmaids dresses or the colors of the table clothes or both- she didn't much care seeing that if she had her way, come Spring, there would be no wedding to attend. Either her marriage would be dissolved by unseen circumstances or she would be dead.     

As Lucy settled to the table and launched into mindless banter with the other woman she thought back to her conversation with Makarov. He would begin to rally his mages, prepare them for a war that he wasn't even sure would ever arrive, she would do what she could from inside the castle to send away more mages, dissolve her impending marriage, and if she played her cards right dethrone her father. Easier said than done.      

She had already planted the seeds of doubt in her father's reign to her people, slowly she pestered and poked at them, urging them to grow into contempt unrest. She was beautiful, she knew that, and she could charm any market man with a smile. Her father was old, senile, losing his touch, she had gossiped just a little too loud in the marketplace, joked just a little too much to a certain fishmonger and her plan was set in motion.        

Her marriage was another matter she had slowly begun untying the knots of. Her Fiance had met with her twice since the engagement had been announced and both times she had to fight to keep the bile in her throat. The prince was a handsome man with a wicked smile and an even wickeder temper. He was a brute and she had left both encounters riddled with bruises where he thought no one would see them. The stories she had heard about his terribleness had been true and she was at the receiving end of it. In ways it helped her, it made him easy to hate- she wasn't sure what she had done if he had been kind to her- and it made him easier to discredit. Her chambermaids had already started whispering about the finger marks around her throat, they were currently hidden under a thick lace collar. And they'd began to pity her when she had "fallen" down the stairs three times in one week.       

Lately, guards had been more protective of her, stood just a little closer to her side than her father's and held their swords just a little tighter. Though she knew they could not come out and say it, she could see in their eyes that they were worried for her and would come to her aid in seconds. Her fiance was a terrible man, but maybe she was equally as terrible, using her misfortune to her advantage. Win over her father's forces completely and she could have an army in this war, become more powerful than her betrothed and she could break the proposal. A man would not marry a woman more powerful than he was, it would make him look weak.       

Lucy went about her day, she filled it with a trip to the market, talking to her people. Though they had loved her father they adored their princess, even more, she bore the face of their late queen and was kind to them and offered her help in any way she could. Lucy listened to them, spoke to them as if they were her family, visiting them lifted her spirits. Many were innocent of the hate that her father had garnished, only following him because he was their king and he ruled with fear. If they had another option Lucy was sure they would side with her. But she needed an army to do that.      

Night fell far too quickly for Lucy's liking, and she returned to her bedchambers. She fell into a deep sleep, dreaming of a world where they weren't divided and dreaming of smiling people.

 Lucy woke with a jolt, her eyes wide with fear, as a hand curled itself over her mouth and her body pinned to the bed. In the dark room, she could just barely see the moonlight reflecting off her fiance's high cheekbones. He had been beautiful in the day but at night he was deadly. "I know your secret, little lamb, you've been a very bad princess." he cooed in her ear, his breath hot.       

Lucy thrashed and kicked under his weight, her vision started to blur, she couldn't breathe around his hand and she gasped for air. Her vision faded to black, leaving her terrified and then she couldn't think at all.       

She woke with a jolt, her arms bound by heavy chain that burned her skin. They knew, they knew she was a mage- she realized, the thought chilled her to the bone. The chains they had used were meant only for wizards to dispell her powers. Though without her keys she was as good as human, she didn't suspect they knew that. The chains hissed and burned and pain lashed through her. Her head pounded as she took in her surroundings.      

She was in the back of a supply carriage, she could feel the wheels under her hit every rock in the ground as the moved. And it was still dark if it was the same day she didn't know, but it was freezing, snow was falling and in only her nightgown she was shaking.       

Soon they stopped and she was retched from her curled up spot by clammy hands, they dragged her into the forest through snow that clung to her and froze her into a stumbling mess. The chains around her wrists dug into her with every tug on them and she bit back tears.        

They entered a clearing, her fiance leading the way alone. He turned and swung, striking her to the ground. Over and over he kicked her, she could feel her ribs cracking with every hit, but she was too cold, too tired to do anything against him. How he had found out she didn't know and it was too late to care. She was going to die here, alone in the cold, beaten to death. Lucy could only hope that Makarov had readied his forces enough for the war to come.       

Tears streamed from her eyes as her beloved kneeled down and spat on her, "You disgust me, you deserve a slow death and that's what you're going to get. Stay here and rot, Magic scum." He rose and readied for another kick. Lucy drew a ragged breath and tried to curl into herself, hoping if she made herself small enough that she would disappear entirely.       

But it never came. As he readied to strike her one last time a wall of red fire scorched through the clearing, it warmed Lucy and she wondered if death were this welcoming. Her head had started to swim and the flames that were licking at her fiance's flailing body were starting to look like just pillars of light. She had seen that fire somewhere, had felt its familiar heat against her skin but for the life of her, she couldn't think of when. It was getting hard to do anything and thinking just didn't seem like it was on the table.      

Lucy closed her eyes slowly, liking how the fire's flame made the insides of her eyes dance with color and then she slipped from time.

Hope you liked it! its 6am and I haven’t gone to sleep yet so goodnight guys!

[crawlinginchaos]

Unkindled Ash - Part 2

It's not long before she's reached the narrow stone hallway separating the dull grey valley she woke up in from the pale yellow skyline, the sun's glare preventing her from getting a clear view of what lays beyond. She navigates past a few more white-skinned hollows to get there, sneaking past their dulled and ancient senses when she can, and applying the strong two-handed swordplay she'd begun to remember when necessary. Pulling her blade from the thin stomach of a hollow's corpse, she takes the final steps out onto a narrow ledge. The blurred afterimage of the sun bursting through the clouds above the horizon blinds her for a moment, but she blinks through it. She's rewarded with a breathtaking view, of snow-dusted mountaintops in the far distance, a vast chasm-like expanse of low hills seperating them from the ledge she's standing on. A castle wall towers over her immediate right, perhaps it's where the dead in the cemetery came from. Her left offers more, however, as she's greeted by a view of a close-by chapel-like structure, a low and old building graced with a pair of crumbling towers at its rear. She inches along the five-foot-wide ledge of crumbling rock, making her way towards it in hope of finding other sane folk. The ledge eventually opens out into a wider platform, leading down into what can only be described as a pair of natural corridors, carved out of two walls of roofless stone. She takes a few tentative steps down into them, before jumping aside at the sudden scream of a charging hollow. Having gotten used to their animalistic, tactless fighting, she simply catches its broken blade in her own, parrying it to the side before drawing her sword across its throat. As she lowers her blade and kicks the hollow lightly to make sure it's still dead, she notices something strange. A dull light and a quiet whispering sound is emnating from the corpse, a sprite that slowly filters out from the body and into her own chest, giving her a light feeling of elation and strength. She'd noticed something similar when cutting her brainless opponents down before, but she'd simply put it down to panic and a lack of her own senses, due to her recent revival. Perhaps she'd ask any sensible inhabitants of the chapel ahead what this strange effect was. Shaking her head, she casts the thought aside for now and ventures down through the corridor to her right.

She's greeted by a pair of resting hollows, one that she catches by surprise with a downwards thrust and another that takes a swing at her; a high swing that she ducks under and guts her attacker in its panic. The corridor leads opens out into another ledge, one that crossroads into the left and right. She hugs the left wall, backing up against it to dodge the sudden thrust of a spear-wielding hollow. She sheathes her sword, grabbing the spear just below its point and yanking it out of her attacker's hands. She swings it upward, catching the hollow in the jaw with the spear's handle, before twirling it around to a normal grip and plunging it into the zombie's chest. She leaves the wooden pole protruding from its corpse, stopping only to pick up the flimsy wooden shield it had been carrying in its offhand. The small ledge soon opens out into another clearing, smaller than before, but with once-polished stone flooring and a large grey brick wall along one side. An open doorway sits in it, but she's drawn away before she can properly look past it by a small wooden projectile whistling past her head. Another of the pale horde she's been cutting through sits between her and the doorway, clicking another bolt into its ramshackle crossbow. Shield up, she charges it, two more bolts clumsily missing her before she reaches their shooter. She bashes the crossbow out of the hollow's hands with her shield, drawing her sword back and slinging a powerful cut across its abdomen. Split nearly in half, the beast falls, and she steps over it and into the doorway ahead. She's met by a downward staircase leading into a large clearing of mud and stone brick, a large grey suit of armour kneeling at its centre. She advances towards it, eager to both get a closer look and reach the chapel just past it. Upon a much closer inspection, the suit of armour was much taller than her; standing at just under eight feet, clad in grey stone-like metal and kneeling next to an enormous iron glaive. A small black root-like growth sprouts from its shoulder, but her attention is drawn away from that quickly by the contents of its chest. A hole in its breastplate accomodates a large sword-like object with a spiralled blade and a four-armed, downward-facing crossguard. She sets her shield down at her feet, and places both hands on the large blade's hilt. With a strong yank, it becomes somewhat loose. She begins to pull slowly and free the blade, but a groan and a shift from the armour draws her attention away from it. Its head slowly tilts upwards, its shadow-shrouded eyes looking into her visor as a deep, powerful voice booms out from it.

"Unkindled one, failure to the First Flame, do you accept the challenge before you?" It speaks in a monotone, but most certainly holds a sense of power and authority. She takes a second before answering. "Yes. I do." She says, her long-unused vocal chords choking and cracking slightly. "Very well. State your name, unkindled one, and wrench the coiled sword from me." The armour replies, turning its head back towards the floor. She pauses, not sure how to respond given that her name still eludes her. "I... I.. Uh... Aiya. My name is Aiya." She stutters out, hoping that a simple placeholder will suffice. With a hard pull, the coiled sword comes free, clattering to the floor at her feet. She kneels to pick up her shield as the armour stands, placing a hand on its enormous glaive and wrenching it from the floor. "Aiya, unkindled one clad in the armour of Astora, conquer the Ashen Judge Gundyr and prove your worth." It murmurs, holding the massive polearm behind itself and lowering itself into a laid-back but certainly offensive stance.

Unsheathing her sword and raising her shield, she pushes a heavy breath out through her visor as the Ashen Judge charges.

[kristablogs]

Where does fear actually come from?

Convention thinking says that the root of all fear lies in our brains. But what comes before then? (The National Museum in Oslo/)

Excerpt from Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear by Eva Holland. Reprinted with permission of The Experiment.

Fear, it seems at first, should be easy to identify and define. To borrow from that old judicial decision about the definition of obscenity: we know it when we feel it.

Putting that feeling into words can be harder. G. Stanley Hall, the nineteenth-century founder of the American Journal of Psychology and the first president of the American Psychological Association, described fear as “the anticipation of pain,” and that seems like a pretty good general definition to me. Fear of violence? Anticipatory pain. Fear of a breakup, the loss of someone you love? Anticipatory pain. Fear of sharks, of plane crashes, of falling off a cliff? Check, check, and check.

But what we need, really, isn’t just a solid catch-all definition. What we need, to understand the role of fear in our lives, is to examine the layers and varieties of fears that can afflict us.

There’s the sharp jab of alarm when you sense a clear, imminent threat: That car is going to hit me. There’s the duller, more dispersed foreboding, the feeling of malaise whose source you can’t quite pinpoint: Something is wrong here. I don’t feel safe. There are spiraling, sprawling existential fears: I am going to flunk this exam, tank this interview, fail at life. And there are precise, even banal, ones: Pulling this Band-Aid off is going to hurt. How do they all fit together? Or, put differently, to what extent does each stand apart?

According to Greek mythology, Ares, the god of war, had two sons, who accompanied him into battle: Phobos, the god of fear, and Deimos, the god of dread. That seems like a useful distinction to start with—fear versus dread—and it’s one that’s echoed today by our distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear, generally speaking, is regarded as being prompted by a clear and present threat: you sense danger and you feel afraid. Anxiety, on the other hand, is born from less tangible concerns: it can feel like fear but without a clear cause. Simple enough, at least in theory.

In Fear: A Cultural History, author Joanna Bourke gamely attempts to parse the distinctions between fear and anxiety. “In one case a frightening person or dangerous object can be identified: the flames searing patterns on the ceiling, the hydrogen bomb, the terrorist,” she writes. Whereas “more often, anxiety overwhelms us from some source ‘within’: there is an irrational panic about venturing outside, a dread of failure, a premonition of doom ... Anxiety is described as a more generalized state, while fear is more specific and immediate. The ‘danger object’ seems to be in front of us in fear states, while in anxiety states the individual is not consciously aware of what endangers him or her.”

But as Bourke points out, that distinction has serious limitations. It’s entirely dependent on the ability of the fearful person to identify the threat. Is it legitimately, immediately dangerous? Or is the fear abstract, “irrational”? She offers the hydrogen bomb and the terrorist as examples of potentially clear and present threats, but both can also serve as anxiety-inducing spectres, ominous even when absent.

Nerve by Eva Holland. (Courtesy of The Experiment/)

The distinction between fear and anxiety, then, can be murky, even as it can also be a useful and even necessary line to draw. But setting the issue of a threat’s clear presence aside, there’s the matter of our “fear” response.

The scientists who study our emotional lives make distinctions between different categories of feelings. There are the primary emotions, our most basic and near-universal responses, found across cultures and even appearing, or at least seeming to us to appear, in other species: fear, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness, and happiness.

Think of them like primary colors, the foundational elements of a whole rainbow of emotion. Just as red and blue in combination can be used to create all the shades of purple, you can imagine some more precise feelings as being built by the primary emotions. Horror, for instance, is fear mixed with disgust—and, maybe, some shadings of anger and surprise. Delight could be happiness with a bit of surprise stirred in. And so on.

There are also the social emotions, the feelings that don’t stand alone like the primary emotions but are generated by our relationships to others: sympathy, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, jealousy, envy, gratitude, admiration, contempt, and more.

Of all these, fear is perhaps the most studied. But what does it really mean to study fear? What do we even mean, exactly, when we say “fear” in the context of scientific research? That’s a more complicated question than you might expect.

Traditionally, scientists have studied “fear” in animals by measuring their reactions to threatening or unpleasant stimuli—a rat’s freezing response when it is subjected to a small electric shock, for instance. In studying humans, scientists have more options and a broader array of tools. Most importantly, humans can self-report, verbally or in writing: Yes, I felt afraid.

The complicating factor is that those two responses—the freezing and the feeling—are separate and distinct. As the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, an expert on the brain circuitry of fear, emphasizes in his book Anxious, we know that the physical fear response and the emotional feeling of fear are produced by two different mechanisms in the body.

For a long time, the working theory held that the feeling came first, in response to the fear stimulus, and then the physical response followed from the feeling. This is what’s known as the commonsense, or Darwinian, school of thought. But that was more an assumption than a proven mechanism, and these days it has fallen out of favor.

Instead, as science has turned its attention to working out that elusive mechanism more concretely, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has come up with an answer that, while provocative, ultimately feels right to me. The feeling, he argues in a pair of funny and wise books, Descartes’ Error and Looking for Spinoza, is actually derived from that same menu of physical reactions that we would typically view as accessories of, or adjacent to, our emotions.

For the purposes of his argument, Damasio makes an unusual distinction between “emotions”—by which, in this context, he specifically means the physical, measurable reactions of the body in response to an emotional stimulus, the physical fear response—and “feelings,” the intangible expressions of emotion in our minds. That may seem odd, or even nonsensical, but it’s a key to his case, so keep it in mind.

“We tend to believe that the hidden is the source of the expressed,” he writes in Looking for Spinoza. But he argues, instead, for a counter-intuitive reversal of that order: “Emotions”—again, meaning the physical reactions here—“and related phenomena are the foundation for feelings, the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds.”

All organisms have varying abilities to react to stimuli, from a simple startle reflex or withdrawal movement all the way up to more complex multi-part responses, like the description of our physical fear processes above, which are Damasio’s “emotions.” Some of the more basic responses might sometimes look, to our eyes, like expressions of the feeling of fear, and in fact the machinery that governs them is also implicated in the more complex processes. (My startle reflex, one of our oldest and simplest reactions, has certainly come into play at times when I’ve also felt afraid. Hello, raptors in the kitchen in Jurassic Park!) But the “emotions” are at the top of the heap in terms of complexity, and as such not all organisms are capable of generating them.

Unlike some of the simpler “fear” reactions in simpler organisms (poke a “sensitive plant,” watch its leaves curl up), our emotions can be generated by stimuli both real, in the moment, and remembered—or even imagined. That’s the gift and the burden of the human mind.

But for now, let’s stick with an in-the-moment example, like a strange noise heard in the night. The fact of the noise is captured by the sensory nerves in the ear and is relayed to the brain structures involved in triggering and then executing a response. Now your body is reacting in all the ways described above.

So far, so good? The next step, in Damasio’s formulation, is the creation of the feeling itself. We know that our bodies are laced with neurons, and that they not only send out information from the brain, they also receive it.

So after the outgoing messages have gotten our hearts pumping, our sweat beading, and so on, a series of incoming messages returns to the brain, bearing all of that information about our physical state. Our brains, Damasio explains, maintain incredibly complex maps of the state of the body, from our guts to our fingertips, at all times.

And here’s the core of his argument: when the incoming messages bearing news of the body’s physical fear-state alter these maps, that’s when the feeling itself arises. Your brain learns from your body that your heart is pounding, your pupils are dilated, your goosebumps are standing at attention. Your brain does the math and says, Aha! I am afraid!

In his 1884 essay, “What is an emotion?” the philosopher and psychologist William James wrote,

If we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no “mind-stuff” out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. . . . What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think.

Damasio picks up where James left off. But he doesn’t just draw on Victorian-era philosophizing to make his argument. He also works from case studies and his own research; for instance, the case of a Parkinson’s patient in Paris. The woman, who was sixty-five years old and had no history of depression or other mental illness, was undergoing an experimental treatment for her Parkinson’s symptoms. It involved the use of an electrical current to stimulate motor-control areas of the brain stem via tiny electrodes.

Nineteen other patients had undergone the treatment successfully. But when the current entered the woman’s brain, she stopped chatting with the doctors, lowered her eyes, and her face slumped.

Seconds later, she began to cry, and then to sob. “I’m fed up with life,” she said, through her tears. “I’ve had enough ... I don’t want to live anymore ... I feel worthless.” The team, alarmed, stopped the current, and within ninety seconds the woman had stopped crying. Her face perked up again, the sadness melting away. What had just happened? she asked.

It turned out, according to Damasio, that instead of stimulating the nuclei that controlled her tremors, the electrode, infinitesimally misplaced, had activated the parts of the brain stem that control a suite of actions by the facial muscles, mouth, larynx, and diaphragm—the actions that allow us to frown, pout, and cry. Her body, stimulated not by a sad movie or bad news, had acted out the motions of sadness, and her mind, in turn, had gone to a dark, dark place. The feeling arose from the physical; her mind followed her body.

This whole thing seemed counterintuitive to me at first, reversing as it does the “commonsense” view. But then I sat back and really thought about my experience of fear. How do I recall it in my memory? How do I try to explain it to other people? The fact is that I think of it mostly in physical terms: that sick feeling in my gut, the tightness in my chest, maybe some dizziness or shortness of breath.

Think about how you actually experience the feeling of happiness, of contentment, or ease. For me, it manifests in the loosening of the eternally tense muscles in my forehead and jaw, in my neck and shoulders. My eyes open wider, losing the worried squint. I breathe more deeply.

Or think about the sheer physicality of deep grief, how it wrecks your body as well as your mind. When I look back on the worst of my grief after my mom’s death, I remember it as headaches, exhaustion, a tight chest, a sense of heaviness, and lethargy. I felt sad, yes—sadder than I’ve ever been—and it was my body that told me how sad I was.